Alone

by Michelle Parise

  And yes, I called him My Rogue. A strange nickname, I know, and in hindsight is almost like calling him Heartbreaker or Soul Destroyer or Goddamn Liar Cheater. That would be even weirder to put on a wedding ring. But to me, My Rogue was a rascal, with that devilish smirk, that dark stare. He was Han Solo to my Princess Leia.

  Fun fact: they were the two figures on top of our wedding cake, in place of the traditional bride and groom.

  You know, my wedding band was also my mother’s wedding band. I mean, who thinks it’s a good idea to use the wedding band of her divorced parents? But I thought our love transcended superstition. The ring was from the sixties, just like my vintage wedding dress, and I loved it, the design on it so different from anything I’d ever seen. So I didn’t think it was bad luck. I didn’t think an object could hold such currency.

  Now I put more weight in objects. Now I’m no dummy.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ADRIFT

  SCENE OF THE CRIME

  October 2012. I’m walking with a tall, smart musician. He’s really great and we’ve been talking non-stop all night. Right now, we’re headed to his apartment and as we get closer, I realize something. Holy shit, we’re walking right up to her place.

  Yeah, her.

  When I first found out my husband was sleeping with another woman, I became obsessed with finding out everything I could about her. There wasn’t a lot to go on, but The Husband had let slip the intersection she lived at, and my journalist-brain knew just what to do. I drove to that intersection. The neighbourhood around it was densely packed with houses, condos, lofts, and apartment buildings. I went to each and every building. I got in and out of the car, over and over again, looking for her name on the front door directories. And then, at an old mattress factory that’d been converted into lofts, I found it. The way it made me feel just to see her name there I can only describe as a cliché — my blood boiled.

  I pressed the buzzer. It was March Break, and because she’s a teacher, I imagined her to be home, still sleeping, probably lying there beside someone else’s husband. I pressed the buzzer again. Honestly, I had no plan. I knew if she said hello, no sound would escape from my mouth. I knew I would do nothing, her voice echoing in the glass doorway. She didn’t answer. I got back in the car and bawled my eyes out. I shook and cried the whole drive to work. I wanted to drink so badly.

  Now, cut to seven months later and here I am, walking on her street with Tall Smart Musician. There are tons of places he could live. There’s no way it’s going to be in her building. But, oh. Oh yes, it is. It’s the biggest city in the country and yet there I am, about to sleep with a man I barely know, right at the scene of the crime. I decide to take it as some kind of a sign and resist the urge to pick up rocks and hurl them at every single window until she sticks her head out. I resist yelling her name at the top of my lungs. Instead, I go inside the apartment of the super-nice, super-smart musician. And when he gives me an orgasm, I make it extra-loud just in case.

  Then, I do something I’ve never done before. It’s late and Tall Smart Musician says I should just sleep over. Now, I have a rule with men — no sleepovers, never. But it seems right to break that rule, to sleep overnight in the very building where earlier that same year my husband spent the night, as our daughter and I slept in our beds at home. I want to take the power of that place away. So I do. I sleep with a cat on my head that night, in the bed of an incredibly sweet man who will go on to become a true friend of mine.

  When I walk away the next morning, I feel a little lighter. I have no impulse to buzz her door repeatedly, or shout her name, or throw rocks. I light a cigarette and walk. Eventually I hail a cab downtown to my place, change my clothes, freshen up, and go to work. It’s Wednesday morning after all.

  HOT ACTOR

  Friday night, that same week, I’m sitting on a bar stool in a very hipster bar in a very hipster part of the city. A friend of mine is DJing. Another friend is sitting on a barstool beside me, talking to a guy, and I’m trying not to be rude as his friend talks at me, small bits of spittle hitting my face.

  The place is packed, but all the men look the same. Same jeans, same haircuts, same beards. I am so bored. I’m totally not getting laid tonight. What a waste of a Friday. In five days I will be thirty-eight years old. I hate this bar, I hate these guys, I hate The Husband for throwing me out into this world to make a go of it alone.

  And then, the most gorgeous guy in the world walks into the bar. You can almost hear the angel chorus above the hipster din. It looks like the crowd parts for him. I wonder if he’s some singer or a model or an actor or something. He comes straight through the crowd and holding my eye edges himself in at the bar right beside me. He orders a drink, then turns his shiny brown eyes back to me and smiles. I smile back and he says, “Well look at that,” and points to the tattooed words on my right wrist.

  “Forza e coraggio? Huh. What’s that, like … strength and courage or something?” and I say, “Wow. Yeah exactly.”

  Neither of us touches our drinks, we just sit there and talk. About Italians and Jamaicans, about our moms and dads, our brothers and sisters, how we’d both grown up in little run-down towns side by side out by the airport. Remember this? Remember that? we keep saying, as if we grew up together, and in some strange way it feels like somehow we did. We talk about our careers, and it turns out he is an actor. He’s only in town for a few months shooting a film. He’s twenty-seven years old and smart and articulate and eloquent and gorgeous. At last call, I say a thing I’ve never said to a stranger before.

  I say, “Do you want to come home with me?” and he says, “Yes I do.”

  We get into a cab and go to my place. And although he’s a total stranger, I feel completely comfortable with him. He smells so good in the cab, I’ll still remember it years later. That night is a turning point. The point where I realize, I don’t need dating profiles. I can do this, in real life. I mean, if I can pick up Hot Actor, then I can meet anyone.

  A few sweaty, incredible hours later, as we lie in my bed talking, I realize it’s 4:00 a.m. So I say, “Kid, why are you still here? Time for you to go now.” But soooo casually, soooo confidently, he says, “Nah, what’s going to happen is this. We’re going to fall asleep talking, and in the morning, we’re going to do all that again, and then we are going to go get some breakfast.” He kisses my shoulder, and I say, “Okay, sounds good!” because it sounds amazing. And it is.

  Over the next several months, Hot Actor comes in and out of my life. He shows up at my birthday, and my friends and colleagues marvel at his hotness (and so he is crowned). We go dancing. We go for food. We hang out in my apartment. We have fun. One morning while I get ready for work, he just sits on the edge of my bathtub talking and talking … man, he talks so much. He’s goofy and gorgeous and always compliments me, reminding me that even in daylight he still thinks I look twenty-nine. Even if it isn’t true, it doesn’t matter. It’s funny, but I have absolutely no romantic feelings for him. He’s like my pal — you know, the kind of pal with a six-pack, who I just happen to have sex with.

  I know this sounds fun and exciting and like I’m living the life, but believe me, I would trade all the hot actors for one kinda-handsome husband. I’d give up every six-packed, late-night lover for one loving partner to fall asleep beside while doing a crossword. I have to believe that one day I will have this again. I live on hope.

  Somewhere in the long stretch of November of that first year, I’m at a bar watching an old friend of mine, The Singer-Songwriter, perform. He’s on stage with his wife, a brash, beautiful, warm-hearted firecracker of a woman. They’ve been together for more than a decade and here they are tonight, singing songs they’ve written together. At this moment they’re covering a Johnny Cash/June Carter duet and if you could see them now, as we all do from the audience, you would believe in love, too.

  They are that couple, the kind that ignites creativity in one another, the kind that operates like the most beautifully
symbiotic machine. You look at them and you see it — that electrical field that flows between them, and then when they look at you, you feel pulled in, magnetized.

  I’ve come here alone tonight and it feels awkward, sitting by myself in a bar, so I down drink after drink, hoping to feel less like an island, and maybe more like a lake, lapping so gently no one really notices me. Their performance is awesome and heart-crushing at the same time. Meanwhile, Hot Actor is texting me from some theatre party he is at. See you soon, he promises. Then an hour later, Prolly in an hour or so?

  They come off stage and I congratulate them on their beautiful existence. They hug me tight. They’re only in town for a few days, then back to their Vancouver Shangri-La. While Singer-Songwriter goes off to talk to other admirers, The Firecracker holds my hand. She says she knows how hard this has all been for me.

  I wince, I fight back the geysers. It’s a losing battle, again. She launches unexpectedly into her own story, one I didn’t know, the story of her before she met my friend, before their magical pairing burst into existence. She was basically married, she tells me, together with the same man for ten years when she found out about his affair. She said it cut her life in two and she thought she’d never recover. She thought they’d be together the rest of their lives and then, poof! I listen, I nod, I am so stupid drunk and I wish I wasn’t because I can’t handle this story, I don’t want this awesome woman to have ever felt what I’ve felt.

  “But then I met the handsome singer-songwriter!” she continues, “and he was so into me, and I couldn’t believe it was true, he was so talented, this handsome young thing. But what happened was that he was perfect for me. And I was perfect for him. We found each other when I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”

  She smiles at me, her eyes two kind pools she entreats me to just go ahead and jump into. I cry. I cry and cry and cry there in the bar like the dumbest drunk girl in the world. She tells me her point is that the man she thought she’d be with the rest of her life wasn’t the one. The one came after. Some people hit it on the first try, she is trying to tell me, but some of us just don’t.

  I hear her. I hear what she’s saying. I want it to be true for me, too, holy shit. I’ve already figured out by now that The Husband was not the one for me. I already get that. But the string of boys that have come after, and my fear of letting anyone really in, has led me to believe that this will be it for me. This lonely me, getting grammatically indecipherable texts from young actors, this was it, prolly forever.

  Her swimming-pools-for-eyes tell me not to give up hope. To still believe in love. So I hug her tight. I do still believe in love, and I won’t give up. I know that, intellectually, but I’m not emotionally there yet. My heart is still slowly corroding, the wound in my side still too fresh. And my phone is beeping. Hot Actor, all twenty-seven-years-old-and-six-pack of him is texting me with excuses again.

  When I get home I fall hard onto my bed — shoes, coat, and all — and try to read his text. Still wanna see you, doe … I see through spinning, blurry eyes … but this party, you know, I gotta stay a bit more. I’ll leave soon as I can. I close my eyes to stop the spinning. It is midnight on a Tuesday, I have to work tomorrow, I have responsibilities, and what am I doing? When did I become this ridiculous mess? I fall asleep like that, in my dress and heels with my phone in my hand. I wake up at 6:00 a.m. and immediately check my phone. He never did text again, he never did show up. I don’t even care, I realize. I only wanted him to come over so that I could fall asleep, but the booze and heartache had done the trick.

  For months I think about The Singer-Songwriter and The Firecracker and what she said to me that night after the show. I think about it still. I cling to the hope, the belief in love. I have to. I have to.

  At the end of December, Hot Actor’s film shoot wraps and it’s time for him to leave the city. We make one last plan to get together, on a snowy afternoon at the dead end of the year. He comes over and is his usual positive self, checking out the globe and magnifying glass Birdie asked Santa for, talking about his family and the presents he got, asking me how my first Christmas without my husband went, and then kissing me softly while leading me to my bed.

  Our goodbyes are sweet but unsentimental. It’s just “see ya,” and then one deep long kiss and he’s out the door. That’s the end of that. I never see him again.

  When He’s Here

  When he’s here with me, I feel calm. There are no waves, the sea is as flat as a table, the sun warm on my skin. His scent in the room, I would bottle it. The way he fills the space like he was part of the original blueprints. Like he’s always been here, just one of the many treasures I’ve accumulated over the years. My apartment like a curio shop, filled with objects that each have their own story to tell— seashells, rocks, coins. My grandfather’s camera, my first guitar, framed postcards. The Man with the White Shirt, eyes blazing.

  When he’s here I can breathe out. I can throw out my line and there’s actually something to catch it, something to be tethered to, strong and real. I’m not lost or seasick anymore. I’m docked for the night in the world’s best port town. I’m the happiest tourist, it’ll be the trip I talk about for years.

  When he’s here — here — in my bed, I feel so much I forget it wasn’t that long ago that I did everything I could not to feel anything. When The Man with the White Shirt is here, I’m awake. I watch him sleep, tracing his dark eyebrows with my finger, then traversing the ridge of his nose, my God have I ever loved a nose? Not till now.

  When he’s here, everything is poetry to me.

  PG24

  An easy nickname, just his initials and age. Although I never tell anyone about him, and I never see him again, so a nickname is useless in this case. Still, this is how I think of him in my head, a little magical secret, a mirage. You can’t get more impossibly young than twenty-four. I mean, honestly. But here he is, hanging on my every word. He is adorable and funny and smart and we have a lot of tequilas. It is almost Christmas.

  Someone buys a round of shots, and down they go. He introduces himself. There’s another round. We talk about music, and it’s so easy to impress him. He works in a record store and thinks he knows everything about music, but I best him more than once. My knowledge of Springsteen albums — of all things — is the clincher. But I keep walking away from him.

  I’m in a fog of booze and this strange internal cocktail of high-confidence and low self-esteem. I’m amazing, I’m pathetic. I feel real and invisible all at once. The world is underwater with a reggae soundtrack. I’m trying to dance with uninterested men my own age, but PG24 is beside me again, asking why I keep running away. I give in to the underwater world, the tequila in my heart. We leave the bar.

  “Let’s go to your place,” he says.

  “We can’t. I have a kid there tonight. And my mom’s with her.”

  He looks surprised. And then says sheepishly, “Well, we’ll go to mine, but … it’s … it’s not very nice, it’s kind of a mess.” I laugh and he takes my arm in his. We talk and walk, the December air strangely warm, no snow on the ground. And then we turn onto his street. Oh my God. It’s the very street that I lived on when I was his age. Only three doors up from where I lived, with my boyfriend The Musician, fourteen years earlier. The universe is indeed mysterious.

  Holy Lord, I’m drunk. How is this even a thing that is happening right now? My new life still astounds me. We walk in the door and a group of guys are in the living room packing up instruments. I feel like I will die from embarrassment. Surely in the bright lights of the house they can see I’m a hideous old lady. Surely they can see that their friend made a drunken mistake in a dark bar. But they’re friendly and he’s excited to introduce me. I’m mortified but try to play it cool. They’re in a band I know really well, I love their second album, but I don’t tell them that. I can’t believe I’m in their house.

  PG24 takes my hand and we climb up staircase after staircase, to the attic room at the top of t
he old house. His room is like a dream, like I’m floating in my own youth, like I’ve gone into a wayback machine, transported to my twenties. The unmade bed, the Christmas lights strung haphazardly across the ceiling, the milk crates for furniture, the David Bowie and Smashing Pumpkins posters on the wall. I’m in heaven.

  Like so many of The Babies, PG24 did not disappoint. At 4:30 a.m., I say I have to go. He watches as I put all my clothes on. I tell him I had fun, that I’ll never see him again. “How do you know? What if I want to see you again?” he says, but I shrug at the suggestion. He’s served his purpose. He helped me make it through another night. Now he’ll be a memory of a time where for a few hours I forgot I was a grown up, with all its attendant responsibilities and heartache.

  I like to remember the two of us sitting on the beat up old couch on his front porch waiting for the taxi to come and take me back to my regular life. How he lit me a cigarette. And kept looking at me, kept smiling, kept his arm around me like I was his new girlfriend as we argued about which Springsteen album was the best. (Darkness on the Edge of Town, obviously.) How he kissed me long and hard while holding my hands on that porch. When the cab arrived. I ran down the path shouting “See ya, PG,” saying his full name like one name, as I had done the whole night.

  “Goodbye, Beautiful Dream!” he called back. As the cab pulled away, my head swam from the tequila, lack of sleep, and the general giddiness from the experience I just had. I rested my head on the seat, smiled and closed my eyes for a bit, arriving home at 5:00 a.m. At seven thirty, my daughter and my mom were both awake, crashing around in the kitchen. I woke up, too, and went on with my thirty-eight-year-old life.