I had just been through another soul-killing seminar with Dr. Stein, and to make myself feel better, I was deep in an armchair with three scratchy blankets over my legs, reading 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“Oh, there you are, I’ve been looking everywhere,” Jules said. “It’s Cyrus.”
“Did something happen?”
He sat down beside me. “No, we just— It’s the anniversary of his mom’s death next week. I think we should do something.”
I felt like an imposter for not knowing the date. “I had no idea.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about it. But he can’t be alone.”
“I can take the day off. Does she have—is she buried somewhere?”
“He scattered her ashes in Port Townsend, that’s where she was from.” Before I could ask, he said, “It’s on the West Coast, near Seattle. He hitchhiked all the way there when he was sixteen.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Jules was staring into the cold fireplace. “I came out to my parents right around the time that Cyrus’s mother died. It was late—I’d known for years, but I was afraid to tell them.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“One of each. They make bank and play golf. I’m the youngest, the runt.”
“Oh.”
“Sometimes I think of a world where my parents died in an accident so I would never have had to tell them.”
“What happened when you did?”
“Everything changed. It was like they disappeared, like they were right in front of me but they were ghosts.”
“I saw Cyrus’s mother at school sometimes.”
“What was she like?”
“She was beautiful. It looked like she’d had him when she was very young.” Something came to me. “She loved Ella Fitzgerald. I remember that about her—she sang at the parents’ talent show.”
“You guys had a parents’ talent show?”
“The school needed money, so the parents put on a show where they paid to see each other do stuff. The teachers did it too—I’m still haunted by the sight of my algebra teacher singing Cat Stevens.”
“Hippie Cat Stevens or Muslim Cat Stevens?”
“Hippie.” I looked over at Jules. “So should we practice a song?”
“I don’t know—are you any good at singing? Because we all know that I am awesome.”
“I’m Bengali,” I said. “It’s in my blood.”
* * *
The following week, on the twelfth anniversary of the death of Poppy Jones, Cyrus disappeared. I woke up in the morning and found that he was not on the other side of the bed. He was not downstairs in the kitchen and he was not outside in the garden and he was not in any of the rooms on any of the floors of the house. He did not answer his phone. He did not reply to text messages or emails.
Jules was eating peanut butter out of the jar when I gave him this news. “How long has he been gone?”
I checked my phone. It was eleven thirty. “I don’t know what time he left, but I haven’t seen him all morning.”
Jules nodded. “He’ll be back in a few days.”
“A few days? Are you kidding me?”
Jules took a gallon of milk out of the fridge and gulped straight from the carton. “I told you, his mom’s death is still raw.”
“You are the only person I know who consumes real dairy,” I said. “And why the fuck didn’t you say anything to me sooner?”
“What, that Cyrus likes to do a runner? It’s his thing.”
“His thing? And you never thought to warn me?”
“You got married before I even learned your name.”
He was right. “A few days? Do you try to get in touch with him in the meantime?”
“Nope. You just leave the door open, and he comes back when he’s ready.”
Early the next morning, Cyrus slipped into bed beside me. I’d fallen asleep after hours of staying awake and checking my phone every few minutes, so I thought I heard him say he was sorry, but I might’ve just been imagining it. I took my cue from Jules and didn’t ask where he’d been. That night we put Poppy’s photograph in a frame and surrounded it with candles. In the piano room, where there was a decaying concert grand, we arranged small bunches of poppies in coffee mugs. And then Jules and I did a duet of Ella Fitzgerald’s “A Sunday Kind of Love.” Jules had an excellent baritone, and I didn’t completely embarrass myself either, because I’d practiced nonstop while Cyrus was away.