Love in the Present Tense

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  All I asked was, “Is it wrong?”

  He breathed a lot, and didn’t answer for a minute. “I’m not sure how to explain this,” he said. “They would think it’s wrong.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Anybody.”

  “But it’s not?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “Maybe somebody could even get hurt. But I can’t say I think it’s wrong.”

  “But everybody else would.”

  “Some would,” he said. “But you won’t know who would and who wouldn’t until it’s too late.”

  I thought maybe if almost everybody else thought something different than me, I might think they were right and I was wrong.

  “Someday when you get older, you’ll understand,” he said. “For now, I’d appreciate it if you’d just go with me on this.”

  “Yuh,” I said. “Sure, Mitch.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to talking to anybody about anything so confusing ever again.

  LEONARD, age 17: what love isn’t

  I still remember my first lesson about love. Not forever love, but the other kind, the kind people use every day. The kind that only works with grown-ups. The kind that always seems to self-destruct after a while.

  Really it’s the opposite of forever love when you think about it. It’s more like a time bomb, and the only real question is how the clock is set. How long it will tick before the explosion.

  I walked into the kitchen one morning while Barb was in there with Mitch. I knew she was in there, too, and I think that’s why I walked in. She had just come back, after that time when I’m pretty sure Mitch thought maybe she never would.

  In one way I knew they wanted to be alone in there, but in another way I could feel their intensity rolling out of the kitchen like waves. I could smell it, the way something heating on the stove sends its good smells out to the people in the living room, and makes them want to come and get it.

  I just had to go in.

  Mitch was leaned back on the counter, and she had her arms around him, and her head on his shoulder, and they both had their eyes squeezed shut. Then she picked up her head and put it near his, so their faces were touching all along one side.

  I knew they were saying quiet things to each other, but they must have been really quiet, because my sense of hearing is great.

  I could see his hands on her back, and there was something hungry about them.

  I couldn’t stop watching, and I couldn’t stop wondering, if this is love, why does it look like it hurts?

  But it really looked like love, to the point where I couldn’t imagine what else it could be. It was so intense. I figured it was just a kind of love I’d never seen before. So I waited to see Pearl in it, but she wasn’t there.

  Funny, I thought. They both seemed so sure. Just for a minute even I got fooled. But it was not the real deal. It had failed the simple test.

  Then Marty came, and Cahill said his name real loud from the other room, and they jumped apart like they’d been caught doing something wrong. So, right there it failed another basic test. How could love be something wrong? Why would you need to make sure anybody didn’t see it?

  Then Mitch looked up and saw that I was standing there. And even though I could see that he minded me less than he minded Marty, he seemed uncomfortable.

  It was all very confusing at the time.

  Years later I developed the simplest litmus test of all. And found the simplest possible way to communicate it. If it takes you apart, that’s not love. Love puts you back together.

  Eventually I even shared this theory with Mitch, though of course I approached the whole topic as reverently and sensitively as possible.

  But, predictably, he had no more understanding of my theory than he might have if I’d explained it all in Latin.

  MITCH, age 25: a graceless new language

  Long-term complications of retinopathy of prematurity. Laser photocoagulation. Cryotherapy. Late-onset retinal detachment. Scleral buckling surgery. Retinal dragging and folds. Vitreous surgery. International classification of ROP. Injection of intraocular gas. Retinal reattachment surgery. Blindness.

  Blindness.

  Blindness.

  The worst thing about my list of new words, other than the actual retinal detachment part: it was laced with treatments that could have helped Leonard already, at earlier phases of the game. Except blindness, of course. That was a specter for further down the road.

  Leonard remained absolutely silent on the way home from the ophthalmologist’s. Maybe he was freaked out, but I doubt it. He’d heard all this before. I was the one learning the new language. I was the one with the words spinning in my head. And behind each new word, more words. Hidden words. Words like insurance coverage. Preexisting conditions. Hospitalization. I was the one who was thrown, and I fully believe he stayed quiet only to allow me time to think.

  There are screening programs for ROP in most neonatal intensive care units. That’s what the ophthalmologist had said. They screen because so many of these problems can be avoided with early diagnosis and treatment.

  Well, then, what happened? I wanted to know.

  Well, she’d said. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But if the mother was on public assistance, or was just low income…if she had to resort to a county hospital. I hate to say it, but it’s a factor. I can’t sit here and pretend it’s not a factor, she’d said. And when the condition was diagnosed, even if the mother had Medi-Cal, well, just try getting Medi-Cal to throw for laser photocoagulation. Since there was no guarantee that he was headed for more than pronounced myopia. They’d probably buy him a cheap pair of glasses and leave it at that.

  I remembered the first phone conversation I’d ever had with Leonard, remembered him telling me he had to spend lots and lots of time at the clinic. What clinic? I wondered. How good a clinic? What did they really do for him? Everything I would if I had my way? Or just the least required? Just what Medi-Cal would throw for?

  Visual rehabilitation. Flashes and floaters. Traction retinal detachment. Slit lamp biomicroscope. Ophthalmoscope. Ora serrata. Arteriovenous shunts. Neovascular ridge.

  The orbiting words were beginning to give me a headache.

  “Hey, Leonard,” Hannah said when we got back. “How was your eye appointment?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Come over and sit on my lap and tell me about it.”

  “He might have a little trouble finding his way there,” I said. “He’s dilated.”

  Leonard carefully felt his way around the desks until he found Hannah’s. Then he sat in Hannah’s lap, as requested, perfectly cheerful as always. “It went fine,” he said.

  I wondered how much he’d had to memorize the lay of this place already, just with his old glasses. It was impossible for me to fathom what it meant to be that nearsighted. What adjustments he made. How his life was different from mine. What the world looked like to him.

  “So, what did the doctor say about your eyes?” Hannah asked.

  “Oh, you know. Same old stuff.”

  Cahill said, “So, Doc, want to see the results of the first campaign polls?”

  “That depends,” I said. “Will I like them?”

  “That depends,” he said. “Do you want the man to win?”

  “Of course I do, Cahill. What the hell kind of question is that?” I owed the cuss jar a buck.

  “Then, no,” he said. “You won’t like them.”

  Barb came back at ten o’clock that night. We made love for almost an hour, that desperate, clingy, incredibly satisfying make-up sex.

  Then after an unusually long stay she rose and dressed, and I put on a robe and walked her to the door. At least, that’s where I thought we were going. Instead she sat down on my couch, which—now that Leonard had his own bedroom—conveniently no longer contained any sleeping boys.

  She asked if I had tea without caffeine. She said if she drank caffeine this late she’d be up all night. I put on
a kettle of water and then sat down with her. I wasn’t quite sure what we were doing. Whatever it was, we had never done it before.

  “You can’t really judge much by the polls,” she said. “Especially not this early. A lot of winning candidates get off to a slow start.”

  “I don’t know anything about the process,” I said. “But I agree it’s too early to judge.”

  “So,” she said. “What’s changed since I last saw you?”

  “I’m sorry. What’s the question?”

  “I’m asking what you’ve been doing.”

  “Oh. Okay. Right.”

  That’s when it hit me, what was happening. And I felt stupid for being so slow to understand. She was staying afterward to talk to me. To hear about my life. In other words, she was responding to my earlier complaint. I supposed that meant I had cut her with that complaint in some way. I couldn’t have imagined, at the time I’d said it, that it hadn’t gone without saying. But you never know when you’re going to cut somebody.

  “Well, let’s see. We moved Leonard into his new bedroom. Found an office to rent downtown. We’re outgrowing this space so fast. Cahill went to a bankruptcy auction and bought a bunch of new hardware. What else? Oh, and we took Leonard to get his eyes checked out.”

  The kettle began to whistle, and I got up to get it.

  I made her a cup of herb tea, then got a little vague on how she might want it. I didn’t know whether to steep it dark for her, and I didn’t know whether she took honey or sugar. That struck me as sad. I felt I should have known that about her. I decided I would just have to ask.

  But she wasn’t where I had left her on the couch. I looked in the downstairs bathroom, but the door was open, the light out. I climbed the ladder to the loft, stuck my head over to look, but there was nothing happening up there.

  When I came down I saw the door open to Leonard’s bedroom. I walked by the doorway slowly, hesitating only briefly to look. He was still fast asleep, and she was standing in the dark by the edge of his new bed, her back to me. I felt like a thief trying to steal a piece of that moment, whatever it was, so I went back into the kitchen. Put the mug of tea on a tray, with the jar of honey, and a saucer for the tea bag, and a spoon. She could sort the whole thing out the way she wanted it.

  When I got back out to the living room, she was sitting on the couch as though she’d never left. “Thanks,” she said. “Let it steep awhile.” She leaned against me, so her back rested against my chest. I wrapped an arm around her waist. “So, what was the upshot of his eye exam?”

  “Long version or short version?”

  “Just the gist of what it adds up to.”

  “He has this eye condition that premature babies sometimes get. There are good therapies for it, but they’re expensive. You have to have either money or good insurance. On Pearl’s income I guess they were more or less out of the question. Anyway, at this point he’s a good candidate for tearing in his retina. He’d have to have this cryotherapy technique to repair it, and then they might have to put a silicone band around his eye to reshape it. To get the retina to lay flat. Otherwise it could lead to complete retinal detachment. Even if he gets through childhood without too many problems, when he’s a teenager the scar tissue in his eyes could tear the retina. Because the eye has grown. If it isn’t repaired, and fast, he might go blind.” We sat without talking for a minute, her hand stroking my bare wrist. “I’m beginning to see your point,” I said. “About biting off more than I can chew.”

  “Well, you’ve made the choice, so you’ll live with it. You’ll make the best of it. You can handle it as well as anyone. What are the chances that you’ll actually be keeping him permanently? Are you planning to try to legally adopt him?”

  I had talked to his social worker about this at some length. Problem is, she’d said, they favor two-parent homes. If a good two-parent adoption home comes along, well…Anyway, she’d said, not all kids get so lucky, so we’ll wait and see.

  “That could go either way.”

  “Well, it’s a coin toss, then. Maybe this will all be your problem and maybe it won’t.”

  “I know I shouldn’t ask this, but I can’t help it. I have to. What were you doing in Leonard’s room just now?”

  Silence radiated for a moment. I knew she would have preferred I hadn’t seen, and I felt again that perhaps I should have kept the question to myself.

  “Just telling him I was sorry,” she said.

  Barb and I had a lot in common. All of my most noble moments with Leonard happened while he was sleeping, too.

  After she left for the night, before I went to bed, I let myself into Leonard’s room and sat on the edge of his bed.

  I thought for a while about what I would do if someone adopted him. If they were responsible and had financial options, fine. They could see to his eyes. But if they didn’t do it, or didn’t do it right, it was still my problem. Because I’d promised him that if I had anything to say about it he wasn’t going blind. That was one problem. The other problem was that it hurt, already, to think about him living with somebody else.

  “I’m really glad Barb came back,” I said. “But I hope you notice that I didn’t sell you out for it. I’ll never sell you out.”

  Then I decided this was unfair, and it had gone too far. In the morning, over breakfast, when I was sure Leonard was awake, I would tell him that I’d love him forever, that I wouldn’t let him go blind if I could help it, and that I’d never sell him out.

  A boy deserves to hear these things while he’s awake.

  LEONARD, age 17–18: preflight check

  I’m waiting for a special moment. It’s exactly three minutes away. It’s three minutes to midnight in the driveway of my adopted parents’ home, and at midnight I will be eighteen. And when I’m eighteen I will be no one’s responsibility but my own. And nobody can tell me where to live or what to do. And it’s only three minutes away.

  There’s a good, strong moon tonight, and I’m sitting beside my finished craft, waiting. Waiting to belong to myself. I love my adoptive parents. I really do. But it doesn’t feel right to belong to them. They’re great people, really, but they are not Pearl, and they are not Mitch. And they are not me.

  I’ve backed Jake’s truck into the driveway, nearly up to the glider, and it’s just sitting there. The truck and the glider and I are all just sitting here, quietly.

  Jake has this truck that he uses in his construction trade. It has one of those metal racks across the cab and bed, from bumper to bumper, a raised metal rack for strapping down lumber and such. Gliders and such. I bought a huge tarp, because no matter how tightly I lash it down, no matter how slowly I drive, I’m afraid of the wind getting underneath it, and lifting it up, just the way it’s designed to do. I’m afraid if I’m not careful the whole truck could fly. Well, not literally. But it might be hard to control.

  Okay. It’s time now. It’s time. I belong to me.

  I manage to lift and position the glider across the rack of Jake’s truck. It’s light. It sticks out way too far, crazy far, both front and back. But the streets should be more or less empty. If the cops or the highway patrol spot me, it’s probably over. But I don’t have that far to go.

  I tarp it all around and lash the tarp down to the truck in every possible direction, to every possible tie-down. At every tarp grommet, I find something to secure it to. Front bumper, back bumper. Tie-downs in the bed. Problem is I have to leave plenty of room for the wind to get under the front of the thing, because otherwise the tarp would obstruct my view of the road.

  It’s okay. I’ll drive slowly.

  I go back into the kitchen and leave a note for Jake. Tell him I’m sorry I lied about the crash helmet and the additional ground school, which I think I’ve had plenty of already and Jake doesn’t, and the fifty air hours before I launch off a cliff, and the professional inspection on the glider, and all the other things I promised. I tell him I’ll be as careful as I can under the circumstances, and I’ll
be back. No guarantees, actually, but probably I will be.

  I tell him if for any reason I don’t see him and Mona and the other kids again, please know I love them all and I’m grateful for everything they’ve done for me. I tell him if I do come back I’m going back to live at Mitch’s house, which should not in any way undercut that love and appreciation. It’s just that Mitch and I need each other in a special way, like one of those jagged-cut playing cards in the spy movies, that two people fit together to make sure they’ve got the right match.

  Then I tell him that if anything should go wrong, his truck will be on the bluffs at the end of that long dirt road across the railroad tracks. I’ll leave the keys in the magnetic key holder under the driver’s side wheel well. Mona can drop him off to get it, or actually he could really walk or bike there if he wanted. It’s only a few miles.

  I coast out of the driveway, all silence, lights off. Then I let the truck drift down the street. At about the corner I turn the key and it sputters to life. I turn the lights on and I’m gone. Only about ten miles per hour, but I’m gone.

  So this is what it feels like to belong to yourself, I’m thinking.

  I could get used to it.

  I’m up on the bluffs in the moonlight when I realize I’ve made one tactical error. Taking Jake’s truck. Belonging to oneself carries a great many new responsibilities. Okay, on the one hand I lied to Mitch, I lied to Jake and Mona. I’m about to do something they all want me not to do. But I can do what I want to. What I need to. I’m mine. But Jake’s truck is not mine. That’s a different matter. I can’t just take what isn’t mine.

  I know I have to adjust the plan.

  I off-load the glider, which is wonderfully light but a little hard to handle. Balance is important and a little tricky, especially the way the wind gets underneath. I lash it to a telephone pole, retarp it. If nobody steals it, it will still be here when I get back. I’ve tied it down too tightly for the wind to upend it or take it away.