Who Do You Love (27 page)

“That's what my mom told me,” Andy managed. “Except
SI
just found out that he's not. He spent twenty years in jail, and now he's living in Philadelphia.”

“Jesus, what'd he do?

“He was an accessory to murder.” Andy punched in his mom's number. When she didn't answer, he said, “Hey, Ma, it's Andy. Can you call me as soon as you get this? It's important.” Even as he was hanging up he was realizing that there was nothing that Lori could possibly say to explain this, no way that she could justify that big of a lie.

“Oh, baby,” said Maisie. She put her hands on his shoulders and started kneading, a move Andy always found more of an annoyance than a comfort—her hands were so small that she couldn't exert enough pressure for it to feel good—but he'd never said anything. “Oh my God. I can't even . . . Tell me what I can do.”

“I don't know,” he said. He didn't know how he felt or what he wanted or what the next move should be. He dialed his mother again. No answer. Maisie started in on his neck, and Andy felt like the apartment walls were crushing him, like his clothes were too tight, like his skin was shrinking, and that if he didn't move he would explode.

“Give me a minute.” He scrambled into pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and one of the dozens of pairs of sneakers he had, and was out the door without stretching or planning or even telling her where he was going, across the street and into the park, running without a heart monitor or energy gels or the watch that tracked his distance and speed, as fast as he could, until he stopped somewhere along the East River path, pulled out his phone, and punched in the digits he was surprised he still remembered.

She won't answer,
Andy thought.
It's not her number anymore. And what can I even say to her? And what will she say to me?

The phone rang once, then twice, and Andy was about to hang up and put the phone in his pocket, or maybe call a private investigator and try to figure out what had happened and where his dad was now, when a voice said, “Hello,” and then, “Andy?”

“Hey, Rachel.” Andy stopped and looked around, taking a moment to realize that he'd run far enough to see the Domino Sugar sign across the river.

“What's wrong?”

“How do you know something's wrong?”

“You call me after all this time and you sound awful. Something's wrong.” Oh, Rachel. Her voice was so familiar. It all felt so familiar, like they'd picked up a conversation that they'd ended the night before.

“It's my father,” Andy said. “He's not dead.”

“What?” He heard her talk to someone, then rustling, the sound of a door slamming shut. “Sorry. I thought . . . Did you just say your father's alive?”

“Alive,” he repeated. His voice sounded hoarse. His body felt knotted, fists clenched, quads and hamstrings tight. “He didn't die. He got arrested. He's just been in jail for almost my whole life.”

“Oh my God.” He could picture Rachel thinking, could remember how they would rest together, her head snuggled against his chest; how she'd look at the ceiling and click her tongue against the roof of her mouth. The smell of her hair, the softness of her arms. The way she'd make him laugh. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don't know. Go home, I guess. Talk to my mom. Try to find him. Try to ask him . . .” He lurched backward as a pack of cyclists sped by. “Ask why he didn't want to know me.”

“Oh, Andy,” she said, her voice so sad, so familiar, so dear, that Andy felt like his body, the finely balanced tool that he'd fueled and coddled and cared for, was crumbling, like it was made of ash or salt. “Oh, Andy.”

“Rachel,” he croaked . . . and, just as he blurted, “Could you come with me?” he heard her say, “I'm getting married next month.”

“Married?” It hit him as if one of the shot-putters had aimed wrong and sent sixteen pounds of iron crashing into his gut. He opened his mouth and the word “Congratulations” hopped out like a toad.

Her voice was tiny. “I was going to call you . . . before it happened, to tell you, but I thought . . .”

How could you?
he thought . . . except he had no right to ask that; no claim on her. He'd never tried to get her back, never even tried to tell her that he still thought of her, that he still imagined that somehow they would end up together.

“He's a great guy,” she said, and he heard her trying to sound enthusiastic, like she was selling herself on her soon-to
-b
e-husband's greatness . . . and then, in a whispered rush, just before she cut the connection, he thought he heard her say, “Sometimes I wish it had been you.”

Rachel

2003

I
t won't hurt like this forever.
That was what I told myself when I was curled on my bed crying, or lying there motionless, feeling stunned and sick and sad, like I couldn't get out of bed, like I couldn't go back and be in the world.
The only way through it is through it.
At least he hadn't pretended that he wanted me with him, hadn't made a big fake effort at getting me to stay. The truth was that I'd been a distraction, poorly suited for a world where the sole focus was on bodies and times, where the party talk was all about lactic acid threshold; where, instead of holding me close and saying that he loved me,
Andy's
first move every morning was to lie on the floor with a foam roller under his hips, or work his legs with a tool that looked like a plastic windshield wiper designed for myofascial release.

I had packed up my stuff while he was still in New York. I'd thought about going back to Florida, but the picture of my parents' faces, the way that they'd be thinking, if not saying,
I told you so,
made the idea unbearable. Instead, I'd flown to New York, couch-surfed until I'd found a little efficiency on West Eighty-Sixth Street, reenrolled at NYU, and gotten a paying job at the Family Aid Society, where Amy was still my boss and, no big surprise, Brenda was still a client.

“Ooh, girl, what happened to you?” asked Brenda. We'd been scheduled for a nine o'clock meeting, and I'd been waiting on her front steps as she hopped out of a stranger's car, looking perky in knee-high fringed black boots and a cropped black leather jacket. She had cut baby bangs, a quarter-inch fringe. It was a look only girls with perfect features and beautifully shaped skulls could pull off, and Brenda, cute as she was, was not one of them.
Andy's
new girl probably was. I'd looked her up on the Internet and she was exactly what I'd expected—­gorgeous, exotic, with slim hips and small, elegant breasts and a face that seemed flawless from every angle. “Your basic nightmare,” I'd told my friends. Amy had asked if I'd wanted to stay with her and Leonard for a while. Pamela had offered to come up from Virginia, and Marissa had volunteered to come down from Vermont. All three of them had told me that I was too good for him, that they'd never trusted him, that world-class runner or not, it was bizarre for any woman to sleep with a guy who had a smaller butt than she did.

“You're late,” I told Brenda. It was Monday, mid-March, cold and clear, with trees just starting to show nubs of nascent blossoms. I hated it. I wanted weather like my mood, the skies gray and stormy, ripped by lightning. I had hardly slept for the last month, had barely eaten. The last conversation I'd had with Andy was playing on a loop in my head, illustrated with images of Maisie, leaving me exhausted and with no patience for Brenda's nonsense.

“Yeah. My car broke down, so, um, my friend, um, Lynn, was giving me a ride.”

“Your friend Lynn looks exactly like your ex-boyfriend
Stephen
. You need to be on time for our appointments. No matter what. You know that our help depends on me signing off on your compliance.”

“I'll try,” said Brenda, sounding unapologetic. She unlocked the front door, leading me up three flights of narrow stairs and into the chaos that she'd managed to re-create in the three different apartments she'd had since I'd known her. A bird in a cage shrilled from a bedroom. Her dog lay farting on the floor. I could hear the frantic beating of the bird's wings, and I could smell cigarette smoke, male sweat, cheap perfume. There were newspapers and magazines layered on the coffee table, shoes and socks on the floor, a coat crumpled in one corner, and the TV remote, backless and emptied of batteries, on the couch. Brenda picked it up, examined it, then held it as she sat. “I had to turn the cable off. Too expensive.”

When I didn't answer, she continued. “And then my car broke down, and the guy at the shop won't give me a loaner. ‘Go get a rental,' he says.”

“Is the car under warranty?”

Brenda looked at me like I'd stopped speaking English, and my sorrow hit me like a sandbag. “You know what?” I said, gathering my bag. I'd stuffed it with a fistful of folders before leaving the office without even making sure they were the right ones. “I'll come back next week.”

“Wait, what? You're leaving? But what about my car?”

“What about the subway?”

Her brown eyes widened. “Why are you being so mean?” she whispered. “The whole time I've known you, you've never been mean to me. Never once.”

I leaned against the wall. “I owe you an apology,” I said, but Brenda wasn't done.

“Everyone else is mean. The people at the OCFS, the people at the school. The supermarket checkers, when I give them my card, everyone else in line, they all look at me like I'm nothing. But you don't make me feel bad.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I've been dealing with some personal issues.”

Her expression brightened. “What happened?” she asked, leaning forward, ready to dish. “Why'd you come back, anyhow? You split up with your man?”

“This is not appropriate. I really need to go.” A vague memory surfaced. “Did you ever get Dante tested for ADHD?”

Brenda's face fell. “Oh, yeah. That shit. So guess what? No ADHD. He's gifted,” she said, her tone making it clear this was not a welcome development.

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “You don't get money for gifted.”

“Actually, you can,” I said, pulling on my coat, zipping up my bag. “It's a special condition. There's money for enrichment . . .” The zipper caught. I yanked it hard, and it broke off in my hand. My bag burst open, spilling papers all over Brenda's floor.
I
crouched down to start picking up the mess, and found that I couldn't move. I rocked back on my heels and covered my face with my hands as tears started spilling down my cheeks.

“Oh, now.” Tentatively, Brenda touched my shoulder, then wrapped her arm around me, helping me stand. “Hey. Come on. No man's worth all this.”

I didn't say a word as she led me to the couch. I just kept crying. Brenda handed me a box of Kleenex (name brand, even though we'd discussed how generic was the exact same thing) and then a cup of instant coffee. “Look at us,” she said, and shook her head. “The two saddest girls in New York.”

•••

I went to Brenda's bathroom, splashed water on my face, went back to the office, then took the subway home. I made myself behave like I was a normal, functioning person. I set my alarm, savoring the handful of seconds after I woke up and before I remembered what Andy had done, where I was, and that I was alone. I forced myself out of bed and into clothes. I saw my clients, kept my appointments, attended my review session for the licensing exam. At the end of the day, I stopped at the corner grocery, bought a frozen Marie Callender's chicken potpie, put it in the toaster oven, and took a shower while it cooked. By the time the hot water ran out, my dinner was done. I put on a robe, ate my pie with a glass of wine, climbed into bed, took one of the Ambien I'd talked my doctor into prescribing, and fell asleep like I'd been concussed. I wouldn't let myself call him or go near the Internet to look up his race results or see if there were pictures of him, of her, of them together. I tried to remember the bad stuff, how it felt to be the only person in
Andy's
little enclave who had any visible body fat, the way the female runners looked at me when I'd gone to use the gym; the way I was always the last thing on
Andy's
mind, behind his workouts, his diet, his training schedule, the race he'd be running the next month or the one he'd run the month before, and how every time I suggested going out to dinner or to a movie or a play or a museum, he was either too busy
or
too tired.
What kind of a life was that?
I'd asked myself . . . and then I would remember something—having sex in the shower, or how it felt when he'd laugh, and I couldn't lie—despite all the annoyance and embarrassment, it had been the life I'd wanted.

By June, the weather was brutally humid, but Amy insisted that I walk with her to SoHo, then join her for a drink. “Here's to love,” she said, lifting her Champagne cocktail. “I signed you up for JDate.”

“Oh, no. No. Please no.”

“It's not up for discussion,” she said, handing me her phone so I could see my profile. At least she'd used a good picture, I thought bleakly, a shot from when I'd been a bridesmaid at
Pamela
Boudreaux's wedding, my hair drawn back in a
chignon
, with a single white camellia behind my ear.

“Just go on ten dates,” Amy said.

“Five,” I bargained.

“Eight,” she countered. “Look, if you don't get out there you're just going to spend every Saturday watching
Sleepless in Seattle
and
When Harry Met Sally
on your couch.”

“And that's wrong because . . . ? ”

“There's a guy out there for you,” Amy said. “You have to open yourself up to the universe's possibilities.”

“Did your yoga teacher say that?”

“No. I think I read it on a napkin at the new salad place.”

“Here's the thing,” I said. “What if I already met the guy out there for me? Only he dumped me for a swimsuit model?” As far as I knew, Maisie did not solely model swimwear. Still, whenever I described her, I called her a swimsuit model. It sounded so much worse than just “model.”

“Honey,” she said, “Andy was not the guy for you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if he was,” she said, “he'd be here. Or you'd still be there. You'd be together, and you'd probably be engaged.”

It was hard to argue, and easy to log on to the website, sort through the hundreds of guys, like they were entrees on a Love menu. Lots of them looked good and sounded funny and interesting. Then again, I thought, how hard was it to look presentable and sound acceptable online? On the Internet, every guy was a catch.

“It's a numbers game,” Amy told me. She counseled me not to get too attached too soon, to develop a thick skin and keep it moving, setting up dates with other guys even while I was waiting to hear from a promising prospect. “Prepare for the worst,” she'd said . . . but the worst turned out to be so much worse than I had ever imagined.

My first encounter was with a charmer named Nate, an off-line fix-up and a fraternity brother of Pam's cousin Martin. I arrived at the agreed-upon bar, a place in Midtown near his office, ten minutes early, and was sitting with a glass of chardonnay when Nate showed up, wearing fashionable eyeglasses and carrying a cool canvas bag. He was a little more jowly than he'd appeared in his picture. In repose, his face had a kind of smugness, an expression that said
I have sampled many o
f
life's finer things and expect to enjoy many more.
“Hi there!” he said, his hand extended. The smile on his mouth didn't reach his eyes, which were cool and assessing, moving around the room, possibly scoping for better prospects. “You're Rachel?”

“I'm Rachel.” Greek life at our respective campuses would give us a solid ten minutes of conversation, I thought; his job as a speechwriter for the mayor and mine with the Family Aid Society would be good for another ten, at which point we should have finished our beverages and gotten some sense about whether we wanted to see each other again.

The hostess led us to a table. A waiter approached. Nate asked for Scotch as I swallowed a yawn. “You feel like getting food?” he asked.

“I had a late lunch,” I lied. I hadn't had lunch at all, had gobbled a granola bar on the subway uptown so my stomach wouldn't grumble during our date. I didn't want food. I wanted to be home, with my boots off and my bra unhooked, a bowl of Cream of Wheat on the table and
Friends
on TV.

“Okay if I order something?”

No
. “Sure, that's fine.”

“Lunchtime just got away from me. I completely forgot t
o
eat.”

I didn't trust people who forgot to eat. Andy, I remembered, didn't trust short men. “They've all got something to prove,” he'd said. I pushed Andy out of my mind, wondering how long it would take to permanently evict his voice from my head, and tried to focus on Nate, who was not short, and was Jewish, and reasonably handsome, and perfectly acceptable.

Nate ordered a burger, well-done, with fries. “You sure you don't want anything?” he asked, so I got some soup. Eight dollars for a bowl of watery chicken broth with mealy, limp noodles. I could have made an entire pot of the stuff for eight dollars, and it would have tasted better than what I'd been served. Soup had been one of my go-tos when I'd lived with Andy, healthy enough for him, indulgent enough for me. I'd learned to make three different kinds of lentil soup, split pea, minestrone, Italian wedding soup with tiny meatballs, pungent with garlic and cheese . . .

“So!” Nate had a strand of something green between his two front teeth. Nice hair, I told myself. Nice, thick hair, not a sign of thinning or receding. Focus on the good stuff. Maybe this could work. “Tell me about yourself!”

I'd gotten as far as “born in Florida” when Nate interrupted, launching into the story of his grandparents, who'd retired in Sarasota, continuing on to the highlights of the spring break he'd spent in St. Pete in 1999 and how, in general, he preferred ski vacations to beaches. “Too much sand in too many places, you know?” Pausing for a bite of burger, he chewed, swallowed, and said, “Do you ski?”

“Never learned. I had a heart condition when I was little, so my parents were really cautious about what they'd let me do.”