The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

  “We don’t have time,” I say. “This can’t possibly go past midnight.” One night only. It’s only poetically fair.

  “That’s two hours from now,” Robert says, as if to say that’s plenty.

  “What are you suggesting?” Audrey asks Conrad. “A conversation on politics would hardly be a break.”

  “In this climate, no.” Conrad shakes his head. “Although I do often wonder what those of your generation who are gone would think about the world now.”

  “Nothing good,” Audrey says. “It’s quite appalling.”

  “Indeed,” Conrad says.

  “Everything moves so fast now,” Robert says. “It’s impossible to keep up.”

  “What’s it like?” Conrad asks. I expect him to take out his pocket pad, but he doesn’t.

  “Good,” Robert says. “Not bad.”

  “No,” Audrey says. “Not bad. The getting dead I could have done without, but the rest of it is … kind of lovely. You needn’t fear it.”

  “No!” Robert says, as if this point is obvious. “There is no need to fear it.”

  Tobias is quiet. Conrad looks to him. “And for you?”

  “Different,” Audrey says. Her tone has changed. It’s more empathetic.

  Tobias nods. “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. My heart starts racing. Is Tobias somewhere he doesn’t want to be? Is he in pain?

  “More in-between,” he says. He smiles at me, the kind of smile I know takes effort, the one he puts on for my benefit and mine alone.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  He leans over and tucks my hair behind my ear, even though none of it has fallen in my face. “You want to know what I remember?” he asks me.

  “What?” I say. I feel close to crying. He’s so near, and his words are so tender.

  “Those days with you at the beach.”

  “Where are you?” I ask him again. But then I think of something. If he’s not there, if he’s not wherever Audrey and Robert are, then there really is a chance for us. I really can get him back. He’s not as far away as they are.

  “My early years with the children,” Audrey says, from across the table. “If we’re doing a highlights reel.”

  Tobias blinks back from me, and I have the urge to leap across the table and throttle Audrey. We were so close, a whisper from something, before she spoke.

  “And Paris,” she says, taking us further and further away from the moment before. “I miss it.”

  “Of course,” Conrad says. He taps her wrist gently. “Robert?”

  “My highlight?” he asks.

  Conrad nods. I hear Jessica next to me sigh audibly. “My first year of sobriety. The birth of each of my children.”

  “Are they like Sabrina?” Audrey asks.

  Robert smiles. “I’d like to say yes. I mentioned Daisy likes to sing. She’s in a conservatory for directing, writing, and performing. I know her mother worries about her ability to provide for herself with such a creative career, but I think she’ll be okay.”

  “Is she talented?” Audrey asks.

  “Very,” he says. “And stubborn—like you, I think?” Robert looks at me and then blinks a few times rapidly. “Alex is much more reserved. She grew up quickly; she was always an old soul, and she married quite young, actually. I was still there for that.”

  “You walked her down the aisle,” I say.

  “I did.”

  “Nice for her.” I don’t want to be, but still I’m bitter. I feel the emotion in my throat like the remnants of cough syrup—sticky and dense. And since we’re almost out of time, I ask him.

  “You got better and they got you,” I say. “And all I had was a drunk father who left before I could even remember why.”

  Robert exhales. “I can never make right what happened, but I’d like you to know them,” he says. “They always wanted to meet you.”

  I know this. I have a letter from Alex sitting in a box at home. I never opened it, even though it’s been more than ten years. It felt like a betrayal to my mom, somehow, to be in touch with her. To want more than what she gave me. So I didn’t.

  But she’s not here tonight. Only Robert is.

  “Alex is a dentist, you said?” Conrad asks.

  I see Robert’s eyes light up. “She’s training to be an orthodontist. She’s very bright and does quite well. Oliver…” He pats his coat pocket and then seems to remember himself.

  “It’s true what they say,” Audrey reacts. “You can’t take it with you.”

  Conrad chuckles. “I’m still going to try.”

  Jessica squints at Conrad. “You mean you’re not…”

  “Dead?” Conrad nearly screams it. “Most certainly not! I am very much alive. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  Jessica shrugs. “You just give off the impression.”

  “Of being dead?” Conrad asks. “How flattering.”

  “No, she means wisdom,” Audrey says. “About life, which makes sense. It is best suited for the living.”

  “I know I can’t ask anything of you,” Robert says to me. “But if I could, I’d like you to look them up and meet them. I think it might help.”

  “Help?”

  “Sabby,” Tobias says. “You know what he means.”

  “I don’t think it would,” I say.

  “It might,” Jessica says. “You don’t know.”

  I look at her, because out of everyone she should understand. Her mom had another family. Jessica has three younger brothers she helped raise. Her mother was a teenager when she had her and a grown-up when she had them. And then she died and left Jessica in charge of it all.

  “I love my brothers, you know that,” she says, reading me. “They made a lot of it worth it. And those girls miss him. Just like you do.”

  “I don’t even know him,” I say.

  I look at Robert. He’s sitting upright, his face drawn, but his eyes are wide open. I can register the pain my comment has caused, but I see something else there, too. He looks hopeful.

  “I have a lot of regrets,” Robert says. “I should have left Jeanette more money. She’s okay, but I worry about her. I wish the girls were a little older. I didn’t get to see Daisy graduate. She needs a father now. She fights with her mother a lot. I wish I had met my grandson.”

  “Do I have to sit and listen to this?” I say.

  “Yes,” Robert says. And it’s the first time I’ve heard him speak with authority all night. He looks taller, and younger, too. “I have a lot of regrets, Sabrina. About my whole family. But I am here with you. Tonight I am here with you.”

  Happiness is a choice.

  “He’s right,” Tobias says. “You can be angry, you can hate us, but we’re here for you. All of us.”

  It’s so much, it’s too much. Tobias in purgatory and Robert with his regrets and me, mourning both of them, still. “Alex wrote me a letter,” I say. “I never opened it. I was just too…” I look to Robert. “I guess I didn’t want it to be that easy.”

  Robert looks down onto the table. He holds his fist to his mouth and clears his throat.

  Our coffees arrive then.

  “Oh, how delightful, foam art! I completely missed foam art,” Audrey exclaims. She clasps her hands together and peers down at her cup. It doesn’t even appear performative, although she is, after all, an actress.

  “You are the delight,” Conrad says to her.

  Audrey blushes.

  “And I don’t hate you,” I say just to Tobias. But I know the table can hear. “I miss you.” I look up just an inch when I say it and catch Robert’s eye.

  SIXTEEN

  OUR LAST SUMMER, TOBIAS GOT AN assignment in the Hamptons photographing the new Montauk Inn. I took a vacation day and went out to the beach with him. It had been a rough winter and a rougher spring. His unhappiness with his job and our opposing schedules were taking their toll. I knew we needed the time together. He knew, too, and he arranged the whole thing. He asked for a b
ungalow right on the beach (which the shoot paid for), he asked me to get off work, and he picked up my favorite wine and brought it out with him.

  Tobias borrowed Matty’s car (he had one of his own now) and drove out east on Thursday. I followed on Friday and met him at the Montauk train station. I took the LIRR out after work, a ride I hadn’t done since our first year in New York, when Sumir’s boss at the law firm had lent him his house for the weekend and Jessica and I had piled into the train with Two Buck Chuck, Scattergories, and bags of popcorn. We were only out there for a long weekend, but it felt like a month.

  When I saw him standing on the platform, holding a single sunflower, I knew instantly we were okay. It was him. Tobias. My Tobias. Not the grumpy, downtrodden guy who sometimes inhabited our home, but the boy I fell in love with on the Santa Monica Pier all those years ago.

  I leapt into his arms. He picked me up and spun me around. I could smell the salt water on him. “We really should stick to beaches,” he said.

  That night we cooked lobster and dipped it in butter sauce on the bungalow’s deck. I had brought in four bottles of white wine from the city in addition to his red, and we drank two of them snuggled in a chair together. I was wearing his sweatshirt—an old one from UCLA that smelled like him. I remember thinking that this was the heaven I wanted to be in—this, right here. The two of us and butter and the sunset—making everything fluid and hazy and golden.

  “Why do we fight?” he asked me. “We don’t need to. It’s stupid.” He nuzzled his face in the crook of my neck. I felt his nose graze my collarbone.

  “I know,” I said. “It is stupid. I just want you to be happy, and sometimes I feel like you’re not.”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Now.” I sat up and put my hands on his chest. “But sometimes I feel like you blame me for the work stuff. Like if you had stayed in California you’d be shooting for Vanity Fair by now.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said, but it wasn’t, I could tell. He was trying to bury his tone.

  “It’s not.” I turned his face to mine. I looked into his eyes. “You came back for me, but it’s not enough if you don’t really want to be here. I love you, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not happy.”

  Tobias shifted me in his lap. He brought his face close to mine so that I couldn’t see his features, just the smooth square of skin. “I’ve blamed the situation,” he said. His voice was low and hoarse—near a whisper. “But I don’t want to anymore.”

  I felt his heartbeat on my chest, the warmth of his breath on my chin. “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s not fair, I know. But I need you to forgive me.”

  “Tobias.”

  “Please?” he asked. Although it wasn’t a question.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I kissed him and he wrapped his arms around me. He carried me into the bedroom. It was all white and blue with little accents of sea-foam green.

  I didn’t think much more about it. I didn’t think what it meant, that he had admitted it to me. I just thought about the fact that he wanted to let it go. He had, in a moment, decided our future was more important than our past. It was as simple as that.

  “Let’s just stay here,” he said to me. We were in bed, naked, our limbs entwined like tree roots.

  “We could fish for sustenance,” I said.

  “I’d learn the ways of the hunter.”

  I laughed. The idea of Tobias hunting anything was comical. He hadn’t so much as had red meat in six months—a fact he thought I hadn’t noticed, but had. He’d left a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma lying around the house. He hadn’t mentioned it, but slowly he’d started to transition his diet. He stopped ordering burgers—not that they were a staple. But he’d started buying vegan imitation meat and roasting portobello mushrooms as a protein.

  “I’d gather. Weeds and nuts and seeds. We could build a home of bamboo.”

  Tobias raised his eyebrow at me. “A tree fort?”

  “Cool in the summer, warm in the winter,” I said.

  “Sounds perfect,” he said. He moved his hands on me underneath the blanket. “Just the two of us.”

  I didn’t think, but I should have, about his comment. How all our fantasies—his and mine, ours together—revolved around us being alone, somewhere other people, the world with all its politics and societal demands, couldn’t touch us. We were the best when we were separate, uninterrupted. The beach, our apartment, a bedroom with the windows closed. Our problem wasn’t us together, it was us in the world—a world that demanded we reconcile its reality with our romance. If only, I remember thinking, although I wasn’t sure what.

  10:17 P.M.

  “IS THERE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SAY?” I ask Jessica. She has been shifting and sighing in her chair for minutes—a sure sign she has an opinion on something.

  “You don’t care what I think,” Jessica says. “So why are you even asking?”

  “That’s not true,” Tobias says over me. “I care.”

  Jessica exhales and rolls her eyes at him. But it’s friendly. I have a flash of them playing gin rummy on the living room floor together, and Tobias throwing his hand to let her win.

  Robert busies himself with his cappuccino. From across the table, Conrad and Audrey lean in.

  I open my mouth to say something, to counteract her, to tell her I want to know, of course I do, but I think about what she’s said. I didn’t care, not when Tobias and I were together. I felt pressure and then annoyance—mixed with the pain of the fact that she had broken this contract between us. Lifelong friends. Ride-or-dies. I wanted to be where she was, but I also knew Tobias wasn’t ready for that kind of real life. Maybe I resented her for having it.

  “I do, too,” I tell her.

  Jessica sighs. She tucks some hair behind her ear. “You both thought you loved the other one more.”

  If I were honest, I did feel that way. I tracked him down. I bought that photo. I held on to us like we were some kind of guiding star. And then later, I was the one who walked on eggshells when things were rocky, who made concessions and tiptoed around my bedroom and paid our rent and whispered.

  “Maybe that’s true,” Tobias says, which comes as a surprise. I didn’t think he’d cop to the imbalance in our relationship in such broad terms.

  “I loved you more,” I say. “I don’t blame you—I chose that role—but it was me. Gardener, remember?” I try for a smile.

  Tobias runs a hand over his face. His neck muscles tighten. It’s the first time all night I register his annoyance—maybe even anger. It wafts off him like cologne.

  “The fact that you think that means it’s not true,” Tobias says. “You didn’t love me more. If anything, I loved you more. I gave up my job to come back for you. You never fully let me in. You always had an escape plan.”

  The familiar tilt in his voice makes my stomach turn over. It’s the same tone he used during those mismatched mornings. Next to me, Jessica nods, which makes my irritation match his.

  “See?” Jessica says. “You both started to be resentful of all the things you thought you’d given up for the other one, and that resentment took up all the space—it pushed everything good out. It was hard to watch.”

  Tobias shakes his head. “I wanted you to be happy so badly, Sabby. It just felt impossible sometimes.”

  “It felt impossible to me, too,” I say. I feel stubborn, defiant—this is not what was supposed to be happening now. This is not how we get back.

  “So you loved each other too much,” Robert says. “Is that possible? If you love, is there even such a thing as a yardstick?”

  I think about that. I would never think my love for Tobias had boundaries, limitation, a quantified amount. It was endless. And I didn’t believe I had a choice in it. We’d found each other again—in New York City!—and against all odds. Our story couldn’t end any other way than us together—even if it made both of us miserable sometimes.

  “The person who believes the
y love more believes they give more,” Jessica says. Her tone takes on a wilting, guru quality reminiscent of our early years. “And that can lead to resentment.”

  “No shit,” Conrad says.

  We all turn to him, surprised. Conrad hasn’t sworn once all night.

  “These things aren’t perfect,” Conrad says. “When I met my wife I was down on my luck. I’d just been fired from the first university I’d ever worked at. I had no money. I wasn’t sure I’d ever teach again.”

  “What happened?” Audrey asks. Her tone is breathless and her hand flutters to his forearm.

  “Budget cuts to the department. I was a relatively new hire, and so I was the first to go. It wasn’t personal, but I took it hard. Twenty-seven years old, you understand.”

  Audrey nods.

  “She worked at the local library in Santa Rosa, and I’d go there to work and scan for job openings. This was before the Internet, of course. We were confined to pen and paper.”

  Conrad chuckles to himself. “We fell in love over Faulkner and Yeats. She’d bring me new books to read whenever she saw me. Eventually, she asked if she could cook me dinner. I must have appeared a poor sight.”

  “Where were you living?” Jessica asks.

  “Old tenement housing,” Conrad says. “A bed and a washbasin. I was too embarrassed to bring her there, so I suggested a picnic in the park.”

  “How darling,” Audrey says. Her eyes are big and wide.

  “She showed up with a basket of cheeses and this strudel she’d made. Still the best thing I’ve ever tasted. She took me in after that. She had an apartment on the outskirts of the city, and I lived there for two years, working odd jobs, before another university position came up. She paid our bills, those two years, with her librarian salary. I could never repay her.”

  Conrad gazes off, and I realize the thing that’s been staring me in the face all night.

  “What happened to her?” I ask softly.

  Conrad looks back at me sharply. “Early-onset Alzheimer’s,” he says. “About five years back now.”

  Robert jumps in. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “That must have been very painful.”