Nashville Weekend

What We Refused to Say

Chapter 28: Nashville Weekend

They went to Nashville in September because Anna asked twice and then stopped asking in a way that made the invitation more urgent rather than less.

"Come see where I actually live," she had said on the phone. "Not just the portions that make it into updates."

So they drove down on a Friday after lunch with an overnight bag, Margaret's road snacks in a canvas tote, and Daniel aware he had spent years loving his daughter inside abstractions sturdy enough to survive distance.

Anna's apartment was on the second floor of a brick building in East Nashville with a narrow balcony, one dying fern she continued to defend, and stairs so steep Daniel understood immediately why she had once described moving in as "an upper-body problem."

She met them at the curb in running shoes and a black tank top, hair up, city already on her skin in the form of heat, traffic, and speed he associated with younger bodies choosing pace as lifestyle rather than emergency.

"You found it."

"The map helped," Margaret said.

Anna hugged her, then Daniel.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hi."

The apartment itself was smaller than he had imagined and more specific. Not stylish in the magazine sense. Lived in. Books in unstable stacks. A blue couch with a blanket over one arm. Plants on the windowsill at varying stages of hope. A framed print over the table that read nothing inspirational at all. The kitchen just wide enough for one person to cook and two to develop opinions.

"This is the grand tour," Anna said. "Living room. Kitchen. Bathroom. Bedroom. Balcony if you don't lean like a hero."

"It's nice," Daniel said.

"It is," Margaret replied before Anna could turn sarcasm against herself. "It feels like you."

Anna gave her a quick appreciative glance.

"Thank you."

She showed them where she'd put clean towels, where the coffee was, where the downstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling if anyone vacuumed before eight. Then she took them on foot to the taco place around the corner because, as she put it, "If I feed you in my neighborhood first, the city will feel less like a test."

At dinner she knew half the staff by face and one by name. The hostess asked whether her mother was the beautiful woman from Christmas and whether this was her father, and Daniel had the odd experience of meeting his daughter in public as herself first.

The tacos were excellent. The music too loud. Margaret happy. Anna relaxed enough that she interrupted herself without apologizing.

"How's work," Daniel asked at one point, and heard even as he said it how old the entry felt.

Anna caught it too and smiled.

"Which part."

"The actual part."

"Better," she said, letting him off lightly. "The campaign we were terrified of tanking did not tank. My boss still says let's ideate like nobody can stop him. I still fantasize about deleting every app and working at a bookstore. Normal."

"That does sound like work."

Later they walked back by side streets lined with porches and string lights and dogs who believed intensely in sidewalk jurisdiction.

On the balcony, after Margaret had gone inside to shower off the road and the restaurant heat, Anna leaned on the rail with a glass of water and looked out at the alley below where somebody was loading a guitar amp into the back of a hatchback.

"You seem different," she said.

Daniel rested his forearms on the rail, careful not to test the hero clause.

"Do I?"

"Yes." She turned the glass slowly in her hands. "Not transformed. Don't get excited. Just less like you're standing in a conversation while also preparing minutes about it."

He laughed once.

"I'll take that."

"You should. It took work to earn."

They were quiet a moment.

"Do you like it here," he asked.

Anna looked out over the alley, the power lines, the rectangle of lit windows across the street.

"Yes," she said. "And sometimes no. It's expensive and loud and lonely in a way small towns aren't because everybody's loneliness is paying higher rent." She shrugged one shoulder. "But I chose it. Which changes the loneliness."

He listened.

"I didn't know that sentence before," he said.

"No."

"I'm glad you said it."

She looked over at him, measuring the tone and then apparently finding it usable.

"I also might interview in Chicago," she said.

He felt the old machinery assemble itself at once. Salary, move, cost of living, distance, weather, timing, safety, parking, flights at holidays. The whole fathers' committee arriving in neat rows.

He kept his eyes on the alley.

"How do you feel about that?"

Anna let out a breath that might have been surprise.

"Interested. Sick about it. Flattered. Exhausted already by thinking about it."

"All right," he said.

"I'm trying."

He nodded.

"Me too."

Margaret came back out in socks and one of Anna's old college T-shirts she'd packed by mistake and refused to regret.

"What are we being sincere about?"

"Chicago," Anna said.

"Ah."

Margaret took the third chair and pulled her feet up under her.

"Do you want opinions tonight or not tonight?"

Anna smiled.

"Not tonight."

"Excellent. I had none prepared."

The city sound below them moved in waves. Car doors. A siren far off. Laughter from the building next door. Somebody practicing trumpet badly enough to count as courage.

The next morning Anna walked them to the farmer's market, to the coffee shop where she wrote on Saturdays when her apartment got too small, and past the office building where she spent weekdays translating other people's ambitions into campaigns and deadlines.

"That's my desk," she said from the sidewalk, pointing up to the third-floor windows.

"You can see your desk from outside."

"Capitalism is intimate."

At the market, a woman with sleeve tattoos and two small children stopped Anna to ask whether she'd finished the grant copy for the community arts program. Anna answered without apology or performance, then introduced Daniel and Margaret as if those roles required no extra architecture.

Saturday night they ordered takeout and ate it at Anna's small table with the windows open to late summer air and city noise.

Halfway through dinner Anna said, "I should tell you one other thing before Christmas makes it weird."

Margaret set down her fork.

"All right."

"I'm seeing someone."

Daniel looked up and then, just in time, did not ask any of the committee questions waiting in line.

"Do we know him," Margaret asked.

"No."

"Do you like him?"

Anna smiled.

"Yes."

"Does he know how to sit in a chair and answer direct questions?"

"Mostly."

"Good."

Anna looked at Daniel then, waiting.

He took a sip of water and bought himself the half-second he needed.

"How's it feel," he asked, "not whether it scans well."

Anna held his gaze a moment longer than the answer required.

"New," she said. "Calm in a way that makes me suspicious. Not boring. Just not built on adrenaline." She looked down at the takeout containers and then back up. "I wasn't going to tell you if it meant opening an audit."

"Reasonable."

"I figured."

Later, after Margaret had fallen asleep on the couch with a blanket over her knees and the city still moving outside the windows, Anna and Daniel washed dishes in the narrow kitchen where elbows had to negotiate every gesture.

"You used to come at me sideways," Anna said, handing him a plate to dry.

"I know."

"Not always on purpose. But if something actually mattered, you'd get practical first. Which meant I had to decide whether to answer the practical question or the real one underneath it."

He set the plate in the rack.

"I did that with everyone."

"Yes," she said. "But I'm everyone you took to Disney World in third grade, so it was personal."

He laughed softly.

"You earned that."

She rinsed the last fork.

"This weekend feels different."

"Good different or bad different."

Anna shook water from her hands and reached for the dish towel.

"Different like I can tell you're staying in the conversation long enough for me to use my first answer."

He dried the last bowl and set it down carefully.

"I'm glad," he said.

On Sunday morning, when they loaded the overnight bag back into the trunk, Anna stood on the sidewalk with one hand shading her eyes from the sun.

"Drive safe," she said.

"We will."

"And if you decide to panic about Chicago, at least wait until after I get the interview."

Margaret smiled.

"We'll do our best."

Anna hugged her, then Daniel.

"Love you," she said into his shoulder with the speed of a person who had practiced saying it without making it ceremonial.

"Love you too."

They pulled away from the curb and merged into the city traffic while Anna grew smaller in the side mirror and then disappeared behind a delivery van.

Daniel kept one hand on the wheel and looked at the road opening south in front of them, the city thinning into interstate, fields, and distance.

For years he had asked his daughter for updates.

Now, at least occasionally, he could picture the balcony, the table, the office window, the dying fern she insisted was resting rather than failing.