Are We There Yet? Page 12

  Danny can see that Ari is as amazed by this surreal reunion as he is. They lost touch because of the distance between New Jersey and Ohio. Now they meet up in Rome. Of course.

  Ari seems genuinely thrilled, but there's also a flicker of worry, a consciousness of time in his eyes.

  “You have to be somewhere?” Danny guesses.

  Ari nods.

  “Now?”

  “Yes—but…are you free tonight?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Dinner arrangements are made. Danny cannot stop shaking his head at the coincidence of it all. Ari says goodbye, and as he leaves, Danny can see that he's shaking his head, too.

  Still smiling, Danny heads to the old Jewish ghetto. For at least another fifteen minutes, he doesn't even think about the heat.

  Elijah awakens to the sound of rain. Or at least he thinks it's rain. It's really the hotel's ancient air conditioner, struggling unsuccessfully against the heat of the day.

  Julia is nowhere to be found. It is eleven o'clock in the morning, which means Elijah slept for at least four hours. The bathroom door is open and all the fixtures are silent—Julia is not in there, either. Elijah rolls over and throws on some clothes. After a few minutes of vague worry, he hears the key in the door. Julia walks in.

  “Where have you been?” he asks.

  “Thinking,” she replies, and it is to Elijah's credit that he realizes: To Julia, thinking is indeed a place.

  He remembers that it's July 4th, but that seems like a rude thing to mention to a Canadian. So instead he wishes her a very happy Friday, and she in turn looks at him with an almost resigned curiosity.

  “Let's go to the Colosseum,” she says, and indeed they do. Strangely enough, it is not as intact as Elijah had thought it would be. He'd imagined a full and complex building with part of the rim chipped off. But instead it looks like something unearthed from the Planet of the Apes.

  “People died here,” Julia whispers.

  Elijah pulls her into the shade and begins to kiss her. Almost immediately, he sees he's done the wrong thing. Although Julia's body doesn't move away, it feels as if she's left it. Elijah says, “Well, then,” and the two of them move on.

  They walk through the ancient city without really saying a word. Elijah wants to go to the Pantheon, but that's where Julia went while he slept. So instead they head to the Piazza Navona, in the hope of sitting down to eat. In the hope of conversation.

  Elijah can see that Julia is troubled, and it is the core of his nature to want to make it better. Whenever he says “I'm sorry,” she tells him it is not his fault. He knows this. But he is sorry just the same.

  He blames time, for there are only two days left until he must return to America. Two days left to answer the question: And now what?

  The two of them sit on a bench. Julia leans her body into his and closes her eyes. He takes this as a good sign. Although it is wretchedly hot, the sun feels good as it shines across his face. Careful not to shift away from Julia, Elijah studies his surroundings. The fountain at the heart of the piazza is beautiful, topped by an obelisk inscribed in languages from a different time. A blond boy with a pink teddy bear—he must be about six—points at an overweight couple sitting on slim cafe chairs. There is a breeze. It is nice. A group of fifty or so young Italian women passes by, trailing talk. Another boy chases pigeons. He is running in circles. Elijah closes his eyes and stays still. He and Julia are picture-perfect statues. The fountain splashes in murmurs. The breeze continues. The tourists fade away. A clock that no longer works watches over them.

  Minutes pass. Elijah opens his eyes as a bride walks by. Her long gown glides across the stone, picking up the dust of the square. She smiles at Elijah smiling. Or perhaps she doesn't see Elijah at all.

  A photographer arranges the full wedding party in front of the fountain—bride, groom, and an assemblage of family members, each with a paper fan to rustle away the heat.

  Julia pulls away from Elijah and stands. She stares for a moment at the bride and the groom. The expression on her face is a different language to Elijah. And he cannot ask for a translation, for fear of exposing an ignorance that love can't conquer.

  Love?

  Julia is walking, then waiting for Elijah to follow.

  “Julia,” he says. But she is already too far away.

  The Jewish ghetto makes Danny feel hope and sadness. Hope because the Sinagoga Ashkenazita is still there. Sadness because it must be guarded by carabinieri armed with machine guns.

  After a tour of the Jewish Museum, Danny heads to the Piazza Navona. He has heard that the fountain is beautiful, and it does not disappoint. A wedding party is having its picture taken in front of the obelisk. From the ragged state of their smiles, Danny can tell they've been at it for a little while. The photographer is manipulating the group into preposterous poses, using a lamppost as a prop. The groom lovingly arranges the bride's dress so that she may sit. In this heat, the bride is no doubt wishing she'd worn a miniskirt. The groom is clearly itching to take off his jacket and dive into the water.

  Tourists take pictures of the photographer taking pictures.

  Danny sits on a bench and watches. In a nearby cafe, a lunchtime guitarist is singing “Knockin' on Heaven's Door,” only the refrain sounds much more like “Knock, knock, knockin' on lemon's door.”

  Soon the song turns to another song. And another. Danny sits and listens and watches as the people pass by.

  At long last, the wedding photographs are done. Joy returns to the faces of the bride and the groom. He lifts her up and swings her through the air. The photographer fumbles for his camera, but he is too late. As the bride and groom parade back through the square, the bride looks at Danny and gives a little smile and salute. Danny smiles back, and wonders where such familiarity came from.

  “Let's get dressed up for dinner,” Julia says. It is the end of the day—all the ruins have been visited, all the squares have been crossed. Elijah is exhausted.

  “I'm not sure I have anything to wear,” he confesses.

  “Didn't you bring a suit?”

  “I'm not sure I own a suit.”

  “I'll bet Danny brought a suit.”

  “I'll bet Danny couldn't travel without one. Just in case there was, you know, a business emergency.”

  Julia pulls a sleeveless black dress from her bag.

  “Do you have anything that would remotely go with this?”

  “What's the occasion?”

  “Isn't it your Independence Day? Or maybe I just want to take you out to a wonderful dinner. Do you think you could deal with that?”

  “I think I could manage.” Elijah triumphantly pulls a tie from the bottom of his bag.

  Julia applauds and slips off her clothes. Before Elijah can react, she is putting on the dress.

  She looks even more beautiful with it on.

  Danny is nervous that Ari won't show up. He has been looking forward to this too much—he is relying too heavily on a random encounter. He paces the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for twenty minutes—fifteen minutes before Ari is supposed to show and five minutes after. Danny is worried that he misheard the directions. He is worried he is waiting at the wrong place, for the wrong person.

  Then Ari appears, apologizing the five minutes away. He shakes Danny's hand and ushers him in the door. The maitre d' seems to know him, and the table they get has a spectacular view of the nighttime alleyways.

  “I'm so glad I found you,” Ari says, sitting down.

  “Likewise.”

  It has been so many years, but they plunge into them quickly. Danny says he can't believe Ari is already a pilot, and Ari tells him how it came to be. He dropped out of Harvard for flight school, which caused his parents no end of grief.

  “Is your mom still in Ohio?” Danny asks.

  Ari nods. “Same house. Same life. Her gallery keeps getting bigger and bigger—she just bought out the jeweler next door, so she can expand again.”

  “And yo
ur father?”

  “What wife was he on when we last wrote to each other?”

  “The second, I think. No wait—he was just starting with …Laureen.”

  “I can't believe you remember her name!” Ari exclaims. (Neither can Danny, for that matter.) “She actually never made it to the altar. Dad left her for Gail. Now he's with Wanda, soon to be wife number four.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “I like that she's his age.”

  “Does your mom still make those raisin cookies?”

  “Yup. You are still, to this day, the only person who liked them without raisins.”

  “I didn't appreciate raisins back then.”

  “You always wanted chocolate chips.”

  The waiter makes a third pass at the table, and Danny and Ari finally take up their menus. Danny steals glances at Ari as Ari carefully reads the selections. He wasn't a particularly attractive kid, but he's grown up to be an attractive man. Not that Danny can really tell. But he takes some satisfaction that it's not only the bastards who get good looks. Danny remembers back when they were in camp—every body change seemed like an event, shocking and fascinating, the prelude to such alien phenomena as sex and shaving. Now they've crossed over to that other world. They are comfortable within their own skin (or at least Ari seems to be).

  Did they even think about the real future back then? Did they just assume they'd be friends forever?

  Danny cannot remember what his younger self foretold.

  Julia takes Elijah to a room lit only by candles. There are other people within it, but they are only flickers in the background, sounds in the air.

  “This is wonderful,” Elijah says. He had tried to stop at an ATM on the way, but Julia wouldn't let him. “It's my night,” she had said.

  The owner gave Elijah a jacket at the door. Julia said it made him look dashing. Like a film star.

  Now she watches intently as he unfolds his napkin and places it on his lap. She is taking him all in.

  He picks up the menu, but she waves him down.

  “Allow me,” she says.

  The waiter approaches. His hair is the color of burnt embers. Julia orders for them both, her Italian faltering in parts.

  The waiter nods, understanding. Two minutes later, he is back with the wine, which Julia sips to her satisfaction. The room is warm, and Elijah can feel himself settling into the candlelight glow. The waiter pours the wine. Julia smiles secretly.

  “A toast,” she says, raising her glass. “To the end.”

  “I was engaged once,” Ari tells Danny. “I really thought she was the one. I really thought, This is it. I met her while I was in school—we volunteered at the same shelter. Perfect, right? She was a nurse, so that made scheduling a little hard. But we managed. For three years, we managed. I proposed to her the first time she flew with me. My instructor lent me his Cessna. At first, Anna was really nervous—she wasn't a big fan of flying. But I asked her to trust me, and she did. I took her up over the Rockies—it was a gorgeous day, you could see everything. When we hit ten thousand feet, I put on the autopilot, pulled the ring from my pocket, leaned over to her, and asked her to marry me. Right away, she said yes.

  “I thought that was the hard part, but I was wrong. We moved in together, which was great when we were both there, but we weren't both there a lot. I graduated, and Continental picked me up. Denver was still my home base, but I had to go wherever they wanted me to go. At first, Anna understood this. She supported it. But after a while it wore us both down. Finally, one night I came home—it must have been two in the morning—and she said it was too much. She said she wasn't sure she was old enough to be anybody's wife. And she sure as hell wasn't old enough to be a pilot's wife. I couldn't argue with her. We both realized we'd gotten as far as we could go, and that the only way to go from there was backward. And neither of us wanted to go through that.”

  Ari pauses and takes another sip of his water. “How about you? Anything like that?”

  Danny shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Not even a little.”

  At first, Elijah thinks he's misunderstood her. Or that she's misunderstood him.

  “To the end?” he asks.

  “To the end,” she repeats, taking a sip of wine.

  “But tomorrow's my last night. I leave Sunday.”

  “I know.”

  He still doesn't get it.

  “So why is this the end?”

  Julia puts down her glass and says, simply, “Because it is.”

  Danny is amazed that he feels so comfortable. He is amazed that while there are some people you can see every day and not say a word to, there are other people whom you can see once a year—or once a decade, or once a life—and say anything.

  “How's your brother?” Ari asks. “God, he must be old now, right? I remember you writing to me about how you were going to teach him multiplication, even though he was only four. You were going to make him the smartest kid in his nursery school class.”

  Danny starts off by saying Elijah's fine. Then he finds himself telling Ari everything that's happened—from the moment he got his parents' call to the moment Elijah left the hotel room in Florence. He remembers that Ari has two brothers of his own—two brothers and three stepsisters.

  Ari listens carefully. Danny isn't just talking to say things aloud. He is talking directly to him.

  “I don't know how we got this way, Ari. I don't know when I stopped wanting to help him, or even when I stopped wanting him to be smart. I dreaded coming here with him. I really didn't want him to come—I figured I'd be happier alone. And I don't know whether it's because he was here and then he left, or whether I was just wrong in the first place, but right now I wish he was here. Not at this table with us. But I just wish I knew where he was.”

  “It's hard.”

  “Yeah, it's hard.”

  Ari puts down his fork and looks right into Danny's eyes.

  “Brothers are not like sisters,” he says. From his tone, Danny can tell this is something he's learned. “They don't call each other every week. They don't have secret worlds to share. Can you think of two brothers who are really, inseparably close? No, for brothers it's a different set of rules. Like it or not, we're held to the bare minimum. Will you be there for him if he needs you? Of course. Should you love him without question? Absolutely. But those are the easy things. Do you make him a large part of your life, an equal to a wife or a best friend? At the beginning, when you're kids, the answer is often yes. But when you get to high school, or older? Do you tell him everything? Do you let him know who you really are? The answer is usually no. Because all these other things get in the way. Girlfriends. Rebellion. Work.”

  “So this is normal?” Danny asks.

  “Don't go for normal,” Ari suggests. “Go for happy. Go for what you want it to be instead of settling for what it is.”

  Elijah doesn't see how he and Julia can go on with the meal, but they do. She asks him about home, and he finds himself telling her about the time Mindy got fired from her temp job at the Gap because she couldn't fold properly, and the time his friends Max and Cindy got caught making out in Cindy's parents' bed. Her parents never said a word about it, but her mother threw out the sheets.

  Julia is laughing, and Elijah is smiling, and to any other person in the room they must look like a happy couple. But all Elijah can think is, It's over. And there's nothing in Julia's face that says anything different.

  “What do you want?” Julia asks over dessert.

  “From what?” Elijah asks.

  “From love. I mean, from the person you're with.”

  “Love is enough,” Elijah answers.

  Julia shakes her head. “It's more complicated than that. I know I'm only, what, three years older than you? But let me tell you, it can get so complicated. Try to keep it simple. Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and
play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it into our heads that we need to get that feeling—that intimacy—from a single someone else. We call that growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find.”

  When dessert is over, Julia pays with a Gold Card. Then she touches Elijah's hand and tells him it's probably time to get his things.

  She seems sad when she says it. But he can tell he's not going to change her mind.

  Ari walks Danny back to the hotel. He has an early flight the next morning, otherwise they'd probably walk all night. They are talking tangents now, but somehow the tangents connect. Ari is talking about all the places he's been. Danny feels like they are all the places he wants to go. The Sahara. Budapest. Sydney. New York.

  Danny pulls Ari into a 7-Eleven and shows him the Italian translation of his work. Ari is amused, and asks if the snack cake is suitable for framing. Danny says he doesn't think so—but perhaps that can be the slogan for the new Pop-Tarts campaign.

  Ari wants to buy one of the Divines, but Danny is afraid he might actually try to eat it. So instead they get Slurpees—their own shamelessly American way of celebrating the Fourth of July.

  “So your job sounds like fun,” Ari says as they leave the convenience store.

  Danny nods. “I'm afraid that's the problem. Maybe I enjoy it too much.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Someday we'll have a balance, right?”

  “Someday. Yes.”

  Across Rome, towers chime midnight. Danny raises his Slurpee in a toast.