“Vegan,” Gracie says. Emme makes a surprised humming noise in approval. “But TikTok says there’s a line, and if I don’t eat something in the next ten minutes, I will scream.”
Somehow, I believe her. “I know the owner,” I say. It’s a little pathetic, thedingof pride I feel when Reid gives me an impressed look. “My mom babysat for him when she was a teenager. I can get us a table, if you don’t mind us joining you.”
Emme and I have always been close, but since the divorce, and then lockdown, she and I have developed an uncanny ability to communicate silently. Now the look I give her is a question:Are you OK with this?
The look she gives me back says,I’d rather not, but I’m hungry, so I’ll do it.
Then I say,I love you. You’re the coolest.
Reid sticks his hands in his pockets and nods at me slowly. “Interesting,” he says. “I don’t remember you taking advantage of your connections when we were...”
He doesn’t finish that sentence. When we were... what? Sleeping together? Obsessed? Falling in love?
“I’ll make up for it now,” I say.
I see Gracie and Emme trade a look likeWhat thefuckis going on between our parents?
Then Reid grins at me. I notice the smallest chip in his front tooth. That didn’t exist thirty years ago.
“OK, then,” he says. “Let’s see what’s happening on Twelfth Street.”
VIII
As soon as we sit down, I know this was a bad idea.
When we walked into the old-school Italian restaurant, the owner’s son, Massimo, greeted me with a hug and a double kiss, asked after my parents, then looked at the hostess and touched his finger to his nose, the sign of a free dessert or bottle of wine. And then he deposited us at our table, a cozy booth in the back, and took all his warmth and gregariousness with him.
Now the four of us consider our menus in silence. A jazzy rendition of Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” plays over the speakers. At the six-top next to us, a compendium of eclectic older women—lots of velvet scarves and jawbreaker jewelry—gossip about someone named Janice. At the table behind us, a young woman in a slicked-back bun and twisted gold earrings reads Eve Babitz’sSex and Rage.
I clock all this because nothing is happening at our table. Or, a lot is happening at our table, but all of it subterranean. The tension between the girls is still pulled taut. I keep trying to catch Reid’s eye, but he won’t meet my gaze.
A barrage of unwanted thoughts comes tumbling in.Did he only take up my invitation out of his unfailing politeness? Seeing me now, in middle age, is he looking back at our time less rosily?
Then he rests his arm over the back of the booth, behind where Gracie sits, and it clicks: He’s protecting his daughter’s feelings and waiting to make sure she’s OK with this admittedly odd situation. I’m ashamed that I considered any other alternative.
Then a waiter stops at our table and asks if we’d like something to drink.
“Yes,” Reid and I say simultaneously, with feeling.
The waiter laughs. We laugh. We order a bottle of Chianti. The girls continue to icily consider their menus and avoid eye contact with their respective parents. But it’s something.
There is so much I want to ask Reid, but I start with the most obvious question. “What were you two doing at the show?”
I watch Reid glance at Gracie before he responds. From my vantage, she remains expressionless, but clearly Reid saw something that loosens him up a little bit.
“Gracie came across the announcement on Instagram.” Reid gives her a playful look. “She and I are in town until Tuesday—she finally wore me down and got me to take her on a tour of NYU.”
“You have a problem with NYU?” I say in mock defense. To Gracie, I clarify, “It’s my alma mater.”
Her expression remains intelligently blank, revealing nothing to display that she has received this information.
“I do have a problem with it, actually,” Reid says. “It’s three thousand miles away from me and her aunt Cat.”
At this, I expect Gracie to roll her eyes. Emme certainly would. But instead, she gives her dad a small, tender smile. It seems the protectiveness goes both ways.
“Cat, my god,” I say, my voice wistful.
“The one and only,” Reid says. “She’s head of A&R at a label now, if you can believe it. Actually, that Jeff Buckley show was kind of an epiphany for her. Something about your confusion over whether we worked in the music industry... it made her believe that she could actually do something like that. She ended up coming out to LA a couple weeks after I went back. Started in the mailroom at Epitaph Records, broke some cult bands, and worked her way into a major label.”
