“I never said that, either.”
“You did. You got angry when I told you I loved you.”
“What I don’t believe in,” she said, “is easy love. Or convenient love. Or words that don’t really prove anything.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
There was an awkward silence. Then Camilla said, “Would you like to go away this weekend?”
“What about your two-days-in-a-row rule?”
“I’ll waive it.”
I didn’t answer right away. I felt my throat constricting. And finally I said, “I can’t this weekend. I have to work.”
Camilla looked down, as if she was embarrassed. I said, “Maybe next weekend. Or the weekend after.”
She didn’t say anything. Just nodded. And then we didn’t speak to or see each other for five days.
On the sixth day, I called her and asked if she wanted to have dinner. I took a deep breath and said that I missed her and didn’t like not talking to her. She didn’t respond to that. She just asked me when I wanted to get together, and I said, “Tonight.” All she said to that was “Okay.”
It’s funny. I knew her well enough to know that I was supposed to go to her apartment, and I knew that I was supposed to get there at seven-thirty. I was even pretty sure I knew where she’d want to go for dinner—back to that original sushi restaurant. But I didn’t know how she was feeling about me. Or how the evening would go. I didn’t know if this would be the last time I’d ever see her. I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to stand it if it was. And yet … and yet … Why did there always seem to be an “and yet” for almost every big event in my life? But here it was: And yet there would also be a sense of relief if our relationship ended. I didn’t understand it. It almost made me physically ill to even think about it. But it was true. I knew I’d done something to damage our relationship. I just didn’t know exactly what I’d done or why I’d done it.
The evening went very well, it turned out. It was a little awkward for a bit, but there was too much between us—too much knowledge, too much genuine affection, too much interest, too much involvement and emotional attachment—for the awkwardness to last long. I apologized for my behavior. I told her I wanted to go away with her for a weekend. Any weekend she picked. I told her it was just an asshole moment that had occurred and that it wouldn’t happen again. And then I blurted out that I was very sure that I was in love with her and I didn’t know why it frightened me so much but that she had to give me another chance. Awkward had turned into passion and then panic before I even knew what hit me.
Camilla listened. She didn’t say much other than her usual oohs and aahs and moans over the sashimi and sake. After I’d given the waitress my credit card, Camilla touched my hand—she didn’t hold it, she just touched it, let two fingers rest on the end of my fingers—and said, “It shouldn’t take the idea of losing me to make you tell me that you love me.”
That was pretty much that. She didn’t invite me in when I walked her home, even after my ineloquent hints. We didn’t talk for a couple of days afterward; then we did, and it seemed as if our relationship picked up exactly as it was before my panic attack, before I’d been given exactly what I’d been praying for and had basically stomped all over it. We saw each other often—but not two days in a row—and we made love sometimes, always at her unspoken instigation, but more often not. Nothing gave me more pleasure than talking to her and listening to her, with the possible exception of touching her. And I was fairly sure she felt the same way. Although there was definitely a new wariness on her part. She had made a huge step forward, I’d fucked up big-time, and so she’d taken two giant steps backward. Along with the wariness, I also felt a certain edginess to her behavior. I’d hurt her, even though I hadn’t meant to. And I knew that meant there had to be some kind of payback.
Over a glass of wine one day, after we’d had lunch in her apartment, we went for a stroll and she took the recurring conversation about having a baby further than she ever had before. It was the first time the subject had come up since the going-away-for-the-weekend fiasco. “Seriously,” she said, “no playing around and no sweet talk: Would I be a good mom?”
When I said yes, yes, of course, she asked me why I thought so. I told her, “Because you wouldn’t become a mom if you didn’t think you’d be good at it. You wouldn’t do anything unless you thought you’d be good at it. You’d be a great mother because you’d be in love with the father and want to have his baby. And the first time you ever saw your kid, the amount of love that would be surging through you would be unbelievable. So yes, I think you’d be a wonderful mom.”
Camilla looked thoughtful—she was usually thoughtful, except when she was angry—and she wanted to know if Anna had ever asked me about being a mother. I nodded. Camilla asked how I’d answered and I said I’d told Anna that she would be a great mother because she and I would be the parents, and together we could make things right. I said to Camilla, “I always thought of Anna as a part of me, so I couldn’t imagine her having a child unless I was a part of it. I couldn’t separate the two things or think of her doing it on her own. I don’t think she could, either.”
“Thinking about it now, would she have been a good mother on her own? Without you?”
“I still can’t think of it that way,” I said. “It’s not something that would ever have happened.”
“She didn’t exist unless it was as part of you?” Camilla asked, and now there was an edge to her voice.
“In some ways, that’s right. At least that’s the way I saw it.”
“But for me, you see me as something separate.”
“Don’t you?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I don’t think Anna could have had a child without me. I was too entwined with her, too much a part of her present and her past. We were completely dependent on each other, so it’s not something that would ever have happened unless I was part of it. Not then, anyway. And probably not ever.”
“But you’ll never know that, will you?”
Her words weren’t spoken harshly, but they were pointed and they caused me to take a step backward.
“That’s right,” I said slowly and carefully.
“She died before you could find out a lot of things about each other.”
I didn’t answer.
“Is it hard for you to talk about that?”
“I think we knew everything about each other,” I said.
I could feel the hurt seeping out of my words. Glancing up at Camilla, I suddenly realized that I could barely stand to look at her. Anna had appeared before me like an apparition, dragging me back into the past.
“Everything about each other,” Camilla said, “except what you would have become.”
I said nothing. But I could feel my heart beating faster and my chest heaving and falling underneath my shirt.
“I have to get going,” I told her.
“I’ve upset you,” she said. I could see a bit of panic in her eyes. Fear that she’d crossed some line. Regret that she’d crossed it. And yet … it was a line she was going to cross again and again. We both knew that. She couldn’t help herself. She reached for my hand, this time trying to hold it.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “Please don’t go.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d ever said no to her, but it was the first time I’d ever wanted to say no to her. I had to get away, so I muttered something unsatisfying and evasive about having things to do and left her standing on the street. I walked back to my apartment, trying not to run, and when I got there I fell against the living room wall, using it to keep me upright. I didn’t turn on a light, didn’t make any motion to pet a dog or cat or bird. I did nothing but wait until I caught my breath.
I didn’t know what the hell had upset me so much. Didn’t know what the hell was going on. I wanted this woman. Loved her. And yet … there it was again. The dread “and yet.” I didn’t know all of what was scaring me. But I sure knew that
what Camilla had said about Anna scared the shit out of me.
I spent the rest of the afternoon going over some records. Around seven P.M. I went down to the clinic and stayed there until after ten. I made myself focus on the charts and numbers and notations in front of me, and then read some fairly complex new research on vaccinations. The whole time I was hoping Camilla would call and hoping she wouldn’t.
Around ten-fifteen, my cell phone rang. Caller ID showed a Los Angeles number. I suspected that it was Ted and could feel the tension rise up in my throat. I hadn’t spoken to him in months, not since our mother’s stroke. I let the call go and later noticed that the caller hadn’t left a message.
I got into bed around eleven-thirty. Tried to watch a Law & Order but found that I couldn’t. I flicked off the TV and reached over to pick up a paperback copy of The Shock of the New, a great critic’s overview of modern art. The book was probably twenty-five years old, but Camilla had given it to me and said I would learn a lot from it and like it. She said I would agree with it—and she said she knew I only liked to know about things I inherently agreed with. She smiled when she said it. I smiled back at her, silently acknowledging that she had a pretty good understanding of the way my brain worked.
Before I could even open the book, my phone rang. It was my landline. Camilla never used the landline; she always called my cell. Maybe because I hadn’t given her that number when we first met. She held grudges—even against phone numbers. But when I picked up the receiver and said hello, it was indeed Camilla.
“I don’t like making you unhappy,” she said. “I’m sorry that I did.”
I had been feeling miserable for many hours: knots tightening my stomach, anger clenching my fists. And then I heard her voice. One sentence. One nice thing. And the misery and anger and fear washed away instantly.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I acted like a child. I don’t know why. But I apologize.”
“Hey,” she said. “This is my apology call. You had the last one. Don’t steal my thunder.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve got to cut that out.”
She laughed. I laughed back. Jesus, life was good. Jesus, life was crazy.
We lingered on the phone then, in silence. It wasn’t awkward; instead it was remarkably intimate. Somehow we both realized that words would only get in the way, would push us further apart rather than keep us close. So neither of us spoke. We listened to each other breathe; I swear she was listening to me think. After three or four minutes, she said, in a whisper that was so seductive in its simplicity that it sent shivers down my spine, “Do you want to come over?”
I couldn’t begin to whisper like that, so I did my best to speak in my normal tone, although I failed miserably and sounded like one of those idiots in a movie who drinks homemade whiskey in a prison-of-war camp and can barely get the word “good” out of his mouth.
“I can’t,” I croaked. “I’m just so exhausted from what happened today.”
“Having an argument exhausts you?”
“Yes. I feel a little ridiculous when you put it that way, but yes.”
There was another silence. Not like the first one. I could feel her thinking, feel her concern, but I couldn’t tell if it was me she was concerned about or herself.
“I think you should come over,” she said.
“I want to, but I think I just need to go to sleep.”
“Would you like me to come to you?” she asked.
She had never set foot in my apartment. I’d asked, she’d avoided. Spending the night at my place had never seemed to be an option. It was another line waiting to be crossed.
“Yes,” I said finally. “Yes, I would.”
So she came to me. She was there in fifteen minutes. Looked around the apartment, nodded her quiet approval. Didn’t quite know how to react to the menagerie that greeted her individually, one by one making their way over to sniff, rub up against, or demand to be petted by the newcomer. She dealt with the inspection passably well, but it clearly wasn’t her favorite moment in life.
When we walked into my bedroom, she wasn’t quite sure how to handle Rocky, who was curled up in bed exactly where Camilla wanted to plant herself. I smiled to show her that she was on her own. She got undressed, folded her clothes neatly and put them on top of my dresser, came back, peered down at Rocky, and frowned. After a moment she gently picked him up and placed him at the foot of the bed. Grumbling a bit, he tried to settle in but soon hopped off, landing on the floor with a graceless thud. I propped myself on an elbow and looked down at him: Since the day I’d gotten Rocky, he had never slept anywhere but on my chest or curled up against my side. Then Camilla pulled back the covers and got into my bed and I had no more thoughts about annoyed felines or bewildered dogs.
We kissed.
“The blue walls in the living room,” she said. “That has to go.”
“But—”
“Haven’t you ever heard of white? Walls are supposed to be white.”
“I—”
She kissed me again.
“I’m glad that’s settled,” she said.
She pulled me over to her and turned her back to me so my chest was against her back, my mouth in her hair. I fell asleep smelling her shampoo.
* * *
We woke up at the same time in the morning. I’d rolled back over, and now her arms were wrapped around me. I felt her fingers move and I turned to face her. Larry, Margo, Waverly, and Che were all on the bed. Larry was perched on Waverly’s head. When we stirred, I heard Rocky scamper around on the floor. But he didn’t come up to join the rest of us. Camilla kissed my neck and let her lips linger there. Her face nestled up against mine.
“Are they always like this?”
“Who?”
“All these weird animals.”
“Yes. Well … when they feel like it. They must like you.”
“Of course they do. But they make me a little uncomfortable.”
“Of course they do. Because they like you.”
“Don’t be such a smart-ass.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, Rocky is clearly pissed off.”
“Which one is he?”
“The orange cat. He’s my special bud. He doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“His loss.”
“He’ll come around.”
“I’m sorry I’m disrupting your household.”
“I’m not.”
“No?”
“I’m happy,” I said.
She accepted that with a quick nod. “You know what I noticed last night?”
“No.”
“I mean, other than your weird animals. You have really good yoga feet.”
“What?”
“Do you do yoga?”
“No.”
“You should. You have really good feet for it.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
We lay there for a few minutes longer, neither of us fully awake, reveling in the closeness of our bodies, reveling in the many pounds of animals hunkered together around us. At least I was reveling, and I’m almost certain she was, too, although reveling in the face of drooling dogs and needy cats was not really in Camilla’s DNA.
“I’m glad,” Camilla said after a long, comfortable silence. “I’m really glad you’re happy.”
Her words surprised me and touched me. Hearing her say them was a bit like seeing her naked. Every time she took her clothes off, she smiled. It was a self-conscious smile that made her seem so young and innocent, but it was also a joyously sexy and knowing smile that made her seem so in control. Sometimes she would slink into bed like a seductress or a secret mistress; sometimes she would bounce into bed without a stitch on, giggling and cackling and waving me to join her and it was as if she were a teenager leaping onto a trampoline, ready to celebrate anything and everything without a care in the world. And sometimes her nakedness was so quiet and subdued it was
as if she was revealing more than her breasts and her legs and her ass. It was as if she was making her soul vulnerable to my gaze.
I heard all of that in her words that morning. They were innocent and sexy, seductive and joyous, revealing and vulnerable. I believed they were the first words she’d ever spoken to me that were totally unprotected and unafraid.
The next thing she said, she put her lips to my ear and spoke very quietly: “You make me feel safe.”
“Don’t jump out of bed or hit me or go crazy,” I said. “But I think you feel that way because I’m in love with you.”
She ignored that and said, “The problem is, I don’t really like feeling safe.”
“That’s because you don’t trust me.”
“How do you know I don’t trust you?”
“Do you?”
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“But you’re getting there?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome.”
“I’m going to get better, I swear. I know I screwed up, but—”
“No,” she said. “Not on your side. On mine.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Really.”
“Such as?”
She breathed out a nervous little laugh. “Oh my god, you have no idea.”
“Try me.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Maybe not. But that’s my new goal,” I said. “To make you trust me.”
“It’s a good goal,” she said. “But it’s not as easy as you think.”
“Nothing’s ever as easy as I think. But I never learn. It’s part of my charm.”
“You really are a romantic, aren’t you? You think that love can make the whole world go ’round.”
“I don’t,” I said, in all seriousness. “I just think it’s a good place to start.”
She laughed, a real laugh this time. “Okay, we’ll see. After we get rid of the blue walls, we can deal with the curtains. Then we’ll figure out the whole trust thing.”
I froze and then pulled away from her a bit. “What’s wrong with the curtains?”
Ask Bob: A Novel Page 27