Chapter 25
I Choose You
Portland smelled of rain, as she had said it would.
They flew in on a Friday afternoon, the eighteenth of October, in a small plane that shook the whole way, and came down through a sky the color of wet slate onto a runway that shone like the back of a fish. It was drizzling. It had clearly been drizzling for some time, with the patience of a thing that does not mean to stop. They stood on the curb outside the terminal with their bags, and Sarah put out her hand, palm up, and watched the small cold drops land on it one at a time.
"It's raining," said Daniel.
"I know."
"It's, you said it would."
"I didn't think it'd be this, it's so, it's so polite."
"It's a polite rain."
"It's the most polite rain I've ever seen. It's not even, it doesn't fall. It just sort of settles." She was laughing. She had put her face up, with her eyes shut, and the mist was beading on her lashes. "Daniel. It's so green."
It was. It came as a shock after Ashford's browns and grays. Everything dripped. The trees along the highway were not bare, as they ought to have been in late October, but a deep wet jeweled evergreen, and ferns, and moss on the guardrails, and a long bright smear of orange where a maple had decided to be, unreasonably, on fire. The hills in the distance wore a veil of cloud. The bridges, when they came to them, were enormous, painted a hard clean green, and spanned a wide gray river like a row of stitches.
"That's the Willamette," said Sarah, reading from her phone.
"It's very big."
"It's the biggest river I've ever seen."
"It looks tired."
"It's been raining on it since the Ice Age."
They had two days. They had a small rented car, a hotel room with a view of a parking structure, and a list. It was not a long list. It had been made in the dark on a Thursday, in a bed in Ashford, in a low voice. It said, at the top, in her handwriting, See the library. It said See the neighborhood. It said Eat something that isn't from here. It said, at the bottom, in smaller letters, with a wavering line under them, Find out how it feels.
The library was a long low brick building on a quiet street, with a rose garden and a book drop shaped like a barn.
It was a branch. It was not the flagship. Sarah had said that she did not want the flagship. She stood on the pavement, in the rain, with an umbrella that she had bought in the airport, and looked at it, and said nothing for a long time. A mother went past with a stroller. A boy of about seven ran up the steps, in rubber boots, and pushed open the door with both hands.
"It looks like ours," she said.
"A bit."
"It's bigger."
"It's got a garden."
"It's got a, look, there's a reading nook. In the window. There's a man in a hat." She had her hand pressed to her chest. "Daniel. It's got a rug. It's got a rug shaped like the world."
"Like yours?"
"Exactly like mine."
"That's a sign."
"It's a very common rug."
"It's a sign," said Daniel firmly, and took the umbrella, and held it over her, and they went in.
She was shown round by a woman named Beth, who would be her boss, if she took it. She was fifty, with gray curls, and glasses on a chain, and a voice like warm porridge. She had a laugh that rang in the stacks. She walked them through the children's room, past a mural of a whale, and a tank with a turtle, and a pile of bean bags in the shape of fruit. She talked a great deal. She said that the job was hard, and that the pay was not generous, and that the budget was always in danger. She said that on Thursdays she held a story hour for a hundred children, in four languages, and that nobody had ever once been bitten.
"We had a T. rex," said Sarah.
"A what?"
"A, there was a boy in a, he came every week. In a costume. He bit a grandmother."
"Oh, I know him," said Beth, with enormous satisfaction. "We've got three."
Sarah burst into tears.
It was sudden. She had not known that it was coming. She was standing in the middle of a picture-book room in Oregon, in a wet coat, with the smell of paper and carpet coming up round her, and she put her hand to her face and found that it was streaming. Beth did not look alarmed. She only stopped talking, calmly, and took a small packet of tissues from her cardigan pocket and held it out, as one holds out a thing that one has held out before.
"It's all right," she said. "It happens. It's a good room."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's usually the T. rexes." She patted Sarah's arm. "Take your time. I'll show your young man the turtle."
They ate, that night, in a small noisy restaurant with a wood stove, where the waiter brought them soup in bowls the size of hats, and the woman at the next table was knitting something orange. They were tired. They sat close, on a bench by the wall, with their shoulders touching. Their clothes steamed.
"Well," said Daniel.
"Well."
"What does it feel like?"
She thought. She turned her spoon, in the soup. She said, at last, slowly, "It feels like standing on a very high diving board."
"Scary."
"A bit. But it's, you're not afraid of falling. You're afraid you won't." She looked at him. "I think I've never been so sure of anything. And I'm also, I'm so afraid that it's, I keep thinking, you're running. I keep thinking, this is you running from the, from your mother, and Eli, from everything. And then I think, no." She stopped. "I think it's the first time in my life I've wanted something that wasn't, that no one else asked for."
"Then it's not running."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're not looking over your shoulder."
She did not answer.
"I've been watching," said Daniel. "All day. You haven't looked back once. You haven't checked the, you haven't looked at your phone. You looked at the whale." He put his hand over hers. "You're not afraid of what's behind you. You're only afraid of whether you're allowed."
"Am I?"
"You're twenty-eight. You've got a degree coming. I think you are."
She turned her hand over, under his, and laced their fingers. She did not say anything. She held on.
"What about you?" she said, in a low voice.
"What about me?"
"What do you feel?"
He did not answer at once.
He sat looking at the stove. It glowed red through its small glass door, and a log in it shifted and broke, with a shower of sparks. The woman at the next table dropped a stitch. Somewhere in the back, a plate fell, and a man laughed.
"I'll tell you," said Daniel. "But I'm going to say it as it is. And it's not all nice."
"Please."
"I'm so happy for you that it hurts."
"Daniel."
"It's true. I stood in that room, with the turtle, and I watched you cry. And I thought, that's it. That's where she belongs. And I was so glad. It was like watching someone come home." He swallowed. "And then I thought of my dad."
"I know."
"He's seventy-two. He's got a, he's not as good on the stairs. He sits in the car outside my house, when he's worried, and I'm not supposed to know." He gave a shaky laugh. "My sister's got a baby, and a part-time job, and she calls me twice a day. The robotics club, I started it. They're, Priya's going to, she'd be in high school. I'd miss it. I'd miss all of it. I think I'd be a, I'd be homesick."
"Yes."
"And I'd also be the man who followed his girlfriend to Oregon." He stopped. "I'd hate that."
"Would you?"
"I'd hate it if I thought I'd done it for you. I'd hate it if you were the reason. If I ever, in some bad year, looked at you, and thought, I gave up a life for this. I think it would kill me. And I think I might think it. I think I'm that sort of a, I might."
She did not move.
"So I don't know," said Daniel. "That's it. That's what I feel. I feel everything. I'm in love with you, and I'm proud, and I'm terrified, and I'm sad, and I don't know what to do."
"Okay."
"I think that's my answer."
"Okay," said Sarah.
She sat still. And then, to his surprise, she smiled. It was slow, and wide, and rather shaky, and it went right up to her eyes.
"It's perfect," she said.
"It's a mess."
"It's the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me."
"It doesn't solve anything."
"I don't want it to," said Sarah. "I want it to be a thing we, I want to know. I'd rather know all of it. I'd rather sit here, in a soup, and know that you're afraid, than have you say of course, let's go, and find out in a year that you hated it."
"You would?"
"I'd much rather."
"That's very, I thought you'd be upset."
"Why?"
"Because I'm making it hard."
"You're not making it hard. It is hard." She squeezed his fingers. "That's the part I was so afraid of. I thought, if it was real, if it was good, then it'd be easy. It'd just fit. And it's not. It's a, it's two people. It's two whole people, with two whole lives, and they don't match." She laughed, wetly. "It's the best news I've ever had."
"Why?"
"Because it means we're not strangers," said Sarah.
He talked to his father on the Sunday.
They did it in the garden, as they always did. It was the last Sunday in October, a thin bright cold one, with a wind from the north and the sky scrubbed clean. Frank Moore was kneeling in the rose bed in his old corduroys, with a trowel, putting the bushes to sleep for the winter. He heaped dry leaves round each stem, in a neat brown cone, and patted it with the back of his spade. He did not look up when Daniel came out.
"Your sister says you've got a thing," said Frank.
"I do."
"She says it's Oregon."
"Yes."
"Is it a good thing?"
"It's a very good thing."
"Then why've you got a face?"
Daniel sat on the step.
He sat with his elbows on his knees and watched his father work. It was a thing he had done as a child. He had sat on that same step, in a short-sleeved shirt, with a sandwich, and watched this same man bend over this same bed, and had thought that there was nothing in the world so safe as the back of a gray head in a garden. It was thinner now. The neck was thin. There was a long brown patch on the back of the hand.
"I don't want to leave you," said Daniel.
His father went on with the leaves.
"I don't want to, Dad. I know you're fine. I know you've got Mrs. Delaney. I know you've got Nina. But you're seventy-two. And I'd be three thousand miles away. And if something happened, if you fell, I'd be on a plane, and I'd, it'd be eight hours."
"Is that all?"
"Isn't that enough?"
"It's not what's on your face." Frank sat back on his heels. He took off his glove. He had a long, slow, patient way of doing it, finger by finger, as if the glove were a letter. "I'll tell you what's on it. It's your mother."
"Mom?"
"You've got her look. When she'd made up her mind and was afraid to say."
He was still.
"We moved four times," said Frank. "Did you know that? Before you were born. I was, I'd been in Cleveland. She'd come from Pittsburgh. She had a mother there, an aunt, two sisters. They were all in the one street. And I got a job here, with the post office. The pay was better. And she looked at me, one night, in a kitchen, and said, Frankie, I'll go anywhere you want."
"I didn't know."
"She cried the whole way. All the way down the highway, in the car. She'd her hand over her mouth." He smiled. "I said, Dot, we don't have to. She said, I know. I want to. I'm just sad. And I said, how can you be both? And she said, I don't know. I've never been both before."
Daniel did not say anything.
"I'll tell you the secret," said his father. "I've had forty-five years to find it out. It's that there isn't a right place. There's a, you pick one, and you make it your own. And you miss the other one all your life. It doesn't go away. It's a, it's a toothache you've got fond of." He put the glove on his knee. "She missed Pittsburgh till the day she died. And she was happy here. Both. She never once said she'd made a mistake."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying go."
"Dad."
"I'm saying you've got a girl who looks at you like the sun came up. I'm saying you'd have to be a fool." He cleared his throat. His eyes were very bright. "And I'm saying that I'm not going to be the reason you didn't. I've been your father for twenty-nine years. I've got one job left. It's to be an old man in a garden, who says, go on, I'll be all right."
"You'll be lonely."
"I'll be very lonely."
"Then."
"Danny." The old man put out his hand. It was dry, and rough, and steady, and it closed on his son's knee. "You're not asking me whether it's going to hurt. You know it is. You're asking me whether it's allowed." He squeezed. "And it is. It's allowed. It's the only thing a parent's ever for."
He did not trust himself to speak.
He sat on the step, with his father's hand on his knee, and a dry brown rose leaf blowing across his shoe, and felt a long, slow, grinding thing come loose in his chest, like an old door being opened for the first time in years. He put his own hand over the old one. They sat there, the two of them, in the clean cold light, and did not say anything more.
"And the dog'll like the rain," said Frank, after a while.
"He'll hate it."
"He'll complain. It's what he's for."
Daniel laughed. It cracked, and ran away, and he put his face down on his knees, and his father, who was not a man who touched, put a hand on the back of his head, and left it there, as he had in a hospital corridor, twelve years ago, on a day in March.
They went to Gus's on the second of November.
It was Daniel's car. It needed new tires, if it was going to cross the country, and Gus, who had been told, in a long and rather tearful conversation on the telephone, had said, You'll bring it in on Saturday. I'll do it myself. So it was a gray, windy morning, the second of the month, with a few spots of rain, and they pulled into the lot on Canal Street at ten past nine, in a battered green Subaru, with a three-legged dog in the back.
The bell over the door rang its usual rusty clank.
It was exactly as it had been. It was the paneling, and the plastic chairs. It was the RIP sign on the coffee machine, and the television in the corner, with the sound off, where a man in a very large hat was holding up a fish. The vending machine glowed in the dimness like a small cold shrine.
Gus came out of the back, wiping his hands.
"Twenty minutes," he said.
"Gus."
"I'm only telling you."
"We know."
"I'm an honest man." He stood in the doorway, vast and gray and doleful, and looked from one of them to the other, for a moment, in silence. Then he said, in a thick low voice, "I'm going to miss you two. I've got, there's not, it was a good bet."
"Marian won?"
"She says she did. She says it was a tie." He wiped his nose on the back of his wrist. "I'll do your tires. Sit. Don't touch the machine."
He went.
They sat.
It was the same two chairs. Neither of them had planned it. They sat in them without a word, a few feet apart, in the blue light, with the plastic creaking under them. The dog stretched out on the linoleum between their feet, and put his chin on his paws, and sighed. On the television, the man in the hat let go of the fish, which hung in the air a moment, in frozen water, and swam off.
"That's an unhappy fish," said Sarah.
"They always are."
"Look at its face."
"It's never once looked pleased."
"My dad used to say," said Sarah, and stopped. She was looking at the screen. Her voice shook, a little, and went on. "He said the fish had a good deal on its mind."
"Did he fish?"
"No. He just liked the hats."
He laughed. It was a short, surprised, choked sound, and it filled the little room, and then he was silent. He sat with his hands between his knees. He did not look at her. He looked at the floor, and the dog, and a grease stain on the tile in the shape of Ohio.
"I've decided," said Sarah.
He did not move.
"I want you to hear all of it. I'm going to say it in order." She had turned in her chair. She was sitting with her knees together and her hands in her lap, a small, straight, pale figure in a green coat, and her face was calm. "I'm going to take the job."
"Okay."
"I'm taking it because I want it. I'm taking it for me. It's mine. If you'd said, if you'd begged me not to, I'd still have. I'd have been sad. But I'd have gone." Her mouth trembled. "I want that to be very clear. It's not about you. It's not, I'm not leaving anything. I'm not running. I'm not, I'm going to a thing."
"I know."
"I'm choosing myself."
"I know you are."
"I learned it from a man on a bench."
He smiled. His eyes were full.
"And I want you to come," said Sarah.
She said it simply.
"I'm not asking you because I need you. I want to be sure that you know. I don't. I'd be all right. I'd be lonely, and I'd cry for a month, and I'd be fine. I could do it by myself. I know I could." She drew a breath. "I'm asking you because I'd rather. Because I looked at it, every way. I looked at the whole thing, from the beginning, a dozen times. I looked at the version where I go alone, and the one where I stay. And the one where you come." She shook her head. "And there's only one that I want. I want the one with you in it. Not as a, not as a prize. As a person. As someone with his own, with a life and a dog and a father in a garden. Who's got every right to say no."
"Sarah."
"I'm not done."
"Okay."
"It's not a decision for you. It's a, you get to want what you want. And if that's not Oregon, then it's not. And I'll, we'll find out. We'll do the long way. We'll do the phone. We'll, I don't want you to say yes because I'm, because of the way I'm looking at you. I want it to be yours." Her voice broke. "That's all. I'm asking. I'm asking. That's the thing I never did. I'm asking you to stay."
"Stay?"
"With me," said Sarah. "Wherever."
He had a thing to say.
He had practiced it. He had rehearsed it, all week, in the shower, and the car, and on the long walk with the dog. It was not long. It had three parts. It was clear and honest and brave. And he sat there in a plastic chair, in a garage, in the blue light of a television, with a woman's eyes on his face, and found that every word of it had gone.
Come here, he thought.
She said it was only two words.
He did not say them.
He did something else. He got up. He did it slowly. He crossed the three feet of floor between the chairs, and went down on one knee in front of her, on the oily linoleum, between her shoes, so that his face was on a level with hers. He took her hands. They were cold, and a little damp. He held them in both of his.
"I've got a thing too," said Daniel.
"Okay."
"I got a call. On Tuesday. I didn't tell you. I'm sorry. It was, I was going to tell you on Sunday." He was laughing and crying. "It's a school. A middle school. In Portland. It's called Hawthorne. I applied in September. I sent it off the day you told me. I didn't tell you, because I wasn't sure. I thought, it'll go nowhere. I thought if I said, you'd feel you had to."
"Daniel."
"They want a, they interviewed me. By video. It was, there was a woman who laughed when I told her about the sock-folding machine." His voice cracked. "They've offered me a position. It's seventh grade, and an after-school club. It starts in January. It's, I haven't said yes."
She was staring at him.
"I haven't said yes," said Daniel. "Because I didn't know. I didn't know whether I wanted it, or whether I wanted you. And I'd like to say, that was the, that was the thing I got wrong. For so long. I kept thinking they were the same question. And they're not."
"They're not?"
"I want it," he said. "I want it for me. I want a classroom with a rain on the window. I want to see what happens to a kid who's never had a, to make a robot in a place with moss. And I want you." He was holding her hands so tight that his knuckles shone. "And I want my dad, and my sister. I want to come back, every summer, and mow the lawn. I want to be, it's all of it. It's not a, I don't have to pick."
"No."
"I just have to say it. Out loud. That I want it."
"Then say it."
"I want it," said Daniel. "I want all of it. I'm going to be homesick, and happy, and afraid. I'm going to be both." He drew a deep, shaking breath. "I choose you. Not instead of the rest. I choose you and the rest. I choose a, I choose the whole stupid beautiful mess, and you're in the middle of it."
She put her hand over her mouth.
"Is that a yes?" she whispered.
"It's an absolutely."
"Say it again."
"I choose you."
"Again."
"I choose you," said Daniel. "I choose you every day. I'd choose you in a garage. I'd choose you in a, I'd choose you in the rain. I'd choose you if you were a perfect stranger."
She was laughing and sobbing, with her face wet and her hair coming down. She put both hands on his cheeks. She said, "Wait. Wait. I have a thing. I have to. I've been, I had a plan. I wrote it down. I'm not, I'm very bad at this, give me a second."
She fumbled in her coat.
She found a pocket. She took something out. She held it, closed, in her fist, against her chest, and looked down at him, on one knee on the floor of a garage, with an expression of such terror and joy and tenderness that he forgot to breathe.
"It's not a ring," said Sarah.
"Okay."
"I haven't got a ring. I thought, I'd like to, I'll do it properly, with you. We'll pick. If you, if you say. I'm only." She opened her hand. "I thought about it for a long time. I thought, what do I have? What's the thing that's ours?"
On her palm lay a small, yellow, blunt-nosed pencil.
It had a worn pink eraser, and a dent where somebody had bitten it. It was no longer than her thumb.
"It's yours," said Daniel, hoarsely.
"It's ours. You gave it to me. On the, you gave it, with the crossword." She was crying so hard she could scarcely speak. "I wanted to give it back. As a, it's, I'm not good at this. I'd like to say. You can fix a thing in pencil. I'd like to be married to a man who lets me be wrong. I want to write it down, in pencil, in a, in a book. And leave it. And be able to change it."
"Sarah."
"Will you?"
"Will I what?"
"Will you marry me?" said Sarah.
The room was silent.
It was a small, quiet, shabby room, with a rusty bell and a broken coffee machine and a television showing a man in a hat. A dog lay on the floor. A tire gun whined, a long way off, in the back. The whole world seemed to have stopped, and stood very still, with its hands behind its back, waiting to be told.
He did not answer.
He could not. He knelt there, on the floor of a garage, with a pencil in front of his face, and tears running down into his collar, and his mouth open, and not a word in his head. He thought of a man talking to a vending machine. He thought of a hand on a sleeve. He thought of a bicycle, and a bench, and a pond, and a landing on a cold stair, and a long gold September, and a woman in a blue coat who had held out half a packet of crackers without looking up.
Perfect strangers.
"Yes," said Daniel.
She made a sound.
"Yes. Yes. Yes. God, yes. Yes." He was laughing. "Yes, of course. I'd, I was going to ask you. In a, I had a speech. It was in the, it's in the glove compartment. It's three pages."
"You did not."
"It had a diagram."
"Oh, Daniel."
"You can read it later," said Daniel. "Come here."
She came. She slid off the chair, onto her knees, and threw her arms round his neck, and he caught her. They knelt on the dirty floor in the blue light, clinging, rocking, in a heap, with the dog scrambling up and licking whatever he could reach. She was kissing his face, his ear, his hair. She was saying his name. He was saying hers. It was a loud, undignified, entirely unembarrassed tangle, in the middle of a public waiting room, and neither of them cared.
"Twenty minutes!" said a voice.
It was Gus.
He stood in the doorway to the shop, with an impact wrench in one hand, and a rag in the other, and a look of vast, gray, unutterable satisfaction on his face. He had, they saw, been standing there for some time. Behind him, in the bay, a small round woman in an apron had her hands pressed to her cheeks. A mechanic in blue overalls was applauding. Somebody, out of sight, was blowing his nose.
"I told you," said Gus. "I told you. Marian! Pay up!"
It was a very long twenty minutes.
They sat on the hood of the car, after, in the thin wet sun, with the tires done and the dog on a blanket, eating pretzels. The vending machine had not eaten a single dollar. They were both quiet. She had her head on his shoulder. He was holding her hand, the left one, and turning it over, and over, on his knee, with a kind of wonder, as if it were a thing he had found in a field.
"We'll get a ring," said Daniel.
"Yes."
"A real one."
"I like the pencil."
"It's a very good pencil."
"It's the best thing I've ever been given."
"It's got a, it's a bit chewed."
"That's the point," said Sarah. She was looking at the street. A bus went by. A woman was walking a dog. The wind blew a paper bag along the curb, and it rose, and turned, and was gone. "I think that's all it ever is. A person, with a pencil, who's allowed to be wrong."
"And who says come here."
"And who comes."
They sat there a while.
Behind them, in the shop, a tire gun whined. A radio was playing. A big gray man was singing along, very badly, to a song with a piano, and they both heard it, clearly, over the sound of the wind: a rolling, yearning, falling figure, and a woman's voice beneath it, old and level and kind.
She did not say anything.
She turned her face, and kissed him, softly, on the corner of the mouth. And in the plain bright gray of a Saturday morning, on the hood of a battered Subaru in a parking lot on Canal Street, the two of them sat holding hands, with a three-legged dog, and a pencil, and a whole wide road ahead, and watched the rain begin.