The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

  “We haven’t even figured out how to get married,” he said. He ran a hand over his face. “Why can’t we ever take one thing at a time?”

  “Because we don’t. We just stand still, and we resent each other for it.” It cut my heart right in two to say it out loud.

  He got up and walked outside. I followed him. The sun had moved behind a cloud, and it was freezing. My coat was inside, looped over the back of my chair.

  “I hate feeling this way and I hate making you feel this way. It’s fucking powerless.” He put his hands up to rest on the top of his head. “I’m not sure it’s supposed to be this hard.”

  I felt my world come crashing down. I swear it was like the sun fell straight out of the sky.

  “We can’t keep doing this to each other,” he said. I saw how much pain he was in. I saw the sting in his eyes. “I can’t keep doing this to you.”

  I could feel the desperation in him, and I felt it, too. It began to mix with anger, flooding my fearful veins with rage. “Do it, then,” I said. I crossed my arms in front of me. I was shaking. “End it.”

  “Sabby…”

  “No,” I said. I was seeing stars. I knew the sadness would be too big, too wide—I didn’t want to feel it. The anger was shorter. Let me burn there.

  He started to cry. “Maybe we just need to take some time apart,” he said.

  I looked at him, dumbfounded. It felt like he had stabbed me with a sword and taken out my heart and lungs in one clean swipe. I said nothing. I looked down at my hands. On my finger was the ring. The beautiful, sweet, subtle ring. The one that was supposed to carry us through decades, not months. I reached over and with shaking fingers took it off. I couldn’t keep it. I couldn’t even look at it.

  I handed it back to him. “Pawn it,” I said, my voice shaking. “You need the money.”

  I walked back into Baba Louie’s, grabbed my coat, and walked out. We went back to the cabin, packed in silence, and then we drove back to the city. I stared out the window, my feet tucked up into my chest on the seat. I was too numb to cry.

  “This isn’t a breakup,” he said. “It’s just some time. I just think we need to be alone for a bit. Don’t you? Sabby?”

  I was scared of being without him, of course I was. But what terrified me more was him being without me—what he would find in that quiet. Whether it would be his happiness.

  11:21 P.M.

  AUDREY AND I ARE STILL OUTSIDE. I’ve smoked three cigarettes; she’s finishing her second.

  “We should return,” she says, although neither one of us makes a move. I know that she’s right, that it’s time to go back inside, because time is almost up, and now that I know what to do, I need to do it.

  Conrad appears at the door.

  “My dears,” he says. “You’ll catch cold if you stay much longer.”

  “Such a gentleman,” Audrey demurs. She puts her cigarette out on the window ledge. “Shall we?”

  Conrad holds the door open and I follow Audrey inside.

  “How was it out there?” Tobias asks. There is a hope in his voice, a childish lilt that makes my heart break, and I know it’s there because he thinks there’s a way out, that maybe Audrey and I uncovered it in the night air. How am I going to tell him there isn’t, that I can’t? That life isn’t like the movies we loved but something infinitely more complex?

  I look to Jessica, but she’s still in the bathroom. Robert nurses his coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Robert. I’ll start there.

  He sets down his cup, startled.

  “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out with Mom, and that you guys lost that baby, and that when you got well you couldn’t or didn’t come back, and that I never knew you. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to find you when I could, and that when I did, I left and didn’t go through with it. I don’t know if it would have helped, but I don’t want you to feel tortured anymore. I don’t think it’s helpful for you, nor do I think it’s helpful for me. I don’t want to carry around your regrets, and I think in some ways that’s what happened. I think I picked them up somewhere along the line, maybe to hate you, maybe to feel closer to you, I don’t know, but I know they’re too heavy for me now, and I have to give them back to you.”

  Robert sits up straighter. I swear I think he’s going to hold out his hands.

  “You don’t have to carry them, though,” I say. “Just because I’m giving them back. You can leave them here.”

  Robert’s eyes well up with tears. “That would be all right,” he says.

  I stand up from my chair, because I want to hug him. Not to make him feel better, but because I want to feel him. I have no memories of hugging my father. I imagine he held me when I was little, maybe even rocked me to sleep, but he never picked me up off the sidewalk when I scraped my knee or dusted off me after a fall from my bike. He didn’t carry me on his shoulders or up the stairs. Didn’t tackle me in the backyard during a game of touch football or let me climb onto his feet for a father-daughter dance. And I know I won’t get all that back, that there’s no way to, that it’s lost like the shells of the sea. But I want to feel what it’s like to be in his arms, to be loved by him, just once.

  “Dad,” I say. He seems to know, and he stands up and embraces me. He smells like him, not like I remember, because I don’t, but like I expected him to, and this more than anything makes me cry into his shoulder. He puts one hand on my back and the other on my head. I know he’s done this many times before, with his girls, and I’m aware of the fact that we only get this one, this shot today. That’s it. Maybe it can’t make up for anything, but it can prevent some future pain, maybe even precipitate some peace.

  He pulls back and holds me at arm’s length. “It wasn’t easy to do what you just did,” he says. “It shows what a strong woman you are. Your mother did well with you.”

  I kiss his cheek. I wonder if he’ll remember this, wherever he goes to next. I think he will. I hope so.

  I sit back down. Across the table Audrey and Conrad beam at me, like proud parents.

  Jessica comes back to the table. “This thing takes forever when it doesn’t have a full charge,” she says, dropping the pump back into her bag. “What did I miss?”

  Robert smiles at me. He looks stronger than he did earlier tonight, and it makes me feel proud, somehow.

  “I think we should get the check,” I say.

  Next to me, Tobias shifts. “What about us?” he asks.

  Conrad pushes back his chair to get the waiter’s attention. Audrey’s eyes are fixed steadily on me.

  I’m reminded of one of Jessica’s sayings, a magnet that stuck to our refrigerator for the duration of our time together.

  All good things must come to an end.

  “Baby,” I say. Something I haven’t said in so long. I take his hands in my own. Tears are streaming down my face before I even get the words out. “We have to let go. It’s time.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TOBIAS WENT TO STAY WITH MATTY as soon as we got back from Great Barrington. I didn’t want to think about him, about us, about what this break would mean—so I focused on our past. I replayed our relationship like a YouTube montage of a television show’s greatest moments. Us on the beach, the towering canvases around us. Our stopped subway car. Eating pasta in bed. Memories stacked and stacked and stacked so high they threatened to topple.

  Tobias and I didn’t speak much in the two weeks that followed. A few calls here and there. He checked in on me but I didn’t know how to respond. Good, thanks, just lying at the bottom of the ocean. We texted about functional things—money, shared items. Sometimes we said “I miss you.” Most important, we didn’t see each other.

  I don’t think either one of us knew what we were doing. Breaking up for good seemed impossible, but the more time we spent apart, the more deciding to be together seemed equally unlikely. How would we go back to our life, our relationship, our apartment after this? How would we move forward? We were stuck, and we h
ad been for a long time.

  When Matty came over to pick up a box of his stuff, I answered the door in a bathrobe. That had been my routine—come home from work, change into bathrobe, watch How I Met Your Mother until my eyes stung and I passed out.

  “You look like shit,” he told me.

  “It’s in the bedroom,” I said. I walked over and picked up the box from the floor. It was filled mostly with clothes and a few kitchen supplies Tobias had asked if he could “borrow.” I shoved it at Matty.

  “Have you had dinner?” he asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m taking you out.”

  We didn’t go far. A ramen place in my neighborhood the three of us had been to many times together. But it was enough for me to put on jeans, a sweater, and lip gloss.

  “You’re a vision,” Matty said when I emerged.

  “Sarcasm was never your strong suit,” I told him.

  “Who says I’m being sarcastic?”

  We ordered bowls at the counter and a bottle of wine. They had a cheap white that always did the trick. Matty poured as I slurped noodles.

  “Good?” he asked.

  “Better,” I said. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a real meal. My jeans, when I put them on, hung sloppily on my hips.

  “He’s still with you?” I asked. Tobias hadn’t said, but I’d assumed.

  Matty nodded. “Yeah. But I have room.” He had bought a two-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights. It was far less showy than the Midtown loft had been. It was a second-floor walk-up with crown molding in an above-average prewar building, and I loved it. Big floor-to-ceiling bay windows on a tree-lined street.

  “He’s never going to change,” I said. I downed my wine. Matty refilled.

  “He will,” he said. “Everyone does. But, you know, maybe it’s wrong to think you guys have to change for each other.”

  I looked over at him. He had grown up in the time I’d known him. His personality—updated from excited puppy to passionate man—had affected his exterior. He dressed like a grown-up. He was successful. It made me happy for him.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You’ll figure it out,” he said. I was reminded again of the last dinner we’d had just the two of us. I didn’t wonder whether he thought I told you so. I knew he did.

  Matty walked me home and took the small box and loaded it into his car. He gave me a hug. “Be well,” he said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  I went upstairs and dialed Jessica. I hadn’t wanted to tell her. In fact, I’d been ducking her calls since Great Barrington. I knew eventually I’d have to. If Tobias hadn’t told her already—although I didn’t think he would. She’d have tried him when she couldn’t reach me, but I didn’t think in the current state he’d take her call. I was surprised, in fact, that she was so persistently trying to get ahold of me. She’d been the one doing all the calling.

  I pulled a pillow onto my lap and called from the old club chair that used to be ours, and then mine and Tobias’s, and I guess was just mine now.

  “Hi,” she said. “Finally. I thought you were dead.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m here.”

  “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” she said.

  “I know, I’m sorry. Jess—”

  “Wait. I have some news. I wanted to tell you in person, but I’m starting to show, so … I’m pregnant.”

  I flashed on a moment in our first apartment, huddled over the sink, trying to read a pregnancy test. Hers. She had been with Sumir for years at that point, but we were still only twenty-two, hardly ready for a baby. It was negative, and we squealed, jumping up and down.

  Change is the only true constant.

  “Amazing!” I said. “I’m happy for you.” And I was. I knew she wanted it, as much as I knew anything about Jessica then. Her life in Connecticut eluded me. So much of who she was seemed to have dissipated over time. I felt she still knew me, but only because I was who I had always been—maybe that was unfair, too. “How far along are you?” I asked.

  “Four months,” she said.

  Four months. She had been pregnant the entire fall. August, too.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  I could have told her then, but I didn’t. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to tamp down her joy, but it wasn’t, at least not entirely. It was because I didn’t trust her with this grief. And that made me sad—sadder, possibly, than I even was about Tobias.

  “Fine,” I said. “You know, work.”

  “Come out soon,” she said. “I’m gonna be so fat in like a second. My pants already don’t fit.” There was a note of something in her voice … was it some kind of longing? Nostalgia? I wanted to believe the tone in her words. I miss you.

  “I’m sure you’re glowing,” I said. “And I’d love to come.”

  “Sab?” Jessica said. She hadn’t used my nickname in a long time. “I hope it’s not a boy.”

  I laughed. So did she. It felt good, even over the phone.

  “Let’s do something next weekend,” she said. “Or the one after.”

  “You got it.”

  We hung up. Later, after she’d asked me why I hadn’t said anything, I’d told her the truth: I was afraid you’d tell me it was for the best.

  11:32 P.M.

  IN RESPONSE TO MY SUGGESTION of good-bye, Tobias pushes back his chair and stands up. He doesn’t say anything, just walks over to the window. Conrad raises his eyebrow at me, but Jessica is already up. She follows Tobias over to the window and they stand next to each other. I find Audrey’s eyes across the table. They tell me to stay put, and so I do.

  I don’t much feel like talking. The others linger in silence now. The waiter is clearing our last remaining plates. Audrey is asking for some more water. He hands me the check, and despite Conrad’s protestations I give my credit card. I want to pay. It’s my dinner party, after all.

  I look up at the clock. The second hand ticks steadily, like a soldier marching into war. I have a memory, like the flash of a camera, of my father singing to me when I was a baby, stomping around the kitchen.

  I left my wife and forty-eight children alone in the kitchen in starving condition with nothing to eat but gingerbread. Left. Left. Left, right, left.

  It’s not until I hear my father that I realize I’m singing out loud. He starts in with me. Left. Left. Left, right, left.

  Then Conrad joins in. His big, bellowing voice fills the restaurant, and I’m glad we’re alone at this point, save the dish washers and our waiter. Audrey pipes in, too, and the four of us chant on together.

  “This is an awful nursery rhyme when you think about it,” Audrey says, breaking out of rhythm.

  “Particularly for me,” Robert says. “Although I do fondly remember teaching it to you.”

  “They all are,” Conrad says. “‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’ is about the homicidal nature of Queen Mary.”

  “And the one with the well,” Audrey says.

  “The well?” Conrad says. “I’m not aware of one about a well.”

  Audrey frowns. “I feel a little unsteady,” she says. “Must be all the wine.” She glances up at the clock on the wall, and I feel something squeeze in my stomach. I look over at Jessica and Tobias. There’s no time, there’s no time, there’s no time.

  I can’t stand it any longer. I stand up and walk over to them.

  “How’s it going over here?” I ask.

  Jessica looks at Tobias. “Well, he’s dead, and it appears he’s going to remain that way, so not great.”

  Tobias starts to laugh then. It’s been so long since I’ve heard his laugh. Longer, by far, than the time he’s been gone.

  Jessica puts her hand on my shoulder. “I’m still here,” she says. “We’ll work it out, we have the time.” She squeezes my shoulder, taps Tobias on the chest, and goes back to the table.

  “I wish I could take you away from here,” he says. He’s looking o
ut the window, not at me. At the passing taxis and a few lingering people on the sidewalk. Outside the city spins, unaware.

  “Where would we go?” I ask.

  “Maybe down to the West Side Highway,” he says. “We could walk along the water.”

  “Not far enough,” I say. I go to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

  “You’re right. We never got to go to Mexico, or Paris, or Guam,” he says. “I regret that.”

  “Don’t,” I say. “No more regrets.”

  I put my head on his shoulder.

  “What’s going to happen to me now?” he asks. I turn to look at him, and I see the fear dancing just around the perimeter.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I wish I did. I don’t think you’ll be where you were, though. I think you’ll be…” My voice catches, and in the space he answers.

  “Gone,” he says.

  My cheeks are wet. I haven’t stopped crying. “There isn’t any more time.”

  He nods. His eyes are wet, too. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “We were so good at being together but so bad at the rest of it.”

  “The rest of it was important,” I say. “I think more than we realized.”

  He nods. “Were we always going to end up here?” he asks.

  I think about the decade we spanned, the entirety of it splayed out before us tonight.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But we did. I think that’s what matters now.”

  He takes my face in his hands. “I love you,” he says. “Always.”

  Meant to be. I used to think that about us. That we were meant to be. That the stars had aligned to bring us together. It never occurred to me that our fate might not be forever.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  IT HAPPENED ON A SATURDAY. I was at home, doing laundry. I had planned to head out to Jessica’s in the afternoon. We were going to go to an early dinner, since she said she was now getting tired at seven. I was going to see her belly. I hadn’t seen Tobias since the day he dropped me off nearly a month ago.