Truth in Advertising Page 0,24
her I’d do it. I would have walked to Tierra del Fuego on my hands if it would have changed the expression on her face, lifted the gloom. All day I’d opened doors and gotten water and coffee, carried boxes and tried to smile, waited on them both like a beaten servant. And I was happy to play the role. I kept saying sorry.
We were standing on Fifty-seventh and Lex and it was getting dark. I wanted a movie moment, a smile, a hug. I wanted forgiveness. Her mother stood a few feet away, examining her hands.
I said, “I’ll call you, okay?”
Amy stared. “No, Fin. You won’t.”
I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Amy, with too much edge, her patience spent: “Stop saying you’re sorry, Fin.”
It was loud on the street. Cabs honking their horns, a car alarm not far away. City noise wears on you sometimes. It had been a long day. Not enough food, too much coffee. I hadn’t been sleeping well. The thing is, I’m not someone who raises their voice. It came on fast, out of control.
I said, “I didn’t plan this! Okay?! The idea wasn’t to hurt you! You think I like this? Hurting you? I don’t! I’m just so fucking sorry, okay?”
My throat closed up and my eyes welled and my hands were shaking and I was pretty sure I was going to vomit. I bent forward, hands on my knees, like I was in a huddle, and a strange sound emanated from me, a kind of primal moan.
And just that fast whatever anger was there was gone, and in its place an overwhelming regret that I had created all of this. I stood up and put my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath, my heart beating like I just ran the hundred-yard dash. I think in that moment, for the first time in weeks, Amy saw me differently. If the look on her face was any indication—though how can one ever know these things for sure?—I think she saw that she wasn’t the only one in pain. Which is why she then sobbed harder than she had the night I said I couldn’t do it, wailing away a block from Bloomingdale’s.
The point is that I never made it to Simon Pearce that day to return our last engagement party gift. Nor any day after that. I kept it. I do not know why, exactly, but I needed to hold on to it, even if only for the imaginary dinner party I would have with my imaginary wife, where one needs an obscenely expensive gravy boat.
• • •
The phone startles me. I see the display, the area code before the number. 617. Boston. It’s Eddie. It has to be. I watch myself watch the phone ring, like someone in a movie, and think, as I do when I’m watching a movie like that, Answer the phone! A tingling in my stomach, in my palms. Answer the phone, it’s your brother, for God’s sake. But I continue to hesitate. Because it’s Eddie. Because of who Eddie’s become. Because it’s about my father. And maybe he’s alive and maybe he’s dead and there’s a one in a million chance he’s come back to beg forgiveness but I’m sorry, old fella, there’s a statute of limitations on forgiveness. At least with the Irish.
The ringing stops.
I go back to the obits and read about a pioneer in DNA research who won a Nobel Prize. I read of an economist who was noted for his “mathematical rigor.” I read of the inventor of the Bundt pan. Unlike the other two men, there is no photo of him. Instead, there is a photo of a Bundt pan. He was eighty-six. This is how he is remembered to the world. I wait for the red light on my phone that signals a message but it never appears.
• • •
An e-mail informs me that there is a problem with Doodles.
Doodles are a chocolate candy with toffee in the center. They are one of the oldest candies in America. Chances are good that you have eaten them. We have been their ad agency for many, many years. Doodles and Chew-gees and Gooshy Gum. One of the company’s newer products, Joy-Jellies, which is selling very well, is handled by an agency across town. We would very much like that business. Last year alone, those four products earned two-point-eight billion dollars worldwide. The Chinese love Doodles and they love Joy-Jellies