Truth in Advertising Page 0,76

under my arms. And yet I was a willing participant in this entire charade. I made this happen, me, the person who’s supposed to be immune to false narratives, the person who creates false narratives for a living. “You make her happy,” Amy’s mother had said. Yes, and then I made her very unhappy.

With six weeks to go until the wedding, she found me in the kitchen one night, sitting on a chair by the window, converting dollars to złoty on a pad of paper.

“Honey?” she said, the slightly confused, mildly frightened voice one uses to speak to the insane. “What are you doing?”

I hadn’t known she was there and I looked up, terrified, a feral animal cornered.

“I’m fine,” I’d said, too loudly—and certainly not convincingly—considering the fact that I was naked, wide-eyed, and shivering.

Amy said, “You’re scaring me.”

I had to say it. I felt like I might vomit. My palms were sweating and my heart was racing, like I’d had eleven cups of coffee.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” I said, looking at the figures on the paper in front of me.

“Do what?”

I could take it back. I could dance around it. But she knew.

The light from the streetlamp was the only light in the kitchen.

She was staring at me, her arms folded tightly across her chest. I could feel it. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at her. Finally I said it again, slower this time, a dare to myself, to what tiny amount of courage I had left. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

She said, “Honey. People get cold feet sometimes. It’s . . . it’s a huge thing. It’s natural to be a little scared.”

“No,” I said. “It’s more than that.”

And perhaps it’s the way I said it, the tone of my voice. That’s the thing about a play. They’re not meant to be read. You read them in high school and in college, but often they don’t mean as much as when you see them on stage. You hear the actor’s voice, their inflection. It’s all about how we say a thing.

She stared at me, a woman looking at an accident on the highway, at a dead body, only to realize she knows the person lying there.

“What!?”

I said nothing, just looked at her. I’d hoped that she would understand what I myself didn’t quite understand; that I liked her a lot but that the idea of marrying her and being responsible for her happiness when lately, for some time, I had been unable to find any myself, well, that was just a little too much at the moment.

She’ll understand, I thought. It is one of the things that drew me to her, her empathy. This is her job, really, as a social worker, to listen and put herself in the shoes of other people, to help them help themselves.

Her face began to crinkle. She winced. Her hand went to her mouth and I realized, as she leaned back on the stove for support, repeating “Oh my God” through muffled sobs, that what she understood was that I was calling off the wedding.

That was eight months ago.

• • •

“I’m good,” I say now. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m in Boston, actually.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

And here a memory comes to me clear and fast. I once told Amy my father was dead.

“We’re pitching Legal Sea Food. Do you know it? Amazing sea food restaurant. How are you?”

The old woman is sniffing the backs of her hands like a maniac, like she’s lost a scent.

“I’m great. Do you have a minute?”

Maybe we could have a coffee or a drink, I think to myself. Maybe we could have crazy dirty monkey sex. Maybe that’s why she’s calling, like she once did, to describe the color and satiny texture of her bra, the demi-cup, the fullness of her gorgeous breasts. Is it possible she’s been thinking about me? So what he backed out on the wedding. Other than that he was a catch.

She says, “I’ve actually been meaning to call you.”

There is a tenderness to her voice. The sadness and anger of the break-up long forgotten now. She is the kind of person who will only remember the good things—a far better, more nuanced, more emotionally mature person than I. She once said, “Fin, we all have an emotional toolbox. Our parents give us these toolboxes on our eighteenth birthday after years and years of filling them with all the wonderful tools we’ll need. Compassion, patience, empathy, courage,