“No!” Frankie said. “Absolutely, unequivocallyno.”
“But—”
“But what?” she said too loudly. “What about me ever gave you the impression that I wanted to be someone’s wife?”
And it was unkind. She knew as soon as it was out of her mouth, but she was so furious at him. After two years, he had totally and wildly misunderstood her. What was the point of loving someone if they refused to see the entirety of you? What was the point of any of it?
“I mean, I love you, Frankie! I want to be with you forever!”
“You can’t love me,” she shouted, “when it is devastatingly clear that you don’t know me!”
“What does that mean?” Ezra yelled back. “I know every single thing about you.”
“Then you’d know that I would never in a million years say yes.”
They said some ugly things after that: how if he didn’t know her, it was because she refused to let him; how if she’d refused to let him, then maybe it was because she’d been the smart one; how she was too childish for motherhood; how he would fuck it all up because he was always in pursuit of his absent dad.
It was an undignified, messy ending, and they both deserved better. But they’d let so much go unsaid for so long that it all spilled out, too much, more than either of them really wanted. A decade later, running up the frozen brick pathway of Middie Walk, Frankie understood that. But back then, she was so angry at him, so offended by what she saw as a betrayal of who she was working so feverishly to become, that she didn’t know how else to react.
She made her mom cancel the dinner reservation. April and Laila happened to stop by her room while she was sittingon the floor crying, and they pulled her up, and she told them everything, and they listened with no judgment, then called her a cab and walked her to the curb and hugged her one more time.
“Do you want me to tell Ezra you left?” April had asked. “What can I do to make this easier?”
And it was such a simple question, such a perfect question, that Frankie started crying again. She didn’t want anyone telling her what to do, like Ezra had, like Ezra would. She just wanted someone to make it easier. This was what she owed April a decade later: an act of grace. And this was why she showed up for her wedding: because sometimes, you stood beside people to make things easier, to make them complete.
She boarded the late-evening flight to Los Angeles and stared out the window for a solid six hours, her Walkman keeping her company, a mixtape that she had made months back that reminded her of Ezra echoing in her ears. They landed at midnight, and Frankie stopped to pee in the airport bathroom. Her underwear was dotted with bright red blood. She dropped a dime in the tampon machine for a maxi pad, and when she woke up the next morning in the hotel room that she’d put on her dad’s credit card, the last vestiges of Ezra Jones had emptied from her.
She called him a week later and said tersely: “I don’t want to make this any more drawn out than it needs to be. I’m not pregnant. It was all a mistake.”
And Ezra went silent for a long time, like he sometimes used to when they would linger on the phone on those hot summer nights when they were just falling in love and sharing all their secrets. Then finally he said, “Ok, well, it’s done.”
And that was the last they spoke of it until ten years later when a wedding reunited them back at the place where it all began.
Frankie hadn’t thought about any of this in so long, but last night, as Ezra steadied her up the steps to the stage of Steinway, then back to the music rooms behind it, the unresolved pain of their decimating ending came back in a rush. She would have done so much of it differently. If only she had known how. She wouldn’t have married him. But maybe she would have been less angry, maybe she could have been less selfish. And as she flipped on a light to a practice room and found an upright there, she gazed into his open face and understood that he would have done the same. They’d both been greedy back then, and now, she knew, they were both sorry.
She sat heavily on the bench in front of her, and Ezra, surprisingly, plopped down beside her. She’d never, in the span of her life, shared a piano bench with anyone other than the times when Fred got close enough that she could smell his spearmint gum and his aftershave, which she came to associate with her mom. And her instinct was to shove Ezra off, to tell him to give her some goddamned space, but she squelched that voice because there was something fragile between them now, and she didn’t want to break it.
“Any requests?” she asked.
“I just want to listen,” he replied. His eyes were already closed, and he swayed a little, and Frankie found it endearing.Shit, she thought.Shit, shit, shit.
There was a beanbag in the corner, and as soon as Frankie’s fingers found the keys—stiff at first because she was so out of practice—Ezra rose and curled up on top of it. She played amade-up melody; she didn’t want to be cheesy and play something from her old mix-tapes: U2 or Pat Benatar or Tina Turner or Prince. She could have played any of them because she saw the notes in front of her like she always did. But she thought she heard Ezra lightly snoring, so she played something of her own, something original because he was half-asleep, and also, she trusted herself to show him. To be honest. Not to hide behind anyone else’s version of a masterpiece. Frankie played longer than she’d planned to—she’d talked herself into just one composition, but then time stood still and, just like she used to, she got swallowed up in the notes and the melody and the beauty of making something from nothing, just with your fingers and your heart and the ivory keys. She’d forgotten that once, maybe only at the beginning but indeed once, she’d loved it. And it wasn’t that it felt good to abandon herself to it again—it was painful and bittersweet, but it was wonderful too, like waking something inside of her that had been dormant and now was ready to emerge from hibernation.
When she stopped, Ezra mumbled something like: “You’re incredible,” and she rose from the bench and curled up on the beanbag next to him, mostly because her head really was throbbing, and she wanted to be horizontal, but also because she found that she just wanted to be near him, to get closer to him, in any way that she could.
She said: “I would have done it all differently, you know. And I’m sorry I didn’t.”
And his eyes fluttered open, and he said: “Me too.”
She reached into his jacket pocket and found his grandmother’s ring and slid it on her finger. She was curious how the weight of it would feel, because she’d spurned the chance tenyears ago. She held it up to the light, and Ezra shook his head and said, “Wow, this is really a mind-fuck,” and it wasn’t eloquent, but Frankie laughed, and then so did he, because he was right.
And one of them, even now with a few minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve, as Frankie slowed her pace because Ezra was in front of her, she couldn’t remember which one, said: “We should start over, go all the way back to Homer and just start over.”
And so they did. Ezra slipped the gold band over his finger, and he called her Mrs. Harriman because she said she’d still keep her maiden name, so he said, “Great, I’ll be Mr. Harriman because why not,” and she said, “No, no, no, Ez, you gotta learn to keep parts of you for yourself,” and he nodded because it was true. And then they waited for someone to emerge from the Homer gate, and they tiptoed inside, which was pointless because no one was really around. And then Ezra found his freshman-year room, and it was unlocked because everything at Middleton was safe. And they curled up into bed together and fell asleep, just slept because it was what they needed most and maybe that was the most intimate thing they could do with each other now. His heartbeat like a metronome in her ear, her breath a welcome calm in his busy, ever-anxious brain.
And then they woke up this morning, and everything was forgotten.
FORTY-FOUR
