CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sadie

I thought when Noah came to visit the city I was obsessed with, he’d understand. He’d never been to New York before, aside from the obligatory eighth-grade field trip. I wanted him to drink in the architecture, the life and pulse of the city. I thought he’d appreciate the glittering skyscrapers and gracious brownstones, the cobbled, uneven streets of SoHo, the thrum and rush of noise, the smells of street food and the variety, my God, the newness of every single block.

He came to visit for the first time on Columbus Day weekend of my freshman year. He didn’t love a thing. In fact, he hated it. “How can you live here?” he asked the second night, rubbing his forehead. “You can’t hear yourself think. How do you paint?”

My mouth dropped open. “I’m getting really good!”

“You were good already.”

I made a disgusted noise. “Anyone can do a pretty landscape, Noah,” I said patiently. Landscapes had been my forte in high school, and they won me those prizes at our town’s art contest (which meant nothing, I had quickly learned). “I’m really growing as an artist. It’s mind-blowing, what I don’t know yet, and how good I could get.”

I stopped in front of a gallery; we were in SoHo, and you couldn’t swing a cat in this neighborhood without hitting a posh space staffed by black-clad beautiful people who spoke three languages. “This is art,” I said, pointing to the sole oil painting in the window. “It’s so much more than a pretty picture. This says something.”

“Looks like blobs of black tar to me,” he said.

“It’s a statement on materialism and abstraction,” I said. “There’s a tension here, a grittiness and impact. It’s a dissonant whole worldview about what’s real and what we want to be real.”

“It’s black blobs, hon,” he said. “That painting you did of the blood moon rising? Now that’s beautiful.”

I sighed. “Yeah, well, I’d kill to have been the one to come up with this. You know how much it goes for?” I knew, because my class had had a field trip here just last week (hence my knowledge of dissonance and such). “Three hundred thousand dollars, Noah.”

His eyebrows jumped. “Jesus. But then you’d have to look at the goddamn thing. Whereas if someone bought one of your paintings, they could actually feel happy.”

“Noah . . . knock it off.” But I smiled, even if I felt somehow slighted by his compliment. Happiness because of a painting? How plebeian. Why not just frame a picture of your dog? (I mean, yes, I did have a picture of my dog, the late, great Pokey, who died when I was eleven.) But art was supposed to do more.

I went home for Christmas break, but only for ten days, because I was going to Venice for the remainder. And oh, that beautiful city was everything I’d imagined. It spoke right to my heart, the crumbling buildings, the canals, the decrepit, genteel beauty, the patterns of bricks, the beauty imbued in everything, even the rainspouts. I loved the garbagemen who chatted animatedly with each other, smoking, but who paused to give me an appreciative glance with “ciao, bellissima.” The riotous glory of stained glass in every church, the beautiful window boxes and brightly painted shutters. I took the water taxi to Murano and watched handsome men blowing glass, their arms brown and scarred. The beauty of the city, the foreignness of it, filled up parts of my soul I didn’t even know I had.

When I got back to school, I signed up for a summer session in Barcelona and found a waitressing job so I could pay for it.

A quick trip home, travel on break, back to New York. It became my pattern. My painting changed; the gentle landscapes that had gotten me into Pace were cast aside. Now I did mixed-media and monochromatic paintings. I tried sculpting. I started wearing only black (I know, I know). I got my nose pierced.

Noah visited when he could, which wasn’t often. He was apprenticing as a carpenter, working six days a week. When we were together, in bed, skin against skin, his light scruff gently scraping my cheek, our fingers intertwined, the red glow returned. But he kept asking about the next break, when I’d come home. When I did go back to Stoningham, I felt itchy—my mother, still the same but only on more committees; Juliet, securing her status as favorite by giving birth to a girl she and her perfect husband named after my mother.

And Noah. His love was so big and fierce it was like a dragon, waiting for me.

I could feel the resentment growing in him.

My return visits consisted of Noah and me sleeping together whenever and wherever possible, and seeing the two friends I’d kept in touch with from high school. My dad was the only one who asked me the questions I wanted to answer, who listened with real interest as I described the wonder of the Duomo di Milano’s rooftop, the hundreds of different shades of green in Ireland, that moment when I stood at the very tip of South Africa, one foot in the Indian Ocean, one in the Atlantic, and compared the shades of blue. He was the only one who didn’t ask when I was going to come home, the only one who believed I could succeed out in the world.

New York had its hooks in me, and I believed with all my heart that I would make it.

When you’re a student in that city, all you see around you is what you could become. It is a city of wanting—wanting to live in that neighborhood, have that view, stride through that lobby every day. Wanting to show at this gallery, eat at this restaurant, be a regular at that bar. Wanting to shop at that boutique, wear those clothes, be invited to that person’s parties. Wanting to know all the city’s secrets.

I started bicycling all over the city, and the overriding emotion I felt was a combination of wonder and hunger. When I saw a woman who seemed to have it all, I wanted to be her—the confidence, the look, the way she belonged, the casual grace and comfort she exuded just walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant. Me, I’d almost killed myself gawking at a particularly beautiful building on the Upper East Side, and a cop yelled at me when I attempted to zip through the intersection on a yellow light, which apparently wasn’t done in the Big Apple. Everywhere I went, I wondered, Who are these people? How do they pull it off? How do they make it?

I wanted to weave myself into the fiber of this city. I wanted to paint it, eat it, breathe it, own it. I wanted to be right without even wondering what right was. I wanted to live in a building with character and flair. I wanted to walk into an art exhibition and have people murmur—“Oh, my God, Sadie Frost is here.” I would be that strangest anomaly—a warm, welcoming, super-successful New Yorker who knew everything and shared everything. The parties I would throw! The students I would mentor! The love and admiration of my peers and teachers! I would be celebrated, and I would give back.

Except I wasn’t, and I didn’t.

The thing about going to art school is that you’re surrounded by talent. I might’ve been the best artist in my graduating high school class, but as I hit the end of my sophomore year of college, I started to see that I was . . . average. Skilled. We’d all started off as talented kids. All of us had different strengths. But while I’d been great at the technical aspects of art, now was the time where my professors were using words like fragility, vision, articulation . . . and they weren’t using them on my pieces.

That was okay. I’d learn. I’d change. I could refine my voice and clarify my point of view. My travels had deepened and educated me—didn’t I backpack through Europe with ten bucks in my pocket? Didn’t I sleep under a tree in the Parc Municipal in Luxembourg? I bought breakfast for the old woman who begged for food outside Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor in Barcelona and talked to the heroin addicts of Manchester. Surely all those things made me a real artist. I would take it all and express it, beauty and darkness both, hope and despair, rage, loneliness, love . . .

“Sadie,” my professor sighed during my senior year conference, “you have to stop trying to be what you’re not.” She pointed to the angry scribbles of charcoal. “This is what you think art should be.”

I tried not to let my confusion show. Wasn’t that the point?

She tilted her head. “Do you even know what you want to say with your art?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “It’s the melding of rage and darkness with the, um, the scope of architectural beauty and . . . uh, poverty. But hope, too. That things will change. For the better.”

She grimaced.

“How is this worse than Zach’s work?” I asked, because yes, my classmate had also done a series of black charcoal abstracts and gotten a show at Woodward Gallery in fucking SoHo.

My teacher folded her hands. “Zach’s work shows a modernist fusion and battle of urban life and nature. It’s a poem to the fragility and strength of humanity. The minimal quality of movement, the strength of message . . . if you don’t see the difference, Sadie, I’m concerned.”

I cried on the phone that night to Noah. “She’s wrong,” he said. “You’re fantastic, Sadie. You are. You just have to . . . I don’t know. Find your audience.”

“You mean, paint pictures of sunsets and sell them to the summer people?”

“Well, yeah. What’s wrong with that, Special?”

It was the wrong time to use that nickname, beloved though it had always been. I had just been told I was anything but special. “I want more, Noah! I don’t want to be stuck in that stupid town, painting stupid pictures of stupid clouds!”

He answered with silence.

Right. I’d given him that painting of clouds, and he’d just hung it in the little apartment he’d rented over the hardware store. He’d sent me a picture of it there.

“I’m sorry,” I said belatedly.

A few weeks later was the senior art show. Our school sent out invitations to art buyers and critics, gallery owners and collectors. Some students got a big break this way, and I was hopeful, anxious . . . and a little desperate.

Noah came, as well as my parents. “Your stuff is the best here,” he said, ignoring the fact that everyone seemed clustered around Zach the charcoal boy and Aneni, a woman who painted strange animals with miraculous detail.

My work wasn’t the best. I knew it, and so did everyone except Noah. Dad told me he was so proud of me and couldn’t wait to see what was next . . . which, in my funk, I interpreted as “keep trying and maybe you’ll get better someday.” My mother bought one of Zach’s paintings. “Imagine what this will be worth in ten years,” she said, and I wanted to bite her.

I latched on to one woman who owned a gallery in Greenpoint, my voice high and fast as I tried to describe the references to Warhol and my love of Venice in my sculpture, only to find that her gallery had closed last month and she was going back to school to become a physician’s assistant. The art critic from the Village Voice glanced at my display as she moved across the space and didn’t even slow. My heart cracked.

I didn’t sell a single piece, except to my dad.

My parents were staying at a hotel; Noah came back to my dorm room. My mind buzzed and fretted as I swallowed the sharp tears in my throat.

I hadn’t been discovered. All those trips, the thousands of photos I’d taken, the open heart and mind I’d kept for four years had resulted in the Village Voice reviewer walking right past and my father pity-buying the Zach knockoff.

I’d have to keep working. Be more daring. Be different. It would be hard, but wasn’t it better this way? Who cared if you were discovered at a school show, especially at Pace (which had been good enough until this moment but had now completely failed me as an institution).

No. A much better story would be of Sadie Frost who, believe it or not, was told she was unoriginal by her own art professor! I’d be in the same league as J. K. Rowling, who was rejected a zillion times, or Gisele Who Married Tom Brady, once told her nose was too big for modeling. Bill Gates. Oprah. I’d be in great company, goddamnit.

Then Noah got down on one knee.

“I know we’re young,” he said. “But I’ve loved you since I was fifteen years old, Special. Marry me. Come home. I promise we’ll be happy.”

The timing . . . it really sucked.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, my voice squeaking with disbelief.

His dark eyes lost their light. “No.”

“Noah. Honey. Come on. I haven’t accomplished one thing I want to. I can’t marry you! I can’t quit before I even get started!”

He stood up. “I’m not asking you to quit. I just want us to be together. I love you. You love me. Why are we wasting time?”

“Because I have to be here!” I said. “Noah, I’ve never wanted to live in Stoningham. That’s your dream. Mine is something different. You move here, and we’ll see how it goes.”

He wasn’t going to move here. It was loud. Dirty. Crowded. The air smelled bad.

“I have to stay here,” I said. “And you know what? I love it here. This is where I have to be right now. If I leave, I’ll never prove I’m good enough.” My voice broke.

“Sadie. You’re more than good enough.”

“You’re the only one who thinks so, and Noah, I’m sorry, you just don’t know that much about art.”

“I do know about you, though.”

Tears slid down my cheeks. “Then you know I have to stay.”

“I’ve saved money so we can travel, and I’ll build us a house where you can have a studio with the right light—”

“You’re not listening to me. We’re twenty-two, Noah. I’m not getting married this young. And I don’t want to move back to Connecticut. Maybe ever.”

He closed his eyes.

“So let’s just keep going this way,” I said, reaching for his hand. “Long-distance. We’ll figure something out. Weekend lovers. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough.”

“No. It’s not.”

The weight of those words seemed to squeeze all the air from the room. “Are you going to dump me because I have ambition, Noah?” I asked. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a razor blade.

“I’m just saying you can have ambition and work from anywhere in the world. I’m asking you to make a life with me. I thought it’s what we both wanted. You can’t raise a family if one parent doesn’t live in the same state.”

“Okay, it’s way too early to be thinking about raising a family,” I said. “You can work from anywhere, too, Noah. You could get a job here in a heartbeat. There’s a housing boom, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I don’t want to live here. I hate this city.”

“Well, I hate Stoningham.”

“No, you don’t! You just think you have to because it’s small and quiet. It’s not part of the story you made up about how New York would fall over itself when you came to town.”

Oh. His words sliced me right through the heart. They were so big and painful—and true—that I was frozen where I stood.

And then I said, “So you won’t move for me, and I won’t move for you. I guess we’re at an impasse.” I couldn’t bring myself to say, I guess we’re breaking up. Not to the wild boy who loved me. Whose pet name for me was Special. Who lit up my heart in such glorious, vibrant, pulsating color.

“All right, then.” His eyes were shiny. I’d never seen him cry before, and I couldn’t now. I looked away. “I’ll wait for you, Sadie,” he said, his voice rough. “But not forever.”

“Same.” The lump in my throat was strangling me. I still couldn’t meet his eyes, and while I was staring out the window, he left.

At dinner that night, my mother asked, “Why isn’t Noah here?”

“We’re taking a break,” I answered, the words wooden and hard in my mouth. I drained my martini, even though I hated martinis, but it was what Zach had ordered the last time we’d all gone out, and . . . and God, I was so fucking unoriginal.

My dad squeezed my hand. “These things happen,” he said kindly. “Don’t worry, sugarplum.”

“Marriage is an outdated institution,” Mom said. Dad sighed and let go of my hand.

I cried so much that for the next month, there were salt deposits in my eyelashes. It felt like Noah had slammed the door on my pulsing heart. Why did I have to move? Why wouldn’t he even try living here? Why was there no compromise? What was this sexist bullshit?

And then I’d flip. Should I move home? What would happen to me if I did? Would I hate him for cutting my dreams short? How long was I going to try to be an artist in this vicious, competitive city? Was he right? Did I want five black-haired babies? The truth was, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t hate babies, but I didn’t stare at them or fawn over them like some of my friends.

He would wait, he’d said. Apparently in silence, because we didn’t talk to each other for a month.

Not many high school couples stay together, I rationalized. Not many twenty-two-year-old men really know what they want. Sure, I could marry Noah, and within a decade, we’d be stale and old and bitter, scratching to make ends meet in a town that catered to the wealthy. Our kids would grow up in the weighted gloom the way I had, tiptoeing around their parents’ disappointment in each other. We’d inevitably divorce, and those five kids and I would resent him. Or worse, they’d love him better. Who wouldn’t?

I’d picture his face, his wild beauty and curly hair, the rare smile with the power of the sun, and I’d cry again.

But I had to try. I’d always only wanted to be a painter, and I knew I had to give it my best shot. I had just graduated. It was too early to call myself a failure.

With a little help from my dad, I was able to rent a shared apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, the only part of Manhattan that had resisted gentrification. It was a grubby, stuffy place with two roommates, not counting the cockroaches. Mala never left the apartment and barely spoke, just sat with her face practically touching her phone, thumbs twitching away. (I had no idea how she paid her bills, if she worked, if she had friends or family . . . She never offered anything.) Sarah was a violinist and only came home with her friends to cook giant vegan meals and leave all their dirty dishes in the tiny kitchen for days at a time.

Two months after my graduation, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see Noah standing there with a duffel bag. I burst into tears and wrapped myself around him, sobbing with relief and love.

“I’ll try it. Okay? I’ll try.” His eyes were shiny again, and we fell into bed without another word.

He got a job in construction—not finish construction, which was what he did back home—trim work and custom cabinets and, occasionally, a piece of furniture. Here, he worked with a company that built skyscrapers—Juliet had connections and got him the job. So every day, he went to work with metal and cement, thirty or more stories above the ground.

Noah was afraid of heights. I remembered the summer I got him to jump off a rock into the Sound, and how he’d been shaking, how it took half an hour of my talking him into it, and when he did and we surfaced in the briny water, he’d kissed me, and I pushed his wet curls off his face and loved him so, so much. I knew he was doing this for me, just as he had jumped for me, too.

I worked, too, waitressing at a sleek restaurant in Tribeca (hoping my proximity to the heart of the art world would grant me a lucky break). I made a website featuring my artwork, dropping in the fact that I was (probably) a distant relative of Robert Frost . . . anything that would help. It didn’t. During the days, I painted in the tiny living room, my easel on the couch because there wasn’t enough floor space for me, the canvas, my paints and brushes, and Mala, staring at her phone, cackling occasionally.

Noah and I didn’t have a lot of leisure time together, but at least we were here. When we could, we’d take walks, because that’s the best thing to do in New York. We’d poke around St. Mark’s Place, or get some street meat near Central Park. I told him about the city, the history, the art, the famous people who’d thrived here and loved it here.

He was trying. I could see that. And he was failing. To him, the city was too loud, too hard, too full of chaos. He didn’t sleep well, and dark circles appeared under his eyes. He didn’t smile as much as he used to. He had always been the quiet one in our relationship, but now, he was rivaling crazy Mala in silence.

As Heathcliff needed the moors, so my wild boy needed to go home. Stoningham was as lovely a town as there was, but I knew it wasn’t the pretty streets and green that Noah loved. It was the birdsong, the tide, the sound of the wind in the marsh grass, the way a storm would roll up the coast and light up the horizon with lightning. The deep woods with their three-hundred-year-old oaks and maples, the farmland and stone walls that wandered through forest and field, marking out the history of the land. He missed working with wood; his job was now pouring cement. He missed his parents and knowing everyone he ran into.

One night, I woke up and looked at him. He was asleep, his lashes like a fanned sable brush on his cheeks, the scruffy beard that never seemed to fill out. He’d lost a little weight, and he didn’t have it to lose. With his arm over his head, his ribs seemed too sharp.

My city was hurting him.

In the morning, I made him breakfast as Mala stood near the window with her goddamn phone. “Mala, could you give us a minute?” I asked. She shot me a dark look and stomped to her room.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said to Noah, setting his eggs and toast down in front of him. “I think you should move back, honey. I know you hate it here.”

He took a deep breath, the relief clear on his face. “Will you come, too?”

“No. I have to stay, and you have to leave.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“No. I just can’t stand seeing you so unhappy.” My eyes filled. “I love you, after all.”

He looked at his plate. “I love you, too. I want a life with you, with kids and everything, but I can’t wait forever.”

“Fair enough.” Was it, though? Was it fair to ask someone to give up trying to get what they’d always, always wanted?

It was a wretched goodbye. I cried. A lot. My tiny bed seemed huge without him. And yet . . . and yet it was easier, too, without him looking like a beaten dog, without him silently judging my paintings, knowing he thought I should be drawing puffy clouds or dogs romping on the beach, rather than trying to stretch and grow. I missed him. I was glad he was gone. I loved being here, doing what I was. I hated being without him.

I tried to get an agent and absorbed their feedback—nice color palette but the content is a bit too familiar . . . once you’ve honed your eye . . . not taking new clients at this time . . . have you considered taking an art class? I had taken four years of art classes, for crying out loud! I could teach art classes! I had a double degree, thank you very much.

That was okay, though. Content too familiar . . . I could use that. Every failure, I told myself, was a step closer to success, even if it didn’t feel that way.

I lugged my portfolio to the galleries who would see me, and sent countless e-mails to those who wouldn’t. I was suckered into paying hundreds of dollars to be featured in a show for a week . . . the “gallery” a former garage that still stank of diesel, the promised opening consisting of cheap wine in plastic cups, with not even a dozen people attending. I entered contests, paying the fees with my hard-earned waitressing money, never once placing. But I tried to learn and absorb from every experience. New York was a harsh teacher, but the best teacher, too.

Months passed. A year. Noah came to visit twice, and I went home to Stoningham to see my parents and nieces from time to time. We were still together. We talked on the phone almost every day. Then less. Then a little less.

My art school friends started leaving the city . . . It was so expensive, so competitive. Only Aneni stayed—even Zach, my professor’s favorite student, left for Cincinnati and a job at an advertising company. So much for your wunderkind, I wanted to say.

Aneni, she of the amazing and bizarre animal drawings, was our school’s pride and joy. She was showing at all the hot places and guest lectured at the Art Students League. Every time she had an opening, I was invited, and she hugged me and introduced me around to her friends, gallery owners, critics. Once in a while, someone would say, “Send me your info” or “Stay in touch,” but it never leveraged into anything.

Aneni . . . she had a true gift. You could see it a mile away, because her paintings were like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was so happy for her, because she was incredibly nice, but I couldn’t lie. I was also jealous. Really, really jealous. How had she done it? Her viewpoint was so clear, her drawings incredibly precise, beautiful and odd. Was it because she was from Zimbabwe that she had such a different point of view? Why did I have to grow up in Connecticut, a state no one (except Noah—and my mother) took seriously?

Of course, I tried to figure out what my art was missing. I knew I could be better, clearer, more. As the months passed, I stayed resolutely openhearted. I took classes when I could afford them, listened to my teachers and tried, so hard, to be better. I pored over the great works at MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Met, the Frick, the Whitney. I went to galleries and studied the paint strokes, the textures, the voices.

I still loved painting with all my heart. It was more like painting didn’t love me. Or the art world didn’t. I’d stare into gallery windows and think, Is that piece really so special, or did someone just anoint it? And if it was anointed, how could I get some of that holy oil, hm?

Then one of my professors sent me a link to a teaching job at St. Catherine’s, a small Catholic elementary school in the Bronx. I applied, and the rather terrifying nun, Sister Mary, seemed to like me. I was good with kids for the same reason I didn’t seem to burn for them—to me, they were entertaining little aliens. Wanting kids never felt as real to me as painting did. I knew what I wanted there. Kids? They were . . . nice. Fun. Kinda cute.

At any rate, I took the job. I had a solid education, appreciated health care and didn’t mind the tiny paycheck, since waitressing was pretty lucrative.

Carter, who taught third grade, took me under his wing, and suddenly, I had new friends, not in the art world. Normal people, many of whom had been at St. Cath’s for decades and had children older than I was. There was a handful of us in our twenties and thirties.

The job was nice. The art room was bright and cheery, and I got hugged a lot.

Noah was furious. If I could teach in the Bronx, why not Stoningham? He saw it as a betrayal, and we stopped speaking for a while. Fine. The way he seemed to be watching and waiting for me to give up made me want to kick him, anyway. Then he sent me a card with a bluebird on the front. Inside, he’d written, “I still love you.” Nothing else.

I made him a pastel, one of those easy skyscapes that virtually anyone could draw, and wrote on the back, “I still love you, too.”

So we weren’t quite apart, even if we weren’t together.

When we saw each other the next time I went to Stoningham, we were practically strangers.

“How’s teaching?” he asked as we sat in his mother’s kitchen.

“It’s really nice.” It was so strange to feel awkward around him, of all people on earth. We seemed to be having trouble making eye contact.

“Painting going okay?” he asked.

“Yep.” I didn’t tell him about the galleries and rejections and meh feedback, not wanting to give him ammo in his argument for me to come back home. “How’s carpentry going?”

“Good.”

“Great.”

We’d never been like this before. He drove me to New London to get the train, and when I got my ticket, he kissed me, hard and fierce and beautiful, and if we’d kissed like that when we first saw each other, maybe things would’ve been different.

I still waitressed downtown. I grew to hate Mala, who never even tried to be nice. I cleaned up after Sarah, who was a pig but pleasant. I painted and critiqued my own work and painted more, still not able to pinpoint what I was trying to accomplish with my work, other than make somebody see its value.

But something started to happen. Two years out of college, no longer shielded by my student status, I was becoming a New Yorker. I knew which subways to take, which street would be clogged with tourists, how to avoid the Yankees fans swarming to the stadium for a day game. I didn’t worry about what to wear and knew which boutiques were cool and cheap. I painted all summer, and my work was getting better. I even sold a few pieces at those studio open houses where you paid to play.

Then one of the moms at St. Catherine’s approached me. She was an interior decorator and wondered if I’d do pieces on commission to match the rooms she was doing. It was too hard, she said, to find art that matched exactly right. Maybe she could give me some paint colors and fabric swatches, and I could make something that would fit on the wall she had in mind?

I didn’t hesitate in saying yes. Why the hell not? Would Aneni? Never.

My first piece for Janice, the decorator mom, was a ten-by-five-foot painting for over a couch. “Here’s the couch fabric, and the throw pillows,” she said, handing me swatches of fabric. “Make it with some texture in it, swirly, you know? Like that one with the stars in it by the dude who cut off his ear? Super! Oh, and sign it. My client will love having an original piece.”

So I made it—an oil painting in sage, apricot and lavender with swirly brushstrokes (like Van Gogh, you betcha). Was it a complete sellout? Yes, it was. Did I earn five hundred bucks? Yes, I did.

Janice was thrilled. She came back to me again, and then again, and then it became part of her selling point: original artwork made just for your house. It gave me an idea, and I contacted half a dozen more decorators. Selling out, with the emphasis on sell. I was loyal to Janice and kept my prices low, but I asked for triple that with the other folks, and they didn’t blink. Apparently, some artists were quite fussy about being told what to do and how to do it. Not me.

Later that year, I quit my waitressing job (which never did produce any contacts) and ditched the horrible little apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, Mad Mala and Sloppy Sarah. Juliet alerted me to a “motivated seller” with a place in Times Square (the worst neighborhood in all five boroughs to any true New Yorker). But the apartment was affordable, and nicer than I could’ve gotten in any other neighborhood. Juliet loaned me the money for a down payment (we artists had no pride), and just like that, I had a one-bedroom place of my own, lit up at night by the garish lights of enormous, flashing advertisements.

I still tried to paint more than just the couch paintings, as I took to calling them. I still took the occasional class, still entered contests with influential judges, still sent e-mails to those galleries that could make a career. I was still young. But however mundane, I was also selling art . . . made, alas, to match comforters or bathroom tile. Between that and teaching the little darlings at St. Catherine’s, I was making a living. At painting. Not a lot of people could say that. Not even Zach of Cincinnati.

Besides, it would make another great story, I told myself. Philip Glass had once been a cabdriver. Kurt Vonnegut had sold cars. David Sedaris had been an elf at Macy’s. Oprah Winfrey had worked at a grocery store.

“This is an early Sadie Frost!” someone might brag someday of my couch paintings. That purple-and-blue horror I’d done to cover a sixty-inch flat-screen TV? It might sell for millions.

Noah still came to visit, but I could sense his heart hardening toward me. It almost felt like he wanted me to fail. He viewed my apartment as proof I didn’t want to get married, but for crying out loud, we were twenty-four years old. I didn’t want to get married! Not now! I was getting tired of his broody bullshit. He was an artist, too, though he hated when I said it. Only in bed did we recapture that beautiful, fierce glow and remember why we were together.

I settled into this new phase of my adulthood, one in which I could pay my bills and go out for dinner once in a while, get cable, if not HBO. Carter lived on the Upper West Side (family money) and he and I hung out a lot. One of Janice’s clients asked to take me to coffee to thank me for her “stunning” watercolor, and we started going to yoga classes together. Alexa, the sixth-grade math teacher, and I both loved to wander through the New York Botanical Garden, which wasn’t far from St. Catherine’s.

I made good use of the city, believe me . . . I went to author readings at the 92nd Street Y and student recitals at Juilliard. My father came to visit, the only other person in our family who loved New York—not even Juliet, the architect, enjoyed being here. But Dad loved it. He thought my apartment was perfect, and loved walking as much as I did. We went out for dinner to my favorite little Italian place in the Village, and then meandered through Washington Square Park, where some kid from NYU was doing ballet while her friend played the violin. Sometimes, Dad would even stay over, insisting on sleeping on the pullout couch rather than taking my bed. “It’s fun, sugarplum,” he said, and we talked and talked.

He understood my ambition. “I wanted to be a writer,” he told me once. “Law school was supposed to be temporary. But then, you know . . . we moved to Stoningham, and your mom loved it so much, and then Juliet came along. It never seemed like the right time to quit my job and try to write a novel.”

“You could still do it, Dad!” I said. “There’s no age limit. You’re retired now! You should start tomorrow!”

“Well . . . I don’t know about that. I think the urge is gone now. Besides, your mother thinks I’m enough of an annoyance without me talking about a crime novel.”

“She’d probably love for you to have a hobby.” And get out of her space, I thought. But she wasn’t exactly the encouraging type (unless your name was Juliet Elizabeth Frost).

“Well. I’m very proud of you, Sadie. Not everyone is brave enough to go for it, and here you are. My fierce little girl, making it in the Big Apple.”

No one else felt that way. No one had said they were proud of me in a long, long time. Noah used to, but not anymore, not if it meant me staying here. Our love for each other was becoming a clenched fist of frustration and uncertainty.

Love is not all you need. Don’t believe that lie.

On my twenty-fifth birthday, Noah called. “I need to see you,” he said, and it didn’t sound promising. We weren’t a couple, not really, not in his eyes, and yet we weren’t not a couple. I gathered we were about to come to a conclusion.

When I saw him in Grand Central Station, my old love for him hit me like a wave, tumbling me in its force. I still loved him. I’d always love him. And when he saw me, his face softened just a little, an almost smile there on his lips. He never could grow a proper beard, but he looked sixteen if he shaved, and it was so . . . so endearing. My heart glowed that scarlet color that only Noah could bring.

“Hey, stranger,” I said, and gave him a big hug. We hadn’t seen each other in months, and he seemed bigger—broader shoulders, more muscle, and there was a sudden lump in my throat at the idea that my wild boy was now a man.

He wanted to go to a nearby restaurant and “get this out of the way.”

“Sure thing,” I said, nervousness and irritability fluttering in my stomach. I took him to a tourist-trap Irish pub just across the street, and we ordered beers and burgers. He could barely look at me.

So there was someone else, I guessed, and for a minute, I had to bend my head so I wouldn’t cry.

“How’ve you been?” I asked, my voice a little rough.

“I want you to marry me,” he said.

My head jerked back up. Not what I expected.

He was scowling.

“I want you to marry me and come home. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone but you, Sadie. But I’m not waiting anymore.”

“This sounds vaguely like a threat, not a proposal,” I said.

He didn’t answer. The waitress brought us our beers and wisely slipped away.

“Sadie . . .” He looked away. “Do you still want to get married?”

I sat back in the red booth, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t want to be with anyone but you, Noah. I love you. But I’m not sure I want the same life you do. You always had our future mapped out, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for compromise.”

“I did compromise! I lived here for four months.”

“And you hated it, just like you promised you would.”

“I can’t help that. You’re the one who sent me away.” He glowered.

“I didn’t send you away, Noah. I put you out of your misery.”

The waitress brought us our burgers. “Enjoy,” she said. We ignored her.

“Stoningham sucks the life out of some people,” I said. “I know you’re not one of them, but I am.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Thank you for being so understanding.”

He scowled.

I rolled my eyes.

“Are you happy, Sadie?” he asked.

“Yes. Mostly.” Content, maybe. Climbing my way to happiness.

“Because from here, it looks like you’re killing time. Being a teacher, doing those paintings you hate, listening to sirens and car horns all day, taking your life into your hands every time you cross the street. You gave it a shot. It didn’t work. Come home and be with me.”

My jaw clenched. “Wow. So now that I’ve failed—at least the way you define it—I should come home and marry you and get pregnant.”

He leaned forward. “I love you. Doesn’t that matter at all? Because to me, that’s everything.”

“It doesn’t sound like everything. It sounds like everything you want, with no room for me. Why can’t we be together, me in the city, you in Stoningham? Lots of people have long-distance relationships.”

“You can’t raise a family that way!”

“So that’s it? Your way, or nothing?”

“What would I tell our kids? Mommy doesn’t love you enough to live with you?”

“I don’t see me having kids anytime soon, Noah. And certainly not because you bullied me into it.”

We glared at each other over our cooling burgers.

“So you’re saying no, is that it?” he asked. “Because I’d like an answer. The waiting period is over, and I’m not gonna chase after you all my life.”

“This is a very hostile marriage proposal.”

“Don’t make jokes, Sadie. Give me an answer. Will you marry me?”

There was no right answer I could give.

“I’m so sorry, Noah,” I whispered. “I love you with all my heart, but I don’t want that life right now.”

His face didn’t change. He just looked at me with those dark, dark eyes, then glanced away and swallowed. Twice. He pulled out his wallet and put two twenties on the table. Then he left me at the table with our untouched burgers and unfinished beers.

Sitting there in that pub, I think I knew. A love like that didn’t come along every day. No other man was going to light my heart up in shades of red so beautiful it hurt. I loved Noah, loved his gentleness and kind heart, how hard he worked. I loved his smile, his mouth, the way he looked on the water with the wind blowing in his tangled hair. I knew that being with someone who thought you were the most wonderful, precious thing in the world didn’t happen very often, and maybe would never happen again.

But I wasn’t going to marry a man who’d proposed via ultimatum.

---

— —

Three years after I’d turned Noah down in that stupid Irish pub, he got engaged.

My sister told me about it. We were having a perfectly nice, perfectly bland chat about her perfect life when she said, “Hey, by the way, Noah’s getting married. Gillian something. You guys were pretty hot and heavy, weren’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

Noah was getting married. To someone who was not me. Married. As in living together. Sleeping together, waking up together, eating together, and probably having kids together.

My sister’s words sat in my stomach like stones. “That’s nice,” I said belatedly, but Jules was already talking about the perfect vacation she’d be taking.

I’d managed to avoid imagining Noah with someone else. It was much more romantic to think of him staring out at the horizon, wind whipping his hair, arms crossed, his heart still mine. Occasionally, he showed up in my dreams, at times happy, sometimes angry and, worst of all, sad.

You can try to talk yourself out of loving someone. You can pitch it all the right ways, ways that make sense. We wanted different things. It was beautiful while it lasted. Not every relationship is meant to be forever. I’ll always have a soft spot for him. You never forget your first love. And all that makes sense . . . in your head, if not your heart. I still loved Noah, and sometimes I’d find myself walking down a street and letting out a growl of frustration. Why couldn’t he have at least tried to love my city, to open his heart to it? Why did he view Stoningham, that beautiful, pretentious, infuriating, lovely little town, as the be-all and end-all for our lives?

And who the hell was this Gillian person he was marrying?

A quick Facebook search brought me to her page. Gillian Epstein, the future Mrs. Noah Pelletier. She was an event planner—Epstein Events, not a very creative name.

Neither was she subtle about their engagement; her profile picture was her hand on a man’s chest. Noah’s chest. On her finger was a very pretty solitaire. Other photos showed the two of them at McMillan Orchards, in what was obviously their engagement photo shoot. I knew this because her page wasn’t private, and there were thirty-seven pictures captioned Engagement Photo Shoot!!! A lot of Stoningham people had weighed in on how beautiful they were, how happy they looked, couldn’t wait for the wedding, a year and a half away, for the love of God. If you were going to do it, just do it.

I didn’t like the look of her. She was pretty, but very done. Those too-perfect eyebrows. Eyelash extensions (or very blessed). She looked . . . smug. Oh, she was nice-looking, of course. Quite pretty.

But it was Noah’s face I really studied. His hair was cut short. Why on earth would he cut that beautiful, curly black hair? He looked—he was—older. I blew up the picture to see if he was really smiling, if his dark eyes crinkled and sparkled in that special way I remembered, and shit, yes, he did look happy.

My wild boy.

Tears spilled out of my eyes, surprising me. Obviously, I could’ve been his wife. I’d said no for all good reasons. He was uncompromising, and that wasn’t a good sign for a marriage. We didn’t want the same things, no matter how much we loved each other. So of course he was moving on. He deserved happiness, and I felt a hot, fast burn of shame that I hadn’t been able to give it to him. No. I’d broken his heart instead.

Then again, he’d broken mine, too. It was a mutual devastation.

So I would be glad for him. I took my unjustified sense of betrayal and stuffed it down deep. Before I could talk myself out of it, I took out my pastels and drew him a little card with a heart-shaped cloud on it and wrote, Congratulations on your engagement. I’m happy for you, Noah. I didn’t sign it. I didn’t have to.

He didn’t answer, nor did I expect him to. I just wanted him to know I wasn’t resentful or furious or sobbing on my desk . . . even if I’d sobbed a little.

In a way, his engagement freed me. I didn’t have to justify or prove myself, because Noah wasn’t out there, watching and waiting and judging anymore. I relaxed, not knowing my heart had been clenched with tension until it loosened. Something softened in me. Now when I saw that New York confidence, when I read about Aneni’s latest show, I felt the familiar sense of wonder, but it was no longer infected by envy. Maybe I’d never be them, those brilliant, sharp-edged, confident New Yorkers, but it was okay. I was doing just fine.

I got a couple of raises at St. Catherine’s—Sister Mary seemed to like me. Teaching was more fun than I’d expected, introducing the kids to Picasso and Seurat, Jackson Pollock and Georgia O’Keeffe. I was told I was loved multiple times throughout the day, and was the beneficiary of many hugs. At least once a month, a kindergartener or first grader would propose. It was good for the ego, all those bright eyes and happy faces, and it was nice to leave them, too, and return to my lovely apartment in the armpit of the city.

Though I was embarrassed by their utter vapidity, the couch paintings were profitable. I could bang out one of those in a couple of hours, depending on the medium and size. If it looked like something you’d buy at Target, so be it. I still got to sign my name and deposit a sizable check. I took down my website, since nothing I was doing needed to be immortalized in cyberspace.

I saw friends often and enjoyed the nights when I was alone, despite the urge to machete my way through Times Square on the way home every night. (Tourists taking pictures of neon signs should be thrown in jail. There. I was a true New Yorker.) I even dated a little. A slurry of first dates, one regrettable hookup, then a nice person named Sam. We dated for a few months—he was a funny guy who did something with the waste water of New York City. I liked him very much. We never had a bad time together. One night, when we’d been together long enough that we didn’t wonder if we were going to spend the weekend together, he said (in bed, no less), “I think I’m falling in love with you, Sadie.”

I replied with, “Oh, wow, that’s so . . . flattering.”

Thus ended Sam and me. I was grateful he broke it off before we got more entangled in each other’s lives. Breaking another heart was not something I could handle. And besides . . . I think I’m falling in love with you? Kind of tepid. I’d never had to ponder that with Noah. It was, to quote the great Stevie Wonder, signed, sealed, delivered. Done.

Once in a while, I’d check Gillian’s Facebook page. She was the kind of bride who gave me a rash—obsessed with the me-ness of the upcoming day. “Which bouquet do you like best?” she’d ask. Sure, sure, she was an event planner, but come on. She had Pinterest boards of dresses, bouquets, centerpieces, bridesmaid dresses. She had a bachelorette weekend with her twelve closest friends in Miami (those poor women . . . I imagined it cost them thousands), and every photo showed Gillian’s blinding white teeth in a near-feral smile. She wore a tiara that said BRIDE, in case we were unclear.

In short, she was milking every drop of attention she could possibly get, and while I tried not to hate her, I failed. She had a countdown to the wedding on all her pages. Every frickin’ day, she mentioned something wedding related, even posting a picture of the white corsety thing she’d be wearing under her gown. For Pete’s sake, as my mother would say.

Then, four months before the “Big Day,” there came a cyber-silence (not that I was stalking her or anything). Five days later, she posted that she appreciated all the concern and kindness, but she and Noah were going their separate ways. No one was to blame, and they’d stay friends. He was wonderful, and she wished him only the best.

I clicked off immediately, shoving aside the shameful rush of satisfaction. Their breakup was too personal for me to read about, even if she’d posted it for all to see. Noah didn’t have a Facebook page, except for his business: Noah Pelletier Fine Carpentry, on which he posted pictures of kitchen cabinets and decks and, in one case, a rather magical tree house made for one of the summer people.

I didn’t send a card this time. Somehow, some way, even though we hadn’t spoken for years now, I felt responsible for his heartache.