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“Thanks for coming, kids. He really needed friends today,” Mr. Posner said.
They all dropped their heads and nodded, unsure what to say to a man whose wife was dying of cancer. They all felt too young and immature for the gravity of this moment.
“No problem, Mr. P,” Miles finally said for all of them.
Candace leaned back just a bit to see inside Mrs. Posner’s room. Ezra was asleep at his mother’s bedside, one of her hands clutched in his. He looked so peaceful. He hadn’t looked so calm in months. She missed seeing him like that, as if the weight of the world weren’t sitting on his shoulders. She missed the illusion that they were still kids in some ways. She missed him.
They hadn’t seen each other all summer. Miles had been in San Diego working a summer internship at an architecture firm, Mei had been in Tucson at an artist’s retreat and Ezra had been clear across the country on a summer developing course at MIT. Candace’s friends had been off doing cool stuff and preparing for their futures while she’d been at home, working her regular job at the clothing store her mom managed, picking up random serving shifts at the diner her dad managed and saving every penny as usual. She’d felt lonely and abandoned, waiting for the school year to start.
This wasn’t how they’d planned to spend their junior year. The day before classes had started, she and Mei had dropped off their suitcases in their new apartment and headed immediately out. They walked the four blocks to Miles and Ezra’s apartment, feeling giddy about finally being back together. On the way, Mei had talked incessantly about how cool her residency was and Candace had done her best to skirt her best friend’s questions about their time apart. There was nothing to tell and it made her feel an odd mix of jealousy and embarrassment — emotions she’d been avoiding acknowledging all summer. All that mattered was that she’d missed Mei, Miles and Ezra more than she could say.
When they’d arrived at the boys’ apartment, Mei had banged on the door loudly as they’d giggled. Their laughter had died on their tongues when Miles opened the door.
“Ezra’s mom has cancer,” was the first thing out of his mouth.
Whatever normal Candace had been waiting all summer to get back to never appeared.
All semester, Ezra had split his weeks between school and home, wanting to be with his mom as much as possible. He and Candace barely saw each other. He was an engineering major; she was in Art History and their classes weren’t even in the same buildings anymore.
She hardly saw Mei and Miles either. Sometimes the three studied together on Tuesday afternoons and they went to basketball games at least once a month, but more days than not she only saw Mei just before their first class on Monday and Wednesday mornings. And the apartment she’d imagined sharing with her best friend came to feel like her own as Mei spent more nights than not over at Miles’s, especially since Ezra was so rarely there.
Shockingly, nothing was the same in their friendship circle without Ezra.
It was her idea to visit the Posners in the hospital, but now that they were there, she didn’t know what to say. It had been okay downstairs in the cafeteria when Ezra had just wanted to sit with them and pretend as if everything was normal. They listened to Miles tell them about Christmas at his dad’s new “condo for sad, divorced men.” It had been more hilarious than depressing and by the end Ezra’s eyes were wet with happy tears and he was leaning over the table, his body shaking with laughter.
But standing outside Mrs. Posner’s hospital room, everything felt different. And not just because Mrs. Posner was weak and unconscious surrounded by beeping and whirring machines. She was small and frail and Candace couldn’t help but remember how full of energy she used to be. She didn’t look like the same Mrs. Posner who’d invited them to every Purim since they’d met Ezra and gave her son extra money so they could all have one great meal out before final exams, and none of them knew what to do with that.
But selfishly, the thing Candace couldn’t get over was Ezra’s warm hand squeezing hers desperately under the table, so tight it almost hurt. She squeezed his back just as hard. For a couple of hours, it was almost like things were back to normal. He didn’t speak, he only cried a little bit and he laughed at Miles and Mei’s jokes as he held onto Candace’s hand for dear life. She wanted to ask him why; what it all meant. But of all the bad timing in their relationship, this was the worst.
“We’re gonna go, Mr. P,” Miles said. “But we can come back tomorrow or the day after if you... I mean, if that’s okay.”
Candace’s eyes shifted back to Mr. Posner. His eyes were rimmed with red behind his glasses and he pulled them off to wipe at the tears running down his cheeks. He nodded. “That’d be great. I think he’d like that.”
“Do you need anything?” Candace asked.
Mr. Posner shook his head, sniffled and put his glasses back on his face. When he turned to her, he looked like a sad version of his normal self; still kind and open but shattered. He looked like Ezra; like how Ezra would look in twenty years.
“We’ll be fine, kiddo. Thank you. Just come back. I know he’ll be happy to see you.”
They said their goodbyes and walked to the elevator. When the doors opened, they turned and saw Mr. Posner still standing outside his wife’s hospital room, seeing them off. They waved at him. He waved back.
They rode to the lobby in silence, Miles and Mei holding hands while Candace tried to understand the way Mr. Posner had said “you,” as if Ezra would be happy to see her especially. Not just the three of them, but her alone.
And then she stamped down on her heart and ego and prayed that Mrs. Posner would be okay.
January 1, 2005
“Do you have everything?” Candace’s mom asked for the fifth time just that morning.
“Yes, ma,” she whined, even though she once again checked to make sure that her passport, travel checks and emergency credit card were all in her purse. They were.
“It’s just that if you need anything, I can have your dad speed over there.”
Candace smiled. “My plane starts boarding in twenty minutes. We’ll be in the air before dad even got out of traffic on the bridge. I’m fine. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“You’re my little girl,” her mother said.
“You’re adorable, you know that? A great egg. I raised you right,” Candace laughed.
“Shush. Do you have your calling card?” her mom asked.
Candace frowned. “I don’t know actually,” she said.
“Candace,” her mother groaned.
Candace could practically see her mother wringing her hands right now, surely aggravating her arthritis. She bent down and opened her backpack. She felt certain she did have the international calling card her aunt Sophie had gifted her for this trip, because she’d packed, repacked and double and triple-checked her bags with a detailed eye days ago. But with the panic in her mother’s voice, she decided to lie, not wanting to give her parents one more thing to worry about.
She exhaled in relief when she found the card at the back of her travel pouch. “I’ve got it. It was in my travel pouch with all my other important information,” she said happily.
Her mother exhaled as well. “Good. Good. I’m going to miss you, peanut.”
Candace smiled. “I’ll miss you too, mama.”
“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you while you were so far away.”
Candace could feel the pressure of tears in her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I promise, mama.” She tried to lighten her voice to put her mother at ease. “Watch, you’re crying on the phone, but I bet the next four months are just gonna fly by.”
“I hope so,” her mother whispered.
And that was the problem. Candace wanted to live a little, to live on her own without feeling the weight of her parents’ anxieties. They loved her so deeply that they never quite let her fly the coop. It had taken three years of saved wages, applying to every scholarship she could find and a year of dropping hints that she wanted to study abroad for her parents to “let” her travel farther than southern California. And as happy as she was to go, Candace still felt guilty about leaving them.
A single tear slipped down her cheek and she wiped it quickly away. “Mom, I’ve gotta go. Dr. Montero is getting the class together before we board.”
“Okay, baby,” she said, even though she sounded everything but okay. “You’ll call as soon as you get there?”
“I’ll try, mama. As soon as I find a phone, okay?”
“O-okay. Have fun, peanut.”
“Thanks, mama. I love you. And tell daddy I love him too.”
“I will, baby. I will.”
Candace hung up the public pay phone and stared at it for a few seconds, giving herself a few moments to feel her guilt and sadness. Her parents deserved that at least.
On an impulse, she fished another quarter from her purse and dialed her and Mei’s landline.
After Mei and Miles had interrupted her encounter with Ezra, they’d spent a couple of hours taking care of them before Ezra sent her to bed so she could rest before her flight. When she’d woken up, Miles and Mei were once again passed out in Mei’s bed, Ezra was snoring on the couch and the bathroom smelled strongly of bleach. She’d briefly considered waking Ezra up, but he looked so peaceful that she changed her mind. But her eyes kept darting to his prone body as she frantically threw the last of her clothes into her suitcase.
She had to make two trips to bring her bags down to the curb. Each time she opened and closed the front door, she silently hoped he would wake up. He didn’t. She spent the entire cab ride to the airport regretting that they didn’t get to say a proper goodbye or talk about what last night had meant. So, she called home, hoping that he was finally awake.
Her heart throbbed with every ring until finally someone picked up.
“‘Lo.”
“Miles?” Candace asked.
“Hey, Can. You on the plane?”
She squinted. “Obviously not. You hungover?”
“Very. I think I’m gonna die. Never drinking again.”
“Good idea. Hey, is Ezra there?”
“Mmmm, nah. He went to get breakfast. He promised me bagels if I didn’t throw up again. Might not be able to keep my end of the bargain though,” he said and then burped. “Wanna talk to Mei?”
“No,” Candace breathed. “I left her a card. Hey, can you tell Ezra that I called when he gets back?”
“Yeah.”
“And like, can you...” Candace hesitated and frowned. She turned to look at her gate and saw that Dr. Montero really was rounding the class up before boarding now.
She wanted to tell Miles to tell Ezra that last night was amazing and totally worth the three-year wait. She wanted Ezra to know that there had been a moment last night, when his face was buried between her legs, that she’d seriously considered not going on this trip. She wanted him to know that she wished they could spend their final semester together. But that would be too much information to tell Miles even if he hadn’t been severely hungover.
“Can you just tell Ezra to email me as soon as he gets back? I won’t be able to email him until I land in Quito but... please, just tell him to email me, okay?”
“Yep. Will do. Have a good flight, Can,” Miles said, yawning.
“Thanks,” she said, and put the receiver back on the cradle.
“Candace,” Dr. Montero called. “Vámanos.”
She sighed and then turned. “Ya voy,” she called back, and grabbed her backpack from the ground. It was corny, but just before Candace walked onto the jet bridge, she stole one more glance across the boarding area to the bank of payphones.
She boarded that plane certain that there would be an email from Ezra when she arrived in Quito. That when she came back for graduation, he would take her out on a date to a jazz club in San Francisco. That he would come to her parents’ house for the Fourth of July and she would be his date to his cousin’s wedding in August. But of all the emails in her inbox when she landed, none were from Ezra.
And it cracked Candace’s heart in two.