“She married LucasEkker? I’m speechless.”
“Did you know him?”
“Of course I knew him! Your mother was his publicist when we worked at Houghton. What a pontificating bore of a man.”
“That’s him.”
“I shudder to imagine the through line between Buddy Zabriskie, myself, and Lucas Ekker.”
“My mother had range.”
“Well, I wish her every happiness. I do. She deserves some peace in her life. Did you tell her that we ran into each other?”
“I haven’t yet.” The phone and I went out the kitchen door and into the backyard, where I sat in Jonathan’s Adirondack chair.
“There’s a fear, of course, that once you do, I’ll never hear from you again. I’ll have to put your memory back in its little box, but even if that’s the case, this has been wonderful for me. I can’t begin to tell you what it’s meant to see you again after so many years, to be able to talk like this.”
“Why are you talking like one of us is about to die?”
“Because I’m afraid of getting my hopes up.”
Two tiny rabbits were grazing their way through the tender spinach in one of Jonathan’s raised beds. Rabbit Mecca. “If my mother told me you were a Russian operative working to overthrow democratic elections, I’d still want to go to dinner with you.”
“Would you? Oh, Daphne, that would be wonderful. I’ll expense the whole thing to the Kremlin. Bring Jonathan! Maybe Leda and her husband would like to come as well.”
“Jonathan’s in Wisconsin with his sister, cleaning out their mother’s house.”
This information was met with such prolonged silence that I wondered if the call had dropped. “Are you there?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Thinking.”
“I can wait. I’m in the backyard. It’s nice out here.”
“I have to go to a party tomorrow night at the Century Club.”
“Some of the parents have graduation parties for the girls there.They always like to rope in a teacher or two. It’s extra fancy.”
“That’s the place. This party will be extra fancy, black-tie. I’d asked a friend to go with me, but my friend caught a cold, a summer cold. She made her regrets this morning. The thing is, there’s no way for me not to go. Fiftieth anniversary, fifty couples, very precise. Polly would never forgive me if I didn’t come, or if I came and didn’t bring someone. Forty-nine and a half couples for her fiftieth wedding anniversary would kill her.”
“Is this an invitation?”
“It would be, if the thought of asking you didn’t seem so overwhelming.”
“I’d be happy to go with you.”
Again, there was silence on the line, and this time I knew to wait. I stretched my legs out in front of me, tilted my face up to the sun. Jonathan had wanted a retirement party, a fancy one, and I had thrown it for him, which meant I had the perfect dress to wear to the Century Club.
“I used to think that if I ever saw you again it would be like this,” Eddie said, his voice quiet.
“Like what?” I asked. I wanted to hear him say it.
“Like it was still the two of us, like we were in the car.”
“I know,” I said, even though I had failed to imagine what it would be like to see Eddie again. After the end of childhood, I had failed to imagine him at all.
“Do me one more favor.”
“Name it.”
