What they were doing didn’t make sense.
“I don’t get how you can talk about Dad like that, miss him, but still want him gone.” I didn’t talk to her the way I would have Dad. I wasn’t struggling not to yell or lose my temper. I could never talk to her that way.
“Oh, Adam.”
“No. Mom. I’m trying to understand. Jolene... Her parents are going to throw parties when the other dies. She never has to wonder why they aren’t still married—she wonders how they ever got together in the first place. I know why you and Dad got married. I’ve known it every day of my life. What I don’t know is how you can want to be apart when you still love him...when he still loves you...?”
“This is hard for me.”
I almost asked her if she thought she was the only one it was hard for. “Then why are you doing this?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Because we make each other sad.” She swallowed. “After Greg... It nearly destroyed us, I know you know that.” She stood and took my hand in both of hers. “We made it day by day, hour by hour. Sometimes minute by minute. It was all we could do.”
I did remember. Waking up at night to the sounds of Mom crying and, worse, Dad crying with her. Holidays where one or both of them would leave the room and not come back for hours sometimes. The way she was squeezing my hand as she spoke.
“We decided that maybe we would be less sad apart. I love him too much to make him hurt if he doesn’t have to. He loves me the same.”
“And is it working? Are you less sad now, or are you just sad and alone?”
Neither of us had expected me to say that. It wasn’t cruel and hadn’t been spoken harshly, but my own sadness had bled through, and I could tell that she felt it.
“I don’t know. Sometimes both.”
NINTH WEEKEND
January 15–17
Jolene
“You should have sent the picture! Did you really delete it?”
“Hell yes, I deleted it. I don’t need you mocking me until the end of time.”
“Adam, that’s sweet that you think we’ll be friends that long.”
“You don’t?”
The Saturday matinee crowd at AMC was growing increasingly intolerant of our talking over the previews. A couple a few rows ahead hissed for us to lower our voices. “Well, how do you figure?” I whispered. “Are we both going to go to the same college? Live in the same state? No. You’ll go to an Ivy League school, marry Erica 2.0, and live in Virginia, coach your son’s hockey team and jog along the Potomac River with your golden retriever on the weekends. Whereas I am going to go to UCLA to pursue film studies, become the next Sofia Coppola, and then die tragically in my apartment alone before the age of fifty.” I gathered a fistful of popcorn from the bag Adam held and started munching. “See? Radically different life trajectories.” I went for another handful, but Adam pulled the bag away.
“First of all, I’m a cat guy, so no golden retriever for me. And second, if you become a famous director, I’m coming to every one of your premieres. Third, you’re not going to die tragically young or alone, even if that means I have to travel the world to find a doctor who’ll keep you alive long past what ethical medicine deems morally acceptable.”
I threw popcorn at him. “Okay, I changed my mind. Now you stay single forever, and I occasionally get you pity casting auditions, which you ruin by showing up drunk and without pants.”
Adam’s laughter drew more glares from the couple in front of us. “So no middle road? I can’t end up divorced with a dead-end job that keeps me in pants if nothing else?”
“No,” I said. “You’d never get divorced. And I can’t imagine any Erica leaving you.” That was a big statement for me to make—big and true. No one would willingly let go of Adam unless they thought he’d already let go of them. It was more than a little scary to realize I was including myself in that category.
The film’s opening credits started playing.
“You want to know how I see our future?”
I nodded.
“Okay. Watch the movie and I’ll tell you when it’s over.”
I almost called him on his cop-out. I hadn’t gotten two hours to come up with a future, but I let it go because the movie was finally starting. It turned out to be a mediocre sci-fi flick that didn’t keep my attention from wandering back to Adam every few minutes, wondering what he was thinking up for us and if it was half as bleak as the scarred landscape on screen.
When the movie ended and we trailed out, Adam requested an Uber for us and then he started telling our story.
“I end up at Brown and you go to UCLA. You cry at the airport when I drop you off. After you get your hysterics under control, I chuck you under the chin and send you away. We video chat every weekend for the next four years. I fly to you for spring break, and you come to me for Thanksgiving. During the first summer, we backpack across Europe, and we get jobs with a traveling circus the next. Our third summer we spend apart, because you get an internship working with J. J. Abrams.”
I couldn’t help but interject with a cough and the name “Suzanne Silver,” followed by another cough.
Adam smiled. “Fine, you get an internship with Suzanne Silver. Better?”
“No offense to J. J. Abrams, but yes.”
Adam shook his head and kept going. “After graduation, I drive across the country for the premiere of your first movie, and I get there in time to catch the leading man kissing you.”
“Plot twist!”
“My life feels meaningless for a while, and I bounce between jobs because, as it turns out, majoring in philosophy was as big of a waste as my dad warned. I’m complaining about this to you one night via video chat, because you’re on location shooting your first big studio film.”
“Okay, can I just say that your future for me rocks?”
“You can. I’m complaining, and you end up telling me that I’m miserable enough to write a book. And the idea sticks. I write it, it connects with the world, and suddenly movie people are knocking at my door, begging and pleading for the film rights. I refuse, because, by then, I’m too pretentious to consider selling my art. We still talk, but we’re both busy—you’re too busy, in fact, to read my book.”
“Future me is starting to suck.”
“You eventually read it after the financing on your latest movie falls through. You recognize its unmatched brilliance and want to make the film. I’ve never been able to say no to you, so I agree. Three years later, we stand onstage together with matching Oscars, you for directing and me for adapted screenplay. It’s a great night with many more great nights after it.”