Inside the restaurant, people are clapping because someone made a speech, a loving speech. Not me, my hate speech. I want so badly to look down, to hang my head. But this is part of it, winning her back. It’s what she said. Let me look at you. It’s a hard thing to do, the hardest thing I’ve done in so long, the thing I’m most afraid of with my boy, that he will look at me, that he will know where I’ve been.
“Eggie.” She kisses the back of my hand. “You do have to go see him.”
“I know.” It’s in her voice, I’m okay, we’re okay, for now.
I wrap myself up in her and she cries a tiny bit, the tiniest bit, muffled reluctant tears like she did so many times in the beginning, those first few days when Chuckie was having problems, when there was still hope that he would be okay.
“So,” she says. “You gonna go back to Nashua?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I hope you get this guy, Eggie. You know I’m on your side.”
“I know, Lo.”
“You know I don’t think you’re nuts. You know I want you to win, to be right. I know how your mind works, I know how you see things.”
“I know, Lo.”
“But you do need to be that way at home too.” She pulls away. “You know,” she says, licking her lips. “There’s a professor in there I haven’t seen in years, he got divorced, he’s you know, circling. And the whole time he’s circling, trying to buy me drinks, told me three times about his new condo in Newport…” She laughs. “Eggie, I kept looking for you. I want you here.”
“I’m sorry.”
She is serious. Newport condo serious.
“I’m here,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Then you’ll stay here with me and you’ll go in there because I want to go in there, because that’s how it works.”
She digs into her purse for Throat Coat tea bags. “Oh,” she says. “I brought some of these, you know, for you.”
I take the tea bags and put them in my pocket. I know better than to thank her. It’s embarrassing, the imbalance, the months she took care of me and I make a stink about getting a present. I hold the door for my wife and now she murmurs, nobody can hear it but me, Thank you, Eggie. I put my hand on her shoulder. I squeeze. Sorry, Lo.
Nashua can wait. It has to.
CHLOE
Every time we go to a potential spot for the wedding, it’s the same. Carrig winces on the sidewalk when he spots the telltale white lights, My mother likes colorful lights. I talk him down, If we rent the place, we can design the lighting. And then we go in and none of it feels right, it’s all too Brooklyn, too too. And then we have a few drinks and we laugh.
And tonight is par for the course. We agree that Milk and Roses might be too beautiful for us. We’re eating creamy polenta, soaked in candlelight, seated in another garden that isn’t quite right, not when you grew up like we did, with cavernous yards. We’re laughing about the idea of our parents in here. Carrig’s mother would be horrified by the bookshelves inside, the small portions on our small plates, the whole Brooklyn aesthetic of it, the rustic decor, the nonstop fulfillment of expectations. My mother would smile, but she’d be rolling her eyes at it. A vivid memory from childhood, my mother to a saleswoman in a furniture store: I hate whimsy. There has to be furniture for a young girl that has zero whimsy.
Carrig pours more wine into my glass. “Zero whimsy,” he says. “The only place we’re gonna get that is my parents’ house.”
“But we don’t want to get married in the same place we have the engagement party,” I say, and then I shake my head.
He laughs, rubs my back. “It’s not too much too fast?”
“God no,” I say, drinking my wine, the wine he poured. “I’m just still thinking about the New Hampshire thing. It would be ironic if we blew all this time and money trying to find a place, going to all these restaurants, and then we wind up in Nashua.”
He shrugs, Mr. Bashful, the home state finding its way back into his voice. “Or maybe it would be romantic. I mean it’s not like I wanna move back there or anything, but you really can’t beat the fall. Our backyard. I mean that could be cool.”
“Do you though?”
“Do I what?” he asks, the tiniest bit defensive.
“Wanna move back,” I say. “For a minute there it sounded like you do.”
He shrugs. “When we’re older,” he says. “You know, like to retire.”
The waitress is back, asking about dessert, and I motion to Carrig, your call. Already my head is spinning. You know, like to retire. I didn’t think it through, didn’t move that far into the future in my mind. There are moments like this every day, little stings, like mosquitoes. I can’t picture us old, retired. Whenever I saw myself as an old gal, I saw myself with Jon.
“Honey,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
In the bathroom I splash cold water on my face. This happens. Little spells. You don’t lose a person all at once. You lose them in parts. At first it felt so good, so empowering, to literally paint over Jon. A revenge for the way he’s occupied my brain for most of my life, in a good way, in a bad way. But every day has a moment like this, a bump. I don’t get to think about him growing old with me anymore. And it shouldn’t hurt like this, not when I’m so excited to be in this with Care, so engaged with the wedding planning, the new lilt in his voice, the relaxation, the new purpose to our life, every restaurant is a possible spot for a wedding, everything is possible for us.
I take my phone out and look at the Nylon article again. It makes it all feel real on this other level, it makes it all feel right. Sure, there are a few people in the comments picking on me, but the comments don’t bother me the way they used to. It’s easier to laugh off the losers who say they liked me better when I was mourning over Basement Boy. Those people must be going through terrible things in their lives if they bother to go to Nylon and read about me. Being engaged has made me a more empathetic person.
Carrig stands to welcome me back to the table, kisses me on the lips. “You look so good,” he says. “I mean we could do it right now.”
“We’d get arrested,” I say, winking, sitting up so tall, he’s right, I do look good, I feel good, it’s good, all of it. I keep thinking of Mary Steenburgen at the end of Parenthood, how she smiles and cries, how everything is okay, I always cry at the end of that movie and this feels like that, like things are where they’re meant to be, even if some things are surprising, like this tiny and ridiculously embellished slice of white cake on the table. Carrig grins. “Derek Zoolander would be like, ‘This cake is ridiculously good-looking.’ ”
He’s so relaxed now, he does his little voices, he laughs easily, it’s all easy. I dig my fork into the cake, softer than I expected, almost like pudding. There’s so much on the fork that I have to lean over to get it all into my mouth and he intercepts the fork and our mouths meet and we are kissing, we are laughing. We are those people in love, those people I used to see when I was alone, those people I’d marvel at, thinking I’d never have that, this.
On the way home we hold hands. I ask him if his family saw the Nylon article and he laughs. “They don’t care about that stuff,” he says. “And you don’t even need that.” He kisses the top of my head.
We can’t make the light, so we wait. There are couples all around. It’s one of those late-spring nights when it’s so good to get out, when you don’t need a sweater but you brought one anyway. The sign turns white for walk, but we aren’t moving. I realize it’s me. I’ve lost track of time and place, I stopped hearing Carrig, stopped seeing the crosswalk. There was a guy across the avenue and I thought it was Jon. I wasn’t even aware of it, this searching part of me, the scanner that’s always looking for something. We both feel it, as if Jon himself just appeared, next to us. And it’s my fault. But it’s also my move, my chance.
I lace my fin
gers around Carrig’s hand. “I’m sorry, Care. That sugar really hit me. I’m spacing out.”
My girl, he says, so easily moved along, as if we’re on ice, in skates, gliding. I picture us old together, gray-haired, in skates, clinging, holding on to each other, as if we’re not both in the same position, off-balance, wobbling. I imagine his friends over the years, questioning him about his lasting obsession with me. Why don’t you just give up on that girl? What’s so great about her? Why do you keep trying? He held on and I did too and we’re lucky we did. We have us now. We can overcome a moment like that, when I slip. We’re good for each other. And you have to be if you want a marriage to work. He wants to know why I’m smiling, I tell him the truth.
“I’m just happy.”
JON
I’ve never parked in Roger Blair’s driveway. But I’m not myself anymore. Chloe is marrying Carrig and I’m a defective. A freak who can’t be with a girl without hurting her, a monster who eats a whole cake because he can’t kiss a girl, can’t love. I’ve never felt so full of horror, The Dunwich Horror. I remember the way the townspeople would glare at Wilbur, how Lovecraft went out of his way to hit you over the head with the fact that Wilbur was weird, grotesque. I remember reading it for the first time when I got out, after Chloe fainted, this horrible little voice in my head, nagging, Well, Jon, you were always weird and gross. At the time I thought things were different now that I was so jacked, now that I could be a model or a jock.
I am pounding on Roger Blair’s door. I am kicking the door. I am done waiting. I grab his fucking sign.
Life’s a Beach!
I’m about to hurl that sign at the closest window when I hear a Journey song, the music cut up by the sound of jalopy wheels hitting the potholes. It’s Red Hat and Blue Hat. I walk to my car and get in. The excuses fly around my mind. I could be serving him a subpoena. I could be a Jehovah’s Witness or a long-lost cousin. I could be a cop, undercover. I back out of the driveway as Red Hat gets out of the car. I smile and crack my window, ready to shut it quickly if Red Hat’s nose starts to bleed.
“Hey,” I say. “You seen Mr. Blair around?”
“Mr. who?”
“Mr. Blair,” I say, willing my heart to settle, cracking the window a little more.
“Who’s he?”
“The owner,” I say. “I helped him pick out furniture at Alex Interiors over in Providence and I was supposed to take some measurements.”
He pops open a can of beer. “I don’t know a Blair,” he says. “The dude that owns this joint bought it on eBay a few weeks ago or something. He lives in Canada or some shit. Not even living here, you know, same as most people lately, just using the place as an Airbnb.”
I roll up the window because my heart is thumping pretty good. The idea of this time, wasted. Roger Blair, a ghost. Me, a fool. A stalking, patient, fool. “Do you know who he bought it from?”
Red Hat looks at Blue Hat, who’s tinkering with the tools. “How the hell would I know?”
“I think it had the same owner for years,” I say. “If you worked on it before—”
Blue Hat cuts me off. “Yo, D, should I start with the gutters?”
Red Hat nods at Blue Hat. “Guy,” he says. “I got shit to do, but if you wanna get in there and do your measurements or whatever, we got a key. Maple leaf fucker finally hooked us up. You want?”
* * *
—
I don’t go into the house. I don’t go back to my house. I get on the highway. I don’t have to look at the GPS. I don’t need to look at it. I don’t stop for gas or water. My throat is dry and the roads are clear.
I don’t play any Hippo Campus and I don’t open the windows to relieve myself of the smell, the vomit on my breath. All of it is fitting for this moment. I was right that change was in the air. But I was wrong to think it could mean good things for me. Roger Blair. Chloe Sayers. They’re moving on with their lives. I’ve been sitting here, hiding, waiting, hoping, even when I thought I wasn’t, that’s what I was doing. But they’re just trying to get away from me.
All I can do is keep moving, keep driving, speeding and passing people left and right. I wish this car could fly, I wish I could be away from my mind, my memories, how they all come crushing back. I almost lose my grip on the wheel.
You have power.
No I don’t. I have nothing. It’s over. I see my exit. I gulp. My exit.
EGGS
There’s an art to leaving your wife when you’re on probation. I’m up early today and I treat the day like a Sunday. I tell Lo I’m going to get the papers, the Pro Jo and the Globe, the Times. And I show her the art from Jon’s apartment. She looks at me, then nods.
I wait in a line from hell at Dunkin’ and I get two pounds of Lo’s coffee, a box of doughnuts. Then I start in on the real mission, all those eyes from Jon’s apartment. I carry them with me, the one I took down from his wall. I show the eyes to people at CVS, Stop & Shop, at Dunkin’. You know this artist? Nothing. Nobody knows. It’s an impossible Google—big eyes art—it leads you to a movie called Big Eyes, and this movie is about art, but not his art.
Lo texts wanting to know if I’ve had any luck. I tell her no. But going to Thayer Street.
My fingers are crossed for you. Go get em, E.
I try. I head over to the RISD campus, the Rhode Island School of Design, and I loiter outside of a building. First kid that comes by is on a skateboard and he doesn’t stop for me. Beep beep, he says. My bag whinnies. The nuisance of that bag, the bag of tricks I have to lug around, the gauze, the disinfectant, a God damn baby bag, it’s almost worse than the cancer. The next two students stop but don’t recognize the work. And here comes another student, a girl, probably a freshman, she’s panting as she lugs her stuff up the hill. Her glasses slip off her nose. She looks like she was up all night. I show her the eyes.
“Ah,” she says. “I feel like I just saw this somewhere.”
Painful. Breathe, Eggie, breathe. “Do you remember where?”
She looks at me. “No,” she says. “But it will pop into my head in the middle of the night like everything does.”
“Or maybe you’d do me a favor and close your eyes a minute, give it some thought.”
“Are you a police officer?”
I work the girl good now, I tell her she’s got a good eye, I am a cop, but this is hardly official business. I act all casual, I tell her my wife’s birthday is coming up, I found this in one of her books, I figured I’d come over here, it would mean the world to me if I could give my wife a good present for once, unlike last year, I got her this blender and—
The girl snaps her fingers. “Chloe Sayers,” she says, pushes those glasses back to the bridge of her nose. They slip down again a moment later. “That’s her name. I saw an interview with her online.”
Chloe Sayers. The friend. The friend from the articles. The young girl with the sad face and those brand-new boots in the newspaper picture. The girl in the cold. The friend. The one friend. Of course this was her. She was drawing him, hunched over canvases, trying to find him in her mind, make him appear there on the easel. Chloe Sayers. Of course.
I thank the girl and give her my old-man advice she didn’t ask for, probably doesn’t want. “Go into any LensCrafters, they’ll tighten those glasses for you.”
She smiles at me. “Thank you.”
I am a hero at home too. Lo marvels at the bounty. “Wow,” she says, collecting her newspapers, her coffee. “You got the goods and the goods.”
She’s shuffling back to the bedroom, same way she does most Sundays, and I’m just about to ask her to stay when she laughs. “Hey Eggie,” she says, not turning back to look at me. “First you deal with your bag, then you can see about Chloe.”
I make a vow to do better—Sorry, Lo-Lo—and I deal with the damn bag, the tedium of it, and then finally I plop onto the sofa
and I crack my knuckles. Chloe Sayers is the missing link. Jon’s carrying a torch for her too. His walls look different to me now. To think of him covering every inch with her drawings. How much he must miss her. Long for her. He wouldn’t do that if he was living with her. No artist would live like that, walled in by her own imagination. She’s never been there. I’m sure of it. I comb through pictures of Chloe, the pictures of her now are mixed up with pictures of her as a kid, pictures of her work, the eyes from Jon’s apartment. This is how he got those pictures. He searched for her online, he printed them, one by one, methodically taping them to the walls of his home.
He missed her. Did he kill for her?
I find a fresh interview with the girl in Nylon. I remember the last time I went on a roller coaster, that moment when you’re at the top, right before you turn, right before the noise begins. This is like that. Chloe Sayers is wearing a T-shirt. Live Free or Die.
The phrase means something different to me now, matched with the quiet in her eyes, a sadness you’re not meant to see. This is a girl who’s been to the dark side of things. She missed the kid and missing him made her lonely. Live free or die. She thought by drawing the kid she’d free them both.
And then it’s a quick paragraph, almost a throwaway.
Chloe Sayers is no longer in communication with Jon Bronson. His whereabouts are unknown.
I walk out into the front yard so Lo doesn’t have to hear as I call Jed and Penny. The sun assaults me. I forgot my sunglasses. More self-destructive behavior.
Penny picks up. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mrs. Bronson?”
There’s a dog yapping in the background, I’m happy for them. That’s the right move when your kid is troubled. But as for us, Lo’s allergic and I’m not a cat person.
Penny bites my head off, to start. “If this is a telemarketer, I signed up for that thing where you’re not supposed to call.”
Providence Page 26
