BD laughs, nodding.
“Wouldn’t it rock his sense of self,” I say, “if Profiles in Courage turned out to be a hoax?”
“Have you told him?” BD says.
“I mean, the odds are JFK had a ghostwriter, but—”
“I mean about Noa Callaway,” BD says. “Have you talked to Ryan about it?”
“BD,” I sputter, feeling myself overdoing a display of shock. “My NDA! I can’t tell anyone . . .”
She gives me her I’m-just-going-to-wait-for-you-to-get-there look.
“I told you because I need advice, because I trust you,” I say. Still getting the look. “And because . . .” I pause. “I already know what Ryan would say.”
She tilts her head, takes a tiny sip of her coffee. “What would Ryan say?”
“First, he’d call Noah an asshole. Then he’d seize the opportunity to say that maybe this isn’t my dream job anymore. Before I knew it, we’d be talking about the improbability of my working remotely from D.C. Hypothetical children and their hypothetical Halloween carnivals, which I’d be missing because of my hypothetical commute. And then he’d go, ‘Maybe a fresh start in D.C. is what you need.’ ”
I thought I’d just done a pretty good impersonation of Ryan, but BD isn’t laughing. She’s staring at me, concerned.
I raise my shoulders. “That’s why I figured I would start with you.”
BD and Ryan have met only once, at a big family reunion where all of my extended Atlanta relatives vied for Ryan’s attention, thereby guaranteeing that none got quite enough. It’s a goal of mine for my grandmother and my fiancé to bond before the wedding, but it hasn’t happened yet. She knows him, but she doesn’t know him, and I’d better clarify some details of our dynamic so she doesn’t get the wrong idea.
“BD, what I mean is—”
“You know, your grandfather wrote terrible poetry,” she interrupts. “He once wrote a series of haikus called Foreplay.”
I glance around. “I missed the segue in the conversation.”
“Believe me, he was good at many things. The man could read an X-ray like it was a nursery rhyme,” she says. “He made the lightest pierogi you ever ate. And when it came to a sensual massage, your grandfather had hands like a—”
“Okay, BD!” I say, laughing. “I get it, but what’s the point?”
“That no one person can fulfill every single one of another person’s needs. Which is why book clubs and grandmothers exist. I’m sure Irwin would have liked a more enthusiastic audience for his efforts in verse. Whereas I would have preferred the poetry of his fingers to the poetry of his . . . poetry. I would have liked him to pick up a novel once in a blue moon. There was this wonderful couples book club at the JCC we never got to join.” She takes my hand. “I do wish you could have known him.”
“Me, too,” I say, and give her hand a squeeze. Irwin died before I was born.
“My point is no marriage gets it all right, honey, but I hope that in choosing Ryan, you have found someone you can turn to when you have a problem, when you really need a steady heart.”
“Of course,” I say, too quickly. “And I will tell Ryan. At some point. When I have a better handle on what I’m going to do.”
“When’s that going to be?” she asks. “It won’t get easier to tell Ryan, especially if you have more interactions with Noah.”
“I’m screwed, okay?” I say, surrendering dramatically. “Did I mention Noah told me he’s used up New York, that there’s nothing fresh for him to write about? Why did he have to choose now to get writer’s block?”
“Very selfish of him.” BD nods as the waiter clears our plates. “This is supposed to be your moment to shine.”
“I don’t know what to do.” I reach for the bill in the middle of the table, because it’s one way to seize control, and because if I lose my job, I won’t be able to treat BD to lunch for long. “How would Mom have dealt with this?”
“Your mother believed in the hair of the dog. She’d look for a way to solve this problem according to its nature.” BD takes out her golden snakehead compact mirror and reapplies some bright magenta lipstick. She looks at herself in the mirror, seeming pleased. “What about Fifty Ways to Break Up Mom and Dad?” she asks after a moment.
“What about it?” I say.
I think about my favorite scene, where the characters go hang gliding. The moment just before they run off the cliff.
Life’s greatest mystery is whether we shall die bravely.
I read this scene aloud to Ryan once. I was just about to tell him how it made me think about my mother, when he’d teased me—“So suicide is sexy now? That’s the message?”
But that wasn’t the message at all, and everyone in Fifty Ways made it down the fictional cliff in one piece. The message, as I understood it, was that some people can look into the abyss without losing sight of themselves or what they love. Without being too scared about what lies on the other side.
Maybe my mom’s last words to me were an act of bravery. She wasn’t worried that I was too young to handle them. She trusted me enough to make a leap.
Did she also trust that when the time came for me to make my own leap, I’d be able to feel her with me? Is that moment now?
“Are you saying Noah Ross is my abyss?” I ask BD.
“Maybe,” she says. “I’m also saying the man needs a taste of his own medicine. No one ‘uses up’ this city, and if he thinks he’s the lone ranger who’s done it, he’s got another think coming. You might have to be his tour guide on this adventure. It just might take you fifty ways.”
“What do you mean? We go hang gliding over the Hudson? No, thanks.”
“I mean take him to the places you take me,” she says. “This charming hole-in-the-wall, for example.”
“It’s the best Ethiopian food in the city.”
“And maybe Noa Callaway has never sampled its delicacies or thought about writing of them. He writes about the big tourist attractions. Show him your New York.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Remember when you took me to the Lithuanian consulate for Užgavėnės a couple years ago? That was fun!”
“I remember you went home with the consulate general’s phone number,” I say.
“Exactly. I’d even go so far as to call it inspiring.”