Chapter 11
Better to Have Loved?
Cecily
The first time I spoke to Teo again after he saved my life, I almost slapped him.
That’s dramatic to say, but I was that mad. Furious.
It was two months after the explosion. I hadn’t slept properly since. Between my own guilt and sadness and taking care of the kids, I felt like I did in those hazy days after their births. Day and night had ceased to matter; personal hygiene was no longer a priority. Everywhere I turned it felt as if I were discovering things I should’ve known but didn’t. The fact that Tom had taken a new line of credit a year before because of business losses he never told me about, for instance. Had I signed those papers? The bank said I did, but I had no memory of it. And then there was the credit card I didn’t know about with a hotel room charge at the Langham. I didn’t want to know these things. And I was constantly worried about money, how I was going to pay the bills or eat when the free meals stopped showing up. There was money coming, I kept getting told, but it hadn’t arrived yet. In the meantime, what was I supposed to do? Put the house on the market? Sell my children’s childhood out from under them? How could I do that after all they’d suffered, what they were still suffering daily?
Then there was my face on all those magazines. I hated it but felt like a chump for complaining. What was my discomfort next to my children’s pain and the pain of all the other families who’d lost someone that day? So what if it felt weird to be pushing a cart through the checkout line in the grocery store past a raft of publications with my shocked face on them? Big deal if some of the other shoppers looked at me funny. What did any of it matter compared to everything else? But then the calls started, the requests. Could I come to this event? Could I do this interview? Could I give more and more and more of myself, be more and more and more visible, when all I wanted to do was hide?
I said yes to all of it, tucking my anxieties away as best I could, but I didn’t feel as if I had a choice. And that made me resent it. Resent him. Teo.
It was the inauguration event for the Compensation Initiative. I’d borrowed $5,000 from my mother that week so I could pay our mortgage and the electric bill, pay off the credit cards, buy groceries and a dress that would hide the desperateness I felt. Cassie helped me do my hair and makeup, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I looked like her, the woman on the cover. The Poster Child, the part I was playing. I felt as if the woman I used to be was stolen from me, taken by his camera, and I could never get her back.
Sara drove me to the event, making sure I got there on time, or at all. We got caught in traffic, and she went to park the car, letting me off in front of the building with promises to return soon, reminding me to breathe. It was a blasted winter day, that lake-effect wind that cuts through everything and grips your bones. My feet pushed me inside, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to ride the elevator or know I was going to be that high up. It was the first time I felt that vertigo, even before I left the ground, but it wouldn’t be the last.
I stopped short in the lobby, right past the revolving door. Someone bumped into me from behind. I spun around, and there was Teo.
“Sorry, I—”
“You!”
He stepped back. His head was covered with a black watch cap, but I knew immediately who he was.
“Mrs. Grayson—”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was invited. I thought . . . I can go if you want.”
That’s when I almost slapped him. I don’t know what it was that made me feel so violent, but as we stood there in the lobby of a building that was going to occupy too much of my life, surrounded by Christmas ornaments while the wind beat against the windows, I wanted that shock of contact. I could even hear the hard crack my hand would make.
“Mrs. Grayson,” Teo said. “I’m going to leave, okay? I’m leaving.”
The anger fled my body as quickly as it arrived.
“No, stay.”
“Are you sure?”
“You have as much right to be here as I do.”
He pulled the cap from his head and shuffled it between his hands. “I’ve been meaning to reach out to you.”
“You have?”
“When I took that photograph, I didn’t know . . .”
“You didn’t know what?”
“What would happen. I shouldn’t have asked you for your permission then. I should’ve waited.”
A blast of cold air struck us. Sara twirled through the revolving door, the ends of her scarf flying.
“I had to park six blocks away,” she said, panting.
“Why are you out of breath?”
“I ran from the car.”
I felt Teo shift away, but I concentrated on Sara. “Why did you do that, silly?”
“I didn’t want to leave you alone for too long.”
“That’s sweet, but I was okay.”
And as I said it, I knew it was true. I’d felt okay talking to Teo, once that flash of murderous rage passed. Even at that very moment, something was tugging me toward him, some thread of connection that had been forged a few blocks away.
I just wasn’t ready to have it pulled on yet.
After coffee with Franny, I go back to the Initiative to find Teo. He’s in his boardroom down the hall from where our compensation meeting was, working on his wall of plot. Maggie’s taking notes. She’s sitting on the edge of the table, her short skirt riding up her toned thighs. Part of me wants to warn her—this is not the way to start out your life. The other part of me wants her to leave so I can have Teo to myself.
Which is interesting right there, to say the least.
“Cecily,” he says, his face breaking into a grin when he sees me.
“Hey, Teo. Maggie.”
Maggie hops down off the table. “Coffee, Teo?”
“I’m good. You, Cecily?”
“If I have any more coffee, I might levitate off the floor.”
Maggie rolls her eyes in a way she means for me to see, then leaves.
“Alone at last,” Teo says.
“Um, what?”
“Sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .” He shuffles some of the cue cards on the table, a kaleidoscope that flashes pink, blue, green, yellow. “How did the vote go?”
“All in favor.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Off the record?”
“Anything you say to me when the camera isn’t rolling is off the record.”
I walk to the wall of plot. The POSTER CHILD card is still front and center. I want to believe him when he says this, but I can’t.
“I’m super happy for the Rings.”
The Rings are on here, too. Joshua, forty-five, Emily, six, and Julia, four. There are fewer cards below them, as if Teo hasn’t quite figured out what their story is yet. Today’s decision will help up the drama quotient in his film, though. Family denied compensation gets it in stunning reversal, if I were writing the headline. He’d asked to film our meeting, but they’re closed-door, confidential sessions. No exceptions. Perhaps he’ll reenact it. I wonder who will play me?
“And Franny?” he asks.
I search the board for Franny’s card. There it is in pink, off to the left. Beneath it are more cards with the words: ADOPTED, OUTSIDER, MOTIVATION?
“Of course,” I say.
“I never asked—how did you two become friends?”
“Maybe I’m standing in for her mother.”
“Perhaps.”
“You think I feel sorry for her?”
“Do you?”
I turn around. Teo’s only inches away. I can smell his soap and the mint of his toothpaste.
“Are you one of those people who brushes his teeth after every meal?”
“Busted.”
“Ha. See. You’re not the only one who can figure things out.”
“Your kids are good at that, too.”
“They are.”
“That was fun the other night.”
“It was?”
“Why are you surprised?”
“Bachelor like yourself, dinner with two teenagers . . . Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d be into.”
“I like kids in general, and your kids especially.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It’s true.”
“How come you don’t have kids? You don’t have them, do you? I never asked. And that question was kind of aggressive. I don’t usually ask things like that. Sorry.”
Teo takes a step back, as if my stream of words pushed him. “It’s fine. And no. I was married once, in my twenties—I guess you’d call it a starter marriage now—but no kids.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It’s fine. Besides, I still have time.”
Teo’s forty-two. “Men have all the time in the world, it seems.”
I slap my hand across my mouth, the way I often did in the first days after October tenth when it seemed as if I’d lost control over the link between my brain and my mouth, like I was a kid again who didn’t understand social cues. What a terrible thing to say. No one has all the time in the world. Tom certainly didn’t, but I don’t need to be saying that out loud. What’s wrong with me today? Is it the vote? The lingering aftereffects of the memorial? I thought I was past all this.
Teo pulls my hand away, his fingers warm on my cold skin. “It’s fine. Don’t be embarrassed.”
“I hate when that happens. I used to have better control of myself. I thought I did again.”
“That’s life. And you’re right. Barring unforeseen events, I still have time to have kids, if I want. Which is good. Life is good.”
Teo turns and splays the cue cards out over the table, like he’s dealing a hand. We both look at them, seeing different things, I’m sure.
“So, what happens now?” Teo asks. “With the compensation?”
“It has to get approved by the Supra Board, but I’m sure it will go through.”
“Supra Board?”
“That’s what I call the muckety-mucks who administer the fund. We’re only the recommending body. They make the final decision.”
“Seems complicated.”
“You ever watch that film about the guy who was in charge of the 9/11 compensation?”
“I have, in fact.”
“Of course you have. Stupid question. Oh wait—you didn’t make that film, did you?”
“Don’t worry. Wish I had.”
I watch him continue to move the cards around. I can’t figure out what the colors mean. Where the peaks and valleys in the action are. Whether there will be surprise twists and turns.
“How’s this all shaping up?” I ask.
“Too soon to tell, I think.”
My phone beeps. It’s a text from Cassie. She’s having dinner at a friend’s and will be home by curfew. Henry texted me something similar earlier. After all the togetherness of the memorial, we’re now scattering to the four winds—or three. Ugh. Is this the beginning of a pattern? As our grief shifts, will we find there isn’t anything holding us together anymore? Was Tom, despite everything, our glue?
“I should go.”
Teo looks up. He has an expression on his face I haven’t seen before. Shyness, maybe. Uncertainty. “What about you get dinner with me instead? Or do you have to get home to the kids?”
“I . . . No, Cassie and Henry are both out tonight.”
“Then you’re free.”
“I am, in fact.”
“And you’ll come?”
“Off the record?” I ask.
“Off the record,” he says.