We both laughed. We were both trying too hard. We both knew it.
“You look good,” I said.
“So do you.”
Brief silence.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m out of uncomfortable clichés and forced banter.”
“Whew,” Rachel said.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m buying food.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you meant,” she interrupted. “My mother moved into a condo development in West Orange.”
A few of the strands had escaped her ponytail and fell across her face. It took all my willpower to stop from pushing them away.
Rachel glanced away and then back at me. “I heard about your wife and daughter,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“I wanted to call or write but . . .”
“I heard you got married,” I said.
She wiggled the fingers on her left hand. “Not anymore.”
“And that you were an agent with the FBI.”
Rachel put her hand back down. “Also not anymore.”
More silence. Again I don’t know how long we stood there. The cashier had moved on to the next shopper. Zia came up behind us. She cleared her throat and jammed her hand toward Rachel. “Hi, I’m Zia Leroux,” she said.
“Rachel Mills.”
“Good to meet you, Rachel. I’m Marc’s practice partner.” Then, thinking about it, she added: “We’re just friends.”
“Zia,” I said.
“Oh, right, sorry. Look, Rachel, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to run.” She jerked her thumb toward the exit to emphasize the point. “You two talk. Marc, I’ll meet you back here later. Great meeting you, Rachel.”
“Same here.”
Zia rushed off. I shrugged. “She’s a great doctor.”
“I bet she is.” Rachel took hold of her cart. “I have someone waiting in the car, Marc. It was good seeing you.”
“You too.” But surely, with all I’d lost, I must have learned something, right? I couldn’t just let her go. I cleared my throat and said, “Maybe we should get together.”
“I’m still living in Washington. I head back tomorrow.”
Silence. My insides turned to jelly. My breathing was shallow.
“Good-bye, Marc,” Rachel said. But those hazel eyes were wet.
“Don’t go yet.”
I tried to keep the pleading out of my voice, but I don’t think I was successful. Rachel looked at me, and she saw everything. “What do you want me to say here, Marc?”
“That you want to get together too.”
“That’s all?”
I shook my head. “You know that’s not all.”
“I’m not twenty-one anymore.”
“Neither am I.”
“The girl you loved is dead and gone.”
“No,” I said. “She’s right in front of me.”
“You don’t know me anymore.”
“So let’s get reacquainted. I’m not in a rush.”
“Just like that?”
I tried to smile. “Yeah.”
“I live in Washington. You live in New Jersey.”
“So I’ll move,” I said.
But even before the impetuous words came out, even before Rachel made that face, I could recognize my own false bravado. I couldn’t just leave my parents or dump my business with Zia or—or abandon my ghosts. Somewhere between my lips and her ears the sentiment crashed and burned.
Rachel turned to leave then. She did not say good-bye again. I watched her push the cart toward the door. I saw it automatically swing open with an electric grunt. I saw Rachel, the love of my life, disappear again without so much as a backward glance. I stayed still. I did not follow her. I felt my heart tumble and shatter, but I did nothing to stop her.
Maybe I hadn’t learned anything, after all.
Chapter 10
I drank.
I am not a big drinker—pot had been my elixir of choice during my younger days—but I found an old bottle of gin in a cabinet over the sink. There was tonic in the fridge. I have an automatic icemaker in the freezer. You do the math.
I still lived in the old Levinsky house. It is much too big for me, but I don’t have the heart to let it go. It feels like a portal now, a lifeline (albeit a fragile one) to my daughter. Yes, I know how that sounds, but selling it now would be like closing a door on her. I can’t do that.
Zia wanted to stay with me, but I begged off. She did not push it. I thought about the corny Dan Fogelberg (not Dan Somebody) song where the old lovers talk until their tongues get tired. I thought about Bogie questioning the gods who would allow Ingrid Bergman into his, of all possible, gin joints. Bogie drank after she left. It seemed to help him. Maybe it would help me too.
The fact that Rachel could still pack this kind of wallop annoyed the hell out of me. It was stupid and childish really. Rachel and I had first met during summer break between my sophomore and junior years of college. She was from Middlebury, Vermont, and supposedly a distant cousin of Lenny’s wife, Cheryl, though no one could ascertain the exact relationship. That summer—the summer of all summers—Rachel stayed with Cheryl’s family because Rachel’s folks were going through a nasty divorce. We were introduced, and like I said before, it took some time for the bus to smack into me. Maybe that’s what made it all the more potent when it did.
We began to date. We doubled a lot with Lenny and Cheryl. The four of us spent every weekend at Lenny’s summer house on the Jersey shore. It was indeed a glorious summer, the kind of summer everyone should experience at least once in a lifetime.
If this were a movie, we’d be cueing up the montage music. I went to Tufts University while Rachel was starting out at Boston College. First scene of the montage, well, they’d probably have us on a boat on the Charles, me paddling, Rachel holding a parasol, her smile tentative then mocking. She’d splash me and then I’d splash her and then the boat would tip. It never happened, but you get the point. Next maybe there would be a picnic scene on campus, a shot of us studying in the library, our bodies entwined on a couch, me staring mesmerized as Rachel reads from her textbook, her glasses on, absentmindedly tucking a hair behind her ear. The montage would probably close on two bodies tussling under a white satin sheet, even though no college student uses satin sheets. Still, I’m thinking cinematic here.