Before We Were Strangers

by Renee Carlino

  Elizabeth was still glaring at me. She threw her hands up and said, “Can you just call this person back? I’m trying to talk to you.”

  “Hold on, Grace,” I said.

  “Grace?” Elizabeth’s mouth fell open.

  I covered the receiver. “Get the fuck out of here!”

  She put her hand on her other hip. “I’m not leaving.”

  I uncovered the receiver. “Grace?”

  God, I wanted to fucking cry.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Can you give me two minutes? I promise I’ll call you right back.” I thought I was going to throw up.

  “If it’s a bad time . . .”

  “No, no, I’ll call you right back.”

  “Okay,” she said, uncertainly.

  We hung up. “So, you’re seeing Grace?” Something about her tone smacked of satisfaction, and her eyes said, Of course you are.

  I sucked in a deep breath through my nose. “No, I’m not seeing her. That was the first time I’ve talked to her in fifteen years, and you just ruined it.”

  “This is your job, Matt. This is a workplace.”

  “Is that what you said to Brad before you fucked him in the copy room?” I shot back, flatly. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest and I was bleeding out. I felt weaker and weaker by the second. “I don’t feel good. Can you leave me alone please?” My eyes started to water.

  She flushed. “I . . . Matt . . .”

  “Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t care, Elizabeth. Not at all. Not even one iota.” I shrugged.

  She turned and walked away.

  I went to my recent calls and hit send on Grace’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “That’s okay.”

  I took a deep breath. “God, it’s good to hear your voice, Grace.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How have you been?”

  “I’ve been okay. It’s been . . . a long time, Matt.”

  “Yeah. It has, hasn’t it?” She sounded a little apprehensive. I was, too. “So what do you do now? Where do you live? Are you married?”

  “I’m not married.” My stomach unclenched. Thank God. “I live in a brownstone on West Broadway in SoHo.”

  “You’re kidding. I live on Wooster.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s very close. Are you still working for the magazine?”

  She knew I worked for the magazine? “Yeah, but I do more for the TV channel now. I’m not traveling as much. How about you? Still playing the cello?” A memory of Grace playing the cello in our dorm room, wearing nothing but her flowery underwear, drifted into my head. The light from the window had silhouetted her so I had pressed the shutter on my camera and snapped away as she played. I still had those pictures somewhere. I remembered that I had set the camera down, gone up to her, and traced the indentations above her cute little ass. She had gotten tripped up on the music and started giggling. I wondered now if I’d ever hear that giggle again.

  “Uh-huh. Not professionally, I teach high school music classes now.”

  “That sounds great.” I cleared my throat awkwardly. I wanted to tell her that she sounded different, doleful, un-Grace-like, but I kept those thoughts to myself.

  Several moments of uncomfortable silence passed by. “So you saw the post, I take it.”

  “Yes, that was really sweet . . .” She hesitated and took a deep breath. “When I saw you, I didn’t know what to think.”

  “Yeah, um . . . the post was a shot in the dark, I guess.”

  “You’ve had a great career. I’ve followed you a little.”

  “Have you?” My throat hurt, my head began throbbing, and I was suddenly very nervous. Why had she followed my career?

  “Is Elizabeth . . .”

  “Pregnant?” I blurted out. Why did I say that? And how does she even know about Elizabeth? I wanted to fill her in on everything, but all the wrong words were coming out of my mouth.

  “Matt.” Another long, uncomfortable pause. “I feel really confused about seeing you, and the post and . . .”

  “Elizabeth isn’t—” I started to say, but she interrupted.

  “It was nice talking to you. I think I’d better go.”

  “Coffee? Do you want to get a coffee sometime?”

  “Um, I’m not sure.”

  “Okay.” Another awkward silence. “You’ll call me if you change your mind?”

  “Sure.”

  “Grace, you’re okay, right? I mean, you’re well? I need to know.”

  “I’m well,” she whispered and then hung up.

  Fuck!

  Elizabeth chose that moment to come back with a stack of photos. She had the worst possible timing. “Can you review these and have them on my desk by tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah, fine, leave them.” I didn’t look up. My heart was hammering in my chest and I was about to cry. I felt Elizabeth’s hand on my shoulder. She squeezed, the way a football couch might do. “You okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s hard for you to see me like this, isn’t it?”

  What? I was so taken aback, I almost laughed. Elizabeth had a way of making everything about her. “You think it’s hard for me to see you pregnant? No, I’m happy for you.”

  “I guess that makes sense since you never wanted children.” Her tone was inscrutable.

  I always wanted children, just not with you.

  I took her hand in mine and did what needed to be done. “Elizabeth, I’m sorry I wasn’t a better husband to you. I’m happy for you and Brad. I wish you both many years of marital and familial bliss. For the sake of all that is good, including our workplace sanity, let’s never, ever talk about our crappy marriage again. Please?” My eyes were pleading.

  She nodded in agreement. “I’m sorry, too, Matt. I went about everything the wrong the way.”

  I released her hand. She smiled warmly, sympathetically, almost piteously. It was better to let her think I was lonely and pining for her than to fuel the fiery resentment she had always had toward me because I never got over Grace. Her suspicions were right, but I would never admit the truth to her.

  Brad had been my friend since I’d first started at National Geographic as an intern. I had met him around the same time I met Elizabeth. He’d always had a thing for her and she’d always had a thing for me. I’d almost felt like an asshole for marrying her, so when she cheated on me with him, I wasn’t shocked. In fact, I’d had a strange urge to high-five him. Isn’t that terrible?

  Elizabeth went back to her office and I headed to Brad’s office. It was time to be the bigger man, or at least the equally flawed, human man. I had blown the phone call with Grace, but it had shaken me loose; I didn’t want to stay in this rut of self-pity and hatred forever.

  Standing in the doorway of Brad’s office, I cleared my throat.

  He looked up at me from the other side of his desk. “Heyyyy, man.” He always stretched the “hey” out, stonerlike.

  “Brad, I just came by to say congratulations on the pregnancy. Well done, my friend. We all know I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  “Matt—” He tried to stop me.

  “I’m kidding, Brad. I’m happy for you guys. I swear.”

  “Yeah?” He quirked an eyebrow.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How ’bout a drink after work. Just the two of us?”

  Well, I’m sure you fucked my wife on every available surface of the apartment I used to own, and now she’s pregnant with your child, so . . .

  I clapped my hands together. “What the hell. Why not?”

  We went to a hoity-toity cocktail lounge on the Upper West Side near my old apartment, which he and Elizabeth now shared. I fucking hated that bar, but it was familiar territory for both of us.

  My scotch was served in a martini glass with an ice cube. There were so many things wrong with the drink but I downed it anyway. “Are cigars in order yet?”
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  “No, that’s after the baby’s born. You’re not really into kids, are you?”

  “No, I hate them. I just want an excuse to smoke a nice Cuban,” I lied, for fun. What else is there in life?

  “Well, the time will come. By the way, your sister in-law called. She’s sending us the antique bassinet.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, she thought it should go to us. She thinks of Elizabeth as a sister.”

  The bassinet was a family heirloom; it was meant to be kept within the family. “Monica is not the damned keeper of the bassinet.”

  Brad picked up on my hostility and tried to change the subject. “Are you dating anyone these days?”

  “No, just fucking,” I lied again, for amusement. “Finally got rid of that old ball and chain, you know?” I was finding it hard to stick to my goal of being the bigger man here.

  “That’s great for you,” Brad said, uncomfortably.

  “Another scotch please!” I called out.

  “You know, sometimes Lizzy gets pissed at me for the smallest things. Like the toilet seat—she’s mad if I leave it up, but she’s mad if I leave it down.” He looked at me and shook his head. “She says my aim isn’t good enough.”

  I actually felt sorry for him. “Listen, you’re gonna have to learn to piss sitting down. It’s part of being married. It’s actually kind of relaxing, like a little break.”

  “Really?”

  “Totally.”

  My second scotch came. I drank it faster than the first.

  “You know, I forgot to tell you that Lizzy found another box of your pictures and some rolls of undeveloped film. She said she wanted you to come by and pick them up since we’re . . . you know . . . trying to prepare the spare room.”

  Jesus. “Okay.”

  He checked his phone. “Shit, we have Lamaze class soon. I gotta go, man. Want to come up to the apartment and grab that box?”

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  We walked the few blocks to the apartment, hardly speaking along the way. Once we got to the building, I shuffled behind him into the lobby. The two scotches, combined with the weirdness of being in my old building, suddenly hit me. “You know what, Brad? I’m just gonna wait here for you to bring the box down.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’ll wait.” I smiled weakly and took a seat near the elevator. A few minutes later, he returned with a dark gray plastic tote.

  “Thought you said it was a box?”

  “Uh, yeah, it was, but Lizzy took everything out of the box and put it in here for more efficient storage.”

  “More efficient storage?”

  He could barely make eye contact with me. “Yep.”

  I was sure Elizabeth had gone through the entire box and thrown half of it away. I wasn’t surprised. “Thanks, Brad.”

  “See ya, buddy.” He slapped me on the back as I turned to walk away.

  Once I got back to my loft, I sat on my old leather couch, turned on U2’s “With or Without You,” kicked my feet up on the plastic tote, and closed my eyes. I imagined that I had built a life, not just a career. I imagined that my walls were covered with pictures of my family, not animals from the fucking Serengeti. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and opened the tote.

  It was everything from that time, preserved in black-and-white photographs. Grace and me in Washington Square Park. At Tisch. In our dorm. In the lounge. Grace playing the cello. Grace naked on my bed, taking a photo of me, the camera masking her face. I ran my finger over it. Let me see your face, I remember saying. Grace and me in Los Angeles, playing Scrabble at my mom’s house. My mom teaching Grace how to throw pottery in the Louvre. Grace sleeping on my chest as I looked up into the camera.

  Slowly, I took each photo out of the tote. The last photo I pulled out was taken on the day I left for South America. It was what they call a “selfie” now. Grace and I were lying in bed, looking up into the lens as I held the camera over us and clicked the shutter.

  We looked so happy, so content, so in love.

  What happened to us?

  At the bottom of the bag, I found a cassette tape and an undeveloped roll of film. I removed it from the canister and held it up to the light. It was in color, something I rarely used back then; it wasn’t until I started working for National Geographic that I used color on a regular basis.

  I got up, set the roll on the counter, popped the cassette into an old tape player, and drank until I passed out, listening to Grace and her friend, Tatiana, playing a violin-and-cello duet of “Eleanor Rigby.” They played it over and over, and each time, at the end, I could hear Grace giggling and Tatiana shushing her.

  I fell asleep with a smile on my face, even though I felt like one of those lonely people they talk about in the song.

  * * *

  THERE WERE STILL a few film-processing stores around downtown. The PhotoHut was long gone, but I found a camera store on my way to work the next morning and dropped off the mysterious roll of film.

  When I arrived at the office, I spotted Elizabeth in the office kitchen, near the coffeepot. “I thought you’re not supposed have caffeine when you’re pregnant?” I said.

  “I’m allowed to have a cup,” she shot back as I brushed past her. I smirked and walked toward my cube. I could feel her walking behind me, her ballet flats shuffling against the carpet, kicking up electrical currents. She had a habit of dragging her feet.

  I flipped on my computer and turned to see her standing behind me, waiting to acknowledge her. Her hair was sticking up, floating off her shoulders from the static electricity. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What?”

  “Your hair.” I pointed, like a five-year-old.

  She scowled and wrapped her hair in a bun, grabbing a pencil off my desk to hold it in place.

  “Thanks for getting a drink with Brad and picking up the tote last night.”

  “Thanks for organizing my personal shit for me. Did you toss anything from the original box?”

  “No, I could barely look inside of it. It was like a shrine to Grace.”

  “Why were you so determined that I get all that stuff back, then?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel bad, I guess.”

  “What exactly do you feel bad about?” I leaned back in my chair.

  “Just . . . you know. How . . . I don’t know.”

  “Tell me,” I urged with a smug grin. I couldn’t help but take pleasure as she struggled for words. She was clearly still envious of Grace.

  “Just the way you put her on a pedestal and talked about her, like she was the one who got away.”

  I leaned forward. “You’re not telling me everything—you’re doing that weird eyebrow thing that you do whenever you lie.”

  “What weird eyebrow thing?”

  “You wiggle one eyebrow, all crazylike. I don’t know how you do it. It’s like a creepy twitch.”

  She self-consciously raised a hand to her brow. “It’s nothing that you don’t already know. I mean, we were so busy back then.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes darted all over the room, like she was mapping out her exit strategy. She looked down at her overpriced shoes. “Grace called and left a message for you once, and . . . it was just . . .”

  I stood. “What are you saying, Elizabeth?” I didn’t realize I was shouting until the room went completely silent. I could feel our colleagues peering around the walls of their cubicles at us.

  “Shhh, Matt!” She leaned in. “Let me explain. It was while we were in South Africa.” She crossed her arms and lowered her voice. “You and I were already fucking. I didn’t know why she was calling.”

  My mind raced to figure out the timeline. It would have been roughly two years after Grace and I last saw each other. After she disappeared.

  “What did she say?” I asked, slowly.

  “I don’t remember. It was so long ago. She was in Europe or something. She wante
d to talk to you and see how you were doing. She left her address.”

  Every nerve was on full alert. “What did you do, Elizabeth?”

  “Nothing.”

  She was acting so weird. Shifty. Like she still wasn’t telling me the whole truth.

  “Just tell me what you did.”

  She winced. “I wrote her a letter.”

  “You didn’t . . .”

  “I was in love with you, Matt. I wrote to her, but I was kind. I said that you had moved on, that she was part of your past, but that I wished her the best.”

  My eyes were burning with fury. “What else did you do? For the love of God, Elizabeth, I’m about to make a headline out of us, and I’m not a violent man. You know that.”

  She started crying. “I was in love with you,” she repeated.

  I was stunned. I always thought Grace ran off. She hadn’t left me so much as a note—no address, no phone number. I had been devastated, always believing that she had been the one who left me.

  “If you were in love with me, why didn’t you give me the choice?”

  Brad walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “What’s going on? What are you saying to her? She’s pregnant, man; what’s wrong with you?”

  My chest was heaving. “Leave. Both of you.”

  Elizabeth turned into Brad’s arms and started to cry against his chest. Brad glared at me and led her away, shaking his head, like I was the one who had done something awful.

  Ever since I’d seen Grace on the subway, I’d been replaying everything that happened to us fifteen years ago, how the last conversation we’d had seemed so typical, just six week before I was supposed to fly home, back into her arms, back into the routine we’d set for ourselves during that year of heaven.

  After work, I picked up the roll of film I had dropped off earlier. It was a Friday, and I had nothing better to do than go to my mostly empty loft and digest the news that Grace had tried to get in touch with me years ago. I sat on the couch near the big floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the street.

  Next to me, on the end table, was one small lamp; in my lap, the developed photos. The first three were blurry, but the fourth caught me off guard. It was a picture of me and Grace in our pajamas, standing in front of the blurry traffic lines. Our faces were slightly out of focus, but I could see that we were looking right at each other. That night we went to that diner in Brooklyn.