I cut her off. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I need to learn to fight right too?” I feel bad about cutting her off, but at this point, if I hear that advice one more time…
“Of course I wasn’t going to say that.” Willow looks offended. “Why would I say such a thing? No, what I was going to say is that I’m a little shocked that in such a situation, you would resort to such a clichéd thing as buying flowers.”
Stung, I gaze down at my bouquet. “What’s wrong with flowers?”
“Nothing, in and of itself. But everyone does that.” Once again, Willow looks disappointed, only this time it’s at the clichéd atrocity that is apparently me. “What you need is something in addition to.”
Something in addition to—what’s she talking about? What else could I get at Super Stop & Shop, the cat toy and the rubber bone? But those were for the pets.
As if reading my thoughts, Willow shakes her head in disgust. You need something that will show Mrs. Smith how you really feel.” Dramatic pause. “You need to make…a grand gesture.”
A grand…
I’m thinking the words she’s spoken, in my head, over and over again. And as I’m thinking, I’m looking all around me, when suddenly, over her shoulder I catch sight of something and in that moment, I am forced to admit how perfectly Aristotelian life can be, because what I see, the solution to my problems, is both surprising and inevitable.
“Willow,” I say, grabbing a hanger and something off the shelf above to go with it, “you’re a genius!”
“Not really, Mr. Smith.” She gives a rueful smile. “I only measure 139 on the Stanford Binet, but I’m working hard to make up for that missing point.”
“Well, you’re close enough for me.” I slap the thing I took from the shelf on my head. “How do I look?”
She tilts her head to one side. “I think,” she says, “you are perfectly achieving the effect you want to achieve.”
“Excellent!” I look at my watch. I can’t believe how late it is. I mean, it’s still early, but yeah. “I hate to say it, but I really gotta go, Willow. Are you going to be OK here?”
“Of course. My mom’s probably in the produce section even as we speak.”
Not wanting to take a chance, though—what if her mother deserted her here?—I insist we make our way to that section of the store just to make certain.
Sure enough, when we poke our heads around the corner, Willow’s mom is there, fingering some fruit.
“See? I told you,” Willow says. “In an uncertain world, my mother finds fresh produce very reassuring.”
“Well, thanks for everything,” I say, indicating the things I’m holding that are not flowers, but in addition to.
“Anytime.” She pauses. “Hey, if I give you my number, could you maybe call me later and, you know, give me a report on how it goes?”
“Sure thing, kid.” I hand her my phone, watch as she turns it on and programs her number in, which gives me an idea. “Hey, why don’t you put my number in your phone too?” I suggest. “You know, just to have in case of…whatever.” I don’t want to say in case her mother gets more manic or more depressive but it’s in the air.
“Thanks, Mr. Smith.” She looks relieved as she follows my suggestion. Then she looks up at me, head on an angle. “It helps to have friends, doesn’t it?”
Finally back in the car, I put on the things I’ve bought.
Great, I’ve got my flowers, my grand gesture, my plan.
But what if it’s not enough?
Be a Clown
If these were normal circumstances, I might register the importance of the vehicle parked at the curb in front of my house. The fact that I’ve been up for twenty-four hours straight, however, coupled with my determination to see Helen, means that as I approach the door wearing my grand gesture and bearing my bouquet of flowers, the black-and-white car means nothing to me.
But it sure registers, it sure means something when a uniformed police officer comes to the door.
Holy everything that is holy, did something happen to Helen?
I don’t even get a chance to ask, though, because there’s Helen, coming up behind the police officer and pushing him out of the way. She’s wearing the same clothes she had on Saturday night and tear tracks stain her face.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to sell,” she says angrily, “you crazy…clown, but whatever it is, we’re a little bit busy here right now.”
I can’t believe she doesn’t recognize me. Maybe the red wig, which has come loose and is dipping down over my eyes, is a bit much in conjunction with my clown costume?
Helen moves to close the door in my face, but I stop it with my bouquet hand.
“Helen!” I say. “It’s me!”
She squints at me. Then: “Johnny?”
“Of course,” I say. I wave the flowers, my piece offering. “Who else would bring you these?”
Helen gestures at me, a flat palm outstretched as she turns to the cop. “And this is the missing person I was telling you about. Meet my husband, the clown.”
Well, when she puts it like that…
“Wait,” I say. “You reported me missing?”
“What else did you think I was going to do? I came back an hour after I left—”
She’s been here all that time?
“—but you weren’t here, so I waited and waited, and kept trying your cell—”
Huh. I must’ve had it turned off, which obviously I did, since Willow had to turn it on to program her number.
“—and when you never answered, I got worried, so I called the cops.”
She was worried about me? But: “I always thought they wouldn’t come out for a missing person until twenty-four hours or something.”
“Your wife’s an important person,” the police officer interjects to inform me.
Like I don’t know that.
“She’s a D.A.,” he expands.
“But not in this town,” I say.
“Still, you never know when she might come in handy.” He turns to Helen. “Everything OK now, Ms. Troy?”
“As well as can be expected. You can leave me here with”—another open-hand gesture—“my clown.”
The officer tips his hat to her and he’s gone, leaving the door open behind him and us standing in the doorway.
“What is the matter with you?” She hits me, but not too hard at least, in the shoulder.
“What?” I mean, obviously, there’s a lot the matter with me. I’m just curious which particular aspect she’s focusing on right now.
“How could you leave here like that?”
“You left first!” Well, she did.
“But you left second! And then, you stayed out all night.”
“I figured you were out all night too, you were so mad when you left. I don’t know. I never expected you to come right back in an hour.”
She ignores that.
“And then,” she says, “when you finally do come back, you’re dressed like that? What did you do while you were gone? Did you join the circus?”
“No,” I say, and in that instant it hits me, how ridiculous what I’ve attempted is. “I was trying to make a grand gesture.”
And something about me saying that—or maybe it’s the sad way I say it?—causes realization to dawn in her eyes and her hand goes to her mouth.
“You’re dressed as a clown,” she says, stunned.
I thought we’d already established this fact but apparently I need to say the word out loud: “Yes.”
“But you hate clowns.” Now all the anger is finally out of her voice and what remains is just fear and confusion. “You’re scared of them. Everyone knows that about you. One of our first dates, when you took me to that crazy carnival/circus, when a clown passed by unexpectedly, you shrieked, ‘Eek! A clown!’”
Not my bravest moment, I’ll grant you.
“I know,” I concede the point.
“So why would you…” And again with the hand
gesture.
“Because I wanted to do something big, something that scares me, to prove how much you mean to me.”
Her hand goes to her chest and her eyes are shiny as she says, a tiny break in her voice, “I still…mean a lot to you?”
I nod. How can she doubt this?
“Some guys,” she says, “if they wanted to do something big, might just settle for the flowers. Or, if they wanted to go really big, I don’t know, might jump out of a plane.”
“Yeah, well…” I scuff my oversized shoes.
“I thought we were over,” she says.
“How could you…?” But then I realize that I thought that too, and I reassure her, “Of course we’re not over. Because of one fight? We could never be over. We just need to learn to, I don’t know, fight better or something.”
“I don’t know, Johnny.” Now she looks more than just a little fearful. She looks frightened. “When you find out what I’ve done, you may not feel so sure about our future anymore.”
Wait. What? She said she was only gone for an hour last night. Did she manage to find someone to cheat on me with in just one hour? Oh no. Maybe she hooked up with Daniel—much better a total stranger than Daniel; I’m not sure I could take that. But even if that’s the case, wouldn’t I forgive her? Wouldn’t I somehow find a way to forgive her, because aren’t we in this thing together til death us do part? Still, I have to know and she’s just standing there, waiting for my response.
“What did you do?” I ask hesitantly, not sure I really want to know.
“I guess I put that wrong.” She twists her fingers. I’ve never seen her this nervous. She can’t do that thing with her hands in front of a jury, can she? “I shouldn’t have said ‘what I’ve done.’ I should have said ‘what I’ve been doing.’”
But wait. That grammar usage—“been doing”—indicates an ongoing thing, not an isolated event. So she’s been…cheating on me for a while now?
I can’t take this not knowing anymore. The suspense is killing me.
“Just tell me, Helen,” I say, trying to keep my voice reasonable and not sounding at all how scarily desperate I feel, like our whole future depends on whatever this thing is. “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”
“I’ve been…I’ve been…”
Oh, the temptation to just say, “Please, just spit it out!” But instead, I reach out with my bouquet-free hand and grab onto her twisting fingers, stilling them. “Really, I tell her. It’s OK.”
“OK,” she says. Deep breath. “I’ve been…testing you.”
Wait. What? That’s not what my brain was expecting, not even remotely.
“You were testing me? What are you talking about?”
“The dog, the off-centered clock in the bathroom, having Daniel over, the yellow kitchen, the pink and black bedroom—it was all a test.”
I just stare at her.
“I couldn’t stand that bedroom after I painted it,” she says. “I mean, who would like it? OK, so maybe Stavros does. But pink and black? They’re fine separately. But together? In a bedroom?” She shudders.
I’m speechless. OK, maybe not. “Why would you do that?” I say. “Why would you feel the need to…test me like that?”
“I don’t know!”
But she must know, so I wait for it to come, as patiently as I can.
“It took me a long time to realize that I was even doing it,” she finally says. “It wasn’t like I planned to do it. There was no intent. I just…I think a part of me still couldn’t believe it, still couldn’t believe you, still couldn’t believe us. All my life, I wanted love but never had it, not really. I think I just finally gave up. Then you came along and even after we got married, I think I still didn’t believe in it. I’d think, ‘How can anyone possibly love me like this? How can he love me?’ So I guess I started testing you, maybe even trying to push you away in a sense, because I couldn’t trust that it was all real.”
“You have to trust that it’s real, Helen. How can this ever work if you don’t trust in it?”
“I know, Johnny, I know.” She wipes at her face with the back of her hand before returning that hand to my grasp. “Are you mad at me? Because of the testing?”
“Well, I have to admit, it’s not great.”
Still, I suppose it’s a lot better than if she’d cheated on me with Daniel Rathbone.
“I thought being married was going to be easy,” I confess, “but it’s not. It’s hard.”
“Too hard?” she asks, and I can see from the jut of her chin that her defenses are up now. She’s preparing for the worst.
“No,” I say softly but with determination, “it’s never going to be too hard.”
And suddenly I’m thinking of Leo and The Little Lady, and I’m seeing for the first time what their life together was like, all seventy-plus years of it.
“It’s not going to be perfect,” I say. “There will be fights. There will be conflict. But if we just show up every day, and I mean really show up, if we keep choosing one another not just once but over and over again, if we fall in love with each other again repeatedly, like I’m falling in love with you again right now, I think we’re going to be OK. You have to trust that.”
“I do,” she says. “I trust you.”
And then she’s kissing me and we’ve both got morning breath—do we have morning breath!—but who cares about that right now? Because Helen, my wife Helen, is kissing me.
When at last we separate, she looks at me, her smile mischievous.
“You said it won’t be perfect, right?” she says.
I nod.
“I’ll be a bitch sometimes!” she declares.
“Yeah, I got that,” I agree with a rueful grin. “And occasionally, I’ll be an idiot!”
We declare more things to each other in shouting voices, all the things we foresee ourselves as doing wrong and it’s like we’re pledging our vows all over again, only this time, we’re getting it right.
We are flawed human beings, and we will spend the rest of our lives being flawed together.
From the doorway behind us, we hear voices—“Hello! Hello!”—and we turn to see a couple standing there, about our age, the wife part of the couple bearing a covered dish in her hands.
“Hey, neighbors,” the man says.
“We just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood,” the wife says.
“We’ve been here four months,” I say, laughing. I don’t say “What took you so long?” but I’m thinking it’s implied.
“Sometimes,” Helen says, laughing too, “things just take a little time.”
And then Fluffy’s there, no doubt looking for a top-up on his kibble bowl; Bowser’s there, no doubt hoping for a walk; and Stavros is there in his jammies, scratching his belly.
“Who are these people?” He looks at the neighbors, then shrugs. “Anyone feel like breakfast?”
“It’s going to be a crazy life together, isn’t it?” Helen says.
“It is,” I agree.
I’m not daunted at all by that prospect and from the look on her face, neither is she.
“Now take that wig off, please, so I can kiss you again,” she says. “You look ridiculous.”
I smile and do as she asks, lowering my lips to meet her waiting ones, but before our lips touch, I have one last thing to say:
“I know, right?”
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Isn't It Bro-Mantic? Page 29