Splitting the Difference

by Tre Miller Rodriquez

  Almost.

  Watching Roberto surprise Priscilla with a ring, I can’t help but relive my own engagement and compare notes.

  Alberto did it right.

  Gave me a story to tell the grandkids we never had.

  On our fourth date, I introduced him to my parents in California. He seized his moment after dinner, as soon as he was alone with my dad.

  When I rejoined them, the conversation stopped.

  So, I asked, uncomfortably, does everybody still like everybody?

  We do, my dad said. In fact, we were just discussing how much we both . . . love you.

  Really, I said, looking from my dad to Alberto and back.

  Therresa, my father paused for a long moment. Alberto would like to marry you. And he’s asked for my blessing.

  And . . . did you give it?

  Indeed I did, he says.

  After hugging my father, I wrapped my arms and lips around Alberto.

  Did he really just say my lines? Alberto whispered once my dad left the room.

  Yes, I whispered back, but that was just the dress rehearsal. This is the real performance.

  He took the cue, dropped to one knee, and opened a red box that held a platinum ring with a sparkly diamond.

  Tré Therresa Claire Miller, will you marry me?

  Yes, my darling. Hell yes!

  * * *

  I think my grief has physically migrated to my shoulders. I’m popping Advil like they’re mints, but eventually the ache creeps through. When it does, I force myself to take deep breaths and consciously relax before returning to whatever I’m doing. Invariably, my shoulders start hunching skyward and the pain jolts through me again.

  Same routine every day for the past two weeks.

  I book a massage for tomorrow and step out of the apartment for another bike ride.

  * * *

  Three razors in our shower:

  One is mine, one is Alberto’s, one is my brother’s.

  I’ve kept Phil’s Gillette all these years, and it’s one of the few things of his that I see every day.

  Two out of three razors.

  Today Phil would be thirty-three years old. Although I fly back to California for the anniversary of his accident, on his birthday I trust my parents to put a sunflower on his grave for me.

  They’ve sent a dozen to me this year, and it’s this well-timed bouquet that rallies me away from the razors and toward a downtown massage.

  * * *

  These days, I chart my healing according to what I’m able to face: returning to our favorite fish taco place, taking a bike ride, going to Connecticut, not crying through an entire massage.

  But grief is infernally humbling. Things like, say, taking out the trash, replacing a track light bulb or the five-gallon bottle of water—his designated chores—still have the power to paralyze me.

  * * *

  Back in February, Alberto reserved a car for Fourth of July so we could spend the week on Lake Winnipesaukee with Nikki’s and Fico’s families.

  Like Connecticut for Memorial Weekend, I can’t imagine going anywhere but New Hampshire for this holiday. But unlike Connecticut, there’s no simple mode of public transportation to Winnipesaukee.

  There’s no way I’m getting behind the wheel, but maybe someone else would? Who might be willing to drive and be able to deal with my meltdowns? The usual suspects are either New Yorkers who don’t drive or girlfriends who do but live on the West Coast. When I remember that my cousin Vanessa in California is a college student with summers off, I pick up the phone.

  Hey, I say, you like to travel, right?

  Love it, Vanessa says.

  And road trips?

  Of course, she says, why?

  Twenty minutes later, she’s agreed to fly to New York in two weeks, after I visit California for my dad’s birthday.

  I remind her that she’ll need to drive us to New Hampshire and that I will no doubt be a hot mess once we get there.

  I hear hot mess is the new black, she laughs.

  * * *

  Most weekdays, I woke up without Alberto beside me.

  His bio-rhythms would wake him at 5:20am, when he would trot naked into our home office and do whatever important things were rattling around in his brain.

  Review timesheets. Watch porn. Plan our next vacation. Write emails.

  I’d wake with my 7:10am alarm and say goodmorningiloveyou! with my eyes still closed.

  If he didn’t respond, I’d sit up, open my eyes, and say it again.

  He would lean his voice toward the bedroom and singsong it back to me from the office: Good-MORN-ing-I-LOVE-you.

  Mornings begin now with me fighting the urge to say goodmorningiloveyou to an empty apartment.

  * * *

  At a large dinner party tonight, a friend’s mom is compelled to comment on my “situation.”

  You should get back to your routine, she says. Routine is good.

  Yeah, I say. That’s what people love to tell me.

  What I really want to say is that my “routine” hasn’t been disrupted: it’s been decimated.

  What I actually need is a brand-new routine.

  One that that doesn’t involve reading the Times over cafecito every morning.

  Or going for tapas on rainy Thursdays at Tia Pol.

  Or watching Friday night baseball or Friday Night Lights over pizza.

  Or Saturday morning bike rides.

  Or the crossword at Sunday brunch.

  Or Scrabble.

  Or Frank Sinatra or the Orishas or Mel Tormé or Sammy or show tunes.

  How about, instead of telling me what I should be doing, you people show me what I could be doing?

  Get me a subscription to the New York Daily News.

  Fill my iPod with a thousand songs I’ve never heard.

  Teach me to make Korean food.

  Or do Sudoku.

  Or unicycle.

  Or belly dance.

  Or understand football.

  Or play the ukulele.

  Or some other usefully distracting activity of your choice.

  Oh.

  That’s right.

  You’ve got a husband and family who need attending.

  Yeah.

  Thanks for all the thoughtful advice about my “routine.”

  Also, is there more wine?

  * * *

  Two days before Alberto died, his last IM to me announced that it was Show Tunes Friday at Revolución: he’d started things off with Grease and moved to Fame and closed with Fiddler on the Roof.

  Five Fridays after he died, I decided to pick up where he left off.

  I put on a brave face and hugged my way through his office, determined to play The Sound of Music and West Side Story and Gigi.

  I spent half my visit in the bathroom, trying to pull myself together.

  Since then, I’ve passed by Revolución at least one Friday a month.

  Each time I do, everyone but Henry—who talked me down from the ledge when I couldn’t find Alberto’s jacket for the viewing—seems surprised to see me.

  Today, it seems like either the music ritual has run its course or I’m too fragile to carry it forward. I don’t know how to respond when Fico turns down the music because he’s getting on a call. Or when Tito—whom I haven’t seen since the funeral—chats me up about a photo shoot he’s doing across from the Flatiron. Tito knew Alberto for a decade, and all he’s got are some choice words about the hot model he’s shooting this weekend?

  I realize Revolución has an office to run.

  But I got a husband to grieve.

  * * *

  It’s two days before Father’s Day and I’m behind the 8-ball.

  I usually have Dad’s gift so
rted two weeks in advance, but this year?

  I’ve got no game.

  Even the first Father’s Day after Phil died, I managed to go all out: homemade card, framed photos, brunch after church. I also remember that the whole day felt like a fake pep rally and we ended up at the cemetery before driving home in silence.

  That evening, while I smoked cigarettes out my second-story window, I noticed two unfamiliar, well-dressed guys walking across the lawn. When they disappeared from view, I tossed my smoke and crept into Phil’s dark bedroom. I peered down from his window and saw the men set their bags down in front of our garage.

  When they started lifting the corners of the garage door, I punched open the window with a fury.

  What da fuck? I growl.

  The voice that comes out of me is foreign.

  It’s a voice that doesn’t know it belongs to a five-foot-four white girl.

  The men look up, frozen.

  I do not blink.

  Yeah, I say, thrusting my chest out like I’d seen Phil do. The fuck.

  They drop the garage door, grab their bags, and take off.

  So do I.

  I bolt down the stairs, past my parents watching TV.

  Call the cops! I yell, running toward the front door. We almost just got robbed!

  I’m sprinting at top speed when I see them throw their loot over the perimeter wall and scale it. I hear an engine start but by the time I hop up, I can only get a make and model—early ’90s BMW, 700 series, dark paint—but not the plate number.

  My adrenaline’s still pumping when my dad rushes toward me with the portable phone.

  They’re already gone, I say. You got the cops?

  He nods.

  Good. I got a description.

  After a few minutes, the officer says he has everything he needs.

  We’ll be in touch if we need you to do an I.D.

  I’m game, I say. I mean, what kind of asshats go thieving in a luxury car?

  The kind that steal luxury cars to go thieving, he answers.

  Touché, I say.

  I give the phone to my dad, who wraps his arm around me.

  Well, who needs a guard dog when we have you around? he smiles.

  I felt like I was Phil tonight, I confess. Six-feet-tall. Gangster.

  Father’s Day 1995 would be not the last time I channeled my brother.

  Over the next decade, I would do things Phil had done and things he didn’t live long enough to do. I drove too fast on highways, jumped out of planes, took up rock-climbing, ate mushrooms, traipsed around Europe, and continued standing up to men twice my size.

  His death gave me a strong sense of everyone else’s mortality, yet it somehow made me feel invincible.

  No way would anything happen to me: my parents couldn’t have taken any more loss.

  God must have agreed.

  And added some extra muscle to my security detail.

  * * *

  Oh shit, Melanie-the-Opera-Singer whispers.

  What’s wrong, I ask.

  He’s here. Quick! The stairs!

  Melanie’s stalker ex-boyfriend just showed up at Soho House, so we race to the stairwell and crash the party on the roof: a group of six good-looking guys.

  A few mojitos later, the six boys have become two—one blond and one brown-haired guy—and we’ve already had the conversation about why I’m wearing a wedding ring and how the two guys are friends from college.

  When the roof closes for the night, the four of us walk to the elevator, discussing where to go next. Melanie wraps her ankle and Southern-molasses voice around the blond guy, asks if we should go to Swaaaay?

  I clear my throat and make a call.

  Making a call for a table at Sway is one thing. Wanting to kiss Brown-Haired Guy at a table where Alberto and I once sat is another.

  And yet.

  I do it.

  As it’s happening, I mark its milestone-ness.

  Try not to think about who else might be watching.

  Two bottles of Veuve later, the four of us are outside, hailing a cab to the midtown loft of Brown-Haired Guy.

  When a taxi stops, Melanie grabs my hand and tells me there’s been a change of plans: she and the blond guy are going back to her place, oh-kaaaay?

  Not cool, I want to say. But I kiss her cheek, tell her to have fun, and step away.

  Brown-Haired Guy beckons me into his cab, and it should occur to me to go home right now. I don’t live far from here. But since I’m the conductor of my own personal train wreck tonight, this guy does not seem like a bad idea.

  On his landscaped terrace, we forge some small talk—about his absent roommates, his job at a music magazine, our favorite countries to travel in—and I ask if he has roof access?

  He does.

  I tell him that me and my beer are going up.

  He meets me on the roof with blankets, condoms, and bottles of water.

  The view is spectacular—as is the metal grate upon which we undress each other. The night air is warm and breezy and I’m naked on a Westside rooftop at 4am, which, really, should be all I need to lose myself in this moment.

  But it’s not.

  So I tell him that I like it a bit rougher.

  What does that mean?

  Spank-me-bite-me-pull-my-hair. That sort of thing.

  He bites my lip for about three seconds before going back to whatever he was doing before.

  I meet his eyes and ask if he’s ever been up here—to the roof?

  Once.

  What—when your realtor showed it to you?

  Yes, he admits, sheepishly.

  First time having sex in public?

  Yes.

  He asks if we can please go back downstairs: this grate is killing his back.

  His bedroom—with its vaguely Victorian theme—does zero for my libido, but he’s into it.

  So I try to be.

  Try to pretend I’m a Victorian virgin.

  Not a twenty-first-century widow.

  But fantasy isn’t working.

  Reality isn’t working.

  The moment is no longer a milestone.

  It’s a letdown.

  I just want it to be over.

  And it is.

  Even sooner than I hoped.

  I find my bottle of water and ask if he’ll hate me if I leave?

  Don’t go, he says. Stay over. Wake up with me.

  Waking up with someone doesn’t sound half-bad, so I drain my water and curl into him.

  When I open my eyes a few hours later, the room is no longer in shadows and the man beside me is not snoring.

  Oh.

  God.

  Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.

  Brown-Haired Guy is not dead.

  He just doesn’t snore.

  I sink into the pillows and think about where I am, how I got here, why the hell a straight guy would have lace curtains?

  On one hand, I got this milestone over and done with: I didn’t come—but I didn’t cry either. On the other hand, I feel like a slut who needs a shower.

  I find my sundress on the floor and his bathroom down the hall, where I finger-brush my teeth and wash my face. My head is pounding with equal parts hangover and horrification.

  When I emerge, he’s awake, offering coffee.

  I’ll just take a water to go, I say.

  He asks for my number.

  Give me yours, I say, before racing out the front door.

  * * *

  Waking up in someone’s arms was exactly what I was craving.

  But the awkward sex?

  And the slut walk afterward?

  Gross.

  Think I’ll stick with the last present Alberto gav
e me for a while.

  * * *

  A married client asked me to dinner tonight in Tribeca. He’s someone with whom I’ve had business lunches and someone who’s been ten kinds of sympathetic this spring.

  Tonight, this man grabs my waist when I emerge from the restaurant bathroom and pulls me toward his lips.

  Seriously? I say, recoiling.

  He shrugs.

  I’m too shocked to slap him. Too shocked to do anything but escape after the second course. Too shocked to feel anything except dread about returning to work in two weeks.

  * * *

  I call my parents at 6am Pacific time, crying.

  Oh no! What’s wrong? my mom shouts.

  Sorry, sorry, these are—good tears. I got the call from the insurance company this morning: the policy for me and Barby was approved.

  Thank God, she says.

  Believe me, I am.

  Does this mean you can fly out here this weekend? she asks.

  Yes, I reply.

  It also means I can replace the money I’ve drained from my IRA and savings since March.

  Pay the lawyers.

  The accountant.

  Our taxes.

  The rent.

  * * *

  I arrive at my parents’ house this afternoon and get a call from my cousin Vanessa, about our upcoming trip to New Hampshire.

  I’ve had a few fainting spells lately, she says.

  Are you okay?

  Hopefully, but my physician just put me on a heart monitor—and yanked my driver’s license until the results are analyzed.

  Translation?

  She can’t drive for a month.

  I should be extending concern and asking about her condition, but my brain is fixated on the stupid rental car I will now have to drive to New Hampshire for Fourth of July.

  The panicky feeling starts threading down my throat and esophagus.

  Dad walks outside as I’m hanging up the phone, shaking my head.

  What’s wrong? he says, reaching for me.

  I tell him about Vanessa.

  The six-hour drive.

  The installation of the bike rack that will obscure my rear view.

  The eight different parkways through four different states.

  First-world problems, I say, but Dad, you know how much I loathe driving on the East Coast.