The Futures

by Anna Pitoniak

  “I can’t wait to see you,” she said, her voice scratchy over Skype. It was late May; I hadn’t seen her since January. “I miss you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I’m going to meet you at the airport, okay? Right near baggage claim.”

  The crowds ebbed and flowed beneath the bright lights of Charles de Gaulle Airport, and then I saw Julia. She wore a loose black dress that skimmed her tan thighs, a bright scarf, her hair in a bun. She looked older, and more beautiful. That summer we traveled across Europe, living out of our backpacks and surviving on bread and wine. It was my first time abroad, and I was self-conscious about my unstamped passport. Julia had traveled a lot on family trips to London, Paris, Venice, Barcelona, Athens. She knew her way around these cities intuitively. One afternoon in Rome, she led me to the top of the Aventine Hill. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said, walking with purpose.

  At the top of the hill was an orange grove overlooking the city. The sky was soft and golden, and couples took turns posing for pictures in front of the sprawling sunset view. I figured this must be the place she’d meant to lead us. But Julia kept walking. She led me past the grove, down a paved road, to a plain-looking green wooden door. “What is it?” I said.

  “Okay.” She pointed at a small keyhole. “Look through that.”

  I found out later that it was a famous thing to do: to peer through this keyhole and see the framed view of the basilica in the distance. But at that moment it felt like she was giving me something just discovered, something I never would have found for myself. A new way of looking at the world. There was a stillness as the image came into focus.

  We got back to campus senior year, and it was different. It was better. We were happy. I felt more certain about all of it. It made sense to me, for the first time, how one thing flowed into another; that there was a logic to the way life unfolded. We never did wind up winning a national championship, the one Reynolds had hinted at back in freshman year. I was a solid player, up and down my wing with discipline, but I wasn’t good enough to play forever. Gone were the days when I’d cram my hours with extra squats and lifts and sprints. It didn’t matter anymore, because that wasn’t what I wanted. I was done with hockey. What I wanted was a life with Julia.

  I still had one of the business cards from four years earlier. Reynolds must have passed out hundreds of those over the years. Finance was a well-trod path for other guys from the hockey team. I could do that, I thought. And it felt in keeping with a certain vision, an answer to the question that I’d been chasing ever since I was a kid. The jobs in finance flowed through campus like a wide, swift river. I wound up getting an offer from the most competitive place I applied to—Spire Management, a hedge fund in New York.

  And when I asked Julia to move in with me, she said what I knew she would say. She smiled and threw her arms around me. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I will.”

  Chapter 2

  Julia

  Abby and I were at a party at Jake Fletcher’s apartment on the night of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. The flat-screen TV in the living room showed a massive stadium filled with glittering lights. Jake shared this apartment, at the top of a high-rise building in the financial district, with three of his friends from Dartmouth.

  “Holy shit. Look at that view,” Abby said. The Statue of Liberty was visible in the distance, through the window. “How much do you think they’re paying?”

  “A couple thousand each.” The wraparound terrace, the sunken living room: Jake and his roommates may have been pulling down banker salaries, but this was above and beyond. “Right? At least. I’m sure they’re getting help from their parents.”

  “You think any of them are single?”

  I grimaced. “Ugh. Don’t even joke.”

  “Hello? You’ve seen my shit-hole apartment, right? It might be worth it.”

  She turned, expecting a laugh, but instead she saw me scanning the room again, frowning at my phone. She waved her hand in front of me. “Earth to Julia?”

  “He’s two hours late. He hasn’t even texted.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a mope. Come with me.” She grabbed my hand. Abby always knew how to turn things around. She was the youngest of five, and the Darwinian pressures of a crowded childhood had made her resourceful. She was like the stone soup of friends. Give her twenty bucks and a room and you’ll get a great party.

  “Hold this,” she said, handing me her cup. We found an empty corner on the terrace, forty stories above the street. A constellation of cigarettes moved through the night air. Music thumped from the built-in speakers.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked as she lit the end of the joint.

  “Here. We’re splitting this.”

  “I haven’t smoked since graduation.”

  “That’s no way to live,” she said in a choked voice, holding the smoke in her lungs. Then she exhaled. “See? This party is awesome.”

  We’d smoked half the joint when I saw Jake Fletcher across the terrace. I waved him over.

  “Hey, Jake,” I said. “This is my friend Abby. My roommate from college.”

  Abby held up the joint, but he shook his head. “I wish. They drug-test us at work.”

  “Where do you work?” Abby said.

  “Lehman.”

  “Oh, well, sorry about that,” she said. “Great party, by the way.”

  Abby got even friendlier when she was high. She and Jake started talking. My attention slipped loose, which didn’t take much to happen these days. There was a pause in the music, and the next song that played was one of the big hits from the previous summer, a song I’d heard a million times on campus in the past year. I leaned out over the railing. We were at the edge of the island, where the East River curves into the harbor. The shorter, darker skyline of Brooklyn sat across the water like another city.

  I could close my eyes, and the sounds of the party weren’t so different from those in college, but I wasn’t tricking myself. The feeling in the air had changed. There was a whole world out there, beyond wherever we were gathered. It didn’t matter whether it was a cramped walk-up or a tar rooftop or a weedy backyard strung with lights. How you spent your time was suddenly up to you. There were other options. Infinite, terrifying options opening up like a crevasse and no one to tell you which way to go. I think everyone was wondering, through the haze of weed and beer pong and tequila shots, whether this—right here, right now—was in fact what they were supposed to be doing. I suspected I wasn’t alone in detecting a desperation in the muggy air, people laughing too loudly, drinking beer that hadn’t been chilled long enough.

  My reverie was interrupted by the sound of my name. I turned and saw Evan pushing through the crowd. Evan, who was more than two hours late, his tie in a straggly knot and dark circles under his eyes.

  “Nice of you to join us,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended.

  “I’m sorry, Jules. I got held up at work. There’s this big new project, and—”

  “It’s fine.” My cup was empty, and that suddenly seemed like the most pressing thing. I pointed at the kitchen. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  We took a cab home that night, up the FDR. The old Crown Vic groaned as the driver hunched over the wheel, his foot pressed down hard, swerving between lanes and urging the car to go faster. The meter ticked higher, and I felt a prick of guilt for taking a cab instead of the subway. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window and saw the Pepsi-Cola sign glimmering up ahead like a lighthouse. I’d been unfairly terse with Evan all night. We both knew what he was signing up for when he took the job at Spire. I turned back toward him, intending to apologize and to ask him about the new project he’d mentioned. But his eyes were closed. He was already asleep.

  * * *

  I guess I’m having trouble knowing where to begin. It’s true, that summer was when the feeling descended. Those hot, humid New York City days and nights when I was ne
rvy and jumpy all the time, a constant thrum underneath ordinary movements, a startled sensation like taking one too many steps up the stairs in the dark. It seemed obvious enough, the source of it. I had just graduated. I was trying to become an adult, trying to navigate the real world. Trying to find an answer to the question of what came next. Who wouldn’t be made anxious by that? The problem existed in the present tense. But sometimes I wonder whether I got it all wrong. I wonder how far back it really goes.

  * * *

  Junior year of college, Christmas break. I was home earlier than everyone else because I had a light exam schedule that semester. My parents were out, and I was wandering around the house with nothing to do. I pulled out an old hardcover copy of The Wapshot Chronicle from one of the bookshelves in the living room. A frail, yellowed photograph slipped from the pages. It was a picture of my mother as a young woman, wearing a loose paisley dress, her long hair parted down the middle. She was sitting on a flight of steps with a group of girls flashing peace signs at the camera. On the back of the photograph, in her delicate handwriting, was the inscription: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RALLY, WELLESLEY COLLEGE, 1975.

  I shivered. Her hair, her smile: it was like looking at a picture of myself dressed up as a tourist from another era. I closed the book, put it back on the shelf. Then I took the book out again, removed the picture, and put it in my pocket. I kept thinking about it, all through that week, that month. How different my mother looked back then. She was the exact same age in that photograph—a junior in college—as I was in that moment. She never spoke about college. When she occasionally talked about the past, the stories always began in law school, never further back than that. Law school was where she and my father met. Both of them graduated near the top of their class and took jobs at high-powered firms before my mother left to raise me and my sister. I don’t think she ever stopped comparing herself to my father, who is a senior partner and a widely admired attorney. She excels in other ways instead: charity boards, meetings and lunches, a perfectly slender physique. Her energy is always channeled to productive ends. But maybe that wasn’t how she originally intended her life to turn out. Maybe there was another trajectory, one she’d been careful not to reveal to us.

  But how would I know that? She doesn’t complain or wax nostalgic. She doesn’t tolerate moping—not in herself and certainly not in us. She was too busy shaping us into the best versions of ourselves. That was her job, and she was good at it. I turned out right. I fit smoothly into the world around me. My teachers liked me. I fell into a comfortable position within the social hierarchy: near the top of the pyramid, but not so high as to wind up a target of scheming usurpers. I never had a problem getting a date. I checked every box there was to check: friends, boys, sports, school.

  It’s only now I see the red flags along the way. Cracks in the armor. I remember a writing assignment in English class, the year before I left for boarding school. Our class filed outside, notebooks in hand, and sat down on the grassy hill behind the gym. Our teacher told us to describe the scene around us in any way we wanted—to be creative, to free-associate. I never liked English as a subject. I never got what was so great about it. Still, I was surprised to find a bright red C on my essay and a note from the teacher asking me to come see him. He inquired, eyes full of concern, whether I’d understood the purpose of this assignment. I’d always done okay in his class before, even though I hated it. I could string together insightful statements about Hamlet, Lord of the Flies, you name it. But somehow, I couldn’t manage such an open-ended task. I struggled to fill those two pages. I had described the sights, the sounds, the smells. What else was I supposed to do? My stomach roiled with humiliation. What else did he want me to say?

  But that was just one essay. One bad grade evened out by many good ones. The next year, I went away to boarding school, and I had never been happier. I started dating Rob. I played volleyball in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. I snuck cigarettes in the woods on Friday nights and sipped spiked hot chocolate at football games on Saturday mornings. I got straight As. Rob was recruited to play soccer at Harvard, and I was going to Yale. We agreed to try long distance, although I think both of us knew it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t matter, because on the very first day of school, I met Evan.

  * * *

  Three weeks after I found that photograph of my mother, I left for a semester abroad. She had been the one to persuade me to go. I’d lamented the idea of leaving, of missing Evan, of missing Abby and my other friends. “Don’t be silly,” my mother said. “They’ll be there when you get back.” She framed it as a decision to be made for practical reasons. When else would I get the chance to live in Paris? Why wouldn’t I take advantage of this opportunity? She was right, of course, but I had different reasons for going. Sophomore year had been a difficult one, a bad year capped by a particularly bad incident. I needed a change. I sent in my application the first week of the new school year.

  That January, I flew to Paris on a red-eye and took a bleary taxi ride to a crooked street in the 11th arrondissement. That old picture of my mother at Wellesley came with me in my suitcase, and I tacked it to the wall above my narrow bed in my homestay. My host was young and gamine, with bad teeth and great hair. She was a costume designer for the national theater. She hosted students in her spare bedroom to make extra money, she explained, so that she could spend her summers traveling with her boyfriend. Her hours ran long and late, and I rarely saw her, but the apartment always smelled like her—strong coffee and clove cigarettes.

  Except during our weekly Skype dates, I didn’t think about Evan much. I was too consumed by what was in front of me: the bottles of wine on the banks of the Seine, the afternoons in the Luxembourg Gardens, the yeasty scent of the bakeries when we rambled home from the clubs at dawn. I sank into it, like a deep bath, and I felt myself letting go of something for the first time. Evan and I planned that he would meet me in Paris after the semester ended. But when that day arrived, on the Metro ride to the airport, I felt sweaty and nervous. What if, these past months, I had changed—or he had changed—so much that we wouldn’t have anything to say to each other? I scanned the crowds at baggage claim, anxious not to miss him; he didn’t have a phone that worked in Europe. We’d spent time apart before, the previous two summers, when he’d gone back to Canada and I’d gone back to Boston. But this stretch was different. I’d learned to live in another country. He’d learned to live without me. Suddenly our plan—traveling through Europe for two months before senior year—struck me as foolish. What if he arrived and everything was all wrong? What if it was over?

  Then I spotted him, towering above the rest of the crowd, in a ball cap and T-shirt. He saw me and smiled. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be wrapped in his arms, to feel the vibration of his laughter in his chest. Things did feel different. Evan felt like an old friend, an old lover, one whose reappearance in my life was sweeter for giving me a link between past and present. I was known; I was remembered, even far from home.

  We flew back to Boston in August, pausing for a night, and then we got on a plane to British Columbia. It was my first time out there, my first time meeting his parents after more than two years of dating. His hometown was tiny, like a grain of sand on the map. That first night, in Evan’s childhood bedroom beneath the slanted rafters, in the modest house tucked among the tall pine trees, I realized that I had never experienced so much quiet in my life.

  “Have fun, kids!” His mother saluted us with her thermos as his parents drove to work the next morning. She leaned through the window as they backed out of the driveway. “Oh, and Julia, my bike’s out back if you want to borrow it.”

  We rode through town that first day, Evan pointing out the landmarks of his childhood: the high school, his first girlfriend’s house, the hockey rink where he’d spent so many hours practicing. Weeks, months, years of practice. Someone called his name as we were pedaling away from the rink. “Peck? Is that you?”

  “Coach Wheeler?” Evan
called back. The two of them hugged, the coach clapping him hard on the back. “Julia, this is my old coach, Mr. Wheeler. Coach, this is my girlfriend, Julia Edwards.”

  “Where are you from, Julia?” He knew right away I wasn’t a local.

  “Boston,” I said. “Evan and I go to college together.”

  “How is it out there? Been meaning to ask your folks how your season was. He was the best player I ever had.” He winked at me. “No one ever worked as hard as Evan Peck. I knew this guy would go places.”

  Evan beamed from the praise. They talked for a long time, catching up on Evan’s college career, on how close Yale had come to winning the championship that year. His coach asked whether he knew what he was going to do after graduation. “You going to try and play in the minors, maybe?” he said. “Or you could go over to Europe. You’re good enough for it.” Evan shrugged, his smile slackening, the light dimmed. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.

  The next day, we biked over to the river to meet up with some of his friends. Most of them had stayed put, working construction or other odd jobs in town, still living in the houses they grew up in. They brought along beer and a waterproof boom box, and we went tubing down the river. It felt like something out of a movie. We floated with our inner tubes lashed together, our toes trailing in the cold water, the beer light and fizzy on our tongues. Evan traced circles on the back of my hand. He tilted his head back to look at the summer sky, a bright blue banner framed by the soft green fringe of the pine trees. “God, I love it here,” he said.