Tim Murphy - Christodora

Milly:

But you have help, right?

Drew:

Yeah, a great girl. But still!

Milly:

I’m sure. Well, but wonderful you did it.

Quite a long pause there. Then:

Drew:

I would love for you to meet them. I tell them about you all the time.

[

Tell them about me?

Milly thought.

They’re six months old!

]

Milly:

I’m sure that holds their interest.

Drew:

It’s mostly just me rambling to them during feedings or rocking the cradle. Rambling on like a crazy mother.

This was almost too twee for Milly to take. Finally she wrote, feeling lame:

Milly:

You sure sound busy with them.

Drew:

Do you think you could make it out here to visit?

Suddenly Milly had to go to the bathroom. She went and came back, and then she wrote:

Milly:

My dad takes up a lot of my time now.

Drew:

I meant to ask you. How are you both doing? [

She means since my mom’s death, obviously,

Milly thought.]

Milly:

He’s a bit addled but he’s doing okay. He has his Rachel Maddow. He’s had a crush on her for ten years now. He thinks she’s going to come around for him.

Drew:

Haha! What about you?

Milly:

Nothing to report.

Drew:

Making work?

Milly:

Been too busy with Dad.

Drew:

Mmm. That’s gotta be tough.

Quite a pause passed.

Drew:

We might all make it out to New York next spring to see Xtian’s sister.

Milly:

That sounds fun. First time on the plane with the kids?

Drew:

It would be, yeah. Would be so great to see you!

Milly pictured the four of them just coming at her.

Milly:

Of course. Let me know if you come.

Drew:

It’s pretty definite. I miss you Millipede!

[

No, you don’t,

Milly thought.

You’re too busy, too full. You don’t know what it means to miss someone. It’s not a warm, fuzzy feeling. It’s a cold void.

]

Milly:

Well, hang in there with the kids!

A pause.

Drew:

OK, I will. Take care.

Then: “xoxo.” As far as Milly was concerned, “xoxo” was the end of a conversation, so she left it at that. She and Drew went back to their usual one-word exclamatory comments and smiley-cons. The winter that followed was the warmest in New York ever. On January 6, the temperature hit seventy-one degrees, a record breaker, and it never really got properly cold for three months. Milly couldn’t take it. When she went out, people were frolicking in the park, throwing around a football in shorts or with their shirts off, and she would wrap an unnecessary midweight coat around herself just to feel some semblance of normalcy. Everybody else loved the warm weather, it seemed, while to her it just felt like the end of the world.

She left the house to do whatever she had to do as quickly as she could, then came home and made hot tea just to pretend it was an old-fashioned January. If it wasn’t for the thought of her father alone at night, fumbling to put his dinner together, she probably wouldn’t have left the house that winter. Half the time, she ended up staying uptown with her father. Once she stayed up there for a week. She would be lying around reading her tablet regardless of where she was, so it made little difference to her whether she was uptown or down. She slept in her childhood room and read old papers from high school. She found letters from J. from the summers of ’89, ’90, ’91. “I got a house off campus with Jon and Lew for next year,” read one. “There’s a huge kitchen where I’ll make you dinner every night — penne with broccoli rabe, Cajun salmon, all your favorites, sweet Milly.”

He was going to leave me someday, Milly thought, reading the letters. He just didn’t know it yet.

In March, Drew pinged her: “Hey! So like I said, we’ll all be at Xtian’s sister’s place in Brooklyn the second week in April. Would LOVE to see you. Please let me know how that week looks for you. xoxo.”

They would all be here. Not just her. All.

Milly got that message on a Saturday. She had the wherewithal not to reply until she could talk about it with Gallegos the following Monday.

“It sounds like she misses you and she really wants to see you,” he said after she told him.

“How can I make it clear to her I don’t want to end up in one of her chapters as the childless single friend she goes to visit in New York?”

He laughed. “Is she working on something?”

“She’s always working on something.”

“If you’re really worried about that, you could wait to bring that up until after you’ve seen her and you know for sure she’s working on something.”

Milly crossed her arms in her chair. “I just don’t want to feel like I’m being used as fodder.”

“Has she ever written about you before?”

“A little bit, in her first book. She was sweet about me.”

“Then why are you worried about it?”

Milly thought about this on the way home. She thought that she would definitely not go out to Brooklyn to see them. It didn’t seem fair that she’d have to be the one doing the traveling just because they had strollers and bags of diapers and that sort of thing. So instead she did some research online and found a brunch spot in the East Village that was right off the F train for them.

“Hi,” she wrote back. “Would love to see you guys. How about Four Figs Sunday at noon? Right off the F train in the old hood. I’ll make a reservation.”

A few hours later Drew pinged back: “Restaurant in Manhattan a bit tough for us with the kids. But we’ll rally! It’ll be an adventure. See you there. Can’t WAIT to see you! xxoo Drewpea.”

From that moment on, Milly was pretty much sick whenever she thought about it. She saw Drew’s post when they arrived in New York: “Grime! Shoving! Assholes! New York, I’m back and I’m loving it!” Oh, jeez. The pic of the four of them on the stoop outside Christian’s sister’s brownstone in Brooklyn. Saturday night at dinner, Milly told her dad she was meeting them the next day.

He looked vague, like he couldn’t remember from their last conversation exactly who Drew was, never mind that she’d had twins. “That sounds jolly,” he finally said.

“I don’t wanna go,” Milly told him flatly. “I’m sick about it.”

Her dad seemed to truly look at her for the first time in a long time. “Come here,” he said, beckoning Milly to lower her head toward him.

“What?”

“Lemme see that forehead.”

She bent forward and he kissed her there.

“What was that for?” she asked him.

“For being here for me,” he said. “And for what a beauty you are.”

Milly looked at her dad’s face. His nose had to have grown about twice its size in the past ten years. That’s what happens when you age, Milly thought. Your nose grows. She was disgusted at the thought of that happening to her, though unfortunately it was already happening. For the first time in a while, she let herself cry a little, her hand on her dad’s.

“Everyone’s gone, Dad,” she said.

He started in with his head nod, vaguely side to side, like his brain was going ticktock as he weighed that idea. “A lot of people are gone,” he finally said.