WE WERE LAYING ON her bed this one time, Mrs. Maretto and me. Most times after we did it she’d want to get right up and take a shower, but this time was different. She lets me just lay there, leaned up on the pillows, and she’s laying next to me, bare naked. Don’t ask me why, with a body like she got, but after that one time she did her cheerleading for me, she was shy about me seeing her. “What are you looking at?” she’d say. “Then she’d turn off the lights or pull up the covers or something. But this time she didn’t seem to mind. I didn’t want to stare, but it was the first time I ever got to see a girl like that, all the parts together at once, and not in a magazine but for real. She was just so pretty. I was scared if I reached out to touch her she might remember she didn’t have nothing on and cover up. So I just lay there, trying not to look too hard. Thinking, This is all I ask for. If she’ll just stay with me, I won’t need nobody else.
She’s petting me, kind of like she used to pet Walter. Real gentle. She rubs her hands over my chest. I’m wishing I had hair there. Figuring Larry probably does, him being Italian, and old. But she’s with me, not with him, right? So I guessed it was OK I didn’t.
She musses up my hair, kind of like those moms on TV shows that muss up their kid’s hair when they’re running out the door to play baseball or catch the school bus. Come back here and have something to eat. Then they hand the kid a Pop Tart. Those moms that shake their head, only you know they aren’t really mad at their kid. Really, they love him. Mrs. Maretto was like that. “You silly boy,” she’d say. “You idiot.” But you knew she liked you.
I get up from the bed and put on the tape that was playing when we were making love. Motley Crüe, Theater of Pain. Then I get back in bed next to her, put my arms around her and stuff. She was facing the wall, curled up like. Even though she was married, with a car and everything, I always had this feeling like I’ve got to take care of her. She was so delicate and sensitive.
When she turned around there was a tear on her cheek. “What is it?” I say. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she says. “You don’t understand. You never could. If I didn’t love you so much I wouldn’t be crying this way.”
“What then? What’s the matter? You gotta tell me.”
“I can’t go on this way,” she says. “I can’t keep living a lie. Loving you and then seeing him walk in the door, wanting to kiss me and everything. I feel like I’m a split personality. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”
“You think it’s easy for me, going home and leaving you here, knowing he gets to sleep with you?” I say. “Just thinking about him touching you, kissing you, I go nuts.”
“If all he wanted to do was make love that would be bad enough,” she says. “But that’s not all. When he drinks he gets violent. He can tell I don’t love him anymore. And instead of accepting it, he won’t leave me alone.”
“You got to divorce this guy,” I say. “You got to get away from him.”
“You don’t understand,” she says. “He’s violent as it is. If he knew there was someone else, if he knew he couldn’t have me, he’d never leave me alone. And then there’s Walter. I know Larry. He’d take Walter. And I’d have nothing.”
That’s when I told her I wanted to marry her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. She was all I ever needed. “Look,” I said. “I may be young and I may not be some hot-shit restaurant owner, but I swear to you, I’ll always take care of you. I’ll never let you down. I’d do anything to make you happy.”
For some reason this just makes her cry more. Now she’s got her face buried in the pillow and her whole body’s shaking. I put my hand on her shoulder, I lay down on top of her just to stop the shaking. “Suzanne,” I say. “Suzanne. Suzanne.” It’s the first time I ever called her that. I just kept saying it.
“I can’t see you anymore,” she says. “I can’t see you ever again.”
For a minute there—Jesus, I don’t know how long—I couldn’t even talk. I couldn’t hardly breathe. Everything I ever heard about that people sing about, having their heart broke, that was me. The room’s spinning. It’s like someone punched me in the gut. It’s like—what can I say?—it was like nothing would ever be OK again in my whole life.
“No,” I say. “There’s got to be another way. I love you too much to ever let you go.”
“And I love you too,” she says.
“I’d do anything,” I say. “I’d die for you.”
“Larry would never leave us alone,” she says. “He’d be like that woman in Fatal Attraction. He’d never give me any peace.”
All I could do was keep saying it. I love you. I love you.
“He used to say if he couldn’t have me, he’d want to be dead,” she said. “And I believe it. He’d lose his mind.”
I said I saw a show one time where that happened. Guy went mental, ended up in the state hospital, drooling and banging his head against the wall.
“Larry wouldn’t want to live if he knew I’d stopped loving him,” she says.
“I know how he feels,” I say. “But me, I could never lay a finger on you, to hurt you. A guy does that to someone like you, he doesn’t deserve to live.”
And that’s when she says it. “Well,” she says. “I did have this one idea.”