The Forever Year

by Lou Aronica

  “Yes, very much. It’s inspiring. It makes me want to enlist in community service.”

  Gina smiled. “Stick with me and I’ll have you handing out flyers on street corners in no time.”

  Mickey thought anything that involved “sticking with” Gina seemed utterly appealing.

  “Sign me up.”

  The conversation shifted at that point to lighter subjects. Gina seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of film celebrities and their personal lives, and admitted sheepishly that when she read the newspaper she turned to the funny pages first.

  “Slapstick,” Mickey said, almost in a whisper, while he ate his raspberry soufflé.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I love slapstick.” Mickey was very surprised to be admitting this to a woman he wanted to impress. “I know I’m not supposed to. I realize it isn’t the sign of an educated mind. But I just love it.”

  Gina laughed. “I think that’s great.”

  “You think it’s great that I find it funny to watch people bop each other over the head and fall down?”

  “I think it’s great that you find anything especially funny. I mean, I already know that you are smart, a hard worker, and up to date on most of the issues of the day. I also know that you can be a little mysterious, but you’re too mysterious to explain that just yet. I think it’s great that something always makes you laugh – even slapstick. Not that I can say I’m a fan myself.”

  She smiled at him again. And this time she was smiling because he had admitted something that he’d been too intimidated to mention to any of his other Manhattan friends, something that he thought pegged him as an ignorant Brooklyn boy. Instead of reacting badly to the admission, though, Gina had rewarded him with the greatest gift she had given him to date: that remarkable smile.

  As they left the restaurant, Mickey felt like he was airborne. The night was young and he had no desire to see it end anytime soon.

  “Would you like to go dancing?” he said while Gina took his arm as they exited La Coquille.

  She squeezed his arm softly. “I’d like that very much. Someplace quiet, though. I’d rather not go anywhere noisy tonight.”

  “There’s a great trio that plays at The Plaza on Saturday nights.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  Mickey had thought the night couldn’t get any better, but as he put his right arm around Gina’s waist and clutched her left hand for their first slow dance, he realized he had been pitifully wrong. There had never been more delicate fingers, never been a softer cheek, never been a form that fit more naturally against his. Cole Porter had never written a song to describe this feeling. How could a woman he had only begun to know possibly thrill him this way?

  “And you can dance as well,” Gina said as they moved across the floor.

  “My mother taught me, if you can believe it. She said ‘the ladies’ would like it.”

  “And do ‘the ladies’ like it?”

  “I’m only interested in the opinion of one lady.”

  Gina set her cheek against his and whispered, “I think your mother might have been right.”

  They danced until after one. Mickey wasn’t sure that he would ever have stopped, but Gina told him regretfully that she was expected at breakfast early the next morning and needed at least a bit of sleep. In the cab back to Gina’s apartment, she laid her head on Mickey’s shoulder and neither said a word. When they arrived outside the door, they lingered on the street for several minutes.

  Mickey turned toward her. “I’m sure this is obvious, but I had a wonderful time tonight.”

  Gina swept him up in her eyes for perhaps the twentieth time that night. “I’m glad. I did as well.”

  “Can I see you again?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “This week?”

  “I’d like that, too.” Gina thought for a moment. “Do you like the opera?”

  “I don’t think Laurel and Hardy have ever been in one. I can’t say I know much about it.”

  “Come with me Tuesday night. My mother and I have a subscription at Lincoln Center. I think I might be able to convince her to give up her ticket.”

  “The opera would be wonderful. It will be like exploring a new world.”

  “That’s as it should be.” She looked over her shoulder. “I should really get inside.”

  With that, Gina leaned forward and placed a delicate kiss on Mickey’s cheek. While she was just barely touching him, her lips lingered at the spot for several moments.

  Then she pulled back, smiled, and walked into the building.

  ~~~~~~~~

  “It was like an angel had kissed me,” Dad said. “A living, breathing angel.” He looked off into the distance. “I can still feel it, Gina.” He cast his eyes downward.

  Jesse hadn’t spoken since Mickey had begun the story. At first he had thought to interrupt his father with questions, but he hadn’t even noticed when he made the decision to simply sit and listen. Jesse was stunned that his father was telling him this story, and he had to admit that he was completely hooked. He waited now for his father to continue, but Dad didn’t say a thing. A shadow had passed over his father’s expression. He had been beaming only minutes earlier, but now he seemed lost in thought – or was he lost in time?

  The suspense was killing Jesse. “There’s more, right?”

  Mickey seemed to return from wherever he had gone. He regarded Jesse as though he had forgotten his son was in the room.

  “There’s more, yes. But not right now. I think I’m going to lie down for a little while. And you have a lot of work to do.”

  Chapter Eleven

  This story was stunning to me on so many different levels that it was hard for me to even comprehend just how stunned I was. I of course wanted to hear more, but since things had been pretty awkward between my father and me the last few days, I also didn’t want to appear overeager. When he rose from the table, I got up as well, saying something inane like, “Yeah, really, gotta get to this article.” But my mind was reeling.

  Who was this woman who had so completely captivated my father? Did she turn out to be someone very different from who he thought she was? Did she turn into some overbearing freedom fighter, leaving my father in the lurch? Perhaps Gina wasn’t her real name and she was really a major political figure whose identity he was forbidden from revealing. I, of course, immediately began to wonder about what broke them up, because that’s where my mind went whenever I thought about love stories. It was clear that talking about Gina took a lot out of my father, and that suggested to me that she ultimately broke his heart. Did they burn intensely for a short period, or did things decline slowly, leaving my father to grasp at what might have been?

  Then there was the shock of hearing my father speak this way. Until a couple of days before this, I had never once thought of my father as a romantic. He and my mother filled their roles, partners in the enterprise. He didn’t bring her flowers, sing her love songs or do anything else that Neil Diamond might have suggested – at least not while I was around. Then he put on his little display with Marina, which was strange enough. When he talked about Gina, though, his entire demeanor changed. He was like one of those professional storytellers who become possessed by the characters they’re playing. He was transformed from Mickey Sienna, eighty-two-year-old grumbler, to a lovestruck young man with dreams in his eyes. When he talked about the intoxicating qualities of attraction, I could identify with what he was saying. But this was because of what I knew of it myself rather than because I had seen him talk this way before. While he was telling this story, I believed that the most important thing in the world to my father was the love between a man and a woman. This was a nearly complete disconnect from the guy who talked portfolios, career choices, and bacon. At least I recognized the part about slapstick. There had been several times since he moved in when I nearly buried my head under a pillow because he was guffawing over some stupid comedy in the next room. He’d had that guilty pleasu
re for as long as I could remember. But not only had I never heard him prioritize romance before, I’d never even seen him put it in the top ten.

  Meanwhile, who was this guy he was describing in this story? Not only was the Valentino someone I’d never met, but neither was the Cosmopolitan. I always knew my father was very intelligent and he certainly liked to surround himself with quality. But designer suits? Four-star restaurants? Posh nightclubs? Prime beef, Stickley, and Lincoln were in character. Puligny-Montrachet, though? Not any Mickey Sienna I’d ever seen.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Marina about this, but of course I had no choice. She was in school already, so I’d have to wait until I saw her that night.

  “This is incredibly sweet,” she said after I’d begun telling her the story. We were sitting on her couch, even though we were going to be late for a movie. I simply couldn’t help but spill the details the moment I saw her. “I can just see your father all doe-eyed and gushy.”

  “Therein lies the difference between you and me.”

  “Oh, come on, Jesse, you’re going to have to admit one of these days that your father is a thinking, feeling person. I could have told you that two minutes after meeting him. But now after hearing this story, how can you have any other opinion? Heartless people don’t carry torches for fifty-something years.”

  “I never said he was heartless. Closed-minded, demanding, a world-class pain in the ass, I’ve said those things. But I never said heartless.”

  She pulled me closer to her on the couch and kissed me on the cheek.

  “I can’t believe he’s telling you this huge secret after all this time. Do you think your mother knew?”

  I shook my head. This was one of the dozens of questions I’d been asking myself all day, the biggest one of course being why he was telling me this story at all.

  “I don’t know. He made it clear that none of my siblings had heard it, but he didn’t say either way about my mother. These days, as you and I are very much aware, someone like Gina would come up in conversation during a first date. But back then, maybe you didn’t talk about things like that.”

  “So when do we get to hear the rest of the story?”

  I smiled up at her. “Got you hooked, huh?”

  She smirked. “Unlike you, right? Feel free to take off your coat anytime you’d like. By the way, I think the movie started seven minutes ago.”

  “No, I absolutely admit my fascination. Not to him, of course, but I’ll admit it to you. I don’t have a clue when he’s going to tell me more, though. He looked exhausted at the end of this part, like it had taken this huge effort. The few times I saw him the rest of the day, he seemed completely lost in thought, like he was reliving the whole thing. He didn’t say a word about it, though. It might be a while. It could even be that this is all he’s going to say.”

  Marina considered this for a bit. I wondered if I would feel disappointed if he never mentioned Gina again and I realized that, especially now that Marina was interested in it as well, I would be.

  “It makes you think of him in a totally different way, doesn’t it?” Marina said.

  “It does, amazingly enough. Do you think that’s why he told me?”

  “I think he’s reaching out.”

  “Maybe. If that’s the case, his timing is awfully strange. He’d been in a lousy mood since the day after you came for dinner.”

  “Maybe the story was a peace offering. He wants you to know that he’s really a good guy even though you two don’t always get along.”

  “I suppose anything is possible. I mean, who would have thought that Gina was possible?”

  Neither of us said anything for several minutes. I nuzzled further into Marina’s arms and thought about the details of my father’s story. I’m sure Marina was doing the same. I wondered how my father and Gina held each other. I’d been doing that since I walked in the door, juxtaposing my father’s and Gina’s life with Marina’s and mine. Did he excitedly come to her home to tell her things? Did they miss movies because he did? Was he especially fond of certain things she wore? Did she have any endearing little habits like Marina’s lightly brushing the hair at my neck while we sat together?

  When some time had passed, I returned from my time-trip to my father’s past to acknowledge how comfortable I felt here on the couch with Marina. It had been more than a week since we’d had any time to simply sit with one another, and it was a welcome respite.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere tonight,” Marina said.

  “You’re okay with not seeing a movie?”

  “No movie is going to beat the story you just told me.”

  “What do you want to do instead?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  I settled back a little more comfortably in Marina’s arms. I was thinking about how much better that felt than I would have felt going to the local multiplex. I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew it was 1:00 a.m. I startled when I saw the time on the clock and my doing so awakened Marina.

  “What happened?” she said, rising to a sitting position.

  “It looks like our date tonight was a nap.”

  Marina laughed. Her arms were still around me and she pulled me a little closer. “That was a great date.”

  “Yeah, it was. I didn’t even know I was tired.”

  I was surprised that I felt that way. I had never simply fallen asleep on a date before. I think if I had done it with any of the other women I’d dated over the years I would have been scandalized, concerned that I, or at the very least our relationship, was losing vigor. Instead, I felt deeply satisfied, like we had spent all night talking in a quiet café. This had been much too impromptu to suggest that we plan on its happening again, but at the same time, I looked forward to the possibility.

  As much as I regretted it, I said, “I need to get back. I shouldn’t be away from my father two nights in a row.”

  “I know. You don’t want him getting mad at you now when you haven’t heard the rest of his story.”

  “Hmm, so maybe that’s what this is all about. Maybe this is his new way of keeping me in line.”

  Marina got up from the couch, which caused me to get up as well. I realized as we headed for the door that I had never taken off my coat.

  “Kind of a weird night, huh?” I said as was stood in the doorway.

  “It was nice.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I really think so.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Give your dad a kiss for me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  By the next Sunday, my father still hadn’t said anything more to me about Gina. While I had suggested to Marina the possibility that he would never say another word about it, I hadn’t begun to take that notion seriously until then. He wasn’t reticent in any other way. If anything, he seemed a little more relaxed, a little more familiar with me. Surely, though, he had to know that I was expecting him to finish. I remembered how tired and worn down he’d looked when he got up from the kitchen table that morning, and I wondered if telling the first part of the tale had taken so much out of him that he hadn’t yet fully recovered.

  But that wasn’t what this Sunday was about. Not when a visitation from royalty – at least in their eyes – was upon us. Denise, Brad, and Marcus had chosen this day to make their ceremonial visit. It would be the first time Denise had set foot in the house since my father had moved in. In fact, it was the first time she’d made the crossing in nearly two years. Everything about this had the aura of fulfilling an obligation, from the scheduling (“An afternoon meal would be best, Jesse. You know the traffic can be hell on Sunday evenings. I’ll have a dozen things to do to get ready for Monday, and Marcus will need to study”) to direction over the menu (”We’re trying to avoid red meat, so it would be best if you didn’t serve that,” she told me, though I had stopped eating red meat five years earlier) to the pre-screening of topics of conversation (“It would be best if we didn’t over-discuss Mom,
don’t you think? That can’t be good for Dad”). My father was, of course, excited that they were coming.

  “Do you think Denise will bring her Blackberry, her tablet, and her laptop?” I asked as we were getting things ready. “Or do you think she’ll just bring an assistant along with her?”

  “Why do you talk that way about your sister? She was always very good to your mother and me.”

  “Dad, she took a call during the funeral.”

  “It lasted thirty seconds. She forgot to turn the phone off.”

  In a complicated kind of way, I was excited about Denise coming to the house as well. As much as I saw her for who she was and disagreed with many of the things she stood for – like endless devotion to career advancement, raising your child from the time he’s two to be a valedictorian, and systematically marginalizing your parents – I had never stopped looking up to her. She was sharp, she was polished, and if she could bother to concentrate on me for any length of time, she was actually very valuable at dispensing advice. I always felt that I needed to be on my toes with her, that I needed to report to her on my progress in life. While that lent our infrequent visits a relatively high level of stress, it was also invigorating.

  Though we were expecting them around noon, they arrived at 1:15 in a flourish of protestations about the hassles of getting over the George Washington Bridge. Denise kissed me on the cheek and then put her arm around my father’s shoulders and walked him through the house. Brad shook my hand, nodded stiffly, and moved deliberately into the living room. Marcus also shook my hand (he’d hugged me once a few years back, but I’m pretty sure it was an accident) and immediately began to pepper me with questions about an article I’d published in the summer on male pattern baldness. While I didn’t want to be rude, the prospect of discussing this with an eight-year-old seemed absurd and I had an ear cocked in the direction of the den, where my sister was discussing the placement of several items from my parents’ old house.

  “Things look pretty well incorporated,” Denise said to me when she returned. “You’ve fit a lot into this space.”