Rae, this is Ellen, your hospital charity case. I was going to text you but it’s hard to type with my arm in this cast, so I decided to call.
Unable to sleep on her last night in New York, Rae had gone to the rooftop of her FiDi apartment building for the first and final time.
Standing at the railing, overlooking the volatile city that hadn’twatchedher grow up (too passive) butforcedher to, she recalled that half-poem she’d written long ago about her love-hate relationship with Manhattan, asserting that all subway lows were forgiven on that next rooftop high.
But she wasn’t susceptible to renewal tonight, or even resentment.
Wrapped in numbness, or stripped of feeling, she assessed the scene objectively—how there were too many lights per square foot, too many horns per traffic jam, too many ambitions per open slot.
Acutely glad to be alone but absently craving company, she’d scrolled through old voice mails until she’d found the first one she’d ever gotten from Ellen, after the car accident the day they’d met.
Very old-fashioned, isn’t it, leaving a voice mail?Ellen’s voice bounced on, disconcertingly clear through the speakerphone.Can’t remember the last time I did this, and now I feel like I’m doing it wrong, rambling too much. Anyway, just wanted to thank you for the bagels. The food here is straight plubber—plastic and rubber—and you completely saved the day. And if you wanted to bring more bagels tomorrow, I’m craving egg. Kidding! Though I do love egg bagels … Anyway, I know I’m going to see you again once I break out of this room—just a joke, I’m not breaking out!She was probably talking to a hovering nurse.But actually, Rae, the universe is telling me that we’re going to be splendid friends. Love you!
Her voice stopped as abruptly as it had started. Ellen, the girl who’d loved Rae right away, for a simple bagel, and the woman who still loved her today, for all her complicated holes in the middle.
Rae wanted to laugh or cry, but she just stood there blankly, blinking at the jagged skyline that no longer smiled or even scowled but just saw straight through her.
She would have played a voice mail from her college boyfriend, too, just to acknowledge that time in her life, but she’d long since deleted them, if he’d ever left any at all. Texting with punctuation had been effort enough for him.
She played a message from her wannabe boss, from back when Rae was a junior analyst.
Rae, are you there? Fuck, this is why I told you to sleep with your ringer on. Wendell needs a round of edits ASAP before we send the pitch book to Jared—
Rae paused the message midrant. It triggered PTSD.
The next voice mail was from Dustin, picked at random from that hot-and-cold stretch when they’d been attempting friendship. He spoke in a soft volume, and she had to hold the phone closer to her ear.
Sorry I’ve been off the grid. I’m walking home and just got splashed with puddle water by a speeding cab and wanted to see if you could make a poem out of it. Come to Brooklyn tomorrow? Or I’ll even venture into Manhattan if you want … that’s how much I want to see you …
His voice faded out, and Rae tried to resurrect angst but just found herself nodding slightly—nodding that it had happened, nodding that it was no more.
The last voice mail she played was from a month ago, from Dustin’s mom. Rae’s stomach had plummeted when she’d gotten the call at work, anticipating the news she’d been fearing since that day in Washington Square Park when Dustin had told her about his depression, and every day and night and dawn and twilight since. She’d stumbled into the bathroom to listen, preparing to pass out on the tile floor.
But the message had brought good news, not bad, and she played it again now.
Rae—it’s Debra here, Dustin’s mom. This is an overdue thank-you for reaching out to me over the summer about Dustin’s … issue. He’s been in treatment, and things are looking … up. I know we’re not in the clear—we never really will be, will we? But I feel—I feel like I have my son back. And I know it couldn’t have been easy putting up with everything when you were together, but you’ve been a gift to us, and I just needed you to know that. I’m sorry I didn’t reach out sooner, I’ve just been … processing everything. Thank you, Rae. Take care now.
In that secondhand way Rae experienced emotions these days, she’d felt relief, trailed by consolation or maybe curiosity—she couldn’t separate them and didn’t try to. Maybe that was why Dustin had been in her life, not so they could spot poems side by side all their lives but so she could spot warning signs to help keep him alive. Maybe that was how she was supposed to love people—leave them better than she found them, but leave them nonetheless. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to tie the knot after all but just help people untie their own knots.
As she listened to the message again tonight, she felt nothing but bland envy that someone else had managed to help him where she hadn’t, bland annoyance that Dustin’s mom called him someone to “put up with,” and an equally bland, though not dull, pain because Dustin hadn’t reached out himself.
Rae had planned to call his mom back, but she’d kept procrastinating, and now she knew that the window had passed and she’d never return the message.
Fire truck sirens blared urgently from below while ambulance sirens arced through the avenues and drawn-out car horns punctured the air with impatient periods, splicing floating fantasies into fallen fragments. Rae missed the seclusion of the Lorimer Loft rooftop just long enough to remember that she wasn’t supposed to miss it. In just a few hours, she’d be going somewhere much quieter than Brooklyn, somewhere that she could look up and see the stars rather than a murky fog of light pollution.
A decade ago, New York had lured her with its lofty valuation that had turned out to be built on nothing but dazzling delusion, and now she was finally executing her exit strategy before the city split up the rest of her heart to sell it for parts.
Thoughts stuck to the ground, eyes stuck to the spire of the Empire State Building, lit up red tonight, Rae wished that one day she’d feel like wishing again. Then she turned her back and walked inside, writing the last sentence of her New York chapter with all the words left unsaid.
CHAPTER FORTY
REINVESTING
“I’ve told you, Mom, my interest rate in men is zero right now. I just don’t have the emotional capacity to make any new investments,” Rae said, as she and her mom sat at the kitchen table of her Indianapolis apartment, eating homemade pecan pie her mom had brought over. “I’m still getting settled.”
“You’ve been here two months now,” her mom said. “I call that settled enough.”
In many ways, Rae felt like she’d been back two years already, the slow pace light years away from Manhattan’s rat race. The dinner had turned into a bid for Rae to hurry up and settle down with a local boy.
