People Who Knew Me Read online

  She wanted a good story, a love story. So I came up with one, long ago, in preparation for the day she asked me. When people lie, they tend to embellish and go on and on, so I kept it short and sweet. I told her he was my high school sweetheart. I told her we wanted to live happily ever after. I told her he died in a car accident when I was pregnant with her. I told her she had his eyes—big and blue. I told her his name was William.

  Most of those things aren’t true.

  “Do you have a picture of him?” she asked me, those big eyes of his looking back at me.

  “No, sweetie, I don’t,” I said.

  That was true.

  I hated lying to her, I really did. But the guilt faded over time. Living with my lies has become easy. I don’t even notice them anymore. They have become, in a sense, my truth.

  She never asked about her father again. She never seemed bothered growing up with just me. Even now, in the midst of what’s supposed to be a bratty adolescence, she still hugs me before she goes to bed, still kisses my cheek and says she loves me. But I never should have let myself think that I’ve done okay at all this. That somehow it will always be okay.

  It was just a few weeks ago that I was thinking about the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 and how I could finally relax in this life that still feels new. It’s been fourteen years, I told myself. Fourteen years and at last I can exhale. But I can’t, because the universe, or whatever it is that keeps track of these things, seized that moment to say, Silly Connie, or Emily or whoever you are, did you really think it would be that easy? See, last week, everything changed. Last week, the universe decided the karmic equilibrium had been off for too long. Last week, my doctor said, “It could be cancer.”

  THREE

  To understand how I ended up in California, you have to go back to 1992, to an autumn Saturday at New York University. I was just twenty years old, starting my senior year, majoring in literature because I thought I could have a life of just reading and talking about it. I lived in an apartment off La Guardia Place with Jenny, a girl I’d call my best friend for a few years, until we’d lose touch completely. One day, I’ll tell Claire this is just what happens in life—people come and go.

  Fate put Jenny and me together as roommates freshman year. When a girl in our dorm got mugged, Jenny’s parents freaked out and bought the La Guardia Place apartment for her. They said it was a good investment opportunity for them and they liked that there was a gate with a security intercom. It would let them sleep at night, they said. Jenny was from a small town in Minnesota. She’d been homeschooled on a farm. She’d never seen a black person before coming to NYU. Her parents didn’t want her to live alone, so she asked me to move in with her. I didn’t have to pay rent, just half the utilities. My room was the size of a large closet, with just enough space for a twin bed, a small nightstand, and a dresser. I had a round window next to my bed, about a foot in diameter, like a porthole on a ship, and on winter mornings I’d watch the snow fall and write poems that I thought could rival Emily Dickinson’s. It’s that delusion that makes youth so sweet.

  “Have you met the guy next door yet?” Jenny said, coming in the front door and taking off her boots. She threw her coat over the armchair and sat next to me on the couch—a hideous plaid thing from the seventies that came straight from her parents’ garage. She was excitable like this at least three times a week, and it was almost always boy-related. Jenny was a virgin. She was determined not to be by year’s end.

  “I haven’t,” I said, pulling my knees to my chest. “Cute?”

  She took her book bag off her shoulder and set it on the coffee table with dramatic flair.

  “Cute is an understatement,” she said. She put her hand to her heart as if it weren’t there anymore, as if he’d already taken it from her.

  “Did you introduce yourself?”

  I wasn’t boy-crazy. Not like Jenny. I’d had a boyfriend through most of high school. Danny stayed over, slept in my bed. My mom was hardly ever around. She was either working one of her many odd jobs or spending the night with one of her many odd boyfriends. Even when she was around, she didn’t care. Danny and I had sex on my sixteenth birthday. We used condoms my mom kept in a Duane Reade bag in her nightstand drawer.

  By the time I started college, I didn’t want to be tied down by anyone. I still dated, but sporadically. In freshman year, there was the guy in my biology class—Lawrence, never Larry. He refused to dissect a frog—because of fear, not morals—and I lost all attraction for him. In sophomore year, I hooked up with Tony, a twenty-four-year-old wannabe-guitarist who worked the counter at a butcher shop. In junior year, I had an on-and-off “thing” with Alex, whose high-school-sweetheart-of-a-girlfriend went to Boston College. They broke up every other week and, as a testament to my stupidity, I thought it was somehow romantic to be “the other woman.” Then he told me it was over. I thought he meant with her, but he meant with me. I feigned apathy and committed myself to being alone and reading all the books by the Brontë sisters.

  “I was way too shy to say anything but hello,” Jenny said. She hit herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand to express her regret. Jenny majored in theater.

  “Well, if he lives next door, we’ll see him again.”

  “Let’s make up a reason to go over there,” she said.

  “Like what—‘Hey, do you have a cup of sugar?’”

  Jenny shrugged and said, with all seriousness, “That could work.”

  “Jen, seriously?”

  She laughed, trying to play it off like she’d been joking. Jenny needed me, relied on me to call her out on her naïveté. As a young, still-insecure kid, I needed to feel smart and savvy. We were good for each other.

  “Let’s just ask if he wants to grab pizza with us,” I said, standing up, pushing down my rolled-up-to-the-calf sweatpants and gathering my hair in a loose bun.

  “Now?” she said.

  “Why not? It’s almost dinnertime.”

  She looked up to me from her cross-legged seated position on the couch, something like admiration and terror in her eyes.

  “Are you even going to change first?” she said. It was like she was from the 1950s, when girls only presented themselves to boys while wearing poodle skirts.

  “Jen, come on.”

  I had my hand on the doorknob when I remembered:

  “Shit, I have a date with Gabe tonight.”

  I turned around and she was right there, on my heels.

  “Ooh, Gabriel?” she said, with a trying-to-be-ethnic accent.

  Gabriel—Gabe—Walters was one of those guys on campus almost everyone knew, and for that very reason he wasn’t my type. He was handsome enough to make me feel self-conscious, and that was a turnoff. Jen assured me I was attractive, even “on his level.” I never saw myself that way, though. I was thin, “like a model” according to Jen, gangly and scrawny according to me (and the handful of boys who teased me in junior high). When I was thirteen, I resorted to supplementing my meals with those protein shakes created for elderly people who don’t have the ability to chew anymore. I had long brown hair, wavy if I didn’t blow-dry it, which I almost never did. I knew my big brown eyes were my best quality, so I accentuated them with too much eyeliner and multiple coats of mascara, hoping people would look there and not notice that my chest was flat, my legs were twiggy, and I wore the same pair of jeans every day because, truthfully, I was a poor kid on scholarship.

  “Is this an official date?” Jen asked. We sat back on the couch.

  “I guess so.”

  Gabe flirted with me for months in junior year. I didn’t give him much attention—partly because I was involved with Alex throughout that year, and partly because I assumed he flirted with all the girls. When the school year was coming to an end, we had a brief conversation about summer plans. He was going to Puerto Rico, to stay with his mother’s family for a few months. Gabe’s mom was Puerto Rican and his dad was white, which explained the juxtaposition of his brown s
kin and bright blue eyes. Jen called him “exotically handsome”—or was it “handsomely exotic”? His family had a place near Aguadilla and he claimed he was going to surf eight hours a day. He said I should come along, and I laughed. He said he was serious, and I laughed more. I told him we should probably have dinner first, before getting on a plane together. He suggested we go out that very night. I said, “Look, if you still want to have dinner with me when you come back, I’ll go.” He said it was a deal. I assumed he’d forget about me. He’d get tan and even more muscular and he’d find a beautiful Puerto Rican girl to distract him. Come fall, I’d never hear from him. And I’d never have to worry about seeing him. He was a business major; we wouldn’t share any classes.

  But that’s not what happened. One night in the dining hall with Jen during the first week of the new school year, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see him there.

  “Emily,” he said, a dopey smile on his face. Nobody ever called me by my full name. It was always Emmy or Em.

  “Yes, Gabriel?” I said, not missing a beat.

  “I believe you said you’d let me take you out to dinner.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did. I wouldn’t be confused about something that serious. You can pick the place, as long as it’s not on campus.”

  Jenny looked like she was about to jump out of her seat and accept the invitation herself.

  “When is this alleged date?” I asked.

  “Saturday? I’ll be by your place at eight?”

  “Here’s the address,” Jenny said, scribbling madly on a Post-it note withdrawn from the depths of her book bag.

  “At least someone is looking forward to it,” he said. He winked at Jenny in a way that probably made the hairs on her arms stand up. I gave him a stiff smile. Jenny berated me for ten minutes after he’d left, saying I needed to be more polite, show more enthusiasm.

  “A guy that good-looking doesn’t need my enthusiasm.”

  * * *

  “Where are you guys going?” Jenny asked.

  “Mexican place on Bleecker.”

  “You don’t even seem excited.” She crossed her arms over her chest, profoundly disappointed in me and my disinterest in joining her in acting like a giddy schoolgirl.

  “How I feel before the date shouldn’t matter. We’ll see how I feel after.”

  I stood up and went to the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Next door. Gabe won’t be here for an hour. You wanted to say hi to the cute guy, right?”

  Standing at their door, we could hear muffled music within—Nirvana. The Nevermind album had come out the year before; “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was on all the alternative radio stations. We knocked twice and, as footsteps approached, Jenny let out something of a squeal.

  The door opened to a shaggy-haired guy, at the forefront of the grunge look. This couldn’t have been the guy Jenny was raving about; her version of “cute” was very clean-cut, very JFK, Jr. I thought he was cute, though. His hair was dark, almost black, his eyes crystal-blue.

  He looked at us expectantly and I remembered that we were the ones knocking on their door and not the other way around.

  “Hi,” I said, more tongue-tied than I wanted or expected to be. He smiled, which just made me more uncomfortable. He had a sly grin, the type of grin that suggests he’s up to something.

  “Well, hello,” he said, totally at ease.

  “I’m Emmy Overton,” I said, feeling immediately dumb for using my full name. That was my last name then, the one I was born with—Overton. “And this is Jenny.”

  “Emmy and Jenny,” he repeated, saying it like the two of us were hosts of a variety show.

  “Hi,” Jenny said over my shoulder.

  “We just wanted to introduce ourselves. We’re your neighbors. Next door,” I said.

  “Right, I thought you looked familiar. I’m Drew,” he said, sticking out his hand. He had a firm shake. My palm was sweaty—it always is when I’m nervous—but his wasn’t. “And my roommate is…”

  He turned around and shouted, “Hey, Brian, come meet our neighbors.”

  The “cute” one came to the door. Brian looked like he had been class president in high school. Even relaxing in his apartment, he was wearing a collared shirt and khaki shorts, like he was prepared to play golf at a moment’s notice.

  “Hey,” Brian said. “Nice to meet you.” He was overly nice, well mannered.

  Drew welcomed us inside and cleared off their couch, which was covered in books and binders. In the next fifteen minutes, we found out that Brian’s parents owned the apartment (to which Jenny, desperate for commonalities, said, “My parents own our apartment!”); Drew and Brian met in a chemistry class and became lab partners first, then friends; and they were seniors (“Like us,” chirped Jenny), Brian majoring in political science and Drew majoring in liberal arts.

  “What do you plan to do with that?” Jenny asked, sounding like her mom, who asked if Jenny was still majoring in theater every time she came to visit.

  “Be liberal and artsy,” Drew said.

  Jenny laughed too hard, even slapping her knee, and Drew smirked at me as if to say, This roommate of yours is a character.

  I gave myself permission to peruse their bookshelf: Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell. There was a random palm-reading book, too.

  “Let me guess—the liberal arts major is the reader of you two?”

  “Guilty,” Drew said, raising a hand.

  “And whose music taste does this reflect?” I asked, waving my hand to indicate the Nirvana that was filling the room.

  “That would be me, too,” Drew said.

  “Nirvana,” I said. “I approve.”

  He nodded. Jenny and Brian looked at each other.

  “Nirvana?” Brian said, confounded. They were pop music types, those two.

  “I don’t know them, either!” Jenny said.

  It was clear where the attractions were. Brian looked at his watch and said he was heading out to a party. He asked Jenny if she wanted to come along and she skipped out of the apartment by his side, giving me a too-obvious wink on the way out. Drew and I sat on the couch, staring at anything but each other—the ceiling, our feet.

  “You’re a Scorpio, aren’t you?” he said.

  I am, born October 28.

  “How did you know?”

  “Just a vibe,” he said.

  “Oh, god, you’re not an astrology weirdo, are you? Is that your palm-reading book on the shelf?”

  He laughed. “It might be.”

  He stood and went to the shelf, pulled out the palm-reading book. He flipped through it, scanning, then looked up and said, “I’m a Scorpio, too. I know my kind.”

  This excited me, irrationally. I was never one to believe in astrology. I’d been known to call it stupid.

  “I read this back in high school,” he said, putting the palm-reading book back in its spot. “Here, give me your hand.”

  He sat next to me again, taking my hand like it meant nothing. I got chills from the bottom of my spine to the top.

  “Tell me my fate,” I said with a cynical sigh, trying to sound disinterested. At that age, apathy is cool.

  He traced his finger along the lines of my palm. Oh, how I wanted to kiss him.

  “You’re going to live a long time,” he said.

  “Would you tell me if I wasn’t?”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t lie to you on the first day I met you. That’s just wrong.”

  “Okay, go on, then.”

  “You’ll experience a lot of love. You’re lucky that way.”

  I smiled and dared to look him in the eyes.

  “You’re really beautiful,” he said.

  I felt my face get hot and averted my eyes from his. That’s when I remembered the time. Gabe. My date. I had to get ready.

  “Shit,” I said, standing hurriedly an
d heading for the door.

  “What?”

  “I forgot. I have to go. To this dinner thing.”

  “Dinner thing?” he said curiously. “Like a date?”

  I didn’t want to tell him, which had to mean something.

  “Kind of. I guess.”

  He laughed like it was no big deal at all, like he wasn’t the slightest bit jealous. This disappointed me, warned me that maybe I was the only one getting chills up my spine.

  “Have fun, then,” he said. “And I would love to take you out sometime, but only if you don’t call it a ‘dinner thing.’”

  “I’d like that.”

  He opened the door for me, and we stood there on the threshold. If life were a movie, we would have kissed, but it isn’t, and we were shy. And I had a date expecting me. Drew just smiled that smile of his and I tried not to stumble over my own feet on the way out.

  * * *

  When I picked out my clothes for the date with Gabe, I imagined I was dressing for a date with Drew. I stepped into a flowing black skirt I’d bought at a flea market in Bensonhurst that summer. It was still warm enough for a purple tank top, as long as I wore my favorite black cardigan over it. The cardigan looked gray in comparison to the skirt. I’d worn it so many times that there were perpetual balls of lint attached to it. I hung dangly earrings from my ears and fastened a silver bracelet around my wrist.

  I sat on the couch, waiting, and then felt agitated that I was waiting. Gabe wasn’t even late. It was ten minutes before eight. I was just antsy. I wanted to go next door, spend the night talking to Drew.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Gabe’s number. It rang a few times and then he answered.

  “Gabe? It’s Emmy.”

  “Hey, there, I was just on my way over.”

  “Good, I was hoping to catch you before you left.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I know this is strange and you will hate me forever, but I have to cancel.”

  I expected a reaction or at least a question, but he was silent. I thought the connection was lost, but then I heard him breathing.