It’s nice when tables turn as they have between Tony and me. Out here in the benevolent May afternoon, the only thing that separates us from the harbor is a stainless steel fence, the handrail too low to obscure my view of the water.
So I ask about Tony’s life and realize as he answers that he’s just as I suspected. Normal. Compassionate.
“I wish sometimes I wasn’t so good at what I do,” he says after telling me about his wife and his special needs child. “Gloria bears the brunt of all that with my traveling.”
“Why not just be a photographer in . . .” I circle my hand.
“Florence, Mississippi.”
Not what I expected.
“Okay. In Florence.”
“Nothing there would pay the medical expenses like this does.”
And he gave up the scoop to accept my invitation. An idea comes to mind. “When this leg heals, do you want to do an exclusive shoot and interview?”
He raises his eyebrows.
I nod for emphasis. I might be throwing away that great interview in New York, but who cares about those bigwigs? They don’t need me one bit. I’m the one who needed them. “You’ve always been so kind to me, Tony. Even when I was at my worst.”
I regret to say I actually pushed him off his feet when I was eighteen.
“If you find yourself ready for that. Then yes. Of course.”
I ask him more questions over lunch—a hamburger for me, poached salmon for Tony—and realize afresh how much more there is to people than simple sight allows, and so far, I’ve not taken the time to realize that with anybody. I’ve been guilty of the same mind-set as everybody I’ve complained about so bitterly.
Josia picks up on the second ring. “Fia!”
“Major breakthroughs going on over here.” I tell him about my day so far.
“So I take it you don’t have a new boyfriend?”
“The photographer?”
“Already on that tweety thing. Been checking for you.”
“No. Tony’s . . .” I think for a second. “Well, he’s a friend. A friend I didn’t know I had, but now I do.”
“Good!”
“Kinda like you, Josia.”
“Oh, we’re everywhere.” He laughs.
“Otherwise, how does it look out there?”
“Some believe your story. Others don’t. But more do believe than don’t now since the lunch pictures, so that’s at least an improvement. And the pictures look very nice. You’re very photogenic.”
“Well, that’s better than I expected. How’s the kitchen coming?”
“It’s good.”
“Very good?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that.”
Of course he’d say that.
Brandon looks five years older than he did when he left this morning.
“That bad?” I ask as he lowers himself into the lounge chair next to me on the upper deck. A couple of birds have alighted onto the railing, their silhouettes dark against the water reflecting the golden sun of early evening. The heaviest commuter traffic is over, but Baltimore is still mostly making its way home for the night. I love this time of day.
“Oh dear.” He blows out a whoosh of air. “I’m happy to help, but heaven help me, Fia. I’m so sick of hearing quotes from Galaxy Goons I could scream sometimes.”
He slips his feet from his loafers, stretches his legs out in front of him, and for a reason I don’t know, his sock feet look very dad-like.
He laughs. “Yep. Well, I’m going to take a shower and wash off the tired.”
Oh yeah. “I forgot you say that!”
He smiles, and it’s tender and paternal. And something, a seed, a spark, I don’t know exactly, stirs within me, and I feel like I want to cry.
“The fact of the matter is that I did to Brandon what the world did to me.”
I tell Jack this as he sits in the lounge chair Brandon just occupied, the evening breeze now sweeping in across our faces. I feel like I have my own salon these days where beautiful men come to spend time with me.
“Where is he?” Jack asks.
“Taking a shower.”
“So what did you mean?”
“Okay, so I never actually listened to him. I let everybody else tell me who he was, what he was up to, why he did what he did, and on and on. Chiefly my mother, and who would choose to believe her? Me, that’s who, I guess.”
“He could have volunteered up more info, Fia. Not have allowed you to be swayed by the National Enquirer.”
“I know.”
“I guess you’ll just have to ask him. But you should. Sometimes being too nice isn’t necessarily the best thing. If he needs to answer for some things, let him. He’ll be better off for it.”
“I hate conflict like that.”
“It will be over soon enough. But my advice? Do it. He may actually want to explain himself and, at the very least, apologize. Did the terms of the divorce keep him from legally doing so before?”
“Basically, yes.”
“Well, there you go, then. Now’s your chance to find out his side of the story. I’m going to shower and change.” He stands up. “Hey, you want something to drink when I’m done?”
“Sure. Surprise me, and then tell me how your day went.”
“Well, it was fine until I realized I have some competition out there now.” He places his hand on the sliding door handle. “Who was that guy?”
“The nicest member of the paparazzi there is. It was time I took him to lunch. Or rather, you took him to lunch.”
Jack laughs, seeming relieved. “Fia, you’re priceless. And I mean that in the best possible way.”
I love watching the harbor from my little crow’s nest here on the roof, happy hours going on down beneath me. And who can blame all of the people imbibing? Life is hard. We try to pretend it isn’t, or it shouldn’t be, at the very least, and then feel guilty for not being able to sail on our life like it is a sea of glass. I remember Elena saying, “Instead of feeling bad that we struggle, we should accept the workings of the universe and congratulate ourselves for making it through another day.”
She was always so right about these sorts of things.
Jack hands me a tonic and orange juice and lowers himself on his lounger with a, “Whew, that was a day and a half.”
“You smell nice.”
“Thanks. But I’m beat.”
Because Jack doesn’t need a person to pry information out of him like I do, he proceeds to ramble on about the difficulties of his current project. “Every so often I have a client who just doesn’t understand what I’m saying no matter how I try to break it down.”
“So that’s your specialty?” I ask.
“Yep. I’m pretty good at being a go-between for the way it is and the way people will best understand it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Exactly.”
My phone screen lights up with a text. “Care to use your skills now? It’s from my mom.”
He holds up a weary hand. “Even I know my limits.”
I punch the button.
MY PLANE GETS IN TOMORROW AT 4:07.
I show him the phone. “I cannot believe this. Why? Why now?”
“You really need to ask that?”
“I can’t believe this.”
“And she’s an all-caps person,” he observes.
“There’s that.”
“So, we’ve got the whole family,” he says.
“She’s seen all the social media.”
He nods. “Must be pretty favorable if she’s hopping on the bandwagon.”
“It’s a little too late.”
“Bandwagon’s full?”
“Exactly.”
The bandwagon is most definitely full.
Jack decides that he’s eaten out more than his fair share lately. “I’m going over to the Market and just buy some regular old food.”
“What’s that?” asks Brandon, coming out on the deck and looking dumpier than I’ve ever seen him in old running shorts and another ratty T-shirt.
“Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, peas, and I don’t know what for dessert, but definitely something along the order of chocolate.”
“Brownies? Pudding?” I ask.
“She loves pudding,” Brandon says, pulling over a chair from the table on the other side of the deck.
“Chocolate pudding, then.” Jack lifts himself off his lounger, shoves his feet back into his flip-flops.
Wow. We’re all wearing green T-shirts. Weird.
After he’s gone, Brandon pours himself a tonic and lime and refreshes my drink. We sit inside to watch the news.
“I don’t remember you wearing such ratty clothes, Brandon.”
“I didn’t.”
“What changed?”
He shrugs and lifts the hem of the shirt for inspection. Portions of the hem are so frayed it looks as if someone came along and nibbled the fabric like an ear of corn. “When you left, I realized a lot of things. Chiefly, money can’t buy happiness. And spending all you have can actually buy the opposite, along with a lot of stuff you don’t need.”
He clearly has no idea who he’s talking to! Maybe showing him the house on Mount Vernon Place isn’t such a bad idea at that.
“But you always look nice out there.”
“When was the last time you saw me in anything but khakis and a blue blazer? Or my charcoal suit?”
I try to recall the media pictures I’ve seen of him. “Other than your tux, well, I guess I just don’t know.”
Crazy.
“But still, you’re always jetting off to someplace. With women, usually.”
“True. But my trips are always connected to something— an awards show, or some appearance I’m being paid for.”
“Really?” I lift my glass to my lips, then lower it again. “I honestly thought you hadn’t changed.”
“Have you seen my cabin at the ranch recently?”
“Of course not.”
He grins his famous, classy bad-boy smile. “Fia, sixteen years is a very long time. A man can come to a lot of realizations and decisions in that space.”
“Like what?”
“Like what’s really important. After you left us, I realized that what I thought was so great, wasn’t. It was that simple. I was a train wreck. You know that.”
“Then why did you let me go so easily?”
The words gush out of me and I am horrified. I stand and somehow quickly make my way to the bedroom despite Brandon’s calling me to come back and my wound screaming at me just to stop.
I lay myself on the bed and will myself not to cry. But I do anyway, and after all the exertion of the day, I realize as I’m doing so that I am falling asleep, and this makes me happy.