28

The waitress brings our drinks and leaves our menus. Maybe I’ll eat later, but for now, my stomach is already busy eating itself.

“When we met at the fair,” Mara says, “I wasn’t sure what you knew.”

When I ran into her that day, I saw Mara only as an acquaintance of the man I’d loved and an artist whose painting we once displayed in our home. But this woman sitting across from me now is someone entirely new. She’s a person on whom Syd was willing to bet our entire future.

It’s hard not to examine her every move and attribute. Rainbows of paint nest under her fingernails. Her eyes are hypnotically blue, extra-pronounced against her dark brown hair and fair skin. She’s got decent bone structure in the face, nothing too striking. On the whole, there’s something undeniably warm and welcoming about her, as if she’s subtly smiling even when she’s not. And then, when she actually smiles, her face seems to expand, and a grand dimple forms on her right cheek.

I take a swig of beer. “Please, start from the top. How did you two first meet?”

Mara begins her story at a house party in Park Slope. She was invited by a friend of a friend. It’s unclear how Sydney ended up there.

“I was peering up at a bookshelf and he just came over,” Mara says. “He thought I was looking at the books, but I was actually looking at the shelves. The entire wall of this house was built-in bookshelves. I told him someday I was going to have a house with built-in bookshelves. And he said, ‘I believe you.’” She pauses, reflects. “It wasn’t the response I expected.”

I wonder how I would’ve reacted if Syd had approached me randomly at a party instead of us meeting on a prearranged date. Would I have taken him seriously? On looks alone, probably not. His allure was most apparent when he got you one on one. It was then that you discovered his special gift; he had a skill so rare that when people experienced it, they found themselves opening up to him fully. It was simple: he listened.

They talked more about bookshelves and then about books. Syd noted that The Art of Looking Sideways, which was placed horizontally on a shelf, would be better displayed vertically so the shelf peruser would actually be forced to look sideways in order to read the title. At that, Mara wondered if all books should be placed with their spines inward so that you would never know what book you were reaching for. Syd asked if this was some extreme interpretation of the old adage to never judge a book by its cover.

“It wasn’t what I meant,” Mara tells me. “I was just thinking it would be more fun that way. Like a little adventure every time you wanted a book. Syd liked that.”

This first meeting between them happened back in September. It makes sense timing-wise. As Joan already shared with me, during that same New York trip, Syd also attended a barbecue in the Sully backyard where he talked to Joan about not wanting to be the last Brennett.

“What did you think of him?” I ask.

She takes a moment. “Put it this way—before he came over I was bored out of my mind and ready to leave the party. But after we started talking, I sort of lost track of time.”

“What else did you guys talk about?”

“He was really interested in hearing about my art.” She almost flinches when she says it.

“What?”

“Nothing. I hate talking about what I do. I’m much happier just doing it.” She pulls her hand off her beer glass as if only now realizing how cold it is. “That’s one thing I don’t miss about Brooklyn. It just seemed like some people were more interested in saying they were artists than in actually making art. But anyway, I didn’t mind talking about it with Sydney. It was nice.”

Syd was great at that, making us artsy types feel important. He truly believed in the power of art to inspire, guide, and change. He also knew how effective it was at getting people to buy into something. Selling was, after all, his vocation.

“And I assume you knew he wasn’t trying to pick you up?”

She smiles gently. “He mentioned you pretty quickly. I thought it was really sweet how he was bragging about you. He was telling me all about the show and your role in it and insisting that I watch it. I told him I didn’t really watch TV and he said something like, ‘Well, darling, you better start.’”

She says it with this wistful look in her eyes. I saw the same look when she was speaking about Sydney at the arts fair. The remembering-Sydney look isn’t hers exclusively. I’ve witnessed a similar expression in Paige and many others when they talk about Sydney. And now, realizing this, I know it’s a mistake to treat Mara as a stranger or adversary or someone to merely extract information from. Because now I know, I see, that she, like the rest of us, loved him.

“I don’t know why,” Mara says, still with that look, “but he just had this calming effect on me.”

“I know what you mean,” I assure her. I long for the calm he gave me. I’m pretty sure Mara and I would both welcome a dose of it right now.

She takes her first sip of beer, leaving a faint smudge of lipstick on the rim of the glass.

“How did you guys leave off that night?” I ask.

“He told me…” She trails off. Her bag is ringing. She looks at her phone and debates whether to answer. She ignores it and apologizes. “Syd said he was going to check out my stuff online. Most people say that and you never know, but a couple months later he called, out of the blue.”

“When was that exactly?”

“Early January. Right after New Year’s.”

After our December fight.

“He said he wanted to buy one of my paintings,” Mara says. “He wanted to know if he could visit next time he was in town. I was literally dancing in my bedroom, just freaking out. I’d never gotten a call like that in my life. I thought it was too good to be true. But he called again to set a date. I was really inspired after that. By the time he got here, I had a bunch of brand-new paintings to show him.”

“You were living in Brooklyn back then?”

“Yeah,” Mara says. “He came to my apartment. He brought, like, five different kinds of soup.”

“Why all the soup?”

“I couldn’t figure it out at first either. Then I remembered I had written on my Facebook page that I loved soup.” She lifts her beer, as if Syd’s thoroughness deserves a toast. “He obviously did his research.”

I think back to my first date with Syd and the knowledge—gained only recently through Joan’s memory—that he had chosen that particular sushi restaurant based on a crude impression I’d done back in college. It seems there’s still plenty more to learn about the lengths Syd would go to when he really wanted something.

“We sat in my apartment and ate soup and talked. He asked me all sorts of questions, but it never felt like an interview or anything. It was really natural and easy, like we were old friends. He asked surface stuff, like what’s my sign, to—”

“What is your sign?”

“Leo.”

I nod knowingly.

“What?” Mara asks.

“Leos and Libras are the best signs. That’s what Syd always said. He thought they made for the most solid people.”

She reflects on it and then pats her stomach. “I could definitely stand to be more solid.”

I smile and lift my beer in agreement.

“He asked about deeper stuff too,” Mara says. “He wanted to know about my grand plan, which I had to laugh at. I didn’t have one. I told him I had a hard time believing I could really have a life as an artist and he basically told me, Hey, if that’s the way you’re going to think, you should stop now.”

“He was definitely all or nothing.”

“I get it,” Mara says. “I’m trying to be more like that.”

Syd got into her head. I don’t mean that in a negative way. He got into mine too. He made me realize that I was falling short of my potential and that it wasn’t too late to correct that. Honestly, when he first gave me that speech, I thought it was a bunch of bullshit. But then, to my surprise, it actually worked. It seems he was trying to teach Mara the same lesson. How to believe.

“Is that when he bought the forest painting from you? Woods?” I ask.

“I was asking two fifty,” Mara says. “He said my price was too low. He gave me twenty-five hundred for it.” Her arching eyebrows tell me she still can’t believe the amount.

“Did you wonder, like, who is this guy?”

“Totally,” Mara says. “But as far as I could tell, he was completely legit. He handed me a check right then and there. I didn’t want to cash it right away. I remember just staring at it for days. It meant so much, more than just money. And believe me, I needed the money.”

“Then what? He took the painting and left?” I say.

“He gave me a big hug.” She drops her gaze, fixes on a spot between us. Then, peering up with a brave smile, she says, “I didn’t realize how much I’d been starving for it.”

“The hug?”

“The reassurance,” Mara says. “Someone to say, ‘Good job, keep going.’ My parents wouldn’t pay for art school. They never really got it, you know.”

I know how powerful it can be when someone puts his faith in you. I’m trying to find the right words to say next, but the waitress arrives and shatters the moment.

I order fries for the table, just to get something in our stomachs, even though we both claim not to be hungry, then excuse myself to the bathroom. I rinse my face with cold water but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t wake me from what feels like a dream. Sydney had forged an entire relationship with this person and though I was aware of it peripherally, I had no appreciation for how substantial the bond was or how much was riding on it.

I wasn’t prepared for Mara the person either. She’s bright, witty, humble, thoughtful, and, from what I can tell, solid. I should’ve known that Syd wouldn’t have devoted so much time and energy to someone who wasn’t really worth it. But I just didn’t expect the woman who had built a secret partnership with Sydney without my knowledge or approval to be so likable.

There are so many questions that only Syd can answer, about his mind-set and intentions and emotions. But all I have is Mara’s one-sided narrative. I suppose I should be used to it by now, after doing it so many times with Joan. Still, hearing about Syd only makes me wish all the more that I could hear from him.

I return to the table and find the fries there already and Mara hunched over her phone. Not merely passing the time, but dealing with something. She puts the phone away, resets in my presence.

“I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says, almost confessing it.

“Me too.”

She’s once again hypnotized by the spot between us. It’s not the table she’s focused on. She’s staring at my wrist. At Sydney’s bracelet.

“I just feel terrible,” Mara says. “The whole thing didn’t go how I thought it would.”

It’s a reminder. No matter how her story unfolds, the ending will always be the same.

A few weeks after purchasing her painting, Syd called Mara. He was planning to return to New York in late February and wanted to meet up. Syd claimed he had an easy photography gig for her, that he’d pay twice her daily rate at the gallery if she could take the day off from work. She said she would.

He met her at the corner of Charles and Washington. Mara brought along her camera. They found Claire, the broker, upstairs.

“Syd wanted me to take photos of the space,” Mara says. “He said they were going to be used for a brochure or something.”

I can only assume Syd invented the job for her, because as far as I know, nothing came of the pictures. Yes, he hoped we’d eventually move to Manhattan and was interested in finding us the right property, but it seems his prime objective that day was simply to spend more time with Mara.

“He took me out to lunch afterward,” Mara says. “He handed me an envelope with five hundred dollars cash. I started tearing up.” She looks down at her lap, as if still clutching the envelope all these months later. “It had been a rough couple of weeks. Even with two jobs, I was barely covering my bills. The money he’d given me for the painting was already gone. And again, it wasn’t just about the money. I had been working so many hours, I hardly had time to be creative, and that’s always been a release for me, you know?”

“I do.”

“And here I was, getting paid just to take a few photos, something I would’ve done for free. It was like he came to see me at the perfect time, just when I was thinking about moving back here to New Hope, which I really didn’t want to do. It felt like admitting failure or something. But he helped me put it in perspective. He asked me what was more important, living in Brooklyn or being an artist? I knew the answer, but it took a few more months before I could really accept it.”

She finally grabs a French fry from the plate we’ve both been ignoring. Now that she’s partaken, I follow suit, lifting a lukewarm fry and inserting it dispassionately into my mouth. We each stop after the one.

“We went for a walk after,” Mara says. “I don’t know what it was, maybe just the fact that I had opened up to him at lunch, but all of a sudden he started telling me everything that was going on with you guys. All the baby stuff.”

It feels like the French fry is caught in my throat, even though I’m certain I’ve swallowed it. I listen as Mara rattles off all the troubles Syd and I were facing. The lack of control a couple has when neither party has a uterus. The inconsistent laws from state to state. The sifting through databases, having to judge egg donors based solely on short videos and résumés. The fact that we (really, Syd) had already exhausted the obvious donor options, namely, family members (at least one of them, Veronica) and friends (Paige, possibly others). And, finally, our desire to have a satisfactory answer when our child asked about his or her mother, the peace of mind we could offer if we had a person who wasn’t a mystery but someone with whom we had an intimate bond.

“I could see how much it meant to him,” Mara says. “He looked so tortured. I wanted to comfort him the way he always comforted me, but I wasn’t sure what to say. And then at one point, I don’t remember when, he just asked me straight out if I’d ever thought about donating my eggs.”

It’s exactly what Paige advised him not to do. Just hearing it secondhand makes me squirm. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Mara says. “The thought had never crossed my mind.”

I stare down at the plate of fries, wondering if I should shove them into my ears instead of my mouth so I wouldn’t have to endure the rest of this story.

“That was it,” Mara says, as if intentionally sparing me. “He didn’t mention anything else about it. He flew back to L.A. and that’s when it hit me: Did this man just ask me for my eggs? I didn’t know how to process it. I felt so many things at once. It was shocking and also kind of flattering and definitely overwhelming and even disturbing. I felt a connection with him, sure, but I was imagining more of a mentor/protégée thing. And then I started to wonder, Who is this guy, anyway? I Googled him, dug as deep as I could. I saw the pictures he posted of you two together, and I felt the love there, it was obvious, but these were my eggs we were talking about.”

“Of course. It’s a huge deal.”

“I knew I wanted kids of my own someday. I mean, not anytime soon—I’m only twenty-five—but eventually. I wasn’t sure how that would work. So I started researching what it was all about.”

She watched YouTube videos of donors describing the procedure: the doctor visit; the screening process (Ever paid for sex? Ever taken anti-depressants? Recreational drugs? More than two male partners in the last six months?); the daily hormone injections; the needles in your belly and thighs; the side effects; the ultrasound visits; the abstaining from sex, alcohol, and medication other than Tylenol; finally, the surgery.

The women in these videos were just like her. Some in their teens. Most in their twenties. A few nearing thirty. Typical compensation ranged between eight and ten thousand dollars. The money went to pay off debt, college tuition, daily expenses, even vacations. Many of the women had donated half a dozen times.

Some donors had personal relationships with the intended parents. Most did not. The majority preferred to remain detached from the act, to treat it like a job, albeit one that gave them a feeling of doing good in the world. They all took comfort in the fact that they were helping people. Giving life.

“It was kind of beautiful,” Mara says. “I totally understood why someone would want to do it. But I couldn’t imagine doing it myself. I couldn’t get past the idea of having a kid out there, in the world, existing, feeling, thinking. And what if you guys decided you really did want to move here to New York? The kid would be right around the corner. What would my future husband think about that? As much as I adored Sydney, I had only just met him.”

I can’t argue with anything she’s saying. Had Syd included me in the process—had I made him feel I was ready and willing to be included—I would have encouraged him to take a step back and slow down.

“I sent his next call to voice mail,” Mara says. “His message didn’t say anything about babies or eggs, nothing like that. He was just checking in, saying hi, seeing how I was doing. Part of me wondered if I had imagined the whole thing.”

An entire month went by before they spoke again. It was now April, four months since Syd and I had had our December fight, which, as far as I was concerned, had put our parenthood quest on hold. It seemed to me then, based on what I knew, that Syd was respecting my wishes to slow down a little. The agency was still sending us updated donor lists, but Syd rejected every single one. The plan, in my mind, was still for me to ask Veronica, when I was ready. By April, I knew what Syd had already learned back in January, that Veronica had started dating someone. I didn’t think much of it then. I figured this new relationship, like her previous ones, wouldn’t last long (I was wrong about that). Besides, I needed the extra time. I was so busy with The Long Arm during those months that I had mostly pushed the notion of fatherhood out of my mind.

But Syd, I now know, had never stopped thinking about it. He flew back to New York in April and asked if he could take Mara out to dinner in Manhattan. After some hesitation, she accepted.

“He seemed a little off from the start,” Mara says. “He didn’t have that usual calm about him. We chatted for a good half hour, talking about art, New York, everything, and then, I remember, he just looked at me and took a deep breath and said, ‘Oh, Miss Hallowell…’”

My whole body tightens, bracing for some imminent crash.

“I asked how things were with you two and he started to go into it a little bit. He said you had found a few donors that looked promising. Then he stopped himself. He wanted to say more, I could tell. I encouraged him, made him feel safe, and then he told me everything. He said at first he didn’t have a picture of who the ideal mother was, but that changed when he met me. He said I was a little bit of him and a little bit of you, that I was smart and focused and imaginative and beautiful. I was kind but also edgy. Confident but also self-deprecating. A realist but also a dreamer. No one’s ever done that before, spent all that time thinking about just me and who I am and what I’m made of. It was intense.”

She relaxes a moment, reminding me to do the same.

“He got quiet and then he apologized for spilling his guts like that. He didn’t want me to feel pressured by anything he’d just said. Honestly, I didn’t know how to feel or what to say. I cared about him. I cared about him a lot. But…”

She pauses.

“I really wanted to help him,” Mara says. “I just couldn’t.”

It took her several weeks after their last dinner in New York to gather the strength to tell Sydney that. She called and left him a message saying she wanted to talk. She was surprised when several days went by and she still hadn’t heard back. She decided to check his Facebook page. Everyone was saying such nice things about him. The sorts of things people say when you’re no longer alive.

We’re outside now, Mara pacing alongside the restaurant with her phone pressed to her ear. Her hushed voice suggests drama unfolding over the line. She must’ve checked her call log a half a dozen times back at the table.

I’m standing twenty feet back, allowing her privacy. The parking lot is dusk-covered, the tops of cars resembling rolling hills across a blue horizon. My rental car is here somewhere. I forget what it looks like.

I watch Mara walk, her summer dress falling shapelessly around her. The canvas shopping bag on her shoulder should be carrying groceries, not personal items. Back in the restaurant, she filled in all the pieces I was missing. And yet, I’ve never felt emptier. Yes, he went behind my back. Yes, he “fell” for someone else. But he did it all for us. He loved me until the very end. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

Mara finally finishes the call and strides over with a hearty sigh. “I could use a cigarette.”

“I’d love that.”

She slips inside the restaurant and returns with two smokes and a matchbook, all of which she’d bummed from the bartender, a guy she went to high school with. She strikes a match. The flame dances in the air, clings to the white edge, glows orange.

Now seems like the right time. “I set your painting on fire,” I say.

“Excuse me?” Mara says from behind a puffy cloud.

“I burned Sydney’s things.”

“Right,” she says, swiping at the air. “I heard about that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve often wanted to burn them myself.”

I light my cigarette. The smoke swirls in and tickles all the right places. She lowers herself onto the curb and I join her. We sit for a while, smoking in silence. It feels like we’ve just hiked up some impossible mountain and now we’re resting at the top, taking in the view, surprised at how we got up here.

“Can I ask you something?” Mara says.

“Sure.”

“What Sydney said he felt about my art—do you think it was sincere?”

Inhale, exhale. “I understand why you’d ask that,” I say. “Honestly, there were times I wondered the same thing. Did he truly think I was a good actor? Or was he just biased by his emotions? But you know what? I don’t think the two things are separate, you and your art. They’re part of the same thing. And the whole point with art is that we try to make people feel something, right? And you did that. Really. That I can say without any doubt.”

She leans back onto her elbows, gazes skyward. Her smoke joins mine, forms a supercloud above us. I follow the smoke as it rises, wondering how far it will travel, imagining it will somehow reach Sydney. If he’s up there watching, I’d like him to know I approve of his choice, even if I disagree with his method. I just wish he hadn’t felt the need to keep it from me. I wish I hadn’t made him feel like he had to.

“I should probably go,” she says, crushing her cigarette into the pavement.

It feels too soon. I just found her.

“My boyfriend’s been calling,” she explains. “I was supposed to meet him a few hours ago.”

This is the first I’m hearing of a boyfriend. “How long have you been with him?”

Mara seems to know why I’m asking. “Believe me, it had nothing to do with my decision. We’ve been together only a few weeks, but we dated in high school. When I came back here to New Hope, he was still here. It’s been a huge help to have him around, actually.”

It’s good to hear. For some reason, I feel invested in this girl’s future now. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to Brooklyn?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I don’t see myself staying here long term, but I think I needed to come back for a little while, just to recharge.”

I know what she means.

We both stand and face each other. “I’m sorry for just showing up like this,” I say.

“I’m glad you did.”

I hug her, hold her like I’m holding him. It’s hard not to think of what might’ve been.

When I finally let go, I tell her, “I think Sydney would want me to keep an eye on you, if that’s okay. You know, just to make sure you’re not slacking.”

“Please do,” she says. “I’d really like that.”