I’ll leave the Swiss Army knife for Paul and the lighter for Phillip. I slip my Rolex off of my wrist and into my pocket, and I pick up Dad’s old Tag Heuer. When I was a kid I would hold on to his wrist and turn the diving bezel, enjoying the way it clicked around the face of the watch. I give the bezel a few turns. The clicks feel different without his wrist anchoring the watch. I flip it over and see that the back of the case is engraved. YOU FOUND ME. My mother’s words, her naked love cut into steel. It’s hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it’s impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents. They really did have something, though, my parents. I don’t think I ever fully appreciated that until right now. At first the steel is cold against my wrist, but it warms quickly against my skin, like a living thing. I slide the drawer closed and sit on his side of the bed for a minute, looking down at the watch. My wrist isn’t nearly as thick as his was, and I’ll have to have some links removed from the band when I get the watch fixed. For now the hands are motionless on the white face—the watch stopped working years ago—but I don’t have much of a schedule to keep to these days.
9:40 a.m.
MOM, PHILLIP, PAUL, Alice, and Horry are at the table, eating a lavish brunch comprised of shiva leftovers. Phillip is telling a story that has them alternately gasping and laughing. He has many stories that can do that, and some of them might even be true. I watch them for a moment, unseen from the hallway, and then step quietly down the hall to the front door. For reasons I don’t fully understand, being at the center of another tangle of good-bye hugs and well-wishes is more than I can handle right now. Alice will be weird, Paul awkward, Phillip exuberant, and Mom will cry, which will make me cry, and I have cried enough.
“Making good your escape, I see.”
I turn to see Linda, standing at the foot of the stairs, watching me.
“No. I was just—”
“It’s okay,” she says softly. “Seven days is a lot of togetherness. Come give me a hug.” She wraps her arms around me and kisses me once on each cheek.
“I’m happy for you and Mom,” I say.
“Really? It’s not too weird for you?” She blushes a little, looking younger and suddenly vulnerable, and I can see her a little the way Mom does.
“It’s a good weird.”
“That was a perfect way to describe it,” she says, hugging me again. “Thank you.”
“So, are you going to move in?”
“We’ll see,” she says, offering up a small, wry smile. “We’re taking it very slow. Your mom hasn’t dated in such a long time. This is all very new to her.”
“I would imagine it is.”
“Oh. Well, yes, that too.”
She looks me over fondly, appraising me. “You look better than when you first got here.”
“Then I was a cuckolded husband. Now I’m an expecting father.”
She grins. “Don’t be a stranger, Judd.”
“I won’t.”
Outside, the sun lights up the red leaves of the dogwoods, casting the yard in soft amber hues. Across the street, two gardeners with noisy leaf blowers send up a twister of multicolored leaves swirling off the lawn, blowing them in a slow, graceful procession to the curb. A cat suns itself in a picture window. A woman jogs by pushing a baby in a running stroller. It’s amazing how harmless the world can sometimes seem.
9:55 a.m.
I SIT IDLING in a gas station just before the interstate junction, drawing maps in my head. I can be at the skating rink in ten minutes. I can be back in Kingston in ninety. According to the GPS, I can be in Maine in seven hours and seven minutes. My car doesn’t have GPS, but Phillip’s Porsche does, and that’s what I’m driving. I left him a note with the keys to my car. This morning, on a hunch, I counted the money in my bag and found it light two grand, not one, so I figure a little collateral is in order.
Penny. Jen. Maine. None of the above. There are options, is my point.
The girl gassing up her blue Toyota has piles of kinky brown curls held off her face with a black headband. She has great skin and funky black glasses that convey a sexy intelligence. She’s a magazine writer, or maybe a photographer. When she looks over at me looking over at her, I smile. She smiles back and I fall briefly, passionately in love with her.
Options.
I want very badly to be in love again, which is why I’m in no position to look for it. But I hope I’ll know it when it comes. My father’s watch jingles loosely on my wrist, my mother’s words resting unseen on my skin. YOU FOUND ME. It gives me hope.
I pull onto the interstate, grinding the transmission once or twice on the way to fourth. Dad made us all learn on a manual, his massive forearms flexing as he worked the stick.
Clutch, shift, up, gas. Clutch, shift, up, gas.
I hear him in my head and smile. We can all drive stick. We can all change a flat. We can all repress our feelings until they poison us. It’s a complicated legacy.
I’m not a fan of country music, but there’s no better music to drive to. Turn the right song up loud enough on the Porsche’s sound system and it will swallow you whole. The past is prelude and the future is a black hole, but right now, hurtling north across state lines for no particular reason, I have to say, it feels pretty good to be me. Tonight I’ll sleep in Maine. Tomorrow is anybody’s guess. I’ve got a baby girl on the way, a borrowed Porsche, and fourteen grand in a shopping bag.
Anything can happen.
Acknowledgments
Thank You:
Lizzie, for your endless support and encouragement. Spencer, Emma, and Alexa, who continue to amaze and inspire me. Simon Lipskar, who, nine years and five novels later, continues to represent me with passion, wisdom, and just the right amount of profanity. Ben Sevier, my editor, who read numerous drafts of this book, providing sharp insight and helpful suggestions at every step along the way. Kassie Evashevski, Tobin Babst, Rebecca Ewing, Maja Nikolic, and Josh Getzler.
About the Author
Jonathan Tropper is the internationally bestselling, critically acclaimed author of
How to Talk to a Widower, Everything Changes, The Book of Joe,
and
Plan B.
He lives with his family in Westchester, New York, where he teaches writing at Manhattanville College.