“Let’s do a comedy for once,” Kirsten says. “The Good Place looks fun.”
Her bright suggestion hangs in the air, until Sam sighs and says, “I’m not feeling this. I’m gonna head back.” She stalks off, and I think, Good riddance.
“Jeez, it was just an idea,” Kirsten says. “What’s with her?”
“Probably hormones.”
The way Kirsten picks the thread back up, it’s as if she just finished telling me her adoption plans: “Anyway, once Caleb really, truly understands that I won’t give up on motherhood, I know he won’t give up on me. Maybe an ultimatum sounds silly and lame”—I shake my head; who am I to judge anything?—“but I’ve never wanted anything so badly. You know?” I switch to nodding, even though I have no idea. “It’s like, you would never stand in the way of Gabe writing because you know how important it is to him. That’s what it means to be in a committed relationship.”
“Uh-huh.” A fly buzzes by my ear; my head is all white noise.
“And if I’m wrong—if Caleb feels stronger about not adopting than about being with me, then I suppose that’s what’s meant to be.” Kirsten shrugs.
I know I should wrap a comforting arm around my friend, or tell her how brave she is, but her words make me feel like the world’s biggest coward, and all I can think to say is, “Let’s turn back, too, okay?”
• • •
I’m almost relieved when, over watery coffee in the inn’s dayroom, Sam says in her faux-casual way, “Hey, didn’t you say that dude Charlie got a job as a ranger around here?” She was like a ticking time bomb and now I can stop bracing myself, waiting for her to explode.
“No way!” Kirsten says. “That guy you dated, Molly? Leo’s friend?”
“I bet he’d give us a tour of the park,” Sam says, looking intently interested in the contents of her mug, ignoring my glare. “We could learn about leaves and worm species and all that shit.”
“Since when do you care about worm species?” I say, again trying for breezy, but I can hear the edge in my voice. “Anyway, I guess Charlie does work around here, but I’d prefer to hang around with just us. It’s a girls’ weekend, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Sam says, voice sharp. “Come on, live a little. Let’s do it.”
So, we do. I make a show of consulting a map. I even send us on a detour, attempting to get us lost, but Sam’s sense of direction, like her determination, is keen. Inside the park, she pulls into a spot just a few feet from the one I vacated this morning. We all get out, and Sam locates a ranger. To my disappointment, he doesn’t say that Charlie is off-duty, or incapacitated, or un-findable. Instead, he points a firm finger at the information center.
This time Charlie does look surprised to see me. He also looks hung-over and exhausted. His ranger uniform hangs on his limbs. I’m suddenly furious at myself. I try to purge the anger from my voice: “Charlie, you remember Sam and Kirsten. Sam suggested we drop by for a tour.”
“Ah,” Charlie says. I feel him searching me for answers, but I avoid eye contact in favor of a display on the American bison. “Well, as much as I’d like to show you ladies around, I’m on duty until closing. It can get pretty crazy up in here.” He gestures around; we’re the only ones there. “Someone’s gotta reign in the chaos.”
Kirsten blinks, maybe waiting for a better punch line. She’s never understood the appeal of Charlie, although she’s too kind to admit it. But Sam has about-faced into charming flirt mode. With a hand on Charlie’s bicep that makes me want to abandon her in the middle of an unmarked forest trail, she interviews him about whatever she can remember from high school biology: food chains, deforestation, the carbon cycle. Charlie is rendered helpless by the attention; pregnant belly notwithstanding, Sam must be an alluring anomaly among the park’s usual visitors.
I can’t help it: I swat Sam’s hand away from Charlie’s arm. “He said he’s busy. I think we should go.”
“Is there a gift shop?” Kirsten asks. “I’m a sucker for a souvenir.”
“Fine, we’ll leave,” Sam says. “But we came all this way, we may as well document it.” She whips out her phone and, before I can blink, snaps a selfie of the four of us. “Oh, cute!” There’s no way it’s cute—we’re barely congregated, all looking in different directions. “And look, I have a few bars of cell service. I’m just going to upload this to Instagram, hashtag no filter.”
“Sam,” I say.
“What?” She looks up, thumbs hovered over keypad, her pose of innocence so convincing that only a best friend would suspect the challenge beneath. Charlie, somehow, has the sense to flee; he produces a pack of cigarettes and slips outside. “What?” she says again.
“Stop it.”
“So, you don’t want me to post a photo of you and Charlie to social media?”
“Cut the crap, Sam. Obviously I don’t want that. Why are you being such an asshole?”
“Finally!” She throws her hands up in the air. “I wondered what it was going to take to get you to admit your feelings. After lying through your teeth to us all morning. After months of moping around, throwing yourself a pity party. And why? Because Gabe wrote a book acknowledging that he used his penis before he met you, and boohoo, you’re sad, but you won’t even talk to him about it. After flipping your shit and getting yourself fired, and then embarking on a top-secret life of spending and screwing, of lying to and alienating anyone and everyone who gives a shit about you. Finally!”
“Excuse me, but how is any of this any of your business?” I ask.
“I’m your best friend, Molly! I care about you, believe it or not. But I’m so sick of trying to help you when you keep blowing me off to go fuck up your relationship and everything else in your life!”
I’m seething. “Sam, I never asked you for your help! Also, you are such a hypocrite. You’re up on your high horse, when meanwhile, you have never once not done whatever and whomever the hell you wanted.”
“You’re right, I’ve slept with other guys while I’ve been with Tom,” she says. “But guess what? Tom knows because I tell him! He and I are grown-ups who actually talk about things and make decisions together. Shit happens. I got pregnant, and we talked about it, and now we’re having a baby. I’m sorry, Molly, but when’s the last time you said one goddamn honest thing to Gabe, or to me or Kirsten, or to yourself, for that matter?”
I’m too stunned to speak. And Sam isn’t done berating me: “No wonder Gabe thinks it’s okay to pull some stupid publicity stunt palling around with his ex-girlfriend to sell his book.”
I don’t know when exactly Kirsten meandered over. “You guys, what’s going on?” She’s panicky, looking back and forth between the two of us. “Molly? Sam?”
I squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry, Kirsten.” And then I take off.
• • •
I’ve suffered from motion sickness ever since I was a kid. Whenever Leo wants a favor, he brings up the time when I, aged nine, spewed chunks onto his lap on a family road trip. Thankfully, there’s no one next to me on this Greyhound, so I can sprawl across both seats while concentrating on not vomiting. That’s preferable, anyway, to thinking thoughts of any real substance. Still, I can’t stop Sam’s taunt from playing on a loop in my head: When’s the last time you said one goddamn honest thing to yourself? Well, here’s an honest thought: If I hadn’t come across a bus station a mile from the park visitor center, I’m not sure what I would have done. Actually, scratch that. Honestly, if I hadn’t come across a bus station a mile from the park visitor center, I would’ve doubled back to Charlie’s cabin, spent another night there, and subsequently despised myself for it. But, luckily, it didn’t come to that. So now I’m halfway back to the city, with approximately half a shred of pride intact.
I was supposed to be gone another night, and my clothes and toothbrush and house keys are all still upstate, languishing among the Barbie dolls. So, I take a Lyft from Port Authority to Leo’s apartment, praying he has the night off. When he answer
s the door, I nearly leap into his arms.
“Hey,” he says, clearly not as thrilled to see me as I am to see him.
“Can I crash on your couch for the night?”
“Uh, okay, but can I ask what you’re doing here?”
“Being here for you. Duh.” I again hear Sam’s taunt in the back of my head. “Well, that and other stuff I’d prefer not to talk about at the moment.”
Leo doesn’t push me. “All right. Then let’s not talk about anything, okay?”
“Deal.”
We settle in to watch whatever’s on TV, which turns out to be The Little Rascals. A few minutes in, I realize I know what’s coming next. A distant memory arises of our hometown movie theater, of splitting a box of Junior Mints with Leo, of making him hold my hand through the whole movie even though it wasn’t scary. It must’ve come out when I was six or seven. I get chilly and ask Leo for a sweater. The one he hands me smells like Lana, and somehow it only makes me chillier. I squeeze my brother’s hand.
He squeezes back, and says, “Let’s just watch the movie.” And we do. But I don’t let go of his hand, and he doesn’t let go of mine, either.
• • •
Leo’s couch is more of a statement piece than a piece of furniture designed for human comfort. I’m fitful for hours, illuminating my phone screen every few minutes only to discover again and again that no one is trying to reach me—not my friends, not Gabe, not Charlie, not even my mother.
I’ve never been a good sleeper. When I was little, I begged my parents to teach me how to fall asleep. I wanted a real lesson, like the ones I’d had on tying my shoes and reading my ABCs. Counting sheep, listening to soothing music, deep breathing—none of it worked. My mom would plead with me, Aren’t you tired? Of course I was tired—that was the whole problem. Having a problem didn’t mean you knew how to solve it.
My father understood. He’d stay up with me, and make us peanut butter toast and mugs of warm apple cider. Then we’d sit at the kitchen table reading—The Boston Globe for him, a Ramona book for me. My father taught me the word “insomnia” and told me some of the smartest people suffered from it: Abraham Lincoln, Vincent van Gogh, our president. He made me feel proud of my inability to shut off my thoughts. The hours of the night would stretch out and swirl and slowly slip away, until the sun finally peeked out from the horizon. I remember those nights as some of my happiest.
But then my father got sick, and he started sleeping all the time. Meanwhile, I slept even less. I’d make my own peanut butter toast and keep vigil at his bedside. My mother let me do this during the daytime, but if she caught me lurking by the bed in the middle of the night, she’d toss off the covers and march me back to my room. “Big girls sleep through the night—in their own beds,” she’d say, deaf to my pleas to stay. “You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” For hours, I’d watch the shadows dance across my walls, wondering if one day I’d get sick and then finally be able to sleep, too.
Around that time, I started slipping into Leo’s room and tucking myself into his bed. I’d wiggle into his warmth and nuzzle against the scratch of his pajamas. My brother slept deeply; without waking up, he’d lift an arm to accommodate me. There in his bed, I could finally rest.
I do the same thing now, drifting from Leo’s couch to his bed. And just like all those years ago, he lifts an arm to let me in beside him. My brother’s breathing is a soporific, and when I’m close to drifting off, I whisper, as if something is wresting the words out from inside of me, “I spent the night with Charlie.” It’s such a relief that tears spring from my eyes. Leo murmurs, maybe in his sleep, and then he flops over and flings his arm around me. In that way we sleep, like little kids.
• • •
After two nights in two different beds with two different men, I’m back in my own bed, waiting nervously for Gabe to return home. The bed is made up with Power Ranger sheets, rough and scratchy against my skin. I gave them to Gabe as a joke after his mother revealed that as a boy he’d slept with all the action figures, throwing a tantrum if one went missing. Only when we haven’t done laundry in weeks do we resort to using them.
At one a.m., Gabe texts me that he’s crashing at his parents’ hotel—they’re in town for his book party. After that, I sleep fitfully, splayed out across the bed, waking frequently to the glares of the brightly costumed superheroes. Even through their alien-like helmets, I feel their judgment.
Chapter 27
GABE’S BOOK PARTY is at the bookstore where he took me on one of our first dates. It was at the height of that early exciting phase of the relationship, when the two of us felt so full of potential, the air between us practically fizzing with it. Gabe was my treasure trove, any snippet I discovered about him gold. As we wandered the bookstore arm in arm, I loved watching my new boyfriend run his fingers along the spines of books like they were holy, this space his house of worship. He held up volumes and shared how each one had affected him. Sheepishly, he confessed his dream: to see his own name displayed in the store window one day for his own book reading. I dreamed along with him, feeling proud to be his partner. That’s when I came up with my private name for him: “Scrabe,” Scribe + Gabe.
Gabe introduced me that day to E.B. White’s book of essays Here is New York. Like me, White was a Maine native transplanted to New York, and his words felt like they could’ve originated from inside my head. Since my first days as an NYU freshman, I’d always felt ambivalent about the city. I was in awe of the noise and the activity, so different from the hushed, wide-open spaces I was used to. I was equal parts impressed and intimidated by the throngs of people all doing their own things, all seeming so sure of themselves, unbothered by the hordes of neighboring bodies. I understood the ironic magic of New York, that within the crowds was the potential for a person to feel freer, to find one’s own place—even if I personally hadn’t yet fulfilled that potential. Getting to know Gabe started to change that.
Gabe bought me a copy of Here is New York and we read it aloud together. It was a paean to the city and its settlers, those who powered the streets with passion, those who found a deep belonging here precisely because of its constant churn and change. Zipping around the city with Gabe made me feel finally like I too was one of those settlers, an essential part of the place. I was falling in love twice over—with a guy and with a place. I told this to Gabe, and he inscribed my book: “To my favorite New York settler.”
Walking to the bookstore now, I reconsider his dedication. Settlers are pioneers, adventurers, seekers of something new. But eventually they settle down, settle disputes, settle for what comes … or not, I suppose. One can always un-settle. It’s exactly how I feel at the moment: unsettled.
Gabe’s dream has officially come true. There it is, I see: his name displayed in the bookstore’s window. The sidewalk chalkboard is a work of art, no doubt the creation of some vastly overqualified bookseller. The announcement, “Gabriel Dover, The Charms of Dahlia, March 15th, 7 p.m.,” is drawn into a billow of smoke; it comes from a cigarette that’s held by a replica of the woman from the book cover.
I spot him inside the store: Gabe, my Scrabe. E.B. White described New York as a poem whose magic is at once real and elusive. I feel it standing here on the sidewalk, noticing a smudge in the corner of Gabe’s chalked name, and watching him through the glass, surrounded by people who’ve come to celebrate him.
Inside, I find Gabe, peck his cheek, and then withdraw. I don’t want to break the spell halo-ing around him, the well wishes of his parents and friends, his coworkers and acquaintances, and a smattering of people I don’t recognize. I get a glass of wine and hang around the periphery, revisiting the books from Gabe’s show-and-tell years ago, the authors’ names stamped in bold lettering across the covers: Carver, Exley, Kesey, Robbins, Salinger, Updike, Vonnegut, Wolff. Now the books strike me not as sacred but stale, a bunch of old men and their tired prose. How arrogant it seems to declare yourself an author, to consider your private thoughts worthy of public
ation and an audience. At the edge of my hearing is Gabe’s full-throated laugh.
I’m two generous glasses of wine in when Kirsten and Caleb arrive. Caleb greets me with a hug. “I hear you girls had a blast upstate,” he says. “Kirsten noticed you left a few things behind.” My friend wordlessly hands me my duffel bag, her forehead wrinkled with concern.
“That’s me, always so forgetful.” My cheeks go hot under Kirsten’s gaze. “Thank you for coming. It’ll mean a lot to Gabe.”
“Let’s go greet the author,” Caleb says. As he leads Kirsten through the crowd, he places a hand on the small of her back, the same gesture of the elderly man on the trail upstate. It’s impossible to imagine the two of them splitting up. I return to the wine station for a refill, then weave my way through the store. When I spot Kirsten loitering in the children’s book nook, I duck and head the other way.
Each ding of the doorbell draws my eye to the entrance. Every face is a disappointment. Only when the store owner announces that it’s time to get started and the rows of seats fill do I realize whom I’ve been waiting for: Sam. I check my phone—maybe she texted—but the only message is from Leo, saying he’s battling epic traffic but on his way. As Gabe is called up to the lectern, I find a spot to stand in the back. When Leo slips in, I see him look around for me, give up, and then hover at the side.
The owner is finishing her introductory remarks, about how Gabe has been a loyal and longtime supporter of the store, and how proud it makes her when members of the community become authors. “With that, I’m thrilled to announce Gabriel Dover, to officially launch his debut novel, The Charms of Dahlia.”
The applause is generous and resounding. I clap until my palms sting, conjuring up all I’ve felt about this book over the past six months. At the peak of the acclaim, the doorbell dings again. In walks Talia. It’s like slow motion, how she saunters before the crowd in her slinky slip dress and claims a seat front row, center. Surely she planned this late arrival, this opportunity to make an entrance. It’s an announcement of her import, her essentialness to the book and to this event and, of course, to Gabe. A moment later, Jonathan slips in, too, looking disgruntled.
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