twenty-three

THE TWO UNLABELED milky-white memory globes are nestled in a cream-colored silk scarf. They look so innocent for objects that hold so much mystery and temptation. I should alert Libby or Furukama, but I won’t. Not when the globes pulsate with truths that have been kept from me all this time. Truths that could be my salvation—the keys to improving my relationship with Neil, maybe even salvaging my friendship with Autumn. And until I have these truths, nobody has to be aware of this but me.

I inch closer until I’m poised directly over the twin globes. Their soft glow illuminates my greedy hand as I make contact with the one on the right. The globe pops and the memory dissolves into my skin, rushing my mind with images and sucking me back in time. Back to my earthly life.

It’s nearing midnight and I’m sitting cross-legged on my narrow bed in the tiny Paris hotel room I’m sharing with my dad. The score to the Prancing Goat Symphony is laid out all around him on his own narrow bed, and he scrawls notes in the margins.

“Isn’t it a bit late to be making changes?” I ask. “The concert is tomorrow.” I’ve been practicing for months, but my nerves are so frayed that my hands are tucked under my legs to keep them from shaking. It’s not only worry about my performance. It’s also that I texted Neil earlier and asked him to call, but he hasn’t. And I don’t know why not. He should’ve been home from work an hour ago.

Dad flashes me a harried smile and collects all the papers, stacking them in an orderly pile. “Preconcert ritual to keep the jitters at bay.” He gets up and deposits the score on the desk under the window, sweeping the curtain closed at the same time. “We should get some sleep. Did you brush your teeth?”

I groan. I’m eighteen and my dad is still telling me to brush my teeth. “Yes, Dad.” I finished my entire bedtime routine in the bathroom, including changing into pj’s. I even laid out an extra blanket on the end of his bed in case he gets cold.

“Did you floss, too?”

“Yes.”

He nods. “Floss every day, and you’ll keep your teeth forever. That’s what our health teacher in high school told us. It may have been the only thing I learned in that class.”

In my case my health teacher was far more concerned with preaching safe sex than extolling the virtues of flossing. She averaged 3.2 utterly mortifying statements per class, and none of them had to do with teeth.

I slip under the duvet and stare at the ceiling. Without even moving my eyes, I see all four corners of the room. The springs of Dad’s mattress constrict and his sheets rustle as he gets into bed. He clicks off the lamp and plunges the room into inky darkness.

“Why didn’t Mother come?” I’ve been thinking about her absence a lot today, sure that it means she still doesn’t want to see me, especially because she’s never missed one of Dad’s premieres before. The absence of light makes me bold enough to pose the question.

“Oh, you know. She had an important embassy function she couldn’t miss.” Though he tries to keep his tone light, as if it doesn’t bother him, there’s an undercurrent of strain in his voice. I can just imagine their arguments about me.

“I’m sure.” I taste the bitterness on my tongue when I say it.

“Oh, sweet pea, she would have come if she could have.” His words lack conviction, only confirming what I already suspected. My mother wants nothing more to do with me after what I did to get my security clearance revoked by the State Department. The official reason was that I misused my diplomatic passport when I entered Myanmar to look for my dad, but I’m sure the fact that I fled the scene of Autumn’s murder without calling the police and hacked my way into a free plane ticket contributed to the State Department’s decision. I don’t answer. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said already. I’ve talked to her only twice since, both after my accident.

Dad and I have been in Paris now for a week, our time eaten up by lengthy daily rehearsals. Neil has called every day without fail, except today. This is the longest amount of time we’ve been apart, with the exception of the days after our car accident when we were both too out of it to even notice. He’s become so much a part of me, I hate being this far away. I wonder if this is how my dad once felt about my mother. If he still feels the ache of separation despite their many solo trips throughout their marriage. Does it ever get easier?

“When did you know that you wanted to get married?” I ask.

“Hmmm . . .” Dad thinks aloud. “Well, after we recovered from malaria in Dakar, we went back to our posts in rural Senegal. I had time to bike over to her village once or twice a week, but it was never enough.”

I hear the smile in his voice as he recalls his courtship with my mother. I wish I were able to see the side of her that brings my dad such joy.

He goes on. “We talked about what we would do when our peace corps term was up. Evie wanted to get her master’s degree in international relations at George Washington University. My Africa stay had gotten me interested in ethnic music, and I was already composing classical pieces that integrated tribal drums. I didn’t really have a plan, so I ended up following her and proposing to her because I didn’t want to lose her.”

“You knew each other for only a year when you got married, right?”

“Well, it was more like eighteen months by the time we planned the wedding.”

“Did you ever think you should have waited longer?” I ask tentatively.

“We’ve had our problems and differences of opinion.” He pauses, the weight of his statement clear. “But I’ve never regretted marrying your mother. Not for a second.”

Though I find it hard to believe the woman my dad loves so fiercely is the mother who hates me, I’m happy for my dad that their relationship has stood the test of time. It gives me hope for Neil and me.

He clears his throat. “Why the sudden interest?”

I feel my cheeks grow hot. I don’t want to discuss Neil with my dad right now. Not when my insides are churning with so many insecurities about both Neil and the concert. “Oh, no reason. Trying to keep my mind off tomorrow.”

“You’ve been so good in rehearsals. You’ll nail it.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Good night, sweet pea.”

That’s where the first memory ends, a bittersweet fragment of my life that reopens the wounds of my mother rejecting me. But my father forgave me, let me back into his life. I wonder what he’s doing right now. If the pages of his Prancing Goat Symphony score swim before his eyes when he thinks of me.

I stare at the ceiling, a dull pounding pain in my head from where it smacked the floor. Maybe I should go into the next memory from a lower position. I get up on my knees and stretch my arm until my hand comes in contact with the second memory globe. Then I’m pulled under again.

Dad and I sit at a table with Arno, the director of the Metropole Orchestra, and Frederick, the guy who organized the financing for tonight’s sold-out performance of the Prancing Goat Symphony. They laugh and talk over one another, their eyes still bright with the memory of our standing ovation.

We’re in a brasserie in Paris that Arno recommended. He says he loves to come here for both the excellent food and the art nouveau décor. I stare up at the gorgeous stained-glass windows in the ceiling. In the one directly above our table, green and yellow and white glass come together to form an intricate floral mosaic.

The waiter distributes menus. The leather cover of the menu is embossed with the restaurant’s name. Julien. Not spelled the same way as that ghost from my past, but an unsettling coincidence all the same. I haven’t thought of Julian much lately. After confiding in Neil about my dark days, Julian pops up on my radar only rarely. I can’t help closing my eyes and picturing him as he was the last time I saw him, when he ditched me outside the Irish pub on Halloween. His face is slightly blurry behind the window of the cab, but the sadness in his eyes is clear. Now I swing my head to the right, as if the motion could erase him from my mind, but instead what I see is impossible: Julian behind a steering wheel of a police car—the police car—for a split second before glass shatters all around me.

I open my eyes with a start and drop the menu onto the table. Dad looks at me with concern, but our dinner companions either haven’t noticed anything or are too caught up in their postconcert euphoria to care.

Flashing Dad a reassuring smile, I open my menu and hide behind it. There’s no reason for me to be seeing Julian’s face in connection with the car crash. Whenever I try to think of the crash, my mind shuts down. I don’t know what happened from the moment Neil swerved to miss the police car until the moment I woke up in the hospital, hooked up to machines and under the influence of pain meds. They told us the driver had miraculously gotten out of the twisted wreckage and fled the scene, that the police car had been reported as stolen, and that they had no leads. They also asked us a bunch of weird questions, like if we’d seen a tornado. I hadn’t been back to the crash site, but friends mentioned that the trees and bushes along the side of the road had been flattened.

Julian couldn’t have been in that police car. I was definitely angry with him for a long time, but loving Neil has taught me to be more forgiving—both of others and of myself. I’m sure I only had this vision because I’m under so much stress, and the coincidence of reading his name on the menu made my mind invent Julian’s presence at the scene of the accident. So why is my whole body tense and shaky?

Dad puts his hand on my arm. “What would you like? I ordered the escargot as a starter.”

The waiter poises his pencil above a pad, his eyebrows arched. “The fish,” I say, and he nods and writes down my selection.

In an attempt to steady my nerves, I study the patterns of the stained glass. Conversation and laughter whirl around me. Arno and Frederick comment on the excellent sound in the Salle Pleyel and praise the woodwind section in particular for bringing across the haunting atmosphere of the wild Turkish hills. They also compliment Dad for his composition skills and me for playing the piano so well. They don’t mention my slew of very minor mistakes, but then, it’s possible only Dad and I know the piece well enough to tell. In any case, their attempt to include me in the conversation works. By the time the escargot arrives, with the tiny special fork-like utensils, I’m cheerful and chatty enough that Dad stops throwing me worried glances.

After dinner and a succulent fillet of fish that is a billion times better than ramen noodles from a package, all four of us take the subway back to our hotel in Montparnasse. Dad presses the ornate room key into my hand at the front of the hotel and heads off with Arno and Frederick for a special after-hours tour of the Montparnasse cemetery.

In our room I sit on my twin bed and text Neil that my dad’s out, so he can call me. He’s six hours behind us, which means it’s midafternoon there and he should be finished with his shift soon.

It’s pure agony being apart, and from this distance our problems don’t seem that big. When I try to imagine a future without Neil, I can’t do it. So if I can’t live without him, am I willing to make the ultimate commitment? Am I willing to get married?

Eighteen is far too young to get married, but it’s legal, so obviously it can’t be too wrong an idea. And if we get married, Neil would be okay with us living together. We could finally be totally uninhibited with each other. The thought makes me hot all over.

To distract myself while I wait for his call, I rummage nervously through the drawers of the desk and find brochures for the Tour Montparnasse, one of Europe’s tallest skyscrapers, and Les Catacombes. I’ve been to the fifty-sixth-floor observation deck of the tower before, but I’ve not dared to go to the catacombs. I was never a fan of morbid curiosities before my brush with death, and I like them even less now.

Soon I’ve exhausted all the reading material the hotel room has to offer. A glint of silver on my dad’s bed catches my eye. He forgot his camera. Dad’s the type who only takes pictures of buildings with people in front of them—otherwise he could just buy a postcard, he always says. So our family albums are full of shots of me or my mother or both of us, looking exasperated in front of castles and other landmarks. But as I go through his memory card, I’m horrified to find that not one photo is of me. A stranger scrolling through it wouldn’t even know he had a daughter. Do the newest family albums tell the same story? Can I so easily be erased from my parents’ lives?

Finally the phone rings.

“Hello?”

“It’s so good to hear your voice,” Neil says from across the ocean. “Sorry I couldn’t call you yesterday. I had to stay late at work.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I say, even though it wasn’t okay.

“I miss you, Felicia.”

My heart does a little flip-flop, like it always does when he says my name. “I miss you, too. Only a few more days.”

“I don’t want you to ever go away for so long again.” Neil’s voice cracks. “I can’t stand it.”

I swallow back a sob and try for lightness. “Why don’t you come with me next time?”

He doesn’t reply for a few seconds, and I kick myself for possibly alienating him so early in our conversation. Every day leading up to this trip I begged him to reconsider coming with me, but he was resolute in his argument that he couldn’t afford it. I hold my breath and I hear him sigh. “Where’s your dad right now?” he asks.

“Oh, he’s visiting Serge Gainsbourg’s grave. It’s, like, this musical pilgrimage he does every time we come to Paris.”

“Is that next to Jim Morrison’s grave?”

I laugh. “No, totally different cemetery. Jim’s in the Père Lachaise, and Serge is in the Montparnasse.”

“They sound like expensive hotels.”

“Everything sounds fancy when you say it in French.”

“Don’t you think it’s creepy to visit strangers’ graves?”

“Wait, are you saying my dad is creepy?”

“No . . .” Neil tries to backpedal. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“Good, because he may well be your dad soon,” I say at the same time he says, “But I wouldn’t want to do it personally.”

“Wait . . . what? Why would your dad be mine? Does he want to adopt me?” I detect a teasing note to his voice, so I know he’s understood me.

“Think about it, Neil. I have.” I press forward, breathlessly, speaking so fast that my words tumble over one another. I don’t want him to interrupt me, or I might never say what I need to say. “It’s the right choice for us. I can’t imagine anyone ever being a better fit for me than you are. The car accident showed me that we could die at any time. We could die tomorrow. I don’t want to miss out on anything. I don’t want to miss out on knowing every part of you.”

After my impassioned speech, the crackle of our long-distance connection is the only sound I hear. I’ve rendered Neil speechless twice now. He’s silent so long that I start to worry.

“Neil? Are you still there? Do you think I’m totally crazy?”

“No,” he says seriously. “I think you’re impulsive and wonderful and passionate . . .”

His words make me giddy, and I stand and jump on the bed. The hotel phone cord protests and pulls the receiver out of my hands, causing me to miss the last part of his sentence.

I fly off the bed, grab the receiver, and smash it against my ear in my haste. “. . . when you get back,” he says.

I bite my lip. “What was that? Sorry. I dropped the phone.”

“I said, I think we shouldn’t do this over the phone. We should talk when you get back.”

His voice is neutral. I can’t tell what he means by talking when we get back. Maybe he means he wants to do this right and propose on bended knee. He’s such a gentleman, so I wouldn’t put it past him. Or maybe he doesn’t think we should get married and he thinks I’ll take it better in person. I’m about to ask him when the door creaks open.

“Felicia?” my dad calls in like he doesn’t want to disturb me while I’m getting dressed or something.

“Just a sec!” I shout. Crap. I don’t want to do this with my dad hanging around. “Can we talk again later? My dad is here. I’ll text you when I’m alone again.”

“Sure.” Neil’s voice has a slight edge to it, like he’s annoyed. “Love you.” And the phone clicks before I can say it back.

“Love you, too,” I whisper into the dead line. To my dad I shout, “Come in.” I put on my most radiant smile for my dad. I don’t want him to ask if something’s wrong, because I don’t want to think about something being wrong. If I do, I might have a nervous breakdown. I’ve put myself out there, and I’ve been left hanging. It scares me more than I could have ever imagined.

The memory cuts out, and I lie stunned on the floor. I can’t believe I brought up marriage to Neil. Maybe that’s what Neil is missing—a concrete commitment. But I won’t know how he reacted to my proposal until I view another memory. I’m dying to find out what happened next.