Splitting the Difference

by Tre Miller Rodriquez

  I will congratulate them and heartily accept the groomsman honor. My mom will fly out and accompany me and I won’t connect the significance of the third Saturday in March until I’m standing in a Massachusetts church, seating guests. I will suddenly realize that I’m wearing black in a church lobby on the same March Saturday that I carried Alberto’s coffin two years before.

  I will have a moment of panic and dash for the exit door.

  In the shadow of a Gothic church, I will remind myself that this is a joyous occasion. One in which you’re honored to be included. There is no coffin to carry or eulogy to deliver. So just find your smile and walk the bride’s sister down the aisle.

  I will go back inside and perform my duties like a boss, but afterward, I will walk to the adjacent hotel reception and find myself standing on a limestone staircase.

  Wearing a tux.

  And heels.

  I will linger there, half-expectant, before climbing the stairs toward present tense.

  * * *

  I wake at the crack of noon wearing the same clothes I went out in—and to the hazy memory of hosting a late-night party for a dozen strangers and friends.

  There was prosecco.

  And Scrabble.

  And kissing.

  I stumble out of the bedroom and see the empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and game board on the coffee table.

  I can’t recall the name of the boy I made out with on our living-room floor and I can’t believe I played Scrabble with a random guy on the special edition Alberto gave me for Christmas.

  I vomit three times and force myself to go to the gym.

  Lent may be ten days away but my moral diet needs to start today: drink less, no men in the apartment, and for the love of everything, keep it in your pants already, Tré.

  I’ll backslide on two of these vows, but no straight men will enter this apartment for another year.

  The straight man will be Tony Papa, who will stay with me while he’s producing a photo shoot. For eight days, I will come home to the sound of dishes being done in the kitchen. To the white noise of a shower behind a closed door. To the smell of Thai food and a messy living room and a figure on the couch.

  It won’t startle me or inspire my type-A tendencies.

  It will actually make me happy.

  Tony and I will stay up late watching documentaries. We’ll make a mess of the kitchen and eat homemade dinners together. We’ll both be in the process of quitting cigarettes, but we’ll buy a pack late one night and smoke until dawn. We’ll sleep in separate rooms but make tea for each other every morning.

  When he leaves, I’ll thank him profusely for staying with me.

  But, he will laugh, why are you thanking me?

  For lifting me past the guilt of having straight guys in this apartment. Past the belief that I could never make dinner in our kitchen for another man or see a striped dress shirt on a doorknob without choking up.

  * * *

  If my “Dumb Shit People Say” list is any indicator, the state of being newly widowed is an open invitation for people to abandon etiquette and word-vomit all over you. But I’m starting to realize that their words are shaped by their own fears, experiences, and marital situations—not mine.

  Example.

  The woman from my Dumb List who said at least you know where your husband is—and he didn’t leave you with four bastardos.

  Maybe she thought I’d find comfort in knowing it could be worse: I could be widowed and saddled with four kids. Or maybe she found comfort in thinking she had it worse. Either way, her words didn’t have much to do with me.

  Tonight, an unfiltered question posed by a lifelong friend doesn’t have much to do with me either: Don’t you worry about dying alone, Tré?

  This friend’s dad drowned in a freak boating accident last year.

  Alone.

  I reply to his question—we all die alone, and I’m not worried about who will be there when I do—but it’s what he says next that reaches inside and accesses a space I rarely allow myself to visit.

  Do you ever hope you and your daughter will reunite?

  Nice segue, I say. Shouldn’t you buy me dinner before getting me naked and confessional?

  I’m serious, he says. Don’t you think about it?

  Seriously?

  Yes.

  I do look at photographs of Laurie and wonder what her voice sounds like.

  I wonder if she’s as kind-hearted and well adjusted as she comes across in the emails from her parents. Does she fill up journals like I did? Has she set her sights on a certain college? Does she have the good sense of her adoptive parents or the reckless tendencies of her biological ones?

  But I’ve never wondered if we’ll meet: only when.

  Have you thought about contacting her? the friend asks.

  It’s not really my move to make, I reply. I gave her up for adoption and have no legal right to disrupt her life. But my gut feeling is that when she turns eighteen, I will get a phone call or a letter or a knock on my door.

  My gut will, in fact, prove accurate.

  But there will be no call, letter, or knock on my door.

  Two years after Alberto’s death and exactly six months before her eighteenth birthday, she will send me a late-night friend request.

  Her Facebook name won’t match the one on her birth certificate, so I won’t make the connection immediately. I won’t realize the historic shift my life is about to take until the next morning, when I notice a Facebook chat window open on my desktop.

  It was initiated at 1:10am and contains one word from someone named Laurie Rae.

  Hey.

  Hey back, I think. Who are you, again?

  When I click on the chat, her profile page sends me straight to the place I rarely allow myself to visit.

  The space expands.

  And bursts into technicolor.

  My.

  Daughter.

  The tears erupt like champagne bubbles.

  My.

  God.

  This is happening.

  I fight the urge to email her adoptive parents—are you aware that we officially crossed the Rubicon today?—or immediately reply to her chat. I leap around my apartment, place a breathless call to my parents, and scribble notes for what becomes a milestone announcement on the blog I’d launched the previous year. I devour all 793 of her Facebook pictures, reply to her chat—hey there—and a slow, digital dance begins.

  She “likes” one of my photos. I “like” one of hers. She posts a video on my Wall. I comment on her status. Our family members begin friending each other.

  We start exchanging three hundred-word messages in which I learn her likes (meat, makeup, flirting, tidy rooms), her dislikes (rules, televised sports, drugs) and talents (running, tanning, cooking).

  We dance faster—toward our first real-life conversation on December 7th, 2011. When she answers the phone, the sound of her voice races past my eardrums, unlocking doors and attics deep inside me. Something from within expands, contracts, and springs open.

  Within seconds, our stories are tumbling over each other.

  I learn the names of her best friends and that she prefers life in North Carolina to Idaho (but prefers California to either of them). She shares details of her first kiss and asks how much weight I gained during pregnancy? And why in the world had I become a vegetarian? I answer everything from whether Italy is as beautiful as she’s heard (yes) to whether losing a husband is as hard as she imagines (also yes).

  Can I ask you something, Laurie?

  Ask me anything!

  Well, I’ve stayed in touch with your parents all these years, but did you just wake up one day and ask them for my name?

  Not exactly, she admits. I went looking for my birth certificate last year, and once I
had your name, Google did the rest. I even found my birthstory on your blog and printed it out! I cyber-stalked you for, like, a year before friending you.

  Of course you did, I laugh. It’s exactly what I would do.

  Since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with this idea—a wish—for my eighteenth birthday. All I want is for you to come to North Carolina and spend December 29th with me. We could finally meet, Tré! And have a sleepover!

  Yessssssss! is what my gut screams.

  Hold up is what my head warns.

  But your parents? I ask. Are they, um, cool with—?

  Totally! I’ve already asked! Promise!

  The smile on my face spreads to the rest of me, and my head finally switches to silent mode. I let my heart answer her.

  I’m all in, baby.

  Three weeks later, I’m in Cary, North Carolina, on the exact day I was in labor with her eighteen years ago.

  I’m walking toward the door of La Farm Bakery, our designated meet spot, and my hands are shaking as I dial her cell.

  Are you here? she exclaims.

  Yes . . . are you here too?

  Oh my God! Yes!

  Come outside? I ask.

  Yes!

  We’re still holding phones to our ears when she emerges: one-part Griffin, one-part me, and equal-parts stunning.

  Our eyes meet and our phones drop.

  A moment later she’s burrowed in my arms, her shoulder fused to my chin like a long-lost limb. I envelope her and lock my hands. Our feet meet and rock in place.

  Darling girl, I exhale.

  She squeezes tighter.

  Oh, darling girl, happy birthday.

  She sobs harder and I find her shoulder again.

  Breathe in the apple scent of her long brown hair.

  Exhale a few sobs of my own.

  I’ve been dreaming about this moment, she confesses.

  Me too, I whisper. How’s it going so far?

  It’s perfect, she sighs.

  You’re perfect, Laurie.

  We remain swaying, a single silhouette of fabric and skin, until our tears dissolve into giggles.

  After they do, we walk hand-in-hand into the café and hear ourselves ordering the same grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch.

  We notice that we’re rocking the same nail lacquer on our toes.

  Telling stories with the same spastic limbs.

  Ending sentences with the same lilting emphasis.

  We spend the day holding hands and driving through her city. She shows me her high school and the boutique where she works weekends. We find ourselves gushing over the same statement T-shirts and scoffing in unison at spandex pants. Over afternoon coffee, we swap stories about crushes and besties and how we came by our three-letter nicknames—Tré and Rae—which also happen to rhyme. By the time we duck into a photo booth together, Laurie seems like someone with whom I’ve already exchanged a thousand postcards and emails.

  By sunset, I’m climbing the stairs of the home where she’s spent her teenage years. I take one step into her bedroom—and halt. The aqua-based color scheme, giant photo collage, logo shopping bags: it’s as if I’ve walked into my high-school room.

  In this moment, in this room: I feel exactly her age.

  And exactly twice her age.

  The paradox continues into the night: when I joyfully reunite with her parents, when I join the hysterics of dinner with her and twelve teenagers, and finally, when we pull on twin sets of pajamas and fall asleep discussing the merits of Justin Bieber’s documentary.

  The next morning, we sprawl together across her trundle bed, reflecting on how we’d envisioned our reunion.

  I’ve always had this clear picture of where my life would be when we met, I explain. And though I’m closer to that place than I’ve ever been, I’m not quite there yet.

  But you’ve lived, she insists. You’ve traveled the world—and written a book! You’ve met famous people and sky-dived and swam with sharks! You went to Berkeley—and Río! And seriously, Tré, she pauses, you live in New. York. City.

  Wait—what?

  I was expecting awkward questions. I was prepared to fall short of her expectations and to justify my unconventional life path. But here, in the bedroom of my teenage daughter, there’s zero judgment. Laurie already shares my idea of a life well lived. She accepts me for the thirty-something widow that I am—and the scandalous teenager that I was.

  You totally get me, I say, stunned.

  Of course I do, she exclaims. Because you’re me. And I’m you . . . Mom.

  In the six months between this sleepover and our next reunion, Laurie’s text messages will become my favorite part of the day. Our Skype sessions will find me smiling harder than any version of myself I’d pictured. For the first time in eighteen years, I will celebrate my first Mother’s Day and I’ll open presents sent by my daughter.

  I’ll be wearing her gifts of beaded sandals and summer wear when we reunite for a week in the California Desert.

  We will greet each other with all the excitement—but none of the hurry or pressure—of our first meeting.

  This milestone trip is about witnessing the joy of my parents embracing their only grandchild for the first time.

  It’s for the tears—and stars—in my ninety-year-old grandparents’ eyes when they at last meet their “lost great-granddaughter.”

  It’s for lying in the sun beside Laurie, sharing one set of headphones and a Taylor Swift playlist.

  For scissoring up twin T-shirts and turning the guest bedroom into an arts-and-crafts studio.

  For making lasagna in matching aprons.

  Borrowing each other’s bras and giggling over fart stories.

  It’s a weeklong slumber party where my tears are friends that hover, dropping into sentences and stories without regard for convenience or company. A week where my tears are the temperature of unconcealed happiness: light as laughter, constant as gravity. Tears inspired—and brushed away—by the girl who sprung out of my world eighteen years ago, only to take the stage now as a fully formed daughter-sister-best-friend.

  This is the joy awaiting me two and a half years from now.

  And when I finally reach it, the cigarette-smoking-slut-in-a-sundress hangover haze I’ve been in since Alberto’s death will have finally lifted.

  Striped Shirts

  & Epitaphs

  I’m colliding with the sense of you—behind doors, at restaurants, in closets—but you’re nowhere to be found.

  (March 4, 6:41pm via Facebook Wall-to-Wall)

  * * *

  On the May night I met Alberto, I had confessed that 2005 was my first year without a valentine—and I was still bitter about it. A few weeks later, he flew me to New York for our second date and a huge bouquet of red roses was staged in his living room. A handwritten card had asked me to be his valentine.

  But on our first February 14th, I discovered that Alberto didn’t actually subscribe to Valentine’s Day.

  I don’t need Hallmark telling me when to say I love you, he had scoffed.

  Everyone in his office, as well as most people I encountered in New York City, shared his hostility toward the holiday.

  Must be an East Coast thing, I thought, and bought him a gag valentine card that was two feet tall and sent an arrangement to his office. Alberto was mildly amused but didn’t reciprocate.

  The following year I scheduled his flowers to arrive on February 13th, along with a card asking him to be my anti-valentine. He did not acknowledge the gesture.

  The last two years, I skipped the flowers and sent love notes to the office without any expectation. On Valentine’s Day 2009, we had morning sex, read the Times in bed, and he asked if I’d be into the Calder exhibit at the Whitney?

  Hells to the yeah.

  After
an hour or so among the whimsy that is Alexander Calder, we headed to La Esquina for brunch and back home for a movie.

  Since my anti-valentine is missing this year, I’ve been invited to no shortage of Lonely Heart parties tonight. But between now and then are eight hours of meltdown opportunities, so I decide to distract myself by making valentines for New York City.

  I flip through magazines I’ve ignored this year and use a heart-shaped candy box as a pattern trace. With Alberto’s bitten-on Sharpie, I write words like Remember and YES and give it away. Gayson meets me downstairs and we set out to graffiti-heart lampposts, walls, and trees in front of places that hold meaning for me. The throngs of post-brunch, handholding couples don’t sting as sharply with a gay at your side and paper hearts in your hand.

  * * *

  The morning after Valentine’s Day, I receive a letter via concierge.

  It’s from a man I recently met at church. He remembered my reference to living on 23rd and Tenth and apologizes for his forthrightness, but he’d like to see me again and would I please give him a call?

  I’m a little uneasy about being tracked down, but I’m also intrigued.

  Well done, Sherlock, I say when he answers on the second ring.

  Stephen laughs and tells me he figured I lived in a doorman building so he picked the biggest one on the block.

  When are you free for dinner, he asks.

  I review my mental schedule—a movie with my cousin tomorrow, Hilda in town on Wednesday—and tell him it’s either tonight or next—

  Tonight’s great, he interrupts.

  We agree to meet at eight at Sushi on Hudson.

  Over dinner, I learn that Stephen tangos. Speaks six languages. Has lived all over the world. Cooks and plays violin. Is comfortable in his own skin and his faith in God.

  He asks me questions, listens to my answers, calls me luminous.

  As we’re pulling on coats after dinner, he takes me off guard with a kiss.

  It starts out light, exploratory.

  Then his hand finds my hair and tugs it.

  I reflexively bite his lip.

  He replies by enveloping my mouth, scraping my chin with whiskers.