“I’m really sorry, I’m . . .” I could feel hot tears starting to form, and I looked down at the floor.
“Hey,” Toby said. “Don’t worry about it.”
He stepped into the room and sat on the edge of Finn’s side of the bed. He patted the space next to him, and without looking him in the eye I skulked over and sat down. He put his long arm around my shoulders, and I found myself leaning my head against his chest. We sat in that dim room for a long time, neither of us saying anything. I could see the pictures on Finn’s bedside table. Toby looking young and even kind of beautiful in his weird way, with his dark eyes and his scruffy hair. I snuggled in closer and I felt his arms squeeze in tighter. It felt good. Toby was warm and kind and, in a strange way, almost familiar. And sad. Just like me.
“Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking,” Toby said. “You know that I’m dying, right?”
Toby had never said anything like that before. Nothing so big. So definite. I felt numb. Like cold, hard concrete had been poured into all the little spaces in my head where I’d been hiding maybes.
“I guess.”
“Do you see what that means?”
“I think so.”
“Tell me.”
“It means you won’t be here much longer.”
Toby nodded. “Yes, there’s that, but, also, do you see? It means I can do whatever I want. We can do anything we want.” For a weird second, sitting on the bed like that, I thought Toby meant having sex. I gave him a grossed-out look and he pulled away from me so quickly I almost fell off the bed. He sat there with his arms crossed over his chest saying, “No, no, no. Nothing like that. Oh, June, God, you don’t think.”
“Ugh,” I said. “Don’t be so gross.”
That was one of Greta’s tricks. Make the other person think the gross thing was their idea and you’re off the hook.
Toby’s posture loosened. “Okay. All right. Seriously, June.”
I stood and wandered around the room. I picked up a glass paperweight and let my fingers slide over the smooth cold surface. I thought about what Toby had said about being able to do anything. It didn’t quite make sense.
“Well, no offense or anything, but I’m not dying.”
“No. But what’s the worst thing that could happen to you? Me, I could get sent to jail or deported, but now it wouldn’t matter. I’m free. Do you see?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“So, tell me. If you could do anything, what would you want to do? Whatever you want, June.”
I couldn’t think of anything right away. Also, I didn’t think Toby understood that even though I couldn’t probably go to prison, I could get in all kinds of other trouble at home.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s a nice offer and all. I’ll think about it, okay?”
“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Take some time. Mull it over.”
“Toby?”
“Yeah?”
“How long is not much longer?”
Usually I wouldn’t ask something like that. Usually I wouldn’t want to know. Greta always wanted to know everything. Every little detail. But I understood. You can ruin anything if you know too much. But things were different now. I was in charge of taking care of Toby. I needed to know things.
Toby shrugged. “I’m not really one for doctors.” Then he put on a flaky, airy voice and said, “One day at a time, June. One day at a time.”
Toby leaned over to his side table and pulled out two cigarettes. I smiled, because I’d been practicing in the far corner of my backyard when nobody was home. I sat down on the bed and tilted my head back to take a great deep pull off the cigarette. The smoke felt warm and good, like a blanket laid out all along the inside of my body.
“Finn didn’t even seem to care that he was dying,” I said. And it was true. Finn was as calm as ever right up to the very last time I saw him.
“Don’t you know? That’s the secret. If you always make sure you’re exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won’t care if you die tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. If you were so happy, then you’d want to stay alive, wouldn’t you? You’d want to be alive forever, so you could keep being happy.” I reached over and tapped my ash into a pretty pottery dish that Toby was using for an ashtray.
“No, no. It’s the most unhappy people who want to stay alive, because they think they haven’t done everything they want to do. They think they haven’t had enough time. They feel like they’ve been shortchanged.”
Toby flattened both his hands and mimed pressing them up against a window. “Wax on, wax off,” he said, moving one hand at a time in a flat arc. “You’re turning me into Mr. Miyagi with all this talk. I feel like I’m in The Karate Kid.”
I laughed so hard, because I couldn’t imagine Toby ever watching that movie. What he’d said still didn’t really make sense, but there was a tiny flicker of something I felt like I was almost catching. Just for a second it felt like I understood, and then it evaporated again.
“What about you?” I said.
“Me?”
I nodded. “I mean . . . have you been shortchanged?”
Toby took a long drag of his cigarette and stretched his arm across the bed.
“I suppose I’m in that very small group of people who are not waiting for their own story to unfold. If my life was a film, I’d have walked out by now.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t walk out.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen the first half.”
“Tell me, then. All of it.”
Toby ran a hand through his hair, frowning for a second.
“Another time, all right? Another day. Look, it’s nice out. For once you haven’t brought the rain with you.” He smiled to let me know he was joking. “Let’s go out somewhere.”
I understood right then that I would never know the real story of Toby’s life. There was no other time. Everything between Toby and me was in the here and now. That’s all there was. The here and now and Finn. No other history, just scraps and the next few months. And, you know, there was something perfect about that. It meant that everything could be put right. Everything could be new and exactly how it should be.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” I said, pointing at the fuzzy blue robe.
“Only if you want me to,” he said in a jokey voice. I got up and left the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind me so he could change.
When I was in the city, I always had the feeling that everyone could see right through me. Like all the real city people could see immediately that I was from the suburbs. No matter what I wore or how cool I tried to look, I could tell that Westchester was written all over me, head to toe. But not when I was with Finn. Finn was like a ticket into being a real city person. He had a glow that covered me in authentic city light. I thought it would be like that with Toby too. But it wasn’t. With Toby, I felt like we were both strangers in this place. I didn’t just feel like I was from the suburbs but like I was from someplace a world away from here. Like I didn’t belong but also like I didn’t want to. Like I didn’t care. And in lots of ways that felt just as good as blending in. Maybe even better.
It was a beautiful afternoon. Bright blue sky and warm, and everyone we passed seemed to be in a good mood. We walked over to Riverside Park, which is long and thin and stretches along the Hudson right up to 158th Street. It was good to have someone to talk to again, and I talked way too much. I told Toby about Greta. About South Pacific and Annie. How Greta was probably about to become a Broadway star.
Toby laughed. “Broadway? Oh June, Finn would have loved to see her up there.”
Then I told him how I’d found her all covered in leaves after the party. I told him how the two of us used to be best friends but how we weren’t anymore. How Greta hated me.
“She doesn’t really hate you,” Toby said. But I told him she did. She really, really did.
>
“And there’s another party Saturday,” I said. “She roped me into another party and I don’t even want to go.”
“Maybe you’ll have fun.”
I gave him a look that said there was no chance of that happening. Toby gave me a sympathetic look back.
“That’s why Finn painted the portrait, you know,” he said after a while. “He had this idea that if he painted you together like that, then you’d always be connected. I don’t know exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to do something because of how things ended up between him and your mother.”
“What do you mean?”
Toby’s forehead creased and he didn’t answer me at first. Then he seemed to come to a decision.
“I shouldn’t tell you any of this; it’s not my place. But who cares? What does it matter now? Finn always felt sad that he and Danielle weren’t close, that she’d drifted away from him. They used to be so close. Because of all the moving. They were all each other had for so many years. She was the one who made sure their father never had any idea about Finn being gay. Finn didn’t care who knew, but she understood what it would mean. Especially with their father being this big military guy. She’d set up fake dates with her friends for Finn. And of course they all ended up falling in love with him, so it was kind of cruel, really.”
I blushed.
“He told me he never meant to be away so long. You know about that, right? How Finn left?” I nodded like I’d known for years. Like it wasn’t just another thing nobody had bothered to fill me in on. “He told me he wrote to her all the time. Right from the day he left. On the bus out of town. For years he didn’t hear anything back. Not a single letter. And, you know, I can understand it. But Finn never meant his leaving to be hurtful. He didn’t see it as leaving anyone behind. He always thought he’d be back in a few months. But when she didn’t write and he started being out in the world . . . Well, he was seventeen. You can imagine.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.
“He said he even sent her money once. To meet him in Berlin. Maybe that was her chance to do something different. I don’t know. But she didn’t go, so that was that. Then finally he comes back and he’s nothing like the little brother she knew. The young boy on the beach. And the next thing you know he’s sick and there’s Danni losing him all over again. None of it’s fair. None of this. This thing about me not being part of Finn’s relationship with you, the whole thing is about Danielle wanting to say to Finn that he can’t have everything. That he needed to make a sacrifice, too. He always felt like he owed Danni something . . . and I suppose I ended up being that thing.”
“But it’s so stupid. It didn’t solve anything.”
“Of course it didn’t.”
I thought of my mother’s story. The one about Finn carrying that enormous horseshoe crab for her.
“But if they loved each other so much, couldn’t they talk it out?”
Toby gave an exasperated laugh. “You get into habits. Ways of being with certain people.” He stared over at an empty bench. He gazed at it like he could see all the people who’d ever sat there and all the people who might ever sit there in the future. Or maybe he was just thinking about Finn. “It’s hard sometimes, you know? Hard to stop. Finn didn’t want that to happen to you and Greta. So he stuck you into that portrait together.”
Two women in tennis skirts jogged by us, then we passed a man walking two droopy basset hounds. The dogs were panting, their tongues almost grazing the ground.
How would a portrait stop Greta from despising me? And then I had a thought. Maybe it was Finn who’d sent the portrait to the paper. Maybe, somehow, that was all part of what he was thinking. Thrusting us out into the world like that. The two of us in the limelight together for everyone to see. But how would that change anything?
Toby stopped at a Slush Puppie stand and bought an orange one for me and a blue-raspberry one for himself. We sat on the steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, slurping through our thick straws.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“About what?”
“About you having to hide yourself away for me.”
He shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”
I knew it wasn’t, but somehow the thought of it being my mother’s fault seemed worse than taking it on myself. It was such a childish demand to make—so desperate and petty—and I didn’t want to think of my mother that way. It made me feel sorry for her.
“Hey,” I said, trying to lighten things up. “Who asked Matilda to go a-waltzing?”
“What’s that?”
“Trivial Pursuit. It’s a question. I’m testing you.”
“Oh, no. Tests aren’t my strong point. Let me see . . .” He started humming the song at first, but then he began to sing. It was all out of tune, and I put my hand over my mouth to stop laughing. It was hard to believe someone could make such beautiful music with a guitar and be so awful at singing. “A jolly swagman. That’s it, isn’t it?”
I nodded, still laughing. “What is a swagman anyway?”
“I reckon it’s someone like a hobo. A wanderer.”
Sometimes, like right then, Toby’s accent came through really strong. I loved those times. He spoke like nobody I’d ever heard before, and I would have listened to anything he wanted to say.
“Then who’s Matilda?” I asked.
Toby tilted his cup and poked at the slush with his straw. “I suppose Matilda’s the girl who felt like home.”
That night I got out the Book of Days and read the note again. Sometimes when I read it I saw the words that said that Finn loved me. Sometimes I could only see that he loved Toby. That all he cared about was making sure Toby was okay.
I tucked myself in tight under the covers. Like the sick man in the painting. Just like that, I thought, and a hook of anger caught in my belly, because I wanted to be the one taken care of. I wanted someone to look after me, like it was supposed to be. I was the kid, wasn’t I? Toby was the fully grown adult. Being the sick person seemed better than being the nurse. Lying there, having people get every little thing you might need. Who wouldn’t want that?
But then I thought better. The sick person would always be the sick person, but the nurse, she would have to be the nurse for only a little while. And that’s when I understood what it meant, what Toby was trying to say earlier. Toby was definitely going to die. There was no time, but also there was no limit. If I was going to do something for him, something big, I had to do it soon.
I snuck down to the kitchen after everybody was asleep and called Toby. We talked for a little while, then I got to what I really wanted to know.
“What’s the name of your town?” I asked him. “What’s the name of the place you’re from in England?”
Forty-One
It was Saturday, the day of the party, and I went in to the rehearsal for a while, just in case Greta was looking for me. They were running the show straight through, and Mr. Nebowitz looked exasperated. He was making kids do their lines over and over until he decided he was happy with them.
“You’re supposed to be a nurse, Julie,” I heard him say. “You can’t stand there scowling. Come on, people. Step it up. There are folks from the city here today, if you hadn’t noticed.” He gestured to the two seats next to him: An older man wearing a cravat and a woman with bright red hair were sitting there watching the rehearsal. I wondered if they were from Annie. There to watch Greta. Mr. Nebowitz clapped his hands together before telling everyone to run the whole scene again.
I could see the back of Greta’s head in the front row. All the cast who weren’t onstage were sitting on the velvety red auditorium seats. Mr. Nebowitz said it was important for everyone to understand the whole play, not only their own part, and that meant that when you weren’t onstage you should be watching the other scenes. I thought about sitting down next to Greta. Maybe Toby was right. Maybe she didn’t hate me. Maybe it was something else altogether. But then the thought of being made to look s
tupid right there in the front row changed my mind. Instead, I sat in the back and waited for her to go on.
This time she wasn’t anywhere near as good as the last time I saw her. Last time she wasn’t even in costume, but it felt like she was the real Bloody Mary. Even I’d found myself forgetting I was watching Greta. This time it wasn’t like that. This time I could see Greta through and through. Especially when she was singing “Happy Talk.” All the notes were right, but, still, I didn’t believe a word of it. She seemed relieved to be going offstage when the song was done. I left the auditorium right before Nellie, who was being played by Antonia Sidell, sings “Dites-Moi” for the last time.
I wandered down to the greenroom, which ended up being mostly empty. It smelled like stale sandwiches, and the only ones down there were two girls from costumes and a guy who painted sets. They stopped their conversation for a few seconds when they saw me, then angled away and kept talking. I turned back up the stairs, and when I got to the top I stood there, back pressed against the wall, wondering where I could go next. There was something so lonely about that moment, everyone around me completely involved in this thing I wasn’t a part of, me with nowhere to go, waiting around for a party I didn’t want to go to. The only thing I really wanted to do was call Toby. I didn’t have anything to say to him. Nothing interesting at all. But that seemed okay. It seemed like he was the only one I knew in the world who I could call up and just say nothing to. I reached into my pocket, hoping there might be a few dimes, change from my lunch money, but there was nothing. So I did the next best thing. I went out into the woods.
It was windy and springtime-damp, and once I was out there everything sad seemed to blow right off me. It had been a while since I’d been there, and I’d almost forgotten how much I loved the woods. I wandered, aimlessly at first, but then I tried to pay attention. I wanted to get the lay of the land again. I wanted to make sure I knew exactly where everything was. My plan for the party was to keep a close eye on Greta and then get out of there as soon as possible.