“I don’t know if I am,” he says. “But I’m working on it.”
“Well, you seem different now,” she says. “It’s like some sort of spark has been lit.” He can tell how much it pains her to say this, how much it costs her. She pushes back her chair and stands up. “Don’t let it go out, okay?”
He stands, too, then walks around the table to give her a hug. They stay like that for ages, her nose pressed into his shoulder, his chin against the top of her head. His heart aches, not because he loves her—he hasn’t for a long time now—but because he loved her once, and that’s something that never completely leaves you.
“Let’s not be dramatic about this,” she says eventually, stepping back and wiping at her eyes. “We already split up once. No need for a second round.”
Hugo laughs. “Okay.”
“So what happens next?”
“With us?”
“With you,” she says. “What will you do now?”
“Now?” Hugo says with a smile. “I’ve got a letter to write.”
When she wakes the next morning, Mae forgets where she is for a second. There have been so many new rooms, so many different views over the last week. But now she’s home in her own bed, the familiar sound of the nearby train whistle coming through the window.
She reaches for her phone, her heart falling when she sees there’s still nothing from Hugo. It can only mean he’s with Margaret, and that shouldn’t bother her. After all, they’ve already said their goodbyes and gone their separate ways. But still, there’s a pit in her stomach as she stares at the screen.
How’s SF? she types out, then immediately erases it.
She tries again: I miss you.
But she deletes that too. It doesn’t seem like enough.
What she really wants to say is: You have no idea how much.
And what she really wants to know is: Do you miss me too?
There’s a knock on her bedroom door, and Mae sits up, expecting to see one of her dads, but instead it’s Priyanka who pokes her head in. Mae stares at her for a second, then immediately bursts into tears.
“Whoa, you okay?” Priyanka says, hurrying over to sit on the edge of the bed.
Mae launches herself at her friend, folding Priyanka into the world’s tightest hug. “What are you doing here?” she asks, sitting back again and wiping away the tears with her sleeve. “You’re supposed to be at school.”
“Nah,” she says. “Pretty sure I’m supposed to be here.”
She kicks off her shoes and crawls into bed, too, and they lay on their sides facing each other, the way they used to do during sleepovers when they were little. Mae thought she was done crying, but a rogue tear slides down her nose. “Can you believe she’s gone?”
“I can’t,” Priyanka says solemnly. “It hasn’t fully sunk in yet.”
“Not for me either.”
“There was nobody like her.”
Mae’s throat goes tight and she swallows hard, suddenly anxious to talk about anything else. “It feels like magic that you’re here. How are you? How’s school? How’s Alex?” But before Priyanka has a chance to answer, Mae lets out a strangled laugh. “Alex!”
“What?” Priyanka asks, giving her a funny look.
“It’s just…I’m only now realizing how brave you guys are.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, you’re in love with each other, which is crazy enough,” says Mae, a little wild eyed. “But on top of that, you’re taking this huge leap by staying together in spite of all the time and distance between you. It’s totally bonkers when you think about it. But also really, really brave.”
“What happened to you on that train?” Priyanka says, laughing. “I sent you off insisting that love was like a pizza.”
“That’s the thing,” Mae says with a grin. “It turns out it is.”
Priyanka shakes her head in wonder. “What a difference a week makes.”
Afterward—once they’ve caught up more about Hugo and Alex and school and the train, once they’ve told a few stories about Nana that made them both cry, and made plans to catch up more tomorrow night—Priyanka heads home to get ready for the funeral.
Alone again, Mae walks over to her closet, riffling through until she finds a simple black dress, the only one she owns. When she pulls it out, she sees that there’s a piece of blue paper pinned to the tag, and even before she reaches for it, she knows somehow that it’s a note from her grandmother.
For a moment, she just stands there, hugging the dress. There are dust motes floating in the light from the window, and the house is quiet all around her, and she closes her eyes. Then she sits down on her bed to read the note.
Dear Mae,
I’m sorry we didn’t get to say goodbye. I know you’re probably angry with me. But you know how when you’re sick or scared, people always tell you to think of something happy? Well, I was thinking of you. Out there on your big adventure.
I hope you loved it. I hope you saw a lot. And I hope you fell for the cute boy on the train. You have one of the brightest hearts I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Now go out there and let it shine.
Be good. Be brave. Be yourself.
I love you,
Nana
P.S. Don’t let your pop eat too much bacon. And make sure your dad gets those silly tweed jackets taken out a little. He can’t button them, and we all know he’s never going to lose those last few pounds. And make sure they both come visit you in California. They could use an adventure too. (Who couldn’t?)
P.P.S. Wouldn’t it be just like me to write this note and then not die after all? If I forget about it and you find this when you’re home for Thanksgiving and it turns out I’m still kicking, please disregard all of the above and redeem this note for a hug instead.
Mae is still crying when she walks over to the desk to get her camera. And when she turns it on and sets it carefully on a stack of books. She’s still crying when she sits down on the edge of the bed, the black dress—which she’ll need to wear to the funeral in a few short hours—scrunched in her lap like a blanket. It’s only when she begins to speak that the tears finally stop. Her eyes are probably red and her voice is a little shaky, but she doesn’t care. It’s not about how she looks. It’s about the words.
“Once upon a time,” she says, looking straight into the camera, “my grandmother fell in love on a train.” She hesitates, taking a sharp breath. “Fifty years later, so did I.”
Hugo is sitting at the bar of a Mexican restaurant, polishing off a basket of tortilla chips, when he gets the email.
He sent the letter off the night before. It had taken him all day to write, which should probably be embarrassing. But it isn’t. In fact, he’s never been prouder of anything. He left it all on the table, and that was the only thing he could do.
Afterward, he thought about sending it to Mae, but he didn’t. What he told himself was that she had more important things on her mind. Which is why he shouldn’t bother her. And why she hadn’t been in touch. But the truth was that the past week felt to him like a dream, and Hugo still wasn’t sure he’d woken up yet.
His worry was that maybe she had.
Instead, he sent it only to Alfie, with a note that said, If this doesn’t work, I’m with you guys. But I had to try one more time.
Now, as he sees the name Nigel Griffith-Jones pop up on his phone, he fumbles it, knocking his glass over in the process so that the fizzy drink goes spilling all over the bar.
“Sorry,” he says to the bartender, who shakes his head as he reaches for a rag. “I’m so…”
But he doesn’t finish the sentence. He’s too busy reading the email, his eyes skipping over the words.
Dear Mr. Wilkinson,
Thank you for your follow-up letter. While we were looking fo
rward to having all six of you with us for the start of our autumn term—have in fact been looking forward to it for quite some time now—we appreciate the case that you’ve made. We recognize that university might not be the right path for everyone and that—as you pointed out in your letter—you are, of course, six different people and not a single unit.
As such, we’d like to offer a compromise. We’re willing to defer the scholarship as long as you’re willing to join us for a few days to take part in the publicity we’ve arranged for the start of term. The idea would be for you to talk about your upcoming gap year and how you’ll be joining us next autumn instead. We feel certain the late Mr. Kelly would approve, so if that sounds acceptable, then we’ll see you next month. And we’ll be excited to hear more about your travels when you join us the following year!
Sincerely,
Nigel Griffith-Jones
Chair of Council University of Surrey
Hugo throws his arms up and lets out a whoop, knocking over the basket of chips. The bartender groans.
“Sorry,” Hugo says again, jumping off his stool to start sweeping them up. But he’s barely paying attention. His mind is going in a million different directions. He should tell his brothers and sisters. He should start narrowing down where he’ll go. He should tell his parents. He should book a flight. He should tell Mae.
More than anything, he wants to tell Mae.
A little boy has wandered over from a nearby table, and he stares at Hugo as he picks up the chips. Hugo looks up at him with a grin, practically bursting.
“Guess what?” he says. “I’m going to travel the world.”
“Well, I’m going to eat a taco,” the boy says, then runs back over to his table.
Hugo lifts a chip in his direction. “Cheers to that.”
As he stands up again—feeling light-headed and a little dizzy—his eyes land on a map of California on the wall near the cash register. There’s a blue star toward the bottom, the words printed neatly beside it: Los Angeles.
And just like that, he realizes he already knows what his first stop will be.
Later, once all the guests are gone, the three of them collapse onto the couch amid a sea of empty wineglasses and dirty plates.
“Well,” says Pop, putting an arm around Dad, who leans against him, “I guess that’s it, then.”
Dad sighs. “She would’ve hated those crab puffs.”
“Yeah, but she would’ve loved the petits fours.”
“And your eulogy.”
“Yours too,” Pop says, giving him a kiss. “Though she would’ve killed you for telling that story about the donkey.”
“It’s a great story,” Mae says, and they both look over as if they forgot she was there.
“Didn’t we already send you off to college?” Dad asks with a grin.
Mae laughs. “Yeah, but it didn’t take.”
Her phone buzzes in her hand, and when she sees that it’s an email from Hugo, she sits up, feeling the steady drumbeat of her heart pick up speed.
Dad raises his eyebrows. “Is that him?”
“About time,” Pop says. “What’d he say?”
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
Mae looks up, still smiling an alarmingly stupid smile, to find them both watching her expectantly. “I’m, uh…gonna go upstairs for a bit.”
“Say cheerio for us,” Dad teases, waving as she hurries out of the room. But Mae barely notices. She’s already opening Hugo’s email.
All it says is this: How can I ever thank you?
Below that, he’s forwarded a note from someone at the University of Surrey, and her heart lifts as she reads it.
He actually did it.
She laughs, filled with a sudden joy, because she knows how much he wanted this, how much it means to him. And she wishes more than anything that they were together. (Though hasn’t she been wishing that all day?)
She moves on to the letter he sent, the one she’d pushed him to write, feeling giddy that it worked. Near the end, he wrote:
Someone recently told me that if you want something badly enough, you have to make your own magic. You have to lay it all on the line. And most of all, you have to be brave. When you grow up as one of six, it can be hard to say what you want. But that person was right. Which is why, no matter what ends up happening, I had to write this letter. Because some things are worth fighting for—and this is one of them.
It’s not exactly a love letter, but it still makes her cry.
When she’s done reading, she reaches for her computer and pulls up the rough cut of her film, including the part she recorded this morning. And then, before she can think better of it, she sends it off to him, because it seems that the very least she can do is try taking her own advice.
The note she includes is short, just a simple answer to his simple question: You already have.
Hugo is still awake—his head far too crowded for sleep—when the video arrives. He reads her message with a grin, then opens it up, expecting to see Ida and Ludovic and Katherine and everyone else they’d interviewed last week. Expecting the sort of straightforward documentary he thought they’d been shooting all that time.
But instead, it starts with Mae.
He sits up in bed, clutching the glowing screen a bit tighter.
She actually did it, he thinks, shaking his head in wonder.
Then he hears her say it: “Fifty years later, so did I.”
He hits Pause, wondering if he could have imagined this. He rewinds to watch that part again. “Once upon a time, my grandmother fell in love on a train,” she says, her eyes so sad he wishes he could be there with her right now. (Though hasn’t he been wishing that all day?) She looks straight into the camera when she says it: “Fifty years later, so did I.”
Hugo lowers the phone and stares wide-eyed into the darkness of the hotel room, trying to absorb this. He waits for it to happen: that scuttling feeling in his chest that occurred the first time Margaret said a set of similar words, like an animal trying to hide in plain sight.
But it doesn’t.
To his surprise, he finds himself laughing instead. Not because it’s funny. And not because it’s absurd, though it is. It’s completely and utterly absurd. They’ve known each other only a week. But no: he’s laughing—he realizes—because he’s happy.
And because he loves her too.
It’s a joy that moves through him like helium, filling every corner of his body until it feels as if he could float away. He sits very still for a few seconds, thunderstruck, and then remembers that he needs to watch the rest of the film.
Nothing about it is what he imagined it would be, yet every inch of it feels exactly right. The interviews aren’t shown as a whole; they’re cut into smaller soundbites, and it jumps around so that it feels like all these various people—himself included—are having one big conversation about what it means to be a person in the world. And even more than that, what it means to love.
It’s brilliant. It’s moving. It’s funny and unique and inspiring.
It is, in the end, just like Mae.
When it’s over, there are tears in his eyes. He wipes at them, thinking that if he hadn’t already bought a train ticket, he’d surely be buying one now.
But since he did, he just sits there in the darkness and starts the film again.
Out the window of the plane, the clouds are piled up like bath bubbles, and the middle of the country is spread out below in checkered squares of green and gold.
Mae doesn’t notice any of it, though; her eyes are closed, her mind elsewhere.
She’s thinking about Nana, and how happy she’d be right now to know that Mae is off to college, something that got a bit lost in everything else this week.
She’s thinking about saying goodbye to her dads again (“Take two,�
�� said Pop as he hugged her), and also Priyanka, who had pulled up in the driveway early this morning (“One last time”) before getting on the road.
She’s thinking about the text she sent Garrett (Okay, okay—it’s possible you were right) and the way the film turned out, the quiet pride she felt when she watched the final cut. In her pocket, there’s a flash drive that she’ll give to the dean of admissions after she lands this afternoon, and it feels strange to carry it around like that, like a portable heart.
Mostly, though, she’s thinking about Hugo and the fact that he still hasn’t responded, which must mean he hated the film or was scared off by what she said.
Either way, it can’t be good.
Maybe they were just never meant to have a happy ending. Maybe it’s not that kind of movie.
She’s determined not to let this stop her. If the meeting with the dean doesn’t go well, she’ll be back again first thing tomorrow. And if that doesn’t work, she’ll try again the next day. And the next.
She’ll keep trying. But she’s also not worried anymore. It used to be that the thought of spending the next two years taking classes in literature and religion and science felt like missing out. She’d be stuck learning about ancient Greece or the geopolitical situation in Tibet or the poetry of W. B. Yeats while, across campus, the film students would be pulling ahead of her.
But now she’s not so sure.
Maybe Hugo has the right idea after all. Maybe it’s not the worst thing to take a few detours along the way. She loves the film she made this week, loves it as much as anything she’s ever done, and it never would’ve existed if she hadn’t gotten on that train.
No matter what happens next, she’ll always be glad she did.
The ocean appears all at once, a blue so bright it looks fake. Hugo has seen so many incredible sights this past week, so many mountains and rivers and fields, that it seems unlikely there’s any room left for him to be this moved. But it turns out there is.
Field Notes on Love Page 22