Where We Belong (39 page)

A few days after that, at about ten o’clock in the morning, Rachel came to the door of our apartment to tell me she was leaving and to say goodbye. Fortunately, my mom was at work. It was just Sophie, lying on the rug, and me.

“I could have stayed longer,” she said. “But it’s been six days, and I think he’s all right. I think he just needs time to process. You know. Alone. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s getting sick of me.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” I said.

“You know how he is. A bit of a loner.”

“I’m not sure.”

She looked at me strangely. “You don’t agree?”

“I think he might be changing. Some, anyway. So… six days. That’s a nice long visit. You must have had plenty of time to talk.”

I watched her face for a moment. But she didn’t know what I was talking about. It was a disappointment I could feel all down through my chest, like I was a sword swallower. I thought, Why can’t he just tell her?

Not that I thought it was easy or anything. But I would have done it by then, and I’m the world’s worst spaz about things like that. Well. About everything.

“We talked, yes,” she said. “Mostly about the dog. But different things. Nothing special. Why? Was there something else?”

“No. Not really. I just… I know what good friends you two are. And how much it meant to him to have you here. Do you want to come in? It’s cold, and I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“No, I really should go,” she said. “I don’t have the best night vision, so I want to get home before dark. But before I go, I want to tell you how much it means to
me
to have
you
here. I feel so much better leaving him here, knowing you’re here to help.”

“How’s his back?”

“Getting a little better.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and I knew she was ready to go.

So, nice and fast, before she could get away, I said, “You should come visit more often.”

“I’d like that. But I can only come up as often as Paul invites me.”

“I think he wants to invite you more. But I think he feels like maybe it’s imposing… to ask you. So if you ever wanted to suggest it…”

She looked into my face for a long moment, like she’d lost something there. I looked down at the snowy landing. I was worried I’d said too much. Given too much away.

“I just might do that,” she said. “Maybe I will. Happy New Year.”

Then she kissed me on the forehead and headed out down the stairs, being careful not to slip.

I watched her and thought it was no wonder Paul was in love with her. If I was in my sixties, I figured I’d probably be in love with her, too. She was one of those women who just almost made it too easy to fall.

“Happy New Year,” I called after her.

At first, I left Paul alone. I wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted me to. But we had a phone by then. And he didn’t exactly live far away. So I figured he’d let me know if he wanted company.

He called me in the early evening about three or four days after Rachel left. Asked me if I wanted to play a few hands of Gin.

“Anytime,” I said. “Always. I just didn’t want to bug you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But now would be good.”

“I’d have to bring Sophie. My mom is out with her friend Jenna from work.”

“Not a problem. Back door’s open. Just come in.”

So I picked my way down the snowy, icy driveway and up his back stairs. Holding Sophie’s hand so she wouldn’t fall. I led her through the back door and the back bedroom, and then she pulled her hand out of mine and ran to Rigby’s old dog bed and curled up tight.

Paul showed up in the bedroom doorway with me, and we watched her for a minute.

“I’m glad you didn’t get rid of it,” I said.

“Sophie was a good excuse, but really, I think it would have broken my heart if I’d had to throw it away.”

“Maybe you’ll get another dog sometime.”

“Maybe.” We watched her in silence for a minute. Then he said, “What do you think Sophie would think of a new dog?”

“Pretty sure she’d hate him. And that we’d have to protect him from her.”

“Oh. Well. Cross that bridge when we get to it.”

We wandered into his kitchen and sat down at the table. He’d set a glass of iced tea by my plate, which was my favorite. He made good iced tea.

He shuffled the cards.

“So,” I said. “You got lonely.”

He looked up from the shuffling like it required a lot of concentration and I’d distracted him.

“Did I? I thought I just got bored.”

“You never got bored when Rigby was around.”

“Oh. Good point, I guess.”

He dealt the cards, and I reached out and put my hand on his arm before he could pick up his hand.

“Wait, don’t look at your cards yet.”

“Why not?”

“How about if we play for money?”

He looked into my face, his eyes dancing with this weird amusement that might have been partly critical. “Money? Since when do you have money to burn?”

“I don’t. I only get ten dollars allowance a week.”

“Then why do you want to play for money?”

“I don’t know. Just because I never did before, I guess. I just want to see how it feels. I’m not talking about a lot of money. Maybe, like… a quarter a round or something?”

He was still looking at me that way. So I looked down at the backs of my cards. Like I had something to hide, though I wasn’t sure if I did or not. I didn’t want us to look at our hands yet because it seemed fairer to decide if you’re going to bet before you see what you’re betting with. Otherwise, it’s sort of a biased decision.

“On one condition. Ten dollars is the limit. I don’t want you losing more than a whole week’s allowance.”

“What makes you think I’m going to lose?”

He broke into a twisted half smile, and we picked up our cards. I had two queens and an eight and nine of clubs, so that got me off to a pretty good start.

“I had a feeling there was a little gambler in you,” he said.

“Probably. My father was a gambler.”

He looked up from his cards. Into my face. A little too suddenly, I thought.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Well. Didn’t come up, I guess. I mean, when would I have told you?”

“I would think you’d have mentioned it when we were trying to figure out how he died.”

“Why? What does one thing have to do with the other?”

“Oh. Never mind. Forget it.”

“No, what? Tell me.”

He didn’t, at first. But after a while, he did.

“If someone is pretty deep into compulsive gambling, that can get dangerous. They usually end up owing huge amounts of money to the wrong people.”

“Well. Yeah. I guess. But a loan guy wouldn’t kill you, would he? If he did, then you could never pay him back.”

“Unless he wanted to make an example of someone. Or unless… No. You know what? Never mind. I’m sorry I ever started with this. Let’s drop it. This was your father, and we don’t know, so why am I speculating?”

“It’s okay. Maybe you know more about it than I do about it.”

He laughed a big, snorty laugh, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Angie,” he said. “Do I
look
like an expert on gambling? I worked forty-five years at a job I hated for the retirement benefits. I’ve been in love with the same woman for more than fifty years, but haven’t bothered to share that information with her. Where do you see big risk taking on this side of the table? You’re the gambler here, not me.”

We played in silence for a while, and then I called “Gin” and won a quarter. He actually paid me right then and there. Took a quarter out of his pocket and pushed it across the table at me. It was exhilarating, but by then, I knew it shouldn’t be, so I felt bad that it was.

While we were looking at our next hand, I said, “She told me she might come up and visit more often. That would be good. Right?”

I could see him looking at me, but I refused to look up from my cards.

“I didn’t tell her,” he said.

“I figured you didn’t.”

I threw my worst card down and picked up a new one. And tried not to say it. But I had to. I had to say it. I’d been not saying it for so long.

“You’re not going to… You’re going to tell her eventually, right? You’re not just never going to tell her. Are you?”

“I might be never going to tell her.”

I dropped my cards on the table face down. Then it was his turn to avoid my eyes.

“How can you do that? I don’t get that at all.”

“I already told you. I’m not a gambler. I don’t take risks well.”

“What risk? You’re not with her now. The worst that can happen is that you still won’t be.”

“That’s not entirely true. I have a good friendship with her now. We talk almost every day. If I tell her, and she doesn’t feel the same, she might feel terrible about hurting my feelings. Or it might be too hard for me to talk to her after that. It might drive a wedge between us. This way, I have half of what I want. I don’t want to wager with it and end up with nothing.”

“Or everything.”

“I don’t think she feels the same. She would have said so.”

“
You
didn’t.”

“Or I’d be able to tell.”

“
She
can’t.”

“Look. Angie. I know if you were me, you’d go for it.”

“I would. Definitely.”

“But I’m not you. Okay? I’m me. Now how about if we just play cards?”

We played about twenty more rounds, and I left two dollars and twenty-five cents richer than before. Which wasn’t much, I know. But it was still a win.

Sophie was asleep, so I threw her over my shoulder in the fireman’s carry.

Paul put the outside back light on for me, so I could pick my way through the snow and ice and get home.

I knocked, but my mom was still out. So I opened the door with my key.

After I got Sophie down in bed, I was about to shove the ring of keys into my pocket again. But first, I looked at them. I think I might have known why. I might have done it on purpose.

I stared at the key to my locked trunk for a minute. Swallowing too much and too hard.

Then I pulled the trunk out from under the bed and opened it up.

I took out
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
and put it on my bedside table. Sophie hadn’t been doing much shredding for a long time, anyway. And I didn’t have any books going.

Then I took out the note from Nellie. The two-and-a-half-year-old note that I still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to read.

I sat on the edge of the bed, and I read it. With my heart pounding, and my hands shaking, and my mouth so dry, I could hardly swallow.

I read it three or four times. And I’ve read it so many times since then, I could almost recite the whole thing by heart. But I won’t. Because not all of it matters to anybody except me. And because it’s a little private. Not for any special reason, but… just in general, it sort of is.

I’ll share the gist of it.

She was completely sorry, and felt stupid and bad for carelessly hurting and embarrassing me.

She wanted me to know that even though I was hurt and embarrassed, and she could understand that—because she remembered being a teenager and how incredibly mortifying everything was—I really shouldn’t be, because I hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.

And, probably most important, she said that liking her the way I did was more like a compliment, like a gift to her, not like an inconvenience.

I wished I’d known that last part all along.

I called Paul on the phone, because his lights were still on.

“I’m a terrible phony,” I said.

“I doubt it,” he said. “But tell me why you think so.”

“Because I’m no better than you are. There was somebody I liked, and I didn’t tell her. And when she figured it out on her own, I was so humiliated, I ran away and never said another word to her again. She wrote me a note about it, and I stuck it away and never even read it. So… some risk taker.”

“Well,” he said. “Now that you’ve figured that out, are you going to read it?”

“I just did.”

“Then you’re
not
a terrible phony. And you
are
better than me.”