thirty-four
The rest of the world falls away as Leo and I whisper in a corner of a packed subway, zigzagging underground from Brooklyn through Manhattan and back to Queens again. Our journey feels fleeting in the way that a return trip almost always seems faster than the outbound—and it is made even faster by fear and yearning.
I know that what I’m doing is wrong, weak, indefensible, but I still stay on course, fueling my indignation with a steady diet of grievances: Andy doesn’t understand my feelings. Even worse, he doesn’t even
try
to understand my feelings.
He
left
me
last night. He hasn’t called today or softened his stance at all. He’s the one who drew the line in the sand. He’s the one who seems to care more about his family, hometown, job, and everything
he
wants than me. But perhaps most simply, underwriting everything else, he is not Leo. He’s not the one who has, since the day I met him, been able to turn me inside out and upside down like no other—for better or worse.
So here we are. Picking up just where we left off on that flight, our fingers interlacing expectantly. I’m not sure what will unfold from here, but I do know I am going to be honest with myself, with Andy, and with Leo. I am going to follow my heart, wherever it leads. I owe it to myself. I owe it to everyone.
When we reach Leo’s stop, we stand in tandem and walk onto the cement platform I remember well. My pulse races, yet I feel strangely at peace. The night is beautiful and clear—the kind where you could see a million stars if you were anywhere other than a city—and as we descend the stairs, more memories of nights just like this one return to me. I can tell Leo is thinking of the past, too, as he takes my hand and exits the station with sexy purpose. Neither of us speaks until we make the turn onto his block and he asks if I’m cold.
“No,” I say, realizing that I am shaking—but not from the cold.
Leo glances my way, then takes my hand, just as my cell phone rings, muffled in my trench coat pocket, for the first time all day. We both pretend we don’t hear it, walking more hurriedly, almost as if our pace can make the ringing go away. It finally does, but a few steps later, starts again, somehow sounding louder, more urgent. I let go of his hand, reaching into my pocket for the phone, both hoping and fearing that it is Andy.
If you go, don’t come back,
I hear him saying. I hold my breath and see Suzanne’s name illuminated on my screen, feeling awash with simultaneous relief and disappointment. Leo looks away, says nothing, as I decide not to answer, and instead slide the phone back in my pocket, keeping my hand there, too.
By now, we are only a few steps from his front stairs, and a sudden surge of adrenaline and guilt halts me in my tracks. Leo stops with me, looks into my eyes, and says, “What?”
I shrug and give him a slight smile, as if I have no answer. But what I am thinking is this: that I wish I could freeze this moment, somehow delay my final decision, and just hang here in the balance between two places, two worlds, two loves.
We walk up the steps, and I stand beside Leo as he unlocks the door. Once inside, the familiar smell of the past bombards me again. My stomach is in knots. It might as well be the night of the jury verdict, that first night we were together—the dizzy anticipation is the same, even without the drinks. Anything,
everything,
could happen. Something is going to. I put my camera equipment and purse down on the foyer floor, as Leo does the same with his messenger bag. We wordlessly make our way over to his couch, but don’t sit. Instead, Leo tosses his keys onto the coffee table and reaches over to flick on a small lamp with an opaque red shade resting on an end table. Leo squints at his watch and says, “Our reservation’s in twenty-five minutes.”
“Where?” I ask, although it doesn’t really matter.
“A little Italian spot. Not too far from here,” he says tentatively, almost nervously. “But we’d have to hurry to make it … or I could call and make it a little later?”
For some reason, his nerves calm me, and as I slip off my coat, draping it over an arm of the couch, I boldly say what I can tell he wants me to say, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
He says, “Me either,” and then extends his hand, palm up, asking for mine. I give it to him and then fall into him, my arms encircling his waist. His shoulders, chest, arms—
everything
feels so warm, solid, strong—even better than I remembered. I close my eyes as our embrace tightens and we slowly start to sway to imaginary music—a bluesy, plaintive ballad, the kind that can make you cry unexpectedly, even when you’re not in the mood to cry.
He whispers my name. I whisper his back, my eyes welling.
Then he says, “I’ve chased you in my dreams for a long time now, Ellie.” Just like that. From anyone else, the words would sound contrived. But from Leo, they are an honest line from our own epic ballad, written from the heart.
Is this really happening?
I wonder and then ask the question aloud.
Leo nods, whispers, “Yes.”
I think of Andy—of
course
I think of Andy—but I still raise my head slowly, just as I feel Leo’s lowering. Our faces tilt and meet, softly colliding. We are cheek to cheek, then nose to cheek, then nose to nose. I hold perfectly still, listening to the sound of him breathing, both of us breathing together. An eternity seems to pass before his bottom lip grazes my top one, and we make a slight, final adjustment, our mouths now squarely touching, our lips parting. Then, as we do the unthinkable, the inevitable, my mind goes blank, and everything and
everyone
outside this tiny apartment in Queens melts away altogether. And it is just the two of us holding on to something I can’t quite name.
Until my phone rings again.
The sound of it startles me as much as an actual voice in the room.
Andy’s
voice. But when I reach down into my coat pocket, I see Suzanne’s name again, and a text marked urgent. For some reason, I panic, imagining that something happened to our father, so perfectly visualizing the words:
Dad died
. Instead, I read her big-sister command:
Call me now
. I scroll down, expecting something more, but that is all there is.
“Everything okay?” Leo says, glancing down at my phone and then quickly looking away, as if he knows that whatever is on my phone can’t be his business. Not yet anyway.
I flip it closed and stammer, “I … I don’t know.”
“Andy?” Leo says.
I flinch, feeling a stab of guilt as I say, “No. It’s my sister. I think … I think maybe I should give her a call … I’m sorry …”
“No problem,” Leo says, rubbing his jaw as he backs up two steps. “I’ll be … around.” He points toward his bedroom, and then turns and walks down the hall. I fight the urge to follow him, wanting so badly to sit on his bed, watch him watching me.
I take a few deep breaths and drop to the couch, speed-dialing Suzanne’s number, thinking that the moment might be interrupted, but the mood is not broken.
My sister answers on the first ring and says what I know she will open with. “Where are you?”
“I’m in New York,” I say, feeling evasive in a way I wouldn’t have felt just moments before kissing Leo.
“Where?”
“Queens,” I say guiltily.
“Ellen.
Where
are you?” she demands.
“I’m at Leo’s apartment … We just got back from the shoot … Remember? On Coney Island?” I say, wondering why I’m not more direct with my sister—someone who has always been on my side. Even before there was a side to be on.
“What’s going on?” she says, now clearly agitated.
“Nothing,” I say, but my delivery suggests more, and she picks up on it instantly.
“Did you kiss him?” she says, sounding blunt even for Suzanne.
I hesitate, letting her intuit my silence. She does, and then says, “Did you …
sleep
with him?”
“No,” I say, probably not sounding properly offended, perhaps because the thought has crossed my mind more than once in the past few hours, minutes, seconds.
“But you kissed him?” she says.
“Yes,” I say—and something about the aloud affirmation makes everything real. My feelings for Leo. My disloyalty to Andy. My marriage hanging in the balance.
“You need to leave there,” she says, her voice filled with angst and urgency. “Leave there right now.”
“Suzanne …
no,
” I say.
She makes a clicking noise and then says, “You’re going to be sorry.”
“Maybe not.”
“You will, Ellen … God, I don’t want you to be sorry. I don’t want you to have regrets.”
I am thinking that the only thing I regret at this second is that I called my sister back—or that I had my phone on in the first place, but I say, “Andy and I got in a huge fight last night. Everything’s a mess.”
“Okay. I certainly know how that goes,” she says, at least feigning patience, “but you’re … making it so much worse.”
This, I can’t deny. Instead, I resort to a junior-high justification. “
He
left
me,
” I say. “Last night. He probably went to his sister’s—”
Suzanne interrupts. “No. He didn’t go to his sister’s. He went to a hotel … and called
your
sister.”
I blink, then stare at the red lamp shade until I see spots on the white wall above it. “He called you?” I finally say.
She says yes, this morning from the Ritz, and then again, about thirty minutes ago. Her voice trails off, as I imagine the rest of her sentence—
while you were kissing Leo
.
“What did he say?” I ask, feeling torn, numb.
“He’s upset, Ell. He’s scared, and he wants to talk to you.” There is the smallest trace of condemnation in her voice, but mostly just worry—and a little sadness, too.
“No, he doesn’t. He hasn’t called me. Not once.”
“Well, he’s hurt, Ell … He’s really hurt … and worried.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah. More or less.”
“What did you tell him?” I ask, unsure of what I want her answer to be.
“I told him not to worry … That you went to New York for work—
not
for Leo—and that he needed to trust you.”
I look down at my shoes, still damp from the rain, wondering if this same result would have happened if Andy hadn’t left, hadn’t left the note on the counter. Was it a foregone conclusion? Or not?
“Okay,” Suzanne says. “I’m not saying Andy’s perfect. Far from it. And you know how I feel about Margot’s self-centered, controlling bullshit. And, Jesus, I still can’t believe she didn’t tell you about Leo trying to see you …
But
…”
“But what?” I ask.
“But they’re your family. And you’re lucky to have … a family.”
I think of our father, how reabsorbed he is in Sharon’s life, children. Then I think of Vince—how he refuses to commit to my sister and what a frustrating place that must be. And, of course, I think of our mother. I
always
think of our mother.
“You’re my family, too,” I say, feeling guilty in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
“I know,” she says. “And you’re mine. But, c’mon, Ell. You know what I mean … They’re a
real
Norman Rockwell family. And they include you in
everything
. They count you as one of their own. You
are
one of them.”
I close my eyes, thinking of Mr. Graham’s toast to me on our wedding day, saying words to that effect. How Stella treats me like a daughter, and Margot treats me like her sister—even
before
I married Andy.
“Do you really want to give all that up?” Suzanne says, her voice maternal, soft, careful. “Do you want to give Andy up?”
“I don’t know,” I say, the reality of the situation sinking in, becoming stark, scary. And yet—I don’t want to make decisions based on fear.
A minute of silence passes and then Suzanne says, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” I say.
Suzanne pauses and then says, “Do you love him?”
I’m not sure who she means—Andy or Leo—but either way, I tell her yes, I do.
“Then don’t do this,” she says, obviously talking about Andy.
“Suzanne,” I say, glancing down the hall toward Leo. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is,” she says, cutting me off. “See, that’s the thing, Ell. It really
is
that simple.”
thirty-five
I hang up with Suzanne and put my head in my hands, overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. I am way too confused to describe what I’m feeling to myself, let alone to Leo, who has just returned to the living room and is now standing over me. One thing is for sure, though—no matter what rationalization I might try to conjure in the moments ahead, there is simply no way to recover from my wake-up, gut-checking conversation with Suzanne. No way to pick up where Leo and I left off. The mood is broken, not to be salvaged. Leo obviously senses this as he sits beside me, appearing uneasy on his own couch.
“Are you okay?” he says, his forehead lined with concern, his hand reaching out to lightly touch my knee where it rests for one second before returning to his own lap.
“I don’t know,” I say, grappling with Suzanne’s straightforward, yet somehow still enigmatic advice. “I don’t know what I’m
doing
.”
Leo exhales into his cupped hands. “This is really tough … I’m sorry.”
I look at him, interpreting his
sorry,
processing that it is not a contrite, forgiveness-seeking apology, but the sympathetic sort of
sorry
offered at the feet of misfortune, divorce, death. In other words, he knows our situation is dire—but does not regret our kiss or his own feelings. I’m not yet sure if I feel the same. It’s way too soon to tell.
I nod a thank you, or at least an acknowledgment, as it occurs to me that Suzanne never really addressed Leo, or my feelings for him. I wonder why, as I blurt out a question that suddenly seems utterly beside the point. “Do you think we would have lasted?”
Leo looks puzzled and possibly wistful, perhaps noticing my use of
would
rather than
will
. “What do you mean?” he asks.
“You know … If we had gotten back together … would we have
stayed
together?”
“Forever?” he says, his tone answering the question for me. He does not believe in forever. He never has.
But I
do
—at least in theory. “Yeah. Forever,” I say, thinking about marriage and kids, all the things I
still
want.
“Who knows?” Leo says with a faraway, philosophical look.
I think of our breakup, and then his most recent breakup, wondering if the scenarios were at all similar. I pose the question as casually as I can under the circumstances. “Why did you and Carol call it quits?”
“I told you this morning,” he says.
“Not really,” I say, feeling nauseous.
He throws up one hand as if at a total loss, and I recall how he pretended to be at a loss about our breakup, too, when the subject came up at the diner in L.A.
“There were a lot of reasons,” he says, as I watch him start to shut down. His eyelids become heavy, his expression vacant.
“Like?”
“Like … I don’t know … she was a great girl … But she just … wasn’t the one,” he says.
“How do you know she wasn’t the one?” I press, searching for my own answers. Some secret, mysterious litmus test for true love. A definition of soul mates.
“I just know,” he says, reaching up to touch a sideburn. “You always know.”
“Is that why we broke up, too?” I ask, hearing a needy note in my voice.
Leo sighs and says, “C’mon, Ellen.” He sounds weary and vaguely annoyed in a way that ushers in vivid memories—
bad
memories—of the past.
But I stay on course. “Tell me,” I say. “I need to understand.”
“Okay. Look. We’ve already been over all of this … I think our breakup was about timing more than anything else. We were too young.”
“We weren’t
that
young.”
“Young enough. I wasn’t ready for …
this,
” he says, motioning in the space between us, finally admitting the obvious—that it was
him,
not me. He broke up with me.
I nod, as if I understand his assessment, even though I really don’t. Yes, we were young, but in some ways, young love seems the most robust and idealistic, untarnished by everyday hardships. Leo threw in the towel
before
we were ever really tested. Maybe because he didn’t
want
to be tested. Maybe because he assumed we would fail. Maybe because, at the time, he just didn’t love me enough.
“Would staying with me have felt like … settling?” I ask.
The word
settling
echoes in my head, gnawing at my heart and filling me with trepidation. It is a word I’ve avoided for months, even in my own, private thoughts, but I suddenly can’t avoid it any longer. In some ways, it feels like the scary heart of the matter—the fear that I settled when I said “I do” to Andy. That I should have held out for this kind of love. That I should have believed that Leo would, someday, return to me.
“Hell, no,” Leo says, shaking his head with frustration. “That wasn’t it, and you know it.”
I start to pin him down further, but he offers an unprompted explanation. “Look, Ellie. You
were
the one … You
are
the one … If such a thing exists …”
I look into his eyes, his pupils lost in the dark brown around them. My head spins as I glance away, refusing to get sucked back into his gaze when so much is at risk.
“Okay,” I say.
It is a wholly inadequate response, but the only one that feels safe in this emerging moment of truth.
“So … what do
you
think?” he says. “What do
you
want?”
I close my eyes, feeling suspended in time and a little disoriented, the way you sometimes feel when you awaken in a strange place and momentarily forget where you are. Then I look at Leo again, and suddenly realize with shock and a dash of terror that this choice, taken away from me years ago, first by Leo, then by Margot, is now mine to make. Finally. I unwittingly imagine myself at a literal fork in the road, the kind that belongs in a spooky Disney animation. Two twisting, dirt paths. Two signs attached to gnarled trees, pointing in opposite directions. This way for Andy. That way for Leo.
I uncross my arms, letting them fall to my sides, my fingertips grazing the buttery soft leather of Leo’s new couch. Then I silently replay Suzanne’s parting words, wondering if my disillusioned, unlucky-in-love sister is onto something. It’s not about what might have been. And it’s not about whether I have genuine feelings for Leo now, underneath the layers of nostalgia, lust, unrequited love. It’s really not about Leo at
all
.
It’s about Andy, plainly, simply.
It’s about whether I
truly
love my husband.
“I think I should go,” I say, the answer, always in my heart, finally crystallizing in my head, too.
Leo returns his hand to my leg, this time with slightly more weight. “Ellen … don’t …”
My mind races—as I hear only half of what he says next. Something about not wanting to lose me again. Something about how he knows that I’m married, but that we are too good together. He closes with, “I miss
us
“—which is more powerful and compelling than merely missing
me
—especially because I feel the same way. I miss us, too. I always have, and probably always will. Overcome with grief and the sense of impending, final loss, I touch his hand. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I’ll be losing something, some
one
.
But maybe that’s what it all comes down to. Love,
not
as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.
I look into Leo’s eyes, feeling heartbroken, but resolved, and somehow freed.
“I
have
to go,” I say, standing slowly, methodically gathering my things as if I’m moving in slow motion.
Leo stands along with me, reluctantly helping me into my coat and following me to his door, then onto his porch. As we head down the stairs, an errant cab appears in the distance, drifting toward us, down the otherwise desolate street. An omen to stay on course. I make my way onto the sidewalk, step off the curb, maneuver between two parked cars, and wave to the driver. Leo stands at a short distance, watching.
“Where are you going?” he asks. His voice is calm, but there is something frantic in his eyes. Something I’ve never seen before. A short time ago, I might have basked in it, feeling victorious, healed. Now it only makes me more sad.
“To my hotel,” I say, nodding at the driver as he puts my bags in the trunk.
“Will you call me when you get there?”
“Yes,” I say, wondering if I will keep this promise.
Leo walks toward me, puts his hand on my arm, and says my name in one final protest.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling away and sliding into the backseat. I force a smile that feels brave, my vision starting to blur with tears that I frantically blink away. Then I close the cab door, holding my palm up to the window to say good-bye. Just like I did the morning after our red-eye flight.
Only this time, I don’t cry, and I don’t look back.