In my small studio, I begin my new life without him. I buy two bookcases for my books and a low-maintenance plant. I paint the bathroom sky blue and the kitchen a rich red. I take a kickboxing class. I teach four writing classes and work on the novel I’ve been meaning to write since I finished my MFA. Four writer friends and I meet regularly to critique one another’s work. Spring comes again. Cherry blossoms fill the trees, dropping their pink petals to the ground below. The air grows sweet and heady with the scent of flowers. People emerge from their homes, eyes bright, skin pale from the months of rain, and roam the streets. I feel their hunger, their readiness for something new and exciting. Or maybe that’s just me.
My writer friends and I go to bars and to see live music.
And my parade of boys continues.
First, Homeless. A friend names him this for his long, unkempt hair. He sits on my bed talking for hours about the organic farm he plans to run someday while I wait for us to have sex. A week later, when I run into him, he introduces me to his friend as Sarah. Then Eurhythmy, a boy who can sound out words through dance. He practices dance moves in a white robe, the official uniform of eurhythmy dancers. During my time with Eurhythmy, one of my friends tells me he tried to order a Big Mac in eurhythmy, but they turned him away.
“I don’t understand,” he had said. “I was wearing the robe and everything.”
Next is Hold the Phone—he says this to me during sex because he doesn’t want to come too soon. Another friend says “hold the phone” every time she makes me wait on the line while she answers her call-waiting.
We laugh and laugh.
When I’m with these boys, I’m still caught up with wanting more, hoping they’ll love me. But I have to admit, I’m beginning to see the humor.
Somewhere in all of this, I decide to contact Leif. Thinking about my relationship with Toby and how I reached that low point brings me back to him, how I never really got over what happened between us. All this time, I’ve never found a way to close the space he occupies in my heart. The fact is, I still love him.
Leif is surprised to hear from me. We chat gregariously for a half hour, and then I ask if I can visit. I didn’t plan to ask, but now that we’re talking, I feel how much I miss him. He’s not seeing anyone, and neither am I. Maybe there’s a chance we could make things work again.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because I’d like to see you.” I bite the inside of my cheek, nervous.
“I don’t know.”
I wait, my heart heavy. I caused his reluctance, I know. But it feels awful he isn’t as anxious to see me as I am to see him.
“I can come next month,” I say. “Just a couple days.”
“You really want to come.”
“I do.”
“OK,” he says. “Let me know when you get the ticket.”
The week before I leave, Terri comes over and helps me pack. She lends me a black slip dress, which I try on before I put it in my suitcase.
“Do you think he’ll be attracted?” I ask. I turn to look at my butt, which always looks big to me, no matter what I’m wearing.
“Is he blind?” she asks back. She sits on my bed, holding the glass of wine I poured for her.
I laugh. “I’m so nervous,” I say. I pull the dress over my head, not wanting to think anymore about what I’ll look like to him, whether he’ll still think I’m pretty. “Why am I so fucking nervous?”
“You haven’t seen him in two years,” she says. She hands me the glass of wine. “That’s a long time when you still love someone.”
“I want him to still love me.”
“Just get down there,” she says. “You’ll get your answers when you’re with him.”
When the plane lands in Tucson, I powder any shine off my face. I reapply lip gloss and fluff up my hair. Then I walk with the other passengers into the terminal. Everyone hugs and exclaims. But Leif isn’t there. I walk toward baggage claim. I look out the doors to see if he’s waiting in his car. But he’s nowhere. After everyone else on my flight is long gone, I go to a pay phone and dial his number, but there’s no answer. I sit against the wall and try to decide what to do. Just as I stand to try to call him again, I see him loping up the stairs. The same goofy walk he always had, his dark hair shining under the airport’s fluorescent lights. Soon after we first got together he told me he was a human “L” because of his long feet and short stature. My heart fills.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I ran a little late.”
I hug him, his scent, that same familiar scent, surrounding me.
“You look good,” I say. “I like the hair.” I rustle his hair, which is cut short now.
“Yeah?” He touches his hair, and I see in the gesture his insecurity. He feels like I do, nervous and uncertain about how this will go.
I follow him out to his car, not the one he had when I left him, but a van. I watch him as he drives, my Leif, no longer mine with his new hair, his new van. At his apartment, where he lives with one other guy who isn’t there this weekend, he pulls me into another hug. We hold each other a moment, just feeling that after all this time. In his bedroom, there’s a framed photograph of him and a girl. A pretty girl. They’re both tan, their smiles big. Another photo shows him and the same girl from behind as they run hand-in-hand into the ocean.
“That’s in Nogales,” he says. “It’s only an hour’s drive from here.”
“Who is this?” I ask. I don’t look at him, not wanting him to see me. Jealousy’s such an ugly emotion.
“Sarah,” he says. “We went out for a year after the girl from the band.” I watch him look at the picture, trying to gauge what he feels.
“Were you in love with her?”
“Yeah.”
I sit on his bed and take off my shoes.
“Let’s have sex,” I say.
“What?” He laughs, uncomfortable, but his eyes are on me now, not the photo.
I lift my shirt and I set it aside. Underneath I’m not wearing a bra. Then I stand and unbutton my jeans. “Come here.”
He does, and I reach for him. I yank off his shirt, and then his pants. I pull him on top of me, my mouth on his. He gets inside of me, but still it’s not close enough. I want to feel him again. To know him, like I used to, the last two years—and that girl—erased. I want things back to what they were, when I didn’t question whether he was mine. But it’s different. Little things. The way he touches me down there. The way he moves. I don’t recognize our sex as ours. I used to feel so bored with the predictability of our sex, but now I long for its familiarity, to feel that we still know each other so intimately.
Late in the afternoon, we drive up into the Catalina Mountains. As the road ascends, saguaro cacti give way to Arizona oak and Douglas fir trees. In the distance, the range’s sandy slopes, lined with wind and water erosion, look like a woman’s curves. The afternoon sun sends shoots of orangey light onto the road. This is where I had planned to live, among the southwest’s dusty, airy landscape. Ever since my father and I traveled to Taos, I was sure I belonged here. Now it belongs to Leif. For the first time I see the meaning. Leif applied to the school here after he knew I wanted to come. He came out here to be with me.
We set up camp on a raised ridge where we watch the sun sink into a ravine. It’s too warm for a fire, but he makes one anyway, and he opens a bottle of beer for me.
“So, here you are,” he says, and he raises his bottle.
“Here I am.” I clink his with mine.
“I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”
I take a breath. “Sometimes I wish I never left.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I watch him, wanting to say the right thing. “I was confused. I needed to get out of here for a while and find something else.” He looks up at the star-filled sky while I talk. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I want to make this better, to tell him the truth after all this time, but I’m not even sure what that is. “It wasn’t about you. I was empty, and no one, not even you, could have filled me.”
He looks back at me now, and I see he’s crying. After all this time, he’s crying. “You just left me.”
My throat clenches. I see what I’ve done, how much I’ve hurt him, this man I care for. “Oh, God, Leif,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” I get up and hold him, and he sobs like a little boy in my arms. “I wish I could take it back.” I really, really do.
The next night I watch his band perform at a bar, and I see how settled he is here. He has friends and flirtations. People know him as Sarah’s ex, not my ex. They don’t know me at all. The following morning, Leif drives me to the airport and we hug good-bye. I’ve been a fool in the past. That’s for sure. But I’m not disillusioned enough to think we’ll be together now. He has a whole life he’s happy in, and his life no longer includes me.
AT THE END of July, I fly across the country to attend an artists’ colony in Vermont. I fly into New Jersey, where I’ll see my dad for a day and pick up a car. Then I’ll drive to the Berkshires to see my grandmother, who is alone since my grandfather passed, and finally to see Bevin before I head up to Vermont. On the flight over, I sit next to a handsome, well-groomed boy. Three hours into it, we make out. I can see by the little tent in his pants that he’d like us to do more. I briefly consider jerking him off under the tiny airline blanket, but he doesn’t push for it, so I don’t offer. We exchange numbers, but he lives in Philadelphia, and I’m on a tight schedule this trip. I know I won’t see him again.
Dad takes his new girlfriend and me out for dinner at an Italian restaurant we went to often when I lived here. Perhaps it’s the familiarity of the place that leads me to tell his girlfriend about the things Dad did when I was a teenager. Or perhaps it’s been brewing inside me too long. Over dessert and coffee, I tell her how he used to make sexually suggestive comments about my friends, be inappropriate in front of me with his girlfriend, and smoke pot with my friends. With each debasement I mention, she slaps Dad hard on the arm.
“What’s wrong with you?” she says with play anger.
He laughs uncomfortably. “It was years ago.” And then, “Check, please.”
“You can’t run from your past,” I tell him, and smile.
“Maybe not,” he says. “But I don’t have to sit here and take this abuse.”
“Yes, you do,” his girlfriend says.
The waiter places the check on the table.
“Everything was OK?” he asks.
“Everything but the food and company,” Dad says, his standard joke.
“And you have to pay for our dinner after we abuse you,” his girlfriend says after the waiter walks away. I smile, thinking of Nora and her list of what men are good for. I guess Dad likes this sort of teasing from his women. I know inside he believes it’s true. He has to do things for the women in his life to be worthy of them, to make up for all his mistakes.
Dad gets his wallet out. He shakes his head and laughs while he pulls out an American Express. “That’s right,” he says. “I’ll never be paid up, will I?”
I just laugh and raise my eyebrows. That’s for him to determine.
His girlfriend goes to bed early, and Dad and I sit in the living room. He turns on the TV and lights a cigarette, his two biggest vices. He’s too old to still be smoking and though I shouldn’t encourage him, I light one too.
“What really happened with Nora?” I ask.
Dad sighs. He leans back and blows out smoke in a thin stream. “A lot of things happened,” he says. “You know how relationships go.”
I do. “What sorts of things?”
“For one, she drank too much.”
“Really?” Images of Nora come back to me, the glass of wine always in her hand. And the night they came home, her weird looseness, her breath reeking. “I guess I never understood that.”
“I didn’t feel you had to know.”
I nod, appreciating he thought to protect me like that.
“There were other things. Her insecurity. My immaturity.” He smiles.
“You’re getting pretty old to be pleading immaturity,” I tell him.
He smiles again. “True story.”
“So what about this one?” I nod my head in the direction of his bedroom. “Are you feeling more mature?”
He raises his eyebrows, looks toward the TV a moment. “Let’s just say I don’t expect her to be perfect this time.”
“So you are more mature.”
“Maybe I am.”
Later I find my senior high school yearbook and sit on my childhood bed. In my picture I gaze out at the camera, not smiling. My makeup is too heavy, my nails bitten down and ragged. It’s easy to see how unhappy I was, why I made all those bad choices I did with the boys in Manhattan and with Heath and the Jennifers. I flip through the rest of the book, looking for myself there. My classmates fill the pages, playing soccer and volleyball, performing in plays. They look happy, involved. But I’m nowhere to be found. I close the book and put it away, sadness filling my chest. I want to believe I’m different now. I’ve overcome the pain that made me act so impulsively and harmfully. But I don’t really know if that’s the case.
AFTER I SPEND time with Bevin, I start my retreat in Vermont. The summer here is hot. The landscape is lush and green. Birds lazily circle overhead. Crisp river water rushes by beneath a bridge. Days, I work on my novel. When I grow restless, I walk in the warm sun down to the main house, hoping to find others procrastinating too. Or I head up to the gym in the college nearby and run on the treadmill. There aren’t any boys for me here, but it’s one of those rare times I’m OK with this. I like the friends I’ve made, especially three painters—all guys—with whom I go to the local bar some nights. We shoot pool or sit with beers and cigarettes and discuss music and art. I’m attracted to one, Frank, who has sharp blue eyes and skin around them that crinkles when he smiles, but he’s married, so I don’t go there.
The first week, Frank and Jerry, another painter, and I go to the bar, which is two miles away in the next town. Locals play pool and classic rock sails down from overhead speakers. When I order wine, the bartender, a scruffy man with a big belly, laughs at me and then calls into the back for someone to find the box of Franzia. Frank laughs at me too.
“You don’t come from a place like this, do you?”
“And you do?” I smile.
“I know my way around a dive bar.”
“Maybe that isn’t something to be so proud of.” I light a cigarette. I can feel those blue eyes on me, the way he’s watching my mouth. Jerry gets up to watch the pool game, maybe feeling something happening he doesn’t want to be a part of.
“You think you’re so smart, writer girl,” Frank says.
“I do.”
He pulls a cigarette from my pack, and we both watch as it comes out.
“You have paint on your hand,” I tell him.
“That’s because I paint.” He smiles, watching me watch his hand. He lights the cigarette.
“It’s sexy,” I say.
He leans toward me. “You,” he says in a low voice, “are a very dangerous girl.”
During the week, after a few hours of writing, I go to find him painting outside on the bank of the river. We sit together in the sun and talk seriously about our work. Two days before I’m to leave, during one of these times by the river, he tells me he’s crazy about me. At first, I try just to be flattered. I like him, too—a lot. But he’s married. This guy is married. Somewhere his wife is going about her day, assuming Frank is in Vermont, innocently painting away. Perhaps she rushes home every afternoon, checking to see whether he’s called. Perhaps she would never consider that he’s hitting on me, that rather than thinking of her when he’s alone in his bed he’s thinking about what it would feel like to touch me. But as the minutes pass, as we sit together and talk about this thing that could never be, as he explains how different I am from his wife, how much he learns from our discussions, how he loves the way I see things, a familiar feeling rears its head inside: There’s another woman, and he chooses me.
Later, we go swimming in a nearby river with some other friends. The water is icy cold, but I barely feel it. I’m too aware now of Frank, of whether he’s looking at me, thinking of me. I’m too aware of me.
In the evening, we sit in the dark on a stoop and kiss. He pulls himself back, then comes toward me again, grappling with himself. He’s drunk. I know he had to drink to be able to be with me like this. Sober, he’s thinking of his marriage. He tells me he thinks he got married too young, and now he doesn’t know what he wants. I want him to decide he wants me.
The final night we all have a party, and Frank and I dance together in the corner of the room. We’re both tipsy, and I can feel how dangerous our dancing is, how our hips press against each other’s, our breath near each other’s ears. A little later a girl asks me, “What’s going on with you and Frank?” I can see the excitement in her eyes. Artist colonies are notorious for breaking up marriages and housing affairs. They’re also breeding grounds for gossip, usually about those affairs, probably because making art is such a painfully introspective and lonely business, and gossip gets you out of yourself. Hence the girl’s excitement. But I say, “Nothing,” and make a face to suggest she’s being silly. If Frank knew people were talking he’d surely pull away.
I wind up in his bed, but he won’t touch me. He tells me he’ll miss me. I want badly for him to put his hands on me, to feel evidence of his wanting me. It’s such an old habit. How easily I’m pulled right back to that place, where I am only body and desperation, where everything depends on this one man’s decision. Will he love me? Will he not love me? I try to talk myself down, to realize that this is also enough, just knowing he wants it as much as I do.
When I leave, I tell myself it’s over, but he calls me the next night.
“I can’t stop thinking of you,” he says.
“I wish I were still there.”
“I do too. But I’m also glad you’re not. I’m afraid of what would happen.”
“You wouldn’t be able to resist me.” I laugh, joking, but I want him to agree.
“Maybe.”
“You should come here,” I tell him. “Just do it.”
I hear him breathing. “I can’t. Not now.”
I bite my lip, wishing I had magic words to get him to join me.
“But I want to,” he adds.
I buy a CD he tells me to buy. Palace Music. It’s romantic, heartbreaking, angst-ridden. I make a CD for him with Richard Buckner’s “Once” where he sings about wishing to be saved and Aimee Mann’s “Save Me.” It’s true. I want to be saved from myself, from my hurting. I want a boy like Frank to lift me up like a dead thing and breathe me into life. I lie on my bed in my little studio and feel how badly I want Frank with me. How I want his interest in me to mean something, to mean I’m worth something as big as ending his marriage. It’s so selfish, I know. Some time later, when I’m married myself, I’ll know just how selfish. After years of tangling your lives, of making compromises and concessions, of building a shared life, it’s appalling to imagine someone else, some outside person, dismissing all of this for her own gain. But I don’t think of any of that now. I feel the wanting in my bone marrow. It’s like a nasty virus that won’t die.
The next time we talk, I try another tactic.
“You got married so young,” I tell him. “It’s reasonable to grow in different directions.”
“I know,” he says. “But she loves me. I still love her. It’s not so simple.”
“But you’re unhappy.”
“How do I know I won’t be unhappy if I leave her?”
“You can’t know unless you take the risk. If you stay, though, you’re just unhappy.”
He sighs.
I sigh too. “I don’t like this,” I tell him. “Being the other woman. I thought I was too smart for this.”
“I understand.” He’s quiet a moment. “You shouldn’t be, then. Don’t wait for me, Kerry. I’m lost right now.”
I tell my therapist he said this.
“Sounds like he’s being honest,” she says.
“But he sounded so unhappy saying it.”
“He probably was.”
I look down at my foot, which I kick lightly against the coffee table that separates us.
“He likes me for who I am,” I tell her, hearing the whine in my voice. “Nobody’s ever really seen me like that before.”
She cocks her head, waiting.
“I’m such a cliché, aren’t I, waiting for him to leave his wife? I can’t believe this is me.”
She smiles. “No one’s a cliché,” she says as she tucks a strand of her straight blond hair behind an ear. “We all have to go through our own unique experiences, and we all have to find our own unique ways out.”
I look at her bookshelf, full of self-help books and psychopathology texts, and consider this. “How am I supposed to get out?” I ask.
“The way to get out is always the way you came in,” she says and smiles.
A few days later, I get a call from Tyler.
“I left him,” she says.
“Gill?”
“I couldn’t do it anymore.”
And then it all comes pouring out. How Gill has been going on out-of-control shopping sprees, buying elaborate trips to foreign countries without consulting her. When she’s dared to confront him he’s become belligerent and self-righteous. Other times he does nothing but sulk or lie in bed for hours.
“I’m in San Francisco,” she says. “With someone else.”
“So that’s it?” I ask. “You just left everything? The house, all your stuff? And you left with another man?”
Tyler’s silent. She knows what I’m thinking. She’s not dealing with her life.
“I just needed out,” she says quietly. “Being married to Gill was like being married to Mom. I couldn’t separate his needs from my own. I was dying there, Kerry.”
I close my eyes. Tyler was Mom’s stand-in husband for so long, it makes sense she wound up marrying someone who made her feel the same way. I want to be kind, to listen and be helpful, but I’m angry and I’m not sure why.
“What about Gill?” I ask. “Have you talked to him?”
“I can’t.”
When I don’t say anything, she says, “I’m going to have to do this my way, Kerry. I know what I did. But it hasn’t been easy for me, either.”
I think of Leif, the mistakes I made. I don’t want her making the same mistakes. But I hear her. She’s my sister and she needs me. That’s all that matters. “OK,” I say. “I get it.”
The next week, Gill calls.
“Come with me to Venezuela,” he says. “Just you and me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m going next month. Come on. We’ll have fun.”
“Gill,” I say. “We’re not even friends. You don’t know me.”
“I’ve always loved you.”
“You’re manic,” I say. “Do you have anyone there to help you?”
“I don’t need help,” he says, angry now.
“I’m going to go,” I tell him. “I’m going to call your parents and have them go over there.”
“Don’t you dare,” he says right before I hang up.
I call Tyler, who promises she’ll get a hold of his parents, and when we get off the phone I call Terri to come over. I don’t want to be alone, knowing Gill is somewhere out there, feeling so much pain.
The next time Tyler and I talk, she mentions Dad’s five-year affair.
“Hold on,” I say. “Dad had an affair on Mom for five years?”
“I thought you knew that.”
“Mom told you things, not me.” I look out the window of my small kitchen, feeling the old jealousy.
“You didn’t want to hear them.” Tyler’s voice is full of pain too. She’s had her own difficult road, I’m well aware. She’s the one who had to bear Mom’s grown-up burdens, perhaps because I wouldn’t.
I take a deep breath. Our parents pitted us against each other, but I don’t want to play that game anymore. We’re supposed to be adults now, directing our own lives. “Was it the same woman for all five years?”
“I think so. Remember Lynn?”
I close my eyes, searching my memory for a Lynn.
“She worked with him.”
I get a flash then, a slender woman with tight, dark hair. Standing in an unfamiliar kitchen. “Maybe,” I say.
“It was over pretty soon after the divorce.”
“So much for the idyllic childhood Mom wants us to remember.”
Tyler laughs. Maybe it’s because we’ve both made grown-up mistakes at this point too, but we can do this now. We can poke fun at both parents without feeling we have to protect them so much.
On a jog later I think about the few memories I have before the divorce, the fun parties, staying up late, all of Mom and Dad’s friends. If I angle the camera just slightly, I think maybe I can see it: Mom’s forced smiles, Dad’s unhappy gaze turned away. In the revisions I find I feel sorry for them. Like in that Sharon Olds poem, “I Go Back to May 1937,” where she wishes she could warn her parents of all the mistakes they’ll make, all the pain they’ll suffer and inflict. I wish I could go back, too. I wish I could tell them to change it all, to start over, to think more about what they’re both about to do.
Friends and I go out to bars, and I meet a few more boys. I do my usual smiling across a room. I talk with them about whatever they’re eager to talk about. But I find myself bored. Even during the sex. I turn my head to the side, wondering why I’m doing this. Why I’m still doing this, after so many years.
When Frank calls, the caller ID screen says UNAVAILABLE, like some kind of mean joke.
I make a tentative decision: No more boys for a while. Just to see what will happen.
Days pass. I spend time with my friends. I teach. I read novels and work on my own. I even try reading a self-help book about how to find love. The gist is that when you can love yourself entirely, only then can others love you too. Duh. Any moron knows that. But how to love yourself after a lifetime of self-degradation and effacement? That would be a book worth reading. I call Leif at some point, just to hear how he is and to wish him well. I miss him still. Some days, I sit in my small apartment with my loneliness, an unwanted guest, the pain intense enough that I keep my arms wrapped around my middle. I can almost envision it in there—a tiny girl with dead eyes, sitting alone in the dark. I hold her tightly, trying to bring her back to life. On these days, I don’t want a boy. Being alone feels more honest.
A few times I go out to solo dinners at a sidewalk café and watch people walk by. I see a movie by myself and cry the whole way through. A few people glance at me, but I don’t care. I don’t have to answer to anyone, and that feels nice.
I joke with my friends about what I’m doing, calling it a moratorium on my vagina. But it’s actually quite serious. I’ve crossed a threshold somewhere. We all have the opportunity to find that place where awareness trumps our actions. And I’ve reached that place. I can’t go back.
I FLY TO visit Mom. In the Art Institute of Chicago’s café, the café that has the same installation of small kites as she has in her home, she tells me she and Donald are getting divorced. Angrily, she explains Donald has been seeing another woman. She tears up as she speaks, obviously in pain, obviously resigned.
“I did so much for him,” she says. “He just changed all of a sudden. I don’t know him anymore.”
For the first time ever, I feel sorry for her. I put my hand on hers. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I don’t understand what happened.”
I think of Terri’s words about the people we choose, how they’re mirrors of ourselves. I want to say something about this, but I’m afraid she’ll misunderstand.
“I never liked Donald,” I say instead.
“You didn’t?”
“He was spineless. He allowed you to turn him into whoever you needed him to be.”
“That’s not true. We just had the same taste.”
I sigh, knowing we won’t see eye to eye.
“Either way,” I say, “I’m sorry this is happening.”
She looks down at her coffee. “Me too.”
That evening, lying awake in her guest room, I think about her—how, like me, she doesn’t know how to keep love in her life. It pains me to think of her like this, lost and wanting, desperate for love. She’s gone so far into her life, and yet she’s still like a child, tugging on sleeves, pushing people over, trying so very hard to get what she needs. I’m like that too, aren’t I? That little girl inside, clawing her way through life, wanting, always wanting, never ever getting enough to feel filled. It’s so ugly. So profoundly sad and ugly. I don’t want to be like this anymore.
BACK HOME, I go out a few times with friends, testing the waters. In a bar, there’s a boy. He’s heavyset and scraggly. Nice eyes. He sits down in front of me, ignoring my friend, ignoring everything but me.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“Definitely.” He smiles, a nice smile, but I can see from the way his eyes aren’t completely focused that he’s drunk. “Take me home with you.”
I lean forward so my mouth is near his ear, aware of the way my hair falls over one eye. I smell soap and alcohol. He smiles.
“In your dreams,” I whisper.
“Already been there,” he says before he gets up and walks away.
I do take him home that night. And a few nights later, we wind up in bed again. We have sex, but I don’t want to have a real relationship with him. This is new for me, keeping these two things separated, having the perspective to know I don’t really want to date a drunk.
One night he says, “Marry me.” He’s drunk, which isn’t a big surprise.
“Let’s just stick to drunken sex,” I say.
A few weeks later, I meet Michael. He lives with a boy I slept with during my summer of love, but this doesn’t stop us from taking an interest in each other. I like his sharp intelligence, his sense of humor. I like the way his smile lights up his whole face, how, when I talk to him, he really listens. A group of us see the documentary Buena Vista Social Club, and after, recounting an emotional scene from the movie, Michael tears up. He leaves silly messages on my answering machine, pretending he’s someone else. I like this guy. He’s someone I could be friends with, someone I could see wanting to have around. When I’m with him, it feels different than it usually does. I don’t feel like I’m jumping out of my skin when I’m next to him, like if he doesn’t touch me I might die.
One afternoon, out in my car, I see him biking home. He follows me back to my place where we sit outside in the yard. I get us water, and we stretch out in the sun on lounge chairs.
“So you write,” he says.
“I try.”
“I was an English major,” he says.
I turn to look at his light hair catching the sun. “You were?”
“Why does no one tell you not to be an English major?” he says. “Unless you go on for a doctorate, you’ve basically set yourself up for a career as a waiter.”
I laugh. “No kidding.”
“Guidance from parents might have been helpful too.”
“What happened there?”
“I think my dad didn’t have time for it,” he says. “I have six brothers and sisters. Obviously my parents didn’t know when to stop.”
“Wow,” I say. I pour him more water. “So your mother’s a slut.” I smile at him.
He laughs. “Actually, she’s dead.”
“Oh, my God.” I cover my mouth. “Oh, God, I’m such an idiot. I’m so sorry.”
“No worries,” he says, still smiling. “She died when I was six. It was a long time ago.”
“Sometimes I do stupid shit,” I warn him.
He shrugs. “Don’t we all.”
A few days later, we go to a movie together, a real date, and talk for hours afterward over beer and wine. He tells me more about his family, and they sound so, well, normal, so completely different from my own family. When we get back to his house, he kisses me in the hallway. Soon, we’re on his bed, stripping off clothes, but when he gets to my underwear I stop him.
“I don’t want to have sex,” I say. This is me talking, the same girl who usually can’t wait to get a boy inside her, who’s always looking for the moment when she can make a boy totally and utterly hers. Something important is happening here, and it isn’t just that I’m not jumping to sex. I’m realizing love might look different for me than I thought it would. I don’t have to feel all that craziness to be in love. Instead, I can feel like I do: calm, satisfied, and whole.
He smiles and pushes my hair back from my face. “Whatever you want,” he says.
A month later, he tells me he loves me. Four months later, we move in together. Three months after that, we get engaged. This is what I’ve been waiting for, what I’ve been hoping for practically my whole life, and now that it’s here I’m thrilled. But I’m also surprised to find that I’m scared—terrified, actually. I’m still not sure I won’t screw it all up somehow, but I try to trust myself for once. He spends time with his friends. I do the same with mine. I stay focused on my work. We enjoy each other’s company, which is so different from all those times I sat with a boy, desperate for him to notice me. I give him the space to love me. I used to think I would get married when someone finally loved me enough to choose me. But this isn’t about Michael being willing to love me any more than those other guys might have. This isn’t a story about how some guy finally saves me from myself. I’m my own hero here; I do the saving.
One night, lying in bed together, I tell Michael the truth. I tell him about all the boys, about the desperation and running. About all that loss. I wait, afraid this will be it. He’ll see me too clearly. He’ll call everything off. But he just nods.
“I understand that,” he says. He turns and holds me. I breathe in his familiar scent. “I think a lot of people probably do the same thing.”
“But I’m also telling you something here,” I say. “I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“At this,” I say. “At having a real relationship. I get jumpy and needy. I’m afraid I might freak out, do something stupid.”
He holds me closer. “We’ll be fine,” he says.
“Do you hear what I’m saying?” I say, irritated now. “I may fuck up this whole thing.”
“We’ll be fine,” he says again.
I try to pull away, but he holds me tight. “Why do you keep saying that?” I ask, still bothered.
“Because,” he says. “It’s what I believe.”
MY MOTHER OFFERS to take me shopping for my wedding dress, so I go to Chicago once again. I never thought I would be one of those brides, taken up with things like centerpieces and flowers and what font is on the invitations. I surprise myself a lot these days. My friends laugh at how obsessed I am. But I know how hard it was to get here. I deserve to have this fun. My mother and I visit Barneys’ bridal shop and various specialty boutiques. I settle on a two-piece silk organza gown with stitching that looks like water rippling across. I turn around and around in the mirror. A bride.
In the airport heading home, I hug my mother.
“Thank you,” I say. “The dress is perfect.”
“It’s a beautiful dress.” She tears up. “I’m so glad you’re allowing me to share this special time with you.”
Her divorce is still fresh. This can’t be easy for her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know the timing isn’t great.”
“Yes, it is.” She carefully wipes at a tear, not wanting to mess up her makeup. “We could all use a celebration.”
I smile. I get it. This is her way of being genuinely happy for me.
At the wedding, she stands tall, her lips pursed. She finds a way to slip into her conversations that she’s a doctor even when nobody’s asked. She’s horrified when Michael’s and my friends call her Mrs. Cohen instead of the name she changed it to after the divorce, and instead of Doctor. This is hard for her, watching me move on, seeing my father with his girlfriend. Dad small-talks with her. He’s jokey and fun, but also uncomfortable. Really, he’s no different from the way he was when they were together.
“This is a great guy,” Dad said on the phone soon after meeting Michael.
“I know,” I said.
“He’s thoughtful and considerate. What happened?”
“Ha ha,” I said, but really I was annoyed. Did he think I wasn’t worthy of someone like Michael?
“I’m just happy you found him,” Dad said. “Now don’t screw it up.”
I had hung up feeling hurt, feeling old familiar things I had hoped I was done with. But seeing him at the wedding, seeing him scramble to make everyone happy, so insecure around my mother, I hear his words differently. He meant, “Don’t wind up like me.”
NOT LONG AFTER the wedding, I go out with a few friends to watch a band. I sip at my wine and laugh with the friends. A boy in a booth on the other side of the bar catches my eye. Big eyes, long brown hair. He smiles at me, and I smile back. The band goes away, and so do my friends. I’m back there, the yearning, the hoping. Just me, my body, and this boy. After an hour, I decide I’d best leave. I stand to go, and I see him stand too. I make my way to the door, but he catches up to me.
“Hey,” he says. “I’m Mark.” He touches my arm, and my face grows hot. What have I done?
I bite my lip, embarrassed.
“We were watching each other, am I right?”
I grimace. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m married.”
Confusion crosses his face. And maybe a hint of rejection. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
I get out of there fast.
At home, I change into pajamas and brush my teeth. Michael’s already asleep, so I tiptoe into the room. For a moment I just watch him sleeping. I’m scared. I can admit that. I’m really, truly scared. I think of his words. We’ll be fine. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe he doesn’t get it. Maybe he thinks I’m not going to struggle anymore just because we’re together. Or maybe he just plumb trusts me, which frightens me even more. I can’t hurt him, not this time. Not when I’ve finally figured out how to accept being loved.
I climb into bed, and half-asleep he rolls toward me. He slips an arm around my middle and nuzzles his face into my neck. I close my eyes and listen to him breathing. How lovely that sound is. Maybe, I think, I don’t have to be great at this; maybe I just have to be good enough.