So much pain in those simple sentences. For me, for him. “I never thanked you for burning down the church.”
It surprises him into a laugh. His eyes crinkle and I can see the crooked eyetooth on the right, and the sound is exactly the same, slightly hoarse and comically high pitched. “My pleasure, ma’am,” he says with a salute. “Where’d you go when you—”
“Got out of the home? Yeah.” That’s tender territory. “Beryl helped me emancipate myself. I lived with her through the rest of high school. How long were you in juvie?”
“Eighteen months. I got lucky. No criminal history, and extenuating circumstances.”
I think of him then, a smart, fierce young man of color. “Juvie had to have been hell for you.”
He looks away, shrugs, but I can see the sorrow around his mouth. He clears his throat. “They showed pictures of you after your dad—”
“Tried to kill me?” I fill in with a humorless laugh.
“Yeah.” His jaw goes hard, and there’s a suspicious sheen over his eyes. “God, I felt so helpless.”
Now there’s a river of dark emotion rising, and I can’t avoid the tears in my own eyes. “You set me free, Joel. You totally did.”
He bows his head, and I can feel the weight of our losses, but the silence gives me space to calm myself down. We sit in the quiet for a time. The music lilts around us. Outside, clouds chug across the sky. The ocean washes to shore.
I’ve forgotten how still he can be, his limbs quiet when other people would be wiggling or tapping or restless. I forgot how much I liked it, how much space it gives me to breathe.
After a time he says, “Now you. Tell me everything.”
“Me? Um . . . let’s see.” I lift my hand and count on my fingers to mirror him. “Got sent away to Portland, came back and lived with Beryl, went to New York after high school, got discovered”—I spread my hands, like ta-da—“made a bunch of movies, bought a big house in Hollywood, and made some more movies.”
“Fell in love with a big director.”
Dmitri. My soul gives a little wail. “Yeah. We were together nearly twenty years. Until he died.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “COVID, right?”
I nod. “The worst was that he was alone in the hospital. I hated that so much.”
“Same with my mom.”
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
“Thanks.”
“No kids?” I ask, and then wish I hadn’t.
“Only the one,” he says. “You?”
“Same.” An old pain rustles. I see her dark hair, her newborn blue eyes.
“Did you”—he leans on the table, hands steepled tightly—“see him? Her?”
“Her.” I swallow hard. “Yeah. For a very short while. She had a lot of hair, and a beautiful little mouth.” A lot of memories are blurry, but not that one. After so long, the memory no longer brings tears, but thinking of how Joel never even had that glimpse of her brings a fresh swell of sorrow. I bow my head, touch Yul Brynner’s long tail.
Joel closes his eyes. Breathes. Then: “I am sorry you had to go through all of that alone, Suze. I really am.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Still.” He straightens, picks up his cup, and it’s empty. “Mind if I help myself?”
“Not at all.”
We can’t stay in that place of darkness. I can’t. When he comes back, I ask, “What were the lost years?”
“Ah.” He wipes his clean-shaven cheeks. “Just . . . the usual bullshit. Fights, bad jobs, bad relationships. Looking for something I didn’t know how to find.”
“What pulled you out of it?”
“My first wife, Ella. I met her in Seattle. Solid as granite and didn’t put up with nonsense and self-destruction.”
“Good for her.”
He nods, looks toward the sea. “I broke her heart, though—I couldn’t be the guy she wanted.”
“We all do that when we’re young, don’t you think?”
“I wasn’t that young by then. Almost forty.”
“Oh.” I allow myself a smile. “That’s a few lost years.”
“Mmm. Did you?”
“Have lost years?”
“Break hearts.”
“Of course.” I’d had my share of tempestuous relationships. “The difference is, my peccadilloes were fully documented by the paparazzi and the tabloids.”