The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

“Not her,” Matty said. “She’s smart, I can tell.”

  Tobias grinned at me. “Well, that we can agree on.”

  9:10 P.M.

  THE RESTAURANT IS BUSY. WAITERS WEAVE in and out of tables. The tinkling sound of champagne glasses reaches us from another table. People are celebrating.

  They bring out dinner. A plate of steaming saffron risotto shaped into a perfect mound, delicate Parmesan-and-sage tagliatelle in a butter-cream sauce, and steak with a sprig of rosemary. Everything is so neat and orderly and for a moment I regret that we are not at some casual Italian bistro, some corner joint where we share everything, wine spills on the table, and everyone shouts over one another. There is something so familiar about those meals. Jovial. Maybe that would have lightened the mood. But then I remember Jessica asked me where I wanted to go on my birthday and I chose here. It’s been our tradition since we met—we take each other out on our birthdays. So many things have slipped through the cracks over the past few years, but this one has stuck around. All at once, I feel grateful for that. For whatever alchemy led us here.

  “This looks delicious,” Robert says. “You know I came here once with … on business.” He clears his throat. “I remember it being good.”

  “Heartily agree. The wife and I used to frequent it often,” Conrad says.

  “Were the tablecloths red?” Audrey asks. “I remember them being red.”

  “You’ve all been here?” I ask, stunned.

  “Of course,” Audrey says. “It would have had to be somewhere we could find.” She winks at me. I feel the way I did when I first walked in: bowled over by what is happening here.

  Conrad picks up his wineglass. “A toast!” he hollers.

  “To what?” Audrey asks. She grabs at her collar. It is a little warm in here, or maybe the wine is finally settling. We’re drinking a deep Barolo now. Conrad has stealthily ordered another bottle.

  “To sharing a meal together,” Conrad says. He shrugs, like it seems as good a toast as any.

  “And making new friends,” Audrey adds.

  “Thank you all for coming,” I say, because I cannot think of anything else.

  “To Sabrina,” Robert says. He’s holding up his water glass with a mixture of pride and hesitation.

  “Happy Birthday,” Tobias says.

  “Yes!” Conrad says. “Happy Birthday.”

  We clink glasses. Next to me, Jessica yawns. “I feel like we were just getting somewhere interesting,” she says.

  “This has all been pretty interesting,” Tobias says. I can’t tell if it’s sarcasm; his tone is right on the edge. Fifty-fifty.

  “I feel a lot of regret,” Robert says. The table falls silent. Jessica and Conrad begin to pick at their plates.

  “There is a lot of loss here,” Audrey says. She reaches an arm across the table and squeezes Robert’s hand. “I can feel my own, in a way, as well.”

  “Thank you,” he says. His voice sounds heavy. He clears his throat.

  “Sometimes I think that the only true way we can ever know a thing’s value is by losing it.” This from Conrad.

  Audrey looks at him. There is tenderness in her eyes. She’s become maternal in the last few minutes.

  “So how can we ever be happy?” Tobias asks.

  “Happiness is not constantly needing things to be at their full potential,” Jessica says.

  “That’s depressing,” I say.

  “That’s true,” Jessica says. She looks up from her plate. “Like I don’t get happiness from having a perfect day with Sumir. I get happiness from accepting that I rarely, if ever, have a perfect day with Sumir. My happiness is accepting that ninety-five percent of the time my life is deeply imperfect.”

  Conrad winks at her. “Well done,” he says. He takes a forkful of scallop and pops it into his mouth. “Delightful,” he murmurs.

  I wag a finger back and forth between them. “You two are the most positive people I know. In college you gave me a C because I, and I quote, ‘neglected to see the simple beauty and overcomplicated everything.’”

  “Wasn’t so positive for you,” Conrad mutters, chuckling.

  “You’re missing the point,” Robert says. He’s cutting his steak, and he puts his knife down.

  I stiffen. He notices.

  “The simple beauty, as you put it, is from things not always aligning. There is no simple beauty in perfection.”

  “I disagree,” Tobias says. “To me the simplest beauty is nature. And nature is nothing if not perfect.”

  Next to me, Jessica balks. “Oh, come on,” she says. “That’s so generic.”

  “Is it? I think actually it’s pretty profound.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s not profound. It’s easy to sit there and spout poetry about nature and its beauty, or whatever, but it’s immature. You guys have no idea what goes into having an actually simple life.”

  “Enlighten us,” Tobias says. He sits back and crosses his forearms over his abdomen. His food remains untouched.

  I feel, sitting here, physically pulled between them. Jessica loved Tobias, but she didn’t love the relationship we had. I thought it was because she didn’t understand it. It was so much less linear than anything in her own life.

  Jessica straightens up. “An actually simple life means putting your husband’s shoes away when he leaves them by the door even though you’ve reminded him one thousand times. And not saying anything about it.”

  “That just sounds like compromising,” I say.

  “Not compromising,” Audrey says. “Compromise.”

  We all turn to look at her. She gives us one of her dazzling movie-star smiles. “I was married, you know,” she says.

  “What happened?” Those of us who love Audrey know the stories of her two marriages. Abuse, maybe? Jealousy. Regret. Her painful road to motherhood. Three miscarriages, a fall from a horse that left her in permanent pain. For someone with a perfect public image, Audrey had a tragic personal life.

  “I had to dim my light,” she says grimly. “It was not an easy thing to be married to a celebrity. But it’s also not an easy thing to be married to darkness. Eventually I dimmed so far I extinguished.”

  At this, Conrad laughs. It’s an odd reaction to her heartfelt sentiment. “You do have a way with words,” he says, half to himself.

  To my surprise, Audrey smiles. “Why, thank you. I always liked writing. I did a little of it from time to time.”

  “I’d like to return to this idea of compromise,” Robert says. He has his hand in the air, like we’re in a classroom.

  “By all means,” Conrad says.

  “How do you know at any given moment what is giving enough, and what is giving too much? As Audrey would attest, marriage for the sake of marriage is no prize at all.” Audrey nods. Jessica shifts.

  “I think it takes work,” Audrey says. She takes a small bite of her food, chews, and swallows.

  “How much?” Robert.

  “I don’t know,” Audrey says. “I always gave too much or little—they were equally damning.”

  “A lot,” Jessica says, a little frustrated. “It takes a lot of work.”

  “You mentioned your wife,” Tobias says to Conrad. “You got married?”

  “Naturally,” Conrad says.

  “How long?”

  Conrad sets down his fork. “Thirty-five years.”

  “And?”

  Conrad pauses for a moment. A move I recognize. He was always doing this in class: taking an opportunity for dramatic effect. “We never wanted to get divorced at the same time.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Jessica says. She fumbles around in her purse and pulls out a half-bent Moleskine. “Shit,” she says, still looking.

  Conrad unhooks the pen from his outside pocket and holds it across the table. Tobias passes it to her over me.

  She writes it down hastily, tearing off the page and stuffing it into her pocket.

  “What happened to the girl who used to write love is the answ
er on our bathroom mirror?” I ask her.

  “Love is still the answer,” she says.

  “It’s the questions that stop mattering so much,” Audrey says.

  Will we work out? Can we sustain this? How could I possibly be with anyone else?

  Those were the questions I used to ask myself all the time. I asked them constantly. I asked them at the door to this restaurant and I am asking them now, with him sitting beside me still.

  EIGHT

  “TOBIAS, THIS IS JESSICA. JESSICA, TOBIAS.”

  “The famous man,” Jessica said.

  Tobias cocked his head at her. “I hope that’s a good thing.”

  “The best.” Jessica was sitting on the dirty white couch in our living room, her legs curled up under her and an oversized shawl over her shoulders. She’d bought it in New Mexico on a meditation retreat she’d gone on the summer before. I wanted to go but didn’t have the cash. For a week of camping and silence, five hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money. She’d sold her bedroom air-conditioning unit to help pay for it. The following summer she spent nearly entirely at Sumir’s.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Tobias said. He looked from Jessica to me and back. “Sabrina is pretty famous in my world, too.”

  My stomach flipped.

  “I feel like I already know you,” Jessica said. “I’ve been the captain of your search party.”

  Tobias smiled, although if he was amused or confused I couldn’t necessarily say. I shot Jessica a cool-it look. He didn’t know about the UCLA endeavor.

  “I like it here,” he said instead. He started looking around. I peered at our apartment through his eyes. The hanging stained-glass pendant in the window, the pile of Moroccan meditation cushions, the mismatched curtains—like stepping into a crystal shop, without the incense. We had a lot of stuff.

  “We like it, too,” I said.

  Tobias shifted onto his left foot beside me. We had left his apartment because we wanted time to be alone together, and Matty was in a talkative mood, which meant shutting the door was impossible. Sex with Tobias was something I could not get enough of. With old boyfriends it had felt like this separate thing—something different in tone and resonance from the rest of our relationship. Time out of time. But with Tobias it was an extension. He made love the way he lived—close, intense, on the edge. Maybe that’s why it was impactful. Every time we were in bed I had the sense, even underlying, that it might be the last.

  Right then I just wanted to lock him in my bedroom. Usually on the weekends Jessica was at Sumir’s. It hadn’t occurred to me she would be home.

  “What are you guys up to?” Jessica asked.

  “Just hanging out,” I said. “Where’s Sumir?”

  Jessica looked around like she was surprised he wasn’t there. “He had to work,” she said. “Hey, do you guys want to get brunch?”

  Tobias didn’t say anything. “We ate,” I answered.

  Jessica hopped off the couch, tucking her shawl around her. “Is it cold out?”

  I couldn’t answer. I had no idea what the temperature was. We had spent the entire subway ride like two teenagers who had no place to go. Cold? For us it was July in November.

  “A little,” Tobias said. “Jacket, no hat.”

  Jessica beamed at him. “Thanks.” To me: “He’s taller than I thought he’d be.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed; so did Tobias.

  She went into her bedroom. “Nice to meet you!” she called over her shoulder.

  Tobias’s hands found my hips. He pushed me back against the living room wall. “Not here,” I breathed.

  “Show me where.”

  I led him into my bedroom. The windows were open and it was cold and loud. Tenth Avenue was a riot of noise. I shut one. I pulled the other down until there was a gap of half a foot.

  I turned around to find Tobias sitting on my bed. He was looking up at the wall separating my two windows. My stomach instantly turned in on itself, because I knew what he was seeing.

  “The photo,” he said.

  The one. A man, eyes closed, covered in a cloud of smoke. His own work. The photo I’d bought and carried with me through two campus apartments and finally here, to New York, where I had, after two years, taken it out from under my bed, had it framed, and hung it up. It read like a map, kind a symbol, like a prophecy. And Tobias knew it.

  “How did you…” But it wasn’t a question, not exactly.

  I froze. I could not physically move. I didn’t know if that was good, or the end. What if he was freaked out? Didn’t this make me worse than a stalker?

  “I think I’ve been looking for you, too,” he said. He didn’t say it to me. He said it to the photograph. I went to him then. We made love for the first time in my bed. It felt like we were making up for lost time. But afterward, and for years later, I couldn’t help but think of the way he said it, what had his attention. I’ve been looking for you.

  Maybe he meant the man. Maybe he meant the photo. Maybe it wasn’t me after all.

  9:16 P.M.

  “I WANT TO GET BACK TO THE NIGHT I was born,” I say. This is too much talk about Tobias. I’m not ready to deal with it. I’m beginning to realize it’s more complicated than I previously believed, the reason that he’s here.

  Robert pauses mid-bite.

  “Absolutely,” Audrey says. “Let’s do that.” She’s becoming comfortable in her role of facilitator. Conrad can prod; she can foster. They’re a team, and I see from the way he refills her glass and she passes him bread that they feel the shared responsibility, too.

  “What do you want to know?” Robert says. He puts down his fork and dabs at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. The move strikes me as oddly formal, and I get a rush of anger at how reserved he is. Appropriate. I can’t imagine this man in the blue suit with the salt-and-pepper hair throwing a chair out of the window in a rage.

  But he did.

  “I want to know if you were sick then,” I say.

  “Yes,” Robert says immediately, no hesitation. “Of course.” He looks confused, and across the table I see Conrad take a big inhale.

  “You want to know if you’re responsible,” Conrad says to me. “If you made him that way.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Jessica chimes in next to me. “How could Sabrina be responsible? Robert was an alcoholic who left his family in the lurch. She was a child.”

  Conrad doesn’t say anything; neither does Audrey. Tobias is the one who speaks.

  “You weren’t,” he says right to me. I feel him reach for my hand under the table but I move it away. Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he remember he was the one who left me? That they both were?

  Robert shifts in his seat. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he says.

  I look past Tobias to this man who is supposed to be my father. The physical resemblance I see. It just becomes more prominent the longer we sit here. Maybe it’s the surprise factor that makes it so noticeable. My mother never mentioned it. She’d never say something like You have your father’s nose. I’m sure she noticed, though. I’m sure it hurt.

  “Where are my sisters?” I ask. Sisters. What a word.

  Robert busies himself with his napkin again. Is he going to cry? It’s hard to say. I don’t know his tells.

  “Alexandra is an orthodontist. Or she will be next year. Daisy is studying film. She wants to be a director and writer. She’s—” But he breaks off. I know he was going to say talented. He should be able to gush about them; they’re his children. But it makes me feel light-headed—these details, the ways in which he knows them.

  “Where do they live?”

  “Daisy is here, in New York. Alexandra lives in California. She has a baby.”

  “She’s married?”

  Robert shakes his head. “Yes. He works a lot. Her mother helps out with the baby.”

  “How lovely; she must adore her.” From Audrey.

  “Him,” Robert says. “Oliver. Alexandra is a w
onderful mother.” He looks at me. “It would have been nice, for you to know her.” He doesn’t say the rest. He doesn’t say your mother wouldn’t allow it. He doesn’t need to.

  “I think she was afraid of having to share me,” I say, because I feel I need to defend her. She is, after all, not here. And she was a good mother—still is. Distracted, overworked, but present in the ways that mattered. Food, shelter, care. She told me she loved me every day. By all accounts, I have been tremendously blessed. By all accounts, my life was better without him in it.

  “Naturally,” Audrey says.

  Robert runs a hand over his forehead. “She had good reason to keep you away,” he says. “I don’t blame her. It’s very important you know that.”

  I think about how little we talked about Robert, my mother and I. Would it have been different had I pressed her? Should I have? “Fine,” I say.

  “I don’t want you to think after tonight that she’s somehow the bad guy. I am the bad guy. I will always be the bad guy. There is nothing that could change that.”

  “Then what is the point of all this?” I ask. I throw my hands up for effect. For the first time since we sat down I want to get up and walk out the door. I seriously consider it. I also need a cigarette. I have been continuously quitting since Tobias and I broke up, but it has never quite stuck. I don’t chain-smoke, but in tense situations I can never seem to hang on without sneaking out for one. I have my emergency pack in the bottom of my bag, too.

  “Five,” Tobias says next to me. It’s quiet—he leans a little my way when he says it, but everyone else still hears.

  “Frustrated,” I say. I shoot it at him.

  “Good,” Tobias says. “And?”

  “Sad.” I look down at my plate. “Time.”

  “Yes.”

  Conrad and Audrey are watching us with a quiet curiosity. I don’t look at Jessica; she knows the game. I’m surprised when she volunteers one.

  “Memory,” she says.

  “Okay. Memory. You need one more.”

  I inhale. I remember the first time we added this word to our five. I see the scene in my mind. I know he’s seeing it, too. Before I have a chance to say it.