London Is the Best City in America (21 page)

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

I didn’t answer him, just waited for him to tell me what was going on. I couldn’t picture it: Berringer huddled by the corner living room table, entering number after number, trying to figure out how my antiquated phone even managed to function in the first place.

“I wanted to make sure that we were okay,” he said. “I hated that you got so mad at me last night.”

“I didn’t get
so
mad at you,” I said. “And anyway, if you were so worried I was mad, weren’t you worried I wouldn’t pick up after knowing that it was you on the other end?”

“Maybe, but I still wanted you to have a choice in it. In whether to pick up.”

“You’re a weirdo,” I said, but I was smiling as I said it, embarrassed, all of a sudden, as though he was going to catch me. As if he was going to be able to hear what was happening in my chest during this phone call, the speeding up of everything, the inner buzz, a little too much like happiness.

He cleared his throat. “So your brother was saying it turned out to be a long night for you.”

I cleared mine back, which sounded more like a hiccup. I just didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t want to talk about Matt. Not with Berringer. “So you and Josh actually did go running then?” I said. “I thought it was a cover and he’d taken off again. That he went back to Rhode Island or something.”

“I don’t think he’s taking off again, Em,” he said. “I think he’s done taking off.”

I tried to picture Elizabeth and Grace having breakfast at their kitchen table. I couldn’t really. I pictured them driving somewhere in that pickup truck, not talking to each other maybe yet, but listening to something on the radio: Grace singing along to it, Elizabeth watching her, making herself relax. However anyone wanted to look at this, Josh was taking off.

“Anyway, that’s really not what I was calling to talk to you about,” he said. “I want to know why you got so mad at me. And don’t tell me you’re not. Because you were, and I think I know why.”

I took a deep breath in, not sure what Berringer thought he knew, but very certain I didn’t want to hear it myself. Especially if it began and ended with him thinking I felt a certain way. I wasn’t ready to think about that totally—whether or not he was there to watch me do it.

“Berringer, you know what? Whatever you think you know, I’m sure you’re not right.”

“That’s a fairly broad statement,” he said.

“Well, I’m on the highway,” I said. “And driving someone else’s overstuffed station wagon rather questionably. And running late. So less broad statements are going to have to wait. Unless you have an idea of something for me to say to Meryl, whom I can’t so much manage to be around right now.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he said. And from the way he said it, I knew he was. I knew he was sorry, and I also knew he wanted to fix it for me, even if he couldn’t. “Will it make you feel better to know it will pass? The weirdness you’re feeling?”

It made me feel worse, actually, because I knew it was true. As much as I was living in these days now, it was
because
I was living in them. But soon other days would bank up, other things would come to my mind, and they would trump these private truths I had seen, for a minute, about how my brother wanted to live.

“You know what? We can talk about this all later,” he said. “Are you driving safely?”

“Trying to,” I said.

But there was something about the question that stopped me for a second. It made me think of Matt. With everything that had been said, Matt hadn’t asked me a thing about what I was up to in Rhode Island. I hadn’t really wanted him to, but still. I knew about his son and about France and even about his hockey team. But he had absolutely no idea about the documentary or the tackle shop or the 107 wives. He had no idea about the sum total of what my life had become. And I knew he would say I didn’t volunteer the information, which wasn’t untrue. Still, shouldn’t it have mattered enough to him to ask what was going on with me? Even if it didn’t exactly have to do with him?

“Well. I’m sorry I made you feel bad,” Berringer said. “For the record. I’d never want to do that.”

I wasn’t used to that—someone being honest with me, so naturally. It made me feel a little uncomfortable, mostly because I was so lousy at doing it myself. But it also made me feel something else, which I was starting to like.

“That’s okay,” I said. “For the record.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then the rest can wait.”

In the early 1930s—during the heart of the Great Depression, the country in absolute financial ruin—almost all of the major construction in New York City came to a total halt. Only two buildings that were supposed to go up during this time kept being built as planned. One of these was the Essex House. And everything about it seemed like a testimony to prove that. The entire building was a standing example to its own largeness, its inability to fall. When you walked in the lobby, even today, you were greeted by old-school mahogany pillars and chandeliers, jewelry cases full of silverware and intricate china every few steps. The floor shiny and marbleized. I’m not saying it was ugly, but everything was so severe, so intentional and heavy, that it felt, at the least, like something you were supposed to brace yourself against. What I noticed first, stumbling in with my garment bag and full arms, was that there was nothing alive to look at: no vases of fresh flowers, no large green plants. No fishbowl of fishes. It was the exact opposite of a place I’d envision for myself to get married in, the opposite of outside.

The man behind the reception desk was very unhappy about letting me upstairs, even after Meryl confirmed that I could come. I wasn’t exactly sure why this was, but when he gave me a dirty look, I tried to give him one back. Really, I just ended up looking at myself in the mirror behind him: my hair toppled on top of my head, my tank top a little ripped around the edges. Too-long jeans.

How could I even blame him for thinking badly of me? Nothing about me said I belonged in this place. Nothing about me, I was starting to worry—on top of everything else I was managing to worry about—really said I belonged anywhere.

“Miss Mitchelson is in Suite 2401,” the man said, pointing me toward the right bank of elevators. “Do you think you can remember that, or would you like me to write it down?”

“I can try,” I said, and headed that way. But by the time I actually knocked on Meryl’s door, it was after eleven. My knock nudged the door open, revealing that Meryl’s pre-wedding beauty day suite wasn’t a suite at all. It was more like an entire floor: twelve-foot balcony windows looking out over Central Park, three separate living rooms, shiny old paintings covering the walls.

I found Meryl in living room 2. She was sitting cross-legged in the center of the floor, three large fans swimming around her. There was a long wooden table, which I was assuming she’d pushed off to the side, fully covered with silver teakettle sets and bottles of champagne and platinum fresh fruit platters. Little bowls of small chocolate hearts.

“You just missed the manicurist,” she said, holding up shiny white fingernails as proof. “And the psychic.”

I walked over to her, slowly. The only makeup she’d had done besides her nails were her eyes, which—in contrast to her pale skin, her tightly pulled back hair—were so dark and sharp they were spiderlike. Even like this, she was absolutely more graceful than I could ever hope to be.

“Don’t worry. I asked the manicurist to come back later,” she said. “I figured you didn’t need the psychic giving you any good news. Though he is quite famous, apparently. A regular fixture among the celebrity set, out in Hollywood.”

I sat down across from her, the fans blowing me back. “The only psychic I’ve ever met came into the tackle shop right around Christmas last year. She told me I was going to fall in love four more times before I met the person I was supposed to be with,” I said. “And she also said our eel was basically no good for catching any fish of substance.”

“See? Who needs news like that?” Meryl said, smiling at me, and starting to look around the room. “I guess my mother wanted me to be enjoying this,” she said. “With the whole bridal party. She forgot I wasn’t having one. Changes things, huh?”

“Changes things,” I said, and crawled over toward the table, reached up for one of the low-riding platters of fruit.

“The nice thing about your mom,” she said as I crawled back toward her, “is that she’s going to want to just keep you all for herself when you get married. It will end up being just you and her on a private boat, or in New Jersey somewhere. You won’t have to deal with any of this.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s really something to look forward to.”

She laughed. “So did you have a chance to see Josh this morning before you left?”

“No, he went running.”

“Oh.”

“No, I mean he
literally
went running, right before I left. I don’t know what they were thinking in this heat. But he was with Berringer. That was what they were doing together.”

She nodded as though she hadn’t needed the additional reassurance. And why would she have, really? There wasn’t any reason: no clues about Elizabeth lying around, about where we’d been heading this time yesterday. It wasn’t written on my head or anything. So I was only saying it for another reason, if I wanted to be honest. I was just saying it for myself.

I offered her a cantaloupe ball.

“No, thanks,” she said.

“You sure?” I said. “They’re good for you.”

“Positive,” she said.

I put one in my mouth and started to chew. “So what did this famous psychic tell you anyway? Anything good?”

“Well.” She looked up toward the ceiling, thinking about it. “First he said I was destined for a lifetime of happiness. And one of incredible love. Then he said that he thought today was going to mark the new beginning of finding that love. As long as I could let myself see it that way.”

I popped in another ball.

“I’m guessing that’s supposed to be the tricky part of it, wouldn’t you think?” she said.

I covered my mouth. “Definitely,” I said.

And this was when she started to cry.

Often, I’ve wished this were a movie. Because if it were, in this next scene, Meryl would explain that her tears—which were growing louder and more unstoppable—were tears of confusion. That she was having real doubts about today. Did she really want to get married today, did she even remember the reasons she had chosen Josh, did she not love someone else, a little bit more too? And I would get to listen to her. I would get to listen while she explained she wanted things he didn’t, things that he never really wanted to give her or share with her: a high-profile career, a permanent life in Los Angeles, the chance to travel around the world. Then she would hug me, and decide it was all okay. That it was better to know this now than ten years from now. And she’d wait for Josh to get here and they’d call the whole thing off and lock themselves in this fake bridal suite and have one last drink of fancy champagne before wishing each other well.

But this wasn’t a movie. It was someone’s life, and this woman whom I loved and who had watched me grow up and whom I’d been withholding from for the last seventy-two hours because I’d picked my brother over her—she was crying because she loved my brother, more than ever maybe, and because she knew that there was something very, very wrong between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The last thing I would want to do is put you in the middle of this. You know I wouldn’t want to do that, right? You know I would never want that?”

We were sitting on the sofa now in living room 1, or really, I was sitting by her feet. Meryl was lying down in an attempt to force the tears upward—toward her forehead—not down her cheeks, where they were quickly creating makeup track marks down the sides of her face.

“Maybe the two of you just need to talk. If any two people should be talking here, it should be you two. Let me call him.”

“No.” She shook her head, tears spreading outward. “I don’t want to hear anything he wants to tell me right now. I don’t want to hear anything that he is going to use as an excuse, that’s for sure.”

I looked at her in total confusion. An excuse for what? For what he was feeling? It seemed to me that was the best possible thing she could hope for here—that any one of us could hope for. That someone would tell the truth.

Meryl blotted both of her eyes with a tissue, as she tried to get ahold of herself again.

Then she sat up. “I know, okay?” she said. “I know there was someone that last year he was in Boston. Of course I know that. He basically told me himself right after he came out to Los Angeles. He tried to make it sound like it had happened and it was over, but those things don’t end. Even if he wasn’t seeing her anymore, I knew it still mattered to him or he wouldn’t have felt the need to tell me at all. How can he think I don’t know that about him? I know everything about him.”

“Then what are you doing here?” I said. But as soon as the words were out, I was sorry—sorry, and worried that they sounded too harsh. I hadn’t meant them to sound that way. It just all seemed so much sadder to me, sitting here and listening to her. Everything about the promises that were about to be made today felt that much worse.

“It’s just that things stop being that simple,” she said. “I still believe I’m the person he’s supposed to be with. Those first few years, Josh wanted to marry me any day of the week. I just had all these ideas in my head about waiting longer, or waiting until we were settled financially or something. You wait long enough, and it’s harder for a guy to make a commitment. Not easier.” She shrugged. “I think I waited too long. And I know you think I sound like an idiot now and I’m just making excuses. But I’m not going to be the one to call it off. If Josh wants that, he’s going to have to do it. Because I can see it being right between us. I can see it turning out okay. More than okay. And if he didn’t see that too, why would he be here?”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said. “He wouldn’t.”