SIMON WAS DRIVING. BUSINESS was picking up now that there was a chill in the air. For almost a month, he had gotten very little sleep, worrying. What if Stella came back and he was in too deep a sleep to hear her and she left again? The police had finally listed her as missing, but he felt their search was haphazard, so he spent a lot of time searching on his own. He scanned the streets while he was driving, and every time he saw a flash of blonde curls, he’d stop the car and get out and call her name.
Sometimes when he saw a redheaded woman, he’d stop the car, too.
Fuck you, Stella had written, and he couldn’t help but think that she was right. Fuck him. It was his fault. All of it. He knew it. He should have done better, been better, loved both Stella and Libby better, but he hadn’t known how, and now he did and it was too late, and both Libby and Stella were gone, and he would have to live with that.
He was covering all the bills, but he couldn’t afford the apartment by himself for much longer, so he started looking for cheaper places, some of them laughably small. He scoured different neighborhoods, including Harlem, which was having a resurgence, and the suboptimal West 30s, which pretty much shut down at night. He put up a small laminated sign in the back of his car, offering free rides in exchange for news about apartments opening up.
“Better living through advertising,” one woman commented, climbing into the car, but then she mentioned a small studio in her building on the Upper West Side, how it was really cheap, probably because the landlord was her father and he was amenable to renting it to anyone she suggested. She handed him a card. “Call me when you’re ready,” she said. “He’s not even showing it yet.”
The Upper West Side, he thought. More adult than Chelsea. More older people. He had heard kids in his Lyft calling it the Retirement Community and, once, the Nursing Home. All of them wanted to be in Brooklyn now, which he used to mock when he was their age. Well, everything was different now. He could at least look at it.
THE PHONE RANG in the middle of the night. Simon bolted awake and grabbed for it. Stella, he thought. Libby.
“Simon.” His mother’s voice was raw.
“Mom,” Simon said. “Are you crying?” It startled him because his mother never cried. Smile and people will always want to be near you. Frown and you’re on your own.
“Your father’s had a stroke. Come. Please come.”
SIMON TOOK THE first flight he could get to Florida and then a Lyft to the nursing facility where his mother said his father was being treated. His father! Indomitable, never sick a day in his life, not even a cold. (“Do you think a cold would dare attach itself to me?” his dad joked.)
The place where his parents had lived was a retirement community that they loved. But his mother said he was now in a nursing facility called King Gardens. Set back in the woods, with palm trees lining the walk, it looked more like a large friendly house than a facility. As soon as Simon entered, a nurse approached him and reached for his arm. “How can I help you?” she asked.
Her face was rich with sympathy when he said his father’s name. “Come with me,” she said, and she led him down a corridor until he saw his mother, seated by a door, her arms crossed, her shoulders slumped.
“Mom,” he said, and she hugged him and he could feel how she had gotten smaller.
“He got up to pee,” she whispered. “Like he always does at night. Like I always do. Sometimes several times. And then I heard a thunk. He fell. Oh my God, Simon, he had a stroke.” She took Simon by his arm. “Come. Let’s go see him.”
HIS FATHER WAS lying in bed attached to an IV, his hands flailing, plucking at the covers. He kept trying to wrench off the blue hospital gown. But what shocked Simon the most was his dad’s face. One side now drooped. He scowled and drooled, which made Simon wince. “Dad,” Simon said.
His mother gently took his father’s hands away from the gown. “He keeps trying to take his clothes off,” his mother said. “Who knows why.” She touched his father. “Darling, don’t,” she said. “Look who’s here to see you.”
Simon’s father turned and blinked at Simon. For a moment, Simon wasn’t sure his father knew who he was. “Simon,” he said finally, waving his hand in the air.
“I came to see you,” Simon said.
“Do you have your car here?” his father said. “Because there’s traffic. Because you’d better go.”
His mother met Simon’s eyes. “Falls—strokes—they can cause a kind of dementia,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“Who fell?” Simon’s dad said. He squinted up at her. “Something’s not right here. Something’s just not right,” he said. “Believe me, I know. Where are the doctors?”
“Everything is fine, darling,” his mother said to him, then turned back to Simon. “All those years we’ve both been doing those stupid Sudoku puzzles to keep sharp. We swim. We take vitamins.” Her voice trailed off. “It’s age, I suppose.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“He has some dementia, the doctors say. But yes. For now, he’s going to be okay.”
“For now—”
“Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow?” she said.
“Could I have time with him alone?” Simon said.
“Don’t upset him, darling,” his mother said, which offended Simon a little, but then she left.
Alone with his dad, Simon felt helpless. The room seemed too big, the silence too large. He pulled a chair up so he was close to his father. He tried to take his dad’s hand, and to his surprise, his father let him. Simon stared at the ropey blue veins, the creases in his father’s nails, the way his father’s hands looked like they’d been dipped into a freezer.
“Simon,” his dad said. “Where’d you come from?” His father patted him on the hand. “Good boy.”
His father looked so small in the bed that Simon felt tender toward him. His father had been so strong, so sure, in life.
“Listen, I have to tell you something,” Simon said.
His father turned his body closer to Simon’s. “Okay,” he said. Simon thought of all the deathbed scenes he had seen in movies. His father wasn’t dying, but he was old now and not very strong. Who knew what might happen with him? In the movies, people always got to have a finish, to say all the things that had been boiling up inside of them, the things that truly mattered. Simon wanted that, too.
“Tell me,” his father said, nodding his head.
“I love you,” Simon said.
As soon as Simon said that, he knew it was true, despite everything that had happened in their lives. Tears stung his eyes. He swallowed hard. He couldn’t remember saying that to his father, not for a very long time. He couldn’t remember his father ever saying that to him.
“Yes,” his father said, nodding his head.
“I forgive you. Maybe there was something inside of you that made you act the way you did to me. Maybe you had to have outward signs of being important because you didn’t feel it inside—”
“Okay.” His father pinched the blanket between his fingers, studying it now with interest.
“I hope that you can forgive me, too,” Simon said.
“Okay.” His father pulled at his IV cord, trying to jerk it free, and then rested his hands again.
“I want to know you,” Simon said. He felt himself choking on his words. “Tell me about you and me. What was I like as a little boy with you? What am I like now to you? Please. I need to know it from you.”
His father looked sharply at him. “Where’s your mom?” he said. And then: “Do you have a car? Traffic is terrible. You should go.” His father stared at the window. “Go,” he said. “Go now. Be a good boy.”
When Simon stumbled out of the room, his mother was there, leaning against the wall. He walked over to her and rested his head against her shoulder, and then he cried.
SIMON’S FATHER STAYED at King Gardens for a week. He never became himself, but he regained enough strength that he could get around with a walker. He could watch TV and read a little, though most of his ability to comprehend was gone, and he kept forgetting what he had been watching. He couldn’t be left alone. Simon and his mother found and hired a helper for him, a full-time nurse. They went back to their expensive retirement home, which Simon’s mother equipped with all the necessary gadgets. A bathtub seat. Handles and railings everywhere.
Simon and his mom didn’t talk about anything other than his dad, and that was fine because Simon couldn’t burden her with his troubles about Stella, about his life. This was the moment he was in now and he would deal with it. He sat with his mother every day in her favorite cafe, drinking tea, eating too many pastries. That was what she wanted and needed.
“I actually feel that I love him more now,” his mother said. “The stroke made him sweeter to me. He needs me now. And he won’t be catbirding around anymore.”
Simon looked at her, shocked. “What?”
“Your father had an eye for the ladies.”
“You knew that?”
“Of course I knew, darling.” She sipped at her tea.
“Why’d you stay, then? All these years?”
His mother looked at him, surprised. “Because love stays,” she said. “It’s easy to love someone when things are good, when you’re having fun, going out with friends. But the tough times—that’s the test. And believe it or not, your father and I passed it.”
She took a bite of her torte. “Stop looking at me like that, please. This is the natural order of things. This is what happens when we’re lucky enough to get old and decrepit.”
“Don’t say that,” he said.
“You know it’s written all over my face,” she said. “See these lines here? And here?” She pointed to the crepe-paper skin around her neck, the fan of wrinkles crinkling her eyes. “You reach a point where you can’t keep them hidden and all the expensive creams and potions won’t stop more from coming.”
“You’re still beautiful,” Simon said, and he meant it.
“Baloney,” his mother said cheerfully. She polished off the torte and then looked at him. “Darling, now that things are settled pretty much, I have something I need to talk to you about,” she said.
Simon felt a chill. He knew she had diabetes, but he thought it was managed. “Are you okay?” he said.
“Don’t be silly. I’m fine,” she said.
“Then what?”
“I should have listened to you before, but I didn’t realize there was need. I want you to sell the Woodstock house. The upkeep is too much for me. The worry that someone might break in and then I’d have to deal with all of it. And I don’t like even thinking of that house without your father in it. I’ll transfer the title to you. I’ll give you the deed and I’ll front the money for the taxes and the upkeep until it’s sold, so you won’t have to. And once it’s sold, take the money and do whatever you want with it.”
“Dad loves that house. He’d never want to sell it—”
“He’s forgotten that house already. If you said Silverwood, he’d say, ‘What? Where?’ All he remembers now is me.”
“I can sell it?” Simon thought of how he had begged his parents last spring, how much that money would have mattered to him and Stella. Now having to ready it for sale felt like just another burden for him to deal with. But at least it would be money that might float him for a while.
“And something else,” his mother said. “We have accounts for you, stocks. I used to think waiting was the best thing to do.” She sighed. “But now I think you should cash them all in.”
“What?” he said. “Really?”
And then she said something he had never heard her say before. “It’s only money.”
“Okay,” he said finally. Then he took his mother’s hands in his. “I love you,” he said.
“I know.”
SIMON STAYED FOR another week. His mother was right. His father was sweeter to her, his eyes glazing over with love, but his father never looked at Simon that way. He still squinted at Simon as if he couldn’t quite place him.
One morning, Simon was riffling through the paper when he saw Kevin’s photo. The band, still the opening act for Rick Mason, was playing in Miami, one night only, which Simon knew was meant to fire up excitement. (One night only! Better move fast!) The band name was in a bigger font than Simon could ever remember seeing it. He could probably get backstage to see Kevin and Rob and meet the new bass player who had taken his place. He could talk to Rick, mention that he was still writing songs, and maybe Rick would be interested. Maybe Rick would even remember him. Maybe, if he could get to them before the show or during intermission, Kevin would even let Simon play with them for old times’ sake.
Memories flooded back of how it had been in the old days, with Kevin and him onstage playing to each other even more than to the audience. The delight they had felt. The glow of the music. A kind of enchantment. Simon didn’t know what it would feel like to play with the band again—would it be like that horrible night when he had gone to Le Poison Rouge, that club where everything, even the air, felt too loud? It was the kind of place that used to be a home to him, and now he didn’t belong there at all. He was a guest, a visitor.
He looked over at his parents sitting in the living room, his father stroking his mother’s hair. He couldn’t leave them to go hear Kevin. He didn’t want to. Well, at least he could say hello by phone. He called the venue and left his number. Kevin could always call him back.
They were eating dinner that night when Simon’s cell rang. “Excuse me,” he said, getting up from the table to take the call in the other room. “Is that for me?” he heard his father say.
“Simon.”
He recognized the gravel in the voice. “Kevin,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d call me back.”
“I guess I’m getting soft in my old age.”
Simon listened to Kevin talking about the band, about their grueling schedule, about the songs they were doing now. Simon felt the words rolling over him. He studied the kitchen, the special railings they had installed for his father. The locks on the burners for safety. “They love us so much that it’s insane,” Kevin said, and Simon looked into the other room where his father was reaching for his mom’s face, cupping it in his hands. That was love.
“So where the hell are you?” Kevin said. “You want a ticket to our show? I can get you front row.”
“Ah, I can’t,” Simon said. He waited for Kevin to ask him why he couldn’t come to the show, to ask him what he was doing now. “Just wanted to hear your voice.” He thought about Stella, how she didn’t want to be a nurse anymore, and he hadn’t believed her because she had loved nursing so much. But then she had gone on and found something else she loved.
Maybe Simon could do that, too. Maybe everything changes, and that was the way it was supposed to be.
“So, yo, keep in touch,” Kevin said. “Ruby says hello.”
“Sure,” Simon said, and he hung up. He stood in the kitchen for a moment and then went back into the dining room. His parents smiled up at him and he smiled back.
IN THE MORNING, his parents needed almond milk (his father wasn’t supposed to have dairy), so Simon went out to get groceries. It was quiet, and he got the milk, some whole-grain bread, and even tofu in case his mother felt like being adventurous.
He was walking back when he passed a music store, Tune Me Up. In the window were all sorts of guitars, different colors and shapes, and one that was actually a mirror. He felt a pull in his gut, the way he always did when he thought of his love of music. He couldn’t help himself. He went inside.
A bald guy was reading a book behind the desk, and the only other customers were a father and his skinny kid with an unfortunate-looking whiffle haircut. They were trying out guitars, and it was clear neither one of them knew how to even hold one properly. Simon walked slowly up and down the rows, seeing which guitar called to him. They all did.
When he came back around to the front, the father and son were sitting on a bench and the kid was holding a guitar, but handling it all wrong. Simon tilted his head at them. “Can I just show you?” he offered.
“Please,” the dad said. “You’d be doing us a big favor.” He patted the kid’s shoulder. “This is Bobby. I’m Jake.”
So Simon sat down and repositioned the guitar for Bobby, who stared up at him like this was the greatest, most exciting thing ever. Simon showed him how to strum, how to do an E minor chord, which was an easy start, and he had Bobby strum it for him, over and over, until it was right. The kid couldn’t stop grinning.
Simon helped them choose the right guitar, made sure Bobby liked the way it fit in his hands. Jake pumped his hand. “Thank you!” he said.
“Thank you!” Bobby echoed.
Simon used to say to everyone, “Go forth and be a rock star.” He didn’t say it now, because he knew that wasn’t the point. Not anymore. “Find out if this place gives lessons,” he advised, and Bobby lit up again, and then the guy at the counter looked up from his book with interest. “We do,” he said.
“Can I, Daddy?”
“Certainly you can,” Jake said. “And then maybe you can teach me, too. We can have our own band.”
“Okay, but I get to name it,” the boy said.
Simon walked out. For the first time in days, he felt good. Maybe he had changed Bobby’s life, just through the simple business of passing on his joy in music.
That had been fun. Maybe he could get a job at a college, a job with benefits and vacations. He had a degree, maybe not a PhD, but he had been in a well-known band for many years, and that sort of recognition might make him a desirable hire. And he could still play and write songs.
He stopped at a bench and looked up the number for Cancun Records on his phone. What could this hurt? But when Simon got someone on the line, she had no idea who he was and told him they weren’t looking for new songs or artists right now. When he mentioned Michael Foley, the woman on the other end of the line snorted. “He’s not here anymore.”
To his surprise, Simon wasn’t decimated by the news. So what, he thought. There were lots of doors in life, lots of moments. Simon could still love music and make his life around it.
He felt lighter. The air sparkled around him.
TWO DAYS LATER, when Simon left his parents, his father was holding on to his mother. A little old man, Simon thought. But a happy one. He kissed his dad, knowing that this might be the last time he would see him. Or maybe there would be other times, and because he knew what to expect now, they would be sweeter times, more loving because he wasn’t asking his dad for anything. Not anymore.
“Bye!” his father said. “Have a good time! Bye!” His father opened and closed his hands in a cupping wave. “Good boy!” he called to Simon. “Good boy!”
SIMON WAS ON the plane home, watching a terrible movie about a horse trainer, a film he’d selected only because it had closed captioning, so his already-compromised hearing wouldn’t have to additionally strain over the rumblings of the plane. He had to ask the flight attendant three times what the juice choices were, and he finally just nodded and stayed silent when she handed him tomato juice, which he didn’t want. He wasn’t even fifty yet. Did people get hearing aids in their fifties? Maybe they did if they had been around screamingly loud music for most of their lives. Maybe they did if they were just getting older.
Life, Simon thought, was short and mysterious. Or maybe it was long and mysterious. He didn’t know. His father could go on living like this for years, or he could have another stroke tomorrow and die. Maybe something came after you died, but maybe it didn’t. Scientists had found pixels in space, but did that mean everyone was part of a giant computer simulation? Some scientists thought consciousness continued, that you might know that you were dead. But then what? What happened next?
Maybe all anyone had was just this one moment. And then the next moment. Or maybe every moment happened all at once at the same time. Maybe all you could do was try to make the most of it. He’d go home. He’d think about what he wanted to do with the rest of his time. He’d get in the car and drive up to Woodstock and all that had haunted him there, and he’d hire a real estate agent to sell the house because he didn’t need those ghosts anymore and they didn’t need him. He’d think about doing something different. Going someplace different, too. Start anew. Maybe Savannah, which he had fallen in love with when the band had played there. All that moss and friendliness, the dense air like a comforting blanket. Or maybe he’d stay in New York City, call the number that woman had given him about the studio on the Upper West Side. Maybe he could do a lot of things. But first he needed to sell the house.
BACK IN THE city, Simon retrieved his car from where he’d last parked it. He drove north, getting to Woodstock by nightfall. It was a sleepy town, something that always drove him crazy, and tourist season was over. He didn’t want to run into anyone he might know, like old friends of his parents. He was just too tired for that. He had never loved the house enough to carry a key with him, even though his parents kept telling him that he should. He knew where the spare was hidden. He’d be fine.
He looked at the house from the car, suddenly hit with an array of feelings, the stench of failure, the memory of the humiliation he had always felt here.
But now he could do something about it.
He bounded up the porch stairs, feeling for the key under the mat, but it was gone. Fuck this house, he thought. Had his parents taken the key when they moved, knowing he was unlikely to ever return?
Then he heard music, faint as a sigh. He saw a light in the back of the house. He grabbed for his phone to call 9-1-1. He heard approaching footsteps from inside, and suddenly the door swung open, and then, in front of him, like a mirage, was Stella.
AT FIRST, SIMON couldn’t speak.
He couldn’t tell from looking at her how she felt—happy or angry or sad—but he wasn’t sure how he felt either.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Let’s go inside.”
He followed her into the house, into the living room. He looked around the house. From the corner of his eye, he could see an easel. “Why did you come here? This isn’t your house.”
“I had nowhere else to go.”
“You could have asked me before you came here.”
“Why should I ask you? You cheated.” She rubbed her eyes, and when she took away her hand, he saw that her eyes were clear. “I lost you and then I lost Libby. I needed a place where I didn’t feel lost.” She looked toward the window. “If Libby’s in the car, you had better tell her to stay there.”
“You didn’t lose me,” he said. “And I’m not with Libby anymore.”
Stella tilted her head. “Really,” she said. “No, don’t tell me the details. I don’t want to know.” She wrapped her arms around herself like a corset.
He nodded and then looked around the house again. “Is this your ‘fuck you’ to me, coming here to my house? It’s fucking haunted, Stella. It still is. I hate this house. Even coming here right now—”
“It’s haunted for you,” she said. “Not for me. You set me up not to like it, Simon, but I did. I loved this house. I felt safe here.” She dug her hands in her pockets. “Does everything have to be about you?” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come here, but I had to. I didn’t think you’d ever show up here again, not for me, and certainly not for the house. But fine, I’ll pack and get out.” She sat down on the couch, defeated. “Why did you come here? Did you know I’d be here? Do you think you have to take care of me still? You don’t. I don’t want you to. Not anymore.”
Simon sat down opposite her, slumping in one of the chairs.
“Why are you here?” she repeated.
“My dad had a stroke.”
Stella’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Simon, I’m so sorry.”
“He’s alive, but he lost some mobility. His mouth droops and his mind is fuzzy.”
“I’m so sorry. I liked him.”
“He liked you. More than he liked me, I think. My folks are never coming back here. They told me to sell it, so here I am. I just want to get it over with.” He was so tired. If he shut his eyes, he’d fall into sleep. He didn’t know what to do now.
He thought of all the things he had wanted to say to her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah. You and Libby,” she said. “I didn’t have to draw it to see it. Because I saw both of you in the park.”
He thought of her note to him, the pain and fury in the letters, the blame. She must have sent something to Libby, too. He felt awash with sorrow. “We never wanted to hurt you.”
“You were my person. She was my best friend. What you both did is hard to forgive.”
“I can’t believe you came here,” he said.
“Yes, you can, if you think about it. It wasn’t all bad when we came up here,” Stella said. “Remember we went to an outdoor concert and there were all those stars and even fireworks?”
“Puny ones. Not like New York City,” he said, but he felt himself softening because he did remember it, the two of them curled together on a blanket, sharing a picnic. They had come home and kissed through the halls of the house while his parents slept. And when they slept, he had held her so close he could feel her heart bumping up against his.
“You being here back then,” Simon said, swallowing hard. “It made it easier. You made everything easier.”
She studied him, the same intense way she did with people she was about to draw, but then she averted her eyes. “So did you,” she said quietly. “Every time you came into a room where I was, I felt electric sparks. I always had so much I wanted to say to you.”
“Fuck,” he said. “What happened to us, Stell? Where did it all go so wrong?”
She was still for a moment, deciding something.
“It’s not like before,” she said. “We’re not like before. We can talk about it.”
“I loved you,” Simon blurted. The words hung in the air.
“I know,” Stella said. “I loved you, too. But things weren’t perfect even before I was hospitalized.”
“I know that, too. But we could have fixed it, couldn’t we?”
“Maybe. If I hadn’t changed so much,” she said. “And you were so different to me, too, you know.”
“There’re still pieces of you that are the same.”
“You, too.”
Simon remembered how deeply he had believed that his life would change with the LA gig. And his life had changed, but not in the way he had wanted, not in any way he could have ever imagined. He hadn’t left her. He had stayed. He had believed that she’d come back to him the way she had been, but then she hadn’t. “That morning, I thought we were going to talk,” he said.
He got up from the chair and moved close to her on the couch. Her head rested against his shoulder, and he could smell the ginger in her shampoo. “I remember talking,” she said. “I remember thinking we were going to grow old together, one of those couples who hold hands, not just to keep from falling, but because they love each other so much that they can’t be without contact.”
“I thought that, too.”
She leaned away and looked at him. “Why Libby? Why her?”
“You weren’t there, Stell. You were in the hospital. And then when you came home, you were so different, and your being different made me different.”
“But why Libby?”
“She was the one who understood what I was going through.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Stella said. “What else?”
“Because she pushed me to be a better person.”
“I wanted you to be a better person, too,” Stella said. “I didn’t push because you didn’t like it.” She bit down on her lip. “Everyone has to love you, don’t they,” she said bitterly.
“I don’t want everyone to love me anymore,” Simon said.
Stella straightened. “Good, because they don’t,” she snapped. “You were a big baby some of the time, and I had to do so much of everything. And now, thanks to Libby, you’re a grown man, only I don’t get those benefits, those things I kept hoping you might be.”
She was now clearly angry, and it scared him. She looked so different, and an old feeling shot through him. Need and love and desire. He used to be so excited to see her, like she was some miracle that had come into his life. Imagine that, someone so smart and beautiful loving someone like him. He had missed her when she wasn’t with him, a real physical pain. “All my friends are going to be strangers,” he said, borrowing the title of a Larry McMurtry book he had loved, about a young novelist who goes on tour hoping for fame but finds instead that he’s lonelier than he ever was. Simon thought that could have been written about him.
“You got famous, not me,” he said. “And that’s okay.”
Color flashed in Stella’s face. “I didn’t intend that. I just want to do my art. It makes me feel good.”
“You’re handling it better than I ever did. Than I ever would.”
“I don’t want fame, Simon. I never did. That was you.”
“You never drew a picture of me,” he said.
“That’s right,” she said quietly.
Stella got up, pacing, then strode into the kitchen. He followed her, watching her bang the teakettle onto the burner and light the flame.
“Stella,” he began.
She turned and gave him a shove. “Who do you think you are?” she said. “Who did you think you were?”
“I loved you,” he said.
“Loved,” she scoffed. “I don’t even know how I feel about you now.” She shoved him again, and then he reached for her arm to stop her, and for a moment their stares locked. He felt her heat. She touched her fingers to his lips, and then he wasn’t thinking at all. He was so tired, so confused. His father was dying and would never know him again. Simon’s music career was dead. Libby had betrayed him and he had shouted at her, and now she was gone, too. Everything he had ever cared about or wanted was gone.
“We loved each other,” Stella said. “For a really long time. Not everybody gets to have something like that. Not their whole lives. Not even for the time we had. We were lucky.” Her voice dropped with sorrow.
Simon didn’t know what he felt about anything anymore. He didn’t understand Stella now. She spoke to him in a low voice, and it soothed him as much as it confused him. She walked over to the table and sat on it, studying him. He felt something roaring toward him like a tsunami.
“Stell—” He thought of how beautiful she had been the first day he met her at the hospital, the two of them standing in front of the babies. In his mind, he saw her at the lip of the stage, dancing. He saw her making him soup when he had the flu, staying up late talking to him, making him laugh. There was that night when neither one of them could sleep, and it was Stella’s idea to do a Manhattan Midnight Marathon—they hit three different all-night diners and went from late dinner to breakfast. He had been so happy. So madly in love. He came closer to her and touched her mouth. He felt all their memories swarming around them, all the love and need and anger and more, and then he was kissing her, pulling off their clothes, lowering her back onto the tabletop, and then both of them were diving back down into their past.
IT WAS MORNING and Simon was in the guest room, dreaming. He was in Times Square, in a huge crowd of tourists and people dressed in yellow Minion costumes, and then he saw her, a flash of red hair. Libby, he thought, and his whole body grew buoyant. Libby. Everything in him ached for her. Libby. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he had to say. She wasn’t angry with him. She was smiling. He pushed through the crowd, reaching for her. “I thought you were gone!” he yelled, but the tourists’ shouts grew louder, drowning him out. The people in Minion costumes jostled toward him. “Five dollars! Take a picture with us!” they screamed. He couldn’t see her anymore. “Libby!” he shouted, and the Minions descended upon him.
He woke up with a start. There was someone’s hair on his shoulder, but it wasn’t smooth like Libby’s. There wasn’t the familiar coconut scent, but instead something strange and different. His eyes opened and he saw Stella, still asleep. He bolted up, confused, his head pounding. And then he remembered. The kitchen table. Their moving to the bedroom. The whole night.
Everything felt totally wrong. What had he done? What had he been thinking? Did he really believe that you could shuffle the past and the present like a deck of cards, and everything would be okay again?
Simon got up and pulled on his pants.
He was tying his sneakers when Stella awakened. She immediately looked sad and uncomfortable. She turned away from him and pulled on a long T-shirt.
“I’ll make breakfast,” she said awkwardly as she left the room.
He remembered they used to make pancakes. They’d try to make them into different shapes: elephants, dogs. Mickey Mouse was the easiest. They’d sit at the breakfast table and tell each other stories about what the unrecognizable pancakes were supposed to be.
He joined her in the kitchen, and there was the pancake mix, like an omen. He leaned against the sunny counter watching her mix it up. “Here goes nothing,” she said, and again he thought how beautiful she was.
But the pancakes burned at the edges, and she frowned. Then, trying to flip them, they broke in the pan. “Oh fuck, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said. “Oh no.”
He quickly shut off the heat. “They’ll still be delicious,” Simon said.
They sat at the table. “You first,” he said, and she looked at her pancakes. “This one looks like . . .” she said, and then she put her fork down. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t know what it looks like.”
“My turn, then,” he said, and he studied one of his pancakes. He used to be able to make her laugh with his descriptions, but she wasn’t even smiling. All he saw were burnt pancakes and he looked at her, helpless. He took a bite. The pancakes were doughy inside. He put down his fork, pancake still attached.
“Well,” she said, and he heard the resignation in her voice. She leaned toward him and rested her hand on his face as if waiting for something. The heat he had felt last night was gone, and she must have felt it, too, because she took her hand away.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“I’m so sorry, too,” she said.
She started dumping out the pancakes, cleaning the dishes. He could hear her voice above the rush of water. “I’ll pack up today,” she said. “And you don’t have to worry about the mess. I’ll hire a cleaning service.” The sound of the water got louder. “I like it here, this town. I want to stay. I’m sure I can find another place, get a bike so I can get around.” She turned off the faucet. “I can keep watch over the house for you, if you want. Stop by and make sure it’s okay.”
“I’ll contact the caretaker and let him know that he doesn’t have to come anymore. Odd that he hasn’t been here already,” Simon said with a frown. But then he brightened. “Oh, and there are bikes in the garage. Take whichever one you want.”
“Really?”
“It’s not enough,” he said, waving his hand. He watched her leaning against the sink. The first time he had met her, before he had even seen her face, he felt a charge in the air, a vibration. His memory was nudging him, reminding him: I know you. I’ve been searching for you all this time, and where have you been? And what does it matter because we’re both here now. Everything had fallen into place after that. He looked at her now, seeing her solemn, open face, the blaze of her eyes, but the vibration was gone and all he kept thinking was how much he wanted forgiveness for its leaving. He knew then that he wanted her to be happy, even if it had to be without him.
“I want you to have the house,” he said suddenly.
She scoffed. “Right,” she said.
“No, I’m serious.”
“Then you’re crazy, because you know I can’t do that,” she said. “I have some money now, but not what this house would go for.”
“You’ll have it soon enough,” he said. “You’re getting more and more clients. You’ve got this crazy kind of talent. And yes, I can do this. My parents signed the deed over to me. It’s completely paid off. The house is willed to me. I’m paying the taxes on it. And I can let anyone I want rent it or live in it or throw a party in it—”
“Simon—”
“You have to let me do this for you.”
“Simon, what about you? You need the money. You could live on it and keep writing songs.”
“Maybe I want to do something for you.”
“Simon—”
“My mother’s fronting me the money for this place until it’s sold. She loves you. I can’t imagine she won’t be thrilled that you’re here. We can do a lease purchase—you can rent this house and then the rent will go toward the purchase price. When you’re ready, you can get a mortgage from the bank. Then the bank will pay me and I’ll have the money and you—you can own this house, Stella. And in the meantime, you live here.”
He felt lighter, as if he might float away.
She stared at him. “Are you sure?” she whispered.
“I won’t change my mind,” he said, nodding.
“I won’t do it unless you promise me it’s okay.”
“Okay,” Simon said. “We’ll get a lawyer to draw up the papers. So you’ll feel safe.”
She shook her head, clearing it. “Yes, draw up the papers, but what’s so weird is that I feel that I don’t even need them.” She looked at him, amazed. “I trust you,” she said. “Isn’t that strange? I totally trust you now. I didn’t before. Not really. But I do now.”
“Too bad that’s not who we were then,” Simon said.
“At least we are now,” she said.
SIMON LEFT SOON after that. There was no point staying. He could see how excited Stella was, how her gaze kept flying about the house. She was in the future now, seeing how the rooms would change, how she’d make them hers. No one loved this house the way Stella would, and that was what counted, because houses, like people, craved connection.
He drove onto the highway and started to cry, but in amazement, not sadness. For once, he had done something right. But then he realized that he had given himself something, too. He had cried when he left his father because he knew now that no matter how much he had wanted to, there was no way left to make things right between them, that whoever the person his father had been was gone and he’d have to make peace with that. And maybe he had.
He and Stella would still be in contact. Every month, he’d see her scribble when she sent him a rent check. He’d get to hear her voice if she needed to know something about the house. But then she’d have a mortgage with the bank, and he’d be out of the picture. It wouldn’t be the same. He knew that, and already it felt like a great loss to him.
Simon drove, the radio blasting a station that was all rhythm and blues, all voices calling for salvation. I hear you, he thought.
He thought about Michael Foley again, the record label guy Libby had contacted. What if Libby had told him right away that Foley was interested and Simon hadn’t had to find out for himself, when it was too late? Simon had been so desperate.
I would have told myself Stella was being cared for, that nothing was changing, that I could leave then. I would have left Stella in her coma.
He would have gone to see this guy, charmed him into taking him on. He would have done whatever was necessary to get out some music, to get his name out there, put together a band, be on tour, away from the problems, away from Stella. He’d be back in the limelight. That’s where his head was at the time.
Now he felt dark with shame. Libby had been right. She had known him, even back then, had known that he was insecure and self-centered, that he was used to having Stella take care of everything adult in his life. Libby hadn’t let him get away with anything, even when it meant denying him the thing he had most wanted. He had needed to be there for Stella, even when Stella became someone other than the Stella he knew.
Stella had loved him, had given him a reason to grow up, but he had refused to see it. Libby had wanted him to be a better person, but he had shouted at her when he should have been shouting at himself. He needed to tell Libby that. He needed to see her and ask her forgiveness.