“This used to be my favorite area of the city,” I tell Gavin as we begin to walk. “I worked here for a summer when I was in college, for a law firm in midtown. On the weekends, I used to take the N or the R train down to the World Trade Center, get a Coke in the food court there, and then walk down Broadway to Battery Park.”
“Oh yeah?” Gavin says.
I smile. “I used to look out at the Statue of Liberty and think about how big the world was out there beyond the East Coast. I used to think about all the choices I had, all the things I could do with my life.” I stop talking and look down.
“That sounds nice,” Gavin says softly.
I shake my head. “I was a dumb kid,” I mumble after a moment. “Turns out life isn’t as big as I thought it could be.”
Gavin stops walking and puts a hand on my arm, bringing me to a halt too. “What do you mean?”
I shrug and glance around. I feel foolish standing in the middle of a sidewalk in Manhattan, with Gavin looking at me so intently. But he’s staring down at me, waiting for an answer, so finally, I look up and meet his eye. “This isn’t the life I thought I’d have,” I say.
Gavin shakes his head. “Hope, it never is. You know that, right? Life doesn’t ever turn out the way we plan.”
I sigh. I don’t expect him to understand. “Gavin, I’m thirty-six, and none of the things I wanted in my life have really happened,” I try to explain. “Some days I wake up and think, How did I get here? It’s like one day, you just realize you’re not young anymore, and you already made your choices, and now it’s too late to change anything.”
“It’s not too late,” Gavin says. “Ever. But I know what you mean about feeling that way.”
“How do you know?” My voice is sharper than I intend it to be. “You’re twenty-nine.”
He laughs. “There’s no magical age when all your options shut down, Hope,” he says. “You have just as many chances to change your life as I do. What I’m saying is that no one’s life turns out the way they expect it to. But it’s how you roll with the punches that determines whether you’re happy or not.”
“You’re happy,” I say, and I realize it sounds more like an accusation than a statement. “I mean, you seem to have everything you want.”
He laughs again. “Hope, do you really think I sat around as a kid and dreamed of being a handyman?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “Did you?”
“No! I wanted to be an artist. I was the dorkiest kid in the world; I used to insist my mom take me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston so I could look at the paintings. I used to tell her I was going to move to France and be a painter like Degas or Monet. They were my favorites.”
“You wanted to be an artist?” I ask incredulously. We begin walking again, toward the address we have for Jacob Levy.
Gavin chuckles and glances down at me. “I even tried to get into SMFA.”
“SMFA?”
“Ah, you’re not a big art fan, I see.” Gavin winks at me. “The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.” He pauses and shrugs. “I had the grades, and I had the portfolio, but I didn’t qualify for enough scholarships to pay for it. My mom couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t want to take out tons of loans and be in debt for the rest of my life. So here I am.”
“So you just didn’t go to college?”
Gavin laughs. “No, I went to Salem State on scholarship. I majored in education, because I figured if I couldn’t be an artist, I’d be an art teacher.”
“You were an art teacher?” I ask. Gavin nods, and I add, “But what happened? How come you’re not anymore?” I bite my tongue before I add something about him being just a handyman.
He shrugs. “It didn’t make me happy. Not the way that working with my hands does. I realized that if I couldn’t be an artist in the traditional sense—let’s face it, college or not, I’m no Michelangelo—I could create art in some form if I could make things for people. And that’s what I do now.”
“But you fix pipes and stuff,” I say in a small voice.
He laughs. “Yeah, because that’s part of the job. But I also build decks and paint houses and install windows and shutters, and renovate kitchens. I get to make things beautiful, and that makes me happy. I think of it as making the town one giant piece of art, one house at a time.”