Field Notes on Love(68)

Now Mae listens to the swells of music and feels the emotion in every single note. Maybe Nana was right, she thinks, and suspects it won’t be the last time.

At home she walks from room to room, running a hand over various items: Nana’s chair at the kitchen table; her favorite coat, which is still hanging near the back door; the green mug she always used for her afternoon tea. In the guest bedroom, where Nana lived for the better part of the past year, Mae lingers near the door. She doesn’t realize anyone is behind her until Dad clears his throat.

“I loved her,” he says. “I really did. But oof—that perfume.”

Mae laughs; she can smell it too. It’s not the scent itself, which is lavender with a hint of something else, minty and herbal; it’s how much she used to wear, the cloud of it that would trail her around the house.

“Best smell in the world,” Mae says, breathing in deeply.

Later, after they’ve all had a nap, they sit around the kitchen table, painfully aware of the empty chair, and go through what else needs to be done for the funeral tomorrow. Pop reads through the final list of appetizers for the reception, and when he’s done, Dad grins at Mae.

    “Better than train food, huh?”

“Actually, it wasn’t so bad,” she tells him. “They had a pretty good menu. And we got some good stuff when we were off the train too. The best was the deep-dish pizza in Chicago—we absolutely demolished it.”

She blinks a few times, overcome by the memory of that rainy night. Each time she thinks of Hugo, her heart feels like it’s being wrung out, and she’s so distracted that she almost misses the next question.

“So you got along well?” Pop asks, and when Mae gives him a blank look, he adds, “You and Piper?”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah.” It’s the kind of drawn out yeah that makes it clear she doesn’t know where she’s going next with this. Her mind begins to toggle through all the many things she could tell them about her future roommate: We’re best friends already or She was a total nightmare or It’ll be better when we’re in a dorm room and have a bit more space.

But in the end, she can’t bring herself to lie.

Maybe it’s because they’re planning a funeral right now, or because she missed them more than she thought she would. Maybe it’s the guilt of not having been here, or maybe it’s because of Hugo, whose absence she feels like a phantom limb. But whatever the reason, she finds herself saying, “Actually, there’s something I have to tell you.”

They listen as the whole story comes spilling out—the post that Priyanka had sent her and the search for a Margaret Campbell; the video she sent to Hugo and the moment she met him at Penn Station—and when she gets to the part where they boarded the train, Dad is so red faced and Pop is so white faced that she stops. “Are you guys okay?”

    They stare at her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. If I’d known this would happen, I never would’ve—”

A muscle in Dad’s jaw is beginning to twitch. “What were the sleeping arrangements?”

“What were the, uh…”

“The sleeping arrangements.”

“Well, we didn’t really have a choice on the train. But they were bunk beds, so…”

“And what about off the train?”

Mae squirms in her seat. “It sounds worse than it is.”

“Try us,” Pop says flatly.

“Hugo was going to give me the hotel rooms, but then he lost his wallet in Chicago, and we’d already shared the smaller room on the train, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal to—”

“To what?”

“We got a cot,” Mae explains, deciding it’s better to leave out any logistics beyond that. “It wasn’t a big deal. Honestly.”

“So let me get this straight. You lied to us, went off on a cross-country train trip with a boy you’d never met before, and then shared a hotel room with him in a strange city?” Dad says in a strangled voice. “Sure. Yeah. No big deal at all.”

Pop folds and then unfolds his hands. “Were you, uh…,” he says, braving a glance at Mae, then quickly lowering his eyes again. “You were…safe, right?”

    She groans. “Nothing happened. Not like that.”

“Not like that?” Dad says, his eyebrows shooting up again. “So does that mean…something did happen?”

“Look, it was just…I didn’t think you guys would say yes if you knew.” She ignores the matching expressions on their faces, which tell her she’s absolutely right, and keeps going. “But I needed to go. You were the ones who said I had some living to do, and it seemed like fate for this to just fall into my lap. It was never about him. The idea was to figure out my next film, and we were supposed to just give each other plenty of space. But then…I don’t know. Something happened. We really liked each other.”

The worry has eased from Pop’s face, and he’s watching her now with a bemused smile. But Dad still looks slightly murderous. “I swear, if he touched a hair on your head…”

“He did,” Mae says, trying not to laugh. “But really, it’s okay. He’s a nice guy. You’d like him. And anyway, it’s over now.”