Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(23)

I was dumbstruck. What did this gorgeous guy want with my book?

“Don’t you want to know what it’s about first?” I asked.

“It’s your favorite book. What more do I need to know?”

We had only known each other for the length of a song, but somehow, Asher wanted to understand the things that made me come alive.

Train was right: heaven was overrated.





12

THIRTY-FIVE




THE BEST WAY TO FOLLOW an existential crisis is to sing “Hallelujah” during a dead oil baron’s memorial service, on an eighty-foot sailboat schooner off Sag Harbor. I belted Leonard Cohen’s gospel as a wealthy man’s black-tie-clad family scattered his ashes into the sea and, thanks to the high winds, into my mouth. “Hallelujah” was, without a doubt, my most requested song. It was one of my favorites, but I didn’t have the heart to tell the grieving widowers and beaming brides that they were asking me to sing a very Jewish song about being undone by sex.

“She tied you to a kitchen chair.”



“Morty was a devoted husband to his wife, Sue Anne.…”

“Remember when I moved in you.”



“There’s nothing Morty loved more than spending time fishing with his grandsons, Morty the Third and Mason.”

After doing Leonard Cohen proud, I gave the family space to mourn, retreating to the other side of the boat as the service continued. I drew in a deep breath of the sea air, when a tiny, sticky hand wrapped around mine. I looked down, seeing a little girl, no more than three, grinning up at me.

“You’re like a princess,” she announced.

I crouched down to her big cheeks and fixed the undone bow around one of her pigtails.

“So are you.”

She smiled up at me with all her teeth.

“I wish I could sing like you and Ariel. Did you know all the best princesses sing?”

I touched her little button nose. “Did you know that if you can talk, you can sing?”

“Not like you.”

“Do you want to try and sing with me?”

“I’m scared of singing to strangers. I only sing to my Elsa microphone.”

“Well, I used to be afraid of singing aloud to strangers, too.”

She opened her jaw, her blue eyes widening against the wind in disbelief.

“It’s true. Do you know what helped me sing in front of people?”

“Your mommy promised you a chocolate?”

“No. But I do love chocolate. What helped me is I would search for the friendliest face in the audience. Because when you’re new to singing in front of other people, there’s always one person you love in the audience.”

“So, I’ll make my mommy bring my Ariel Barbie next time I sing. I love her.”

“It’s nice that you love your mom.”

“I love my Ariel Barbie the most.”

“Oh.”

“Whose mommy are you?” she asked.

I fought to keep the smile on my windblown cheeks.

“I’m actually no one’s mommy.”

“Why?” she asked, patting my wanded curls.

Several years ago, I started seeing a therapist. She told me that the father wound I thought I’d skirted had in fact punctured deep below the surface. It was why as a teenager I was afraid to sing to a crowd, because I had a special kind of anxiety when it came to rejection. She also let me know that I was using the trauma of my childhood to put off my feelings about having children of my own. It was ironic, but in doing the emotionally exhausting work, I realized what I wanted for myself. I realized I wanted children, and I had just been told that they were nearly impossible to get. If only I’d stayed in the shadow of my childhood, convincing myself that the fear of being a neglectful parent meant I shouldn’t become one—convincing myself that the genes my father gave me could break some little kid’s heart one day. If only I’d stayed frozen in my past, then I wouldn’t be aching the way I was right now, staring at this tiny little girl who wasn’t even mine. I wanted to be able to say I was someone’s mommy. I wanted to give a child the emotional support I rarely got from my mother and the time of day I rarely got from my father. I could one day do both, but I didn’t have many days left to try.

“One day,” I whispered to the little girl, with hope strangled inside a sea of tears in my throat.

I patted her on the head, and she grinned and ran back to the other side of the boat, into her mother’s arms.

Maybe it was because there were the ashes of a successful dead old man inside me, or the fact that a little girl had just made my ovaries weep, but the service only reaffirmed that I needed to create a legacy. I pulled my shoulder blades back and untucked my phone from my purse, dialing Summer.

“Hey. Did you find anything on Asher?” I asked.

“Top of the morning to you, too. You used to be so much more timid about asking for favors, you know.”

“What can I say? Your lack of personal affection has rubbed off on me.”

“You wish. I was just about to call you,” she said. “I did some digging, and my colleague is best friends with Reyes’s PR person. Asher’s here, in New York City. Did you know that?”

Summer was a PR shark who had a Rolodex that boasted one degree of separation from absolutely anyone. I was not surprised in the least that it only took her two days to find Asher. But the knowledge that he was roaming the same streets as myself made my insides flip.