We went home, it got dark, I sat on the porch by myself watching the day fade away. Watched the night as it crept across the sky. Too scared to move. I made deals with the universe. If I can sit here and count to one thousand, then Hendrix will be okay. If I can just not blink for the rest of the night, then Hendrix will come wake me up, and it will be morning and I will have been in my bed this whole time, and the whole thing will all have been a bad dream.
Finally, there was a sweep of headlights, the sound of tires on gravel, a car swinging into the driveway. Someone was coming.
Mama was home, coming back for me. She got out of her friend Eric’s car, and I waited to see if she picked up Hendrix from the backseat, but she didn’t. I ran to meet her, and she put her arms around me, and then Eric waved and backed up and drove away slowly. I heard him call out, “I’ll come back for you later to take you back to the hospital if you need me to,” and she said, “No, I think I’ll be here with Phronsie.” The headlights brushed the porch as he went. Mama said to me, “He’s okay. I just wanted to come and see you before you go.”
“Before I go?”
We sat on the porch steps, her and me, and she took my hand and told me that Maggie and my daddy had driven there, and they were at the hospital with Hendrix. They were waiting until the doctors said it was okay for Hendrix to leave, and then they were coming to pick me up, too, and take us back to New Hampshire.
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it has to be.”
“Are they mad?”
I saw her face change as she tried to figure out what to say to me.
“Tell me!” I said. “They think it was your fault, don’t they? But it was my fault he jumped off the rock! I said he should try to be brave.” I started to cry.
“Sssh,” she said. “It was just an accident. These things happen. You didn’t make it happen.”
I leaned against her, and she put her arm around me. Then, from out of the darkness, after a long time, she said, “You know what I was thinking about tonight? I saved your life one time.”
“You did?” I said.
“When you were born. You and Hendrix were born at home, in the back bedroom of our little house. And your daddy was there, and my friend Annie Louise, who was the midwife. It took a very long time for the two of you to decide to come out, I think. And first Hendrix came out, and then you came out after him. A few minutes later. You weren’t breathing so well. You were a little gray thing, and Annie Louise looked worried, and then I sat up in the bed and I said, ‘Give her to me.’ And Annie Louise handed you to me, and I put you up next to my breast, and I stroked your cheek and your forehead, and I looked into your face, and I said, ‘I am your mama, and I am going to take care of you always always always, and I want you to breathe because you can do it. I want you to stay here. Stay here, stay!’ And you know what happened? You made this little noise, and then you started to breathe and cry, and you turned pink and you looked at me with those wide eyes, and you calmed right down.”
“I decided to stay,” I said slowly. The shaking was beginning to go away.
“Yes. You decided to stay.”
I loved her so much, loved the world that I was seeing through her eyes, loved all the colors she had around her and the way she always said that anybody could be her friend and how she knew that love ruled the world. Also, I had been there, and I knew it wasn’t her fault, what Hendrix did. And I would explain it to everyone in the whole wide world if I had to. She was watching us and paying attention. It had all happened too fast, was all. I held her hand and looked up into her eyes and smiled. I beamed over love love love love love to her like she had taught me to do.
And we sat together and waited for the storm that was on its way to us.
My daddy and Maggie showed up an hour later, furious and silent. As soon as they got out of the car, I could see my daddy’s jaw working itself in and out, in and out, and Maggie’s lips were in a thin, hard line.
“Where’s Hendrix?” I said, and my daddy’s eyes swiveled over to me like he was noticing me there for the first time.
“He’s in the car. Get your things,” he said to me. Mama went to the car to sit with Hendrix, and Maggie and my daddy followed me into the house. They stood there like statues, but I heard Maggie suck in her breath. Just the way they looked around at the house, at the cars in the front yard that needed work, at Mama’s little glass trinkets hanging in the windows, at the sagging porch and the furniture that was mostly just pillows. Nothing in the whole house had any structure to it—the beds were simply mattresses tossed on the floor, and even the tables were wobbly and scarred. The dining room table was an old door held up by cinderblocks. There was artwork piled around, and plates left over dirty from last night’s feast. There was Stony’s pipe left out, next to a pan of half-eaten suspicious brownies. Suddenly I could see the whole thing through Maggie’s eyes, and I was embarrassed for my mother: the torn tie-dyed curtains, the wet towels on the floor, and the bare mattress that had been dragged by somebody into the living room.
“Get your things,” said my daddy. “And get Hendrix’s stuff, too.”
“Robert, this can’t go on,” said Maggie. “Look at this place! That’s a marijuana pipe over there! And all this mess! I can’t believe people live like this. Around children!”
“I know,” he said in a hard, tight voice. Then he looked at me again. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Then go get your things. Now,” he said. But his voice was gentler than I expected it might be. He had gotten scared for Hendrix, and that fear had made him softer.
I did what he said. I picked up all our clothes that were scattered all over the place, and I took a rock that Mama had said we were going to paint on, and a little dove carved out of ivory that she wore sometimes around her neck. Just because I knew from the looks on their faces that there would be no more visitation. No more switches at the ice cream place in Massachusetts. They were done with letting us come up here.
I saw it all through Maggie’s eyes, and I felt sick inside.
But as awful and terrifying as that day was, it wasn’t even the worst day. The worst day was when I turned on my mama myself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After I get off the phone with Hendrix and Ariel, I go into the kitchen and open the refrigerator and stare into it. Mr. Swanky saunters in with me to look. He sighs.
There are three blueberry yogurts, a half bottle of wine with the cork floating in it, a moldy lemon, a bag of string cheese, and a jar of pickles. There is really only one impressive thing: an eggplant the size of Texas. What was I thinking when I bought it? That I was going to have a dinner party for eighteen?
I rummage through my purse for my phone, and I call up Judd.
“Hey, want to come over for dinner?” I say brightly when he answers. “I’m making an eggplant parmesan that’s the size of a football field.”
But he can’t. He is helping someone; of course he is. Helping a guy at work set up a training schedule to run a marathon in the spring. And then—well, he’s going over to set up a stereo system for a guy named Bernie. He’s always got somebody else who needs his help.
“Okay,” I say. “You could come after.”
He hesitates. “Really it’s probably not the right night. This guy’s apparently got a complicated setup with woofers and tweeters, and it’ll be late, so I’m probably just going to want to shuffle on home and crawl into bed. I’ve got a seven a.m. appointment tomorrow with a senior women’s group. That’s a lot of strenuous ladies to deal with first thing in the morning.”
“Okay,” I say. I look through the kitchen window at the fire escape next door. Lights are coming on in all the apartments.
There’s a beat of silence. Then he says, “So what’s up with the eggplant parm thing?”
“Nothing. I just thought it would be nice. We could eat together. You know, since we’re engaged and all
.”
He laughs.
“Laugh if you want to, but I’ve heard that often people who are engaged eat dinner together every night. And sometimes they even sleep in the same bed.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” he says. “And I would come, honest, if it weren’t that I have these other plans.”
“All right. It’s fine. Forget it.”
“So what else?” he says. “Uh-oh. I know that tone. You’re ruminating.”
“I just—well, tonight I talked to Hendrix and Ariel, and I realized that I want to get married because I’m lonely. It’s not just that I’m sick of dating. I want normal life. Like us, spending time together, sitting on the couch, talking about our plans and our day, and to be partners. A couple.”
“I know,” he says. “And we are like that sometimes. But we also have work and responsibilities.”
“But if we were really a couple, then you’d have already told me you were staying late, and then when you got done with work, you’d come home to bed at our place, and I’d be waiting up for you, and it wouldn’t matter if you had to get up early in the morning. Because this is where you’d live. And . . . and we’d figure out things together. That’s what partners do. We haven’t even talked about where we’re going to live once we get married. Whose apartment we’ll go to.”
“You decide,” he says. “I’ll move to yours if you want. It’s bigger, right?”
“Yes, it’s bigger, but the point is, we should talk about it.”
“We will talk about it. We’re going to talk about all the things we need to get to before we get married,” he says. “We have some time, you know.”
I don’t answer. I say I should go, I’ve got to salt the eggplant. I don’t want to be on the phone when he tells me he has to hang up because the guy is there right now. I don’t want to be shut down. I will do the shutting down, thank you very much.
“Okay, bye,” I say. “Eggplant parm tomorrow. Bring your appetite.”
Later, I take Mr. Swanky out for two walks because he demands it. And after staring at my novel and deciding the scene with the woman talking to her psychiatrist needs to be cut in half, I fall asleep on the couch, reading, with the light on—drop in my tracks is more like it—and I wake up later with my neck hurting. I’m still wearing my shoes, for heaven’s sake, from the last time I went out.
I stagger into the bedroom and put on my sleep stuff, which consists of leggings and my long-sleeved T-shirt, heavy socks (don’t judge me—it’s fall, okay?), and I get myself underneath the quilt and turn off the light. Outside, I can hear sirens far away, and the sound of cars on the street four floors below. In the hallway, a woman is laughing, and a man says, “Ssh. It’s two thirty in the morning.”
And I am nowhere near sleep. I lie there on my back, and I think about Maggie and my father, and what my mother would say about my getting married to Judd. Did she even believe all that stuff she once told me, how marriage is bad for women? Are her words like a little curse I carry around in my heart?
Every time I hear myself saying that I’m getting married—I felt this when I was telling Hendrix and Ariel even—I believe it for exactly that instant. And then later, like the way a necklace can get itself all tangled up in a drawer, without anyone interfering, I find myself asking again: Am I marrying him? No, really, am I really doing this? Is this the right thing?
I flop over onto my stomach and let out a big sigh. And then onto my back again. Damn it, he could try to be in love, couldn’t he? He could make this so much easier. But maybe he can’t. Maybe that’s not even what’s wrong here. Maybe I’m the one who can’t try to be in love.
Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
And just like that, I suddenly find myself getting out of bed, throwing on my ratty old blue bathrobe over my leggings and shirt, and I get my keys and go into the elevator and go up to the sixth floor. Judd’s apartment is 6145, and I go and knock on the door. I’m only knocking for politeness’s sake. I have the key to his place, and he has the key to mine, so we can feed each other’s plants or save the other person from a possible lockout.
He doesn’t answer the knock, and so I go inside. It’s dark, but I can see the dim night-light in his room, and I can hear him breathing—a nice, even sleep breath.
I go stand at the door to his room. “Judd,” I whisper. “Judd, it’s me.”
Nothing. He’s just a big breathing mound under the covers. Judd keeps such a neat apartment; he would never let clothes take over the bedroom, as happens at my place. His rooms even smell nice, like lemon Pledge. I think it’s possible that he dusts.
“Judd, I need to ask you a question.”
I wait for what seems like forever, and then I go over to his bed and stand over him. He turns over. He must be in the deepest level of sleep possible. Honestly, I feel like I wake up if the curtains so much as move in my room. Does the man not ever worry about break-ins? Who in America today can sleep this soundly, life being what it is and all? So I sit down on the edge of the bed, and stare at him, and finally he opens his eyes and looks at me. I can barely make out his features—just the shine of his eyes from the streetlight coming through the curtains.
“What?” he says from sleep, and then he looks happy. “Oh, you brought the pastrami. I was hoping you’d do that.”
“What pastrami?”
“You know what pastrami.”
“I didn’t bring any pastrami. You’re having a dream.”
“Oh,” he says. He closes his eyes again.
“Judd, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m on the subway,” he says.
“No, you’re not, Judd. You’re in your bed, and I need to ask you a very important question. You don’t even have to open your eyes. Just answer my question.”
“What is it?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yeah,” he says after a while.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, I have one more question for you in that case. Do you think you’re in love with me?”
“What?”
“You’re not, are you? I keep expecting that you’re going to change and want to be in love with me,” I say. “But you don’t. And I don’t think—I mean, I know. I know I don’t want to go through life this way, with someone who doesn’t think I’m really special. You don’t want me the way I need to be wanted.” And to my own mortification, I start to cry. “You—you just treat me so ordinary. All the time, like I’m just one of your guy friends or something.”
“Wait a second,” he says. He’s awake now. He sits up in the bed and looks at me. He turns on a lamp next to the bed, and it makes a nice, soft puddle of light all around his bedside table. He has a water glass, an alarm clock, a jump rope, and a Men’s Health magazine on his table. A jump rope? It’s just as well I’m calling this off before I have to sleep with a man who jumps rope before sleep every night.
His face is creased with sleep. “You say I don’t want you?”
I am crying too hard to speak. I just nod at him.
He sits there in the bed, looking at me like maybe this is all a bad dream. And then he says, “Wait. What’s really going on? What’s the matter? Is it the pastrami?”
“Judd! You are not awake, and there is no pastrami. We are talking about you and me! And love! The love you don’t feel! Wake up! ”
He rubs his eyes and looks at me. “There’s no pastrami?”
“No.”
“And you’re crying. Because you think I don’t want you. What the hell time is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably three a.m.”
He sighs. Rubs his eyes. Yawns. Then he says, “Come closer, will you?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then I’ll come there,” he says, and he sits up and moves over closer to me on the bed and puts my head on his shoulder. “Nothing good has ever happened at three in the morning. It’s the hour of terrible thoughts.”
&n
bsp; “I suppose so, but I’ve been having these thoughts for days.”
“I’ve made such a mistake,” he says after a minute.
“Asking me to marry you.”
“No. Not showing you how much I want you to be with me. I do love you, Phronsie. I really, really do. I couldn’t go through life without this—what we have. You know that.” His voice is fully awake now.
“But you don’t feel—”
“Oh, stop with that telling me about what I don’t feel,” he says. And he puts his finger on my chin and tips my head up, and he puts his mouth on mine and kisses me, like, for real. A kiss a person could remember. Then he pulls away and looks at me.
“Here. I think you should lie down next to me,” he says, and I do.
“Are we going to sleep together?” I say.
He laughs. “That’s what I had in mind. Is that okay?” He’s leaning over me, propped on one elbow. I realize this is what I have wanted—his body, the way his body would feel, the heft of it leaning over me, reaching for the light switch. Something so routine as that kind of wanting.
“Yeah. We should.”
“We totally should. Should have long ago, probably.”
“Well, at least sometime in the last few days. After we—you know, decided. Only I suddenly can’t remember how you start.”
“I think we should just close our eyes and start touching, and it will all come back to us.”
“Okay,” I say. He holds on to me. And then he tentatively kisses the top of my head, and he does that for a long time, and then he kisses my forehead and the tip of my nose, which may be slightly damp and probably even gross, and then he kisses my cheeks and moves down to my lips, and then Judd is kissing me for real.
He kisses me. Like, really kisses me.
Judd and I are lying in bed kissing.
The next thing that happens is that his hands are warm underneath my T-shirt, and when he takes off his T-shirt, I close my eyes and make up my mind that this is going to be perfectly normal, having his skin next to mine. It is not going to be embarrassing even though he likes women who have much better bodies than I have. I am going to put out of my head that this is Judd, my friend, the one who burps on command for fun, and whom I’ve seen naked from the time we were little, except lately, of course, when it might count for something.
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