Chapter VIII
VIII
As soon as we sit down, I know this was a bad idea.
When we walked into the old-school Italian restaurant, the owner’s son, Massimo, greeted me with a hug and a double kiss, asked after my parents, then looked at the hostess and touched his finger to his nose, the sign of a free dessert or bottle of wine.
And then he deposited us at our table, a cozy booth in the back, and took all his warmth and gregariousness with him.
Now the four of us consider our menus in silence.
A jazzy rendition of Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” plays over the speakers.
At the six-top next to us, a compendium of eclectic older women—lots of velvet scarves and jawbreaker jewelry—gossip about someone named Janice.
At the table behind us, a young woman in a slicked-back bun and twisted gold earrings reads Eve Babitz’s Sex and Rage.
I clock all this because nothing is happening at our table. Or, a lot is happening at our table, but all of it subterranean. The tension between the girls is still pulled taut. I keep trying to catch Reid’s eye, but he won’t meet my gaze.
A barrage of unwanted thoughts comes tumbling in. Did he only take up my invitation out of his unfailing politeness? Seeing me now, in middle age, is he looking back at our time less rosily?
Then he rests his arm over the back of the booth, behind where Gracie sits, and it clicks: He’s protecting his daughter’s feelings and waiting to make sure she’s OK with this admittedly odd situation. I’m ashamed that I considered any other alternative.
Then a waiter stops at our table and asks if we’d like something to drink.
“Yes,” Reid and I say simultaneously, with feeling.
The waiter laughs. We laugh. We order a bottle of Chianti. The girls continue to icily consider their menus and avoid eye contact with their respective parents. But it’s something.
There is so much I want to ask Reid, but I start with the most obvious question. “What were you two doing at the show?”
I watch Reid glance at Gracie before he responds. From my vantage, she remains expressionless, but clearly Reid saw something that loosens him up a little bit.
“Gracie came across the announcement on Instagram.” Reid gives her a playful look. “She and I are in town until Tuesday—she finally wore me down and got me to take her on a tour of NYU.”
“You have a problem with NYU?” I say in mock defense. To Gracie, I clarify, “It’s my alma mater.”
Her expression remains intelligently blank, revealing nothing to display that she has received this information.
“I do have a problem with it, actually,” Reid says. “It’s three thousand miles away from me and her aunt Cat.”
At this, I expect Gracie to roll her eyes. Emme certainly would. But instead, she gives her dad a small, tender smile. It seems the protectiveness goes both ways.
“Cat, my god,” I say, my voice wistful.
“The one and only,” Reid says. “She’s head of A how his T-shirt—the rumpled, tissue-thin material that is the calling card of a certain egregiously expensive basics brand—highlights his broad chest and shoulders.
Again and again, I’m struck with a sense of unreality. This is Reid, exactly as I knew him, and he is also a different person entirely, with a daunting vault of memories and experiences that are completely hidden from me.
And I wonder whether he’s considering me the same way.
But I keep shaking off the existential crisis to enjoy our conversation, which starts to pick up once our wine and food arrive.
When the topic turns to last month’s Met Gala red carpet, Gracie and Emme even begin to address each other directly.
Phoebe Bridgers’s Tory Burch look was a mutual favorite.
So was Doja Cat’s campy glam kitty costume.
At one point, in the midst of talk about the potential schools the girls are each interested in (Gracie, who’s a rising senior, wants to go into premed), Gracie interrupts herself.
“Hang on,” she says. She points that razor-sharp nail at me. A silver bow charm dangles off the tip. “You said you know Aunt Cat?”
“I did.” I mentally attempt to retrace the conversation and remember what I revealed. We haven’t been talking about Cat since we sat down. Gracie must have been turning this over in her mind since then. Did I reveal something I shouldn’t have or cross a line I didn’t know existed?
Then Gracie swings her finger at her dad. “And you said that Jeff Buckley show?” He nods. Gracie turns back to me. “You were there?”
I nod. “Sin-é, 1993. That’s where your dad and I met.” Maybe I’ve had too much wine, but now I give Reid a brazen, challenging look. “Caught him by the coattails before he left New York.”
Reid laughs, low in his throat. “Sure did.”
Gracie nods her head slowly. Then she drops her napkin on the table and stands. Abruptly, she says, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Emme, can you show me where it is?”
Emme, midbite, gives her a look like Me? Now?
Gracie arches a perfectly groomed eyebrow. Now. You.
I’m just as confused as Emme is—clearly, Gracie is up to something. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m slightly afraid of what that might be.
But with the girls gone, the energy shifts.
It is just the two of us, for the first time in twenty years.
Reid’s shoulders drop a few inches. I smooth a hand through my hair.
In the newfound quiet, a sense of intimacy blooms between us, like we can assume a freedom of conversation unbound by a duty to protect our children’s emotions.
Be one person talking to another person, with no agenda other than connection.
Now Reid gestures to my camera, occupying the space between me and Emme on our side of the booth like a mechanical, alien baby. “Glad to see your minor won out.”
I laugh. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I also remember we got you that five-hundred-pound Shakespeare collection for one of your lit classes. Pretty sure carrying that thing back to your place permanently fucked up my shoulder.”
My face flushes. Does that mean he also remembers when he stuck his thumb in my mouth in the basement of the bookstore?
“I think those books are still at my parents’ house.
After graduation, I took a stab as an editorial assistant at a publishing house, but I felt like an impostor.
Actually, it was Emme’s dad who convinced me to quit and try to make the photography thing work.
” Before he can ask, I say, “We divorced six years ago.”
Reid is leaning forward across the table, a crease between his brows.
I haven’t forgotten how good it feels to be on the receiving end of his attention, and I feel a desire to pick up my camera and capture this scene—how the dancing flame on the table throws delicate shadows across his features, sending a single perfect starburst of light into the center of his amber-flecked eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Reid says. “What happened there? With the marriage?”