Alone

by Michelle Parise

  I spiral quickly. It’s disproportionate to the situation since I’ve only known him for one week, so who cares, really? But it’s not about him. It’s about the rejection, it’s about the everything. It’s about the parade of men who came after The Husband’s bomb. The men who, yes, fill me with some kind of modern-gal conquistador’s pride when I show off the folder of favourites, but none of whom wanted anything more than to sleep with me, or to keep me in their atmospheres, not actually date me.

  I email The Matchmaker the next day to say it didn’t work out with Handsome Dude. As days pass, I shake it off. I try to enjoy the summer. I invite Revival back into my bed, and then Tall Smart Musician, who has become my good friend and confidant, but sporadically we still do that thing, because that’s what friends do in these modern times.

  And then, just as summer’s coming to an end, I see The Man with the White Shirt walk through a doorway and everything stops, just like that, in a single moment, when I see him smile for the first time. Everything slows right down, the earth tilts a little, and there’s no sound or space or time. When he sees me, it’s confirmed, although we haven’t talked yet. And when we do talk? Swoon. We never want to stop looking at each other, we never want to stop talking, and we don’t.

  Only one week after I first see The Man with the White Shirt across that crowded café, I email The Matchmaker to tell her to take me off the roster because I’ve met the most amazing guy and I want to see where it goes.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HE EXISTS

  THE ROSARY

  It’s August 2005. We’re standing in Vatican City, the sunlight hitting the dome of St. Peter’s on such a perfect angle it’s like Michelangelo himself painted it for us that morning.

  The Husband is patient with my odd fascination with Catholic objects. He stands around as I pick up tiny statues of Mary, try on bracelets with pictures of saints, and root through bowls filled with those tiny medallions old Italian ladies pin to their bras. I love all of that stuff, it reminds me of my aunts and grandmothers, the women of my childhood who wore nothing but black clothing and beige nylons, whose bodies felt like they were made of endless folds of the softest flesh. In their pockets were hard candies, prayer cards from funeral masses, and of course, rosaries.

  Now, as an adult, although I’m not a practising Catholic, I still love all this stuff, and rosaries the most. So here we are at the centre of Catholicism, St. Peter’s. I’ve already bought a few rosaries, including one for my mother-in-law, even though she isn’t Catholic. But this particular rosary I’ve just picked up is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen with its tiny metallic rose beads. So I buy it.

  The Husband and I climb the inside of St. Peter’s dome, to the very top until we’re out of breath, faces red. You can touch the gilded walls and be that close to beauty and still feel a strange hollow inside of you, it’s the weirdest thing, or a metaphor maybe, I don’t know.

  The night The Bomb drops, seven years later, the world falls out from under my feet and I have almost nothing to keep me from falling out with it. I’m moving into the guest room because I can’t even be in our bedroom anymore, can’t even be there. I’m hyperventilating, crippled by the near-constant images in my head of my husband having sex with that woman only two nights earlier, maybe our whole marriage long, forever.

  I scramble in the junk drawer of the dresser until I find the rosary, with its beautiful little roses. I’m so relieved. Trying not to let the panic take over me, I start to do the rosary. I haven’t said a prayer aloud in probably fifteen years, maybe more. I gave up on it all a long, long time ago. Tonight it comes back.

  I start on the first bead with Our Father, then do a Hail Mary, and repeat, again and again and again, round and round the rosary. When I’m done the rosary, I feel almost like a normal living, breathing person. Almost. I put it over my head, and it falls, down against my collarbones, my skin, the cross hanging. And there it stays. For one whole year. I’m not even kidding. I wear it every single day, every night, 24/7. I even wear it while having sex, with The Ex-husband, with The First Guy, and Cute/Crazy Guy, and Hot Actor, and anyone else who is with me the first year. Any photos you see of me at that time, you can see it poking out from under my sweaters or T-shirts or summer dresses or blazers, always under my clothes so that the beads are close to my heart, on my skin. The cross always tucked into my bra.

  One day, months in, I’m hanging out with a bunch of co-workers at a bar. A woman I’ve known a long time notices the rosary and asks me about it. I tell her: I can’t stop wearing it, I can’t stop doing the prayers, even though I’m not sure I believe in what I am saying. She nods and tells me when she and her wife divorced a few years earlier, she started to do the prayers, too, on her old childhood rosary. Even though she considered herself an atheist, even though the prayers felt hollow. She gets it. She understands how a relic from the past can make the confusion of the present bearable. And so we have a moment, the two of us. The kind of moment where you realize a little bond has been created. We are two people tied by this one experience.

  I wish I could say doing the rosary got me closer to God, but that didn’t happen until the next year, and even then it was more desperation than faith. I had one of those nights where I was crying my eyes out and couldn’t sleep. I was in a vortex of self-pity. So I reached for the rosary with the tiny etched roses. I took it and ran my fingers along the chains that link the beads. I said the prayers over and over again, and then, just in case, I mean, why not? I asked God to send me something good for once, to send me someone to bring me a little joy.

  Look, I know I don’t even believe in you, so I totally get that this isn’t cool, but really, Lord, I’m just so tired of no one loving me, of sleeping alone, so can you send me someone who at least wants to hang out with me and have sex with me? If you do, I will totally start believing in you. I will do this rosary every night.

  This is a completely pathetic admission, I know, but I said I would tell you everything, even these unbearably shameful moments, like asking a God I didn’t even believe in to give me a boyfriend.

  If he exists, you exist. Let me see what you’ve got.

  THE MAN WITH THE WHITE SHIRT

  I’m washing a white shirt in my sink. It’s a man’s shirt, and, yes, all the pioneering feminists are rolling in their graves right now, but I don’t care. The man who was in this shirt is sleeping in my bed looking like the most beautiful form of beautiful I’ve ever seen.

  It’s 8:30 a.m. Labour Day, and I can’t sleep, so I’m washing the mud off his shirt, mud that got there when he rode his bike here in the rain last night. In just twelve days, this gorgeous man has turned my life into one buzzing, electrified hum. Everything feels sunnier, I’m walking on a cloud, I’m over the moon, I am every cliché you have ever heard. I exist, he exists. Holy shit, this is happening.

  I make some espresso, I fry up some bacon, I whip up a batch of pancakes from scratch and flip them perfectly, one by one. I set the table, I cut up fruit and arrange it artfully on a plate. I’m playing some reggae low on the stereo so I don’t wake him, and I sing along like the happiest woman in the world. I’m like Snow White in the forest, with all the birds and animals drawn to me. I’m glowing so much it must be blinding.

  Who is this person? Look closely, I assure you this is me, the me you’ve come to know, just with butterflies.

  I’m scrambling eggs when he comes out of my room looking like God’s gift to man, but wait, there’s more to him than that, I promise. Here he is saying, “It smells so good in here!” then, “Oh wow, look how beautiful that plate of fruit looks!” Oh. My. God. He noticed my artful arrangement! Ohmygod. He smiles so warmly, like with his eyes, and puts his hand on my face. I’m evaporating now, into the ether, look at me gooooo. With his hand like that he says, “Look at you, oh my God. You’re always so beautiful, day and night.” I suddenly remember that I was so intent on washing his shirt and cooking him breakfast that I forgot to fix myself up. I
’m in a nightgown, and my short curly hair is probably sticking up! Shit, I have no makeup on! But here he is looking at me like I’m dreamy, and telling me so.

  We spend the entire day like this, dreamily looking at each other, talking and talking, sitting out on my balcony, or lying around in my bed, laughing. At one point I say, “Man, this day is so nice!” and he says, “I know, it’s like Christmastime nice!” which seems in the moment like just about the best thing anyone has ever said out loud. It’s probably a line. He probably says and does all these same things with all the girls, but I’ve already checked into La-La-Land so it all feels as real and special as I think it is.

  He exists, he exists, he exists.

  He tunes my guitar and plays me a song. As he sings and plays I feel like I’ve actually, truly, died and gone to heaven. I can’t stop staring at his neck, his jawline. I take photos on my phone like a teenage girl in the bed of her first love. Then he plays me a song he’s written, although he’s shy at first. The song is good, his voice low and sweet, and I am floating on Cloud 9. Have you been there recently? It’s been so long, so long for me, I’ve forgotten it feels this awesome.

  “Now you,” he says and passes me the guitar. Oh God, I can’t play and sing for him! But I do. I play Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me” and he beams at me the whole time. Now, if this were a movie, the fact that I sing that particular song would be some kind of super-lame foreshadowing. I mean, really, of all the songs in the universe! The lyrics of that song will basically become the very essence of me when it comes to him. But I don’t know this yet. Instead, I’m on a cloud singing about how madly I love him and what a hold he has on me despite how badly he treats me. Of course I can’t know the irony of this moment, not like I will see it later. But back to the Snow White, pancakes, butterflies, and Christmastime nice. The Man with the White Shirt in my bed like a god, me floating, and I’m just so happy to feel again. This man makes me feel things again.

  As I play the last chord his eyes light up like two struck matches. The ends of his mouth turn up ever so slightly. He takes the guitar from my hands, puts it aside and wraps his arms around me. He smells so good, holy shit. We lie there together, shaky and emotional. I don’t know what has just happened, and I’m terrified I’ve scared him off. But instead, he says how happy he is we met. He says he can’t wait to introduce me to his friends. He says his mother will love me. Jesus, we’ve only known each other for twelve days.

  Twelve alcohol-free days, I should note. Just a few days before I met him, I’d started a detox, making it the longest stretch without drinking since The Bomb. So when The Man with the White Shirt met me, he met me. And he liked me. Me.

  He runs his hand along my shoulder, and I feel like the whole bed will catch fire.

  IT AIN’T ME

  The Husband always wanted me to sing “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” by Bob Dylan. I’d be strumming my guitar and that was always his request. He could never remember the name and would always ask me to play the “sad, sad song.” I found this endearing, adorable. But it also used to worry me a bit, his obsession with a song that pretty much says he’s just not that into you. The song that I’d always imagined was Dylan’s kiss-off to Joan Baez. Here they were, this perfect couple but then he was just like, nah.

  I’d imagine poor Joan listening to the lyrics, realizing that Bob didn’t love her quite as much as she thought he did. And here’s a not-so-fun fact: just as I called The Husband “My Rogue,” Joan called Bob her “Little Vagabond,” which is basically like calling him The One Who Won’t Stay. Anyway, there’s a line in “It Ain’t Me, Babe” that always physically hurt when I sang it, the one where he tells her he has no feelings left for her and by the way, he’s already moved on to someone else.

  Can you imagine it? She’s standing at his door, there to convince him that their love is worth fighting for, and he tells her he’s nothing but stone, motionless, not worth it, and look he can prove it! See? There’s someone else already here with me, someone else who isn’t you, because I’m not the one for you, I’m not the one.

  Why did this particular line haunt me so much back then? Back there, in the thick of our happiness. Did part of me have a hunch that one day he would turn to stone? Or was it just that my deepest subconscious fear was to be left outside of a doorway, heart shredded, as I’m told to fade back into the night? I couldn’t bear the thought. But even though I dreaded getting to that line, sitting there like a pit of despair in the third verse, I would always sing it for him. I’d spend a minute trying to remember the chords and then launch into the world’s saddest song. As I’d sing, he’d continue doing whatever he was doing, cooking dinner or marking papers, and I wasn’t even sure he was really listening. But when the song ended he would always say something like, “You sing that so well,” or “Thanks for singing me the sad, sad song.”

  When Birdie was born he’d say to her, “Doesn’t your mom have a beautiful voice?” even though she was just a baby sitting there, no clue what he was asking her.

  You should Google the lyrics of that Bob Dylan song. Go ahead, I’ll wait. You need to read how deeply sad it is, how apt it is, how significant it is, that for twelve years he asked me to sing him a song that basically describes the way he would one day feel about me. Or maybe always did. A song that says I do care about you, but I will never love you the way you love me. I just don’t. I just can’t. I’m not the one for you. It ain’t me, babe.

  I get it, Rogue, I fucking get it already.

  IT AIN’T HIM, EITHER

  It’s probably clear by now we weren’t soulmates, if you believe in that kind of thing, which I actually don’t. I believe in all kinds of crazy cosmic shit, but not that.

  The truth is I never thought of us as soulmates, or even that we had to be such a magical thing in order for our marriage to work. I saw us as a team, a strong united force. I thought we were meant for each other if only because we said we were, because we said we would love and take care of one another for the rest of our lives.

  After The Bomb, The Ex-husband said many times, “I was flip-flopping all the time. To stay or go. I loved you, but you were driving me crazy.”

  I can’t fault him for this. This is life. We fall in and out of love, we’re confused, we change our minds, we feel trapped, we’re tempted. I get it. But the flip-flopping caused more damage than if he would have just left, before he had an affair, before he turned to stone.

  I didn’t need him to be my soulmate. I just needed him to have been man enough to walk away.

  TILT-A-WHIRL

  The Man with the White Shirt spins my head around so much I know I’m not thinking straight, but I don’t care. I want to be as spun as cotton candy. I want to feel like I’m on the ride where the carny shouts, “Do you wanna go FASTER?” Why yes, yes I do! I want to feel this rush of adrenalin, all sugary and about to throw up.

  White Shirt shows up at my work just to see me one afternoon, the very first week we met, because he says he can’t wait the four more days till our next date. He holds my hand on the street. He kisses me on every corner, every time the light turns red and we have to wait to cross. No matter who tells a story, one of us says, “Oh my God, that’s exactly like me,” and the other answers, “Well obviously, because I’m you!”

  I’ve never experienced such a thing in all my life, this totally getting someone who totally gets you. It’s like we’re each other’s mirror, twin. And we get so instantly wrapped up in it, this spun-like-gold thing that’s happening.

  One night we’re dancing in a club, so close, and the way he holds me, it’s like I’m meant to fit there, folded into him. No one’s on the dance floor but us. “I can’t stop smiling!” he says, and I say, “Me either!” and here it is for me finally — romance. Romance! Imagine how lucky it is to find someone who reminds you that life is full of exclamation marks! It’s the fucking best.

  When I saw him the first time, it was like the air came out of me, but in a good way
. That night, as I said, I was sober, and when I first saw him walk in, wearing, yes, a white shirt and a bunch of other perfectly put together things, I just thought wow. But it wasn’t his clothes that caught my eye, it was his everything, the way he walked around, the way his face lit up while talking to people — the total package.

  It was a Thursday evening in this café-bar in Kensington Market, a goodbye party for a sparkler of a girl I know through a mutual friend. It was a cabaret thing, where her friends performed songs and burlesque, and I expected to just go for an hour or so and then duck out because it’s not really my thing. But, oh, The Man with the White Shirt. I watched him the whole time, his every reaction and changing facial expressions, his eyes when they fleetingly locked on mine. I knew I had to talk to him. After the show, while we all stood around chatting, I couldn’t concentrate on anything my friends were saying. I just kept watching him.

  Finally, I walked right over to him and a woman he was talking to, and asked to bum a cigarette. He said he had menthols and I said, “Oookaaay, thanks Grandma,” and bummed one off the woman instead. Later, he tells me that everything about me lit him on fire immediately. My dress, my confidence, the Grandma insult, all of it. He and the woman were clearly close. She smiled knowingly and said, “I’ll just leave you two” and with that, the rest of the world left us, too.

  By the time I got home, there was a text from him saying he was so glad to have met me and he couldn’t wait to continue our conversation. So we continued to text till 2:00 a.m. After that, I typed a memo into my phone with every single detail I could remember about him — his full name, his birthdate, the country he was born in, the places he’s lived, everything we talked about, my overall impressions of him.