The Man I Love

by Suanne Laqueur

  He started to reply it’s all right, but he checked himself. It wasn’t all right. She wasn’t asking to be excused.

  She just wanted to be acknowledged.

  “I’m sorry.” This was her ugly cry. The gut-shredding weep he had only witnessed a few times. A fevered heat would be filling her face. Her fingers dug into the hair at her temples, her teeth and soul bared.

  Hold still, Erik thought. Just listen. It’s all she wants.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” he said. The full weight of the truth behind the words. He knew as he had never known before.

  “I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t do it to hurt you, please believe me.”

  “I know you didn’t. I know now, Dais. I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. I believe you.” He was the old soldier now. Give it here. He waited, patient, letting her fill his hands, and holding it carefully. Believing it.

  “Are you all right?” he said, when she had quieted again.

  “I’m a mess.”

  “You need to go get a tissue?”

  “No, I have a dishrag.”

  “I have a beach towel.”

  She sniffed. “Brilliant.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I’m sorry I cut you off. I’m sorry I never gave you a chance. I want the chance. If you tell me it’s not too late and there’s still a chance, I want to come see you and talk about this.”

  “It’s not too late,” she said. “And I’m ready if you are.”

  A Better Way To Leave

  “Give me your damn phone number,” Erik said before they hung up. “Whatever else happens, I am never not going to have your phone number. Ever again.”

  “Will you use it?” she asked.

  “I will call you tomorrow,” he said. “What time will you be back home?”

  “By five. Four o’clock your time.”

  “I will call you tomorrow, four my time.”

  A pause. “Would you be offended if I didn’t hold my breath?”

  Erik managed to putter Friday away in a mix of nervous activity and nervous clock-watching. He dialed her number on the meticulous dot of four.

  She answered after two rings. “Crisis Hotline.”

  “This is me always having your phone number,” he said. “How does it sound?”

  She hung up.

  Erik blinked at the dead receiver in his hand until it rang back a few seconds later. “Well-played, Marge,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, laughing. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “It’s all right. I had it coming.”

  They compared calendars and Erik proposed flying out on Wednesday, the fourteenth of December. “Or we can throw another day at it and I came come out the fifteenth. Your birthday.”

  A pause shimmered between them, glazed with just a hint of discomfort. Her birthday was shrouded in such sexual connotations. Erik grimaced, hoping he hadn’t sent the wrong message.

  “Come Wednesday,” she said. “And if we’re alive for my birthday I’ll make a cake. Or a cyanide soufflé or something.”

  Avoiding any more assumptions or awkward sleeping arrangements, he asked her for the name of a hotel. “Should I rent a car?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have a few rehearsals scheduled so you should be free to come and go.”

  “I’ll fly in, drive myself to my hotel and you’ll meet me there?”

  “Yes. The lobby of a hotel is a good place to meet, don’t you think?”

  “No crying in the lobby.”

  “Throwing up is allowed.”

  Logistics settled, they talked about their days for twenty minutes, then said goodnight.

  The next night’s conversation lasted two hours. He told her about his marriage. He kept it short, didn’t talk about the infertility. Just a simple story. Daisy was quiet, almost ominously silent, neither asking questions nor interjecting.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said, her voice airless and tight. “You’re going to have to tell me the whole story again when you get here. Frankly, I stopped listening after ‘I got married…’” She gave a nervous laugh, which dissolved into a jagged-edged sigh.

  He felt his heart contract. “Dais…”

  “I’m sorry.” She was still trying to laugh it off. “I don’t know why I’m... Just give me a minute.”

  “I was a lousy husband at the end,” he said, feeling a strange blend of guilt and apprehension.

  “But you were her husband,” Daisy whispered. And then she was crying. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he whispered.

  “Let me call you back.”

  “No,” he said. “Stay. Cry all you want. Please just stay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing. Take your time.” He let her be, let her ride it out.

  “You know, any time you want to get sloppy, feel free.” She sniffed with another shuddering sigh. “I can’t be having all the fun.”

  “Wait until I get to Canada. I’ll need a separate suitcase for my emotional shit. It’s going to be embarrassing, trust me.”

  She put the phone down to splash cold water on her face. When she came back, he said, “I can’t believe you’re not married.”

  “Well,” she said. “I came close.”

  “To Opie? I mean John. Sorry.”

  “Oh, God, he hated that name and no one could stop using it. No, it wasn’t him. Someone else. And I’ll tell you about it another time.”

  “Will you tell me about when you were cutting yourself? Not right now. When I see you. It should be a face-to-face conversation but I wanted you to know I knew.”

  “I’ll tell you about it.”

  “If it’s too hard though…”

  “I’ll share whatever you want to know,” Daisy said. “There’s no point holding back or avoiding.”

  “True. But—”

  “Erik, listen. Let’s not shelter each other. I’m not defining what’s going on here. I’m not even assuming we’re friends again. And it’s kind of liberating, don’t you think? Put it all out on the table, there’s nothing to lose. I’d rather know everything and be hurt. I hated not knowing where you were. God, it made me crazy…” She trailed off, and the lost years swept through Erik, a biting, gnawing pain of regret for the time he had thrown away.

  “It seemed so important at the time,” he said, shaking his head. “So necessary. And now I can’t understand how I managed to completely shut down.”

  It was the only way I knew, he thought. It didn’t make him feel any better.

  “You’re here now,” she said. “I still can’t believe I’m talking to you.”

  “I might not ever shut up.”

  “Say anything then,” she said. “I’m not afraid. I want to know everything. I need to have everything so I can figure out what I’m going to do.”

  “Do with what?”

  “Do with you,” she said, as if it were obvious.

  * * *

  They talked nearly every night as the reunion crept closer. Ten days away. Then a week. Two days.

  Then tomorrow.

  As he packed his bag, Erik called down to Key West and spoke to his mother. “I’m going to Canada tomorrow,” he said. “Not sure how long I’ll be gone.”

  “Canada? Why there?”

  “I’m going to see Daisy.”

  A beat of silence. “Well,” Christine said. “How did this come about?”

  “I went looking for her.”

  “All these years. What finally made you decide?”

  “It was time. It was time a long time ago. Unfortunately, Mom, my father set a shitty example of how you leave a woman, and even more unfortunately, I followed it. Not knowing there was an alternative. A better way to leave. Or a different way to stay. I know now, and I’m going to Canada to set a better example. Even if I never have a son someday.”

  “I think that’s wonderful, Erik,” Christine said.<
br />
  “I’m slightly terrified.”

  She laughed. “Because you loved her.”

  “I did,” he said. “Possibly I still do.”

  “Leaving isn’t always the end of loving. Love doesn’t give a shit about geography, Erik. It’s not a thing you can abandon at will.”

  He sat on the bed next to his open bag and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, Mom, I never asked you this,” he said. “But is there part of you still waiting for him?”

  “For your father?”

  “Yeah. Waiting for him to call or something.”

  “Of course there is, honey.”

  “If he did call…would you hang up or listen?”

  He heard her draw her breath in and let it out. “I hope I say this the right way,” she said. “I would slam the phone down on the father of my sons. Because I will never forgive him. I would listen to the man I loved. Because part of me needs to hear what he has to say. Am I making any sense, Byron Erik?”

  “Perfect sense, ma’am,” he said. “And I’m sorry he never came back and set you free.”

  A soft laugh caressed his ear. “Sometimes people surprise you.”

  “Or they don’t.”

  He waited. For dismissal of the past. For platitudes or philosophy.

  “You know, Erik,” she said. “While your father was here, he was a good man. And I see a lot of him in you. The good things. Don’t be ashamed of them. Because I also see how you’re different from him. Especially right now. You couldn’t be more different.”

  If he had crafted her response it couldn’t have been more perfect. Erik swallowed hard, curled up tight into her words. Basking in them, he told her he loved her.

  “I love you. I’m thrilled you’re doing this. What you had with Daisy deserves a second chance. You go find out. Listen to each other. And then you’ll both be free.”

  After hanging up, Erik flopped on his back and rolled toward his bedside table. He took out the blue leather case with Joe Bianco’s Purple Heart and lifted out the inset. The flattened penny was still there but it wasn’t what he wanted. He pried up the postcard of the Metropolitan Opera House, trimmed to fit precisely within the bottom of the case. The last thing Daisy had written to him. The only words of hers he had kept.

  I’m sorry, Fish, I know how important it was to you. I feel terrible it’s lost. I hope you find it.

  He held the card to his face, inhaling a scent that wasn’t there.

  Matryoshka

  With a quiet hum, the doors of the hotel slid open, and Daisy walked into the lobby. She wore a camel wool coat over jeans and boots. Her dark hair drawn back, not a tight ballerina bun, but loose and casual, her curls falling over one corner of her sunglasses. Hands in her pockets. Head turning to the right and the left. Anticipation in her shoulders.

  Erik had been sitting in a chair by the fireplace. He stood up. His heart expanded until he was nothing but a heart. A giant pounding heart on two shaking legs walking over to her. His own hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets, clenched, holding on to the lining, holding on tight or he would fly out into space and lose her forever.

  As he got close she took her sunglasses off, revealing her eyes. Blue-green and bright. Older, a little shadowed, faint lines at the corners. Looking at him.

  Trembling all over, he looked at her.

  Trembling just as much, she smiled. “Welcome to Canada.”

  He swallowed. “My new favorite place on earth.”

  Carefully they moved into each other’s arms. Erik held her, paralyzed with feeling. He wanted to crush her to his chest, seize her tight and never let go. He mustn’t. Not yet. He held his embrace in check, then worried he was coming across too casual. He couldn’t find a compromise. His arms kept starting and stopping. He couldn’t take it in.

  I am holding her. I have not touched her in twelve years. She is in my arms. I can smell her. I am holding her. This is happening.

  “I can’t believe it,” she whispered. One of her hands pressed against the back of his head, then slid away. “I’m shaking.”

  “No, that’s me,” he said, trying to still the tremors taking over his legs. Gently he turned his nose into her hair. He felt light-headed. His heart was going to burst right through his chest. “You smell the same,” he said, a little stupidly.

  She let him go, stepped back and looked him over. He held still and let her.

  “You’re the same,” she said. “I know you’re different but you look just the same.”

  She was beautiful and he couldn’t speak. He just stared as she pressed her fingers to her mouth, then curled them into fists beneath her chin while she kept looking him up and down. She reached tentatively, touched his necklace. “I’m so glad we found it.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  They hugged again, still carefully, not giving over to it yet. Erik felt himself fall backwards in time, coming to rest on a quivering freshman night when he first gathered her against his body. Thank you, he had thought then. Thank you, he thought now.

  “Well,” she said. “Should we go try to be normal?” She held out her hands, showing him how they shook. “If this is normal.”

  “The new normal,” he said. His shy hand came up to touch her cheek. Not meeting his eyes, she took his fingers, squeezed them as she moved his hand away. She was biting her lips and shaking her head the tiniest bit.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Now she nodded, still looking past him.

  “Nauseous?”

  She nodded harder and he laughed.

  “I’m all right,” she said, and let go his hand. “What should we do?”

  “Show me where you work,” he said. “I’m dying to see.”

  “We can walk there,” she said, putting on her sunglasses. A different flicker of discomfort had passed over her face though, and Erik frowned.

  “Should we not go?”

  She indicated the doors with her head, and they walked out. It was cold, but not agonizingly so, and the sun was shining. Erik put his own shades on.

  “Here’s the deal,” Daisy said. “I told Will and Lucky we have been talking. And how it’s been going. I didn’t tell them you were coming here, though.”

  “What was their reaction?”

  “Lucky wants to kill you,” she said, smiling up at him. “But Will was neutral. Neither joyous nor indifferent.” She stopped and touched his arm. “I’ll take you over to the theater but if those guys are there, I’m going to turn us around and leave. All right? I want you to myself today.”

  Erik nodded. “I have shit to work out with Will but not today. Today is just you, me and the nausea.”

  They walked along, hands in pockets. Occasionally bumping arms but consciously not touching. Not yet. Erik tried to take in his surroundings but he could barely register anything beyond Daisy’s presence beside him. Eventually he noticed the theater facade up ahead, and the complex of brick buildings attached to the rear of it.

  “The theater is used by a community playhouse,” Daisy said, opening one of the doors, “and the Saint John Orchestra. And us. But we have all those adjoining buildings. All the studios and rehearsal spaces connected right to the theater. We only just moved under one roof a year ago. But it’s been great. Feels like a home now.”

  The lobby had red carpet and gold moldings, a ticket window at the far end. Three sets of doors into the theater, the middle set was open. Daisy walked over and put her head in, then looked back at Erik and gave him a thumbs-up.

  He exhaled in relief and followed her in. She took him all over the complex, from the storage rooms beneath the stage, to the lighting booth in the balcony. The sun-lit studios. The student lounge. The dressing rooms. He asked questions. She showed and told. Her eyes were bright, her face flushed with pride and accomplishment. She had found her Plan B. She was doing what she was born to do.

  The tour ended at her office. Small and snug with soft brown walls, plants on the windowsill and hanging prints
and posters.

  “Hey,” he said, going toward her desk. He had spied the Matryoshka—the Russian nesting dolls he had given her as a Christmas present.

  “You still have these,” he said, amazed.

  “Of course I do.”

  They were un-nested, lined up in size order. He picked up the largest one and something rattled inside. A look of alarm crossed Daisy’s face, she stepped and reached as if to snatch it back. Then she dropped her hand and sighed.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s in here?”

  “It’s stupid. Don’t laugh. All right fine, laugh. It’s funny now. I was just a lunatic at the time.”

  Erik twisted the doll open. Inside was a dollar bill and some change. He looked at her, puzzled.

  “Remember when I sent back all your clothes?”

  He nodded.

  “I went through all the pockets first and I kept whatever was in them. You had a dollar and fourteen cents to your name.”

  “I was rich back then,” he said. He opened the next doll and found two washers, a screw, and a guitar pick. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  He picked up another and raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, smiling. “It gets worse.”

  He opened it. Stared a long time. “Lint,” he said.

  “It was bad.”

  “You went through all the pockets and kept my lint.”

  Daisy shrugged.

  The next doll held a small lock of hair, scotch-taped. “All right,” Erik said, “as a keepsake, this makes sense. How did you get my hair?”

  “Lucky gave you a haircut one time and I kept some.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at him with mild disbelief. “Because it’s what you do.”

  As he twisted open the last doll, Daisy turned her lips in, a pinched look around her eyes. “What’s in there is rightfully yours,” she said. “I shouldn’t have kept it, but I did.”

  He tipped onto his palm the tiny gold scissors which used to hang with the other charms on his necklace.

  “Oh, Dais.”

  “I know.”

  “You had the sax.”

  “I had the sax.”