Chapter 13 #2
“Please not that. She’s awful.” Lisette took a breath. “Okay. I forgive you. And more importantly, I should get back to work, probably.”
“Probably.”
“I said I was having a medical issue. That’s the real advantage of improv. It makes you a better liar.”
“Do you forgive me enough to hang out tomorrow?”
“This time. But I will expect constant updates on your New York City life to make it up to me.”
“You will hear about every stalled subway train and broken shoe.”
“You think that’s a threat, but that is exactly what I want. With photos.”
I didn’t have a very productive workday.
I forced myself to finish a couple of articles that had deadlines and sent them to Kedar to review.
Then I walked over to the windows and stared at the view: this breezy, beautiful city that tumbled down a hill to the coast. I had started to love it here, this practical, stark, beautiful island, full of people I loved.
Lisette turned up after work and threw her arms around me and held for a long moment.
“I should start to pack,” I said quietly. “But it won’t take me long. I managed to put my whole life into a couple of suitcases. Who knew?”
“Why isn’t Paul here?”
“I’m not strong enough. I’ll cry too much.”
“Does he know you’re in love with him?”
I took a breath. “It seems like the wrong thing to tell him right now.”
She nodded thoughtfully, still leaning against me.
That night, Laura and I talked about all the practicalities of her staying at my Brooklyn apartment.
We were going to be flying on the same day, Sunday, with her arriving at close to 3 p.m. and me getting back at closer to eight at night.
I explained how she could get a key to my apartment from my doorman, so she’d have somewhere to sleep.
She explained that her plan was to get Hannah settled and re-enrolled in her local Brooklyn school and then fly back to Atlanta to do the work of packing up all their lives while I watched Hannah.
“Nick is not happy with me,” Laura said, “and I didn’t want Hannah around if Nick and I started fighting.”
“Totally understandable.”
“I don’t want her mad at her dad, you know? Just because I’m not seeing eye to eye with him. I’m not even ruling out ever being with him again, I just…”
“I know, Laur. It’s okay either way. Whatever you decide.”
“I just couldn’t upend my whole life for his version of how everything was supposed to work, you know?”
I was excited to see her again, but a sense of loss still hovered over me.
This trip, which had been intended to change my life, seemed to have been a detour.
Everything was about to go right back to the way it had always been: me watching Hannah, serving as the side character in Laura’s life rather than the main character of my own.
But hadn’t I wanted exactly this to happen?
Lisette and I met outside her apartment on Saturday morning and went for a walk in the drizzling rain to buy her some shower curtains for her basement.
“If you ever want to leave the country,” I said, “or if the awful ex-boyfriend is giving you are hard time, you have a place with me. You won’t even have to figure out a name change.”
“I may go see my family instead. You were right. I shouldn’t let my ex keep me out of Quebec. And my brother Cedric is back from Florida, so I want to go see him. He’s living at my brother Martin’s house right now.”
“You had a brother in Florida? I didn’t know this.”
“Yeah. I told you about him. They film in Orlando.”
“I thought—when you said wrestler…Lisette, are you telling me you have a brother in the World Wrestling Federation?”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“Because you’re so tiny!”
“Well,” she shrugged. “Cedric is six foot six. I told you he could beat up Paul.” She pulled out a photo of a giant man in tights, growling toward the camera. “They call him the French Revolution.”
“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. If you go see him, will you send me a picture of the two of you together?”
“I thought we’d established that we are sending each other all the pictures.”
When it was time to say goodbye, Lisette jumped up to give me one of her giant hugs.
“You’ll be back,” she said. “You don’t know it yet, but I know.”
“I hope so.”
“I have faith.”
“Well, you inspired me to be brave enough to try improv, so thank you for that,” I said.
“It’s a way to live,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to jump before you know the answer yet. That’s how I got away from Simon. I jumped.”
I gathered Paul’s improv books and texted him on Saturday to say that I was coming by. Something about the formality of returning the books had a particular misery to it, mimicking the break-up of a long-term relationship that we’d never get to have.
It was still raining when I walked to his house, just like something out of a sad movie, and I climbed his steps hurriedly, trying to keep the books dry under my coat.
“You walked?” he said when he opened the door. “I could have come over.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m trying to enjoy the city while I still can.”
“Come inside.”
His house was warm. The wood stove was going, and I wondered if that was just for me.
I desperately wanted to hug him, but instead I made myself busy stripping off my coat and putting the books down on a table. Paul stood beside me, looking like he wanted to help and then like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
“Coffee?”
I nodded, once. I knew Paul preferred tea. He had done this for me as well. A small thing. I took a mug and wandered into the middle of the room, staring at his DVDs.
“I gave you so many books,” he said, looking at the pile I’d left behind me. “I guess I really am a schoolteacher.”
“I read almost all of them. They were good.”
He gave a sad smile. “So in New York, you’ll still do improv, I hope. I hope we’ve gotten you hooked.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” The space between us felt endless, the hug I hadn’t given at the door haunting me. I could step forward into his arms and do it now.
“This is too sad,” I said.
He nodded.
I looked at the room, where he had tidied up the mess left by his mother. “You know it’s your mother’s loss, that you’re not in her life.”
He shrugged. “I know that, but it doesn’t help. It just makes me worry about her.”
I went on, because he needed to hear this, at least. “You’re marvelous. Maybe when she’s burned her last bridge, she’ll realize that she was the one setting all the fires.”
“I doubt it,” he said with a weary little smile. “But I know your sister needs you,” he said. “So I’m glad you’re going to get to be with her. I always thought that if she needed you, you’d go back.”
I stared into the swirling black quicksand of my coffee mug.
“She can survive without me. She’s moving into my apartment tomorrow, for a few days. So we’ll get back the same day. Honestly, if I wasn’t being forced back by work, I might not have gone at all.”
“But it’s out of your hands.”
“Maybe I could find some other remote job.”
He gave a quick, pained smile. “Well, you’ve never lived here during winter. That’s when people really decide if they like it up here.”
“I like winter, actually. That wouldn’t have scared me. I was happy here. You made me happy. You and Lisette,” I added.
We were both silent, both good at being awfully grown up about the whole thing. I hated it.
“Paul, I—I loved being with you.”
I could see something cross his face, but this time I couldn’t read it. “Thanks, Abby. Me, too.”
I rose, and he stepped forward. I gave him a hug.
“Abby…”
There it was. The feeling, his hands curving around my back. I was pressed into his shoulder, and I could feel him breathing, feel his heartbeat.
Then slowly we let go. It was like that first kiss: I wasn’t sure which of us had taken the step to move away. I put on my coat and took hold of the door handle, the only part of his house that was cold.
“Hey,” he said, as he stepped outside with me, “do you want a ride home or anything? It may start to rain again.” He gazed up at the clouds, which were moving ominously fast and low across the sky.
“No,” I said, glancing up at the dark grey above our heads. “I can handle it.”
I walked as quickly as I could and definitely did not look back until I had turned a corner. Once I was out of sight, I paused and took a breath. I had gotten out of his sight before I could give in to the desire to look back at him.
The morning of my departure, I realized that I had said good-bye to Lisette and Paul but not to Mark.
I thought about texting him, but I knew he lived about thirty minutes down the road, and I wanted to see him in person.
This felt like the end of an era, and maybe a chance to tell him he’d been right about me and Paul.
As a fellow cynic, he might as well hear that he’d been correct all along: we had always been doomed.
I called up Rick, my crossword-loving taxi driver, who was going to take me to the airport and asked him if he could come an hour and a half early and help me find the little donut shop that Mark had said was across the street from his place: Chocolate Heaven.
I could surprise Mark with some eclairs.
Rick was happy to drive me because I gave him a few more crossword puzzle clues, and we had a desultory chat as we drove out of the center of the city toward Mark’s suburb.
It was slowly turning into a gorgeous day.
Sure enough, the pastry shop owner knew Mark, and the owner pointed to a house a hundred feet away, just up the street.
I took my box of donuts and told Rick to wait for me in the parking lot and decided to walk over.
Mark’s house was a nice house. A very nice house, in fact, with a broad, colonial face and high ceilings and a front porch. It felt like the setting for some movie flashback about someone’s perfect childhood, porch swings and rose bushes and all.
This was the place he’s been hiding from us?
Just after I rang the doorbell, I suddenly knew.