“She didn’t want to live too long with it. When she was diagnosed, she made me promise.”
“We didn’t know,” Audrey says. “Oh, goodness. I feel terribly.” She pats his arm where her hand has lingered. It doesn’t now.
“How old was she?” Jessica asks.
“Sixty-four,” Conrad says. “Too young.”
“Much too young,” Jessica agrees.
A lump has formed in my throat, so ripe and full that I’m afraid if I breathe too deeply all will come out are sobs. This man. This man who has sat here all night, listened and given, offered and been patient, has lost someone, too. And the woven web of us, of all of us—of the people who aren’t here but should be—makes my hands tremble.
We’re here with you, Tobias had said. But I understand now. The significance. How big of a sacrifice they’re all making.
“We both loved more,” Conrad says. “We just took it in turns.”
I look to Tobias. Love is a state of mind.
“You must miss her terribly,” I say to Conrad.
He nods. And then he does something peculiar. He winks at me. “And yet,” he says, right across the table, so that it feels like it’s only the two of us among the dinner crowd. “The beat goes on.”
SEVENTEEN
THE FIRST NIGHT AT THE BEACH opened into morning, and still in a haze of love and wine and sex we woke up early and drove into Amagansett in Matty’s car. We found a spot easily—it was early enough that the streets were nearly vacant. The only people out and awake were parents with their young children, presumably letting the other partner sleep in. Tricycles tottled down the road, training wheels bumping behind. A couple in jogging outfits passed by us, talking.
We got coffees and muffins at Jack’s and then walked down to the beach. It was early, maybe seven A.M., and I was still wearing Tobias’s sweatshirt. Besides a few early-morning runners and two women practicing yoga, the beach was ours. The salt air was cold and the coffee was warm and the sand was wet. I cuffed my jeans at the ankles and we decided to stroll.
“I’m so glad we did this,” I said. “It’s heaven out here.”
The beach was foggy and gray—it felt as cozy as a fireplace and red wine in winter. I grew up in California, and still there is nothing quite like an East Coast beach to me. I had the feeling, walking along the shore, that if I sent a bottle out into the sea it would keep going until it reached its destination. From the shore everything looked wide and open and calm—which was, in that moment, how I felt about us. The details of life that had begun to weigh on us didn’t exist out here. There were no alarm clocks or opposing schedules or underwhelming jobs.
“I’m glad we came out, too,” Tobias said. He pulled me in and planted a kiss on my cheek.
“We should come back in the winter. I bet no one’s here.”
“Shh,” Tobias said. “Let’s focus on now.”
He took my hand. His fingers were warm from holding his coffee and I curled mine around his. We walked like that, barely talking, for upward of half an hour. The ocean was meditative—the crash of waves felt energizing and lulling all at once.
When Tobias dropped to his knee, I thought he had fallen.
I offered my hand to help him up. My gaze was out on the ocean. It wasn’t until I heard him say my name that I turned and realized he was kneeling.
He was wearing that smile—golden and wide with just a hint of mischief. “Hey, Sabby. I wanted to ask you something.”
“No,” I said, although it was the exact opposite of what I felt. All of it—every cell in my body—was lit up with yes.
“I love you. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. There’s no one else in the world for me. You’re it.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “Stop. Come on.” I couldn’t believe it. It felt surreal—like we were just in a watercolor and at any moment might be washed away.
“I’m not.” Tobias looked up at me, and I saw the boy I had met all those years ago on a very different beach by an entirely different ocean. “Sabrina, will you marry me?”
The sea crashed next to us, and I remember thinking I wanted to scream my answer. I wanted to compete with the wild force of the water. But I also remembered our conversation a year ago and Tobias’s resistance.
“Are you sure?” I said, trying, in a moment, to ground us. I didn’t want this to be because of me. I wanted it to be because of him. I wanted him to want it.
Tobias smiled. It was close to a laugh. “I’m asking you to marry me and you’re asking if I’m sure.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, now, that’s tricky. Yes, you’re asking if I’m sure or—”
“Yes,” I said again, cutting him off.
He pulled me down into the sand and kissed me. There was no ring; I didn’t even notice.
We went back to our bungalow and had chilled champagne and, when it started to rain, took the comforter from the bed onto the love seat and watched the movie we had that first time—Roman Holiday. Tobias downloaded it on his computer and hooked it up to the TV with some kind of jumper cables.
Tobias had made reservations at the Grill—a fancy East Hampton establishment—but we ended up canceling. We ate complimentary sour-cream-and-onion potato chips and drank the red that Tobias had brought out instead.
There were no frantic calls to parents or Instagram posts. All that mattered on that East Coast beach was us and the promise we’d just made to each other. Forever.
10:28 P.M.
SOMETHING IS HAPPENING BETWEEN Conrad and Audrey. We’re still waiting on dessert, but they’ve turned toward each other and for the last three minutes have not been engaging with the rest of the table. He refills her water glass and then, in a flourish, retrieves her dropped napkin from the floor. The rest of us have left our side conversations and are watching them like act three of a movie.
“This can’t end well,” Jessica whispers to me.
“How come?” I ask.
Jessica looks at me like I’m nuts. “She’s dead, remember?”
I think about Conrad’s wife, how he’s been alone these last few years, what he probably wouldn’t give to be at dinner with her. And yet his words: The beat goes on.
Conrad leans over and whispers something in Audrey’s ear, and she laughs, a hand placed delicately on her heart.
“Excuse me,” Jessica says to them. “What’s so funny?”
Audrey seems caught, like she’s momentarily forgotten where she is. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, I’m sorry. Conrad was just regaling me with an anecdote about the theater.”
“I’m sure we’d like to hear, too,” Jessica says. She’s ribbing them, but Tobias and I are probably the only ones who notice.
“Nonsense, we’re old-timers here. Just having a look back,” Conrad says.
“I swear to it,” Audrey says. “I don’t think I’d be able to live today. These cell phones—everyone buried in them.”
“Tell me about it,” Robert says. “The girls won’t put them down. I used to hate them, but I know my wife appreciates them now. When she’s not with them she gets to do—” He holds his hand in front of his face as if he’s speaking to it.
“FaceTime?” Tobias offers.
“Right. FaceTime with the baby.”
“How do you know that?” I ask. “You were gone before he was born.”
“I check in,” Robert says, almost sheepishly. “On you, too.”
I look at Tobias.
“Yes,” he says.
I open my eyes and close them again. Audrey’s shoulder is now touching Conrad’s. Neither of them is moving.
“Just with people you love?”
“Sure,” Audrey says. “Although as you go on … you do it less. It becomes necessary to move on, even there.”
She holds my gaze and I look away. “Do you wish you were still here?” I ask her. “Would you want to be?”
Audrey glances at Conrad. “That’s a hard question to answer,” she says.
“I’d be very old.”
“Would you have wanted more time?” I ask.
“I could have done more work with UNICEF,” she says. “I loved my later years with them; I would have liked to do more. And the children, of course.”
I can’t help but think that doesn’t really answer the question, and I can tell Audrey knows, too.
“You don’t miss it, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says. “Life is very difficult. This is not.”
“She’s right,” Robert says. “It’s like the sweetest Sunday, really.”
If I had known, if I had prepared, if Tobias weren’t sitting next to me with time running through an hourglass, I’d have questions. I’d want to know what happens when you die, whether you pass through a tunnel, whether there’s a light. I’d like to know if you can hang out with people, if you see everyone you lost again—and what the deal with reincarnation is—but there is only so much we can accomplish in one dinner, and the priorities of this one have long been set.
“Fascinating,” Conrad says. He pats her arm, and she blushes.
“You’ll see,” she whispers, in that signature breathless voice that made her so famous. A hush falls over the table. Even Tobias is looking at her as if drugged.
“And you?” Conrad asks Tobias. “You said it was different.”
“I said it, actually,” Audrey says.
“But it’s true?” Conrad asks.
“Yes,” Tobias says. “It is.”
“Why?”
Tobias looks at me. “I think I’m still between,” he says. “I’m hopeful this dinner might sort some of that out.”
“Is that common?” Conrad asks.
“I don’t know,” Tobias says. “I don’t think so.”
Again, I feel that spark of hope. He’s not gone. Not yet. In fact, his admission makes me feel closer than ever to bringing him back.
Next to me, Jessica doesn’t say anything. She’s looking down into her tea, and I see, in fact, that she’s crying.
“Jess,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“You think she watches Douglas?” she asks me. “She didn’t…” She breaks off, and I am reminded, of course, of her mother. Of the cancer that came to claim her. Of the absence of her. At Jessica’s graduation. Wedding. The birth of her child. What wouldn’t she do to have one dinner with her? To get one night to tell her everything that happened and all the ways it was unfair? To sit in her presence and touch and gaze and mourn?
“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”
It’s this realization—that this dinner, whatever it may not be, is a stroke of luck, of fate, of fortune—that makes me turn to Robert.
“I tried to find you,” I tell him. His head snaps from Audrey to me faster than a falling water droplet. “I found out you were in California. I even got so far as your house, but I couldn’t bring myself to knock on the door.”
“When?” Robert asks.
“I was sixteen, maybe,” I say. “I borrowed Mom’s car, and she called me when I was sitting in the driveway. I don’t remember about what. When I was coming home or what I wanted for dinner. But as soon as I hung up with her, I turned around and left.”
Robert hangs his head and nods. “I understand.”
“It felt like a betrayal,” I say. “I’m sorry, I wish I would have gone inside.”
“Your mother?” Conrad asks.
I nod.
“She would want this for you,” Audrey says. She leans forward onto her elbows—something she hasn’t done all evening. “She might not know it now, but she would. The petty stuff…”
“This isn’t petty,” Jessica says a little defensively. “He left them. Jessica’s mother raised her.”
“I believe you told us she asked him to leave,” Conrad says.
“She didn’t have a choice,” Jessica fires back.
I have a flash of fierce love for Jessica, and I remember how much she loves my mom. How whenever my mom would send a care package to our apartment it was always for “the girls.” And when she would come to town the three of us would go to dinner. She still buys Jessica birthday presents every year. She knew Jessica’s mom was gone and took it upon herself to sneak in, however peripherally, wherever she could.
“Of course,” Audrey says, still sitting forward. “These things are not mutually exclusive. He did leave. And yet he’s here now. And Sabrina’s mother would want her to forgive him.”
“Oh,” Robert says. “I don’t—”
“You do,” Audrey says. “That’s why you’re here.”
I look at Conrad, who stares straight back at me. “Is she right?” he says.
I think about my father, about Tobias, sitting next to me. About all the ways the men in my life have not lived up to what I needed from them. But I told Tobias I wouldn’t stay with him. Wasn’t I responsible, too?
I look at Audrey. I see a strength there I’ve never seen before—not tonight, and not in all my years watching her onscreen. Her features, her voice, her body were always so birdlike, so delicate and complex in nature that the simplicity of power never seemed relevant. But now I see her seated here in all her regal glory, and she is big and bold—she takes up the whole room.
“Of course she’s right,” I say, still looking at her.
“Forgiveness,” Conrad repeats, like it’s a stone he’s turning over in his hands. “It’s more for the bestower than the bestowed.”
“First there’s something I have to tell you,” Robert says. “It might change your tone.”
“Go on,” Conrad says. “Time is wasting.”
“The story I told you? About the baby your mom lost?”
“Yes?”
“The miscarriage wasn’t from natural causes. Your mother was in a car accident.”
“Oh dear,” Conrad says. “Poor woman.”
Jessica winces next to me. I don’t have to hear the rest to know what’s coming.
“I was driving,” Robert says. He looks at me, and his eyes are full of pain. I think, briefly, of the promise of afterlife—freedom from suffering.
“I was drunk. We had gone to dinner in New Hope, and I was driving us back. I’d had too much wine. Your mother had asked to drive, but I told her I was fine—she was pregnant, you see. I didn’t want to tax her.” Robert holds his fist to his mouth. “We were going to name her Isabella.”
“Beautiful name,” Audrey says.
Robert gives her a small, sad smile.
“I did this,” Robert says. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.”
I think of Jessica’s mom, Conrad’s wife. This strange opportunity I’ve been given.
“You do,” I say. In my lap, my hands shake. “We both do.”
EIGHTEEN
“TOBIAS PROPOSED?!” I WAS ON THE phone with Jessica, on the train back into the city. Tobias was staying in Montauk for another five days to finish up the shoot. She’d screamed when I told her, and asked me to clarify three times. “Tell me everything.”
I was trying to think of the last time Jessica had seen Tobias. I didn’t know. Maybe in the winter, at their holiday party? She and Sumir had thrown one at their newly renovated house, and we’d gone. She’d paraded us around their home, calling out the need for improvements, as their friends, people named Grace and Steve and Jill, trailed behind. I had no idea where she’d met them. The grocery store? Where does one meet Connecticut friends before one has kids?
“And this,” Jessica had said, “will be Sumir’s office. Once I clear some clothes out of here.” We had arrived at a small room down the hall from the master bedroom suite. It had only one tiny window and a fan overhead.
“An office, huh?” Jill had said, and giggled. Jessica had stuck her hands on her hips and shook her head in a girlish way, a way meant for sorority girls and wives on television shows in the fifties. A baby, I remember thinking.
And one of the friends—let’s say it was Grace—asked about us. “Are you married?”
�
��No,” Jessica had answered for me, with a little too much heat. “They’re against marriage.”
“We are?” Tobias had said. He’d draped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me to his side.
“We’re definitely anti-divorce,” I had said.
“Right!” Tobias had exclaimed. “That’s the one.”
Jessica had rolled her eyes. “You’re children,” she had said. I didn’t understand then how much she had meant by that, but now, on the phone, I could hear her glee and something else, too—relief. I was finally doing the thing she wanted me to do. Maybe, just maybe, we’d end up back on the same side.
“We were out at the beach,” I told her. “We went for a walk in the morning. It was early, like seven A.M. He just got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”
A man in a baseball hat next to me took out his earbud and gave me a pointed look before putting it back in. I lowered my voice.
“What did he say?” Jessica pressed. “I need you to be specific here.”
“He said he loves me and asked if I’d marry him,” I said. “It was simple.”
“Oh my god,” Jessica repeated, more than once. “Did you say yes?”
From anyone else it would have been a throwaway question—a joke, even. But from Jessica, I knew it wasn’t, at least not entirely. I paused. I could feel the curl of anger in my stomach. It was as if she had asked, Will you really go through with it? or Are you finally admitting you’re normal, you’re like everyone else?
“Of course I said yes.” I tried to keep my voice level.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then: “I’m happy for you. When can we start planning?”
Tobias and I hadn’t spoken about the wedding. We’d spent the weekend in bed, talking about where we wanted to travel to and what we wanted to do with the apartment—China, get curtains for the bedroom. We hadn’t mentioned summer or winter, a church or outside. It hadn’t even occurred to me to bring it up.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just happened.”
“Okay, well, text me a pic of the ring immediately.”
Strike two. There was no ring. Tobias had said the proposal had been spontaneous. “But of course I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “I want to spend my life with you, you know that. This isn’t a whim.” But nevertheless he hadn’t purchased a ring. He didn’t have the cash right then anyway.
The Dinner List Page 14
