Burke had stepped up senior year—he’d stayed off booze and drugs—and I was proud of him by the time we arrived in Manhattan. More than that, I believed in him. I knew he was smarter than anyone in Langs Valley had ever given him credit for, and it filled my heart with pride to know that he had started to believe it, too.
We lifted each other up, Dr. K. That’s what love does, and we loved each other fiercely. We were more than the other young couples drifting hand in hand around the city—much more. Burke and I were each other’s family.
We found a cheap studio apartment in the East Village, nearly equidistant from Fordham in the Bronx and Medgar Evers in Brooklyn. I know the East Village is trendy nowadays, but back then the area was seedy. Still, it was all we could afford off campus with our housing stipend, and Burke and I had made a firm commitment to live together in spite of our commutes. Plus, being from Langs Valley, we’d seen our fair share of shit, and we were scrappier than average eighteen-year-olds. The apartment was three hundred square feet with a single window overlooking an alley, but we made it home. We found a cheap mattress and some dishes at a tag sale, and a paint-chipped dresser on the sidewalk marked FREE. We tacked my favorite photograph of Gus to the wall above the dresser—the one where he’s sitting in the meadow next to our old house with his little knees tucked into his chest, blowing on a dandelion.
That first summer in New York was hot—a kind of heat we’d never experienced living in the mountains. We couldn’t afford an air-conditioning unit, but we got a fan that we blasted on full speed while we slept.
We weren’t always comfortable, but we were happy. For the first time since Gus died, I felt as if the weight on my shoulders had lightened, and I stood a little taller when I walked. They say you can’t run away from your problems, that your problems will chase you wherever you go, but if my problems followed me to New York, I think the city swallowed them right up. Its utter size and magnitude were more than I could comprehend; walking the streets or riding the subway uptown, I was floored by the sheer number of human beings that filled every inch of space. And everyone had problems. People were sick and homeless and fighting and crying—it was impossible to feel isolated by your own issues in a city that so publicly cursed the world. I loved it.
Burke got a job at the movie theater near Union Square, and I started waitressing at a Greek restaurant near our apartment. We both enjoyed going to work because of the air-conditioning. Some nights the restaurant manager let me bring home leftovers, which Burke and I would eat on our bed with the fan on full blast while we dreamed about the future.
We were going to keep studying hard and get perfect grades. Burke would get into business school at Columbia, and after graduation I would get a good job to tide us over while Burke finished his MBA. I didn’t have a specific career in mind yet, but I’d declared a major in economics and a minor in English, figuring this combination would open a variety of doors. After Burke finished grad school, we’d get married and have a beautiful wedding somewhere classy, like the Botanical Gardens or the Waldorf, paid for with Burke’s signing bonus from whatever top investment bank swept him up.
Once we had plenty of money saved, we’d have a baby—of this I was certain. I wanted children, from a deep place inside me. I wanted to hold them and protect them and give them the world. We’d move to a big white house in Connecticut; not in Libby’s town, but somewhere like it. Burke would be making bucketloads by then; we’d have so much money we’d never need to worry about anything. We’d be able to give our children everything they needed and more. All we had to do was stick with the plan, and with each other.
The one piece of the plan I didn’t share with Burke was that I still wasn’t all that interested in having a career, as he assumed I was. I aimed to work for a couple of years, certainly—perhaps in advertising or PR—but mostly I wanted to not need to work. I yearned for financial freedom, and days that belonged to me; I’d spend them raising our babies and decorating the house and planning vacations and reading glossy magazines in the bathtub with a glass of good wine. This was the true goal, to live the way Libby did. To be the kind of mother she was to her children.
But I couldn’t exactly admit to Burke that my real aspiration was to luxuriate in the wealth he provided—not yet. It would happen naturally down the line, but in the meantime, I needed to keep Burke focused. For him to succeed he had to believe that we were in the trenches together; he had to continue to find inspiration in our shared plan.
So we’d fall asleep like that, whispering dreams in the dark heat. We’d wake up in the mornings, our limbs tangled and sticky with sweat, but grateful to be where we were. We’d made it out of Langs Valley, and we were never going back. For the time being, that was enough.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Skye
OCTOBER 2019
Andie and I get to my building at a quarter past six. I feel like I’ve been gone for months, even though it’s barely been twenty-four hours since I was here confronting Burke. I give Andie my keys and she goes up to the apartment first, to make sure he’s not there. I wait in the cab on West Eleventh, the meter still running. Outside a light rain has begun to fall, streaking the windows.
“Just another minute or two,” I say to the driver.
I told Andie I’d go up to the apartment with her—even though I’d told Burke to be out by six, half of me desperately hoped he’d still be there, that he’d pull me into his strong arms and I’d breathe in his sharp, woody scent and be momentarily pacified. But Andie read the look on my face and told me to wait.
My phone vibrates in my lap, a text confirming the coast is clear. I head into the building and wave at Ivan behind the front desk, as though it were just another day.
Andie is waiting upstairs. The apartment feels different immediately; a sense of deflation is in the air; an empty space is to the right of the bathroom sink where Burke kept his toiletries. The framed photograph of us from the day we got engaged is missing from its usual place on the mahogany side table. I know Andie wanted a few moments alone here to remove any lingering traces of him.
My heart rattles with emptiness. Just two mornings ago I’d woken up here as Burke’s wife, and now he’s gone. I am alone again.
Alone.
The feeling swallows me whole and I crumple onto the floor, fresh tears spilling from my eyes. Andie catches me in her pin-thin arms, which are freakishly strong, and pulls me onto the couch. She lets me cry. I cry as the light dies outside. When it’s nearly dark, Andie gets up to turn on some lamps.
“I’m going to order us some dinner. How does Thai sound? That place on Bleecker with the amazing spring rolls that aren’t too greasy?”
Andie’s voice sounds far away. How does Thai sound?
I’m reminded of a night right after Mom died. My dad was ordering pizza and asked what toppings I wanted. I had the feeling he was speaking to someone else. What did I want on my pizza? How could I consider the toppings I wanted on my pizza when my mother was dead? Her body was in a refrigerator waiting to be burned to ash, and I was supposed to choose pepperoni or mushroom. I wanted to laugh in my father’s face at the same time I wanted to scream at him for not knowing my pizza order—peppers and onions, always. For years it had been the same. But I realized only Mom knew that kind of small thing, that Dad had never known because he’d never needed to, and he’d never been interested enough to learn. I also realized that even though I still had my father and brother, in many ways I was now on my own.