The Futures

by Anna Pitoniak

  But my city, my New York, was different. It was empty of the people I had known, of the associations I had clung to before. Abby was gone, on another continent for the summer. Evan was living his own life. Adam had surely moved on to another girl. Elizabeth was busy with work. This, too, was different from what I’d felt the summer before: neglected, and bored, and constantly waiting. Waiting for Evan to get home, waiting for his attention to refocus on me, waiting for him to fill whatever this vacuum was. Waiting, and wanting, for someone else to solve my problems.

  I walked down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, near Abby’s apartment, or through the twisting blocks of the West Village, or down the Bowery, or along the Battery. One day I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, looking at the city from a new angle. The skyscrapers glittered in the late afternoon sun; the harbor was dotted with the white slashes of sailboats; the spray from a Jet Ski refracted the light. I could pick out Jake’s apartment building, the balcony where Abby and I had stood during his party the previous summer.

  Through it all, I began to see how badly I’d gotten things wrong. I kept looking for salvation in other people. I kept waiting for something else to come along. But that was never going to be the solution. The solution wasn’t going to be Rob, either. It wasn’t going to be staying at home, listening to my parents. I was lonely because I was alone—because everyone was, and no one could solve that for me. I could only learn to solve it for myself. For once, that knowledge didn’t feel oppressive. I walked through the dusk back across the bridge to Manhattan. I didn’t know where that realization pointed me. But for the moment, I let myself be content with it, with knowledge divorced from action.

  I saw Elizabeth for dinner every couple of days. We’d eat something cheap and easy in her apartment, pasta with butter or scrambled eggs with cheese. I ate a lot of my meals alone, on bar stools or park benches. I liked the way it felt. I was free to observe the city, uninhibited because no one was observing me. I’d been slow to appreciate the invisibility New York grants. No one cares what you do, and that’s a good thing. I felt more alive that week than I’d felt since graduation. Or maybe even further back, since that summer in Europe. In the middle of that first week, my mother sent a box of clothes to Abby’s apartment. In among the T-shirts and sundresses she had tucked a note, written in her delicate script on a sheet of her monogrammed stationery. Jasmine was cleaning out the kitchen drawers, and she found this old disposable camera. She got the pictures developed—I thought you might want them. We miss you. It’s very quiet here without you. xxx, Mom.

  I walked, and I walked. I walked down the West Side a lot. I could pass Adam’s apartment building on Riverside Drive, and it was surprisingly easy—I felt nothing. I finally acknowledged what I’d been carrying around for so long, and I had started to make my peace with it. But the one neighborhood I avoided was the Upper East Side. I didn’t even like to cross the invisible midline of Central Park. I worried about what might happen if I ever ran into Evan. What scared me was the possibility that I could inflict more hurt. That there was more damage to be done. That Evan and I might bump into each other, and I would say or do something that only made things worse.

  I knew what was on that camera that Jasmine had found. I kept the unopened envelope of pictures on the desk in Abby’s room. Over the following few days, it gradually disappeared underneath an accumulation of receipts and spare change. I didn’t forget about it. I would open it eventually. But I wanted to take my time.

  Sara Yamashita was waiting for me in a booth at the back when I walked into Balthazar at 12:30 on Wednesday. She stood up and kissed me on the cheek, smelling like mint and cigarettes. It had taken her a moment to place my name when I’d called, the Sunday before. A pause, then recognition. “Julia! Of course. Adam’s friend. I always wondered what happened to you.”

  The room was buzzing, the mirrored walls reflecting a sea of attractive faces. “Have you been here before?” she asked, stirring a packet of sugar into her iced tea. “I’m getting the cheeseburger. You can’t go wrong with that.”

  “I’ll do the same,” I said, closing my menu.

  “So you went back to Boston? What happened?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well,” she said, spreading her arms. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

  I had never really told anyone the full truth. Adam knew, and Evan knew. Abby, my parents, other friends—they knew about the breakup, but they didn’t know what had triggered it. No one searched for a precise, time-stamped reason amid the rubble. But Sara was different. She knew about me and Adam. I wouldn’t be able to leave him out of the story. It was why I forced myself to stick to the plan, even when gripped with nausea on the walk to lunch. If I didn’t take this chance, I wasn’t sure I ever would.

  “Was it something to do with Adam?” Sara asked. “You’re not still seeing him, are you?”

  “Yes. And no. We’re not still seeing each other. Adam is part of the reason I left last year.” I took a deep breath and told her the whole story. My relationship with Evan. The things that started going wrong. Adam’s reappearance in my life at exactly the right time. Everything Evan confided in me and the way I’d repeated it. And then, eventually, the implosion. By then our food had arrived. Sara listened attentively, nodding and asking a question every now and then. She didn’t dispense excessive sympathy or judgment or outrage. She just listened until I was finished.

  “Wow,” she said. “Holy shit. You must be hungry after that.”

  I nodded and picked up my burger. I was hungry. Starving, actually.

  “You seem like you’re doing okay, though. All things considered.”

  “I am. I think so, at least.”

  “God. I wish I could say I was surprised.”

  “You’re not? Has he—”

  “Has he done stuff like this before? Yes. Unfortunately.”

  I swallowed a bite of my burger. “To you?”

  “Maybe never as bad as this. But he’s just shady, you know? We were dating freshman year, and I applied to an internship in the city for the summer. I asked him to read my cover letter—you know, proofread it, edit it. He took a long time to give it back to me. Like, a week, two weeks. He kept saying he was busy, but he’d get to it. When I finally gave up and went ahead and applied, I found that they’d already filled the position. Another Yale student.”

  “Adam?”

  “He was like, why are you pissed? He acted like I was totally nuts. Then he broke up with me two days later. But you know what? This shit’s going to catch up with him eventually. I’ve seen him around a few times since the Spire story. He’s insufferable. But he knows this was a fluke. His editors are already asking for more. They want their genius reporter boy to keep working his source. Which is you, I guess.”

  I pictured Adam squirming in his editor’s office. Sara smiled.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Exactly. I’m sure he’s spinning the bullshit for them as fast as he can.” She dragged a french fry through a hill of ketchup. “But you came back, huh? Do you know what you want to do?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. This stretch, as nice as it was, wasn’t going to last forever. Within the hour, most people in this restaurant would push back from their tables and return to their offices, where they’d continue carrying out whatever slight rearrangement of the world their jobs demanded of them. But they were doing it. They were in it. They had found a way to fit themselves into the flow of time. I poked at the remains of my burger. “I’m still figuring it out,” I said. “I’m staying at a friend’s place for a while. I guess I’ll start applying to jobs soon.”

  Sara cleared her throat. “Can I give you some advice?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m an only child. I never had an older brother or sister or anything like that. You’re the oldest?” I nodded. “Right, so you can understand. I always wished someone had warned me about what it was like after college
. How weird things are. And I had it really easy. My parents are connected. I got a job right after I graduated. I had nothing to complain about. But I still felt like shit. No one told me how hard it was going to be. It sounds like you went through this last year, too. You can relate.”

  She leaned back, letting the waiter clear our plates. “Dessert? Coffee?” he asked, glancing toward Sara. “Two coffees?” she said. Then she continued.

  “What I mean is there’s nothing wrong with you. You had a shitty job, a shitty guy who messed things up for you. But that happens. You can’t really avoid that stuff. It’s not easy, figuring out what you want. It’s really hard. And I mean what you want, not what your friends want, not what someone else wants.”

  I was quiet. She paused. “Is this making sense?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I just—I know what you’re saying, but I don’t know…how do you actually do it? I mean, how do you figure that out?”

  “Well,” she said, sitting up straight. Then she laughed. “This is kind of silly. I’m, like, two years older than you. Tell me if I’m being obnoxious.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well, I don’t know. It takes a while. It’s trial and error. But you just have to start doing it. And you have to trust yourself, to know what matters to you. You’re a smart girl. You’re going to be fine. Don’t let other people think they know better.”

  The waiter set the coffees in front of us, two china cups quivering in their saucers. Sara tore open three sugar packets at once and emptied them into her coffee. “I have such a sweet tooth,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s terrible.”

  Time seemed to slow down—the dissolve of the milk into my coffee, the clink of the spoon against the cup, the breeze from the door opening at the front of the restaurant, the grains of sugar falling from between Sara’s fingertips into the black liquid. I thought about what Sara had said. I thought about the canvases, hovering, in Donald Gates’s studio. I thought about the unopened envelope of photos back at Abby’s apartment. I thought about the loneliness of the spring, which had recently transformed into something else. A purer, simpler feeling. Like the satisfied, heavy-limbed awakening that follows a long night of sleep.

  I looked up. Sara wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, waiting for me to speak.

  “Thank you for that. It’s really good advice.”

  “Is it? I’m not sure it would have actually helped if someone told me that after college. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have listened.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Please.”

  “Why did you ask me to lunch? I mean, last year at the party. I’m grateful, really, but why do all this?”

  “You seemed smart. You seemed better than the situation you were in.” She shrugged. “Also, you seemed better than that asshole Adam. I can relate to that. I only wish you had called sooner. We had a job opening a few months ago that would have been great for you.”

  My stomach dropped. I had been in Boston, I reminded myself. I hadn’t been planning to move back to New York. “You filled it?”

  “I did. I’m sorry, Julia. I wish I had something to offer you now. But things come up. I hear about things through friends. You are looking for a job here, right? You’re staying in New York?

  “Yes. Yes, I’m staying.”

  “Good,” Sara said, smiling.

  I saw Cat every few days when she returned to the apartment for a change of clothes or, occasionally, to spend the night. She had tattoos and cool thrift-store outfits, and when I first learned she was a musician, I thought, That makes sense. Then she clarified that she was a cellist, studying at Juilliard. Her boyfriend, Paolo, was the lead singer in an indie band. It was a Thursday night. Cat was standing in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal before she headed back downtown.

  “You sure you don’t want to come along?” she asked, rinsing her bowl in the sink, opening the fridge. Cat’s visits to the apartment were always crammed with action, a determination to squeeze as much utility as she could from her trip uptown. “They’re playing at the Bowery Electric. It’ll be a great crowd. We’re going out afterward.”

  “I think I’m going to stay in. Thanks, though.”

  “Text me if you change your mind.” She paused amid her flurry and looked at me. “You know, the drummer—he’s single, and you are totally his type.”

  I laughed. “Go, I’ll be fine.” Cat waved as she walked out the door, and then the apartment was quiet again. Cat had lived in this apartment for four years, since she had started at Juilliard, and the place carried the sediment of permanent life: framed posters, painted walls. I could see why she didn’t want to give it up. There was an elaborate sound system in the living room. Cat sometimes plugged in her stereo headphones and listened to recordings of her work, head nodding and eyes scrunched closed, opening only when she paused to scribble down notes.

  A towering stack of CDs sat next to the speakers. I don’t know what inspired me that night, after Cat left, to crouch down and examine them for the first time. She had gestured at them before, telling me to play them whenever I liked. A familiar title stood out in the stack. Kind of Blue, which Adam used to play for me. I slid the CD into the tray. A moment later, the music began, filling the apartment. The twinned initial steps of piano and bass, the soft invocation, the shimmering light of percussion, the eventual pierce of the trumpet. Adam liked to put things before me, novels or albums or movies, and when he told me of their greatness I’d nod along, feigning comprehension, letting his gestures guide my response. I must have heard this album a dozen times at his apartment, but that night was the first time I actually listened to it. I let it fill me, like water rising in a glass.

  I’d finally opened the envelope of photos that afternoon. I felt myself on the verge of something. My mother would have opened the photos after Jasmine had them developed; it was the only way for her to have known they were mine. I imagined her pulling the first one from the stack, her hand twitching instinctively toward the trash bin. No one would have been the wiser. But instead she had sent them to me. I felt grateful to her in that moment, when I took out the photos for the first time. At least she was letting me decide this for myself.

  My digital camera had broken while we were in Rome, two summers earlier. The battery fritzed, refusing to hold a charge. I bought a disposable camera in the train station on our way to La Spezia. We were spending the last week of the trip in the Cinque Terre. The first photo I’d taken, the photo at the top of the stack, was of Evan in Riomaggiore. He was standing on a stone boat ramp that led to the sea, his back to the water, the afternoon light casting his long shadow before him. The boats around him were painted like wooden candy, bright blues and greens and pinks. Evan had resisted when I told him to go stand for the picture. “Come on, Jules, let me take one of you,” he said with a laugh. “You’re the good-looking one in this relationship.” But I shook my head. “This picture is for me,” I said. “I want this for when we get back.”

  The magic had faded so quickly. I must have misplaced the camera when I was back at home, unpacking from the summer and repacking for senior year. That by itself wasn’t so remarkable, but I felt a surge of sadness when I sat back onto Abby’s bed and looked at the pictures for the first time. Why hadn’t I missed these? Why had I never thought of that August afternoon on the edge of the Mediterranean, and let that lingering memory spark the recollection of the camera I’d misplaced? I’d never even bothered to miss it. I’d never bothered to appreciate what we had.

  Evan looked so peaceful in that picture. His smile was wide and unself-conscious. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder, a cone of gelato in his other hand. The vividness of that afternoon: raising the camera to look through the plastic viewfinder and pausing for a moment. Evan was backlit by the lowering sun, his sandy hair sprayed with golden light. “What is it?” he called over the noise of the motorboats puttering out to sea. A family walked between us, parents trying to corral
their children, and I paused for a moment, letting the frame clear. He smiled at me—the smile of someone who knew exactly how lucky he was, in this postcard village more than four thousand miles from home. Finally I pressed the button, and the shutter snapped with a satisfying pop, and I returned the camera to my purse.

  The music kept playing, filling the apartment with its mellow swells. I took out the photos again and spread them across the carpet in the living room. I was surprised to find that I remembered almost every single one of them: dinner on the terrace of our B and B in Monterosso; our sunburned faces after a hike one blistering afternoon; on the steps of the Duomo on our last night in Florence. It was Evan’s first time abroad. He was a boy from the middle of nowhere who had decided he wanted more. Who wasn’t satisfied with the path laid before him. I saw, for the first time, the bravery it had taken for him to do all of this.

  I had obsessed over it all through the spring, that awful night, the idea of taking back what I had done. But maybe it was time to let that go. Maybe I was seeking an answer to a question that didn’t matter, because it had already happened, because the undoing was impossible. Sara was right. It was a messy, difficult, shitty process—growing up, figuring out what you wanted. Some were lucky enough to figure it out on their own. I could see Elizabeth doing it already. Others were lucky enough to find a partner in the process, someone to expand their narrow views of the world. Abby and Jake, as unlikely as it seemed, were doing just that. But maybe there would always be people like me. Those for whom figuring it out came with a steep cost. I could feel it happening, slowly, in the smallest of steps. The future getting brighter. Where I was that day was in fact better than where I had been a year earlier. But the painful part was admitting what had happened to get me there. The implosion of two lives so that I might one day rebuild mine.

  I saw it before I felt it, the darkened spots on the carpet, the drops of water on the glossy surface of the photos. I was crying, but this was different. It wasn’t like the helpless spasms of guilt that had followed the breakup or the crushing anger I’d felt after learning the truth about the Fletchers. I wasn’t crying for Evan or for what I had done to him. I was crying for the person I had been before. That night, the music on the speakers, the night air through the window, the prickle of the carpet against the back of my legs: what washed over me was the realization that I was finally letting go of that girl. The girl who clung desperately to a hope that it would all work out, that everything would make sense if she just waited a little longer, if she just tried a little harder. I let myself cry for a long time. Until, gradually, the spotlight faded to black. The curtain lowered slowly, a silent pooling of fabric against the floor. The hush that followed. The stillness that felt as long as a eulogy.