As she hurried down the sidewalk, she saw, ahead of her, a man with a cane moving painstakingly toward what seemed to be a back entrance to the school, and Avery paused, concerned about his unsteadiness, thinking she should help him but not knowing how. And while she stood unsure of what to do, the door opened, and there was Cressida, wearing sweatpants and carrying a backpack. A light hung over the doorway, and its yellowish glow fell onto Cressida’s face, which still held traces of stage makeup and which blossomed into a sunburst, child-sweet smile at the sight of the man.
The man said, “Look at my superstar girl! You were amazing, sweetheart!”
Cressida laughed and said, “Thanks, Dad.”
And the man used both arms to wrap her in a hug.
“Careful, Dad,” said Cressida, pulling back and kissing his cheek. “You need to keep that cane on the ground.”
Her father said, “You worry too much, Cressie.”
“Here,” said Cressida. She slung her backpack over both shoulders, took hold of her father’s arm, the one not holding on to the cane, and the two of them—father and daughter—walked down the sidewalk to the parking lot.
Chapter Fourteen
Ginny
“My friend Nancy is crazy about Mose and she’s a dog therapist, and she says that your painting captured Mose’s inner dog perfectly, down to the smallest whisker,” said Daniel.
It was evening at the dog park, almost dusk. A few low shreds of pansy-purple cloud and a ribbon of orange edging the field were all that remained of the sunset. One morning, a few weeks ago, Daniel had mentioned that, in addition to mornings, he and Mose sometimes came for a walk after he got off work.
“Oh, so you’ve been holding out on me and Mag,” I’d said. “I see how it is.”
“He’s probably got a whole different set of friends at night who think they’re his only dog park people,” Mag had said.
“Okay, I’m actually feeling jealous that Daniel might have other dog park people,” I’d said, truthfully. “It’s like the cool kids’ lunch table all over again.”
“Who could be cooler than you two?” Daniel had said.
“So invite us!” I’d said.
“Not me,” Mag had said. “I’m old. One dog park trip a day is all the excitement I can take. Besides, now that Ginny’s officially getting divorced, isn’t it time you two got this show on the road?”
For a second, Daniel and I had just stared at her, and I’d waited for the two of us to be engulfed by embarrassment. But it hadn’t happened. Instead, Daniel had laughed.
“That’s our Mag,” he’d said. “Always the subtle one.”
“She kind of has a point,” I’d said to Daniel. “You’re not exactly moving at lightning speed here.”
Daniel had thrown his hands in the air. “Hey, I thought there might be rules about these things. Like a waiting period, maybe.”
“You’re starting a relationship, not buying a gun,” Mag had observed, dryly. “Look, you should call Ginny when you’re leaving work in the evenings, and, if she’s free, she should meet you at the dog park.”
“Fine,” Daniel had said.
“Fine,” I’d said.
And so it was.
“Inner dogs have whiskers?” I asked.
“Are you doubting Nancy?”
“I didn’t even know dog therapists existed.”
“Are you doubting the existence of Nancy?” said Daniel.
“She thinks I captured Mose’s inner dog?”
“Yes. She also thinks that you should paint dog portraits for a living. She says that most dog portrait artists fail to capture the unique soul of a dog. She thinks you could make a mint.”
“Really?”
“I think she’s right. Ever since I hung Mose’s portrait in my waiting room, I’ve had about eight million people ask if you’d be willing to paint their pet.”
“You hung that portrait two days ago. That’s four million people per day.”
“Exactly.”
“Just how much prettier than me is this Nancy the dog therapist person?”
Daniel’s smile flashed in the dusk. “She’s seventy, and she’s been married to Elliott for forty-seven years.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Instead of answering my question, Daniel picked up my hand and kissed my palm, then set my hand on his shoulder. He did it again with my other hand, and I slid my hands around to the back of his neck and locked my fingers. He put his hands in the same spot on my neck and drew me in and kissed me on the mouth. It wasn’t a long kiss; we didn’t stand in the dog park making out. But it was perfect.
“Well, that set the bar high,” I whispered. “For all our future kisses.”
“I’m not worried,” he whispered back. “I have confidence in us.”
I smiled and rested my chin on Daniel’s shoulder and saw Mose, Walt, and Dobbsey sitting in a row, their heads cocked, staring at us.
“The dogs are puzzled,” I said.
Daniel turned to look. “They’re wondering why we just hang out in the dog park,” he said.
“They think we should go on a proper date.”
“How about Saturday?” said Daniel. “Oh, wait, that’s the night of doom; I mean the night of the engagement party.”
I’d told him about the party, how I was nervous to see my high school friends. I hadn’t told him why, not yet.
Before I knew what was happening, I found myself blurting out, “Why don’t you come?”
“To the party?”
I took a step back and blinked in surprise. “Wow. I did not plan to say that to you. But you know what? It’s brilliant. I’m brilliant. Will you come?”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at me. “I sense a plot afoot.”
“How can there be a plot when that was a completely spontaneous invitation?”
“A subconscious plot, then. A spontaneous, subconscious plot.”
“Oh, one of those. Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that that’s not an oxymoron, that a spontaneous, subconscious plot could exist, what would I be plotting to do?”
“Provide a distraction at the party. So that you don’t have to interact with your old friends as much,” he said.
“You being the distraction, you mean.” I considered this and shrugged. “You’re right. Please come. And then you can stay after and help me and Avery clean up.”
“I’m not so sure that crashing an engagement party is polite.”
“Suddenly, you’re Emily Post?”
“I’m always Emily Post,” he said.
“Well, yes, I guess you probably are,” I said. I looked up at the sloping planes of Daniel’s face and at his thoughtful gray eyes. It was true dusk now, but I could see Daniel as clear as day.
“Ugh,” I said. “Shit. You’re so nice.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“Ordinarily, I don’t care if someone likes me under false pretenses. But you’re too nice for that.”
“False pretenses? Wait. Are you a spy?”
“I’m not a spy.” I sighed. “Can we sit down?”
“This doesn’t worry me at all. Not at all.”
I laughed, and we sat, and the dogs came over and sat with us.
“When I was a senior in high school, my friend Gray’s dad died,” I said.
Daniel drew in his breath sharply and then opened his mouth, as if to say something, but I lifted my hand to stop him. I needed to tell my story. I reached for Dobbsey and twined my fingers in his soft fur.
“Someone set our school on fire, and Gray’s dad was a firefighter. He died trying to put the fire out.”
In a voice that seemed to come from far away, Daniel said, “I remember that fire.”
I nodded. “It was awful. Anyway, at the time, there was a lot going on in my life, family stuff, and I tumbled into a depression, a bad one. And I wasn’t there for Gray. I abandoned him. I was a terrible friend. And he and Kirsten and our other friend CJ, they w
ere so mad at me for that, and I can’t blame them. I completely failed Gray.”
I considered adding: And my brother and myself and the husband I hadn’t met yet and should never have married. But obviously, this was too much to confess to Daniel all at once. Or maybe ever. So a silence fell, through which Daniel waited patiently, as if he sensed there was more, as if he knew to leave it space to go unsaid. Daniel was turning out to be disconcertingly adept at reading me. I picked up Dobbsey and kissed him on the top of his head.
“It ended our friendship,” I said, at last.
“But Kirsten’s your friend now,” said Daniel.
“Yes, Christmas break our first year of college, I couldn’t stand not seeing her. I went over to her house and she opened the door and we looked at each other, and she nodded and said, ‘Okay. Okay,’ and we cried and hugged, and after that we were friends again. But she was my friend for years before we got to know the other two. She was more mine than she was theirs, and we just couldn’t stand not to be friends. But Gray and CJ probably still hate me.”
“It was a long, long, long time ago,” said Daniel. “And now they’re coming to your party.”
“Kirsten’s party.”
“At your house. Maybe this is you opening the door and Gray and CJ walking through it,” said Daniel.
“Maybe. I hope so.”
Daniel said, “Listen, what time will the party be over?”
“Nine thirty. Ten at the latest.”
“I don’t think it’s my place to show up at that party. But how about if I come over after and help you clean up?”
“Clean up the house or the pieces of my shattered heart and self-esteem?”
“I bet it’s going to be much better than you think. But both, if necessary.”
“Does this mean you still like me?”
“Yes. You are extremely likable.”
“What if I die of awkwardness at the party, though? If that happens and you’re not coming until after the party, then I won’t get to see you.”
“If you die of awkwardness, I’ll kiss you and you’ll wake up,” said Daniel.
“And if I don’t die, you’ll kiss me anyway.”
“I’ll kiss you no matter what,” said Daniel.
I would not have predicted that a party would be a good place to meet old friends who now possibly, understandably, despise you, much less a party you are hosting, much less one celebrating the engagement of your dearest friend (which obviously ups the joy and lightheartedness stakes a thousandfold), much less one at which your fifteen-year-old daughter is in attendance, a leggy, vivid presence, so grown-up-looking in her short dress and as avid and hyper-tuned-in as a rabbit, awaiting the arrival of your old friends—the kids from my journal—the way she once awaited the materialization of her favorite boy band at the stage door after the show. Hosting a party is nerve-racking, period, and I’m no party-planning expert, but I’m guessing that tossing twenty-year-old grief and betrayal and regret into the evening is not what the experts recommend.
But it actually turned out to be okay. I felt like throwing up for the entire four hours. I almost broke down crying at least three times. But it’s hard to fear retribution or to hope for a grand reconciliation or even to be completely aware of the past casting its long, raggedy shadow when you’re worried that the caramel cementing your profiterole mountain together is insufficiently sticky or that the light under one of your chafing dishes keeps going out or that the supposedly unscented candles you have burning all over the downstairs actually smell like pink rubber erasers.
And the thing about a party is that it goes on. It gathers its own momentum and just goes, carrying you and your guests along like a tide. A party stops for no one and nothing. Not even for the instant when you are standing at your dining room table, pouring cabernet into a decanter, and you hear the laugh of your first love break not over the music and chatter but beneath it, a rumble of thunder in summer, a low guitar strum that you would recognize anywhere.
When I walked out into the living room, Gray’s back was to me. He was talking to Avery, who stood starry-eyed, bouncing a little on her toes the way she did when she was four, and holding his coat to her chest as if she were embracing a person. Gray was narrower than I remembered, but the set of his shoulders—ever so slightly bowed—matched exactly the image I’d been carrying around in my head for twenty years. Not his nearly black hair, not the sound of his voice or the way he moved, but the mere slope and angle of him threatened to undo me. I forced the tears back just in time. He turned around, our eyes met, and he lifted his hand to wave. Time didn’t stop; the rest of the guests did not blur or recede; the music playing did not crescendo. But there was Gray Marsden, waving at me from across my living room, a half smile on his face. I waved back, and then, Kirsten appeared with Tex by her side, and Gray swooped her up in a hug. Before the party enfolded them entirely and I turned to go back to the dining room, I glimpsed a shortish man with a tan face and a head of black curls giving me a look of cool appraisal and knew it must be Evan.
Well, that was easy, I said to myself. And I almost believed it, until I noticed that my hands were trembling. I pressed my palms against the top of the dining room table until they were steady again. Then, suddenly, coming toward me was CJ, in a slightly too large suit, looking so exactly the same as I remembered—pale, little-boy face; corn silk hair, same slightly herky-jerky way of moving—that I blurted out, “CJ, you look exactly the same!”
And right away, a second after I’d said this, CJ showed me how wrong I was, how he was not the same. He didn’t give me a goofy grin or set loose a stream of talk riddled with facts. He didn’t even speak my name.
Stiffly, he said, “Thank you for hosting the party. I know Kirsten appreciates it. You have a lovely home.”
As if I were anyone. His proprietary mention of Kirsten the only sign that we’d ever known each other. Then he tipped forward in what I supposed was meant to be a formal—if disdainful—bow, turned on his heel, literally digging in the heel of his shiny brown shoe and pivoting, and walked out of the room.
I’d loved him, my geeky, hilarious, pure-souled CJ. And he’d loved me. I wanted to shout after him, “We loved each other!” Not so much to remind him but to imprint those words on the face of eternity: we’d loved each other; that happened; that mattered and will always matter.
The face of eternity? I thought. Ginny, honey, you need a glass of wine.
I drank the wine. I circulated. I cleared plates and filled glasses. I smiled and met new people. All the while aware of Gray, his proximity to me, the number of people between us. At the same time that I wanted desperately to have a conversation with him, I wanted, desperately, to avoid a conversation with him. The wave and smile had been good; perhaps it was best to leave it at that.
When I went downstairs to the basement to get more champagne out of our second refrigerator, Kirsten followed me and put her arms around me.
“How are you holding up?” she said.
“This is your party,” I said. “No worrying about me allowed.”
“If it helps,” she said, “they’re just as nervous as you are.”
“CJ thanked me for the party like he was eleven and his mother made him do it. He actually bowed.”
“CJ is dying to be friends with you again.”
“He said that?”
Kirsten shrugged. “Not exactly. He said he wouldn’t be friends with you again if I paid him a billion dollars.”
“Oh, good.”
“But I know he didn’t mean it. No one—and I mean no one in the history of the world—is as nostalgic as CJ. If he had his way, the four of us would still be in the furnace room at LM, shoulder to shoulder around his headlamp, telling stories forever and ever.”
“If you say so,” I said.
“Now, where the hell is Trevor? The big bum.”
“Iris texted to say they were running late. Their flight in to Philadelphia was a little delayed.”
“They’ll come, though, right?”
“They’ll come soon. Trevor would never miss your party.”
I handed Kirsten two bottles of champagne to carry upstairs.
“Listen,” she said, kindly. “Before the night ends, you should talk to Gray. Not a dramatic rehashing of the past or anything. But just a few real sentences, face-to-face.”
“Do you think Evan will let me? I keep thinking he’s shooting daggers at me with his eyes.”
“Evan’s not the dagger-shooting type. But it’s possible he’s a tad protective. I think he knows that you and Gray need to talk, though.”
“Talk sounds scary. A few sentences. That’s what you said.”
“Let’s shoot for six. Six sentences,” said Kirsten. “Or maybe six and a half.”
“Still bossy,” I grumbled. “But okay. For you.”
“For all of us.”
“You still think we’re an us? You, me, CJ, and Gray?” I asked. I kept my tone light, but I found that I really, really wanted her to say yes. How crazy, after two decades, to still need that yes.
“Don’t be crazy,” said Kirsten. “Yes. Of course. Usses like us don’t just go away. Yes.”
I caught that yes in my hand, then pressed it to my heart and carried it with me back to the party.
When Kirsten and I got upstairs, Trevor and Iris had arrived. Iris was as slender and elegant as her name. She was half-white, half-Filipina, and the sheen coming off her blue-black hair could guide ships to safety. When she saw me, she came straight over, gliding across the room in her emerald-green dress to hug me and say, “We’ve been here two minutes, and I’m already concocting a plan to kidnap Avery.”
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