The Light We Lost

But Manhattan was our borough. Yours and mine. And ever since your phone call five months before, I’d felt more aware of that. Even though Darren and I had gotten married in Manhattan, we’d never really claimed it. Brooklyn was our place.

“I like Brooklyn,” I told him. “How about Park Slope? Or Brooklyn Heights?”

Even married with a baby on the way, I was thinking about you. I was making life decisions based on us. But I truly thought it would stop—that you’d fade from my mind again, the way you had before. And that turned out to be more or less true. But at that point, you were still there, front of brain, guiding my thoughts.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “P.S. 6 is a great elementary school.” Then he shrugged. “I guess we could always send the baby to private school.”

“So Brooklyn?” I asked him.

He was already looking at the Brooklyn Heights listings.

“I found one!” he said a few minutes later. “Listen to this: four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, two floors of a brownstone on Love Lane. How could we not live on Love Lane?”

Then he pulled me over and kissed my stomach before he kissed my lips. I kissed him back. “Do we need four bedrooms?” I asked him.

“We might one day,” he said with a smile.

I knew he wanted a big family, like his. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that, but I wasn’t ruling it out either. “How about we check it out?” I said.

We went to the open house. I’d never seen an apartment that big in the city before. There was a formal dining room, an eat-in kitchen—what am I saying, you know all these things. Obviously. You’ve been there.

Once we bought the apartment, once we moved in, once we started decorating the nursery, once all of that happened, I felt like a mom for real. I couldn’t wait to meet my baby.

l

I’m not sure why fives and tens are big deals: thirtieth birthdays, twenty-fifth wedding anniversaries, five-year reunions—ours was the summer I was pregnant for the first time, a week after Darren and I had moved to our new Brooklyn Heights apartment. Darren couldn’t stop talking about filling all the bedrooms with babies, but I was too busy concentrating on the one growing inside me.

You’d come to town but hadn’t let me know. You hadn’t contacted me at all since I’d gotten married. That was probably the right choice. I thought about you enough without the real you making appearances in my world.

But I guess you didn’t want to catch me off guard at the reunion, or maybe you wanted to prepare yourself, to see what kind of reaction I’d give before we saw each other in person. You texted me that afternoon.

See you tonight? you wrote.

I stared at the message on my phone for a good two minutes. You didn’t know I was pregnant. I thought I should tell you before you saw me.

I’ll be the pregnant one in the blue dress, I wrote back, half an hour later.

Probably not the most elegant way to give you the news. You didn’t write back.

And, of course, for the entire rest of the day I wondered what you were thinking. If you were upset or happy for me. If you were going to avoid me at the reunion, or specifically look for me.

“What’s going on with you today?” Darren asked, touching my shoulder. “I just called your name four times, it’s like you’re in a different world. Do you want me to zip your dress?”

“Sorry,” I said, “just thinking about college. And yes, thank you.”

Darren has a thing about zipping up my dresses. He thinks there’s something especially intimate about the act of dressing someone. More so than undressing. He says it showed love, not just lust.

“Want me to tie your tie?” I asked.

He smiled and said yes.

How did you get ready for the reunion? Were you staying with friends? In a hotel room? I never had a chance to ask you.

The reunion was a little insane—don’t you agree? People conspicuously holding on to their husbands or wives. A few of us wearing high-end maternity dresses. The same way I felt those jealous eyes on us in Bloomingdale’s years before, I saw women at the reunion looking at me with envy. I’d nabbed the successful husband, I was about to have the baby. It didn’t matter that we went to an Ivy League university, that the women there were lawyers and doctors, playwrights and bankers, consultants and academics—they all came up to me and asked about the baby, about the wedding. No one asked where I was working, what I’d been up to since graduation. No one cared that I’d just been promoted to associate producer, that I was developing a new show on my own called Rocket Through Time that took kids on an exploration of history and showed how it affected the present. It was just, “When are you due?” “Have you found out the sex?” “How long have you been married?” “Where did you meet him?” I wouldn’t be surprised if half the women I spoke to put in for share houses in the Hamptons that summer. I was starting to think that my college roommates had made the right decision in staying away.

Then I saw you. You were on the other side of the tent, and a woman I didn’t recognize had her hand on your forearm while the two of you spoke. She smiled at something you said, then responded. You laughed. All of a sudden I felt nauseated.

“I need some air,” I whispered to Darren, who had found another investment banker and was talking shop.

“Oh!” he said. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Just a little queasy, I’ll be fine.”

I’d only gotten over the morning sickness phase of the pregnancy a few weeks before. Darren was used to watching me vomit, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience for either one of us.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” I answered, and headed out of the tent.

I took a few deep breaths and then turned back around. There were no walls, so I could see straight inside the tent. I couldn’t find you anymore, but that woman was talking to someone else, her hand on his arm. That did more for me than the deep breaths. My nausea abated.

I was about to head back to Darren when I felt someone touch my shoulder. It was you, of course.

“Luce,” you said.

I turned. “Gabe,” I answered. “Hi.”

The skin on my shoulder prickled with goose bumps where you’d touched me.

“Nice dress,” you said.

Darren told me once that when men say that, they mean, “You look hot in that dress.” I’ve never been completely sure if he was right about that. I should’ve asked you then what you meant.

“Thanks,” I answered. “Nice shirt.”

Your dimple appeared. “I can’t even tell,” you told me. “You look exactly the same.”

Then I turned sideways and held the drapey dress close to my body. “How about now?” I asked.

Your eyes grew wide for a moment before you smiled. “Well that’s . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a baby.” It wasn’t much of one, just about a four-month bump. But I couldn’t wear my regular clothes anymore. I’d had to buy a new dress.

“Congratulations, Luce,” you said. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.” I let go of my dress. “How’s everything been on your end?”

Your smile faded and you shrugged. “Coming back to New York is always strange. It feels like I’m in Back to the Future and I’ve returned to a world that jumped ahead while I wasn’t looking.” Your eyes wandered back to my stomach.

“Your world’s changed too, though,” I said.

You shook your head. “I can’t explain it. My world’s changed, but my New York feels like it should be the same. Everything should be just as I left it, like coming back to a childhood bedroom.” You stopped abruptly. “I’m not making any sense.”

“No,” I said, “you are. Your safe space has changed.”

“Yeah,” you said. Your gaze lingered on my stomach. “Yeah,” you said again. Then, “I should probably go . . . it was great to see you, Lucy. Good luck. I really am happy for you.”

You walked quickly toward the bar set up next to the sundial.

I wanted to call out and tell you to wait. I wanted to ask you more questions so I could understand what you were feeling, so I could hear what your world was like. I wanted you to touch me again and give me goose bumps.

But you were right to walk away. Nothing good could have come of prolonging that conversation. So instead I went back to Darren.

“You feeling okay, sweetie?” he asked.

“Much better,” I told him, and leaned my head against his shoulder.

Without missing a beat in the conversation he was having, he wrapped his arm around me and dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

It didn’t give me goose bumps, but it did feel good.

li

One thing I’ve learned—from work, from you, from my life with Darren—is that as far as I’m concerned, ninety-nine percent of surprises should be avoided at all cost. When I can prepare for something, I’m much better at handling it. If I could have prepared myself when you were leaving New York, if I’d known you were in talks with the Associated Press for a job, I can’t help thinking I would’ve been better at dealing with it. But the fact that it was a surprise, that . . . that made everything harder. That’s why we decided to find out the baby’s sex. I wanted to know so I could prepare. We learned we were having a girl a few weeks after the reunion. I didn’t bother getting in touch with all the women there who’d asked me. I figured they’d find out on Facebook if they were all that interested.