Field Notes on Love(67)

Outside, the air is thick with salt, and he walks straight down to the water, which is dotted with ships. Beyond them, he can see the rocky silhouette of Alcatraz, and in the distance, the faint outline of the Golden Gate Bridge. He should be excited right now; he’s always wanted to see this place. But instead there’s a sour feeling in his stomach because he was supposed to be here with Mae, and everything feels a little bit dimmer in her absence.

It’s not until he’s started to walk down to the pier with the sea lions that he realizes he was actually supposed to be here with Margaret.

He stops to text her back.


Hugo: Coffee tomorrow morning?

Margaret: Brill. I’ll look up some places and let you know?

Hugo: Sounds good.



Nearby two seagulls are squaring off over a crust of bread, and all that squawking reminds Hugo that he needs to text his mum too:


Got the credit card. Thank you for sorting it out.

Love, Paddington



    He looks out over the bay again, realizing he’s made it almost all the way across America without any money, which is either hugely impressive or entirely idiotic. His parents would probably choose the latter, and he wonders if maybe they only sent him off and wished him well because they knew all along that he’d come back to them like a boomerang.

He once read a story about a zebra that escaped from a zoo. For a few hours, it had a grand old time, zigzagging down the motorway and dodging the police. But eventually it was captured again, and that was of course considered a happy ending. Because there’s no way it would’ve survived on its own.

Besides, everyone knows zebras are pack animals at heart.

He decides to skip the sea lions.

Instead he walks until the bridge comes into sight—a brilliant shade of red, like something out of a postcard—and then he keeps going until he reaches a small beach that overlooks it. He sits on the cold sand and watches the colors fade, moving from gold to pink to purple and finally to gray. When the sun has slipped away entirely, he gets up and walks back to the hotel in the growing dark, tired and lonely and ready to fall sleep in a bed shaped like a boat.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, he wakes up, the imaginary movement of the train beneath him. He reaches for his phone, hoping for a message from Mae, but there’s nothing. Instead, there’s a text from Alfie.


Alfie: I’ve been elected to find out how it went with Margaret Campbell, Part Two.

Hugo: She left today.

Alfie: Wow. You must’ve really bungled that apology.

     Hugo: No, her grandmother passed away.

Alfie: Oh—sorry to hear it.

Hugo: Yeah.

Alfie: So what now?

Hugo: Nothing. She’s gone.

Alfie: Right, but you like her, yeah?

Hugo: Yes. A lot.

Alfie: Then that can’t just be it…

Hugo: I think it is. She’s gone and I’ll be home in a couple of days.

Alfie: Hard luck, mate. I’m really sorry.

Hugo: Thanks. Me too.

Alfie: Did she feel the same way at least? Did anything end up happening?



Hugo pauses, staring at the glowing screen of his phone. After a moment, he writes, Long story.

But what he’s really thinking is Everything.

Everything happened.





They stop at a diner on the way home from the airport, where they all order blueberry pancakes—Nana’s favorite.

“The doctors said she probably didn’t feel anything,” Pop says. “She was taking a nap, and she just didn’t wake up.”

His eyes are damp, but there are no tears. He’s usually the crier of the family, but Mae can tell he’s completely tapped out. He gives her a weak smile, then returns to his pancakes, and Dad picks up the thread. This is what she loves best about them, the way they carry each other, silently and automatically, when the other needs it.

“But I think she knew somehow,” he says, putting a hand over Pop’s, who clasps it back. They exchange a look. “After the first stroke, the way she was talking, it was almost like…”

“Like she was saying goodbye,” Pop says.

Mae puts down her fork. “I wish you’d told me,” she says, her throat tight. “If I’d known, I would’ve been here.”

What she doesn’t say is this: that she should’ve been there.

That the only reason she wasn’t, the reason she was thousands of miles away at the time, was because she lied to them.

“She knew that too,” Dad says. “And that’s not what she wanted. You two had already said your goodbyes.”

“Right, but not for—”

“Mae,” Pop says, looking at her over the bottle of syrup and the napkin dispenser and the mugs of coffee leaving rings on the table. His voice is strangely calm. “That’s the thing. You almost never know when you’re saying goodbye to someone forever.”

    Mae nods, lost for words.

“It’s okay,” he says gently. “She knew what was in your heart.”

On the drive home, they listen to the movie score from Titanic, which was Nana’s favorite. The rest of them always complained when she put it on, but she was unabashedly, stubbornly in love with it. “You cretins wouldn’t know great art if it bit you in the behind,” she’d say, to which Pop would roll his eyes and remind her that he runs an art gallery and Dad is an art history professor. Still, she wouldn’t budge.