“Do you know where you want to be?” Leonard raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t fucking know. I know things weren’t perfect, originally, but then when I got back, things weren’t perfect in a totally different direction.” She thought about Tommy and the two beautiful kids and the giant apartment and she was so glad not to be there.
Leonard nodded. “Oh, sure. Once, and only once, when I came back, you had moved to California to live with Serena. That was a disaster, so I made sure it never happened again. But you see how it works—you see what changes and what doesn’t. Not to sound too Buddhist about it, because I’m not a Buddhist, and I’m sure to get it wrong, but everything outside of you is window dressing, you know?”
Alice shook her head. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure the Dalai Lama has never said anything about window dressing.”
“Thank you, miss. But you know what I mean. There’s the stuff that changes, and there’s the stuff that doesn’t. We’re all trying to sort out our inner messes—no one has it any better. Even the Buddhists! They’re better at trying, maybe, or better at pushing aside all of that. It’s not about the time. It’s about how you spend it. Where you put your energy—” Leonard closed his mouth in midsentence, and then his eyes, too. Alice could see it now—just because he was awake and talking, it didn’t mean that he was better. Whatever she’d done, it hadn’t been enough. He’d found love, he’d quit smoking, he’d written another book, he’d taken up jogging, and a thousand more things she hadn’tseen, Alice was sure—but none of it mattered. This was still where they were.
“What is wrong with you?” Alice asked. Even as the words came out of her mouth, she realized that she knew the answer. It was this—what she’d been doing, and Leonard had done who knew how many times. It wasn’t the Coca-Cola. It wasn’t even the smoking. It was this. Of course she couldn’t save him.
Leonard lifted his palms toward the sky. “I think any parent would do what I did. Honestly, I wish I could have gotten off at different stops, you know? Alice at three, Alice at six, Alice at twelve, me at thirty, me at forty...” He marked the points on his arm, like David Byrne dancing in the music video for “Once in a Lifetime.” “No one talks about that—at least not to dads. Maybe moms talk about it more—I bet they do. But no one ever talked to me about it, that’s for sure—what it feels like to love someone so much, and then have them change into someone else. You love that new person, but it’s different, and it all happens so fast, even the parts that feel like they just last for fucking ever while they’re happening.”
He was exactly right. Alice felt like it would be hurtful to say so—to tell him how much he had changed, too, though of course he knew it. She loved him now, but not in the same way that she had loved him as a kid, because he wasn’t the same and neither was she. That was what she’d been doing, going back and forth—even on the days when she hadn’t spent much time with her dad and had gone off and done silly things with Sam or spent the day in bed with a cute teenage boy. It wasn’t that she thought Leonard had been the perfect father—every Father’s Day, on the internet, Alice was bombarded with photos of dads hiking, dads cooking, dads throwing underhanded softball pitches, dads building stuff with tools, dads playing dress-up. Leonard had never done any of those things, and sometimes Alice wished he had, but she couldn’t fault him for being who he was. He was who he was, andshe loved him for it, especially that version of him, the young one who lived like nothing could hurt him. She’d been putting it off, saying goodbye to that version of her dad. Whatever happened on the other end, whether he was conscious or unconscious, he was somewhere else now—slower and stodgier. No one could be young forever. Not even her father, who had time-traveled, who had invented worlds, who had made things that would outlast him. Who had made her.
Leonard let Alice’s thoughts fill the room. “It’s okay to lose people, Al. Loss is the point. You can’t take away the grief, the pain, because then what are you left with? An episode ofBeverly Hills, 90210, where the tinkling theme song comes in at the end and you know everything’s going to be all right?”
“Okay, now I know you have not been paying attention, because those kids were more full of trauma than an emergency room.” Alice laughed.
“You know what I mean. That resolution—it doesn’t exist.” Leonard shook his head. “And you can’t try forever. Or you can, but that’s how you end up like me. That’s what’s going on. That’s what they don’t know. That never happened to Scott and Jeff—they were always ready to zip off back to the eighties in their stupid vests. Or Dawn.” Leonard looked over at Alice. “I tried to make Dawn as much like you as possible. She turned into her own person, like they always do, but when I started, I was just thinking about you, moving back and forth like I knew you would. I guess it’s the way some parents feel about their kids getting their driver’s licenses, you know? Like, you’re out there, beyond my reach. And I just had to trust that you were solid enough. Which you were. Dawn too.”
“So what do I do?” Alice asked. It was embarrassing. She wasn’t sixteen, she was forty, and she already knew that he wouldn’t tell her, that he couldn’t tell her, even if he wanted to. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know for a long time what it was doing to my body. Andthen, when I did—what are you going to do, be the police? I wasn’t going to be the police. We all do what we have to do, make our own decisions about how to behave. What we want to do, what we need to do,” Leonard said. “You wanna watchJeopardy!?”
She did. Alice scooted her chair as close to the bed as it would go and waited as her dad fished around in his bed for the giant hospital remote, which had buttons the size of quarters. He had to use both hands to press hard enough. Alice laid her head on the plastic handrail of the bed and turned her face toward the screen. Alex Trebek would have the answers.
“I have one more question,” Alice said.
“Just one?” Leonard laughed, and then coughed. He pointed at the television. “It’s all questions.”
“It’s always my birthday. When I go back. Why? Nothing happens, I mean, nothing major. For me, I mean.” Alice examined her fingernails.
“Not for me to know,” Leonard said. He looked so tired. “But I can tell you this—the day that you were born, that was when I became the best version of myself. I know that sounds cheeseball, but it’s true. Before you came scampering out, I was pretty happy thinking only about myself, all day long.” Leonard smiled. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you about this.”
“About being a selfish cheeseball?” Alice asked. Even now, she couldn’t help it—the joking, the teasing.
“About what it feels like to go back. It was just—” Leonard’s voice started to waver. He cleared his throat a few times and shook his head. “It was when I felt the most love. In my whole life. You remember when we went to that wedding and the bride told her husband that she was going to love him more than any children they would ever have?”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Yes.” She’d been eleven, swigging unlimited Shirley Temples in a velvet party dress.
“Well, I mean, obviously they’re still married and I got divorced. But I never felt anything close to the love that I had for you with Serena. Or Debbie.” At this, Leonard put a finger to his lips. “And that day, whoosh. There it was, all of it at once. Like when an oil derrick hits, and it all goes shooting into the sky. Maybe that’s it. I know I wasn’t always the best parent, but I tried. We did okay, right?”
“We did great, Dad. We did great.” The hospital made noises—cart wheels on the smooth floor, someone’s cough or shout, a nurse’s hello, laughter behind the desk—but Alice didn’t hear them. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought about everything she’d had on her sixteenth birthday—a father she loved and wanted to spend time with, who also trusted her to be alone. A best friend. A crush. Alice wondered if the day changed over the course of your life. Maybe there was a day in her forties, fifties, sixties that would be so full of love, so full, period, that a ninety-year-old Alice would go there instead. But Leonard wouldn’t be there, because no matter what she did, by then, he would be gone. It might not be someone else’s best, but it was hers, for now.
“What isTime Brothers,” said a contestant, hand still on the button, their face flushed with the satisfaction of knowing they were right.
PartSix
57
There were birds on Pomander—pigeons, sure, but also noisy swallows and sometimes even some barking seagulls who had wandered the short block and a half up the hill from the Hudson. They were congregating on the fire escape, having their daily meeting about worms and wind and bread crumbs. Alice listened for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. From her bed, she could see a sliver of gray sky in between the buildings behind them. She sat up in one fluid motion, her enormous yellow T-shirt riding up her rib cage as she stretched her arms overhead.
Leonard was in the same spot as usual, eating breakfast at the table. There was a folded newspaper beside him, and Ursula sat sentry at the window, as if she were waiting for Alice to appear.
“Knock, knock,” Alice said, clucking her tongue to get her father’s attention. He looked bemused to see her up so early. He didn’t know how often she was up, she was up, she was up.
“Happy birthday, little vagabond,” Leonard said. He ruffled Alice’s hair the way he had when she was a kid and came up to his waist. Alice didn’t cry, but she did swallow hard, several times in a row.
