Page 8 of The Night We Lost Him

In the aftermath, I’ve felt a twisted, long overdue loyalty to her—especially when it came to my father. I couldn’t seem to help it, even knowing my mother never harbored any anger toward him herself.

My own anger may not seem to make a lot of sense, then. Part of it was that he tried to take on a more daily role in my life (something he’d never had), which only exasperated my feeling that the wrong person was doing it. The other part was a strange side effect of my grief—the unmitigated grief I felt since losing my mother.

It had suddenly felt wrong to allow my father to occupy any emotional terrain in her absence. So I left the space empty, digging into that parental void on my own. Hurtling myself toward a simple, impossible mission: I could keep her as close as when she was alive.

Now that my father is gone too, I can’t deny that I was on the wrong mission. The distance I kept from him didn’t bring her back any more than it softened the pain of losing him now.

Where does that leave me, though? What good is knowing that you were wrong when there is no one left to hear you say that you’re sorry?

The subway lurches forward, then stops completely, the lights going out.

An irritated murmur fills the car, but I feel relieved that, as my eyes fill with tears, no one else can see.

* * *

When I get off the subway, it’s started to snow.

I live so far out in Brooklyn that my subway stop is aboveground, snowflakes starting to stick to my coat—to my skin—as soon as I step outside.

I love everything about my neighborhood, even how long it takes to get here. It’s an area of Flatbush called Ditmas Park. It is historic Brooklyn—more small town than major city—with quiet streets, dogwood trees, old Victorian houses. A professor of mine in architecture school lived in one of those houses and rented me a room on a sliding scale. When her husband ended up taking a job in Northern California and she moved out west to join him, she let me lease the whole house until I could put together enough money to buy it from her.

My house is a mint-green Victorian, complete with its original staircase and stained-glass windows, its parquet floors. Pocket doors. Boxed vegetable gardens in the backyard.

I feel a surge of relief as my block of Marlborough Road comes into view, the respite of my home in striking distance.

But tonight, instead of heading that way, I follow the Christmas lights on Cortelyou Road into the heart of Ditmas Park’s restaurants and bars—and my favorite local restaurant, Sheet Music, the name (and the small wooden sign hanging above the door) a relic from when it was a guitar shop.

Now its chef serves wood-fired pizza and elevated farm-to-table comfort food in a space I designed with him. The two of us reimagined the main room together, working to incorporate contemporary details—plaster walls, a stainless-steel canopy over a central dining counter, vintage chairs—while maintaining its former life as a music store, highlighting the tin ceilings and the baby grand piano, brown and lush, in the restaurant’s far corner.

The restaurant was (and is) a passion project of mine.

This makes more sense when you know the chef is also my fiancé, Jack.

I take the side gate and walk around back to the service entrance, peeking into the dining room as I walk past. It’s bustling and full, music seeping out through the windows, the lights low and inviting.

It’s Friday night, which—at least in our little corner of the world—is the busiest night of the week: first dates (and last dates), after-work cocktails, parents wanting a New York City nightcap before disappearing into their family weekends.

I pull open the back door and step into the steamy kitchen, laying eyes on Jack at his station. He is wearing his chef whites and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, his handsome face (my favorite face) sweaty and focused.

I breathe easier just at the sight of him, my heartbeat picking up. It’s the same weird combination of elation and calmness that comes over me whenever I see him at the end of a long day, taking in his skin and his hands and that face. Even now. Even still.

Jack is a year and change into being my fiancé, but he started off as my boyfriend more than twenty-five years ago; though, admittedly, boyfriend is overstating what we were to each other. He sat in front of me in eighth grade woodshop. I don’t remember actively clocking that he was cute, even though he was really cute: tall and lanky with curly hair and dark eyes.

What I remember about him, though, was how he carried himself. Even if I didn’t know how to name it, I could feel how comfortable he was in his own skin. He was sure of himself in a way that most eighth grade boys weren’t. In a way that, I’d come to learn, a lot of grown men weren’t.

He made it clear in how he spoke. His voice was gentle and kind and fleshy, like he belonged on the radio as opposed to sitting on a wooden bench in last period. Like he was only going to speak if he was certain that what he was saying was true.

It made me like being around him. It made me want to be around him more.

I think this is why (though I’m not sure we really ever know why) I did something completely out of character for my eighth grade self. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if he wanted to come get some ice cream with me after class. Does that count as asking someone on a date? It was certainly the closest I’d ever come in my thirteen years on the planet.

Jack, to his credit, didn’t make it the least bit weird, even though that was the first time in his thirteen years anyone had asked.

Sure… he said, as though his cheeks weren’t turning red. I like ice cream.

That afternoon, we biked to the A&P and ate our cookies and cream waffle cones by the river. It was one of a handful of outings before his family moved out west to Mill Valley, a small town just north of San Francisco.

We didn’t see each other again until we were adults. I was on a first date at a much-discussed restaurant near Madison Square Park with a patent lawyer who also happened to be one of the restaurant’s investors. After our meal, he tried to impress me by taking me into the kitchen to meet the chef.

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