Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (20 page)

On Monday at the art museum, Thea stood in an airy white room, shifting her weight from one foot to another, tipping her head to the side to see if maybe it would help her “get” the tangle of iron and plastic lettuce leaves hanging from the ceiling. It didn't.

So,
she thought,
I'm not into art
.

On Tuesday, she swapped out her usual turkey wrap and water for Indian food; her lunch was so spicy that she ended up trashing it in one of the public garages on the pier and eating a pistachio ice-cream cone instead.

On Wednesday, she took Irina to a poetry reading, because once when Thea was younger she had an idea that she loved writing poems, and she wondered if some part of her still did. One soft-spoken poet after another, Irina's boredom became fury—somehow she kicked over her own chair while she was sitting on it. And as far as Thea was concerned, it was the most exciting thing that had happened all night.

On Thursday morning she left it to Jules to open the shop and instead decided to go jogging, because it seemed to her that people who were on a journey to find themselves also got fit. She jogged until she couldn't breathe and until she grew so bored listening to the sound of her own thoughts that she decided to jog herself into the local pastry shop for espresso and a cheese Danish.

And on Friday of the second week in August, she gave up.

“I just don't know that there's anything to this whole finding yourself thing,” she told Dani over the phone. “I try new things, and I don't like them. So why not just stick with the old things that I already know I like?”

“Maybe you're just not trying the right new things,” Dani said.

Thea sat in the near darkness in her office; it was too early for bright light. She tapped the tip of her pen on her desk. In theory, she was supposed to be thinking about her next column—what would she write? But instead, she found herself thinking of her parents. The heavy wooden desk where she sat had been her father's; she had many, many memories of him sitting here, layers of memories, one on top of the other, blurred slightly at the edges. She remembered him writing checks, marking sales for the day in pencil in a spiral-bound ledger, typing on a loud calculator that printed equations in faint blue ink.

She'd seen her parents last fall, when she and Irina had gone to Turkey for a visit, and she was eager to see them again. Within her extended family, her parents were considered too modern, too American. The fact that they hadn't forced Thea to return with them to Turkey had nearly made them outcasts. She supposed she could have been bitter that her parents had left, but she knew they'd never felt entirely comfortable here—while she could never feel entirely comfortable someplace else. They'd made their own sacrifice for her, the sacrifice of understanding, of respecting her choice to stay, even though it went against their nature. For that, she'd always thank them.

It was six thirty in the morning in Newport. It was midday in Turkey. She decided her column could wait, and so she picked up the phone and dialed.

“Merhaba?”
Her father's voice was sleepy.

“
Babacığım
, it's me.”

“Thea!” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“I've missed you,” she said. “Is Mama there?”

“No,
fıstığım
. She's out harassing the nice girls who work at the market.”

The last time she'd been to Turkey she'd seen her mother in action, working for the best prices. Thea was lucky to have inherited some tenacity from her; it helped when she was negotiating the price of beans from local roasters.

“So,” her father said. “How are things with the . . . what is the word from the airplane . . . ?”

“Airplane . . . ?”

He murmured under his breath for a moment. “Turbulence.”

“You mean with Jonathan?” In Newport, thousands of miles away from him, she leaned her elbow against the desk that used to be his. “It's more than turbulence. It's put your head between your knees and hold on tight.”

“Your mother said . . .”

“I'm sure she didn't want to worry you,” Thea said. “We've decided to separate.”

Her father was silent a moment. She tried to picture him—did he have a mustache now? Was he wearing the same sweatpants and sweater ensemble that was so often his leisure wear here in the States? Did he sit down, she wondered, when she told him the news?

“You feel happy about this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“If I divorced your mother every time I thought of it, I would have divorced her a million times by now. But I didn't.”

She paused for a moment. Her father had always been unfailingly supportive. She didn't quite know where he stood, though, on the divorce. “Jonathan's a great man,” she said. “We're going to be model divorcees. Believe me.”

“And what does his family think of this? What about Sue and Ken?”

“I think it's going to be okay,” she said. “But it will take some getting used to.”

“And what about Garret?”

“Garret?”

Her father laughed. “I'm sure he's got strong opinions.”

“He always has strong opinions.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

Thea swallowed. She hadn't expected his line of questioning to veer quite this way. “Yes. He's been picking up Irina on the weekends.”

“And . . .”

“And
nothing
.” She heard a slight pinch in her voice, and she didn't like it. But her father's questions were making her uncomfortable. He should be asking about her and Jonathan—not her and Garret. “Garret doesn't factor into any of this at all—except that I think he wants to keep me away from his family now that I'm separating from Jonathan.”

“And who can blame him?” her father said. “You broke the man's heart.”

“I broke
his
heart? I think you're remembering things backward.”

“Thea. You've always been a strong woman. You and Garret were in love in the way that only kids can fall in love, and you survived it. You went on, got married, had a baby. You can withstand a lot of unhappiness—without even knowing whether it's unhappiness or not—because you're optimistic and you're tough. But Garret . . . what did he do after you? Nothing: that's what he did.”

“I hardly think going to law school and becoming a lobbyist is nothing.”

“You misunderstand.” Her father's voice was strained. “You're not going to be married to Jonathan anymore.”

“So?”

“You believe Garret isn't thinking about that?”

Thea was quiet, stopped in her tracks. Was Garret thinking about her again—thinking about her as more than his brother's ex? She'd only seen him a couple of times. Each time, their meetings were charged and intense—something between them crackling and snapping like fire. Maybe it was his anger. Her regret. Some combination of the two—she couldn't tell. But she didn't think it was . . .
interest
. She'd been with him in high school for less than a year. One tiny little year—a moment so small it should have been inconsequential and forgotten.

It should have been.

Either way, it was trouble. Garret had sworn himself to keeping her away from his family. Even if some small part of him was still curious about her—even attracted to her in some vestigial sense—it didn't matter, and she shouldn't even be thinking about it.

The rest of her life would be a life without Garret—she'd made peace with that the moment she said, “I do.”

“Garret's not going to be an issue,” she said. “Sue, Ken, and Jonathan aren't going to shun me—I trust them.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” her father said, his voice suddenly filled with melancholy. “They're good people. I'm so glad you have them.”

Thea wished she could give him a hug. But all those miles of ocean . . . it was hard to bridge the gap. “Maybe you and Mom will come visit again soon. Or maybe Irina and I will go there.”

“I would like that very much,” he said.

The campus of Brown University, where Jonathan had gone to college, was friendly enough—its collegiate brick buildings with white-trimmed windows, its large green courtyard dotted with austere trees, its elegiac columns and dignified white pediments. And yet, for all its charms, Jonathan felt that going just a few dozen miles away to school was like being sent to the moon.

During fall break, he found Thea walking home from school on a chilly autumn afternoon, when the sidewalks were covered with leaves and the sun was deceptively bright. He knew her by her walk, her jeans cut close to her body, her corduroy jacket showing beneath the arms of her backpack. He beeped the horn lightly, not wanting to scare her as he pulled over to the side of the road. He expected she would be pleased to see him—that she might run to his car to give him a hug. Instead, he saw the flash of recognition in her eyes when she turned, and then she climbed into the car as if her body was too heavy to drag around.

“What happened?” he asked.

She adjusted her backpack on her lap. “What do you mean what happened?”

“Were you crying?”

“No,” she said.

“Thea . . .”

“It's no big deal,” she said.

He took a deep breath and put the car in drive. He wanted to be there for her, more than he'd ever wanted to be there for anyone. His heart cried out for her secrets, her burdens. He would carry them, and her, as long as she needed him. But how to tell her that? And even if he offered to listen, what made him think she would
let
him?

They drove along the familiar streets of Newport, four-square colonial mansions, cottages from long-forgotten farms, carriage houses converted into family homes. It took a moment before Jonathan plucked up the courage to say what was on his mind.

“I know about you and Garret,” he said.

She stared out the window, where the trees were passing in a green and red blur. “Are you mad?”

“No,” he said. But he wanted to tell her,
yes, I am.
“Did my brother do something stupid?”

She shook her head.

“Did you break up?”

Oddly enough, she laughed—a sound completely out of place given her tears. “I saw him on the soccer field with Krissy Spelling. They were just joking around, but he was pretending to, like, dance with her, you know? Like in the old days. Picking her up and twirling her around while she was laughing . . .”