The Truth Is a Theory Read online

  Gavin dropped Tess’s hand, looped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her in. “I love your friends. Well okay, most of them.”

  Beth’s dark eyebrows shot up, and she looked more closely at Tess. Tess was used to this astonishment, had expected it actually. She knew that people viewed her differently when they discovered she was Gavin’s girlfriend; like a paintbrush, this piece of information instantly touched her up—made her brighter, more colorful—and increased her general currency.

  Tess leaned into Gavin’s squeeze. “Yeah, that’s why our plans always revolve around yours.” That was true; the sarcasm was for show. Tess was content to leave the planning of their social world to Gavin. That way, if the experience de jour isn’t high on the scale of Exceptional Times, at least I don’t feel responsible. And her breezy “whatever” in the face of the options was for the most part how she felt. Just being with Gavin was enough. She never knew what stories they would have to tell the next morning. And there always were stories; Gavin incited outlandish merriment by the sheer power of his fireworks-smile, his “I’m game for anything” restlessness.

  Beth regained her composure; she put her hand on her hip. “Tell me you’re not still hanging out at Wolfe’s.”

  “Guilty. But sadly, it hasn’t been the same since you left.”

  Beth laughed. “I’m sure. Have you been there, Tess?”

  Tess mustered up a smile. “Not in a while.” Evidently though, she needed to get down there more often. Long ago she’d decided to give Gavin a lot of space in their relationship; she had a sixth sense that if she remained glued to his side, demanding his all, she could be left with nothing.

  “You’re smart. It’s such a hole in the wall,” Beth said.

  “Hey, the best of the best come to pray at that wooden altar,” Gavin said.

  “To spit and drool maybe,” Beth said. Her red lips spoke to Tess, “I guess you don’t work downtown.”

  “Midtown. I work in PR.”

  “She’s an account exec,” Gavin said.

  “Really. What account?”

  “Mostly Hanes,” Tess said.

  Gavin grinned. “Boxers-versus-briefs has a whole new meaning in our house.”

  Tess smiled and rolled her eyes; this was one of his favorite lines.

  “Hey, I’m not complaining! Either way, I’m set for life.” Gavin said.

  Comments like these gave Tess the fresh thrill of being chosen, every time. And Gavin was not stingy with them; they often peppered his conversations. As Beth drifted away into the crowd (Tess hoped their implied commitment had sent her running), she caressed several of his comments from their weekend together, stuffed in her pocket like polished charms.

  She could clearly envision the cloudless sky, the sparkling ocean, and a gaggle of kids tumbling by with their sandy buckets. Gavin, eyes closed to the searing sun, had said, “How many kids do you think we’ll have?”

  “Maybe three? What do you think?

  “Three. Or four maybe.” He slid his foot over to tickle hers. “Four could be great—two boys, two girls. Or three boys and one girl.”

  “Okay four. If you promise to be pregnant with at least one of them.” She felt as if she could just reach out and touch this colorful future, that if she just blinked her eyes, those kids on the beach might be theirs.

  In her mind, Tess fast-forwarded to window-shopping a few hours later. Gavin’s arm was draped around her shoulders as they passed a small art gallery, and one piece in the window drew their eye and consideration. It was a photograph of a yellow kayak bobbing in the steel gray ocean; a storm on the horizon had canvassed the sky above it in various shades of blue-gray.

  “Let’s buy it; our first piece of non-poster art. We can hang it in our first house, and then re-hang it after we make millions and move into a mansion.” He squeezed her hand.

  The promise was warm and definite, and Tess had returned the squeeze as happiness ballooned inside her.

  The next night, over a leisurely Italian dinner and bottle of wine, Gavin had said with a sigh, “This has been so great, promise me we’ll always spend our summer vacations here.”

  “I promise,” she said as if her hand was resting on a bible.

  Moments like these were caught on film in her mind, and she clung to them whenever the subject of weddings cropped up and Gavin recited his mantra (which he was saying right now at Allie’s reception, perhaps as an addendum to his earlier we’re-set-for-life comment), “We’re too young to get married.”

  “I agree.” Tess nodded her head for emphasis.

  “I mean, what’s the hurry?” Gavin said with a low voice, out of respect for the just-married couple. “What are Dana and Allie thinking? They’re only two years out of college, why not enjoy being single a little longer?”

  “But they weren’t single.” And neither are we.

  “You know what I mean though, right?”

  “I guess. But they weren’t single.” Tess let that hang for a moment; when he didn’t answer, she scanned the room. “Allie looks beautiful, doesn’t she?”

  Gavin considered Allie. “She does.” He focused back on Tess. “So do you.” He kissed her cheek. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied Zoe.

  ————

  A few minutes later, Megan wandered over, giving Gavin an opportunity to sneak a better look at Zoe, who was across the bar flirting with her date for the wedding, Bob Falco. Gavin frowned. He knew Bob from work and had introduced him to Zoe. Big mistake. Gavin was not a fan; Bob made a lot of money and threw it around loudly. Everyone within shouting distance knew how much he spent whenever he opened up his fat wallet.

  Gavin had to admit, he couldn’t stand to see anyone with Zoe. But then again, he usually didn’t have to. These days, whenever they were in the same place, it was either alone in her apartment or out at a bar where the crowded drinks-after-work were just an understood prelude to their later fusion. Ever since their relationship had rekindled two years ago, both of them had continued to toss paper on it. They now fired each other up a few times a month.

  They both worked down on Wall Street, which was a world unto itself; a very separate fishbowl from midtown Manhattan in both its location and its singularly focused energy. It would be unusual to wander downtown without a specific purpose, especially as “wandering” would entail a long taxi or subway ride. Typically the only people at the local happy hours were people who worked nearby, making it just a matter of time before he and Zoe ran into each other. From there, the ice that they had already broken continued to melt.

  In the beginning, Gavin worried that Tess would somehow discover his extracurricular activity. He soon realized however, that he could engineer the risk to almost zero. Tess never popped downtown, and he and Zoe always wound up in Zoe’s apartment, locking away any clues Tess could stumble across. Of course there was always the possibility someone could catch him slinking out of Zoe’s late at night, but the odds were slim, so slim that he no longer let himself worry about it.

  He had synced it so well that although they were all in the same group of friends, Gavin could count on one hand the times that he, Tess, and Zoe had been in the same room together since the girls’ graduation, and at each of those events, a quick whisper to Tess about his desire for the two of them to be alone, and any seeds of panic blew away in the wake of their rapid exit.

  Today however, at this crowded reception, Gavin was claustrophobic. There was no logical excuse he could cook up to escort Tess out, and for the first time in two years, a needle of terror lodged into his supreme invincibility. He had no reason to believe that Zoe wanted to upset the delicate balance they’d created; however, it was dangerous to have her loose in the same enclosure with him and Tess. He had to ensure that Zoe didn’t smell blood, because like a shark cruising a swimming area, even if she didn’t outright attack, a calculated brush of her razo
r sharp wit could be bloody.

  He took a swig of his beer to quench his now desert-dry throat and angled himself so that he was facing Tess, but had Zoe dead-on in his sight over her head. He tried to focus on what Tess was saying to Megan, but Zoe was too compelling. She was the most beautiful girl in the room. He wondered if Bob was feeling the same desire to yank off that bridesmaid dress.

  Zoe slowly turned from Bob and shot Gavin a smile; how her smiles always seemed wickedly sexy was beyond him, but they did. He swallowed hard and lifted his glass to his lips again.

  “Gavin?”

  He moved his eyes slightly and tried to refocus on Tess’s freckled, ivory-soap face.

  “Do you want anything to eat? Cheese and crackers?” she asked for the second time.

  Megan shot Gavin a curious look.

  “No thanks.” Pull yourself together. He smiled at Megan.

  As Megan and Tess drifted off in search of hors d’oeuvres, he ambled back to the bar to refill his now-empty beer. What the hell am I doing? He shook his head. He did not want to lose Tess. But Zoe knows I love Tess. And no one’s getting hurt.

  He visibly relaxed, accepting a beer from the bartender and leaning back against the bar to survey the reception.

  Zoe, never one to miss an opportunity, sidled up next to him. “Hey handsome.”

  He grinned at her. Her perfume wafted up to him and provided him with a quick Polaroid of the two of them entwined together. She was wearing a delicate gold necklace that hung down into her… Gavin forced himself to look back up. He longed to touch her, but even after checking to ensure that Tess was still across the room, he put his hands in his pockets.

  Zoe locked her blue eyes on his. “It’s always so good to see you.” Her eyes sparkled; her lipstick glistened. “You know I always wish I could see more of you,” she said in a voice for the other people at the bar, while she slid her gaze from his shoulders down.

  “My sentiments exactly.” He gave her a look that undressed her with his eyes. “It’s important to stay on top of each other,” he cleared his throat, “of all that’s going on with each other.”

  Zoe laughed. “Yes it is. We shouldn’t let so much time go by, we might miss something interesting.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. We’re both pretty good at laying it all bare.”

  Zoe wrapped both hands around her glass.

  Gavin leaned in so that their shoulders touched. “I have missed you, Zo. It’s just hard to find the time…”

  He felt her body stiffen.

  Zoe took a step sideways, out of brush-by range. “So Allie and Dana finally did it.”

  Gavin heard the change in her tone, from melodic to snipped. He took his hands out of his pockets and picked up his beer.

  “Can you imagine the boredom?” Zoe said. “I mean, I love Dana, but one person forever and ever? I don’t know, I’m not sure that’s me.”

  “Really?” He smiled disarmingly. “Come on. You’ll find yourself settled down one of these days. Well, maybe not settled down; I can’t quite see you barefoot with an apron.” Gavin glanced at Tess laughing with her friends across the room. “And I guess I will too,” he said thoughtfully.

  He knew he had said the wrong thing, as honest as it was. He fired up his grin. “Not right now, mind you. We’re all way too young. In fact, Ms. Chapin, it’s too bad you have a date.”

  “Your loss.” She moved her hand behind him and pinched his butt hard—too hard—and then strode back to Bob.

  The rest of the night Gavin watched Zoe’s fireworks; they were hard to miss. She was the life of the party—flamboyant, flirty—matching Bob drink for drink, line for line, loud laugh for laugh. And it seemed she was always in Gavin’s line of vision.

  Jealousy surged through his veins, and its toxic fever thrust him into overdrive with Tess. He recycled all of his pent up frustration about Zoe into passion for Tess, and was attentive to her with an amorous wildfire that he could tell from her face was catapulting her over the moon. Part of him loved seeing her so happy; part of him thought, oh man, I’m such a jerk.

  He couldn’t resist one more glance at Zoe.

  ————

  And Allie and Dana, dancing and laughing and soaring on an incredible romantic high through well-wishers and great expectations, were oblivious to the powerful undertow of jumbled emotion surging through the country club dining room. Any cold feet from earlier in the day had been warmed and transformed by the intensity of their feelings for each other and by the dazzle of their new commitment.

  Their grins were so wide that they almost connected in the small space between them as clung to each other and swayed to the music.

  “I love you so much,” Allie whispered into Dana’s ear.

  He looked into her green eyes; his heart was bursting. “I love you too.”

  Chapter 7

  Journal Entry #7

  December 12, 2000

  History evaporated with my mom’s desertion. She swept all of the Mussoni annals and anecdotes into a clean, white sheet, tied it into a bundle and attached it to her hobo stick on her way out the door. Afterwards, there were no tender moments on my dad’s lap, listening to his love for me swirl through his hushed tales of when I was born, when I took my first step, when I uttered my first word. Come to think of it, I don’t even know what my first word was. Probably Mama.

  So it’s not surprising that I don’t remember much about my childhood. And of the memories I do have, it’s hard to know which are truly my own, and which are implanted from scraps of dog-eared stories and pored-over photographs. Mental archives are like folded notes in pockets—we touch them accidentally, handle them deliberately, and sometimes even send them through the laundry. Each thumb-through modifies them somehow, so that eventually, the facts become irrelevant. Even at base, memories, like conversations, aren’t exclusively factual. They’re infused with emotion, colored with nonverbal nuance, and filtered through our unique perspective, and it is that subjective core that lingers once the who-said-what-to-whom fades away.

  Mostly what I remember from when I was young are boxed-up feelings and blurry scenes rather than sharp, zoom-lens details. Except of course for the day, the hour, that my mom left. I remember terror once I discovered she wasn’t in the house, and remember being alone with Kevin, which was scary too. He was two-and-a-half; I was four. We waited, holding hands, cuddled together on the couch with our little legs sticking straight out in front of us because the bend in our knees was nowhere near the edge of the cushion. I remember thinking we were in trouble because Mommy had left, thinking she must have left because we were too noisy; which was kind of funny because we were never too loud. Our house was blanketed in a tiptoe hush, as if there was a billboard on our mantel with a black and white cartoon lady holding a finger to her bright red lips. Before my mother left this signage was insinuated; after she left it was just redundant.

  I remember that Paul was playing next door at his friend Jim Dayton’s, and when it was dinnertime, Mrs. Dayton had walked Paul home. They arrived to find Kevin and I still huddled together on that blue paisley couch. Mrs. Dayton, who I imagine was appalled, gathered us up and shepherded us over to her house for dinner. That was the beginning of many afternoons over at the Daytons’, which then became many afternoons of different Mrs. Dayton-like women who briefly passed through our lives only to continue on with their own.

  But what I remember most from that day were the mascara-stained tears snaking down my mother’s cheeks, as if her sorrow had been slow-dripping forever and had finally reached overflow.

  That moment in time, that haunting still life of black tears and anguish burrowed deep into my psyche, and it crouched there, smoldering—crouches there still—flaring up and scorching me whenever the world around me rests. I’ve studied that image until it’s become tattered and pulpy with my desperation, certain that it would gi
ve me a clue as to why she left, where she’d gone. But I never found answers in her sorrow; I only found the unbearable sorrow itself.

  In the end, the only answer that made any sense at all came not from her face, but from the corner of that moment, from the center of our lives, from the most important prop in any snapshot of our family. The answer teased and twinkled from the TV in poreless sensuality: there’s something else out there.

  And she wanted it. Our life, our family, this family that she created, could not compete with the idea that there was more, a promise that curled its finger and beckoned us every day from the magnetic box in our living room. We weren’t living in black and white mind you; we had a good life—tossing bread to the ducks on weekdays, building stick forts in the yard on weekends.

  But better was captivating.

  My conclusion was never disputed, never challenged by my father. After initially telling us that Eva was visiting friends and that she’d be back, he never spoke about her again. Maybe he thought that it would stir us up, make us too sad; maybe he thought that if he didn’t bring it up it would just go away. As an adult I find this inconceivable, irresponsible, and even cruel. But to be fair, maybe that’s what he believed, or at least what he hoped. At some point though, it became clear that she wasn’t coming back. I don’t know whether this was weeks, months, or even a year later, but whenever it was, it had been long enough that it wasn’t a lightbulb clicking on with a news flash. That awful knowledge had been infecting us for some time, flatlining our smiles, weighting our feet at the playground, keeping our thumbs in our mouths long past appropriate. After a while it just became normal, and verbally at least, it was as if she’d never been there.

  Did she leave a note? Did she write in the months or even years after? Did she ever call to find out if we were healthy, happy? I’ve never been able to summon the courage to ask these questions of my dad, to further traumatize him. That’s the impression he gave, as if any mention of her would open old wounds and cause him to bleed out.