29
THE NEXT DAY I DECIDED TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE SHOP. I HAD to see Frank after the abrupt end to our conversation. Who was he to be mad at me? That seemed unfair. I wanted to let him know that. Plus, I was determined to see Enid again, to tell her about everything that had happened, and to ask her for her insights. I hadn’t seen her since she had stomped off, and I needed to make sure she was okay, that we were okay.
When I got to the counter, Frank barely acknowledged me, but it was a busy day, so I ordered my coffee and took my spot in the back, waiting for signs of Enid. I was armed with Belle, and a few lines to impress her: “Would you say her coat was more a caramel or cappuccino color?”
At first, I tried to refrain from doing any more work on the dog before I saw her, but after a while I got bored. Frank was ignoring me, the jazz rotation was all instrumental, and I had already read even the driest sections of the paper.
So I went to work on the drawing, shading and coloring and guessing all the way, convinced I was making things worse with every stroke. By the end of the day, I knew I had to trash it, but I didn’t want to lose the evidence of my effort. I wanted Enid to see, so I waited for her until closing time.
She never showed.
“You didn’t see Enid today, did you?” I said to Frank when everyone else had finally gone.
“No,” he said. “But she wasn’t my main focus.”
“That makes sense. Are you hungry?”
I was starving, and in his brown shirt, his arms looked like pretzel sticks. I imagined him salted, knotted at the ends.
“Chinese?” I said. “Or you can pick the place if you want.”
“I have an online game scheduled for tonight,” he said.
I watched his back contract as he swept the surface with paper towels. I hadn’t noticed those muscles before. They were so delicate, yet strong.
“Is it a pay tournament? I’m really good at poker.”
“No,” he said. “I told you I don’t gamble.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was only asking. What’s with you today?”
He stopped cleaning and stood up straight.
“Do you really want to marry me?” he said.
I looked at the ring, which was still gleaming somehow.
He turned around to face me. “Did you hear me?”
“Frank, I’m really hungry right now.”
“I asked a question.”
He locked the door and turned out all but the front lights. We stood at the threshold, in the shadows.
“About the wedding,” he said.
The only thing I’d had that day had been the coffee, and the milk that went in the coffee. How had I managed to sit for that long? All at once the wooziness hit, and I was missing a chair to lean on.
“Is there any food left in the back?” I said.
“No,” he said, though I knew there was.
Why was he doing this? I was trying to read him, but he had that blank look about him. If only he were a dog or bear. Then I’d be able to feel him.
“Can we go somewhere else?”
I pushed on the door, but it didn’t open.
He locked my eyes. “Mom says she worries you’re not really in this.”
“She said that?” I turned away, searching for crumbs. “The other day I told you I loved you, didn’t I? I didn’t just say it in my head. I said it to you.”
“I tell you all the time.”
“Well, maybe we’re different in the way we say things, like it’s some brain thing that isn’t turned on in me that is in you, or maybe it’s the opposite; I don’t know. Can we talk about this over food?”
“I need to think about it,” he said.
“I said I’d go anywhere.”
“I don’t like Chinese.”
“We can go wherever you want.”
“I want to get married,” he said.
“I know!”
His eyes were glossy, almost beautiful in their translucent glow.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He loved me. That was probably more than what most people had. More reliable than Nate and Dad, more understanding and admiring, so why couldn’t I give him what he wanted?
“I just—why are we having this talk now, in the dark?”
His voice began to crack. “Can you imagine your life without me?”
I didn’t know how to answer. My whole life had been imagined without him.
“Well?” he said, opening the door for me to leave.
“I don’t want to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind because—”
Now there were tears at the creases.
“Please don’t do that,” I said. “You’re crying? You’re making too much of this. I don’t even know what this is right now.”
He looked down, locked up, and turned out the final light. When we got outside, he started walking, fast, rushing away from me.
“Frank!” He halted for a moment. “Where are you going?”
He let me catch up to him before he started moving again.
“You said you’d take back the question,” I said. “Can we go back to that? Please?”
“No,” he said. “It’s too late for that.”
“But why? It’s not like I want to date anyone else.”
“It’s not enough,” he said. “If we can’t move forward, we’re stuck.”
“Is that what your mom said?”
“It’s true,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
I wasn’t sure what the right answer was, what I was supposed to say, what I was actually feeling, what was happening, so I just watched him leave.
But how could I let someone who would serve me heart-shaped coffee and pastries for eternity walk away?
I couldn’t.
By the time I reached my door, the fog of confusion had transformed into irritation. Why did he get the final say? Was I even involved? How was that fair?
As I began to turn the key, I envisioned the cover of darkness, and I thought about how I’d grown accustomed to contact that summer, life beyond Harry. And I got it, kind of—the fuss about other people. Intimacy. I’d felt it, for a second, and I had appreciated it. Relationships. Romance. Companionship. What if I had pushed them all away?
I wasn’t ready to lose everything.
Before I finished opening my door, I closed it again, and I took the train straight to Frank’s.
As I knocked, I could hear game noises emerging from his computer, pings of people joining in and messaging each other. He had a community.
“Can I come in?”
He stepped aside, and I moved toward the loveseat, but he didn’t join me.
“Am I interrupting? I could come back.”
“No.” He turned off his screen and sat at his desk, as far away from me as possible. “But I don’t get why you’re here. I didn’t invite you.”
“Am I a vampire?”
He was confused. “I never said you were a vampire.”
“No, it’s a thing—with vampire mythology? They can’t come in unless . . . Forget it. You wouldn’t know that.”
“Why? Because I’m stupid?”
“No, because you don’t watch TV, or movies, or read books. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just you.”
“I don’t know if you mean that as a compliment.”
“Fine.”
We sat in silence for a minute.
“So this is it?” I said, after what seemed like an hour.
“I guess,” he said.
“We’re breaking up?” I said.
“We have to,” he said.
“Why?”
“You don’t want to marry me.”
“But it’s not you—I don’t think. It’s marriage. In general. I don’t think it’s for me.”
“What we have is not enough,” he said.
“Why?”
“You don’t love me enough.”
“I’ve never loved anyone before. I don’t know what enough is.”
“It’s not enough.”
“According to who?”
“You’re the first one I want to talk to when anything happens,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
“When Nate left, you didn’t call.”
“I didn’t call anyone.”
“Did you even think of calling me?”
I couldn’t answer. I thought of Byron, Sabine, of Enid for a minute, of Nate of course. Nate was the one I wanted to call, but I didn’t think of Frank until he showed up.
“It hurts too much,” he said. “When you look at me like you don’t want to be with me, like you’re not excited to see me, like you want to kill me sometimes.”
“Isn’t that what marriage is?”
“No,” he said. “That’s not what it’s supposed to be. It’s not supposed to sting when you see someone, like you’re not good enough.”
“No, that’s not what I mean for it to seem like, Frank. That’s never what I wanted.”
“Well, maybe you can’t help it, but that’s how it feels.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
His face tensed, and he reached into the drawer inside his desk. For a moment I panicked: Was he going to pull a gun, or a rock to throw at my head?
It was a folded piece of paper, just like his proposal note, which I realized then that I would never have the chance to hear.
He cleared his throat and began to read.
“‘Are you sorry for how much you hurt me? Or are you sorry for never giving us a chance?’”
“When did you write that?”
“‘Are you sorry because it means you won’t get more coffee?’”
“Was I supposed to say I was sorry again?”
It was starting to hit me—hard. I had gone in knowing this was inevitable, but I didn’t know how it would feel. My eyes were filling. I couldn’t contain them.
“‘Are you sorry because I loved you every day, and you never loved me?’”
“Who wrote this? Did your mom say that?”
“‘Are you sorry because you couldn’t say no? Or are you sorry because you ever said yes?’”
“I’m sorry,” I said, tears streaming out.
I hadn’t cried in ages. Weepiness from the stints of depression, but not real tears of pain. Not at Dad’s funeral. Not when Nate left. Not since Mom had died. But this time, I let it go—all of it—because I knew we were over.
“You can keep the ring,” he said. “My mom wanted it back, but I told her I got it for you.”
“I never asked for it,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
He looked down.
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say now,” I said.
I took a deep breath and used the back of my sleeve to wipe my face. “I don’t know why I can’t force those feelings. But I know I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“The ring is yours,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Forget the ring!”
I wanted to throw it at him, but of course it wouldn’t slide off.
I went into the bathroom and used the soap and water to loosen the grip. Don’t fall in the drain. Don’t let this be tragic. Don’t give his mom another reason to hate me. Just let this be painless and easy and—it was off without a fight. That had to mean something.
I washed my face and inhaled deeply. Then I brought it to him wrapped in tissue.
“Here,” I said, placing it on his desk.
When I gave it back, I had hoped to feel lighter, but I only felt sicker. This pain was physical. My stomach ached, and my throat was closing in.
I’d never had the chance to say goodbye to anyone who mattered.
“Can I sit down?” I said. “I can’t stand right now.”
“Okay,” he said.
I was supposed to be hungry, but I didn’t feel like eating anymore. I thought of the coffee, all the time we spent together, Enid, how all of it would be lost.
“Can I still visit the shop?” I said. “Sometimes?”
He looked away, his ears crimson. “I think that would be confusing.”
There was a tightening in my chest, and then another wave of nausea. “I feel sick.”
His eyes were red. I could see that, though he refused to make eye contact. He kept touching his nose, and when he turned his back on me to reach for the tissues, I could almost feel the hole inside me expanding, breaking through the seams, all the extra tears pooling in the void inside.
“I guess you want me to go,” I said.
He opened the door for me. “I never wanted you to go.”
I could tell he wanted to hug me, but leaving first was easier. As I made my way through the threshold, I almost bumped my elbow against the lock, but I pulled it back in time, managing to just skim it.
I decided to walk home.
The streets were so muted somehow. There was space all around me, but all around me, it was empty.
FOR A DAY, or two, or three, I stayed with Harry on the couch, staring into the darkness, drifting in and out of sleep. I ate a little bit, but I wasn’t very hungry.
I couldn’t move. Except from my bed to Nate’s bed because he wasn’t using it—he wasn’t coming back, I was sure—and it allowed me to sleep for longer. I hid in the corner and faced the wall for hours upon hours. Stared and drifted in and out of consciousness.
Slowly, I felt myself slipping past the fringes of sanity, into the darkest reaches of impulses. I could drink some of that cleaner beneath the counter, or take too many pills. That would be easiest. If I could sleep for long enough, I’d be able to stop crying. I could find some relief, and possibly even find my parents. If I believed in that stuff. It was probably best for everyone.
I gathered enough strength to make my way to the kitchen.
I picked up the bottle and considered it, and then I heard a noise.
“Harry? Is that you?”
He didn’t come out.
“Where are you? If that’s a mouse, you’re supposed to scare him away, your one household duty?”
Harry was next to me. I touched his back. “Harry, go get the mouse.”
He didn’t move.
I heard the noise again, closer this time. There was some creaking of the floor, rustling, shuffling, or shifting.
Who was there? A chill bristled past my skin. Every hair was on end.
“Byron?”
No answer. It had to be a mouse. Better a mouse than a roach. Or maybe it was just the furnace. In August. Or the neighbors making noise through the walls. Because there were no such things as monsters, or robbers. That only happened in the tabloids, and in my mind.
This was stupid anyway, all this guessing.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Do what you will.”
I looked up.
The pills spilled from the counter and scattered across the floor. Did I do that?
A faint shadow shifted past, and I smelled a slight whiff of perfume. I could feel her. Something big. A presence.
“Mom,” I said. “Can you hear me?”
Nate hadn’t been able to talk to her either; that’s what he said. I needed to tell him, to let him know she was here. I thought she was. He needed to come back so he could see we weren’t crazy.
“Nate?”
There was no response.
“Mom?”
For a second I almost thought I felt a warm spot on my shoulder. A whisper, a hiss so soft it could have been the wind. “Thissss . . .”
“This what?” I said.
And then she was gone.
This apartment, this situation, this life? Or—
A hackneyed phrase. A boring platitude. An important message. Maybe it was all the same.
This too shall pass. It was her go-to phrase when nothing else was working, when she was exhausted from comforting us, when there wasn’t anything left to say.
Mom and Dad used it like a one-two punch—Mom with the phrase, Dad with the explanation—a rare synchronous effort.
So maybe this was synchronicity. Maybe both of them were there, in that moment, to force me off the pills and off the couch.
I began to draw.
Maybe. But probably, and like each time before, she hadn’t actually said anything. If she had, I doubted she’d waste her word to start a cliché.
And yet one thing I was certain of: Something or someone or some presence had been there. I could still almost feel it. The phrase had worked its magic, and then the moment was gone. There was only silence after that, not even a squeak from the pipes.