If I Forget You(31)

Of course this was absurd, and Henry knew it, and oftentimes he admired Ruth for how she parented, how easily it all came to her, the practicality with which she went about it. Later, when his marriage was failing, he sometimes wondered if it wasn’t really about the affair and more about his desire to run from death, from the responsibility of his daughter, and his poetic sense that catastrophe just had to lie around every corner for the ones he loved. For this is the great paradox of life, isn’t it? The more you love someone, the more that person will eventually break your heart?

Now, walking through the Great Hall of the American Museum of Natural History for the second time that day, Henry looks down at Jess. Her curly hair falls on either side of her pink face. She is beautiful and without scars literal or metaphorical, which is how it should be at this age. She looks up at him, and for a moment he sees the adult she will be someday, more her mother than him, and as if sensing something in his expression, she takes his hand in her own.

Jess looks up at him. And not for the first time he thinks that while he may have married the wrong woman, they certainly had the right child. And sometimes that should be enough, shouldn’t it? Maybe this is why he and Ruth married, so Jess would be in the world. Despite all his regrets, Henry cannot imagine this being undone.

Outside, the rain has stopped, but the day is still gray and all around them are the signs of the rain, the puddles and the mist coming off them. Henry looks down at Jess.

“Cheeseburgers and milk shakes?” he says.

His daughter sticks her tongue out and nods her head rapidly like a puppy.

At Shake Shack, they order cheeseburgers and fries and a vanilla milk shake for her, a pint of beer for him. They stand for a bit, waiting for their food and for a table to open up, and soon one does and they sit down alongside the bubble window on Columbus Avenue. They sit across from each other, and Henry, so used to eating alone, is itching to look at his phone, though he knows there is no real news there, probably nothing more than departmental e-mails that are as important as pennies.

It is just that he is used to eating alone now and to using the phone as a prop, or a book, which he doesn’t have with him. He has to remind himself to be present, and he starts by asking Jess questions about school, which she answers with one word between bites. “Good,” she says, and “Cool,” she says, until he realizes he is practically asking her yes or no questions and this is no way to draw a child out.

At one point, Henry finds himself gazing out at the street, at the people walking by, the streams of children leaving the museum, while he and his daughter sit in silence like an old married couple.

Suddenly he catches his breath. Amid the hustle and bustle, a lone figure stands across the avenue, looking directly at him. A woman in a baseball hat, not moving at all, her stillness causing her to stand out, a port in the storm.

Margot. It can’t be. Henry looks back over at Jess, who’s cramming french fries into her mouth, and then he looks back out the window, half expecting her to have vanished, a mirage. But she has actually taken a step forward, and for a moment a bus going by shields her from view, and when the bus passes, Henry looks at her and she smiles weakly back at him.

There is no mistaking her now.

Henry has no idea what to do. His heartbeat is in his neck. He is not alone. He is of half a mind just to punch his way through the window, emerge on the street, crouching, with broken glass spilling around him like something out of a movie, and then rush into traffic. Of course, he cannot do any of those things. He looks over at Jess and then out the window again. She has not moved. Is she waiting for him?

Henry waves and she slowly raises her hand before letting it fall back to her side.

Henry looks at Jess’s plate. She has eaten half her burger, which is good for her, and is putting the last of the fries in her mouth.

“All done, honey?” he says.

She nods.

More urgently than he means to, he says, “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

“I need to pee,” Jess says.

“What?” Henry says, aware as soon as he says it that he is acting frantic, and his daughter is just staring at him, confused.

“I have to pee,” she says.

“Of course, of course,” Henry says. He stands, and so does Jess. Henry turns toward the window. Margot continues to stand there, and he holds up one finger to her, as if to say, Give me a minute, please. Give me a minute.

“This way,” Henry says to Jess. “Let’s go.”

He leads her down the narrow corridor to the bathrooms. At the door of the ladies’ room, he tells her to be quick, which he realizes is a totally screwed-up thing to say, and he can see that his tension has Jess’s attention, but she just shrugs and goes into the ladies’ room, which is crowded. Usually this moment frightens him, that she is old enough that he can leave her in a room full of strangers to drop her pants where he cannot see her. But today Henry just wants her to hurry.

Five minutes later, Jess emerges, and Henry breathes a sigh of relief, which he knows is silly, as if somehow the bathroom would swallow her up, or one of the women in there would somehow decide to sneak by him with Jess smuggled into her coat.

“There you are,” Henry says, and he takes her hand. They move through the restaurant and then out the door and onto the street. He panics briefly, as he doesn’t instantly see Margot where she stood some ten minutes before. But then he looks straight ahead, across the crosswalk, and she stands there waiting for them.