A boy and a girl walk arm in arm.
They’re heading to the Knitting Factory, and like most things in Williamsburg, it isn’t what it sounds like, not a craft store or a place for yarn, but a concert venue on the northern edge of Brooklyn.
It is Henry’s birthday.
Earlier, when he asked her when her birthday was, and when she told him it was back in March, a shadow crossed his face.
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“That’s the great thing about birthdays,” she said, leaning against him. “They happen every year.”
She’d laughed a little then, and so had he, but there was something hollow in his voice, a sadness she mistook for mere distraction.
Henry’s friends have already staked out a table near the stage, small boxes stacked on the table between them.
“Henry!” shouts Robbie, a pair of bottles already empty in front of him. Bea ruffles his hair. “Our literal sweet summer child.”
Their attention slides past him, and lands on her. “Hi guys,” he says, “this is Addie.”
“Finally!” says Bea. “We’ve been dying to meet you.” Of course, they already have.
They’ve been asking for weeks to meet the new girl in Henry’s life. They keep accusing him of hiding her, but Addie has met them over beers at the Merchant, been for movie nights at Bea’s, crossed paths with them at galleries and parks. And every time, Bea talks of déjà vu, and then again of
artistic movements, and every time Robbie sulks, despite Addie’s best efforts to placate him.
It seems to bother Henry more than it does her. He must think she has made peace with it, but the truth is, there is none to be found. The endless cycle of hello, who is this, nice to meet you, hello wears at her like water against stone—the damage slow, but inevitable. She has simply learned to live with it.
“You know,” says Bea, studying her, “you look so familiar.”
Robbie rises from the table to get a round of drinks, and Addie’s chest tightens at the thought of him resetting, of having to start it all again, but Henry steps in, touches Robbie’s arm. “I’ve got it,” he says.
“Birthday doesn’t pay!” protests Bea, but Henry waves her off and wades away through the growing crowd.
And Addie is left alone with his friends. “It’s really great to meet you both,” she says. “Henry talks about you all the time.”
Robbie’s eyes narrow in suspicion.
She can feel the wall rising up between them, again, but she’s no stranger to Robbie’s moods, not anymore, and so she presses on. “You’re an actor, right? I’d love to come to one of your performances. Henry says you’re amazing.”
He picks at the label on his beer. “Yeah, sure…” he mumbles, but she catches the edge of a smile when he says it.
And then Bea cuts in. “Henry seems happy. Really happy.” “I am,” says Henry, setting down a round of beers.
“To twenty-nine,” says Bea, raising her glass.
They proceed to debate the merits of the age, and agree it is a fairly useless year, as far as birthdays go, falling just shy of the monumental thirty.
Bea collars Henry. “But next year, you’ll officially be an adult.” “I’m pretty sure that was eighteen,” he says.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Eighteen is old enough to vote, twenty-one is old enough to drink, but thirty is old enough to make decisions.”
“Closer to a midlife crisis than a quarter-life one,” teases Robbie.
The microphone flares, whining slightly as a man takes the stage and announces a special opening act.
“He’s a rising star, I’m sure you’ve heard his name, but if you haven’t you will soon. Give it up for Toby Marsh!”
Addie’s heart lurches.
The crowd whoops and cheers, and Robbie whistles, and Toby steps onto the stage, that same beautiful, blushing boy, but as he waves to the crowd, his chin lifts, his smile is steady, proud. The difference between the first questing lines of a sketch and the finished drawing.
He sits down at the piano and begins to play, and the first notes hit her like longing. And then he begins to sing.
“I’m in love with a girl I’ve never met.”
Time slips, and she is in his living room, perched on the piano bench, tea steaming on the windowsill as her absent fingers pick out the notes.
“But I see her every night, it seems…”
She is in his bed, his broad hands playing out the melody on skin. Her face flares hot at the memory as he sings.
“And I’m so afraid, afraid that I’ll forget her, even though I’ve only met her in my dreams.”
She never gave him the words, but he found them anyway.
His voice is clearer, stronger, his tone more confident. He just needed the right song. Something to make the crowd lean in and listen.
Addie squeezes her eyes shut, the past and present tangling together in her head.
All those nights at the Alloway, watching him play. All the times he found her at the bar, and smiled.
All those firsts that were not firsts for her. The palimpsest bleeding up through the paper.
Toby looks up from the piano, and there’s no way he can see her in a place this big, but she is sure his eyes meet hers, and the room tilts a little, and she doesn’t know if it’s the beers she drank too fast or the vertigo of memory, but then the song ends, replaced by a warm wave of applause, and she is on her feet, moving toward the door.
“Addie, wait,” says Henry, but she can’t, even though she knows what it means to walk away, knows that Robbie and Bea will forget her, and she will have to start again, and so will Henry—but in that moment, she doesn’t care.
She cannot breathe.
The door swings open and the night rushes in, and Addie gasps, forcing air into her lungs.
And it should feel good to hear her music, it should feel right. After all, she has gone to visit pieces of her art so many times.
But they were only pieces, stripped of context. Sculptured birds on marble plinths, and paintings behind ropes. Didactic boxes taped to whitewashed walls and glass boxes that keep the present from the past.
It is a different thing when the glass breaks.
It is her mother in the doorway, withered to bone. It is Remy in the Paris salon.
It is Sam, inviting her to stay, every time. It is Toby Marsh, playing their song.
The only way Addie knows how to keep going is to keep going forward. They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined.
“Addie?” Henry is right behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She wipes the tears away and shakes her head because the story is too long, and too short. “I can’t go back in there, not now.”
Henry looks over his shoulder, and he must have seen the color drop from her face during the show because he says, “Do you know him? That Toby Marsh guy?”
She hasn’t told him that story—they haven’t gotten there yet.
“I did,” she says, which isn’t strictly true, because it makes it sound like something in the past, when the past is the one thing Addie’s not entitled to, and Henry must hear the lie buried in the words, because he frowns. He laces his hands behind his head.
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
And she wants to be honest, to say that of course she does. She never gets closure, never gets to say good-bye—no periods, or exclamations, just a lifetime of ellipses. Everyone else starts over, they get a blank page, but hers are full of text. People talk about carrying torches for old flames, and it’s not a full fire, but Addie’s hands are full of candles. How is she supposed to set them down, or put them out? She has long run out of air.
But it is not love.
It is not love, and that is what he’s asking.
“No,” she says. “He just—it caught me off guard. I’m sorry.”
Henry asks if she wants to go home, and Addie doesn’t know if he means both of them, or only her, doesn’t want to find out, so she shakes her head, and they go back in, and the lights have changed, and the stage is empty, the house music filling the air until the main act, and Bea and Robbie are chatting, heads bent just the way they were when they walked in. And Addie does her best to smile as they reach the table.
“There you are!” says Robbie.
“Where did you run off to?” asks Bea, eyes flicking from Henry to her. “And who’s this?”
He slides his arm around her waist. “Guys, this is Addie.” Robbie looks her up and down, but Bea only beams. “Finally!” she says. “We’ve been dying to meet you…”
