“Well. Anyway.”
My hand sticks out for him to shake. He raises an eyebrow but places his palm in mine. I think about leaving it alone—and part of me still wants to—but Tracy’s words ring out clear and powerful, urging me on:You tried your best to break a pattern of complicity. That’s something to be proud of.
“This is the way you should have greeted me at that Yankees happy hour,” I say. “And I am the last person who should have to teach you this.”
His purple face goes violet—all fear, no room left for retaliatory, finger-wagging anger—and the only word I manage to think as I walk away isGood.
I kept it together the whole day until now. I thought forsurehe’d want to see me—even if it was only to say goodbye—but Alex didn’t even give me that. On the subway back to Brooklyn Heights, I full-on melt down in tears. Beside me, Brijesh doesn’t say a word. He just rubs my back and waits out the five minutes it takes me to be able to breathe normally again.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Brijesh says softly, “he’s been a walking ghost.”
I sigh. “Am I a horrible person if that does make me feel a little better?”
Brijesh laughs. “It makes you an honest one.”
When Miriam gets home from the hospital, all three of us go eat together one last time at the same place we went the night I introduced them.
“You got my shared note of East London restaurants?” Brijesh asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll go somewhere new every week, sit at the bar until someone with impeccable taste in food forces me into his friendship.”
Brijesh grins, spinning a lock of Miriam’s hair around his finger. “Fate.”
“Coercion,” I counter.
“Fate,” Miriam agrees.
My flight is at 10:00P.M.Miriam and Brijesh want to stay with me until then, but I have to call my parents and I want to be alone doing it, so I hug and kiss them goodbye after dinner and tell Miriam to sleep at Brijesh’s place.
In our apartment, I say goodbye to silly inanimate things, like my air-conditioning unit and the stove we’ve never turned on. Just for fun, I try to turn it on now and realize it doesn’t even work, which makes a gurgle of deranged laughter peal out of me.
I sit on the floor, legs crossed, and call Dad. Jerry’s holding the phone, but it’s pointed at Dad, who is holding a guitar and waving.
“Hi, guys.”
“I wrote a song for you, honey,” says Dad. “Want to hear it?”
“Is it going to make me cry?”
“You’re already crying,” Jerry notes dryly.
“I’m having a moment.”
Jerry snorts. “Is this like your teenage years when you would look out the window whenever it was raining and listen to sad music on purpose?”
My lips quirk. “A little.”
“Oh, then this’ll beperfect,” Jerry extrapolates. “Play the song, Marty!”
It’s in the realm of “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman or “My Wish” by Rascal Flatts. Slow and melodic, deep and achy, and halfway through, I realize I’ve heard scraps of this song before. A string of chords after my high school graduation, a lyric in the car ride home from Baskin-Robbins. I can hearthis song, that day,on the front patio when Jerry explained to me that I like sure things. Or that I used to, anyway.
I think maybe Dad’s been working on this song my whole life.
I hold it together through the lyrics about the little girl he took backstage with him at concerts, eyes sparkling at the pretty lights but quiet all the same. But I break down in tears that push hard against my eyes when he gets to the part about how I learned to trust the sound of my own voice: singing to myself in a room all alone, him and Jerry one wall away, out of sight but there to catch me if I faltered.
And I just really hope he knows. I hope he knows he’s the best dad in the world, and I’m not running away. I’m just trusting the sound of my own voice, like he taught me. I hope he knows I loved sharing music with him as a kid, even though I flaked on the talent show, even though I can’tmakeit like he does.
But just because you don’t make art doesn’t mean you don’t inspire it.
