How They Met and Other Stories

by David Levithan

  all the words. I am almost thrown from

  the second verse, because I am realizing how

  deaf I have been. I have misinterpreted the

  footsteps in the hallways. I have not seen or

  listened or known. And I am near tears, looking

  at Caleb, looking at my mother, because for a boy

  who has been spending all his time on music,

  it’s not until now that I know what a song can do.

  The second refrain switches a little, but my mother

  knows that. We are looking at each other right in the eye

  and we are singing to the end

  when you know me,

  try not be frightened

  when you see me,

  look me in the eye

  when you hear me,

  listen to what I’m saying

  when you speak to me,

  tell me everything

  is going to be fine

  it’s going to be fine

  the windows are closed

  so we stumble to the doors

  follow the sound of my voice

  saying everything

  is going to be fine

  At first I don’t understand the applause, because

  that’s not where I am. I am making a new song

  out of my mother’s expression, the devotion

  I’ve been too caught up to notice, and Caleb’s music,

  the dancing that we’ll do.

  This is what a song can do. Our moments are

  music, and sometimes—just sometimes—

  we can catch them and put them

  into some lasting form. If I didn’t

  have music, I don’t know if

  I could ever be truly happy,

  and if I didn’t have these moments,

  I would never find music. It is everywhere,

  in the air between us, waiting

  to be sung.

  WITHOUT SAYING

  You are in her room, on her bed, as she paces angrily and tells you about Ridiculous Boyfriend #9 and their relationship, which (mercifully) has just ended. She is walking around the room as if she’s still in a race with him. She is telling you the story even though you’ve been hearing it all along.

  In a few minutes, she’ll fall into the bed and laugh to the ceiling. She’ll wish you next to her, and you’ll comply. You’ll agree with her when she says that guys suck. She’ll say you don’t count. She’ll say you’re not like that.

  You’re only half listening to her. Half listening and three-quarters watching. Ridiculous Boyfriend #9 was a snob, a jerk, too rich, too shallow, too straight, not enough of a pagan. Haven’t you said this all before? Hasn’t she?

  You never say “I told you so,” because she knows that you did, and you know that she did it anyway.

  “Arrrgh!” she yells in a mock fit of frustration. She’s the only person you know who says “arrrgh!” (Charlie Brown doesn’t count.) You calm her down. You offer her chocolate.

  Does it go without saying that you love her?

  Yes, of course it goes without saying.

  Milo does not notice Ramona at first. She’s like the rest of Michelle’s friends. None of them can believe that Michelle is having a Sweet Sixteen. Milo was invited because they needed more boys. But he seems more interested in the centerpieces than in the girls.

  Ramona sees him staring at the tulips. He senses he’s being watched and blushes.

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” she says.

  “Tulips,” he says. “In January.”

  She doesn’t know what to say to that. Her eyes move to the dance floor, where Michelle is making out with Alex Park.

  “She’ll end the night pregnant,” Ramona observes.

  “Good thing I got her a stroller for a present,” Milo says.

  She doesn’t even look at him.

  “That’s an expensive gift,” she says.

  “Only the best for my little girl.”

  They both look back to Michelle, whose bra strap is showing. It’s bright pink.

  “You don’t belong here, and neither do I,” Milo says.

  They leave the ballroom and head to a couch in the hotel lobby. The conversation begins. It lasts for more than two weeks. Milo and Ramona can’t seem to keep their words off each other. Ramona especially. She is surprised—surprised and pleased—by the intensity of this new whatever-it-is. She enjoys their whatever-we’re-doing, although the is-this-or-isn’t-it nature sometimes confuses her. She waits for a sign. Then she looks harder. He calls her his “brand-new friend” and she can’t help but wonder, Is that it? Then she is ashamed of her ungratefulness. Because what she needs more than anything else is, in fact, a brand-new friend.

  You wish you could undo your love for him. It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. You can’t tell anyone about it, because even the fact of it would alter things—perhaps irreparably.

  You wonder if he knows. You pray that he doesn’t. You want him to read your mind. You send him messages. The telepathy never works.

  You try to fall for other people, because maybe he’ll like you then.

  He tries to set you up with one of his friends. Jim, you’re told, is interested in philosophy. Your philosophy, you tell him, is to not be interested in Jim. Because—it’s true—Jim blows his nose more often than normal people do. He laughs (his remarkable laugh) and jokes about your ridiculous standards. “There’s nothing standard about your standards,” he says, and you say that someday your prince will come. More than anything, you want him to reply, “But what if your prince is right under your nose?” Instead he says, “Well, as long as he’s not one of those deposed princes….”

  You wish he’d get a clue. But you’re not about to give him one.

  You wish he weren’t such a prince. You wish he were a frog.

  Milo confesses his love to Ramona. (Ramona imagines this as she walks to the subway.) He proclaims, declaims, and just plain claims. He compares his love to oxygen and then describes her in terms of fire. He confesses that she mixes his metaphors and pervades his imagery. He has seen their future written in clouds, transcribed in dreams. His feelings are unanimous, and his friends are, too: He must be with Ramona. He says this—he says it all aloud. Then he turns off the shower and gets ready for dinner. (Note: she does not picture him explicitly in the shower. It’s steamy. She can’t really see anything.) Ramona will be coming over in twenty minutes.

  He, who is rarely befuddled, cannot decide what to wear. (She goes through the options as she boards the train and it moves forward.) He puts on a tie, and figures that’s too formal. He puts on a T-shirt, and feels it’s not enough. Blue isn’t right and red makes his eyes look stoned. He puts on a turtleneck, rolls up the sleeves, puts them back down. He looks at his watch. He makes sure his phone is on, just in case she calls. (Ramona smiles as she steps out of the subway.) He continues to clean the kitchen, happy his parents won’t be home for hours. There is a single glass in the sink. He washes it, puts it in the dishwasher, looks at his watch. She is late. His heart feels trepidation. Then he remembers his watch is fast. He checks himself in the mirror again. He switches his shirt, and then changes out of jeans. “Ramona…,” he rehearses. He proofreads himself, again in the mirror. He doesn’t like the way his mouth looks when he speaks. (She loves his mouth, lingers on it for a second.) He tries to say “Ramona” with his mouth shut. He hears footsteps. He composes himself, opens the door. It is someone he’s never seen before, heading to another apartment. (Ramona rings the buzzer.) The buzzer rings. It startles him. His feet lift in the air. No, they just feel like they’re lifting in the air. “Ramona?” he asks as he presses the TALK button. And now LISTEN. It is her. (Ramona pictures him expectant.) He closes the dishwasher. He looks at his reflection. He repeats her name. There is so much he has to say. (She knocks. He opens the door.)

  Carefully, very carefully, you begin to send signals. You ask her to make most of the decisions, with
the hope (but not the expectation) that eventually she will make the right one. You imagine (ha!) that the usual rounds of “I-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do?” will end up with her leaning over and kissing you and saying, “There—that’s what I want to do.”

  This does not happen.

  Instead, your “signals”—which seem to you to be so obvious and fat, so loud and behemoth—are as remote to her as the shift of an atom. The conversation does not halt—it does not thin itself and become a conversion. You falter, fall back to asides, to jokes—she laughs, you are amusing. She doesn’t know. You wonder if it’s better that way. Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.

  You could stop her laughter in a second. Force it.

  You don’t want to.

  You back away from an awkward pause.

  These are some of the things you cannot say to her:

  “When I am with you, there is nowhere else I’d rather be. And I am a person who always wants to be somewhere else.”

  “I see you in my dreams. And not just in fourth-grade classrooms or underwater Tupperware parties or other nonsensical dream places. I see you in reality most.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t choose this. It just happened.”

  Milo is distracted, struck, left without a center of gravity. His shoes don’t match, and neither do his socks. He doesn’t notice. He lights candles and forgets about them, only to find the wax and ashes the next day. He puts CDs in the washing machine and throws recyclables in the sink. He is haunted by a muffled ringing. (His cell phone is in the laundry basket. It will take him three days to find it.)

  Ramona is on her way over. Milo regrets this, because really all he can think about is William.

  Two hours ago, he almost said something. To William, not Ramona. He does not say as much as he should to Ramona, and he says even less to William. Or, rather, he says too much to William—everything except those three words, although at least he can use the I and the you in other contexts. He can avalanche William with words—stories, litanies, tangents, anyways—without letting the biggest boulder loose.

  And yet, two hours ago. They were at a gallery, seeing the work of a Japanese photographer who has traveled the world to capture seascaped horizons—the ocean meeting the sky without any land or ship or human in sight. Night and day, calm and storm—gray, black, and white indivisible.

  Milo could have looked at the photographs, but he looked at William instead. The glass on the frames was reflective; Milo could see William’s eyes move to find the border between sky and sea. Milo saw his own hand moving to William’s shoulder—but, no, that was just a daydream mapped on the glass that Milo was placing over reality. They moved from one photo to the next—William covered the placards with his palm and asked Milo to guess the place they were seeing. Milo was invariably wrong—he guessed Cape Horn for the Carolinas, Alaska for the south of Wales. He even guessed Switzerland. William didn’t point out that Switzerland doesn’t touch any oceans; Milo realized it himself. “Guess guess guess,” William asked, playfully tugging at Milo’s sleeve, patting his back tenderly after the third consecutive miss. Guess guess guess, Milo thought, patting William likewise, looking at his eyes in the next reflection. When William was quiet again, when he resumed his immersion in the photography and let out a sigh, Milo felt his heart lurch. It was a strange and heretofore unknown feeling—but it felt perfectly natural, as if Milo had nothing to do with it. It was tidal. Milo wanted to tell William about it—which would mean telling William about everything.

  But William was already speaking, talking about the length of the exposure and the solitude of the near-daybreak. Milo could not find a transition. He was afraid of souring what had been a wonderful afternoon. William spoke on—of apertures and natural light and the point where the eye is directed. Milo’s urgency subsided into a light, bearable sadness.

  He tried to look at the pictures.

  There comes a moment of decision, if not many. He is talking to you about his morning and suddenly more than anything else you want to kiss him. Or it is night and you are staring at her upturned face, wondering wondering wondering. You share a bed, you share a glance. He changes his shirt in front of you, and you think: You have no idea how much I love you. He has no idea. He is the lucky one.

  The question is there in each silence. The question is there in the space between you. But you cannot bring it aloud. He is lending you his sweater. She is hugging you hello, and you try to measure for that extra beat. You linger in his apartment, he lingers in your thoughts. When you touch her arm, you feel a charge. You are lying on the floor, watching TV, your legs intertwine with his. You are on the couch laughing. You are breathing in the night sky, lying on your backs. She is pointing out Orion. Your head is on his shoulder, you are riding on the train. You are walking arm in arm through a snowstorm. Singing.

  There are good reasons, there are bad reasons—but most of all, there are too many reasons. They cloud, they crush, they deceive. They are too much and never enough.

  There is an avoidance in everything. Avoidance, and invention. Ramona rings Milo’s doorbell. Milo watches William’s mouth as he mentions the still point of morning. Ramona rings the doorbell again. She sits alone in her kitchen. Milo imagines what William would be like as a boyfriend. Ramona invents Milo. Milo invents William. They are all invented.

  And you…you are not invented. Who do you invent? It goes unspoken.

  To love—to fall—is not a question.

  To touch—to kiss—to speak—those are questions.

  There is nothing worse than a ruined friendship. There is nothing better than a companion. Somewhere in between lies risk.

  Somewhere in between, lies.

  Ramona reaches over and pulls Milo toward her. She embraces him, she plunges, she will not let go for a minute. She can do it. Milo and William have a conversation about love and halfway through, Milo interjects: “But, William, you know this is how I feel about you?” He can do it. Milo holds Ramona and treasures her. William is surprised, but not displeased. There are happy endings. There have to be.

  You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking. What would you have them do?

  Ramona and Milo. Milo and William. Kisses and sighs. Ridiculous Boyfriend #9 and you. Him and she.

  They are inventions. They can do things.

  I can’t do the things they do. I can invent.

  Ramona reaches over and pulls Milo toward her. (You are right there.) She embraces him, she plunges, she will not let go for a minute. (I want this more than words.) She can do it. (I can’t.) Milo and William have a conversation about love and halfway through, Milo interjects: “But, William, you know this is how I feel about you?” (I have daydreams where I see this happening.) He can do it. (I just can’t.) Milo holds Ramona and treasures her. William is surprised, but not displeased. There are happy endings. (When I write them.) There have to be. (When I write.)

  I want to write my life. I want to be able to write my life.

  You are a second away from saying it.

  You have no idea how much I love you.

  HOW THEY MET

  I think my favorite family stories are the stories of how my grandparents met. To think that these two intersections led to my parents, led to me. That my very existence owes thanks to a piano, a jeep, Hunter College, and the U.S. Army. One of the two stories I’ve been told for as long as I can remember being told stories. The other I recently learned. They amaze me because they prove that a single moment can blossom into almost fifty years of togetherness. They prove that my grandparents were once young and crazy and romantic and yearning. They are finished stories to me now—I knew the ending from the first time I heard them. But at the time…well, at the time it must have been something.

  My Papa Louis and Grandma Alice’s story has to begin with the phrase “It was during the war.”

  It was during the war. My great-aunt Estelle (my grandfather’s sister) and a
friend of my grandmother’s were going to Hunter College. One day they were comparing notes and discovered that both of their siblings were stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. They decided to do a little matchmaking. Gladys (my grandfather’s other sister) wrote to Lou. Irene (one of my grandmother’s sisters) wrote to Alice. Lou got on the horn to Alice. A date was set.

  But Lou wasn’t going to leave everything to chance. He was thirty-three, a paratrooper. He’d been a cop in New York City before the war and had been on a date or two. He decided to make sure everything was on the up and up before going on a blind date. So a couple of days beforehand he borrowed a jeep and did a drive-by lookover. He found out where my grandmother was going to be and (for lack of a better term) checked her out. He liked what he saw. The date was on.

  My grandmother was nine years younger than my grandfather. She was a dietician, and outranked my grandfather. When my grandfather called her up, they arranged to meet Friday for lunch. They hit it off, and my grandmother asked my grandfather if he wanted to go to synagogue with her. This would end up being one of the few times my grandfather would go to temple in his life. (The things we do for love.) He said yes. They met. They talked and talked and talked.

  Something clicked.

  My grandmother told her friends she’d met this crazy guy. Crazy in a good way.

  My grandmother must have been pretty crazy, too. Crazy in a good way.

  They were both clearly crazy for each other.

  They met on Friday.

  By Wednesday they were engaged and talking to a rabbi.

  Three days later, after my grandfather’s baseball game, they were married.