I escaped rehearsal, zigzagging through the room to avoid Karl and his soulful eyes. At least he’d left Parsley behind, so I didn’t have to evade her affection on my way out, too.
I swung by home for Emmeline, and we went for drinks. Tucked into the back booth of a quiet bar, Christmas lights twinkling around us but fortunately no carols playing to plague either of us, I told her about hooking up with Karl since Thanksgiving. And about our fight.
“So, now it’s over,” I said. Declared. Affirmed, like there was no chance I was wrong.
“Hmm.” Emmeline sipped her strawberry margarita. “Okay. And to be clear, if you weren’t in quest mode right now, he wouldn’t be the right kind of partner for you?”
Her question reminded me of how I once imagined Karl—Mr. Moore—as my ideal. But that was the fantasy of a kid spinning tales out of sweet sounds and silliness.
And now?
I couldn’t quite manage shaking my head, but I made a grumpy negative sound. Because no matter how much I liked about the Karl I now knew—his intense charm, and his competence, and the way he gathered up diverse people and created harmony, and how he was a perfect fuck—I couldn’t get into a cycle of thinking he was the only guy in the world for me. The only one who could amuse me over dinner, and wow me in bed, and listen for the truth underlying my tales, and expand my worldview, and make up silly dog songs, and buy boxes of tea in case I came around, and find the perfect fit for our hands to hold each other when we walked.
I sighed. “There’s no point wondering what shifting around nine hundred moving parts of the space-time continuum might mean. Those parts haven’t moved, and they’re not going to. I’m the one in the wind.”
My sister stared me down. “I was fifteen when you went to college.”
I bit my lips together, not sure where she was going with this.
“Larissa was already married. Jeannie was off in Jackrabbit. Sarita had just gotten out of college and settled in Austin. Home was just you and me and sometimes Cole, and then Cole left, and right after, so did you.”
“Shit, Emmers. Was that rough?”
She laughed and slurped up the dregs of her drink. “It was blissful. It was so quiet, and no one was put out by being forced to drive me to therapy or the ortho, and if I asked for Greek food we could have Greek food with no complaints that it was supposed to be lasagna night.”
“Last year I made pastitsio on lasagna night and Cole nearly moved out. I sent him like five links of places calling it Greek lasagna, but he said I was determined to deprive him of life’s only reliable pleasure.”
Emmeline pointed at me. “Exactly. I had three beautiful years of none of that. The elders were benignly indulgent, no one tossed opinions at me. It was the best.”
I looked into my own glass, debating a third Negroni. They were watered down, and I was still in a bummed out mode, but I did have to face hotel customers in the morning. “So, I’m glad you enjoyed all that and I’m sorry I never asked about it before, but why are you telling me now?”
“Gogo, it wasn’t just the freedom to put my faves in the dinner rotation. It was the time to think about my life. To discover mind-blowing shit in my physics class, when I never knew before that I even liked science. And that was cause no one in the family liked science. Why would I figure, if all five of my older siblings shuddered at Mr. Burkholder’s name, that it would turn out his class was the best thing I’d ever taken?”
“I still can’t believe how, of all your awards, the certificate for being Burkholder’s top student is the one thing you hung above your desk.”
“Can’t you? Sure, he can really drone on, but that certificate matters to me, the way the swim trophies or whatever don’t. It reminds me where I was when I knew what I loved. Maybe I’d still have gotten to know that about myself if half my siblings still lived at home, taking up physical and mental space, when I was in high school. But knowing how I work, which is another thing all those years as the only kid home gave me, I kind of doubt it.”
Damn baby sister laying all this truth on me. My throat felt like I’d been kayaking in sea water for a couple of hours, dry and hollow. “I’m glad you found that out. Oh, and you should mention your career goals to Uncle Bill. You need to head him off before he schemes to drop a whole hotel on your life.”
“See, and this is how you know I love you. I could save myself the Uncle Bill hand-me-down problem by encouraging you to settle in with this guy you like and in a job you’re okay at. But I don’t want that for you. I mean, I do, but only if Cole’s made you a pro-con list and you’ve come to the decision to stay.”
Cole’s pro-con lists were color coded things of beauty. I’d made him send me the one about taking the Philly job, even though his move was already happening, cause I loved seeing how he’d balanced his way there. It always taught me new ways to approach my own decisions. Plus, it gave us all ideas for his Christmas gifts; if he thought we wouldn’t coordinate on a sleek winter wardrobe for him, he didn’t truly know his sisters.
“So, you’re saying Bill’s hotel is not my physics certificate?” Emmeline’s bright grin cheered me immensely.
“You knew that already. I’m saying you deserve to eat Greek food whenever you want, and to figure out if following a band across the country or sailing up the Eastern seaboard or dating every choir director in the state of Texas, or somehow all of that, is what makes you feel the most Margo. Because the Margo I see when I look at you is already pretty great, and I want a life for you that allows that greatness to … to expand so much it’ll explode all over us.”
Who knew physics majors expressed themselves in such un-scientific ways? But strange visual or not, Emmeline was telling me what I needed to hear. All I had to do was hold on to her words for one more performance, and then I could get on with the plan of not seeing Karl again.