Great Big Beautiful Life(52)

“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.