The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

  “We still have to pick it up,” I lied. It wasn’t the first time I had lied to Jessica. But it was maybe the first time I had lied to her about Tobias—and that lie felt bigger. It was a lie about our future, Tobias’s and mine. With this lie—about our wedding, a marriage I did, it turns out, long for—it felt like I’d never stop. That our entire future would be half truths and edits. All my elation from the weekend settled down into my stomach and turned to dread. It jumped around in there like bad oysters.

  I arrived at home and there was a note on the door from the super. Someone was coming to check the drain system tomorrow at three—could I be there?

  I dropped my bag by the door and flopped onto our chair—the one that had migrated over from the Chelsea apartment. I thought about calling my mom, but she’d want the same details Jessica did, and I didn’t have them. The balloon of happiness I’d experienced at the beach with Tobias had been punctured by the call with Jessica—I didn’t want to relive that.

  I called Tobias.

  “Hey,” he said. “Is everything okay? I can’t talk.”

  I could hear the sounds of production around him. “Of course,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “Sabby, what’s wrong?”

  “Do you think it’s bad that we didn’t talk about the wedding once this weekend?”

  He paused. I could hear the air through his mouth—in and out, in and out. “Are you serious?”

  “No,” I said. “Yes. Maybe.”

  “Look, I gotta go.” He sounded annoyed. No, he sounded disappointed. Like I had turned out to be just like all the rest of them—all giggling and tulle and baby’s breath and pink ribbon. It made my stomach turn, too.

  “All right, I’m sorry, have fun.”

  “We okay?” he asked me.

  “Great,” I said.

  He hung up.

  My unease about my call with Jessica grew to anger. As much as I tried to pretend, often unsuccessfully, that Jessica’s disapproval of my life didn’t bother me, it did. I wanted her to understand me the way she used to. I wanted her to make fun of Beth and Jill, not be them. I wanted her to roll her eyes when someone suggested Sumir’s office could be a baby’s room—because babies, really? Didn’t we shudder at the idea? Didn’t we laugh and say we’d never be able to give up booze and sleep? That was us, right?

  It’s like all the things she had believed, the deep truths she assigned to the universe, were now girlish fancies, silly dreams she was too mature to entertain. And the crazy thing was we weren’t even thirty yet. This was New York. A baby before thirty was a cause for concern, not celebration. No one gets married at twenty-five. She was the one who had chosen a different path and had to move to another state just so there’d be people who understood her life choices. This wasn’t my fault; it was hers.

  I started to get worked up in the chair in our tiny apartment. She judged my life so harshly all the time. I was engaged, and it wasn’t good enough. I was never good enough.

  I called her back then. I wanted to yell at her that I didn’t want to do this anymore. That I no longer knew what I had done so wrong, that I was sick of this pretend friendship. That she wasn’t the person I’d signed up to love. That as she felt I wouldn’t grow up with her—that I wouldn’t … what? Move to the suburbs and have a baby next door?—I was sad and angry that she’d left, that she’d so readily and easily and joyfully given up on everything we had been—but her voice mail picked up. Hi, it’s Jessica Bedi. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks! Bye!

  I hung up. Jessica had even changed her name. She used to be Jessica Kirk; now she was Jessica Bedi. I matched her judgment with my own until I felt bigger, better. All she wanted to talk about was babies and throw pillows, and whether the shade of eggshell she had chosen for her dining room (she had a dining room!) was too blue. She wasn’t even pregnant yet. I explained to myself that she had sold out and was jealous that I was still here, in the city. I ignored the fact that being a New Yorker had never been Jessica’s dream. She had always wanted Sumir like I had always wanted Tobias. Whose fault was it that our realities were so incompatible now?

  I remember she called me back an hour later. I picked up. She sounded tired, like she had just woken up. “Sorry I missed you,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I dialed you by accident.”

  10:35 P.M.

  “YOU’VE BARELY SAID ANYTHING,” Jessica says to Tobias. I have felt her anxiety building. Since I sat down, really, but particularly after Robert’s confession, her tears about her mother. The table had been in relative silence for the last few minutes in eager anticipation of our desserts, which are still not here.

  “I haven’t?”

  Jessica shakes her head. “No, you haven’t. You keep reacting to everyone else. I still don’t know what you really think about all of us.”

  Conrad raises his eyebrow at me. “You’re a tough critic, Jessica,” he says.

  “Understatement,” Tobias says, but he’s smiling.

  “Well,” Audrey says. “Maybe she’s right, Tobias. What do you think about all of this?”

  “It’s strange.”

  “Obviously,” Jessica says, impatient.

  “I feel sad,” he says. “Sad that Sabby was in pain, that I couldn’t or didn’t do anything about it. That I died. That wasn’t great.”

  He looks up at me, and I see his right eyebrow is raised, as if he’s asking for a smile. I give him one.

  “You are the great love of my life,” he says. He puts a hand on my face. His fingertips feel like relief.

  “This isn’t what I meant,” Jessica says.

  “Jess, stop,” I say.

  “No, I won’t. He’s dead, remember?”

  Something cold blooms in my veins. “Yes,” I say. I feel a chill and hug my sweater closer. “And I’m trying to fix that.”

  “I want Tobias to be alive as much as the next guy,” Jessica says, gesturing idly toward Conrad.

  “Thanks,” Tobias tells her. “I think?”

  “But,” she says, holding up her hand. “I think it’s a disservice to pretend like everything was always perfect with you guys. It wasn’t. There was so much that didn’t work. You knew it, too. That’s why you wouldn’t go to L.A. with him.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “I had a job, remember? I had a life…”

  “Oh, come on! It wasn’t because you were afraid of him cheating on you or your father leaving or any of those bullshit reasons you’ve given. You weren’t sure he was right for you.”

  Tobias looks to me, but Jessica keeps talking. “I’m sorry, Sabby, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right. There isn’t just your side to this story.”

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  “It is,” Jessica says. “You knew he was an artist. You worried about financial stability. You saw him prioritize photography over everything else. Just admit it.”

  “Stop,” Tobias says. He throws his hands in the air. It’s the most animated I’ve seen him all night. “Sabby knew what she meant to me.”

  “Did she?” Jessica asks. “Because I’m sitting here, ten years later, and I still don’t know for sure.” Jessica looks back to me. “You wanted what people want. You wanted to get married. You wanted to know you could pay the rent. You wanted someone who showed up. That wasn’t a crime. It still isn’t.”

  I look to Tobias. I feel ashamed all of a sudden—exposed. Like this conversation should be happening in private. Not in front of Robert and Conrad and Audrey Hepburn.

  “Is that true?” Tobias asks.

  “Sometimes,” I say, because it’s all I can say, barely above a whisper. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever get there together.”

  Tobias looks devastated. It makes me want to weep.

  “I need you to know you were always more than enough for me,” he says. He swallows. “Now. Tonight.”

  “It doesn’t have to be tonight,” I say. �
��I…”

  “How delusional are you?” Jessica asks. She raises her voice until she’s practically screaming. A few lingering diners even look over. “You’re not getting him back! You can’t fix it, and you know that, and I can’t sit by and let you delude yourself anymore. Take responsibility or don’t. But when tonight is over you’ll be alone again.”

  Her words tear through me like teeth. I feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me.

  “Jessica,” Tobias cuts in. “I think that’s enough.”

  Jessica looks at Tobias. I swear I think she might leap over me and pummel him.

  “I’m sorry,” Tobias continues. “I never apologized to you. After L.A. I’m sure it wasn’t easy having to pick up the pieces.”

  “That’s such a convenient narrative,” Jessica says. Her tone is bitter. “The sad young artist who needs to go off and find himself, and the woman who cries herself to sleep at night missing him. You’re not characters in a novel. You’re human. And neither of you will just fucking admit it.”

  “You’re an artist? I thought you were a photographer,” Conrad says, interrupting the tension.

  “It’s a category!” Jessica snaps. She’s getting even more worked up.

  Tobias puts his hand up to his forehead and holds it there. “I don’t know what you want us to say.”

  “Something!” Jessica says. “Anything. You heard Robert.” She gestures to him with her head. “We only get this one night. Do you want to go back over every detail, or do you want to try and help Sabby move on?”

  “No,” I say. “Don’t help me move on.” She’s leading us off course. I have to right the ship.

  It’s now that our dessert arrives. The waiter appears with a tray and starts setting things down. Soufflés and the ice cream and a complimentary sorbet. He asks if we need anything else, and when no one answers Audrey politely waves him off.

  My words are still hanging there. I feel Jessica, tense, next to me. All other eyes are on Tobias.

  He shifts toward me, and I think he’s going to take my hand again—I want him to take my hand again—but instead he kisses me. He puts one hand firmly on the side of my face, right up against my ear, and his lips on mine. They’re cool—like he’s just taken a sip of ice water. But soon the sensation gives way to a folding so big it feels like collapse. It’s like I’m being sucked through a vortex to a place that is him. He’s not there; it is him. And then it’s us. Alone together in some suspended place. And it’s then that I realize the collapsing isn’t space at all but time. Here, now, he’s still alive; we’re still together. There is no separation. There is no before or after. There’s just us on the beach in Santa Monica, us in our apartment, us playing Scrabble with Matty, cooking dinner with Jessica. Memories piled high on top of one another, and the moment stretched so big it covers them all.

  NINETEEN

  A MONTH LATER WE GOT A ring. It was a Sunday afternoon in late September, and we were uptown. It was quiet. The weather was still nice, and on the Upper East Side people were taking advantage of the extra warm weekends out East. It felt like we had all of Park Avenue to ourselves—as if that was in some way desirable. We had just come from the Guggenheim. There had been a retrospective on Edward Hopper that Tobias wanted to see, and afterward we decided to stroll. We may have had lunch at Serafina or picked up bagels at Murray’s, but for right then we were just walking. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon, just bordering on skin-burning but not quite there. There was still movement on the street and we were both wearing hats. Invincible.

  Our hands were intertwined and I remember looking down at them. Pure skin. No metal or even plastic. We hadn’t talked about the wedding at all in the last month. In fact, with the exception of a few key friends and family—Kendra at work, my mom, who miraculously asked nothing; I had the sneaking suspicion Jessica had gotten to her first—we didn’t talk about the engagement at all. It was starting to feel as if it had never happened.

  “I think we need a ring,” I said. Tobias was looking in the direction of a French bulldog that had become untethered from its owner. I could tell he hadn’t heard me.

  “Tobias,” I said. He spun his head to look at me. “We’re engaged. We should get a ring.”

  I wasn’t sure how he would take it. He had been so irritated on the phone when I had brought it up weeks ago that I hadn’t wanted to again. But I was beginning to feel like if I didn’t mention it, no one would, and we’d forget and the engagement would never have happened.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do you want?”

  I swung our hands, still interlaced, around me. I pulled myself into him and kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t know. I just know I want something.”

  I hadn’t really thought about it. I wasn’t one of those girls who dreamed about the big diamond ring. Even if we could have afforded it, which we couldn’t, that wouldn’t have been for me. I thought maybe a colored stone—amethyst or ruby. Something deep in color and ancient-looking.

  “Come on,” Tobias said, tugging me forward now. “I know a place we can check out.”

  We walked down to Seventy-first Street and then made a left. Between First and Second Avenues was this tiny antiques shop. Tobias had never taken me, but he’d mentioned it before as somewhere he sometimes went. He had sold an old leather briefcase there when I’d first known him in New York—back when he needed a quick hundred bucks. I guess he still did; I just didn’t think he pawned things anymore.

  The shop was down a flight of stairs in an old brownstone building on a modest block. The owner, a woman named Ingrid who appeared to be in her seventies, let us in when we buzzed. She kissed Tobias twice—once on each cheek. She seemed happy to see him but not surprised.

  “Handsome,” she said, holding him at arm’s length. “With a little bit of the devil.”

  Tobias smiled. “Ingrid, this is Sabrina. Sabrina, Ingrid.” He leaned in close to her like he was revealing a secret. “Sabrina is my fiancée.”

  Ingrid’s eyes went wide, and she clasped her hands together, turning to me. I was hanging back, letting them have a moment, but Ingrid extended her hand out to me and I stepped toward.

  “You,” she said to me, patting my hand, “are a charmed woman.”

  I shook my head. I could feel Tobias’s hand find my waist. “She is,” he said. “I’m very lucky.” He spun his thumb up under my shirt. “And now we need a ring.”

  This was the most we’d talked about the engagement since he’d proposed. I felt dizzy, delighted. Like everything I needed was right there in that little shop on Seventy-first Street. Ingrid included.

  “Let’s look,” she said. She took my hand in hers and with the other she took her glasses from where they dangled around her neck and put them on. The closer I got, the more I could smell her—the headiest, sweetest vanilla fragrance I’d ever encountered.

  Ingrid peered down at my hand. “Beautiful,” she said. “Very delicate extensions.” She picked up a finger and wiggled it around like she was testing it, like she was trying to find a loose piece. “Follow me.”

  There wasn’t a single other customer in the store as Ingrid took us into a second room. Here were racks of coats—most of them dried-out fur. I cleared my throat in an attempt to stifle a cough.

  “Here we are.” Ingrid went behind a glass case, took some keys out of her pocket, and opened it. She reached inside and took out a velvet tray on which were set rows of rings. “Pick one,” she said.

  At first glance, they all looked antique—Victorian, even—but as I peered closer I started to see all kinds of different periods and styles. There were some diamonds, although small. There was a large array of bands, too. Pavé and sapphire and one with tiny threads of white and yellow gold.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said.

  “Many happy marriages,” Ingrid told me. “I try and see if a marriage is happy, and if it is? I buy. No divorces.”

  I didn’t stop to think about the impossibility of that—if
people were happy, why were they getting rid of their rings? Had they all died? And if so, how could you be sure?

  Tobias laughed. His hand was now on my shoulder and he started kneading there. I suddenly wished this was all being recorded—that I’d be able to see the replay tonight, next year, a decade from now.

  “What about that one?” I pointed to a ring with three small emeralds in yellow gold.

  “No, no,” Ingrid said. She shook her head. “You need something more traditional.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m not really…” I looked up at Tobias. “I’m not that traditional.”

  “No?” she asked. She peered at me for a moment. “Here. Try this.”

  Ingrid handed me a white gold ring with a small diamond solitaire surrounded by yellow amethysts. To this day, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it right away.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said. “But I think it’s a little too much.” What I meant was expensive. The ring looked like it would cost our rent for the year.

  “Just put it on,” she said.

  Ingrid didn’t seem like a woman to disobey, and so I did as she said. I slid the ring over my finger. It glistened on my ring finger, proud. I shifted my hand gently in the light, watching it sparkle.

  “Let me see.” This from Tobias.

  I spun around and shook my hand like I was in a rap video. “Bling, no?” It was ridiculous, I knew. But it was still fun.

  “That’s serious,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “How much?” he asked Ingrid.

  “Normally, five thousand,” she said. “But for you, three.”

  That was triple what we’d be able to pay. I immediately took it off.

  “That’s too much,” I said. “But it’s beautiful. Is there anything else?”

  “Sure, sure,” Ingrid said. “But nothing like that one. I call her Rose.”