London Is the Best City in America (8 page)

“Come on, Em,” my dad said. “Say something.”

Josh smiled at me, winked. “She doesn’t have to, Dad. Just drop it.”

I tried to smile back at him, feeling awful. Then I felt Berringer’s hand on my back.

“You know what?” he said. “She was just telling me she’s still doing some work on it. She’s not wasting it on you guys.”

I looked over at him gratefully—so gratefully, that it surprised me. It surprised both of us.

“She’s saving it for the wedding,” he said.

The Everett boys were drunk enough that we had to split them up for the car ride home: Josh slept in the back of Berringer’s car, and I followed them, slowly, in our dad’s. My dad was asleep as soon as he hit the passenger seat, before I even pulled out of the parking lot. Sneaking a peek at him, his mouth open—lightly snoring—I wished I’d sat tonight out, that he was in Berringer’s car right now, and I had stayed at home to try to make some headway on the documentary. That I had stayed home and gone to sleep—so all of the things Josh had said would already be slipping away.

Behind me, someone honked. I looked in my rearview, the driver shining his brights at me, his red-right arrow. Which might be why instead of taking the requisite turn onto Heathcote Road—eventually leading to my parents’ home on Drake—I headed straight toward Mamaroneck Road. No one behind me on the road, no one in front. I drove past the big church and the junior high, the run-down tennis courts. All the lights were out on the left except for one lone streetlamp, blipping on and off as if it were its only job.

I told myself I didn’t know where I was going, but I did know. I knew as soon as I got to Cushman Road and took the familiar right, making the second turn onto Willow, pulling into the little cul-de-sac I knew by heart, circling the car around until I was facing the right backyard. It all looked the same from the back: three levels of colonial windows, the small attic perched on top, a rectangular backyard filled with swing sets and a slide and broken toys, all belonging to Matt’s little brother.

I killed the ignition and sat back, taking a breath. There weren’t any lights on in the house, not even the back porch light. And it occurred to me that Matt’s parents were probably away for the Fourth—probably up at their home in Maine. It was possible that someone was home, and just sleeping. But I didn’t think so. They were probably gone. And down the hall, Matt’s room was probably empty.

We had spent so many afternoons in that bedroom. I had spent so many afternoons there even without him, on the days he couldn’t make it out to Scarsdale or I couldn’t go into the city. It had made me calmer to be there among his things, doing my homework or wasting time. It was like he was there with me. Every Tuesday night my last year in high school, he’d come home and I’d stay there with him. That was our tradition—weekends together in the city, Tuesdays in Scarsdale. We’d get up at five in the morning, so we’d have a couple of hours together before I had to be at school: Matt bringing up a thin thermos of coffee from the kitchen, that morning’s paper, getting back into bed with me.

Part of me wanted to ring the bell now, or sneak in through the window, and just head back up to that room for a while. Not because it would make me feel any differently afterward, but because I wanted to feel again, for a few minutes, what it had been like. To belong to something bigger than myself.

He had had these thick sheets, this soft blue comforter. Why did the color matter to me? Why did I remember that? You can’t really feel a color. You can’t really feel anything entirely unless part of you doesn’t know it’s happening.

I shook my head, turning the ignition back on. I didn’t need to be here. I didn’t need to be anywhere but in my own bed, sleeping. Or knocking on the bedroom wall, seeing if Josh was awake and could hear me. If he wanted to talk.

My dad opened his eyes, abruptly, and turned toward me. But by then I was already pulling away.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Everything’s fine, Dad.”

“Where are we?”

“Matt’s,” I said.

“Matt’s?” He was confused, but his eyes were closing again. In a minute, I knew he’d be out.

“Well,” I said. “Not anymore.”

When we got back to the house, Berringer’s car was still in the driveway. I carried my bags inside—fishermen’s wives tapes included—and got a glass of ice water and left it on the floor by my father, who was passed out on the couch. Then I peeked in on Josh, just for a second, who was lying on top of his bedcovers, fully dressed, sleeping.

“This house is a mess,” I said out loud, even though no one seemed to be sober enough to hear me.

I filled up another glass of water and went outside. I found Berringer out on the back steps, facing the yard. The tent was up for tomorrow already, these four six-foot-tall wooden lanterns firmly planted into the ground on every side. Berringer was looking out at all of it, an empty cereal bowl next to him.

I handed the water over. He smiled a thank-you at me, taking a huge sip, downing most of the glass, before he started speaking again. “I fear that the Everett men are going to be struggling a bit tomorrow,” he said. “I left your dad a note on the kitchen table, telling him to have another beer in the morning. Hangover cure. A hair of the dog that bit you.”

I moved the bowl over, took a seat. It was still incredibly warm outside, the air thick and sticking to my skin.

I swirled the spoon around in the leftover milk. “What kind were they?” I said, motioning toward his cereal bowl.

“Honey Nut Cheerios.” He said. “It’s usually Honey Nut Cheerios at night.”

“What about the morning?”

“Sometimes Special K. But mostly on Sundays.”

I smiled at him, putting down the spoon. I could feel my heart beating in my head, my eyes starting to get heavy. “I‘m not sure I should have been driving,” I said. “Now that I’m sitting still.”

“Yeah, well,” he said. “I’m definitely walking home from here.”

“In this heat?”

“It’s going to be worse tomorrow.”

“True,” I said. “Isn’t that a weird thing, though? That you can walk home. That our homes are still here? All this time after we left?”

“Well, our parents’ homes.”

“Still . . . I spend so much time trying to escape this place, and sometimes I wonder if it’s the only place I’ll ever have to really go back to. You know? If it’s the only place I’ll ever really consider home.”

He handed me the glass of water. “Drink,” he said.

I took the water from him, starting to laugh. He turned and looked at me, tilting his head. It was weird when he did that—looked at me from that direction. It was almost like he was trying to see something that I wasn’t sure I wanted someone to see. It made me nervous.

“So.” He smiled. “Tell me something more about this documentary of yours. You must be close to finishing by now, right?”

I felt something clutch inside. I didn’t know what to say. I was used to explaining my life away with partial fictions, but it felt wrong, in a way I wasn’t entirely used to, to tell him anything but the truth. Maybe because he seemed to have so little trouble telling the truth himself. What was I going to say anyway, though? That the more time I was spending on this documentary, the further away the end was becoming? That the more time I was spending, the less sure I was why I was doing it in the first place?

“Berringer, I think we have bigger things to talk about right now. Like Josh,” I said. “Just for example.”

“Ah . . . ,” he said, nodding like he understood. “The girl swings it back to Josh when she doesn’t want to talk about herself.”

I ignored that, even though I knew, inside, he wasn’t wrong. “I just don’t understand,” I said. “If you’re saying Josh is so amazing with Elizabeth, that they have this amazing connection or whatever, why aren’t you telling him? When it matters most that he does something about it?”

“It’s past time for that. If he was going to do something, he should have done it already.”

“What does that even mean?” I said. “You want him to make a mistake?”

“Which way do you think is the mistake?”

I looked away, unsure of how to answer that. I had no answer. One minute I thought Josh should absolutely marry Meryl—that anything else would absolutely be the mistake—and then, in the next minute, I realized I didn’t have enough information to know for certain. The only thing I did feel clear about—coming from my own personal experience of sitting absolutely still—was that Josh needed to do something, as opposed to just letting his life happen to him.

Berringer put his empty water glass down. “Maybe there’s not a mistake to even make,” he said.

I looked at him again, angry all of a sudden. Of course there was a mistake to make. There was always a mistake. I lived my whole life in the fear of making it. “Wasn’t there one for you?” I said.

But as soon as the words were out, I was sorry, because I realized how cruel they sounded. And I knew they were really not directed at him at all, but more at myself. Or at Josh. Or someone else who didn’t want to hear me.

“Berringer,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m just getting frustrated because I can’t get a handle on this whole thing. But I didn’t mean that. I really didn’t.”

“Yes, you did, but that’s okay,” he said. He was looking at me now, but it was like he didn’t see me.

Then he stood up. “Wait, you’re going to leave over it?” I said. “I don’t want you to leave over it.”

He bent down and kissed me on the forehead, then bent even lower and I thought he was going to kiss me again, really kiss me—on my lips, my bottom lip—but he didn’t. He just looked at me for a second.

“I’m not leaving over that,” he said.

Then he was gone.

It was probably in large part because this wedding weekend was off to a lousy start that, after Berringer left, I just couldn’t stop thinking about all the superstitious stuff surrounding weddings that I had been reading in planning Josh’s toast: all these crazy dangers people used to face if they broke their commitment to marry someone, if they decided to do something else instead.

At one point people believed that if you were engaged more than one time, you were setting yourself up for damnation. Potential seventeenth-century grooms-to-be were so scared of this fate that they would look for certain signs before going ahead and proposing. In the days leading up to the proposal, seeing a monk on the street or a pregnant woman would predict a bad union. Seeing a pigeon apparently foreshadowed good things to come. These were rules, hard and fast, and people stuck to them. They gave you concrete ways to make decisions about whom to spend your life with. More concrete ways than how you felt or how you didn’t feel at any given time.

Once you were engaged back then, that was as good as being married. If you broke your word on that—if you tried to get out of the engagement—that was going to lead you down a painful road. It was just as bad as divorce. It was sometimes considered worse.

What about now? Today? Did breaking off a commitment hold just as much terror? Even if society didn’t condemn you in quite the same way as it used to, would you end up in a worse position than if—in spite of your doubts—you stuck to your original plan?

I started walking back up the stairs slowly. Tomorrow was the rehearsal dinner. Less than forty-eight hours from now, the wedding was going to happen. Less than seventy-two hours from now, this would all be over. Meryl and Josh would be on their way to Hawaii and then back to Los Angeles, Berringer would be back in San Francisco, and I would be back in Rhode Island. That would be the end of all of this. No damnation for anyone.

So why then did I skip the entrance to my own bedroom? Why did I keep on walking, right into Josh’s? I kept the door slightly ajar behind me, sliding slowly down to the floor by the closet. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that he was still lying on top of the covers, his arms over his eyes. I could see that he was now awake. I picked my words very carefully, knowing as I did that he would listen. Even if he didn’t want to. He would listen to me.

“See, the thing is, Josh,” I said. “I know why you told me about Elizabeth.”

“Emmy,” he said. “Do we have to do this right now? If I opened my eyes, I’d see seven of you.”

I pulled my knees closer to my chest. “The reason is that you know I won’t be able to let it go,” I said. “Because, if the situation were reversed, you wouldn’t let it go. Not until you knew I was okay.”

Against the light coming in from the window, his chest rose up, fell again. I covered my eyes, my head spinning a little also. I wanted to finish this conversation. I wanted this to end, right here, okay.

“Are you okay?”

“Not really,” he said.

I paused, but only for a second. “Do you think you need to see her?” I said. “Is that even possible?”

“She’s in Pascoag.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.

“Pascoag, Rhode Island,” he said. “It’s on the northern tip. The other tip from you.”

I didn’t say anything. The northern tip was probably an hour from me, somewhere on the other side of Providence. I started doing the math in my head. If she were located north—that would take three hours at the least, probably closer to four. That would take the better part of tomorrow, just driving back and forth.

“It’s a cool story, where the name Pascoag comes from. See, there’s this cliff to the east of it, and getting over the cliff used to be the only way in to the town. But the problem was that the cliff was completely crawling with these snakes. Really enormous, boalike snakes. And you used to have to ‘pass’ all the snakes. So . . . pass coag.”

I looked back down, shaking my head. I knew what was coming next, knew why he was telling me that story—knew he knew that I was a sucker for stories—knew even before I was willing to let myself admit that I knew it.

“It would really help if you would come with me, Emmy,” he said finally.

“I’m not sure it would really help, Josh.”

He put his hands over his eyes, already mostly asleep. “It would,” he said.

I looked back down, my eyes starting to close too. If I were a different person, I could have slept right there. I could have bunched up a sweater under my head and wrapped my arms around myself and just drifted off. And then, maybe tomorrow, it wouldn’t feel so pressing. Josh would submerge—the way he had been submerging—everything that was bubbling to the surface right now, everything he was too scared to be feeling.