Tobias smiled, although if he was amused or confused I couldn’t necessarily say. I shot Jessica a cool-it look. He didn’t know about the UCLA endeavor.
“I like it here,” he said instead. He started looking around. I peered at our apartment through his eyes. The hanging stained-glass pendant in the window, the pile of Moroccan meditation cushions, the mismatched curtains—like stepping into a crystal shop, without the incense. We had a lot of stuff.
“We like it, too,” I said.
Tobias shifted onto his left foot beside me. We had left his apartment because we wanted time to be alone together, and Matty was in a talkative mood, which meant shutting the door was impossible. Sex with Tobias was something I could not get enough of. With old boyfriends it had felt like this separate thing—something different in tone and resonance from the rest of our relationship. Time out of time. But with Tobias it was an extension. He made love the way he lived—close, intense, on the edge. Maybe that’s why it was impactful. Every time we were in bed I had the sense, even underlying, that it might be the last.
Right then I just wanted to lock him in my bedroom. Usually on the weekends Jessica was at Sumir’s. It hadn’t occurred to me she would be home.
“What are you guys up to?” Jessica asked.
“Just hanging out,” I said. “Where’s Sumir?”
Jessica looked around like she was surprised he wasn’t there. “He had to work,” she said. “Hey, do you guys want to get brunch?”
Tobias didn’t say anything. “We ate,” I answered.
Jessica hopped off the couch, tucking her shawl around her. “Is it cold out?”
I couldn’t answer. I had no idea what the temperature was. We had spent the entire subway ride like two teenagers who had no place to go. Cold? For us it was July in November.
“A little,” Tobias said. “Jacket, no hat.”
Jessica beamed at him. “Thanks.” To me: “He’s taller than I thought he’d be.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed; so did Tobias.
She went into her bedroom. “Nice to meet you!” she called over her shoulder.
Tobias’s hands found my hips. He pushed me back against the living room wall. “Not here,” I breathed.
“Show me where.”
I led him into my bedroom. The windows were open and it was cold and loud. Tenth Avenue was a riot of noise. I shut one. I pulled the other down until there was a gap of half a foot.
I turned around to find Tobias sitting on my bed. He was looking up at the wall separating my two windows. My stomach instantly turned in on itself, because I knew what he was seeing.
“The photo,” he said.
The one. A man, eyes closed, covered in a cloud of smoke. His own work. The photo I’d bought and carried with me through two campus apartments and finally here, to New York, where I had, after two years, taken it out from under my bed, had it framed, and hung it up. It read like a map, kind a symbol, like a prophecy. And Tobias knew it.
“How did you…” But it wasn’t a question, not exactly.
I froze. I could not physically move. I didn’t know if that was good, or the end. What if he was freaked out? Didn’t this make me worse than a stalker?
“I think I’ve been looking for you, too,” he said. He didn’t say it to me. He said it to the photograph. I went to him then. We made love for the first time in my bed. It felt like we were making up for lost time. But afterward, and for years later, I couldn’t help but think of the way he said it, what had his attention. I’ve been looking for you.
Maybe he meant the man. Maybe he meant the photo. Maybe it wasn’t me after all.
9:16 P.M.
“I WANT TO GET BACK TO THE NIGHT I was born,” I say. This is too much talk about Tobias. I’m not ready to deal with it. I’m beginning to realize it’s more complicated than I previously believed, the reason that he’s here.
Robert pauses mid-bite.
“Absolutely,” Audrey says. “Let’s do that.” She’s becoming comfortable in her role of facilitator. Conrad can prod; she can foster. They’re a team, and I see from the way he refills her glass and she passes him bread that they feel the shared responsibility, too.
“What do you want to know?” Robert says. He puts down his fork and dabs at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. The move strikes me as oddly formal, and I get a rush of anger at how reserved he is. Appropriate. I can’t imagine this man in the blue suit with the salt-and-pepper hair throwing a chair out of the window in a rage.
But he did.
“I want to know if you were sick then,” I say.
“Yes,” Robert says immediately, no hesitation. “Of course.” He looks confused, and across the table I see Conrad take a big inhale.
“You want to know if you’re responsible,” Conrad says to me. “If you made him that way.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jessica chimes in next to me. “How could Sabrina be responsible? Robert was an alcoholic who left his family in the lurch. She was a child.”
Conrad doesn’t say anything; neither does Audrey. Tobias is the one who speaks.
“You weren’t,” he says right to me. I feel him reach for my hand under the table but I move it away. Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he remember he was the one who left me? That they both were?
Robert shifts in his seat. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he says.
I look past Tobias to this man who is supposed to be my father. The physical resemblance I see. It just becomes more prominent the longer we sit here. Maybe it’s the surprise factor that makes it so noticeable. My mother never mentioned it. She’d never say something like You have your father’s nose. I’m sure she noticed, though. I’m sure it hurt.
“Where are my sisters?” I ask. Sisters. What a word.
Robert busies himself with his napkin again. Is he going to cry? It’s hard to say. I don’t know his tells.
“Alexandra is an orthodontist. Or she will be next year. Daisy is studying film. She wants to be a director and writer. She’s—” But he breaks off. I know he was going to say talented. He should be able to gush about them; they’re his children. But it makes me feel light-headed—these details, the ways in which he knows them.
“Where do they live?”
“Daisy is here, in New York. Alexandra lives in California. She has a baby.”
“She’s married?”
Robert shakes his head. “Yes. He works a lot. Her mother helps out with the baby.”
“How lovely; she must adore her.” From Audrey.
“Him,” Robert says. “Oliver. Alexandra is a wonderful mother.” He looks at me. “It would have been nice, for you to know her.” He doesn’t say the rest. He doesn’t say your mother wouldn’t allow it. He doesn’t need to.
“I think she was afraid of having to share me,” I say, because I feel I need to defend her. She is, after all, not here. And she was a good mother—still is. Distracted, overworked, but present in the ways that mattered. Food, shelter, care. She told me she loved me every day. By all accounts, I have been tremendously blessed. By all accounts, my life was better without him in it.
“Naturally,” Audrey says.
Robert runs a hand over his forehead. “She had good reason to keep you away,” he says. “I don’t blame her. It’s very important you know that.”
I think about how little we talked about Robert, my mother and I. Would it have been different had I pressed her? Should I have? “Fine,” I say.
“I don’t want you to think after tonight that she’s somehow the bad guy. I am the bad guy. I will always be the bad guy. There is nothing that could change that.”
“Then what is the point of all this?” I ask. I throw my hands up for effect. For the first time since we sat down I want to get up and walk out the door. I seriously consider it. I also need a cigarette. I have been continuously quitting since Tobias and I broke up, but it has never quite stuck. I don’t chain-smoke, but in tense situations I can never seem to hang on without sneaking out for one. I have my emergency pack in the bottom of my bag, too.
“Five,” Tobias says next to me. It’s quiet—he leans a little my way when he says it, but everyone else still hears.
“Frustrated,” I say. I shoot it at him.
“Good,” Tobias says. “And?”
“Sad.” I look down at my plate. “Time.”