for help or even admit when you are in pain and you are used to being strong and caring for everyone else. And he said he would try to get you to eat something, if I wanted. I told him I’d be grateful to him for trying, but that I doubted he would have much luck. I went back to the room, and I could see the two of you on the deck. I watched him take that crown of leaves off the berry, and I watched him get down on his knees, and I watched him hold out his hand to you, and I watched you. I watched you take that berry from him. And he looked incredibly sweet in that moment. How could I not love him? He was so good to my poor sister, who he had not even been with for three years. And I thought he was doing that for me, but now I know better: it was for you.” She shook her head. “I’m a smart person, but what a fool I’ve been,” she said.
“Natty,” I said.
“You say you don’t love him anymore, but maybe you are lying to yourself. That boy, our Win, took off the leaves for you. If that’s not an act of love, I honestly don’t know what is.
“I had a glimpse into my future this morning, Annie. Would you like to know what I saw?”
“I’m not sure.” Natty’s visions had often involved my untimely death.
“Maybe it’s Thanksgiving,” she said. “Win is there and you are there and the three of us are having a good laugh over the fact that one summer Natty the genius let herself fall in love with Win even though it was obvious to everyone how much he still loved Anya.
“I love you better than anyone in the world,” I told her.
“Don’t you think I know that?” she asked.
They announced the train for Boston. “Have a good semester,” I said.
“Call me every day, Argon,” Natty said.
XXIV
I HAVE THOUGHTS ON THE TRAIN BACK TO NEW YORK; ON LOVE
IT TAKES NOTHING, save a spot of courage, to kiss a pretty teenager at a high school dance. It takes nothing to say you love a person when she is perfect and her mistakes can be dealt with in a ten- minute confession.
Love was a boy getting down on one knee, not to ask her to marry him, but to beg a damaged girl to eat a berry:
Love was the way he had removed the leaves from that berry, the way he had held his palm to me and bowed his head. Love was the humility of those gestures.
Love came three years after he had walked away, and it felt as palpable to me as that strawberry in his hand.
My sister was the romantic; I did not believe in that kind of love.
Sometimes, this good old world does not much care what you believe.
XXV
I RETURN TO WORK; AM SURPRISED BY MY BROTHER; BECOME A GODMOTHER AGAIN!
THE BEGINNING OF SEPTEMBER was always a wretched time in New York—summer is over, but the weather hasn’t caught on. Still, I was glad to be restored to my life and to be in the city, even if I navigated it at a more deliberate pace than I once had.
At long last, I went to get my hair cut. Bangs seemed like a good idea, and so I got them. Probably a mistake considering the shape of my face and texture of my hair, though no worse a mistake than marrying Yuji Ono in 2086 or taking up with the DA’s son back in 2082. In any case, I did not cry.
Scarlet and Felix had moved to a place of their own downtown. She’d left her job at the club and she was making a living from acting in the theater. She was playing Juliet in
Afterward, I met her in her dressing room, which had a star on it. That star filled me with something I can only describe as joy. Scarlet burst into tears when she saw me. “OMG, I’m sorry I couldn’t go to Japan or upstate, but between Felix and the play, I haven’t been able to leave town.”
“It’s fine. I’m sorry I’ve been such a neglectful godmother. Plus, I wasn’t really up for company. You were wonderful, by the way. I didn’t like Juliet when we read the play in school, but you made me like her for some reason. You played her so determined and focused.”
Scarlet laughed though I wasn’t sure I’d said anything funny. She took off her wig, which was long, black, and curly.
“For a second there, we could have almost been mistaken for sisters,” I said.
“I think that every night. Let’s go to dinner,” she said. “And then you can spend the night at my place and see Felix in the morning.”
“I doubt he’ll even remember me. It’s been so long.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You send presents so that probably will help jog his memory.”
At dinner, we ordered too much food and talked about everything. I hadn’t seen her in so long, and I’d missed her more than I even thought was possible.
“It’s like we haven’t even been apart,” she said.
“I know.”
“Do you know what you said before about me playing Juliet ‘determined and focused’? I have a secret about that.”
“Oh?”
“The day of the audition, I was thinking of you and wishing I could go to Japan to see you,” Scarlet said. “And then I started to remember you in high school. I knew other girls at the audition would be playing Juliet romantic and dreamy, but I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to play her like Anya? So I imagined that Juliet hated being star-crossed. I imagined she would have preferred not to have met Romeo, that it was completely inconvenient for her to like someone whose parents her parents didn’t get along with. And I imagined that Juliet wished she was into Paris, because he was the boy that wouldn’t cause her any problems.”
“I thought I liked your Juliet for some reason,” I said.
“The director thought my take was unique, so I guess you could say my choice to play you worked out well. The reviews have been nice, too. Not that those matter. But it’s better than bad ones.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “I mean it. And I’m flattered for any small part I might have had in it.”
“The only thing I have trouble with is the end, because I know you would never plunge a dagger into your chest, no matter how bleak the plot.”
“Probably not.” Someone else’s chest maybe.
“Let’s get dessert, okay? I don’t want to go home yet. The truth about Romeo and Juliet,” Scarlet said, “is that they lack perspective. That’s what I think. She’s so young, and he’s not much older. And what they don’t know is that sometimes life works itself out, if given a little time. Everyone’s parents cool off. And once that happened, that’s when they’d know if they were truly in love.”
My cheeks grew warm. I suddenly felt like we weren’t talking about the play anymore. “To whom have you been speaking?”
“
“We aren’t together yet, Scarlet.”
“But you will be,” she said. “I know it. I’ve known it all along.”
