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He leaned in and touched my face, and I thought he was going to say, You are, it’s me. You are, and I love you, and my friend is just messing with my head. You are and I just need a break to know for sure. To remember for sure. That we belong. Only he didn’t say any of that. And, while I do believe, even now, he couldn’t hear himself clearly—couldn’t possibly hear just how bad it sounded coming out—he did say it.
He reached over and touched my face.
“You were,” he said.
2
The allure of “Checking Out”—the reason the column met, from the start, with a certain level of success—was that it gave people a sense of control. They’d learn about a list of things they needed to experience in a certain place: an extraordinary sight (“Take in the view of the Taj Mahal from the Oberoi Amarvilas in Agra”), an extraordinary taste (“Try the special stewed bamboo rolls at the famed T’ang Court in Hong Kong’s Central District”), discovering the one thing that couldn’t be found anywhere else (“Don’t forget to buy a hundred sheets of freshly made paper from the only operating paper factory in Amalfi—it’s been going since 1592!”). They did these things, enjoyed them, took photographs of themselves enjoying them—and then they got to feel like they’d not only experienced that place, but had truly broken away from their real lives. Next!
Only, as my editor, Peter W. Shepherd, said to me not too long ago, “If I may quote Steinbeck”—Peter was British and about a hundred years old and one of my very favorite humans, but since he began working on his novel (which he described as “Tortilla Flat, only British”), he would use any excuse to start a sentence by quoting Steinbeck—Peter said, “ ‘A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.’ ”
Of course, whether I liked it or not, he was on to something. There was a faultiness governing “Checking Out.” That sense of control was an illusion. The magic of Big Sur, as an example, came from spending a whole day propped up on the rocks by the post office, listening to the ocean behind you. Except that most people didn’
t have the time or inclination to sit by the post office all day doing nothing. But they could find fifty glorious minutes to head to Bixby Canyon Bridge and the most beautiful intersection of mountain rock and ocean you could ever hope to see. Feel like they had a perfect hegira, check it off their list.
In each of my categories in “Checking Out,” I tried to give readers that sense of escaping—of breaking free of their everyday boundaries, of leaving their comfort zone. I labeled the categories with this in mind (I called the sightseeing part of the column “Open Your Eyes” and another part, in which readers were to venture off the beaten path, “Take the Wrong Exit”). And I was very careful not to pick anything too obvious as the thing to see (no Statue of Liberty) or too common as the thing to taste (no sampling the everything pie from Ray’s Pizza in the West Village). Finally, I put the most pressure of all on the last category on the list (“Discover the One Thing You Can’t Find Elsewhere”)—which, in addition to always having to be captivating, had the most important job of all: to make people feel that, after they finished this last one, they were ready to go home again.
In those first days after Nick was gone, I couldn’t help but wonder if Nick had done a “Checking Out” column about me, what would he have put in it? And what would be the final thing? This was what I wanted to know most. What was the final thing that helped him decide he’d had the experience of me? And it was okay—it was time now—for him to go?
One small blessing was that after Nick broke up with me, he was the one to go. He left that very afternoon to stay with his family, or his new friend, or the Village People. I didn’t ask and Nick didn’t offer. What he did say was that he wouldn’t come back to the house or call or begin the process of disentangling our lives (our joint bank account, our house, our cars, our shared computer, our one stock) until I was ready. I could call him when I was ready for that. When we were more healed. He’d used that word. Healed. It is a miracle, when I let myself think about it, that I didn’t slap him.
I was too stunned, right when it happened, to be that angry. Or even that sad. Then I was that sad. I was sadder than I’d ever been. All this time later, the best way that I can describe those first days is that I couldn’t do much but lie in bed at night and listen to the creak of the floorboards. And pretty much all day I’d do the same thing. My heart seemed to have moved in my chest—actually managed to move itself—right into a place it didn’t belong, where it felt heavy and stuck. I’d lie there, listening to nothing, feeling my heart like that.
Then, on the tenth day, my closest friend, Jordan (aka Jordan Alisa Riley, international defense attorney, great beauty, asskicker) came barreling into my house, her three-year-old daughter, Sasha, in tow. Jordan used her key, which meant I didn’t get much of a warning, just a loud hello. A loud, We’re here.
Jordan and I had been best friends since week one of our freshmen year of college when we were placed in dorm rooms next door to each other. Her roommate was crazy (there was a shrine to Saved by the Bell involved). So by week two of freshmen year, Jordan was pretty much living in my dorm room. The rest was our history. Our lovely and loving history. We knew each other so well by this point—knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you’re still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.
As an example, Jordan and I knew each other so well that on the morning of day ten, post-Nick, I got up and showered, “dressing up” in jeans and a purple tank top. Because even though she hadn’t called, I knew she’d be coming, and I wanted her to see that I was okay when she got there. Purple equaled okay in my mind. Sad, pathetic people didn’t wear purple. They wore black. Or maybe green.
This was also the reason that I was sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to be working. I did it for Jordan. I figured it would make her worry about me less. And, as a bonus, I thought it’d be a good message to be sending in case she happened to speak to Nick.
Because there was that too: Jordan was Nick’s sister.
We had met—Nick and I—at Jordan’s and my college graduation. Nick liked to say that he fell in love with me then, graduation day, the first time he saw me. I always doubted that story. For one thing, we didn’t start dating until a few years later. For another, a cap and gown isn’t the best look for anyone.
Jordan stood in the kitchen doorway, her arms on her hips as she studied me.
“Well, the good news is,” she said, “you’re tiny. You’ve lost six pounds, maybe seven . . .”
I pushed back from my chair and got up to hug her, wrapping my arms tightly around her neck, Sasha holding on to both my legs. Jordan, meanwhile, was crying. She was crying harder than I was, which was disconcerting. Jordan wasn’t the sentimental type. Not soft. Though she did write a letter to the editor every time one of my “Checking Out” columns came out, which I took as proof of her secretly sweet heart. Still, in almost fifteen years of friendship, I had seen her cry exactly twice. This counting as time number two.
“So here’s the deal,” she said, pulling away and wiping at her tears. “I brought you some of that disgusting kale salad you love from the vegan restaurant in the Palisades.”
“You did?” I said.
She nodded. “It smells like turkey in there, by the way, but I got you a pound of the stuff. And a vat of your favorite coffee. So, first things first, we’re going to sit down and you’re going to eat.”
It wasn’t exactly a question.
“Okay,” I said.
“That’s step one. You’re going to do that immediately before the kale gets even colder and grosser than it is,” she said.
“What’s step two?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
We sat at the kitchen table, Sasha coloring in her Wonder Woman Coloring Book, Jordan and I sitting next to each other, the pound of kale between us. The sun streamed through the windows, spotlighting the kale, making it look more than a little like kryptonite.
