“Well, that,” Patrick says. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about last night, but then my sister called. I have to show you something. Can you follow me?”
He steers me over to the back door and unlocks all the bolts and—out on his little stunted terrace—there is a whole stack of cardboard boxes. Three, maybe. Large ones.
I look at him blankly. He smiles.
“Frankly, this is the most unethical thing I have ever done in my life, but I kind of don’t feel bad about it.”
“But what is it?”
“The stuff Noah’s been packing,” he says. “Blix’s stuff. It’s all here.”
“But how did you get it?” This is hurting my head even more.
“This is my brand of magic.” His eyes are twinkling. I’ve never seen him look so happy.
“You magically got the boxes to get on your terrace?”
“Well. I magically overheard Noah asking Paco if the UPS driver stops at his bodega, and if he’d take these boxes, since Noah didn’t feel like schlepping them to a post office, God forbid, or to a mailing center. And Paco said sure, no problem. And then I—”
“You didn’t!”
“I did. I made an arrangement with Paco. He brought the boxes over here—Noah had brought some over to him on Wednesday afternoon, which means they must contain Blix’s journal and your letter.”
“Oh, Patrick!”
“So we can go through them and take out what we need—or rather what Blix needs us to have. And decide if we want to mail the rest.”
“Can I kiss you?”
“No.”
He says it so quickly that I laugh. First laugh since the fall.
“Come on. Technically we’ve slept together, so I think I could give you one kiss on the cheek.”
He seems to consider this. “Well. Is it a pity kiss?”
“No! It’s a legitimate thank-you-for-the-magic kiss,” I tell him, and I go over and stand on tiptoes and kiss him on the cheek. “And by the way, just so you know, the other one wasn’t a pity kiss either.”
But then he says he knows pity kisses; in fact, he is all too familiar with pity kisses, pity looks, pity chocolate chip cookies, pity invitations, pity car rides, pity flowers, pity conversations, pity sandwiches.
I would argue, but I am not in my right mind, and also it’s time to go upstairs and see the new real estate agent, the person who might solve everything.
FORTY-TWO
MARNIE
I’m relieved to see that the real estate agent, Anne Tyrone, is not a Brooklyn hipster. She’s motherly, bosomy, and comforting. Not the type to expect perfection in a house the day after Thanksgiving.
She’s wearing her glasses on a little filigreed chain around her neck, like a proper older lady, and she walks through the house without making a single note, just soaking up the ambiance and looking around.
“Lovely, just lovely,” she murmurs.
I am pleased to see that no one would know that a near riot took place in here just hours ago—probably thanks to Patrick cleaning everything up. The only hint that there might have been a disaster is that the kitchen floor has a wonderful gleam to it this morning, the gleam of being well oiled with turkey fat perhaps. Four pumpkin pies are sitting calmly on the counter with plastic wrap over them. There is no turkey carcass in the living room. Bedford isn’t even there—he was taken upstairs by Jessica to sleep off his turkey hangover, according to a note I see on the counter.
So then Anne Tyrone goes upstairs and looks at Jessica’s apartment and then downstairs to look at Patrick’s, and when she comes back up, she says to me, “So, darling, how much work do you want to do here before we put it on the market?”
I explain about my life, Blix, my head injury, the three-month legal agreement, my move back to Florida, and I’m about to launch into a speech about my uncertainty about whether that’s the right place for me, when she pats me on the arm and says, “So, basically nothing then? Is that what I’m hearing?”
Yes. I can’t. I can’t do one single thing.
“Well,” she says. “I think you’re going to be fighting the market the whole time. This isn’t a good time for sales anyway . . . blah blah blah . . . and with so much needing to be done . . . blah blah and additional blah . . .”
“Can’t it be a fixer-upper?” I say. I like the concept of the fixer-upper. We’re all fixer-uppers in this building, I tell her. Seems like we should be sticking together, in a place that understands us—but we’re not. We’re scattering like tumbleweeds, and it may be all my fault.
She is polite enough to let all that news go right by her. “I’ll try,” she says at last. “In the meantime, you may want to do what you can to make it look normal. You know, maybe paint that refrigerator a different color. At least that.”
“Sure,” I say. “Thank you, thank you.”
Whatever.
After she leaves, I go outside. I take down the tattered Tibetan prayer flags and pick up some of the leaves on the stoop. I go down and look at Patrick’s door. His curtains are closed, and the leaves are still piled up in the little entryway by the stairs.
Ah, Patrick.
I remember hearing the conversation he was having with his sister—the U-Haul truck, his computers going with him—and I feel like crying again. I am going to miss him so much. How is it that I was able to withstand losing both Jeremy and Noah, and yet the thought of Patrick leaving—Patrick, who won’t touch me; Patrick, who is so damaged that he thinks everything is about pity; Patrick, who will never go out in public with me EVER—pierces me almost to my core?
Is this love? Or is it what he thinks it is—pity, perhaps mixed with some adoration because he was this tragic superhero, trying to save his girlfriend from the fire? He would say I love his story, not him. Not the reality of a man whose soul and body have been burned beyond his own recognition.
Lola comes outside on her stoop, and she waves to me, a listless wave. Nothing like before.
“That the real estate agent?” she calls.
“Yeah.”
“You’re going with her then?”
“I guess so. How are you?” I ask her, and she says she’s fine.
Then she leans over the railing and says, “I’m sorry I got so mad at you yesterday. It’s really my old argument with Blix, I realized. I loved her to pieces, but damned if that woman didn’t always think she knew best about everybody else’s life! I can’t stand the feeling of being manipulated—even by magic. Especially by magic.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
“You should feel the same way I do! What she’s done with you and Patrick!”
“Well,” I say. “But it’s not going to work with me and Patrick.”
But she waves her hands over her head like she’s trying to bat away a bunch of gnats, and then she goes inside.
I head back in, too. The sun is beaming through the windows, making patches of light on the oak floors. I love the bay windows, the brick fireplace, Patrick’s graceful sculpture on the mantel. I’m overcome suddenly with the feel of this room, and the high ceilings, the staircase up to the kitchen. The little decorative touches, the wainscoting in the kitchen. The way the stove leans just a bit. The soapstone sink that stopped me in my tracks that very first afternoon, when Noah was showing me around, before he knew.
And, may I just say, I love the turquoise hand-painted refrigerator. It speaks to me, this refrigerator.
Ah, this house is a sly one, piling up the memories—Blix’s and mine. The scarred table with the star carved into it. The little plants on the windowsill. The view of the park and the busy street below.
The dust motes drift down, ready to coat everything as they always have. The light continues to pour in, making shifting patterns on the floor as the breeze moves the gingko tree outside, shedding the last of its four leaves, pretending we belong together.
Marnie, it’s okay to love him.
No, he won’t let me.
It’s okay to love him.
“Well, my friend, I think we struck out.”