Theo took classical music and art history. He sat in acoustically designed rooms listening to Mozart’s eleventh piano sonata spiral through the air. He sat in other dark rooms and stared at slides of important paintings like Seurat’s Invitation to the Sideshow. Theo thought of Antoinette at the age of twenty-three meandering through the Met in New York, studying the original painting. This made him feel less lost, that they might have gazed upon the same painting or listened to the same Mozart sonata.
In the afternoons before he headed to the T station, Theo watched ballet class. It was held in the school’s dance studio, where they had a grand piano played by a white-haired gentleman whose hands trembled when they weren’t moving over the keys. Theo watched the dancers go through their stretches at the barre, their plies, their positions. He appreciated the lines of their bodies as they twirled. Some of the girls noticed him staring, and they scowled, or they smiled. They thought that he lusted after them with normal teenage-boy hormones. They had no idea that when Theo watched them dance he was drinking of the one time he’d seen Antoinette dance, her arms flowing, her back bending. He was drinking of how his mother described Antoinette in the last moment she saw her, up at Great Point. She danced into the water, his mother said.
After ballet class, Theo bought a PayDay bar from the subway kiosk and sat on a bench on the grimy platform of the Harvard T station watching people. Sometimes ten trains would screech into the station and pull out again before Theo finally boarded one. He got lost in his thoughts; occasionally he swam around in his old life, afternoons at the Islander liquor store, a hundred years ago, a million miles away.
Am I transforming? he wondered.
Pregnant women were everywhere in Boston, and Theo saw Antoinette in each one. Antoinette growing soft and round with his baby.
Theo spoke very little to his grandmother and that seemed to be okay. She had plenty of other people to talk to. She’d created a life for herself that seemed to revolve primarily around shopping for dinner. It was very European, she claimed, to make numerous stops, and with each stop, enjoy a conversation. Sabrina chattered away with Joe the butcher, Helen at the bakery, Dominic at the fish store, Nathan with Down’s syndrome who bagged at the regular grocery, and a young man named Gianlorenzo who worked in the shop in the North End where Sabrina went to buy cannoli, fresh marinara, and ricotta pies. Sabrina was a great cook and an extravagant wine drinker-she adored the reds of France, which, she told him, were more expensive than his tuition at Boston Hill. But worth it! Sabrina poured Theo a glass with every meal-her paella, her osso buco, her Peking duck. Theo started to gain weight. Am I transforming? he wondered.
Weekends were the most painful days because he was removed from his school routine. On Saturdays, he slept as late as he could, hoping that when he rolled over, the blue numbers of his digital clock would say eleven or twelve so that at least the morning would be over with. Sabrina made him breakfast-granola, yogurt, strawberries-and always invited him on an excursion-strolling along the Charles, studying the gravestones at Old North Church, visiting die MFA. Theo always said no.
“I don’t blame you,” Sabrina said. “I’m an old woman. Not much fun.”
“You’re fun,” Theo said. “It’s me who’s no fun.” On Saturdays at home, his mother made him do chores in the morning and then he went to the Whalers games with his friends. Here, in Boston, he had no friends. On Saturday afternoons he rode Antoinette’s bike down to the FAO Schwarz on Newbury Street where he waited to see pregnant women, even though the pregnant women Theo found never failed to disappoint him-Diet Coke in one hand, bag of M&M’s in the other, puffy-faced, swaybacked and miserable looking.
He allowed himself one fantasy per day: autumn on Nantucket with Antoinette. Theo sitting with her on the back deck, Theo peeling her an apple, slicing a piece of cheese. Listening to the Canada geese pass overhead, Antoinette wrapped in a nubby wool sweater, Theo placing his hand on her stomach and feeling his baby kick.
He masturbated exactly once a week-Saturday night-in the shower. It made him incredibly sad.
One night, when Theo had been living with Sabrina for just over a month, she made an old-fashioned meatloaf slathered with ketchup. It seemed uncharacteristically staid-a dowdy old meatloaf made by a woman wearing a fuchsia pantsuit with a matching head scarf. Sabrina’s long, manicured nails clicked against the plates as she set them down.
“This was your father’s favorite food growing up,” she said.
Theo picked up his fork. “Really?” Sabrina had said surprisingly little about his father since he’d arrived. She hadn’t mentioned his mother or his siblings at all. Theo sometimes caught Sabrina staring at him in a way that let him know she was trying to read his mind. He stared back, sending her the message, Please don’t ask, Sabrina. I’m not ready. But now as Theo ate the delicious, oniony meatloaf, he felt ready. “Has Dad called?”
“Twice,” Sabrina said. “While you were at school. Should I have told you?”
Theo shrugged. He was so busy longing for Antoinette that he didn’t have the energy to miss the rest of his family, not as he should. “What did he say?”
“He asked how you were doing.”
“What did you tell him?”
I said you were quiet, but that you were doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances.”
“Do you know the circumstances?”
“I know that you’ve learned a difficult lesson,” Sabrina said. She put her fork down and moved her hand across the table toward him. “I know that you’ve lost someone you loved.”
“Yes,” he said. Tears rose at his grandmother’s words. Finally, an acknowledgment of what was really wrong. He’d lost someone he loved-not one person but two-because Theo loved the baby Antoinette was carrying. Loved it with a fierceness that surpassed anything he’d ever felt. “They’re lost. Lost. Antoinette and… my baby. Antoinette was pregnant.”
“Yes,” Sabrina said. Her eyes shone with tears. “I know.”
“She wanted to have an abortion, and I was trying to stop her. I didn’t want her to kill our baby.”
“That’s understandable, Theo.”
“She disappeared to get away from me,” Theo said. “I think. But lately I’ve been having doubts. I’ve been wondering, you know, what if it was an accident? What if she is dead? Because what I picture is her living in Hawaii or something, you know, hiding from me.”
“They haven’t found her body,” Sabrina said. “Your father told me that much.”
“So she’s still alive, maybe,” Theo said.
He and his grandmother ate in silence as it grew dark. Then Sabrina cleared their plates and lit some candles.
“You’re going to think I’m nutty,” she said. “And you’ll be right, of course. But would you like me to ask the Madame?”