“My mother,” Margaret says, “was a magnificent woman.”
“Everything I’ve ever read about her agrees,” I say quietly, matching Margaret’s volume, trying not to jerk her from the memory fogging over her eyes. I want her to linger. We’ve finally reached the people who shaped her most, and I want to stay here.
“My father loved her,” she says. “Dearly. It’s important that you know that.”
I nod, my pen going motionless in my hand.
“Because so much of the news was about their divorce,” she says. “And what they wrote about him was true. He loved her, but he didn’t treat her like he loved her. At the time, I couldn’t make sense of this, but now I understand it perfectly.”
“Could you explain it to me then?” I press.
“He didn’t love himself,” she says simply. “I know how trite that sounds. Even hearing it come out of my mouth, a part of me is thinking, Margaret, get a grip. He was a weak, jealous man. But then I remember the early days, and it breaks apart that easy, clean-cut story. He adored her. He adored all of us. You know they spoke on the phone every single day until she died?”
“I’d heard that, yes,” I say. “But I didn’t know if it was true.”
“They were best friends,” she says. “That’s how it started, and that’s what they got back to. Eventually.”
“Well, not how it started,” I point out. “You did just tell me she tore him a new one the first time they met.”
Her lips part on a grin. “That was his favorite story to tell. She’d chime in with, I thought he was a real prick.”
“So what changed then?” I ask.
“Well, she got her MGM contract, for one thing. And when word got out, he sent her a huge bouquet. Which she didn’t care for. She hated seeing cut flowers, made her sad. I never see them without thinking of her, which makes the way I feel about them more complicated, I suppose. Sad, then a little happy, then sad again.”
“I get that,” I say.
She gives me an odd look. “Do you?”
“I think so.”
She waits for me to go on, so I do: “My sister and I had this cartoon we always watched when we were kids. The Busy World of Richard Scarry. We basically only ever watched it while she was too sick to do anything else. So every time I see anything to do with it, that’s what I think of. And maybe it’s different, because she’s okay now, but the memories attached to it…I don’t know. They’re complicated.”
“Everything’s complicated. Everything. Once you start paying attention. My father loved my mother, and he was a shitty husband. He was a horrible father for a couple of years there right before they split up, but he was a wonderful one for the rest of his life after that. And honestly, even saying those words—shitty, horrible, wonderful—how can that come anywhere close to conveying everything I mean?”
“You don’t have to whittle it down like that,” I say. “You can take as long as you want, Margaret.”
“But people stop listening,” she says. “They want the sound bite. They want the headline. That’s what my family built, and now we don’t get to stop it from coming for us.”
“You’re a human,” I say. “The machine can try to compress you into something two dimensional, digestible, but that’s not you. And we’re not here to service the machine.”
“Don’t you get it?” she says. “It won’t matter. If we do this book, I go back to being their paper doll. They’ll splash the most salacious tidbits across the top of a…what do you call it? A listicle! And the audience will pass their judgments on all these people, who are just characters to them, but are real to me. On Cosmo. On my mother and father. On…” She trails off, choked up.
My chest cramps. I can’t help it: I’m already crossing the boat, taking her hand as I sit. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “And I won’t pretend you’re not right. The listicles will exist. The headlines will be salacious. But your story will be out there too. The whole thing. You just have to figure out if one is worth the other.”
She raises her eyes to me. “See?” she says. “Nothing’s ever simple.”
I squeeze her hands. “We can be done for today, if you need.”
“No.” She pulls her fingers out from between mine. “Not yet. I want to tell you about them. My parents.”
I feel myself smiling, feeling both proud of her for opening up and proud of myself for slowly starting to earn her trust. “I’d love to hear all of it. But…maybe we should go somewhere less buggy?”
She chortles. “Now, that’s good thinking.” She starts the boat’s fan back up and steers us back the way we came. Something about her posture seems lighter, her shoulders relaxed so that her neck looks long and stately.
It makes me happy, to think that even if this is hard for her, and she’s uncertain about what we’re doing here, it’s unburdening her in some way. To be seen.
To be known again, after years of hiding.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the living room rug, a hot mug of decaf at my knee, when the first text from an unknown number with a New York area code buzzes in.
Hello.
Nothing else. Just hello. I smile to myself. If I’d been offered a million dollars to guess what Hayden Anderson’s first text to me would be, I’m reasonably sure I’d be a millionaire now.
Hello! I write back.
Who is this, he says.
I snort. Wow, okay. Six weeks of fiery passion and you’ve already forgotten me????
Sorry. I have the wrong number, he says.
I take a sip of coffee, then swipe a throw pillow off the couch and flop back onto it. Isn’t this Hayden?
He starts typing right away, but it takes forever for his reply to come through. I’m really sorry, but I have no idea who this is.
YOU texted ME, I remind him. Another long pause for typing. I’m just kidding. It’s me.
I send a follow-up: Alice.
And then another.
Scott.
He writes back, From The Scratch?
From the tiny island you’re currently on, I say.
Oh THAT Alice, he replies, playing along. Then adds, You really had me scared for a minute. I was looking back through my calendar for a six-week stretch of “fiery passion.”
I laugh aloud, flip onto my stomach, and push my laptop out of sight. I was typing my notes out from the rest of today’s session, and riveting as it was, I’ll have all day tomorrow to finish that up. How far back did you go?
Six months, but I only stopped because that’s when I got this phone. What are you up to?
Not working, I say. What about you?
Also not working, he says.
A good night for it, I write back.
Would you want to do something? he says.
He sends me a pinned location for another twenty-four-hour diner, in Savannah. Only if you think you can stand not talking about Margaret for a few hours.
A few hours? How many courses are we having? I ask.
Didn’t mean to be presumptuous, he says.
I’m kidding, Hayden, I say. I’ll be there in half an hour.
Great, he says.
He is, of course, at the back corner booth of the Atomic Café, looking too sharp and clean for his colorfully shabby surroundings.
He rises to greet me as I approach, which feels like an exceptionally old-fashioned way of doing things, so I go in for a hug.
Immediately, I regret this, because he palpably startles at the gesture, but just as quickly, he relaxes, looping his arms around my back. “Good to see you,” he says, his voice a rumble through my bones. He smells like almond, like amaretto drizzled over sponge cake, sweet without being cloying.
“You smell like dessert,” I tell him as we pull apart.
He visibly balks, frowning to himself, as he slides back onto his bench. “It’s Dr. Bronner’s.”
“Wow,” I say. “Utilitarian yet delicious.”
His facial expression softens on a laugh. It occurs to me that somehow, he thought you smell like dessert was a complaint, and not, as I personally suspect, a subconscious and involuntary come-on. “Got you coffee,” he says, pushing one of the mugs on the table toward me.
Our knees bump. We rearrange so that we’re sitting diagonally across from each other, rather than straight on. We’re not touching, but somehow I can still feel him. He has a presence like that, a magnetic field he carries with him always, but mostly tries to play off as a force field, a barrier to entry rather than an invitation.
“Thanks.” I take the coffee mug between my hands, the heat pleasantly juxtaposing the overzealous roar of the air-conditioning. I gesture toward his glass. “I’m concerned that your green tea is brown.”
“My green tea,” he says, “is sweet tea. Because the Atomic Café doesn’t ‘have it in that color.’ At least that’s what the server said.”
“Did she say it as a full sentence at least,” I ask, “or did she jump right into the middle?”
“Full sentence,” he says. “That’s one point for them, but Ray’s Diner is still winning.”
I take a sip of coffee, and I must make a face, because he says, “Okay, that’s one more point deducted right there, clearly.”
I look around at the neon-turquoise and pink light that lines the windows on the outside of the building, and the matching booths inside, the little jukeboxes at every table and the atomic age wallpaper slightly curling away from the interior walls. “It’s got good ambience though,” I say. “Why aren’t we at Ray’s?”
“I like to try as many diners as I can when I’m in a new place,” he says. “Compare them and find the best.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“Of course?” he says.
I shrug. “The journalist in you.”
“The Midwesterner in me,” he counters. “Always looking for the best deal.”
I hold up the wide rectangular menu. “Six ninety-nine for a steak, eggs, and toast. You can’t beat that.”
“I mean, you could, but you’d probably end up hospitalized,” he says.
The server comes by and takes our order. I go with the two-egg breakfast, and Hayden does the egg white omelet.
“I’m actually surprised you eat at places like this,” I say.
His brows pinch together. “Why?”
“Because even the doorknobs here are buttered,” I reply, “and you seem to be an exceptionally healthy eater.”
“Bad habit,” he says.
“Good habit, if my doctor is to be believed,” I argue.
“I just mean, I was raised that way,” he says. “Obsessively so. My mom used to be really health anxious, and she was that way with my brother and me when we were little. Just…really cautious.”
“Oh.” Now it’s my chance to frown. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be critical. I just noticed—”
“No, I know,” he says. “It’s fine. Promise.”
After a beat, I say, “So I should probably stop leaving you big-ass croissants.”
He smiles at me. It’s kind of a rusty expression, but it still makes my heart flutter victoriously. “No,” he assures me. “Just so long as you’re not offended if I give some of them to Margaret.”
I faux gasp. “Uh-oh, Hayden. Looks like someone has to put a quarter in the M-word jar.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m not talking about work,” he says. “I just acknowledged her existence. That’s not breaking any rules.”
“Maybe none of yours,” I say.
A smirk pulls at his wide mouth. “Okay, fine.” He digs around in his jeans pocket and puts a handful of coins on the table.
“Not going to ask why you actually have quarters on hand,” I say, sliding two toward me. “Just going to assume you and whoever you currently work for are spending a lot of time at arcades.”
“That’s your prerogative,” he says.
I slip the quarters into the tabletop jukebox and flip until I find a winner. No one else in the place seems to be queuing up songs, because as soon as the fifties rockabilly number playing over the speakers ends, “Say You Will (Be Mine)” by Cosmo Sinclair starts playing.
“Oh, come on,” he says on a huff of laughter. “How is this not breaking a rule?”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “This song is a classic.”
“And you know who he wrote this for?” he asks.
I grin and slide my forearms across the table until they meet his. “No, who?”
He studies me as he works out his next play. I don’t back down either, holding his gaze fast.
The challenge building between us is starting to tip over into something else, a heat in his eyes, a pull in the center of my chest.
“Here you folks go.” The server plops our plates down beside us. Really plops them. Like probably gets them no closer than three inches from the tabletop before letting go. We jolt apart and take a beat to study our respective plates before tucking in.
“What do you think?” I ask him after a couple of bites.
“Should’ve gone with the six-dollar steak,” he says.
I choke on a laugh, lean forward, and drop my voice. “Yeah, I’d say this round goes to Ray’s.”
He picks up his cup of sweet tea. “To Ray.”
I straighten up and tap my mug against it. “To Ray,” I say, “and to whoever inspired this song, because it’s absolutely undeniable.”
“To her too,” he says with a nod.
