How Could She Page 7
“I saw Geraldine a couple of weeks ago,” Sunny said. “She came to my opening.”
“I know,” Rachel said. “She stayed with me. She always stays with me.” Rachel’s delivery was more beleaguered than boastful.
“You should have come,” said Sunny. “Afterward we all went to this reggae club on Franklin Avenue.” Rachel used to dance like Rihanna before there even was a Rihanna. Sunny remembered watching her out of the corner of her eye at Province parties and thinking that if there were one thing she could change about herself, it would be her inability to command a dance floor.
“I thought it was a private dinner for like eight.” Rachel stared at Sunny.
Sunny felt a frisson of the illicit. So Geraldine was actively keeping the two of them apart. “That’s strange,” she said. “Because it wasn’t. How’s our friend doing? We didn’t really get to talk.”
“I think she’s okay. . . .” Rachel’s voice trailed off. “She had a meeting at the CBC.”
“Right, she mentioned that. How’d it go?”
“I’m not sure it played out that well in the end, but she was still really excited. It was good to see her that way,” Rachel said. “I’d almost forgotten what that part of Geraldine is like. You know, when she’s full of possibility.”
Sunny nodded. “I heard from Peter.” She scratched at her throat. Sunny so rarely spoke of anything that discomforted her. “His mother just died, and he’s acting really strange. It sounds like things are catching up with him and he wants to talk it out.”
“They have therapists in Toronto,” Rachel said.
Rachel folded her arms, and Sunny noticed Rachel’s brightly colored watch. Sunny hadn’t thought about Swatches since the eighties. Filing away that she would buy a vintage Swatch, Sunny stepped in closer. “I just don’t want him bothering her. Or, you know, chasing after her. Not until she lands on something good.” Rachel was nodding as she listened. “She deserves that much, right?” Sunny asked.
“More than anyone,” Rachel agreed. “Peter has no right to come after her, not for anything, ever again. What do you think, should we poison him?”
“Have you ever sat through a dinner party with Peter? He’s immune to toxins. But maybe we can steer her to safety.”
“We have to try.”
Sunny handed her pad to Rachel. “Give me your info.”
“Do you two know each other?” Miriam had come to loom over them. She’d removed her blazer, and Sunny could see dark pools of sweat under her shirtsleeves.
“We used to work together in Toronto, back when we were babies,” Rachel answered, her tone almost apologetic.
“And we still have a good friend in common,” Sunny said.
“Sunny knows everyone, doesn’t she?” Miriam said. “One day you’ll have to share your secret with the rest of us—perhaps in a column?”
“Oh, I’d rather keep my secrets,” Sunny said, then turned to Rachel. “It was good to see you, Rachel. I’ll reach out soon. We can go for tea and strategize.”
“Yeah, I’d like that,” Rachel said.
Sunny glanced back at Miriam. The invitation was worth it for the expression on her face alone.
7
The birds of downtown Toronto were chirping like mad, and children were laughing and whizzing up and down the paths of Trinity Bellwoods Park on colorful scooters, which felt wholly inappropriate given the occasion. Geraldine’s group was gathered around Ernie, a dog who was about to die.
Upon learning that their nine-year-old mutt had advanced-stage lymphoma, Geraldine’s boss, Garth, and his wife, Miranda, had invited Ernie’s closest friends to come say their final good-byes. Garth regularly brought Ernie to the office, and Geraldine had become close to him, volunteering to slip on his booties and take him for walks whenever she felt like procrastinating instead of writing tables of contents or formatting recipes for upcoming issues.
Ernie lay on his stomach in a mound of dirt. His eyes looked glassy, and his mismatched ears hung flat against his head. It pained Geraldine to see his checked-out behavior, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake in refusing Barrett’s offer to accompany her to the sendoff. Barrett had taken on an overly solicitous air with Geraldine since he’d announced he was going to be leaving. He and Katrina had found a sublet in Cabbagetown, a tiny house that belonged to a professor of musicology. If Geraldine had to overhear them discussing their excitement about the tapestries in the stairwell one more time, she might snap.
“I hear I have you to thank for the juice, Ms. Despont.” Geraldine looked up to see Louise McKnight, a fellow Province alum, gripping a paper cup of wine. Her cheeks were flushed, though she came from Scottish stock and always looked slightly sunburned.
“I didn’t know what to bring,” Geraldine said. “This was my first pre-funeral.”
“You know Garth, always prepared,” Louise said.
This wasn’t exactly Geraldine’s experience with her boss, but she smiled and inquired after Louise. “Are you still at the Globe?”
Louise nodded with disinterest and flipped the conversation away from herself. “How’ve you been?” Her eyes drilled into Geraldine, her voice ringing with concern. Was there anybody who hadn’t heard about Geraldine’s crack-up?
Geraldine straightened her back. “I’m well,” she assured Louise. “I’ve been really busy, and I’ve been traveling a lot, mostly to New York.”
She savored those last two words. They were what kept her going, even if they were also what historically got in the way of her doing the things she knew she was meant to be doing, like responding to messages on dating apps or thinking about grasping a low rung of the Toronto property ladder. Most people couldn’t even say what stood in the way of their happiness. What had she been thinking all this time, meting out her joy in quarterly visits to New York? “I’m thinking of taking a sabbatical and spending more time there,” Geraldine shared.
“So long as you don’t let the city snatch you up the way it tends to,” Louise said, as if reading Geraldine’s thoughts. “Sunny’s become a real fixture there, from what I hear. Do you still see her?”
“All the time,” Geraldine said proudly. “And Rachel Ziff. Remember her?”
“How could I not?” Louise chuckled. “How’s that one doing? Any closer to settling down?”
“She met a really nice scientist, and they have a baby now.” Geraldine’s thoughts disintegrated, her head suddenly empty, her sense of connectedness to her body shot. She placed her hand on Louise’s elbow to steady herself.
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Louise said as soon as she fastened onto the situation.
Peter stood across the throng, his back to them, but it was indisputably Peter. Geraldine’s heart tightened when she saw he was holding a leash with a pug attached. Peter was big and soft-haired and prosperous, a Labrador or golden retriever through and through. He would never buy a little gremlin with four legs, of that Geraldine was certain. So he was with a woman with a preexisting pug. She probably had microbangs and knew about bands that had formed since the late nineties. Maybe she had been formed in the late nineties. At least he wasn’t with another, slightly superior variation on Geraldine. “I love and respect and enjoy you more than I am able to show,” Peter had said when he’d started to end things, burying his face on the tops of her bare feet. “But something in me is dead.” Heat rose to Geraldine’s face as she recalled the scene of that night. At first she’d thought he was trying to tell her he had a tumor. It took her another moment to grasp what he was conveying, which was that she was not enough. A couple more breakups followed, until Geraldine’s fuzzy sense that she was going to lose Peter was whittled down to a solid understanding that he had no use for her and the wedding was but a delusion.
Peter turned around to scan the crowd. An expression of worried hopefulness came to his face as he raised an arm at Geraldine.
Geraldine’s throat went dry. Why was Rachel addressing Sunny? She took a slight step forward and tapped the screen to uncover what the message was in response to. She saw that the previous night Sunny had tweeted a link to a benefit for Planned Parenthood that a fellow artist was organizing. Geraldine rammed the phone back into her pocket. Only weeks ago Rachel had done her habitual thing of bringing up Sunny’s name and then simpering throughout Geraldine’s innocuous response. Rachel never would have followed Sunny on Twitter . . . not unless there’d been some precipitating factor. It didn’t matter that they worked for the same magazine; Sunny worked from her home studio. They saw each other at company events once or twice a year, Rachel had told Geraldine. What had Sunny done to embolden Rachel to write her as if they were friends with each other? And why had neither of the two said anything about it to Geraldine? Did they not owe that to her? If only as a way to acknowledge the strain they had heaped upon her by maintaining their petty animosity for so many years, to thank her for bearing the burden. It had not been easy for Geraldine, censoring her conversation, ping-ponging between appointments with the two of them like some child shuttling between parents in the middle of a terrible divorce. Whatever it was that had magically changed the dynamic, they should have immediately informed Geraldine. They might have even waited for her blessing. Geraldine felt like such a fool. Her reason for putting off informing Sunny that she planned to give up her Toronto apartment soon was that she’d felt guilty for the hassle it would create for Sunny. She should tell her right now—in a tweet, Geraldine thought with a stab of anger.
She stood with her hands buried in her pockets and watched the guests step forward to tell Ernie how much he meant to them and how deeply he would be missed. Certain she could feel Peter watching her, she shifted to the left in order to stand behind an obscenely tall man, curling her toes toward the ground. Her sense of betrayal over her friends’ collusion was consuming enough; she didn’t possess the resources to simultaneously be vulnerable to the one person she’d ever truly loved. It had taken her years to get here, to believe that there might be a future in which Peter did not play a part. But whenever she saw him, which happened all too frequently given the small size of their shared city, her resolve buckled. His presence set off a slide show in her mind of the handful of men she’d tried on since. Perverse as it was to admit, not a single one had come close to making Geraldine feel as understood as Peter had.
Garth wrapped up his speech, and it was Miranda’s turn to give her living eulogy. She reached down to stroke her dog’s neck. “I didn’t used to think of myself as a dog person. I was worried that all those late-night walks would get in the way of my social life. And they did.” She paused, waited for the laughter to subside. Tears rolled down Miranda’s cheeks as she kissed her dog on the snout. “It would mean a lot to me if you would all take a moment to hug one another. Even if you don’t know each other, introduce yourselves and give each other a hug. Make a warm bubble bath of love for Ernie.”
Geraldine seized up when she saw that Peter was making his approach. Did he seriously expect a bubble bath of love from her?
“I just wanted to say hi,” he said sheepishly. “No hugs necessary.”
Geraldine searched Peter, for signs of both wear and madness. But he looked the same as ever, a rumpled baron with his flared nostrils and thatch of sand-colored hair that shot out of his head like dynamite.
“What are you doing here? I thought you and Garth . . .” She trailed off.
“We’ve made amends. He didn’t tell you? Secretive little bastard. We see each other right in this spot every goddamn day.” Peter motioned around the park, then to the animal at his feet. He was wearing brown brogues with purple laces. “I have a dog now.” He spoke in the rich, flat tone he used when he was being ironic. It used to thrill Geraldine to be one of the few people who knew how to read him.
“Congratulations,” Geraldine said.
“I’ve been thinking about you. A lot.” Peter stared at her a moment too long. “My mother passed.”
“I know. I was sorry to hear it.” She didn’t bother to mention the letter she’d sent to Peter’s father. Lionel Ricker had always been kind to her, asking her opinions of films and playing games of Scrabble with her on family vacations. He’d taken Geraldine to lunch shortly after the wedding that wasn’t, and over a bottle of frighteningly expensive Pineau d’Aunis, Lionel had called his son a sorry fool. Now face-to-face with Peter, Geraldine couldn’t bear the tension in the air; she feared she would erupt in sharp trills of laughter.
“I heard you’re headed to New York soon,” Peter said, and Geraldine nodded slowly, as if she couldn’t believe it herself. Peter closed his eyes for a moment. “Is there any chance—would you want to get a coffee . . . or tea?”
Geraldine studied his face. The brackets around his mouth had deepened, and his skin looked weathered and golden. He was like a leather couch she wished she could curl up on and stay nestled in all afternoon, reading and napping.
“Is there something in particular you want to talk about?” Geraldine said.
“No agenda. I just miss our talking.”
It took every ounce of her will not to tell him that she did, too. “I should really get going,” she said, the words catching in her throat. “We should keep doing things the way we were, don’t you think?” Peter just stared at her. “I mean, I’d prefer not to talk to you.” Geraldine took a baby step back and watched him give a staggered-looking nod. “It was good seeing you,” she said. “I’m sorry again about your mother. She was a remarkable woman, and she did so much good for the city.” With that she pivoted and wrapped her arms around a woman standing a couple inches away. “Please don’t let go until that man I was talking to moves away,” she said. “I’m Geraldine, and that man broke my heart.”
“Nice to meet you.” The woman gave off a vibrating laugh, and Geraldine started shaking, too, though with tears.
8
Sunny was already in the café’s back corner, her head bowed over a laptop, her fingers flying across the keys. The picture struck Rachel as somehow incongruous, which she realized was silly. What did she think Sunny used to compose her Cassette contributions—parchment and a quill?
The tables were packed together too tightly, so Rachel rotated her round hips and sidestepped over. Up close, Sunny looked positively incandescent. Were it not for the slight shadows under her eyes, her skin could be mistaken for that of a child. Rachel wished she knew Sunny well enough to ask about her skin-care regimen. She was certain it involved appointments with a woman named something like Maja, not products that could be obtained at Duane Reade.
“Hey, Sunny?”
The register of Rachel’s voice betrayed her nerves. Sunny smiled coquettishly as she closed her computer and came to her feet. She was wearing mannish trousers and sneakers that looked like All Stars but had shorter toecaps and had to be bespoke. She was tiny without appearing skeletal, with bracelets of gold floss circling her wrists.
Sunny widened her eyes. “I didn’t realize you lived so far away. We should have met somewhere in the middle.”
“I don’t live there—I was doing a school visit.” Rachel unzipped her jacket and sat down, feeling something close to awe. Did Sunny really have no idea about her life? When Rachel returned from Toronto, she had lived with her parents for a spell—nowhere near East Canarsie, nearly a decade ago. Now she lived somewhere semi-desirable. The café they were in was on Twelfth Street, a block or two from Sunny’s house. Rachel knew not only where but how Sunny lived, thanks to the pictures she’d seen on real-estate websites and in the pages of Cassette. She knew Sunny down to her vintage silverware and her proclivity to store spices in old candle jars. Rachel was never going to be anything like Sunny, who had a charmingly vague way about her that nobody who grew up in a coupon-clipping household could possibly acquire.
“It must be so satisfying to get to share your work with children,” Sunny said, seemingly unaware of any offense she’d caused with her East Canarsie comment.
“To read to teenagers who are on their phones, you mean?” Rachel tried a grin. “Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I read from something I just started working on, and the response was pretty positive. One of the girls said it was ‘nasty.’”
Sunny’s mouth stretched into a smile. “You’ve struck gold, sounds like.” Rachel was relieved to see she had at least half a sense of humor. “What’s it about?”
Rachel stalled, not sure how Sunny would react to hearing about a scene where a changeling named Renetrios drags a pinkblood named Freya out of biology class and back to the immortal city, whereupon he engages in battle with Roki the overlord. “It’s based on Norse mythology,” she said. “You know, pagans and sex and bloodshed.” Sunny cradled her hands around her empty coffee mug and cocked her head to the side. “Do you want something else?” Rachel asked. “I’m going to go get a coffee.”