“What is it, mine Sadie?” Freda asked.
“I messed up,” Sadie said miserably. “I’m a terrible person.” She worried that Freda would yell at her, say I told you so, insist that Sadie go in and try to apologize to Sam, which Sadie knew would be pointless. Adults always thought they could fix children’s problems.
Freda simply nodded and took Sadie in her arms. “Oh, my love, this must be a very great loss.” She got on her enormous cell phone, and she canceled her afternoon, and she took Sadie to lunch at her favorite restaurant, a divey Italian place in Beverly Hills, where all the waiters flirted with Freda. They ordered chicken parmigiana, Sadie’s favorite, and ice cream sundaes. The only mention Freda made of the whole situation was when she was paying the bill. “There are people like you and like me. We have bad things happen to us, and we survive them. We are sturdy. But with people like your friend, you must be exceptionally gentle, or they may break.”
“What have I ever survived, Bubbe?”
“Your sister’s cancer. You were very strong during that, even if your mother and father didn’t mention it as much as they should have. But I noticed, and I am proud of you.”
Sadie felt embarrassed. “That’s nothing like what you survived.”
“It is no easy matter being the little sister, this I know. And I am also proud of you for befriending that boy. Even if things ended badly, it was a good thing you did for him and for yourself. That boy was utterly friendless, injured, alone. You were not a perfect friend, but you were his friend, and he needed a friend.”
“You told me what would happen.”
“Meh,” Freda said. “Bubbe-meise. An old woman’s guess.”
“The thing is, I’ll really miss him.” Sadie held back tears.
“Maybe you’ll see him again.”
“I don’t think so. He hates me now, Bubbe.”
“Always remember, mine Sadie: life is very long, unless it is not.” Sadie knew this to be a tautology, but it also happened to be true.
Dov did not call when he returned to Cambridge. The day of his scheduled arrival had come and gone, and it was almost the middle of January, and classes were about to begin. She hadn’t wanted to call him, and she thought it would be rude to go over to his apartment. She decided to send him an email, which she revised extensively. In the end, the revisions did not lead to a sparkling result: Hi Dov, Started playing Chrono Trigger. Some interesting elements there.
He didn’t reply for an entire day: I’ve already played it. We should talk, though. Do you want to come over tonight?
Sadie knew she was dressing for her funeral, so she wore black: dress, tights, Doc Martens. She wanted to look sexy. She wanted him to feel bad about what he would be missing, but she didn’t want to be obvious about it. She took the train to Harvard Square, and when she arrived, she found that the Magic Eye advertisement was still up, though lightly graffiti-covered and peeling on the sides. The rest of the world had apparently lost interest in it since Christmas. She decided to delay her arrival to Dov’s place by looking at it again: Walk up close, and back away. Let your eyes relax.
She went to the magic place, and she felt her mind go clear. She told herself that no matter what Dov said, she wouldn’t argue, cry, or complain.
When she arrived at Dov’s apartment, she didn’t let herself in, even though she had the key. She rang the bell, and he came down to get her. He kissed her on the cheek, and he started to help her off with her coat. But she didn’t want to take off her coat. She wanted to have the armor of the cashmere wool blend Freda had bought her at Filene’s Basement in the fall of her freshman year. At the time, Sadie had worried that the coat was too bulky, but Freda had advised, “Winter will be colder than you think, mine Sadie. This I promise you.”
“Let me have it,” Sadie said. She looked him in the eye and she crossed her arms over her breasts. I’m brave, she thought.
“Batia and I are going to try to make it work,” Dov said. “I’m so sorry.” He was taking a leave from MIT, packing up—suddenly, she became aware of the boxes—and subletting his apartment; he would need the key. He was going back to Israel to work on Dead Sea II.
Sadie would not cry. “When I didn’t hear from you, I thought it was something like that,” she said in an easy, practiced voice. Be cool, she thought. Her brain furiously ran through all the reasons to be cool. She might want a recommendation letter from him some day, if she decided to go to grad school. She might want to work at a company that he worked for. She might want to design a game with him. She might end up on a panel with him, or he might be the judge for a gaming award. Sadie, like Sam, had a gift for imagining herself in the future. She saw a future in which she would not be Dov’s lover, but she still might be his colleague, his employee, his friend. If she was cool, this time won’t have been a waste. Life is very long, she thought, unless it is not.
“You’re being very good about this,” Dov said. “It’s making me feel awful. I think I’d prefer if you screamed and yelled.”
Sadie shrugged. “I knew you were married.” Had she? Yes, she had known even if she had tried to pretend to herself and to Dov that she hadn’t. She had seen his biography on a nascent gaming website, long before she had taken the class. She had looked him up on the internet after she’d played Dead Sea the summer before her sophomore year. A wife had been mentioned, as had a son. They didn’t have names, and so they weren’t characters to her, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. He had never told her about them himself, and so she rationalized her involvement with him by thinking, Until he tells me, it’s not my business. “It’s my fault,” she said.
“Come here,” he said.
Sadie shook her head. She didn’t want him to touch her. “Please, Dov.”
Now that Dov knew Sadie wouldn’t make things difficult for him, she could see his eyes soften. She could see them fill with love and regret for her. Sadie wanted to remember Dov’s face like this. She began to edge toward the door.
“Sadie, you don’t have to go. Let me order some Thai for us. A colleague sent me a press copy of the new Hideo Kojima. It won’t be out here for at least a year, maybe longer.”
“Metal Gear III?”
“They’re not calling it Metal Gear III. They’re calling it Metal Gear Solid. Kojima is disappointed with the sales of the previous Metal Gears in the States, so he doesn’t want it to be a sequel.”
“But those games were great,” Sadie said.
“He’s being smart actually, if he thinks he has a hit on his hands,” Dov said. “It’s not only being a good programmer or a good designer, Sadie. You have to be a marketeer and a showman. You’ll learn that eventually.”
Though she was not in the mood to be taught, Sadie found herself taking off her coat.
“I like the dress,” Dov said.
She had forgotten she was wearing a dress, and now she felt sorry for the Sadie she had been an hour ago who had decided to objectify herself by wearing a dress. She sat down at Dov’s desk. He loaded the game, and then he handed her the controller.