If I Forget You(2)

He sees a flash of recognition in her look, and now he definitely says her name out loud, though it is instantly drowned out in the roar of the city.

For a time that feels like forever, their eyes meet. There is no question now. It is Margot. And in her face, Henry sees that she recognizes him, too. Henry starts to walk toward her, and as soon as he does, she gets to her feet and moves into the roiling rush-hour crowd.

“Margot,” he shouts, but she doesn’t stop.

She climbs into the yellow cab that is first in the line of yellow cabs. Henry is running now. He is at the window. She looks up at him—those eyes, unchanged, the pale blue of sea glass—and he stretches his hand toward the closed window and the cab lurches out into traffic, merging quickly, a damn sea of yellow cabs, and he tries to keep his eyes on the one that carries her, until he is no longer sure which one it is and a phalanx of them moves up Broadway and out of sight.





Margot, 2012

A tiresome monthly lunch with her mother summons Margot into the city. She is so reluctant to go, she has this fantasy of missing the train. Though she knows what is expected of her. Outside her house, she stops for a moment and stands in her expansive yard, the large Tudor house behind her, and she just takes in the smell of the lilacs. Her husband, Chad, has a mild allergy to them but tolerates a few weeks of sneezing because the smell of them, slightly fetid and soapy but also sweet, she loves more than anything.

Then on the train, Margot is restless and anxious about lunch with her mother. But something else is bothering her, too, and it’s hard to put her finger on it: more of a vague unease she has had lately. Perhaps it’s only because this is the first year both her kids have been away at school. Alex is in his third year at Wesleyan University and Emma has just started at Miss Porter’s. School is out in a week. But then the busy summer will start, a few days home and then Emma off to camp in Maine, the same one she attended as a child, and Alex to the city with friends for an internship. Maybe it’s that, how fast everything always moves, life like this train, uncontrollable to her and nothing she can do to stop it.

Or perhaps it’s Chad? Sure, he works all the time, and sometimes she wonders if he is the kind of man who has affairs. He always knows her schedule, so she never has an opportunity to surprise him in the city. Perhaps he has a whole life here she doesn’t know about. For isn’t that the way with men who work in the city and live in the burbs?

Coming through the Bronx now, the train passes abandoned warehouse after abandoned warehouse, broken windows and graffiti. Funny how much trains stare at the darkest parts of America. Places she would never see otherwise.

From Grand Central, she takes a cab to Columbus Circle. Lunch is at Masa. Her parents bought a place on Central Park West ten years ago, top floor of a prewar building overlooking the park. They are seasonal New Yorkers—here for the fall and spring—with winters in Tucson, Arizona, and summers on the Vineyard. Many of the friends in their orbit following a similar schedule, like school for wealthy retired people. Lately, her mother has discovered sushi. When Margot was growing up, her mother practically sneezed at anything ethnic—of course there was no Masa then, with its $450 prix fixe.

Her mother waits for her in the foyer to the restaurant. They kiss on both cheeks. Her mother is immaculately put together, as always, as if an important social event might materialize at any moment. Margot reminds herself to exude energy, and right away she has the sense of her mother appraising her, assessing her, and that after, a full report will be given to her sister, Katherine, as Margot always gets one on Katherine post her mother’s lunches with her sister.

Do other adult children meet their parents in an atmosphere like a job interview? Like they are trying out for the role, perhaps? Would you be my daughter? Of course, that’s absurd, and over a bottle of Corsican white, and the tiniest pieces of the freshest fish imaginable, they talk.

Her mother takes her time but eventually warms to the topic that interests her. It is not a new conversation. They—her parents—are concerned about Chad. He is forty-five years old now, well in his prime, and still mid-level at Goldman. Worse, he is on the sales side, which is less attractive than becoming a partner. Margot wants to tell her mother that Chad is essentially a good-time guy, that the wealthy clients like him because he is funny and amiable and that he loves to drink. Chad has never met a party he couldn’t make his own. He is quick with a top-notch cigar and a rabidly funny dirty joke in his back pocket. Besides that, Chad doesn’t really like to work. He doesn’t have that burn of ambition you need to have to climb to great heights, the burn her father clearly had when he became CEO of the largest soft-drink company in the world in his early forties.

Her mother looks at her across the table between small bites of something incredibly exotic—Margot didn’t quite hear what it was. Peekytoe crab, maybe. Her mother’s eyes are steely blue, like hers, though colder.

Her mother says, “Perhaps there is something you can do?”

“What do you mean?” says Margot.

“A wife can often be the greatest asset,” her mother says cheerfully. “You could do more, you know. Charities. Get yourself out there. What do you do in that house all day?”

Margot considers this. Lately she has been painting again. With the kids gone—except for summer—she suddenly has this sea of time. In truth, she has been busy. There are the normal volunteer things she does, serving on the library board and on the board of a foundation a friend started after her son died of a rare disease. She does Pilates three or four days a week, depending. There is the weekly doubles match with the same group of women. She belongs to a book club, of course, which is more an excuse to drink wine than it is to really engage with literature.