Then, he takes them to the garden, a formal one with boxwoods carved into spirals. They walk up a small hill and sit on a tiny bench because from there, you can see the ocean.
WHEN THEY GET back in the car, Gary looks at his phone.
“Shit, I actually need to stop by the office to sign a few papers. Take care of things before I leave for the honeymoon. Do you mind?”
The honeymoon. In three days, Gary and Lila will be on a plane to St. Thomas. They will be married. They will be drinking champagne with rings on their fingers. And where will Phoebe be?
“On a Saturday?” Phoebe asks.
“We’re open until noon.”
Gary’s office is in Tiverton. It looks like a house. Sits on the side of a beautiful coastal road, because most of the roads are beautiful here. On the edge of the country. It gives Phoebe this feeling like she is just about to fall off.
Inside, the receptionists see Gary and get excited. They have missed him, but they also want to know what the hell he is doing here.
“We’re not supposed to see you until tomorrow at the wedding!” one of the receptionists says.
It is nice, she thinks, how he invited his whole staff to the wedding.
“I just couldn’t stay away,” Gary teases, and then goes into his office.
Phoebe waits on the chairs outside. She tries to imagine Lila and her father here doing the same, but it’s hard to picture it. She listens to patients stand at the counter, casually spewing their tragic family histories aloud to the receptionist who asks about gaps in their medical history. Grandparents wiped out by lung cancer. A father who the daughter doesn’t know. Many brothers and sisters, she adds.
“But I don’t know those, either,” the woman says, and she doesn’t sound ashamed. It’s just a fact. She has no family. Then she sits down, and Phoebe is impressed. Phoebe makes a note to start practicing that—not feeling ashamed of her family history but understanding it as just a fact.
On the wall, there are computer screens you can touch to learn more about your diagnosis. A playset in the corner for children. Seasonal decorations for every holiday. On the way out, Gary explains that there’s no point in taking them down just to put them up. And they like having all the holidays with them at all times of the year.
“That’s nice,” Phoebe says. “Why not?”
“Exactly,” Gary says.
This is Gary’s life, she thinks.
AT THE TAILOR, the woman tells him he has the build of a football player. She tells him to spread his legs.
“Good, fits well,” she says and looks at Phoebe. “What do you think?”
Does she think Phoebe is the fiancée? Gary looks at her, like he’s waiting to hear what she thinks, too. And why? If she doesn’t like it, is he going to ask for a new one? Is he not going to get married? No.
“Looks good,” Phoebe says. “You look like … a groom.”
Outside on the street, where honest communication is possible again, they don’t speak. Here they are, alone together, headed to the car. Here they are, on the precipice of the rest of their lives.
“So if you become a winter keeper, that would mean you would move here and quit your job in St. Louis?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says.
“You would just leave everything behind?”
“That’s the plan.”
He pauses like he is skeptical of this. “You won’t miss it?”
“Of course I will,” she says. “But even when I was there, I missed it. I missed everything all the time.”
They get back in the car. She wonders if her feelings for Gary could be a new form of love, one she’s never known before: love without expectation. Love that you are just happy enough to feel. Love that you don’t try to own like a painting. But she doesn’t know if that is a real thing. She hopes it is. She looks out at the parking lot all around them, like she’s a kid going on an errand with her father, announcing whatever she sees.
“That’s a creepy billboard,” she says. “What’s Mummy’s Favorite Music? Why would that be a billboard?”
“I think it says, What Is a Mummy’s Favorite Music? Not, What’s Mummy’s Favorite Music?”
They try to guess what kind of music a mummy might like.
“Baroque?”
“It would really matter when the mummy died.”
“Synth-pop.”
“A postmodern mummy.”
She turns on the car.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Ready,” she says.
But they continue to sit there for another moment, and it feels like the hot tub all over again, as if something is supposed to happen now, as if she should say a thing that will start her brand-new life, but what?
