“Because—because we are open-minded, curious people.”
He looked at me steadily then, his eyes traveling all over my face, and I could see that he was wavering, that deep inside somewhere he was building up walls and fences as fast as he could, but that they were being torn down at the same time by my smile and my eyes. But then, when he was about to say yes, something happened. His mother showed up in his eyes. I saw her clear as day, saw him go cold on me.
“It’ll never happen,” he said. “I have to get going.” And then he called for the check, laid a five-dollar bill on the table, and slid out of the booth and out the front door, leaving me.
IT WAS stupid. I called Grant a few more times, but he always said he was busy. Four months later I started dating a guy named Luther, who was a sales rep at the publishing house. He was impossibly cute, but there was something kind of dangerous about him. He reminded me a little bit of Jay—he had that same sense of entitlement and expectation. They call that optimism, said Magda. She said I’d gotten so used to gloominess that I didn’t recognize it when I saw it.
“And you might as well have fun while you’re waiting for Grant,” she said. “You can practice your moves on this guy.”
She had broken up with the would-be fiancé and was now declaring herself on a lifetime plan of devotion to career, and possibly celibacy. I had pointed out to her that even though she might be correct that I was some kind of unformed chameleon who could adapt to anything, she was a mule who would adapt to nothing. Nobody’s agenda suited her. She was determined to do everything her own way. This pleased her no end. I couldn’t have paid her a higher compliment.
The next step—when it came—was entirely surprising and amazing and not choreographed by anything but fate. I was near Columbia on a drizzly, warm September evening and I hailed a cab, and when I went to get into it, Grant was somehow right there, too, having just come from his office and obviously thinking the cab was stopping for him. We both laughed when we recognized each other, and then I said magnanimously, “You take it,” and he did a little bow and said, “Well, why don’t we share it?”
I had just come from a meeting with a woman who had hired me to do illustrations for a children’s book about outer space, and my head was full of planets and galaxies and the glass of wine she and her husband had served me while we talked over the details. I was still on. I’d been complimented and praised for my initial sketches, and I was on my way home to get dressed for a dinner out with Luther—but seeing Grant there, looking so professorial and manly, made my heart stop in its tracks and decide to reverse course.
It was five o’clock; the cab inched along, and during the whole ride, I could feel Grant’s eyes on me. Everything felt perfect. It was as if I were imbued with a gigantic, supernatural energy. When we got to my apartment, I said, “Why don’t you come up, and I’ll cook us something.”
The timing could not have been better. Magda was away for the weekend; she’d gone to visit her sister, who was giving birth to her third child. And our apartment was spotlessly clean because we’d both felt industrious right before she’d left and had scrubbed the whole place down. Grant and I stopped at a little market and bought some cheese and bread and wine and grapes, and when we got to the apartment, I made pasta with the late-summer fresh tomatoes and basil. While he was in the bathroom, I sneaked the phone out onto the balcony and called Luther and told him I was sick.
Everything felt right: the jazz I put on the stereo, the way the light caught the gleaming copper pots, the fresh daisies on the table. I observed Grant walking around the apartment, pacing with his glass of wine, blinking behind his glasses. He stopped at the bookcase and I heard him suck in his breath. I knew what he was looking at: for a wedding present Magda had given us The Joy of Sex and The Joy of Cooking. “The joys,” we had called them. I still had them both, side by side on the shelf. He reached over and touched them, and I watched him from the kitchen and took another sip of wine. When he turned around, our eyes met and then he looked away.
He kept clearing his throat out of nervousness. While we ate dinner, we talked about his parents and his teaching load this semester, and then he asked about my brother.
“He’s not good,” I said. “I think he’s in a lot of pain, and he’s kind of hard to reach. I think he’s taking lots of drugs.”
“I always liked him,” he said. “The last time I talked to him he was saying that there was some surgery they might do, but he didn’t—”
“Really? You talk to him?” I said. “I didn’t know that. He never mentions it.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t really have anything to do with you,” he said. “I’ve always been fond of him. And it’s horrifying what he’s had to go through.”
“He told me once that he’s not going to be everybody’s favorite paraplegic, working to be a hero for the rest of us.”
“Yeah, he said that to me, too. He’s tried as hard as he can to push everybody away. You have to be pretty strong to stay David’s friend these days,” he said. “He’s a very sad, lonely, lost guy trying to fight his way back, and instead he’s fighting himself.”
This was another thing I’d missed—Grant’s sensitivity.
“I miss you,” I told him. “I miss you so much!”
He laughed a little bit. “No, you don’t. Not really.”
“I do. It’s been devastating how much.”
“Hey, could we skip the next reel of this movie? I’ve seen this one, and I really can’t go there again.”
“But I want to tell you. I know what I did was unforgivable, but—”
“Wait, Annabelle. Don’t say anything more. I need to tell you that I’m filing for divorce. I was going to write you a letter.”
“Wait. Do you mean to tell me that you decided to divorce me just while we’ve been here tonight? When I thought we were having such a nice time. Come on. Isn’t this nice, being together?”
“It’s very nice. But there’s nothing left, so I don’t see the point of drawing this out anymore. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and I think we should get our status ironed out, make it official, that’s all.”
“But don’t you see that I still love you? I don’t make pasta with tomatoes and basil for anyone else, you know.”
He was watching me warily.
I gestured in the air. “I mean, look at us here! Isn’t this what we always really needed? Time to be together and by ourselves? I’ve been so happy here tonight with you, and you can’t tell me you don’t feel the same. I saw the way you looked at ‘the joys.’ Remember that? How we laughed when we opened that present, and when—”
“Do you have to make everything so hard?” he said. “What’s left between us, anyway? We had a very, very short courtship and marriage, and now it’s ended.”
“But I love you!” I said.
He looked away. “No, you don’t. You only think you do because Jeremiah wouldn’t leave his wife after all. Otherwise, you and I both know that you’d be off with him right now making babies with him and helping him write his novel. That was what you wanted and you didn’t get it, and so I’m a handy substitute now that you’re lonely.”
“That’s not it, that’s truly not it. I made a big mistake. It was a horrible time for me, and I’ve done a lot of thinking about why I did what I did. I think I loved you a lot, but I was so young and stupid when we got married, and then that accident happened that made me go back home, and when I came to New York, I was still traumatized and didn’t even know it. And you were never there, Grant—you completely abandoned me, and I didn’t know anyone, and I just … I just … lost my judgment. I wasn’t in my usual right mind.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure you have a regular right mind.” He looked longingly at the door. “I’ve gotta go, Annabelle. I have to get out of here.”
“Grant, please don’t laugh at me. I mean this, what I’m saying. It’s our lives we’re talking about here. I’ve been trying for months now to tel
l you how sorry I am and how I want another chance. I made a terrible, terrible mistake. Ask Magda. She listens to me talk all the time about how much I love you and miss you.”
He kept looking at me, working his mouth around and around. It was in that silence that I knew I had him. A wide spaciousness opened up in me. I went across the room and took his hand, and he was helpless. He didn’t even try to move away.
“And,” I said, holding on to his hand and talking too fast, “you know you still love me, too. You’re like one of those swans that mates for life. And I’m your mate. Face it.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I really, really can’t let you do this to me again.”
I was so close to him that I could see myself in his eyes. He had a slight twitch in his lower lid. I whispered, “I will never hurt you again. I will never, ever hurt you again,” and brought my arms up to circle his neck.
“No,” he said. “No. Annabelle, no.” He kept shaking his head, and then he walked to the front door and let himself out without another word. I was stunned. I stood there for a little while, wanting to cry and not being able to find any tears to cry with. And then I cleared the table and washed the dishes and put them away. My mouth was dry and my head was stuffy from the wine. I was drained and exhausted. I put on my nightgown and went and got in bed, turned on The Tonight Show for a while. Then I couldn’t sleep, so I sat at my desk and started drawing.
At two o’clock, the door buzzed. Without even thinking, I leaned over and pushed the button, knowing already it was Grant. I met him at the door, pulling my wrap around me. And sure enough, he came charging into the apartment, his hair flying everywhere. He looked drunk. He pushed me up against the wall, and when he kissed me, his mouth was so hard against mine that I could feel his teeth. When we pulled apart his eyes were tightly shut, and he was grimacing as if he was in the very worst pain.
“God damn it, Annabelle, I can’t let you do this to me again.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I won’t. I swear I won’t. This time it will be different. You’ll see.”
He gripped my shoulders. “All right,” he said. His voice was different from anything I’d ever heard out of him. “I’ve been walking ever since I left here. And I’ve been thinking about whether people can love each other even in the face of … of mistrust. And here’s what I figured out. If I take you back, here’s the deal. This is the only way I can accept it. I know something about obsession, and I know you’ll never really get over … him. So—”
“No, I am over him—”
“This isn’t really negotiable, Annabelle. I know you’re always going to love him. But the deal has to be that you agree not to see him again or talk to him—”
“I haven’t!”
“You can’t tell me later that you’ve decided you’re going to be friends with him. I can’t be friends with that bastard.”
“No. Not friends.”
He gave me a level look, pushed me harder against the wall. “And we have to leave New York and get a fresh start.”
“Back to California?” This was a surprise.
“That, or we can go to New Hampshire and live in the house I grew up in. My parents are talking about retiring and going to Florida, and it’ll be our house. They’re leaving it to me. And I-I’ll get a job teaching in the community college. We can raise a family there.”
“Community college? But you don’t really want to leave Columbia—”
He put his finger up to my lips. “Sssh. I do want that. It’s the thing I have to do to save this marriage. It’s just the way things have to be. It’s important enough to me to do this. But, if I leave all this, you have to do your part.”
I nodded. “I will.”
“No. Don’t say that until you hear all the terms.” He was speaking in a low, dramatic voice I’d never heard from him. “There’s one more thing that is the most important thing to me. We have to make a pact to be completely and utterly faithful to each other. I’m not going to discuss it to death. And I’m not going to worry about whether I trust you anymore or not. I can’t live that way, suspicious and thinking that the next guy you meet is the one you decide to run away with. I can’t live that way, and I won’t.”
I shook my head. “No one should have to.”
“I will be completely true to you, Annabelle. And you will be true to me. As simple as that. It’s a fresh start. The beginning of our real marriage.”
I nodded.
“It’s our pact. A sacred pact. All that stuff from before never happened. Can you do that?”
“Never—?”
“A new marriage. I just want us to put the past behind us and get the hell out of the city and go and start our real life. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” I lifted my chin.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“And we won’t talk about it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He searched my face. “I mean it. I’m not going to mistrust you. I’m not going to look for evidence and read your mail and always think the worst, because I’m taking you at your word, Annabelle. This means everything. I won’t have my heart broken again.”
“No, no,” I said. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not going to break your heart again. This is what I want.”
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t smile. “So. No cheating. No talking about past cheating. And we quit our jobs and move to New Hampshire.”
“New Hampshire,” I said.
“Yes. It’s beautiful there. And we’ll go skiing in the winter, and ice-skating on the pond, and in the fall we’ll pick apples and in the summer we’ll swim and have barbecues and our kids will grow up knowing how to fish and play baseball, and they’ll be on teams, and maybe I’ll be the basketball coach, and you’ll paint and make our house look beautiful, and you’ll make friends, and the house will be filled up with everything that’s good—”
“Wait. There’s something I want, too,” I said. “If we’re making a pact.”
“Okay, what?” He tried to make his face neutral, but I could see there was still some fear in it.
“A baby,” I said. “I want us to have a baby soon. There’s no better fresh start than that.”
He kissed me gloriously and truly and with emotion. It was the happiest I’d seen him. “Okay! Okay, yes, we’ll have a baby soon. To seal the deal.”
It was three thirty in the morning by then, and we went to bed and made love until the sun came up, when we got up and took a walk out on the streets, curled into each other. The diner opened at six and we ate doughnuts and drank coffee that was as strong and bitter as mud, and we talked to the cops and construction guys who were there getting breakfast, and I was the luckiest woman in New York.
Magda was right: I’d had my scandal, my freedom, plenty of blue eye shadow, and the chance to learn to carry seven plates at once. I’d had apartments and temp jobs, and now I’d met a woman who wanted me to draw pictures for children’s books. Not only that, I had my marriage back and my husband trusted me again—and although I loved this crazy city dearly, I knew I was getting out of it in the nick of time and heading to the life I was meant for.
Our journey to New Hampshire, this time with a U-Haul filled with the detritus of our separate lives—two couches, two toasters, two television sets—was a very different sort of trip. We held hands in the cab and listened to cassette tapes instead of the radio.
And we didn’t look back.
[seventeen]
2005
Grant and Nicky arrive for spring break, and Sophie and I make room for them. I clean the place in anticipation of their arrival, put away all our cosmetics and hair appliances, and lay in plenty of food; and then they come stamping in with their boots and their huge jackets and their smells and their loud-voiced complications, and the place suddenly feels unprepared. She and I just have to slide over, content ourselves with the little bits of oxygen they leave us to breathe.
They are having a fi
ght, for one thing—or what passes for one in Grant’s world, which is little more than a tight-lipped silence on his part while Nicky rails against him, trying to make Grant concede a point. It’s the problem of whether Nicky should be allowed to take a semester off, or whether that will mean the end of his ambition and his college career and lead him down the path toward ruination and disgrace. Apparently this discussion has been going on throughout their drive down, and from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem to be moving beyond the same loop of exasperation. Every time I glance over at Sophie, she gives me a mock-panicky look, like Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which makes me laugh.
Grant has that firm set to his jaw that I remember from our fights, the way he has of clenching his mouth closed while some little spasm in his jaw lets you know just how furious he is. When he comes in and kisses me, he whispers, “I may have to take that boy out and lose him in the subway.”
“Don’t you dare,” I say. “He’s my sweet patootie.”
“Yeah, you say that now. No nineteen-year-old boy is a sweet patootie after you’ve been in a car with him for six hours straight. Trust me on this.”
Nicky has a stubbly beard now and he looks both wilder and more muscular than when I saw him last, which was really only weeks ago, at Christmas break. Still, peeking out from that masculine puffery, he has that same little-boy way of ducking his head and grinning shyly. He’s also in constant motion, pantomiming a boxing match, suddenly leaping in midair on the quest to touch a light fixture, or collapsing to the ground and doing a few push-ups. This makes Sophie nearly crazy.
“Can you stop moving for one instant?” she cries out. “You’re making me so nervous I’m going to give birth right this second. And it is not going to be pretty!”
“Cool,” says Nicky, now running in place. “I think the sooner you pop out that kid, the better you’re going to feel.”
“Not if the placenta comes first,” she says. “Just in case you didn’t know, I have to have surgery to have this baby. There’ll be no popping it out.”
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