The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

  “What is going to happen in there?”

  He taps some ash down. I watch it fall. “I think you will remember some things.”

  “Like that I love my father?”

  “Maybe.” He inhales. “It might help.”

  “It might hurt,” I say. “He is, after all, dead.”

  Conrad laughs. It’s another hearty belly laugh. “And?”

  I look inside. Jessica is leaning over the table, showing her wedding ring to Audrey. Robert is saying something to Tobias.

  “And.”

  If our relationship could be described in one word, it would be that. Never final. Never just this. Always and what if? And next. And after. There was always a sequel.

  “I don’t know,” I continue.

  “Now, that’s not true.”

  Tobias leans over Robert. He pulls something out of his pocket. A watch. I take a step closer to the glass. Robert holds it in his hand. It’s a gold pocket watch. I gave it to Tobias for his twenty-ninth birthday. It was my father’s. It was the one thing I had of his, that he’d worn, and I gave it to Tobias. It was half compass, half watch. I remember saying to him: So we can always find our way back.

  He brought it here tonight.

  “We’re not finished,” I say.

  Conrad takes another inhale and then snuffs his cigarette out on the pavement. He holds open the door. It’s only nine-thirty. We have food still on the table. But that’s not what I mean.

  We’re not finished. We’re here to find our way back.

  ELEVEN

  TOBIAS LEFT TEN DAYS LATER. He moved out and into a beat-up Prius he had bought with a cash advance and drove out to California with three boxes of things I helped him pack. I even labeled them. Clothes. Odds and Ends. Art. He kissed me and said he’d call from the first stop. I told him not to. We’d gone back and forth about this over the last week. He wanted to stay together; I wanted to break up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with him. Every cell in my body wanted to cling to his irrevocably. It was that I couldn’t put myself through the kind of heartbreak I knew was waiting for me. When my father left, my mother changed our locks and that was that. I knew I hadn’t escaped that particular programming. I didn’t know how to do it differently. I had to cut the cord.

  “You’ll come visit next month and then I’ll fly back the one after. We’ll alternate.”

  I imagined the worst, on repeat. I’d call and Tobias wouldn’t pick up and I’d see him on the beach with some bikini babe. I didn’t think he’d cheat on me, but I didn’t want to find out. If I ended it now he’d be free to do whatever he wanted in California, and maybe I could spare myself some pain. What I said to him was this: “Long distance doesn’t work. If it’s meant to be, it will be later.”

  “You don’t believe that,” he said. “Why are you doing this to us?”

  He was right, I didn’t. That was something Jessica would say, something she’d write in steam on the bathroom mirror. I subscribed more to look out for number one. After all, he was. He was leaving. I resented that he was trying to make me the responsible party.

  “I do,” I said.

  He shook his head. “So come with me.” He hadn’t given up on that. It was his response daily. Just come with me. Let’s do this together. You’ll get a great job there, too.

  “Stop,” I said. “I can’t. You know that. I have a career, too, remember? Publishing is a New York business.”

  “Of course I remember.” He ran his hand through his hair. It was long then. A full head of curls. “But I want you with me. I want to be there for you. I want to sleep next to you and make you coffee in the morning and be in your life. This is one chapter. The next time, we can go where you need us to.”

  “I need us to be here,” I said.

  Jessica thought I was crazy. “You love him,” she said. She was frantic. Up until the minute that I walked him downstairs, she was trying to convince me to change my mind. We were in my room, surrounded by a swirl of my things—discarded in the process of packing his. “You’ll regret this, I know you will. Just stay together.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “Long distance never works.” What I meant was: I won’t be left. I won’t be left again.

  “You don’t know that!” She threw a pillow down hard on my bed. “You found him. Him. Sabrina, I’m serious. Don’t give this up.”

  But I did. I didn’t go, and I never asked him to stay. Standing by his car, the summer sun reflecting off my tear-streaked face, the words coursing through my body until I was sure he could read them on my skin. All that came out was “Please.” He thought I meant: Just go, make it quick, don’t ask me again. What I really meant was: Stay.

  He held me. We cried into each other’s shoulders. I didn’t know how to say good-bye, so I didn’t.

  I went back inside. I drew the blinds and I lay on the floor of my bedroom.

  “I don’t know how to be here for this,” Jessica said. She was crying, too.

  “So don’t.”

  She left. She was due to leave on her honeymoon, and the following week I’d get texts from her periodically. Cabana honey! Of Sumir lounging on a chair by the ocean. Honey-dewing. A plate full of melon and plumerias. I knew it was her attempt at reestablishing normalcy, of taking a break from the fallout. I responded with the like. Yay. Aww. Love. We were both pretending.

  In those first early weeks, my coworker Kendra was the only one I confided in. We had both been hired as editorial assistants and started within a month of each other. We were working at an imprint called Bluefire that published mainly children’s books. Kendra was a lifelong young adult fan, and this was her dream job. I was desperate to move into the nonfiction sphere, but everyone told me once you got your foot in the door, moving internally was much easier. Most of our days were spent scheduling meetings and reading from the stack of submissions our bosses got from agents. Kendra was all wide-eyed wonder, out to discover the next Harry Potter. We’d spend lunchtime in the conference room, swapping manuscripts and bagels and trying to find a stepping stone to what came next. I would have loved it if my heart wasn’t completely shattered.

  “You need to go out,” Kendra told me. “You know the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

  “What if you like being on top?” I asked.

  Kendra’s eyes went wide. “A joke! She lives!” Kendra held her belly, which was round and plump like the rest of her. She had straight black hair and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, besides Tobias’s. She wore glasses with black wire frames and men’s button-down shirts. She brought Toblerones to work that her mom sent her by the dozen. I was always sugar high.

  “I can’t go out,” I said. “It’s only been two weeks.” I hadn’t heard from him since he’d arrived in California. But it was what I had asked of him, and he was respecting that. Living without him felt like a sword to the chest every minute on the minute. There were small things, like his forgotten socks I found in the hamper, or the Le Creuset pot we bought at a yard sale and cooked chili in all winter. The whole apartment made me think of him. The whole city did.

  “A friend from college is having a party,” Kendra said. “Harlem. Eight P.M. We can get a marg after work and head up. Stay for twenty minutes.” She stood back and studied me. “Just so, you know, if you kill yourself I can say I tried.”

  We went. The party was small—ten people hovered around a love seat and beanbag chair. We drank warm vodka and ate Tostitos, and I stayed three hours. There was a guy there named Paul who worked in the design department two floors above us at Random House. He was short and laughed easily. At the end of the night, I let him kiss me. And then I let him date me for almost two years.

  9:42 P.M.

  CONRAD AND I ARE BACK INSIDE, and dinner is in full swing. Robert hasn’t said anything else; we’re still processing. But Conrad comes back boisterous—clearly infused with the night air.

  “More wine, mon cherie?” he asks Audrey.

  She
nods, her cheeks red. Her eyes settle on him as he pours, and I think that maybe Audrey Hepburn is developing a crush on Professor Conrad. Crazier things have happened tonight.

  I’m hyperaware of Tobias to my left. I need to figure out what went wrong, to sort through it so that we can find our way back to each other. I feel compelled to tell him, to have him in this with me, but I’m not sure it’s time yet. I look over at him. He’s cutting a scallop with his head down, the way I know he does when he’s really considering something. Tobias was never great at multitasking.

  “Hey,” I say. Just so he can hear.

  He looks up at me like he’s astonished to see me there. “Hi. How are you?”

  We both laugh. It’s an insane thing to ask.

  “This is so strange,” I say.

  “Is it?” he asks.

  “Of course it is. We’re sitting at a table with Audrey Hepburn.”

  “Oh.” He turns back to his meal.

  I keep my voice low. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “I thought you meant us.”

  I swallow. “That too,” I say.

  He smiles at me. That smile that used to stop me dead in my tracks. That used to strip me of sanity and clothing in the middle of any fight. And I think maybe he knows, too. Maybe he thinks we’re here to get back as well.

  “The food is really something else,” Conrad says a little too loudly. “Truly divine. Has anyone tried the pasta?”

  Jessica waves her hand in the air. She’s twirling some tagliatelle around her spoon. “So good,” she says through a mouthful.

  “We really should have done this before,” Audrey says, and the whole table bursts out laughing. I think, for the first time, as I look around, that maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. That maybe something important can and will happen here tonight.

  “Too true, too true,” Conrad says. “Audrey, entertain us. It is mealtime, after all.”

  “With what?”

  “You know, when you were little, your mother used to sing ‘Moon River’ to you?” Robert says, like he’s just now remembered it. The rush in his voice is excitement.

  “Is that so?” Audrey says.

  “I love that song,” Jessica says. “We danced to it at our wedding.”

  I remember Jessica and Sumir swaying to Shania Twain, but I don’t say that now. I know she’s not lying, not intentionally. Jessica, for all her judgment and opinions, doesn’t have the best memory.

  “That was our favorite,” Tobias says. Under the table I feel him reach for my hand. He squeezes once and then lets go. But the contact has been made. My whole body feels like a sparkler.

  “Sing for us,” Conrad says.

  Audrey blushes. “Oh, no, no. I couldn’t. There are people around.”

  “Nonsense,” Conrad says. “They don’t mind.”

  He stands up and claps his hands together. The restaurant falls silent. Waiters pause, mid-serve. Conversations halt. Wineglasses are suspended in hands mid-sip.

  “Would it trouble anyone if my dear friend Audrey here sang a little tune?”

  As if on cue, everyone swings back into motion. Sounds rush back in around us and people return to their meals.

  “See?” he says. “It’s no bother.”

  Audrey pauses. I can see she’s considering it. And I hope she says yes. I want to hear her sing. It feels important, somehow. Her presence here is not just levity but something else, too. Audrey, for me, represents a time in which things were better. My parents together and Tobias and I—happy and in love.

  “I’ll be off,” she says. “I haven’t done it in so long.”

  “Just give it a go,” Conrad says. He squeezes her shoulder in a gesture of support.

  And then she begins. Her voice is angelic, no more than a whisper, but it’s somehow richer and more authentic than it was in the film, or in the recording I have in my iTunes. I get the feeling that the people surrounding us can’t even hear. It’s like as soon as she begins we’re on our own island at sea.

  “Moon river, wider than a mile…” As she sings I am transported to a time many years before this one—before Tobias or Jessica or Professor Conrad. It’s just me and Robert and Audrey. Her voice, its own memory. There is silence when she finishes, like a cloud of something delicate, spun cobwebs or gold, hangs over our table. Even Conrad seems at a loss for words. It’s Robert who speaks first.

  “That was wonderful,” he says. “Thank you.”

  She reaches across the table and takes his hand, and I see that, for the first time in my life, my father is crying. We are split open in the wake of Audrey’s voice, every one of us. What will flow into the cracks we do not yet know.

  TWELVE

  THE RELATIONSHIP WITH PAUL WAS FINE. Nice, even. I knew he was more invested than I was, but he never really showed it. We saw each other twice during the week and once on the weekends. We followed this rhythm week in and week out—never more, rarely less. I met his parents, but only because they happened to be in town and he had tickets to a Mets game. He didn’t cook, and neither did I, so we ordered in. We liked the same television shows and slept in on Sundays. He told me he loved me after seven months, at the Italian place on Carmine we went to regularly. I said it back.

  Occasionally I heard from Tobias. He’d send me e-mails with links to articles I might like—never to his own work. I responded back a line or two. “Thanks” or “I like this” or “I hope you’re doing well.” We didn’t ask questions.

  I had dinner with Matty a year in. He had texted asking if I wanted to get together. I had only seen him once or twice since Tobias left, and I missed him—he’d been my friend, too.

  We met at the Indian place close to their old apartment we had gone to many times. Tobias obviously didn’t live there anymore, and neither did Matty, but we met there anyway. A pilgrimage to our past. He came in carrying a copy of Rolling Stone.

  We ordered chicken curry and yellow lentils and saffron rice, and once we’d eaten a bit I asked about Tobias.

  “He’s doing really well,” he said. He spoke quietly, like he was trying not to startle me, gauging how I’d take it. “I think the work stuff is really good.”

  He didn’t mention any woman, and I was grateful. I wasn’t sure I could have handled that.

  “I know he’d kill me if I told you,” Matty continued. “But I wanted you to see.”

  He handed me the copy of Rolling Stone, which had been sitting on the table through dinner like a gun on the mantel. On the cover was President Obama. I opened it and went to the dog-eared page, which was the cover feature.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “It’s Wolfe’s credit,” Matty said. “But Tobias shot the whole thing.”

  My heart swelled with pride and then tightened with sadness because he hadn’t told me. This was the thing he wanted most in the world, and I couldn’t be there to share in it with him. A thought crossed my mind: that we could have the things we wanted, just not together.

  Matty sensed my emotion. “How’s Paul?” he asked. I remembered he’d met Paul at my birthday party a few months back and liked him.

  I cleared my throat. “Good,” I said. It was true. “We’re going to Portland next week.”

  We were going to stay for a long weekend, explore the city and do some hiking. We already had all our dinner reservations.

  “Nice,” he said. “I love it there.”

  “I’ve never been, but Paul says I will, too.”

  I looked down at my food. Matty reached across the table and touched my arm.

  “Hey,” he said. “You know I thought you guys were totally meant to be, but maybe it’s for the best, you know?” He swallowed. “He’s doing really well, and I think you are, too.”

  I thought about work, my relationship. “Yeah,” I said. I touched the magazine on the table. “This is amazing. Obama. Wow.”

  Matty grinned. He looked so proud. “Pretty cool. He’s doing Harrison Ford next week.”
/>
  After my dinner with Matty I thought about Tobias less and less. Knowing he was doing well, that he hadn’t moved for nothing, that we’d gone through this for a reason, helped. I liked Paul, maybe I even loved him. I was happy. I was just starting to believe that maybe it had been for the best when Tobias came back. It was Christmas. He had been gone in L.A. for twenty-three months and six days when he showed up at my apartment.

  I was renting out the second bedroom to a girl named Rubiah who was getting her doctorate in physics at Columbia and was never there. It was easy rent, and I liked the occasional company.

  I don’t know why he expected to find me there, but he did. I hadn’t gone home with Paul. My mother and stepfather had elected to go on a cruise for the holidays. She asked me along, but I get seasick. People with migraines should never set foot on boats. So I decided to spend the holidays alone.

  I baked macaroni and cheese and made cookies. I was just settling down to watch a History Channel special Rubiah had DVR’d about the end of the Mayan calendar. It was 2014, and they were claiming the end hadn’t been in 2012 like expected, but was still coming.

  He rang the buzzer. I heard his voice. “Hey,” he said. “It’s Tobias. Can I come up?” Just like that. Hey, it’s Tobias. Can I come up? Like the world wasn’t ending. Like it hadn’t already.

  I waited for him in the doorway. My heart pounded so loudly it was preventing me from seeing. He took the steps two at a time. He always did. He showed up with a bag. “I just got off the plane,” he said.

  It should have taken more. It should have taken explanation. Dates, times, plans. We had barely spoken in those twenty-three months. Not once in the last seven. But all I asked was: “How did you know I’d be home?”

  “I took a shot,” he said.

  He put his hands on my face. I didn’t even try and fight him. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  “It’s where you are,” he told me.

  “You shot Obama,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrow at me. He was smiling. “I believe Obama is fine and at the White House,” he said.