A crowd of people approached, making their way down the stairs, led by my sister holding a cake with a little bonfire on top.
Right. It was my birthday. I was forty.
I felt like I was floating outside my body as I listened to the rest of the song. I looked at the blaze and missed camp with everything in me. I missed the hole behind the shower building. I missed Teddy. Even after what he had done, I missed him.
“Hello?” my sister said, making me realize that I was just standing there. “Make a wish and blow already. There are actually forty candles on here, and the ones I lit first are already nubs.”
I drew in a breath, looked at those candles, and thought,Is this all there is?
I awakened to the strains of “Moon River.” Great. Even my subconscious was on my case.
Somehow I’d made it through the rest of the party, mostly by returning to beating the crap out of my building. But as I’d swung that sledgehammer over and over, I’d started to think.
What did it mean that I was still asking myself Dad’s old question? I’d thought I’d answered that question months ago. I’d retired from dating and I’d bought the new building. I had a mortgage to show for my trouble. Not my trouble. Myambition.
Unlike Dad, I’d responded to the question bydoingsomething. Bychangingsomething.
But, as I’d let my tired arm fall, as I’d stopped beating on the walls of my building—the walls of my life, it felt like—I’d had to face the idea that maybe I hadn’t answered the questioncorrectly.
Well, I’d answered it correctly in a technical sense.Is this all there is?No. It hadn’t been. So I’d changed my life.
But had I made the correct changes?
Had Rory been right? Had Teddy been right?
Teddy.
I could barely stand to think about him. I’d been so set back on my heels over the idea of being his muse. It should have been flattering. And in some ways it was. It was amazing to think I might have had anything to do with that song I’d heard.
But I didn’t want to be a muse. I wanted to be a girlfriend. A partner.
Or I had. Before. I’d excised that wanting, though. Completed my crone-ification quest. Taken the weakness, the rot that was holding me back, and cut it out.
Right?
There was a little voice inside me that was hard to hearunderneath all the demolition noise. Demolishing a building is loud. Demolishing your life is louder.
But when I held my breath, closed my eyes, and reallylistened, I could hear the voice, clear as anything. It was saying,Maybe we got it wrong.
I was afraid, so afraid, that I’d lashed out at Teddy earlier not because I was offended by the idea of being his muse, but because I was in love with him.
Pillar Two came crumbling down.
And now I was dreaming “Moon River.” I’d been dancing in the dream. On a stage. I’d had to squint, had been blinded by a light shining on me. I remembered the way the light glinted off the sweat on my forearms.
How would I have worked up that much of a sweat dancing to “Moon River”? All I could come up with was that “Moon River” was a reminder of camp, and camp was a reminder of what I wanted to do when I was allowed to follow the wanting in a pure sort of way.
Or maybe Ihadn’tbeen dancing to “Moon River.” I was pretty sure, based on the lights and the sweat, that I’d been dancing to something else. That I’d beenperforming.
Perhaps my subconscious wasn’t on my case so much as it was telling me that I’d gotten it wrong. That I had to go back and do a retake of theIs this all there is?test.
Pillar One came crumbling down, too.
A swell of violins had me bolting to seated. I wasactuallyhearing “Moon River.” It wasn’t in my head, an echo from a dream. It was here—like,here. In reality for losers.
I went to the window, suddenly knowing what I would find. Dreading what I would find.
But inside the dread was a sliver of something else. It felt an awful lot like hope.
