1030 AM Mia #2
There were seven missed calls. And they weren’t from her mother, but rather from Richie Fournier.
Seeing his name, Mia frowned. Richie had recently gotten sober again, though seeing the number of times he had called made her worry that had changed.
Bringing the phone to her ear, Mia listened to the first message.
It was short—“Hi, Mia, it’s Richie, call me back”—but there was something strange about his voice, a quivering that Mia thought she could hear but wasn’t sure of, because at the moment he began speaking, a bus hurtled past. She waited until it was gone.
Then she pulled up his number and called him.
“Can you make it fast?” she said when he answered. “I’m sitting in a park, I don’t really know where I am, and I really have to pee.”
Another bus drove by, its wheels splashing against the wet pavement.
Richie said: “Mia, something’s happened. Adam’s died.”
He and Rami had been riding Citi Bikes home from an Indigo Girls concert in Flatbush, he told her, their first night out in something like eight months.
It was late, and they had entered Prospect Park at its southeast corner, intending to cut through it to reach Prospect Heights and eventually Fort Greene.
Adam had his AirPods with him; he offered Rami the left one so they could both listen to “Galileo” as they rode.
Adam had been drinking—not much, only a little—and as they were passing the carousel, about where Ocean Avenue met Flatbush, Adam abruptly took off in a sprint, challenging Rami to a race.
But Rami did not want to race; Rami was having a perfectly pleasant time.
And so he let Adam ride on ahead, his legs pumping as he climbed a hill, turned a corner, and disappeared.
The moon shone through the leaf-bare trees; Rami was singing “How long ’til my soul gets it right” when, without any warning, the music sputtered out and stopped.
He pedaled onward, the bike creaking beneath him as he too mounted the hill that led to the park’s northernmost exit.
When he reached the top, he saw Adam on the ground, his bike resting on top of him.
His phone lay shattered next to his right hand.
“It’s called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The heart walls get thick, and they can’t pump as much blood anymore. The doctors told Rami it’s genetic, but there’s no way he could have known he had it without an ultrasound.”
She had the sensation of falling, of the ground beneath her splitting open and sinking to the center of the earth.
She said, “That can’t be right. Adam didn’t have any genetic conditions. That’s why they used his sperm for Lucy. He got tested for them all in Norwalk, Connecticut.”
Richie was quiet. Then he said, “Well, I don’t know anything about Norwalk, Connecticut.”
She started crying without knowing it, and then when she realized what was happening, she cried harder.
The sun was setting over London, turning the roads pink.
A man on an adjacent bench looked at Mia, who ran a hand over her face.
There were a number of things she still had to tell Adam.
For example: There was a Paul Cézanne painting at the National Gallery that reminded her of him.
The Painter’s Father, Louis-Auguste Cézanne, Room 41, Level 2.
In it a man was rendered in thick brushstrokes, the newspaper he was reading clutched with both hands.
His legs were crossed, his chin dipped, and his face was rapt with an expression of pleasurable concentration.
She couldn’t see it without thinking of him.
It reminded her of the hours they’d spent together at the library in college, the way he always held his books an inch from his nose.
Also: once she’d made out with Nina Guzman.
They were both drunk, waiting in line for the bathroom at some off-campus party.
Neither of them ever acknowledged it, and sometimes Mia wondered if she’d dreamed up the whole thing, but then she would remember the taste of Nina’s coconut lip balm and feel a little sick.
“There’s going to be a memorial next week. I’ll send you all the details.” Richie’s voice softened. He said, “The Indigo Girls, Mia. Fucking ‘Galileo.’ ”
She thought of other things—memories, opinions, questions.
Bits of gossip she had picked up between then and now.
All of it had seemed dumb and trivial, like the least urgent thing in the world—their lives had become so sprawling, so unwieldy, she had always figured there would be more time.
But now that he was gone, it all took on an unbearable significance: everything that she experienced from now on would be something that she would not be able to talk to Adam about.
She felt something inside of her crack open, and from it poured a new kind of sadness that she didn’t know how to contend with.
She sensed the unrelenting quickness of time, of how it kept speeding up and how, no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to outrun it.
Acid rose from her stomach. She thought, All you had to do was fucking call him, and choked it back down.
“Mia?” Richie said. “Mia, have I lost you? Are you still there?”
She set the phone down next to her without hanging up and listened as Richie’s voice was overtaken by all the noise of London. She kept her hand covering her face.
In the church garden, a bee investigated a tulip, then moved on to an azalea, hovering a few inches above it before flying away.
Nina said, “It really goes to show that you have to treat every moment like it’s your last, you know? We have to keep reminding ourselves of that.”
Courtney pinched the bridge of her nose. “For God’s sake, Nina.”
“What?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not.”
Courtney pulled a pair of sunglasses from her purse. They were large and black, with octagonal lenses.
She said, “Well, then, do us all a favor and spare us the live, laugh, love crap.”
A car honked on Hudson Street, and a few seconds later honked again. Nina’s brow furrowed. She stood up from the bench.
“You know what, Courtney?” she said. “Fuck you.”
“Yeah, okay, ha-ha. Fuck me.”
“No, I’m serious.” Nina clasped her hands together at her waist. “You’re a miserable person.
That’s why Alison Liu doesn’t talk to you anymore, and why Geoff divorced you.
You’re miserable, and you’re never not going to be miserable, and I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to be in love with you.
Also? Your baby looks like Winston Churchill. ”
Courtney’s mouth hung open. She turned to Mia. “Are you hearing this?”
Mia looked at Nina, and then at Courtney, and then to the entrance of the garden, where Rami now stood, a concerned expression on his face.
She said, “I mean, don’t all babies sort of look like Winston Churchill?” and then: “Excuse me for a second.”
A small fountain stood at the center of the garden, and Mia circled around it to reach Rami. Lucy was in his arms, wearing a tiny white dress. Her hair fell in dark brown curls, and as Mia looked at her, she thought: She has Adam’s eyes.
“Rami,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
Lucy yawned. She put her fist in her mouth.
“Have you heard from Richie today?” Rami asked.
“No—why?”
“He’s not here.”
Mia glanced over her shoulder. Courtney was pointing her finger at Nina; Nina was holding her purse to her chest and looking pitifully at Courtney.
“I’m sure he’ll show up.”
“I’ve called him eight times, and he hasn’t answered. He won’t even answer my texts. I just talked to the priest, and we’ve got to start this thing.” His jaw tensed. “I’m worried something’s happened.”
“I’m sure there’s a logical reason.”
“Okay, but what if it’s that he’s pissed himself in a bar somewhere.”
“You don’t know that. Also, he promised me he wouldn’t drink again.”
“That’s what we all say.”
A vein pulsed on Rami’s forehead. With two fingers Lucy touched his chin, and for a second he looked like he was going to cry.
“I put her in a black dress at first, I bought one yesterday for, like, two hundred dollars. But have you ever seen a baby in a black dress, Mia? You haven’t, right?
Because it’s really sad, it’s just really sad to see a baby in a black dress, so I put her in this white one instead.
” He wiped his eyes. “Do you think that’s okay? ”
“I think that she looks beautiful.”
“Mia, I don’t think I can do this.”
What was there to say? She had thought the same thing as she flew over the Atlantic.
It had struck her as inconceivable that she had to perform all these mundane tasks while such an impossible one lay before her.
How she was supposed to take a shower, and respond to text messages, and eat oatmeal when all she wanted to do was cry or sleep?
She said, “I know. But the thing is, you have to, so you will.”
Rami looked toward the church. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his coat as Lucy grabbed hold of his nose.
“We have to start,” he said. “We can’t wait for Richie.”
“Can you give him five more minutes?”
“No. I’m tired of giving him five more minutes. I’ve been giving him five more minutes for the last six years.”