The Year of Yes

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  “I wouldn’t wear that. What if you’re platonic and you just don’t know it?”

  “We are platonic,” I said.

  “Not according to that outfit,” Vic said.

  I put my hands on a pair of striped overalls I normally used for painting. They were platonic, all right, but so platonic that I wasn’t sure I could manage to wear them outside. I was too much of a girl to enjoy not looking like one. Even if the world was a creepy place.

  Vic continued. “What if he wants a secretary to type his plays for him? What if he’s taking pity on you because he thinks you’re starving and that’s why he’s buying you dinner?”

  All those things were possible. However, he’d left me a voicemail the day before:

  “I’m finally here. Staying at the Rihga Royal, thanks to my gig for Ron Howard. You have to see my bathroom. That sounds weird, but it’s wonderful. Meet me at the hotel, okay? I know that’s not what we talked about, but I hope that’s all right. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

  I realized that the invitation was seriously up for interpretation, but still, he wanted me to come to his hotel room. To see the bathroom. I’d fall apart if this cultured, Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright, this articulate, intelligent, charming man, asked to pee on me. It would be too much disappointment for one lifetime. I was already too on the edge. I tried not to think about it. I put my rain slicker in the back of my closet and didn’t give in to the impulse to bring it.

  WHEN I LEFT THE HOUSE the next morning, I thought I looked pretty good. However, after eight hours straight of meditating on it, I was convinced that I looked like something out of My Cousin Vinnie.

  I dashed into Banana Republic on my way to meet the Playwright. I bought a clearance-priced, high-necked sweater, which I wore out, over the slitted black skirt.

  I was stepping happily onto the downtown bus, when the slit suddenly ripped, hooker high. I leapt off the bus and ducked into another clothing store. There, I found a twelve-dollar ankle-length skirt, which I put on with the sweater. Perfectly prim. Puritanical ancestry finally on display.

  It wasn’t until I was on the street again that I noticed the blatant panty lines. I was forced to throw myself, screaming, into yet another store.

  By the time I finally made it out of the Upper East Side, I’d spent two hundred dollars I didn’t have on five stores’ worth of clothing that didn’t look good on me, and was carrying a big bag full of the clothing I’d rejected. I was completely paralyzed with neurosis, and I was late. I was reduced to hailing a cab I couldn’t afford and asking my turbaned Indian cabdriver if I looked okay.

  “You look sexy, honey! Yes! You want some Indian whiskey? Indian massage? Good Indian company! Eh?” He laughed his ass off. “I am making the joke.”

  “No! I’m having dinner with this guy…”

  “Ohhhh! Your boyfriend!”

  “No! No, he’s married. My friend. Sort of.”

  “You look like you go to dinner with your boyfriend.”

  “Why?” I frantically tried to adjust my top to reveal absolutely nothing.

  “Maybe he propose, eh? In my country, you look like you are going to meet your new husband.”

  “I’m not! He’s someone else’s husband!”

  “Then why your blouse so tight, honey? Eh?” He erupted into uproarious laughter.

  Because everything in every store was tight. Because even if things were not tight, they looked tight on me. Because the universe was conspiring against me. Because despite my legitimate Puritan blood, I simply did not look puritanical. Ever. Maybe this night would turn out to be the worst idea I’d ever had. Very likely, in fact.

  I could see the cabdriver eyeing me in the rearview mirror. He reached his hand back through the cash window and shook my hand.

  “He propose, you trust me, honey,” said the cabdriver.

  “But—”

  “No, no, no! I do not listen. Your boyfriend, he is lucky man, huh?”

  No man that had to deal with me was a lucky man. I was a walking volcano. I could explode at any moment, and God only knew what kind of emotional outburst it would be.

  THERE IN FRONT OF US, much too soon, was the Rihga Royal. It wasn’t the most elegant hotel in New York City, but it was more glamorous than anywhere I’d ever been. I paid the driver and got out of the cab. My shoes informed me that if I attempted to walk more than three blocks, I’d be carrying my little toes in my purse, but there was nothing to be done about that now. I hobbled up to the doorman and went through the revolving doors to confront my fate.

  The Rihga Royal was a hotel made of glass and brass and pomp. I glanced casually into the lobby mirrors and saw a bag lady with crooked bangs wearing a leather jacket clearly scavenged from a Dumpster. I wondered who the hell she thought she was. This was no place for her!

  Then I realized that she was me.

  The only thing that kept me from leaving was the elevator attendant smiling and asking which floor I wanted. I felt too guilty to ask him to let me out. He was pushing the button for me, after all, and that was generous because I couldn’t have done it for myself.

  THE PLAYWRIGHT’S DOOR. I hopped on one foot, trying to get up my nerve to knock. Just as I was turning around to go back to the elevator, coward that I was, it opened.

  “Umm. Hello…” said the Playwright, and I stopped hopping, mortified. I raised my head, and there he was, standing in the doorway, his eyes kind and blue, his smile wide, and his arms open.

  “Do you remember me?” I said, at a loss for anything remotely appropriate to say. Of course he did. He’d called me. I blushed.

  “I was kind of waiting for you,” he said, and laughed.

  I put out my hand to shake and he ignored it and hugged me. My tear ducts decided that just then was the perfect time to cut loose. I tried to hide my tears in his collar. Red plaid. Laundry detergent. Cologne, faintly.

  Why was I crying? I had no idea. Once I started, though, there was no stopping me.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, what’s the matter? This is a happy occasion, isn’t it? I hope?”

  He led me inside, where I dropped all my possessions on the carpet and fell into a chair. I frantically tried to stop crying. He brought me tissues.

  “No real reason,” I said, lamer by the minute. “I’m just happy! Very, very happy!”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, and sat down across from me.

  So I did. I couldn’t help myself. He looked so nice, and seemed to actually care that my apartment was unsafe and I was broke, that I’d been roaming around New York for eleven months, throwing my heart like a water balloon and watching it explode all over people who had no use for it. That I hadn’t slept in what seemed like two years and that my famous, expensive school was not all it was cracked up to be. That this might have been fine, if only I’d been able to fall in love with someone who was also able to fall in love with me.

  Even though now, finally, I knew what I was looking for: kindness, compassion, intelligence, sense of humor, all other qualities negotiable. It seemed that that combo didn’t exist. I was tired to the bone.

  I sobbed on the hotel couch, and the Playwright took my hands and patted them, even as I blew my nose.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said.

  “Warghghhhhhhhhmmmphhhh,” I said.

  “I didn’t quite get that,” he said.

  “Blerghhhhmrrrhmwahhhhhhhhhhhhhh sniffle sniffle.”

  “I know what you mean.” He smiled at me. “How about you wash your face and we go get some food in you. I made a reservation for Japanese, because you said you didn’t eat meat.”

  “Good memory,” I said. Better than mine, considering I had no recollection of saying any such thing.

  “I pay attention,” he said, picking me up off the couch and hugging me again.

  Pull yourself together, I thought. Stop crying. Suck it up. Have dinner with someone you actually like. Even if you can’t have him.

  “You look great, by the
way,” the Playwright said. I looked down at the avalanche that was me and smiled as much as it was possible for me to smile.

  “Oh! You have to see the bathroom.”

  Despite myself, I wished for that rain slicker. I walked down the hall, as slowly as I could. I didn’t want to look at a toilet. Looking at toilets reminded me of Dogboy. Maybe that’s what this was. Maybe I’d have to pee in front of him in order to prove my bravery. Didn’t seem likely, but I didn’t know him all that well.

  In fact, no. The toilet was heated. There was no way to gracefully discern this. I had to place my hand on the seat. There was a phone and a fax machine next to the toilet. It was that kind of hotel. The Playwright was excited in the way that a child is excited on Christmas morning. I liked this. Most people didn’t get excited about anything other than their own discontent. So what if it was about a heated toilet? I was just happy he hadn’t made me regret the stowing of my rain gear.

  “This is a wonderful toilet,” I said.

  “I know!” he said. “It’s the best thing about the hotel. That’s what it means to work in Hollywood. Great toilets. Fitting.”

  SUSHI. SAKE. THE FISH arrived like jewels on a little tray. The sake was warm as it went down my throat, as we toasted to meeting again, to another meal at another Japanese restaurant, to friendship.

  The Playwright ordered tempura and told me a story about almost dying after suddenly becoming allergic to oysters. He’d happened to glance in his rearview mirror as he’d been driving home from lunch and seen his face swollen to three times its normal size.

  We looked down at my raw fish and agreed not to die that night.

  He kept alluding to some story that he wasn’t ready to tell me until he’d had some more sake.

  “It’s not a happy story,” he said.

  “I already cried all over you,” I said. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “I don’t want to make you cry again,” he said. “You won’t, will you?”

  “No promises. If it’s a really sad story, I might. If it’s a really funny story, I might. The only story that might not make me cry at this point is a boring story that puts me to sleep.”

  “Fair enough. This is probably a boring story. It’s not a story you’ve never heard before, anyway. No good way to begin.”

  He looked at me for a moment and then he put his left hand on the table.

  “I’m still wearing this,” he said, “but my marriage is over.”

  I’d heard variations on this theme before. I was instantly wary.

  “Does your wife know that?” I asked.

  “She should, considering she asked for the divorce.”

  “Why?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine anyone would leave this guy voluntarily.

  “I don’t even think she knows. But I’m done holding the marriage together by myself. It’s killing me. In the middle of our fourth attempt at marriage counseling, she announced that she wanted a divorce, and I said, ‘Do you really mean that?’ She said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ The next day, I called my lawyer. You know how you can stubbornly hold onto something, despite the other person stepping on your fingers, and then one day, you just let go? That’s what happened. I let go. It’s the strangest kind of relief.”

  I did know what he was talking about, though my drama with the Actor had been on a much smaller scale, and certainly, thank God, hadn’t taken fourteen years to unfold, as the Playwright’s had.

  He told me more about the relationship and why it had dissolved. A million horrible, heartbreaking things that all ran together because I was hyperventilating, and because the Playwright looked so sad. He talked about the disappointment of finding out that your life was not going to go according to the plan you’d had forever, the one where you find someone to love, and they love you, and you have kids and stay together in peace and harmony until the end of time. The disappointment of discovering that love was not what you thought it was. This sounded familiar to me, though in this moment, I was having the opposite realization. That maybe love was sitting right in front of me, and maybe it was larger and more wonderful than I’d imagined.

  I fiddled with my chopsticks, then stuck an entire roll in my mouth and felt an obscene amount of wasabi snatch at my sinuses.

  The Playwright slapped my back. “Water?”

  “It’s okay.” My mind was racing. This wasn’t dinner. This was more than dinner. That was what I’d wanted. Was this what I’d wanted? Not from him. I wanted him to be happy, which meant, in my twisted logic, that I didn’t think he should want me. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just needed someone to talk to. Maybe I could have been anyone.

  I wanted either to upset the table and dive headlong into one of the fish tanks lining the walls or throw my arms around him and try to save him from his pain. Neither seemed like a good idea. I looked up, and saw tears overflowing the Playwright’s eyes. I couldn’t help it. I put out my hand. I took his fingers. I squeezed them.

  “The kids don’t know yet,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this to them.”

  “It’s better to do it now, when they’re little,” I said, repeating something I’d heard on TV, or maybe read in a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room. I knew nothing about divorce, nothing, as far as I could tell, about anything. The Playwright was holding my hand like I was a lifeguard, the only thing keeping him from drowning. One problem. I didn’t know how to swim, either. I felt like I should give warning. But somehow, we made it out of the restaurant and we walked back to the hotel together.

  Halfway there, he put his arm around me and pulled me in to his side, and I found myself dropping my head onto his shoulder. Despite everything, despite all the potential for complication, here we were, and I could feel something happening to my heart. Joy? Was this what joy felt like? Or was it bad sushi? No. No, definitely, improbably, joy. Was this why fools fell in love? Because we couldn’t help ourselves? Maybe so.

  AT THE HOTEL, we were both awkward. I sat on a chair. He sat on the couch across the room. “So,” I said.

  “So,” he replied.

  There was too much to say and neither of us was brave enough to say it.

  I stared out the window, desperately seeking something, a bird, a plane, Superman, to talk about. Nothing out there but night. And not even any stars. New York City, after all. No place lonelier than a New York City hotel room.

  Then, a miracle. Some light surfaced out of the black. Glowing red letters. ton, they said. I knew it was meant for me. A sign from heaven. A sign saying, yes, this is very fucking big, big enough to squash you, but you have to do it. No matter how scared you are, no matter how much you’ve just realized that you’re unfit for anything this real, no matter that he has so much baggage you’ll never be able to carry it, no matter that this man is everything you thought you didn’t ever want. You were wrong. He’s everything you need. Get up off your ass and get across that room.

  Never mind that this message was delivered via half of the HILTON sign.

  This was the kind of moment that changes your life, and even though I didn’t know which way it was going to change it, I stood up. I drew on every ounce of courage and stupidity, recklessness and hope, everything that had made me do this year in the first place.

  “What’s that light outside the window?” I said, walked across the room, and sat down on the couch next to the Playwright. I put my head on his shoulder. He didn’t look at me. I put my hand on his chest, inside his shirt, and I felt his heart beating fast. And, then, I leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed me. We kissed each other. There is no way to describe a really wonderful kiss. There’s nothing to compare it to, because it is like nothing else in the world.

  The Playwright kissed the marks my bra straps had made on my shoulders, kissed me all over my face, kissed me like a man who’d been starving for years. He looked at me hard.

  “Please, tell me now, if you don’t want to do this. Don’t say yes if you mean no, okay? I know this
is a big deal, because it’s a big deal to me, too. That’s the only question I have. Do you really want me?”

  I put my arms around his neck. I took a deep breath.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  LATER, MUCH LATER, lying in the Playwright’s arms, I thought, so this is what all those books were saying, all those songs. The Playwright had cried against my neck as we’d made love, and I had cried with him, because some things were ending and other things were beginning. My life was about to change irrevocably and so was his. Maybe it would be together. Maybe not. That, I was stunned to discover, wasn’t the point.

  I could hear the announcer in my brain tapping his feet and singing out over the roaring crowd, “This is it! This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for!”

  “Why are you crying?” I’d asked him.

  “Because this is possible,” he’d managed, and I’d stretched my arms out and held onto him as he’d sobbed. It was worth sobbing over. It was worth laughing over.

  When you find the real thing, there is nothing to do but let it take you.

  The Playwright slept, and I curled against him, listening to the sounds of the city: a helicopter passing overhead, taxis honking, dogs barking, and people calling good night. I listened to the bootleg music vendors touting their boomboxed wares, to the subway far beneath us rattling our foundations, to room service rolling down the hallway. I listened to Pierre pushing his vacuum, and the Handyman pushing my buzzer. I listened to the Boxer telling the story of our failure, and the Princelings telling the story of their success. I listened to Baler peddling away, unbitten, and Jarzhe calling down the elevator shaft, unblown. I listened to the Prom Queen’s crinolines rustling, and Marie Antoinette’s bellowing. I listened to Louie and his old man chorus, singing “Chupa, chupa” as though it were a love song. I listened to Wonderwoman telling me she was going to kiss me, and the Actress laughing and ordering Chinese. I listened to the Rockstar singing his revisionist song, and the Designer crunching his radish. I listened to the flutter of the Mime’s fingers flashing through the air, and the whoosh of the Conductor’s breath as he blew out our candle. I listened to the Actor telling me that sometimes his life was amazing, to Ira singing “O Holy Night” in a British accent, and to Dogboy breathing out from underwater. I listened to every man I’d ever met, calling out like a chorus of ghosts, and I knew they’d be with me for the rest of my life.