This Time Tomorrow(23)

She was as tall as her father already—Serena was the taller parent by a few inches, and Alice would end up an inch taller than Leonard, too, but it hadn’t quite happened yet. Her mother hadn’t called to wish her a happy birthday, but it was still early on the West Coast, and who knew what the moon was doing, or the rest of the planets. The planets controlled a lot of Serena’s interactions with the world. The air was cool. Climate change had gotten Alice used to T-shirt weather in October, but now it was still chilly. Had the blizzard already happened? She couldn’t remember, but Alice could see the snowdrifts in her mind, the thick white blanket that had stopped the city for a few days.

“I walk everywhere,” Leonard said. “I walk uptown, I walk downtown. Once I walked all the way around—circumvented the whole island of Manhattan. Did you know that? Why are you asking?”

Alice tried to shrug. “Just curious, I guess.” She was thinking about Simon Rush and the rest of Leonard’s friends—well-read dorks, all, even the ones who were rich and famous. She had so few memories of her father during daylight hours, outside of Pomander Walk. The Sterns had never gone hiking, they’d never gone camping, they didn’t like the beach or national parks or whatever it was that normal families did. All they had done was this—talk. Be in their neighborhood, their tiny kingdom. That was the stuff that Alice wanted to soak up, to absorb as much as she possibly could. What did it feel like, to have their strides match, to both hurry in the face of an oncoming taxi? What did it feel like to have her father next to her, to hear him grumble and hum, make the noises just beneath language? What did it feel like to see him and not worry if it would be the last time?

Leonard put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s very nice.”

She hadn’t touched him until then—she had wanted to hug him when she first walked into the kitchen, but they weren’t really a hugging family, and Alice was pretty sure that she had smelled at best like dirt and at worst like dirt and alcohol and so she had scooted quickly back into her bedroom, too afraid that one of them would vanish into thin air or turn into a pile of dust. Alice put her hand on top of her dad’s. She didn’t remember him ever being younger than this. “What age do you think I was best at?” Alice took her hand back and stared at the ground. “Like, if you had to pick me being one age forever, what age would you pick?”

Leonard chuckled. “Okay, let’s think. You were a terrible baby. Screamed one hundred percent of the time. Your mother and I used to worry that the neighbors were going to call the police. You were very cute after that, to make up for it—say, three to five. Those were good years. But no, I’d say now. I can swear as much as I want to, and you don’t need babysitters anymore. And plus, you’re good company.” Every block they walked had something that Alice had loved and forgotten: the spandex party dresses at Fowad and Mandee, the brightly lit challah bread at Hot & Crusty, the bohemian rich lady shop Liberty House, where Alice had spent her allowance on Indian printed tops and dangling earrings. Tasti D-lite, Alice’s one true love. Were there still Tasti D-lites? Once, in her early twenties, Alice had seen Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson at Tasti D-lite, both of them with small cups, no sprinkles. She started to tell her father that, but stopped. The only Lou Reed song she’d actually owned was on the Trainspotting soundtrack, and she wasn’t sure if it had come out yet. Without the internet, how would she even check? Mr. Moviefone’s voice sprang into her ears, a robotic memory that she hadn’t thought of in a decade, and Alice laughed. It was another century. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but it was. New York City did this over and over again, of course, a snake shedding its skin in bits and pieces, so slowly that by the time the snake was brand new, no one would notice.

“Thanks,” Alice said. Maybe that was why. Maybe he was right, and this was the best she ever was, and even though this version of her dad hadn’t seen her barely graduate from art school, and have dumb boyfriend after dumb boyfriend, and never really make art, and still work at Belvedere, he knew that this was the apex.

Leonard grabbed Alice’s elbow and pulled her back from the curb. A boxy gray sedan swung close, taking the corner tight and fast. “Not on my watch,” he said. They walked until they got to French Roast, the coffee shop that was open twenty-four hours a day, and then turned left, toward the park.





21



There were a few people standing outside Belvedere. Alice was so used to the route, and the block, which had hardly changed, except for the hairdresser that had become a dog-grooming parlor and the frame shop that had become a Pilates studio, that she didn’t actually feel anxious until she and her father were close enough to recognize the faces of the people assembled on the sidewalk. Alice froze. She had thought about seeing Sam, who would still be just Sam Wood, without her married hyphen, but Alice hadn’t thought about seeing everyone else. Her life was so full of Belvedere that she hadn’t thought about all the people who had vanished from it. Leonard tossed his cigarette to the sidewalk and stepped on the filter.

“What’s going on?” he asked, though Leonard had never needed a reason to avoid people.

There was Garth Ellis, who played soccer and had the cutest, roundest butt. Alice had kissed him one time, her freshman year, and then pretended that it never happened. There was Jessica Yanker, who curled her bangs into a perfect tube every morning—Alice and Sam used to prank-call her, pretending to be representatives from a hair spray company, but then *69 came along and you couldn’t take the risk. There was Jordan Epstein-Roth, whose tongue was always hanging out of his mouth just a tiny bit; there was Rachel Hymowitz, whose name sounded too much like “hymen” for her to escape unscathed. Everyone was gorgeous and gangly and slightly undercooked, like they’d been taken out of the oven a little bit too early, even kids that she’d never really looked at too closely, like Kenji Morris, who was taking the SAT class a whole year early, like he was Doogie Howser or something. Some people’s arms and legs looked too long, some noses looked too adult. They were people Alice hadn’t thought of in twenty years, and whom she hadn’t given much thought to even at the time. She cringed a little, thinking about what these forgotten classmates would think of her now, still at Belvedere at forty, still alone, still weird. Alice looked up at the building, and to the window of her office. Leonard leaned against a parked car and lit another cigarette.