Good Enough to Eat (28 page)

“Oh, Nadia, I didn’t know any of that.”

“Then you should ask your spy or private eye or whoever for your money back, because you only got part of the story. He should have told you that when my grandmother died I went to find my mother, who told me that I didn’t exist and that I was making the whole thing up and that she had never had a child before she married her husband. He should have told you that I have two little brothers and three little sisters who don’t know I’m alive and who I will never know. For someone who is poor enough to need to take in a lost wastrel like me for a pittance a month, it seems a very odd way to spend what little money you have. You’d have been better off just kicking me out on a hunch and losing the free hours of help at the store.”

“Nadia, please. I know it’s hurtful and that I have broken trust with you, but I swear, I didn’t pay anyone, I didn’t go looking, the information just presented itself and I was an asshole and accepted it.”

Clarity registers on her face. “Nate, right? The ultimate researcher? What, am I going to be the subject of a film now?”

“I can’t excuse his behavior. I know that your secrecy about your past concerned him, he thought that if he checked up on you he might be protecting me in some way or saving me from hurt. The first thing he found out was about the imprisonment, and that really scared him, and so he kept digging. I wish he hadn’t and I wish when he told me he had found out some stuff that I had told him to not tell me, but I didn’t. But mostly I wish that you had nothing to find, nothing you wanted to hide or forget. I wish that you had an idyllic childhood with a mother and father who loved you and took care of you, with siblings you got to know and love. I wish you had a life filled with nice boyfriends and safe homes and people who were good to you and friends who didn’t let you down. I wish that for you now. For you to have a life from now on that helps to make up for all the crap you’ve been dealt. And I want to be the kind of friend who you can trust and lean on. I know you’re hurt and angry and you have every right to be. But I hope that you’ll give me a chance to make it up to you.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Are you at all willing to try?”

She looks down at her hands. “I don’t know if I can answer that right now.”

“Tell me what you need, what I can do to start making it right?”

“I’m going to leave. I’m going to go to Daniel’s for a couple of days, and I’m not going to come into work for a couple of days. I need some space, some time. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk.”

She gets up off the couch and goes down the hall to her bedroom. I sit, sickened and sad, tears flowing down my cheeks, wondering what kind of person I am that I could be capable of damaging the trust of someone I care about in no less a violation than Andrew perpetrated against me.

How did I get here? How could I, who loves to think of myself as a good person, come to a place where I could hurt someone as badly as I’ve been hurt? What would have been worse—to spend the rest of my life harboring the secrets and pretending I didn’t know, or coming clean and possibly losing her? Nadia moves at a swift pace through the living room, not looking at me, and flies through the front door.

I want Nate.

I want to eat.

I want my mother.

But I don’t feel worthy of any sort of comfort, not the comfort of a man’s arms around me, or the comfort of food. I need to feel this pain, I need to accept the punishment of disappointing and hurting someone I care about, I need to own my anguish. And so I sit on the couch to settle into the reality of the mess I have created for myself and the deep chasm I have opened between me and the friend I had no idea I needed so much.

I’m numb for the first day after the big fight with Nadia. I feel completely isolated. I don’t want to tell Nate, since he will probably feel bad about his part in it, and also think me dumb for telling her in the first place. I can’t confide in Delia or Kai, because I can’t open Nadia up for any more hurt or prying, and lucky for me the two of them are so focused on developing a menu for the new café and getting all their ducks in a row for the closing, that they don’t really notice that Nadia isn’t around and that I am subdued.

I called Gilly the morning of the second day, and she said that I had to forgive myself, I was only human, and if Nadia couldn’t forgive me, then it was her loss. I put off getting together with Nate, claiming exhaustion and needing to work on stuff for the delivery business, which is scheduled to launch full force right after the Fourth of July, just two weeks off. I work and try to not call her, to not e-mail her, and just to let her be. The apartment is eerily quiet.

It’s been three days and I’m just heartsick that perhaps I really may have lost her forever. That I’ll have to eventually explain to Kai and Delia why she’s gone, that I’ll have to figure out how to look at Nate and not blame him for ultimately my own weakness of character. I’m closing out the register when there is a knock at the window. I look up to see Daniel waving at me. I cross the room and unlock the door for him.

“Hi, um, Mel.”

“Hi, Daniel. Please, come in.”

“Thank you.” He comes in and I relock the door.

“Can I get you anything? Are you thirsty? Hungry?”

“No thank you, I’m fine.”

There is an awkward silence. I have to break it. “Is she okay?”

“She’s surprisingly good, I think.”

“Does she hate me?”

“I think she is struggling with her own demons. It isn’t totally about you, Mel, it’s about Nadia.”

“Do you think she’ll forgive me?”

“Right now I’m working on getting her to forgive herself. She’s frustrated, Mel, I’m not going to lie to you. You saw her as trying to hide her past. She was trying to forget her past and move forward. You see her as a product of that past, and she is trying to be a product only of her present. She wasn’t trying to be dishonest or manipulative or secretive, she was trying to exert control over who she is, the face she wants to put into the world, the person she is trying to become. The past was an anchor for her that she was trying to rid herself of, and you knowing it means that when she sees you, she feels the weight of you knowing. I think she wants to get past it, but also wants to get back to a place where the past is just that. She knows you weren’t actively trying to hurt her. She knows that you care about her. She also knows you don’t think ill of her. I do think, however, that she will never forgive Mr. Gershowitz, and she isn’t sure how that impacts your future friendship, since obviously he is very much a part of your life, and if she is also going to be a part of your life, the two of them are likely to intersect.”

I had no idea he could be so articulate, and not only is it clear that he cares about Nadia, but I’m starting to understand what Nadia sees in him as well. “Daniel, what do I do? Do I have Nathan call her to apologize? How do I make it right? What does she need me to do? What did she say to tell me?”

“I’m not here on an errand. I’m here because when you get home tonight she is going to be there. I’m here because I think that you are an important and positive person for her to have in her life, and I want the two of you to make up. I’m here because I love her and want her to be happy and healthy, and I think you are a part of that right now. I can’t give her everything. I can’t be her only support system. She loves her job, she loves you and Delia and Kai, and she doesn’t want to have to leave. But she also needs to not be smothered. When you are maternal with her, it reminds her that she never had a mother. If you are overly solicitous, she will feel that your relationship has changed. Go home, Mel. And try as much as you can to follow her lead. Try not to give into your desire to apologize all over yourself and make it up to her, as you say. Don’t do special things for her to win her back. Just let her be, and try as hard as you can to be no different from how you were before you knew what you know, and it will be okay. And if possible, don’t let your boyfriend come around her for a while.”

I hug this strange boy, a bag of bones in my arms. “Thank you, Daniel. For loving her and taking care of her and coming here to help me.”

He blushes deeply, and pushes his glasses up his nose, hair falling over his eyes.

“Do you know? The details of her past, I mean?”

“I know that when she came over the other night so upset, and told me that she had some terrible things in her past that you had found out about, in part because she was so secretive that it made you suspicious of her, she was equally worried that I might be concerned about what she had chosen not to share with me. I told her I wasn’t concerned at all. She asked if there was anything I wanted to know about her. I said I only wanted to know if she loved me. She said she does. That was all I needed to know, and all I frankly want to know. I don’t care who she was, who she is is plenty for me.”

“You are a very good man.”

“Well, then I do hope you’ll try to stop telling her she can do better.”

I blush. But then he laughs. And I laugh. And suddenly everything feels truly much better. And for the first time in three days, I can’t wait to go home.

 

 

I turn the key in the lock, steel myself, Daniel’s words ringing in my ears, and go inside. Nadia is sitting on the couch.

“Hi,” I say, trying not to put too much emotion in my voice.

“Hey,” she says, looking up from her magazine. “Did you eat?”

“Nope, not yet.”

“I was thinking of picking up Athenian Room for dinner; want to split a Greek chicken?”

“Sure.” I pause, thinking about how I can be normal, how I can assure her that things aren’t different. So I say the only thing I can think of. “You fly, I’ll buy.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

Nadia calls in our order, and heads out to go pick it up. And when she is gone I let the tears of relief fall, and let my shoulders unclench, believing that possibly, just possibly, everything is going to be okay.

I make plans to meet Nate at Toast for breakfast Monday morning, having avoided him all week. I finally told him about the fight and reconciliation with Nadia, and while he seems to not truly understand why the whole thing was such a big deal, why I felt so bad and why she was so upset, he certainly seemed glad that we were mending the rift, and understood that it wasn’t a good time for him to come around the apartment. I am trying very hard not to blame him for the rift, not to punish him for acting on his concern for me, however misbegotten an exercise it turned out to be. And I’m so relieved that Nadia and I are finding our way, that I’m trying not to imagine a time when I might have to choose between them, and what it might say about me if I don’t choose him.