“Yes, Dr. Templeman? Care to share?” My audacity is breathtaking.
“I don’t know much about your work, Josh.” Everyone’s jaw drops even further. Mine doesn’t. I will never give him the satisfaction. I stare into his eyes and mentally twist a rusty fish knife into his gut. I raise an eyebrow.
“I’d . . . be interested in talking to you more about it, Josh.”
I interject. “Now that you know he’s successful? Now you know that he’ll almost certainly be promoted to chief operating officer of a major publishing house? You’ve got something to tell your buddies at golf now.”
“Squash,” Patrick tells me in an aside. “He plays squash.”
I have given Anthony the dressing-down of a lifetime. He is unable to speak. It is wonderful.
“You should love him and be proud of him even if he’s in the mailroom. Even if he were unemployed and crazy and living under a bridge. We’re leaving now. Elaine, it was a pleasure, I loved meeting you. Mindy, Patrick, congratulations again and enjoy your honeymoon. Sorry I made a scene just now. Anthony, it’s been real.”
I stand up. “Now we screech out of here like Thelma and Louise.” Josh stands and goes to kiss his mother’s cheek. She grasps helplessly at his wrist.
“But when will I see you?” She looks up at Josh, but she also looks to me.
I can see Josh’s jaw tightening, and I can almost hear the excuses forming on his tongue. He might drop off the radar for the Templeman family altogether. The next thing I say surprises even me. Especially given the fact I’ve essentially just said good-bye to them all for the last time.
“If you can come up to the city soon, we could meet you for lunch. We could go see a movie after. Anthony, you’re invited too.”
His jaw, which has been hinging loosely, sways in the breeze.
“But only if you’re prepared to be civil and start to get to know your son again. I think you know there’s going to be no more ragging on Josh. Except by me, because he loves it.”
“You and I are going to have a discussion. Outside. Now.” Elaine gets to her feet and points to a French door leading to the side gardens. Anthony looks like a man walking to the gallows. I know a fellow rabid lioness when I see her.
I take Josh’s hand and we weave through our spellbound audience.
“No charge,” the cashier tells me. “Lady, that was better than theater.”
I retrieve our bags from the receptionist, thankfully not the lustful blonde this time. I probably would have roundhouse-kicked her head off. Walking together, matching our footfalls, we exit the lobby like two television district attorneys gunning for justice.
I ask the valet for our car, and turn.
“Okay, let me have it.” I just made an incredibly embarrassing scene. I can see people talking about me as they wait for their taxis. I’m going to star in twenty different retellings of That Restaurant Incident.
Josh picks me up off the ground. “Thank you,” he tells me. “Thank you so much.”
When we kiss, I hear some applause.
“You’re not mad I rescued you? Boys don’t need rescuing.”
“This one did. And I’ll even let you choose which you wanna be. Thelma, or Louise,” he tells me, setting me on my feet as the car arrives.
“You’re the good-looking one, I guess you’re Thelma.”
He slides the driver’s seat back. We drive about half a block before Josh bursts out laughing.
“You told my dad it had ‘been real.’”
“Like I was a bad TV scriptwriter who thought that’s how kids talk.”
“Exactly. It was so priceless.” He wipes a tear away with his thumb.
“I feel bad about your mom, though. She looked so completely stricken.”
“Don’t you worry, she is going to kick the shit out of him for that.”
“I have no doubt. It’s why she and I get along so well.”
He thinks for a few moments while driving. “I don’t know how I can move on from this, with my dad.”
“Nothing’s insurmountable.” I try to believe my own words.
I roll down the window a little so the breeze is on my face. The sun is warming my legs and Josh is smiling again.
I do not even let myself think about how it is all going to end.
IF THE DRIVE normally takes five hours, I swear Josh cuts it down to three. But the hours mean nothing to us as we wind through the countryside, leaving the sea-salt wind behind us.
The memory is lit by the sun through the trees we drive through, nothing but lemons and copper tones scattering across our arms, lighting our eyes up blue; his sapphire, mine turquoise. I see my face in the car’s side mirror and I barely recognize myself.
I’ve changed. I’m someone new today. Today is a momentous day.
I’ll always remember the drive home as a movie montage, and I knew I was in one. Each detail was vividly bright. I knew I’d need the memories one day.
This montage is directed by someone French. A convertible would have been their preference, but the windows are down, so that’s something. The air is unseasonably warm and scented like honeysuckle and cut grass.
The montage stars this pretty girl, Flamethrower-red mouth smiling over at a beautiful man. He’s looking so achingly cool in his sunglasses you immediately buy a pair for yourself.
He lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it. Tells her something charming and makes her laugh. It’s the sort of moment you want to hit pause on and buy whatever it is they’re selling.
Happiness. A better life. Red lipstick and those sunglasses.
The soundtrack should be a lilting indie affair; equal parts hopeful and with a broken, bittersweet lyric hook that makes your heart hurt for some unknown reason. But instead it’s scored by the 1980s hair metal I found in an incriminating iPod playlist titled Gym.
“You seriously got those abs while listening to Poison and Bon Jovi,” I crow, and he can’t deny it. It’s just us, windows down, stereo cranked, the road curling in front of us like a tongue.
We sing along. The lyrics for songs I haven’t heard in years fall out of my mouth. His fingers drum the steering wheel. Life right now is easier than breathing.
We never stop the car. It’s like if we stop, even for a rest break, reality will catch us. We’re bank robbers. Kids running away from boarding school. Eloping teenage sweethearts.
There’s a bottle of water in my bag, and Josh’s tin of mints. We share, and it’s better than a banquet.
I will eventually confess to myself why this montage means so much. I could try to believe it was because of Monday morning looming, and the one prize dangling above two worthy recipients. Maybe it was because of how alive I felt. So completely young and filled to bursting with the scary, thrilling certainty my life was about to change in a big way.
Possibly it was the thrill of sticking it to the man and the heady rush of standing up to someone terrifying. The thrill of rescuing someone. Being the strong one. Carrying someone; coddling and protecting, defending like a lioness.
Maybe it was the smell of spring in the air; the field of four-leaf clovers we pass. Red roses against a fence. Leather seats and Josh’s skin.
No, it was something else; the new knowledge of something irreversible, permanent. It cycled through my head with each revolution of the car’s wheels, each pulse of blood in my frail whisper-thin veins. At any moment a tiny valve could buckle under the pressure of the cholesterol from my croissants. At any moment I could die.
But I don’t. I fall asleep, my cheek against the warm seat, my face turned toward him, like it always has been. Like it always will.
I open my eyes a tiny crack. We’re in a parking garage.
“We’re home,” he says.
I think the unthinkable. I should have been thinking it all along. My eyes slide closed and I feign sleep.
“You need to wake up,” he whispers. A kiss on my cheek. A miracle.
I love Joshua Templeman.
Chapter 28
We walk into his apartment and he puts my overnight bag with his in the bedroom, like I am returning home. I use the bathroom and when I come out, he’s making me a cup of tea with the concentration of a scientist.