Love and Gravity

by Samantha Sotto

  Good night, Andrea.

  “Good night, Isaac. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Isaac’s face paled. He flipped through his notebook. His eyes raced to the bottom of a page. Their rims reddened and quivered.

  “What is it?” Andrea said. “What’s wrong?

  “Isaac?”

  We shall not see each other tomorrow.

  “The next night then?”

  He shook his head.

  Andrea tiptoed and tilted her face closer to the hole in the wall. “So when—”

  His lips silenced hers and shattered every law the universe had wedged between them. She melted into his mouth. Time blushed and looked away, stranding them in the second they stood in.

  The wall sealed Isaac behind it. Andrea collapsed onto the sofa bed. The phone vibrated beneath her leg. Nate’s name flashed on the screen.

  “Finally,” he said. “I’ve been trying to call you for the past fifteen minutes. I thought you were picking me up from the airport?”

  “Oh…uh…was that today? I’m sorry. I forgot. I’ll be right there.”

  “Forget it. I’ll get a cab.”

  Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

  —ISAAC NEWTON’S FIRST LAW OF MOTION

  Los Angeles

  Present Day

  Andrea is twenty-one.

  Do you love me yet? Isaac’s question had turned to dust months ago, but Andrea could not exhale without choking on it. The paper planes that Isaac had sent her through the crack had carried more than just his words. They ferried the invisible, the immaterial, and the ignored. They were like the wind in history’s hands, but they fit snugly in the cup of Andrea’s palms. Isaac’s first memory, favorite color, and the way he liked to lie half-curled on his left side when he slept were not the things that made him significant, much less great. They were far more precious than that. The many little nothings added up, giving Isaac substance. They made Isaac as real as the other man who lived in her soul.

  “Dre, open up.” Nate pounded his fists on her door.

  Since Nate had returned from his tour, his eyes asked Andrea the very question that Isaac had written on his plane. But giving her heart to one of them meant carving it from the half the other owned. Refusing to look Nate in the eye was the least painful choice she could make.

  “I lost my keys,” he said, slurring his words through her door.

  Andrea let him in. The stench of alcohol, dried sweat, and cigarette smoke trailed him. “Again? Seriously? You look like shit and you smell worse.”

  Movie nights with Nate had gotten fewer and far between. Her stock of Honey Nut Cheerios grew stale when he stopped coming by for breakfast. Andrea heard him stumble drunk down the hall outside her door at dawn on more days than he was sober, and on some nights, he didn’t bother going home at all. Tonight Andrea wished that he had chosen the latter.

  “Well, hello to you, too.” He grabbed her by the waist and pressed his mouth against her lips. Whiskey coated his tongue.

  Andrea shoved him away. “Get the fuck off me.”

  He grabbed her elbow and tugged her to him. “Come on, Dre. We used to do more than just kiss, remember? Let’s have some fun. For old times’ sake.”

  Andrea wrestled free. “Stay away, Nate,” she said, backing into the sofa bed. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  He flopped onto the sofa and laughed. “How much time do you have?” He patted the space next to him. “Come sit. This may take a while.”

  “I won’t talk to you when you’re like this,” Andrea said.

  “Oops. Sorry. My mistake.” He stretched out on the sofa. “I thought you just didn’t like talking to me in general.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Tears stung her eyes. “Just tell me what’s bothering you. Let me help.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Let me try.”

  “All right. Then love me. Can you do that for me, Dre? Do you think you can help me out? No? Too difficult?”

  Andrea’s mouth moved, but the truth came out of her in a grating sob rather than any meaningful sound. Nate was a thread woven into her, stitched into every tissue and fastened between every joint and bone. Watching him fall apart, Andrea came undone, too.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “You made it perfectly clear a long time ago that you didn’t feel the same way about me. I guess I’ve just been sticking around all these years stupidly hoping that one day you’d wake up and see me as more than just…me. But that hasn’t happened, has it? I’m not blind. I wish I were. That way, I wouldn’t be able to see how far away you are.”

  “Nate, please. Don’t be this way.”

  “Don’t you think I wish I could? I wish I could be in the same room with you and not think about wanting to kiss you. I wish I could be happy just keeping things the way they are. But I can’t. It’s too hard.” He pushed himself off the sofa and marched to the door.

  “Wait.” Andrea ran after him the way she used to when they were children when he stomped away after one of their playground spats. All she had to do then to make him come around was punch him in the arm and pout. Fixing things between them had been easy when the worst things they broke were drumsticks and cello bows. People shattered less easily, but when they did, they were harder to mend. “Where are you going? Let’s talk about this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…”

  “Because what, Dre?”

  “Because before we were anything else, before we grew up and began wanting more than just to share our lunches or joke around, we were friends. Friends who looked out for each other. Friends who knew how to make each other laugh the way no one else could. Nothing can change that. I’m here for you, Nate. I’ve always been here. You can’t walk away like this.”

  He clutched her hand. A stream of tears had washed away the glaze the liquor had left in his eyes. He gazed directly at Andrea, restored to the Nate she knew. “Then make me stay.”

  Her fingers entwined around his. All she had to do was open her mouth and say the words he wanted desperately to hear. Nate would smile. He would kiss her. She would kiss him back and all would be forgotten, forgiven, and well. But loving Nate had never been the problem. Loving only him was. She turned her face and hid from the plea in his eyes.

  “Yeah.” Nate let go. “That’s what I thought.”

  —

  Andrea found a new apartment that week. She left a note on Nate’s door and told him that she was sorry. She didn’t bother listing what she was apologizing for. There wasn’t enough room on the page.

  Love and dignity cannot share the same abode.

  —OVID

  Los Angeles

  Present Day

  Andrea is twenty-two.

  Cheap red wine splattered along the side of the overstuffed trash can. Andrea shoved her hand through the bin’s plastic flap and pushed down an empty Pinot bottle and pizza box to make more room. She gathered the last of the empty lipstick-stained cups from her Ikea dining table and tossed them in the trash. She wiped the water rings and pizza crumbs off the frosted glass tabletop and set her birthday cake on it. Like the impromptu dinner party she had thrown for some of the staff from the office, the dark chocolate fudge cake made her new apartment feel less empty.

  Upgrading to the one-bedroom unit had seemed like a good idea when she had been promoted to account manager, but she had since realized that moving had been a mistake. A larger apartment meant only that she had more walls to stare at without glowing cracks.

  Andrea headed to the kitchen to hunt for matches to light her striped candles. Her birthday present from her father and Sylvia sat on the faux-granite counter next to the new Moleskine journal from her mother. This year, Johann Sebastian Bach was mint green and matched the Monet-inspired chiffon scarf Sylvia had picked out. Andrea had never been happier to see fresh, blank pages. Its predecessor wa
s nearly stained from cover to cover with all the guilt, hurt, and helplessness that flowed out of her whenever she thought about Nate. On the rest of its pages, Andrea wrote, scratched out, and rewrote drafts of the letter she was going to ask Mr. Westin to deliver to Isaac. She paused her match hunt to review the latest draft she had written on the first page of this year’s journal.

  Dear Isaac,

  It feels beyond strange to be on this end of the conversation. I’ve bottled up what I’m about to tell you for so long that I’m afraid that when it gushes out over this page all at once, it will make no sense. While we shared more than I could have hoped for or imagined in the month the crack allowed us to see each other every night, there was one thing I could not let my little paper planes carry. It was too heavy for their wings. I cannot let you spend another second thinking of me or writing to me without knowing who I really am.

  More than my wall breaks open whenever the crack appears. I split in two. One half is the part that dies a little every time the wall closes with you behind it. The other is the part that remains devoted to a boy who made school less lonely. He no longer speaks to me, but this has not diminished how I feel about him. What he was to me is frozen in place like a shard. I do not know if it will ever melt away or if I want it to. It’s the punishment I deserve for lying to him all these years. I refuse to make the same mistake with you. Now that you know the truth, I leave it to you to decide whether the half of me that is completely, utterly, and wholly yours is worth another drop of ink.

  Andrea closed her journal, clipping an envelope between its pages. The envelope contained the final version of her letter to Isaac. She pulled the envelope out, sealed it, and slipped it back inside her journal. Sunlight sparkled in the glass face of her Omega. She had just gotten it back from the engravers. The answer she owed Isaac’s paper plane warmed her wrist.

  For Isaac. Love, Andrea

  The words were coiled in the shape of an infinity symbol, mimicking the design Isaac had shown her. She wasn’t sure if love was the right word for what she felt for him, but it was the best the online thesaurus could suggest. The right words to describe the constant, aching pull she felt across time had not been invented. Labeling the path of wonder, gratitude, curiosity, and attraction she had traveled on since she was seven was simple, but the point where it branched off in every direction was not.

  Courage and fear. Resolve and weakness. Certainty and doubt. Andrea hurtled down every road. She felt everything all at once, including the compulsions to stay put and run away. It was impossible to feel just one thing for a man who was both long dead and very much alive. She had the engravers etch the word love on Isaac’s watch knowing that it fell terribly and painfully short.

  Andrea set her journal on top of the two-month-old invitation her dad had sent.

  The invitation was buried deep beneath a hill of junk mail and bills, but adding to the stack that kept it out of sight was not going to hurt. Her dad was organizing a Beatles tribute concert with the San Francisco Symphony and had invited her to perform as the show’s guest soloist. He had already picked out her song and sent her a copy of the score he had arranged for the show. She tossed a kitchen towel over the pile, fished a box of matches from her kitchen junk drawer, and returned to her cake.

  She straightened the two-layer cake in the middle of the dining table. It was too large to eat by herself, but a cupcake didn’t have enough space for all of her candles. She pushed the yellow-striped candles into the fudge frosting. She lit each, counting out the twenty-two years they marked. She had known Isaac for fifteen of them. In all of that time, she blew out the candles on her birthday cakes, stole a glance at the wall, and made the same wish: Open.

  Wax dripped along the sides of the candles and pooled over the dark chocolate icing. Andrea closed her eyes and breathed out a new wish.

  Open.

  Wider.

  She fanned the candle smoke, whisking her wish away. Two loud knocks rattled her front door. Andrea scampered to answer it.

  “Good day, Ms. Louviere,” Mr. Westin said.

  “Mr. Westin…” After all his visits, Andrea was still startled whenever he showed up.

  “You’ve moved.”

  “Yes. I had to because…” Next to the many paper incarnations of Johann Sebastian Bach, Mr. Westin was the closest thing she had to a confidant. The slightest twitch around his eyes was all the prodding she would have needed to unravel the tangle of thoughts wound around her lungs. Andrea chose to believe that she was feeling bold rather than lonely.

  His gaze remained steady.

  “I needed a bigger shoe box,” she said, shoving her secrets back.

  “I see.”

  “Please come in.” She led him to the dining room. “We can have your cello lesson in here.”

  Mr. Westin followed her to the dining table. His gaze drifted over to her birthday cake. “Are you expecting company?”

  “No. Would you like to have some cake before we begin?” She’d made her wish and no longer had any use for it.

  “Thank you, but chocolate doesn’t agree with me, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  His eyes skimmed over the top of the cake. “Twenty-two.”

  “Yup, getting old. I think I’ll have to switch to those number-type candles next year. There isn’t enough space to squeeze in more.”

  Mr. Westin smiled and sat down. “When you are my age, I doubt very much that you will think that twenty-two is remotely old. Enjoy your youth, Ms. Louviere. It is not something you can wish back.”

  Andrea opened her cello case and took her instrument out. “Would you like to be younger again if you could?”

  “Of course. Who wouldn’t want such a thing?”

  “Really?” She handed him her bow. “I didn’t expect that answer from you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s because you look so comfortable, well, being you.” She tightened the cello’s strings.

  A tired smile added years to his face. “Silver hair and sagging skin are tricks of nature, Ms. Louviere. They make you look more content than you really are. Old age makes everyone look the same. Wrinkles don’t care whether the years they mark are happy or sad. It is time’s way of being kind, I suppose. Loneliness and regret are hard to look at in the eye.”

  —

  Mr. Westin knitted his brows as he played the C major scale in two octaves. He plucked the last note and exhaled. “How was that?”

  “You’re a fast learner.” Andrea took the cello from him. She had made him spend an hour learning how to find the notes on the fingerboard by plucking the strings, pizzicato style, the same way her dad had taught her. “That was really good.”

  Mr. Westin stretched his fingers. “Real musicians make it look easy.”

  “Practice will make finding the notes second nature. You have to be aware of where your fingers are at all times and what note they’re playing without having to think about it. You need to have blind and deaf security in your hand.”

  He massaged his wrinkled fingers. “Learning to trust this old hand might take a while.”

  Andrea smirked. “If I can bite my tongue for over a year while waiting to ask you one question, I know that you can have the same patience.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “And I don’t want to keep you waiting one moment longer.”

  Andrea walked over to her kitchen counter and pulled her letter for Isaac from between the pages of her journal. She turned to Mr. Westin. “You said that you would be able to deliver this for me.”

  “I can deliver it, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Not directly into the hands of the person sending you your letters. There are—”

  “Rules.” Andrea sighed and pressed her letter into his wrinkled hand. “Just do what you can.”

  “I will,” Mr. Westin said, slipping the envelope into his jacket. “But I can only do this for you once.” He dr
ew out a wax-sealed letter from his suit pocket and gave it to Andrea.

  “Why?” Andrea took Isaac’s letter from him.

  “Will my answer to that question be my fee for this lesson?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then tell me what it is that you really wish to know.”

  “You told me that these letters and packages were inside a box.”

  Mr. Westin nodded.

  “Where did you find this box?”

  “Woolsthorpe Manor, England.”

  “Is…” Andrea drew a breath. “Is it still there?”

  “That’s another question.”

  “And I’m not letting you leave until you answer it.” She blocked the door.

  “Very well.” Mr. Westin smiled. “It is your birthday today. Consider it a present.”

  Andrea exhaled and relaxed her shoulders. “So is the box still there?”

  “Yes.”

  —

  She curled up in bed with Isaac’s letter. She had thought that finding out where the rest of his letters were would feel like the afternoon she had discovered that her dad had hidden her Christmas presents behind the vacuum in the closet under their stairs. As soon as Mr. Westin had walked out of her door, it became clear that she was wrong. Knowing that Isaac’s letters were at Woolsthorpe posed a dilemma. If she jumped on a plane to search for them before the dates Isaac meant for them to be sent, she feared that she might endanger their correspondence. If she didn’t, the image of a box containing Isaac’s words was going to gnaw at her until there was nothing left.

  She pressed his latest letter’s seal against her mouth. The red wax bore none of the warmth of Isaac’s lips, but it was all she had of him. Several lifetimes had seemed to pass since they had exchanged a kiss through her wall, and in each, she withered away slowly. She hungered to find a trace of Isaac in each elegant stroke of his pen.

  My dearest Andrea,

  I received your letter.