Truth in Advertising (17 page)

Mr. Knowles stood and said, “Fin, I seem to have accidentally spilled my drink down my throat. Getting a refresher. Top you off?”

He's clean-shaven with a gray crew cut. Phoebe told me that he saved a friend's life once when skating on a pond. The ice cracked, the friend fell in and disappeared. A deep pond. Mr. Knowles went in after him. This was a few years ago. Tonight he wears a sports coat and a tie.

They are a family of golfers and there was talk of the new greens-keeper at the club. He comes highly recommended—did Winged Foot, did Baltusrol, did Myopia. I have to assume that these are golf courses, though for all I know they could be Broadway shows. I merely nod.

Her brothers asked me questions about making TV commercials. They wanted to know about Gwyneth Paltrow. Phoebe's father said, “Is she the one who adopts all the African children?” Judy said, “No, Stu, that's Angelina Jolie.”

I watched her parents watch Phoebe. It is a lie that parents have no favorites among their children.

I'm on the last of the pots now and reach under the sink for a fresh Brillo Pad.

Judy says, “Leave that. Come look at these.”

She sits down at the kitchen table and opens a photo album. She pours out two small glasses of wine.

I do a final wipe-down of the counter and sit down next to her. Judy leafs through the album and turns it toward me.

Pictures of Christmases past. Of birthdays. Of cookouts, vacations, weekends. Smiling people. Happy people. I could use these shots for ads. Baby pictures. Phoebe sitting in Stu's lap as a five-year-old, in her pajamas, while he reads her a story. Stu and Phoebe on the beach. Phoebe and her brothers on skis.

Judy says, “I love that one. That's up in Woodstock.”

“New York?” I ask.

“Vermont,” she says. “We have a small place up there. It was Stu's father's.”

A picture of Phoebe and Judy at a café in Paris.

A picture of Judy and Phoebe and a swarthy, handsome man at the same café, his arm around Phoebe. I feel a surprise twinge of jealousy.

Judy raises her eyebrows, rolls her eyes, and says, “We won't talk about that.” She turns the page.

I scan each one, find Phoebe, page after page, watch as she grows up.

Judy turns another page and laughs. It's a picture of Phoebe with chicken pox, age fourteen. Pale, miserable, little bumps all over her face and neck and arms.

She keeps scanning, turning. She's smiling.

“This is in Wellfleet,” Judy says. “Last year. Labor Day weekend.”

It's a picture of Phoebe, close up, three-quarter profile, just her face, lost in thought, late-afternoon light.

I stare, perhaps too long, and then turn to see Judy looking at me.

I say, “Who took this?”

“I did.”

“It's amazing.”

“She's an easy subject.”

I nod, look at the picture again.

She removes it from the album and hands it to me.

She says, “Take it. I have copies.”

I take it, say nothing, suddenly embarrassed.

Judy turns the pages and there's Phoebe in a wedding dress, which can't be right. But there she is. There's Phoebe in a wedding dress
with bridesmaids, with her parents, with a man in a tuxedo, holding hands, kissing, cutting a large cake. It is strange to watch the feeling that comes over me, to step outside of my body slowly, the moment before impact in a car accident. My hands tingle and perspire, my eyes squint, the information unable to be fully processed. There's been a mistake.

Judy's looking at me. She says, “You didn't know.”

I smile, but it's forced and weird. I could be wrong but I think Judy senses my discomfort.

She says, “She was young. Right out of college. It was a mistake. Didn't last long.”

I'm nodding slowly, trying to understand it. That's wrong. I'm not trying to understand it. I'm trying to understand why I feel the way I do. Mildly nauseated.

“We all have our secrets,” I say, sounding like an idiot.

Judy says, “Phoebe told us about your father, Fin. That must be very hard for you.”

She was married. How strange. How did I not know that about her?

“It is,” I lie. Then I say, “I guess. I don't really know.”

She looks at me, cocks her head to one side.

I shrug. “I haven't seen him in twenty-five years. He left a long time ago. And then my mother.” I never say these words out loud. The radio is on somewhere. Classical music very low.

I say, “Yeah. My mother killed herself.”

I never use the word
suicide
when I think about what happened. It feels distant, academic. There's always
took her own life
, but that sounds odd and passive. Took her own life
where
?
Killed herself
is much more active. Killed herself is how I think of it, how I imagine it when I do imagine it.

Judy puts a hand to her cheek. She looks pained.

I say, “I'm sorry. That came out very . . . I hope I didn't upset you.”

“No. I'm just so sorry. How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“That must have been awful for you. For all of you.”

Phoebe has Judy's eyes, hazel, dabs of color, wide-set, almond-shaped. The lovely cheeks, high coloring, snow-white hair cut short. Phoebe said her mother cuts her own hair. I've always found it rude when people say of a woman of a certain age, “She must have been beautiful when she was younger.” I can see how a man could fall in love with Judy Knowles.

I shrug and nod. “It wasn't great.”

Images of Eddie's outbursts, of Kevin's leaving, of Maura's desperation to get away and start a new and very different life. You think you can walk away, leave it behind. It is amazing the lies you can tell yourself. I see the green bike again on its side on the grass by the back stairs. No kickstand.
You're not supposed to be home
. She drives away.

I want to tell her that for years I've told people that my father was dead, told them I was an only child. She watches me.

I say, “Thank you for having me tonight. You have an amazing family.”

“Phoebe talks about you so often. She says she's learned so much from you.”

“Me? You've got the wrong guy.”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Well, I'll do my best to talk her out of advertising.”

“As long as she's happy, I don't mind what she does.”

I hear Phoebe and her father coming toward the kitchen.

Stu says, “I'm heading up.” He shakes my hand. “Fin. So great to meet you. Sleep well.” He kisses Phoebe's forehead.

Judy kisses Phoebe on the check, then she leans over and hugs me. Chanel No. 5.

•   •   •

Phoebe and I walk through the backyard, through a wooded area that opens onto the fairway of a golf course and a field of snow. There is a partial moon and the sky is very clear and you can see stars in the black sky. There's no wind but it is very cold. I'm wearing my new old scarf. Phoebe has on her mother's Sorels and what looks like one of her brother's old coats. A wool hat her mother knit from old
sweaters. Somehow Phoebe makes it look good. I follow her through the woods, watch the steam rise up over her. Our breathing is heavy, the snow crunching under our feet.

Phoebe says, “We're going skiing tomorrow.”

I say, “That's great. That'll be fun. I'm going to New York to work. Also fun.”

“Do you ski?”

“The name Franz Klammer mean anything to you? Alberto Tomba? I'd embarrass these guys.”

I can tell, even standing behind her, that she's smiling.

She says, “You could come with for a few days. If you wanted.”

I look up, at her back, waiting for her to turn around. But she doesn't. She just keeps trudging through the snow.

“Thank you. That's really nice. Honestly. And I'd love to. Except for this thing.”

She says nothing for a time. Then, “See that tree over there?”

I say, “No.”

She says, “Well, there's a tree over there and that's where Matt Simon gave me my first kiss.”

I say, “I made out with him once. Guy's a pig.”

“Jackass.”

“Tongue?”

“It was so gross. He opened his mouth as wide as he could. Tongue going like he was searching for a filling.”

I'm walking alongside her now.

I say, “Your mother's mean.”

She smiles. “She likes you.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

I say, “The hug. It was the hug, wasn't it?”

“She hugs everyone.”

“Then what?”

Phoebe says, “The dishes.”

“What about them?”

“She let you do them. You volunteered for them. She likes that.”

“That's it? That's all you have to do? Do the dishes?”

“Not just the dishes. She likes you.”

“I like sleep. I like warmth. Why are we out here again?”

“Stop whining.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just trust me.”

A long, gradual rise. We don't speak. It's a struggle in the snow, the cold air in our lungs. Toward the top Phoebe starts to run. She reaches the top ahead of me.

Phoebe says, “What d'ya think?”

There, laid out before us, is Boston, the city lights, the buildings, a plane in the distance on its approach to Logan. We're standing close. I can feel her against me, hear her labored breathing from the sprint up the hill. I'm looking at her profile when she turns and looks at me, smiling.

Did she stand here with him? Her husband? Did she look at him like this?

Unless you are married, unless you are in a relationship, unless you are at the dentist, it is very rare to see another person's face close up. Something happens in that small space. Fewer words, perhaps. A more fully realized understanding of the moment, of time, of vulnerability and fragility. Of breathing. You see them differently. When they do speak it's in a slightly different voice. Quieter. Intimate. There have been a few moments like that—a party, out with friends at night at a crowded bar, once on our way downtown on the subway—when I've been this close to Phoebe. And they have unnerved me.

Now, here, in my mind, I wrap my arms around her waist, gently pull her toward me, feel her body through the layers. She puts her arms around my shoulders, her face so close to mine. I can smell the Carmex she put on her lips before we left the house. What a thing, what an impossible gift. She leans into me before I have the chance and kisses me on the mouth, gently at first, then more intensely, more forcefully.

“Phoeb,” I whisper.

“Hi.”

Except that's not what happens. Only in my mind. I want to reach for her hand. I can't seem to do it. My mind races forward to
what if
. What if she rejects me? What if it doesn't work? What if the sun comes up and I want to run?

I'm looking at her and she's looking at the skyline.

Phoebe says, “One beautiful thing.”

I say, “World peace.”

She says, “You're a moron. C'mon. One beautiful thing.”

I say, “Your family.”

She turns and looks at me. “That's a nice thing to say.”

“What about you?” I ask.

She looks out over Boston. “That you came up.”

It's very cold. We stand there for a long time.

W
hat a thing it is to live in New York City. To move here and not know a soul. A clean slate, a chance to walk away from the past and start anew.

Those first years were, for me, unlike anything I had ever known. The job paid very little. Most of my money went to rent. I'd often work late in part because they'd often order pizza or Chinese food and that meant dinner was free. On Thursday night the MoMA didn't charge admission after 6
P.M.
I read
Here Is New York
. I traced the steps. I reread
The Catcher in the Rye
and did the same.

Everything seemed possible.
This
is your life, you think. I am alive in this place and I can do what I choose. I will go to a show at a museum and have no idea what I am looking at. But I will do it and think about it and talk about it. My mind will be different because of it. Better. I will take the flyer from the girl with the blue hair on the corner in the East Village and I will go to the show that starts at midnight in the basement of the building that looks like it might be condemned. I will do it because I have nothing else to do on Saturday night and because I don't know anyone. I will walk home at three in the morning after talking with the people in the show and making plans to get together the following weekend and I'll buy Sunday's newspaper that night, in a deli full of other people doing the same thing. People ordering a ham-and-cheese sandwich, in the middle of the night.

I will feign coolness. I will slowly learn the art of not showing that I am surprised or impressed or moved.

I will feel the elation that comes from anonymity.

I will feel the comfortable loneliness of wandering the avenues in the rush of humanity, the side streets by myself. Fort Tryon Park. The Cloisters. Fulton Street Fish Market. The view of midtown from Tenth Avenue near the Javits Center.

I will come upon the United Nations for the first time, thrill at what happens in this place.

I will, one snowy winter night, happen upon horse stables on the Upper West Side, a soft yellow light off the hay, three horses chewing, billows of condensed air streaming out of their distended nostrils, the snow falling silently around me, and be so moved by it that I will be frozen in place for minutes.

And I will eat at restaurants whose names I've heard and read about. I will eat there with clients and bottle after bottle of wine will be ordered and at the end of the meal I will simply get up from the table and leave, the dinner having been paid for. My mother would have shaken her head in wonder.