This Love Story Will Self-Destruct

by Leslie Cohen

  “Actually, I have to tell you something.”

  “What?” My stomach lurched. I felt another blow coming on. That rising dread. A familiar feeling. Everything becoming moving parts.

  BEN

  * * *

  PROSPECT PARK

  Sitting there with Eve, I finally realized the depth of my mistake. I was going to be with this girl for a while, maybe forever. She needed to know who my father was. Where was my sense of foresight? Seeing her with her father, the strain that it caused her beforehand and even after it was over, I realized how disordered life can be. You can’t just permanently shut up about things to avoid them. That doesn’t create order. It was a matter of engineering. You had to take into account the past and the future, the situation as is, not as you wanted it to be. For some reason, this whole thing with Eve reminded me of the George Washington Bridge.

  Growing up, I was always sitting in the back of my parents’ car, looking out the window at that bridge, sleek and relatively flat, with no peak or apex in the middle. Driving one way, you had a view of downtown Manhattan. The other way, you could see the palisades, the rugged cliffs covered with trees. The towers were actually more compact than they needed to be. When the engineers were planning it, they decided on steel because the towers were meant to support a masonry facade. It was supposed to look more like the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was built in the thirties, in the height of the Depression, and they ran out of money. They decided that it looked just as well without the masonry, and it ended up with a more modern look to it. The bridge was initially built with a single upper level, but it was also built with the ability to add a second level. They didn’t see a need for it back then, because there wasn’t enough traffic, but they recognized that there would be that need one day. It was such incredible foresight, to give the towers that capacity.

  So I needed to tell her. Because there would be that need one day.

  “My father actually knew your mother,” I said. “She was his secretary. At the law firm? He was with her right before . . . and I didn’t tell you because he always felt guilty, and I guess I did too, that they didn’t leave the building right away. And maybe they would have both survived, if they had. He told her to stay. He thought that it was safer to stay, for whatever stupid reason. Eventually, they left together because she insisted. But there was a slight delay, because he told her to stay.”

  “Wait. What?” she said. I paused, started pulling at the grass.

  “I know,” I said. “I should have told you. I put it together back when I saw that business card. The one that I returned to you?” I realized how bad this sounded as I was saying it. And I started to panic. There had to be more. There had to be more that I could say. “But . . . maybe . . . your mom saved my dad’s life, and now it’s my job to save yours?”

  “So you figured this out . . . when?”

  “At the bagel place.”

  “What bagel place?”

  “You know, after the first night.”

  “All the way back then?”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking down. “And so, they got out . . . that morning . . . in the first place, because of your mom. He would have stayed otherwise. . . . I’m sure. . . . He can be sort of dense and too calm sometimes, and I’m telling you because you should know everything that’s true, of course, but also because I really don’t want to be like him.”

  Her eyes looked different all of a sudden. Glassy. Oh fuck. I’d really fucked up. There is something about a girl on the verge of tears that is absolutely terrifying. No. Not just a girl. Eve. That was much, much worse.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  “I didn’t know how you’d react.”

  “So you said nothing?”

  “I just kept putting it off. But now I see how messy things can get and I don’t want us to be like you and your dad.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good. High standards.”

  “I felt responsible.”

  “So you’re dating me because you feel sorry for me?”

  I paused, searching for the right words. “I do feel sorry for you sometimes, yeah. But that’s not why I’m with you. I’m with you because . . .” I looked away from her and around at the park. “Because you have not a single pair of socks that doesn’t have a hole in them . . . and you can’t throw out a sock because you’re too afraid that one sock might feel bad because it lost its other, companion sock. And even though that’s mildly deranged, I love you for it. And I can’t say that this sock quality was ever something I was looking for in a girl, but here it is, and that’s how I feel, and there’s not a damn thing that I can do about it.”

  She looked at me with wet eyes and a tear running down one cheek. She stayed silent. I stared at the grass for a few minutes, got the feeling that I couldn’t touch her, or that I shouldn’t touch her. And then she stood up and brushed herself off, with an unreadable look on her face.

  EVE

  * * *

  A SYNAGOGUE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE

  Kate and her fiancé, Charlie, chose a Gothic synagogue for their wedding that looked like nothing special from the street—just a simple, decaying facade of red stone. But it was deceiving, for all the grandeur that was inside. It was built to resemble the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, with its pointed arch windows, doorways crowned by triangular molding, and fifty-foot-high ceilings, cathedral blue and dotted with painted gold stars. That night, there were enough candles inside to make a bonfire of the entire structure, with just one false move. The candles were in glass vases along the floor, scattered across the steps of the main hall, along the bar next to liquor bottles, garnishing trays of hors d’oeuvres. Every table had bunches of white orchids, white roses, pink lilies.

  I was on my way to getting tipsy when I noticed a golden spotlight coming from the dance floor. I went toward it and watched as the newlyweds sashayed to Louis Armstrong; her nose nestled against his cheek, bashfully hiding her face from the world of onlookers, as if this were all a bit much for her, this which she meticulously planned for herself.

  I see trees of green, red roses, too,

  I see them bloom, for me and you

  It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that this wedding was kind of a charade. Well, not a charade exactly, but let’s say this: it didn’t tell the whole story. But that was forgotten now. Gone were all those lunches with Kate where she discussed problems with Charlie, some of those lunches ending in tears. Gone were the nights when she texted me that she’d had enough, promised she’d be over at my apartment in an hour, once she’d broken up with him. I waited for her text. Heard nothing. I didn’t hear from her again that night. I wouldn’t hear from her again until a few days later, with some generic message like, Everything’s okay! But all that was in the past, and reflecting on it now was just bad for business.

  Despite my hesitations about Charlie, when Kate got engaged to him, I promised myself that I’d be a good friend. I’d hit all the checkpoints. So I attended two engagement parties, a bachelorette party in Miami that wiped out my checking account, a bridal shower, a second bridal shower that she deemed nonmandatory for bridesmaids but I went anyway (secretly, because I was hungry that morning and thought there’d be sandwiches and maybe a gift bag). As it turned out, there was only a platter of fruit, and we were all immediately whisked away from it, instructed to take a coat hanger and start sticking sequins to it. Sometimes, life is just like a bridal shower. You show up expecting breakfast and a gift and you end up doing a demeaning arts-and-crafts project.

  Before the ceremony, I examined Kate in the big white dress, looking terrified, and I gave her a look like, Are you okay? She certainly didn’t look okay. I kept watching her. But by the time she walked down the aisle, she had put on her game face. She focused in on the other end of the synagogue, where the doors were opening wider and wider, letting a flood of sunlight in through the stained glass windows.

  And now, an hour later, the deed had been done, and I was gapi
ng at them, along with the crowd, at this supposedly perfect couple, as they took their first official spin around the dance floor. I was one among five bridesmaids in matching dresses and loose side ponytails. We were all a bit weepy, but we allowed this kind of thing at weddings. We embraced it, the elaborate, surreal distraction that a wedding provided. We were huddled together in the corner, trying to keep a few misty tears from falling.

  Except for Maya, who was legitimately crying her eyes out.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered, when her sobbing became audible.

  “I am just so, so . . .” We were all expecting her to say “happy,” but instead she said, “tired.” Lately, Maya had been working long, late shifts at the hospital. Thus, her tears were not so much a sign of emotion as they were an indication that she was physically breaking down. I looked at the other girls, who were all giggling and handing Maya tissues from their purses.

  After the song was over, we made our way to our respective tables. We knew the drill. Lately, our lives had become one wedding after another. It was a well-worn routine that started with that thick, creamy envelope at the doorstep, that bomb of script and websites and middle names of old friends that suddenly appeared as if discovered overnight. And the last stop on the journey was right here, at the main event. Soon, the salads would be placed down in unison. The champagne glasses would be raised into the air too many times to count. The best man would reference the groom’s rowdier days; a bridesmaid would read a poem that she wrote; “The bride’s childhood friend had quite the sense of humor!” some elderly person would comment. Then, the official crepe-colored bride-tested bride’s-mother-approved cake would be cut. The more risqué groom’s cake (shaped like a football helmet, maybe, such whimsy!) would be devoured. There was a rhythm to these events.

  “Why are you dreading this so much?” Ben had asked me before I left. He was in Chicago for a work trip he’d tried to get out of, but couldn’t. This was the first wedding I would go to without him. It was actually the first time that we’d spent a few days apart in a while.

  “Because one of my closest friends is marrying a guy who has been making her miserable for the past year,” I said. “I just don’t trust him. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.”

  “Duly noted. But can’t you just have fun anyway?” Getting Ben to understand wasn’t easy. To him, a wedding was food + dance = fun. In my mind, there were variables.

  “I will try, obviously!” I said, because he sounded distant, maybe annoyed. Since that day in Brooklyn, something was off between us. The truth was, I still hadn’t worked out how I felt about Ben withholding what he did from me for so long. At first, I was hurt. Then, secretly, a little bit relieved. Ben was flawed. The other shoe had dropped. I could breathe again. But with those breaths came the realization that our relationship might not be what I thought it was. It made us into something familiar. But it also made us into something sad.

  “Hey,” he said. “Maybe they’ll live happily ever after.”

  “If they live happily ever after, then my whole logic system comes crashing down.”

  “Your whole logic system? You have one of those?”

  Now that I was standing at this place of flower-filled, candlelit, alcohol-induced merriment, I found myself wishing that Ben were there, despite whatever tension I’d been feeling between us lately. The night had a nostalgic feel to it, with Kate’s friends and other people from college I’d known years ago. I looked over at Kate: her lips a sultry red, her hair smooth waves and clipped on one side with a single diamond pin. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe everything will be okay. She seemed present, busy, moving from table to table, hugging cousins and friends of hers I’d never met before.

  She really was a beautiful bride. I feel like I have no choice but to describe her that way because in all the thousands of toasts at all the hundreds of events that had taken place before this, that was how Kate had been described—by Charlie, by Charlie’s friends—that was always the focus—how beautiful she was, what a beautiful couple they made. Major score, Charlie. Major score. But the Kate I knew was so much more than that.

  The seven-person band began a series of familiar numbers, pleasant background music, not exciting enough to dance to but perfect for cocktail conversation under the golden lights. Since Ben wasn’t there, I was seated next to a stranger. All the bridesmaids had come with their boyfriends or husbands, and I’d thrown off the seating arrangement. I asked Kate ahead of time if I could be seated next to one of the other girls, but she politely explained that it had to be boy-girl-boy-girl. Actually, I believe her exact words were something more like: “You’re dead to me.”

  I turned left and right, subtly scanning to see whom she’d put next to me. The guys on both sides of me were people I vaguely knew from college but whom I hadn’t seen since then. All three of us were awkwardly staring about the room. My friends were across the table, oohing and aahing over the table setting. I decided to break the ice and mingle. There were strangers on both sides of me who I would never see again but who I now had to pretend to be utterly fascinated by. For the next two hours, I would ask where they were from, how they got to work in the morning, what they ate for breakfast, how many times they brushed their teeth per day, what kind of hope for promotion they had at their jobs, their travel plans for the next year, as if it were all adding up to something. We would go our separate ways in a few hours and none of this information would matter ever again, but I still had to ask. God help me if I didn’t ask. They’d take away my filet mignon as punishment.

  “Hi, I’m Eve,” I said to the guy to the left of me.

  “Steven,” he said, shaking my hand and seeming relieved. “My wife, Rebecca.” I reached across the table to a woman wearing glasses and a turquoise dress. “Did we go to college together?” he asked.

  “I think so, yeah!” I responded.

  “So, what are you up to now?” he turned to me and asked. The question-and-answer portion of the evening was officially under way.

  “I’m a writer, for a magazine,” I said.

  “What kind of magazine?” he asked.

  “It’s about music.”

  “Is it anything I might have heard of?”

  I must have paused for too long, because, at this, his wife gave him a light shove and laughed.

  “What kind of question is that? Do you read music magazines?” She rolled her eyes. She hadn’t really been paying attention up until now, just letting him conduct the affairs. She had her own problems, pushing leaves of radicchio around her plate and dealing with nonsense conversation from the guy next to her.

  “It’s called Interview,” I said.

  He nodded. He said that he didn’t listen to music because he was too busy with work, which seemed like a perfectly acceptable thing to say except for it wasn’t. I asked him about his job, and then eventually, we reached a dead end.

  “So . . . what do you do for fun?” I said.

  “Fun?” He laughed. “What’s that?”

  I’m sure I was being dramatic. In my mind I was all, What is happening to the world? But really, I’d just been given an unfortunate seating assignment. I heard a song that I liked and got up. I leaned down next to Maya.

  “We have to dance,” I said. “The guy sitting next to me doesn’t know what fun is.” She looked over at her fiancé, Erol, who was currently transfixed with his salad. She considered the possibility, stabbing a piece of avocado with her fork.

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  We made our way to the center of the dance floor, started moving to the beat of the deafeningly loud music, loosening up more and more as time passed. We knew every word to every song, and sung them without fear, our eyes locked on each other as though we were alone in the room. There’d been so many dance parties in our history. We knew what to do. We danced and lost touch with reality, made a clean break with it, just like we had back in college, so giddy and following the song with our bodies until nothing else mattered. At some p
oint, Maya took off her heels, disappeared to throw them by our table, and then came back, with one hand in the air, another holding a champagne flute, a resurgence of energy. This was the best part of weddings, the perfect release that happened later, after all the preparations, after the tension of the ceremony, after a few bites of food and more than a few sips of alcohol. It always seemed like it wouldn’t come, but it did, eventually. We were at that point in the evening, that rare moment when our thoughts were drowned out by the music.

  So when I saw Jesse standing near the bar, my first thought was that it was the alcohol talking. It couldn’t have been him.

  But then I realized that it had to be. Nobody else could look so handsome and so stupid in a black suit and thin black tie. Oh, and he was wasted. He was drunker than anyone should be at a wedding. He was throwing his arms around everyone. I felt like the only one who understood just how far gone he was. When I caught his eye from across the room, he looked at me with mock suspicion and then grinned widely.

  I looked away. I spoke to Maya in a whisper, leaning forward.

  “Um. Jesse is here?”

  “Oh . . . yeah,” she said hesitantly. “He’s friends with Charlie. . . . Kate didn’t tell you he would be here?”

  “Ummmm . . . no!” I said.

  “Well, I guess she’s been busy, but . . .”

  We agreed. She probably should have told me. But that was just like Kate to assume that because she would be calm and collected in such a situation, everyone else would be too. Maya would have sat me down months ahead of time, and then booked me a three-hour session with a psychiatrist specializing in crisis management.

  “I’m going to go outside and get some air,” I said.

  “Good thinking,” she said right away.

  I made my way through the crowd with a purpose, through a tunnel of dresses and suits, trays of empty glasses, the guests hovering and dancing in a circle around Kate and Charlie. I grabbed a glass of ice water off a table and gulped it down, feeling the cold liquid down my throat and then expanding across my chest.