being more like Gerald Abraham seemed a whole lot better than being himself, selfish and sullen and ruminating. So he’d overreacted to the photograph. So he’d gotten too in his head about his parents, and about himself. That didn’t mean he couldn’t work on it with Nora; that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a way to figure this out so that it would be good for them both. He just had to focus. A diagnosis, and now a treatment. In fact it is common sense!
“Yes,” he said to Sally, gently moving a stiff-legged Quincy back to his chair. “I do.”
Sally smiled across the table at him, her expression a mixture of pride and excitement that dampened some of Will’s confidence. He cringed, thinking of the Good luck text.
“Pretty sure I’ve dug a big hole here,” he said.
Sally might as well have had a tablet and a neon pink binder in front of her when she spoke again.
“I suppose it’s a bit like that mess of an apartment you walked into not so long ago! You’ve got to start somewhere.”
When Will walked into his own dark apartment an hour later, “starting somewhere” did, admittedly, feel like a dimmer prospect than it had when he’d been sitting across from Sally. After all, Nora was still in San Diego until tomorrow, and his options for starting to fix things were limited. He could’ve called, but she’d been pretty clear about wanting to wait until she got back, and anyway, he wanted to give this the focus it deserved, didn’t want to call her unless he’d really thought about what he wanted to say.
And another Good luck–type text message absolutely wasn’t going to cut it.
He kept the lights off at first, not ready to see his spare, functional apartment yet, not wanting the reminder that he— unlike . . . Gerry? . . . nope, Gerald—might not ever get out of this purgatory. But as he moved through his lonely nighttime routine—shower, sleep shorts, brushing his teeth—lights became a necessity, and when he went into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water, he caught sight of his mother’s old book on the counter in the spot where he’d left it almost a week ago. The photograph was in there, he knew; he’d seen Nora slide it gently between the pages when she’d come to find him.
One place to start, he supposed, would be taking that photograph out and staring down at it until he could be assured he wouldn’t overreact again. But the fact that the book was still there at all, he supposed, was progress of a sort—years ago, months ago, weeks ago, even, he probably would’ve gotten rid of it, would’ve put the photograph into the same box where he kept all pictures from his childhood, small and shoved into the back of his closet.
That was Nora’s influence, he thought—maybe she held on to things too hard, but she did love an artifact, more like her parents than maybe she realized. Over at her place, she had an origin story for everything, and mentioning them brought a certain smile to her face, always. The teapot that had been an anniversary gift from her grandfather to her grandmother. The painted tile that Nora’s mother had made in third grade. The lamp that he’d seen her giving away last week, apparently from Italy.
So even though he didn’t much want to look at the book or the photograph yet, it comforted him, somehow, to know he’d held on to them; it gave him hope he could fix this with Nora. Still, for the first time in his life he thought it might be nice to have the kind of artifact lying around that might make him feel like she did—comforted and closer to someone she’d lost.
A thought hit him, and he set down his glass so quickly that water splashed over the back of his hand. He shook it off, wiped it on his shorts, and moved down his galley to the drawer where he always shoved extra pens or rubber bands or those garbage bag ties he never ended up using anyway. He yanked it open, heart hiccupping, and there it was, exactly what he was looking for: a scroll of paper, a number written lightly at the top.
He smiled down at it, the memory like a balm: in his mind was a long green dress, the line of Nora’s shoulders, her long braid and her flower crown, the look she’d given