Nelson asked for it, and he got it. Peter didn't have a choice but to hit him. You can't say something like that to a man about his wife—even if he is a classical musician with a kill your television bumper sticker on his car—and not get punched. All I can guess is that Nelson must have wanted Peter to hit him.
What amazed me about that first punch, and the couple that followed, was the sound. I'd seen enough fistfights in the movies to have a set of expectations. But the punch didn't have a great smack. It sounded more like a slap. It sounded small.
But it was big enough to knock Nelson down. As unbelievable as it sounds, he wasn't expecting it. Peter got him in the jaw with his fist, and Nelson hit the ground. And that was the next sound: the wheeze of air as Nelson's rib cage hit the sidewalk.
For the second time in two minutes, I was frozen in disbelief. I watched Peter tackle Nelson and punch him in the face at least two more times before I came to my senses and started shoving against Peter, trying to push him off. In the next instant, Josh was there, too, and together we knocked Peter over into the berm of snow along the sidewalk, and that was enough to break his momentum.
When Peter stood up, he was out of breath and his face was so contorted in rage and heartbreak that he did not even look like himself. He panted on the sidewalk, glaring at me for a minute, and then, without a word, went inside.
I had never once seen Peter hurt anyone. There was nothing about him that was violent or mean. Even stray insects inside the house were more likely to find themselves scooped up and tossed out the back door than squished.
I ran after Peter. But he was not talking to me. I followed him up the stairs, saying all the things that people who've been caught kissing people they weren't supposed to kiss say. It wasn't what it looked like! I don't even like him! He just grabbed me! I didn't even see it coming.
I followed Peter into the bedroom. His bags were already packed. The kids were already asleep.
“This is insane,” I said. After a certain point, it was all I could say. “Peter,” I said. “This is insane.”
Peter didn't say anything. His knuckle was bleeding, and he went into the bathroom to rinse it under cold water.
Peter's face was so hard, I felt terrified. I'd made him mad a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. But not mad like this. I kept talking a mile a minute trying to make him see how totally insignificant that moment on the sidewalk had been—how, if Peter hadn't been there, it would be over by now, only an uncomfortable memory that was already fading. But Peter didn't say anything. And the more I talked, the more I explained, the more I went on about Nelson and his ex-wife and his rumpled shirts, the more useless my words felt.
If he had at least said something, at least argued with me, I would have felt better. But for the first time in all our years together, he wouldn't speak. He bandaged up his hand while I fluttered around him like a hummingbird, and then he walked over to his side of the bed, picked up his duffel bag and his backpack, and walked out the door.
I followed him. Down three flights of stairs, out the front door, onto the sidewalk. The art van was gone now. There was blood in the snow on the sidewalk. I followed along behind Peter, leaving the boys alone upstairs and asking a whole series of questions that he did not answer: “Where are you going? What are you doing? Where will you stay? Don't you want to tell the boys good-bye?” I started grabbing at his arms. I ran around in front of him and tried to stop him with my body, but he shoved me away with a force I'd never even thought he was capable of.
I could only follow Peter for so long before I had to get back to the boys. Finally, I gave up. I stopped walking and gave it one last try. “Peter!” I called again, as if this time he would hear me. “This is insane.” I watched him keep walking, thinking there was no way we had really come to this point, that this absolutely had to be a nightmare because it simply could not be happening in my waking life. And then, Peter turned around.
I watched him walk back toward me, and I was completely motionless, except for my chest rising and falling with each breath, waiting to see what he would do. It seemed like the course of my whole life would be determined by what he said when he got close enough. I hoped like anything that this was the moment when we would both start laughing.
But it wasn't. Peter stopped just inches from my face. He couldn't even meet my eyes. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “Don't call me in California,” he said. “Don't fuck that up for me, too.”
Chapter 25
Back in college, Peter had just gotten his cast off when Connor invited both him and me to her twenty-first birthday party. It was the week before the end of school. Her parents owned a cabin on a lake about half an hour from campus, and around thirty people were heading out there to spend the night.
Connor let me know that Peter probably wouldn't have made the cut if it weren't for me. She didn't know him that well, after all. But she'd asked him the night before in the common bathroom while they were both brushing their teeth, and he'd said yes.
“He totally wants to hook up with you,” she said.
“You got that from ‘yes'?”
She gave me a look. “It's a hunch.”
Peter was going to catch a ride with Connor's ex-boyfriend, a history major with flags of different countries tacked up all over his room and who Connor still slept with from time to time just so she didn't fall out of practice. Technically, they were “just good friends.” She didn't even particularly like him, she'd told me once, but she thought they'd probably get married.
“Why?” I'd asked her.
“That's just how things seem to work for me,” she'd said.
Connor's family's cabin had been built in the twenties, as had most of the cabins on the lake—except for a batch of recent mega-mansions that were generally regarded as eyesores. Down the shore from the cabin was a stone clubhouse with a fireplace and a deck overlooking the water. Connor's parents were hosting a dinner there for us that night—complete with champagne—and then everybody was going to spend the night at the cabin. Their next-door neighbors had offered to let the boys stay at their house to help keep things civilized.
I drove out with Connor. Her mother had already put sheets on all the beds and pushed back the furniture to make room for sleeping bags. Her parents were not staying the night. They claimed they trusted us to behave.
At the dinner, there were bottles and bottles of wine. We sat at long tables with white cloths and told crazy stories about Connor: the time she threw a watermelon off the second-floor balcony, the time she tried to dye her hair like an American flag, the time she set the dorm kitchen on fire. I watched her up at the head of the table and felt happy to have her for a friend. But not that happy. Because Peter hadn't shown up, and there was an empty chair for him—and a little place card, truth be told—next to me.
I got up to go to the bathroom just before dessert, and when I came back, I actually gasped out loud to see that Peter's chair, which had been empty all night, suddenly had someone in it.
But it wasn't Peter. It was Connor's non-boyfriend, the guy Peter was supposed to have arrived with. He had been seated right next to Connor but had clearly felt an urge to wander around. He was a tall, beer-drinking, baseball-cap-wearing guy, and everybody called him by his last name, Callaghan.
“You're not dating anybody,” he asked as I sat down, “are you?”
“Not that I know of,” I said.
I wanted to ask him why Peter hadn't come, but I didn't know how to do it without pulling back the curtain on my quivering, anxious heart. I finally decided on: “You got here kind of late, didn't you?”
“I was supposed to give a guy a ride,” he said. “But he never showed up.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Fuckin' weird.”
Callaghan stayed next to me through the birthday cake and the candles and the singing. I couldn't figure out why he had come to sit next to me. If he was trying to make Connor jealous, he was succeeding. If he was trying to es
cape her, he was failing in a big way. Connor was staring at us like she was watching TV, and occasionally tossing broccoli stalks at us, and shouting out inappropriate things, like, “She's taken, Callaghan! Or she'd like to be.”
She was so drunk. And there, halfway through my chocolate layer cake with raspberry drizzle, I watched my idea of what the night could have been disintegrate. The grounds were so beautiful, with hydrangea bushes and tall fir trees. The clubhouse itself felt like a movie set. It was a perfect night for dancing, and flirting, and kissing. I had envisioned slow-dancing with Peter, or maybe taking a walk along the shore. But after Connor hit me in the temple with a half-eaten biscotti off her plate, I knew for sure: There was no possibility for romance that night. I was going to spend it—I suddenly just knew—in the toilet with Connor, holding her hair while she threw up. It was my birthday-at-the-lake destiny.
But I decided to fight it. I was ready for romance. I had blow-dried my hair! I had new lip gloss! I had remembered to bring my hoop earrings, and I was wearing a fragrance called “Passion!”
I tried to will Peter to show up. I had this hope I couldn't shake that he'd wind up coming anyway, even though he'd missed most of the party already. I did the things that always seemed to prompt romantic encounters in the movies: I strolled by the lake. I stood at the railing on the dock. I flirted with other guys. I joined the truth or dare game that was gathering in the lounge.
And then he arrived. I had just been dared to suck on the earlobe of my freshman-year roommate's ex-boyfriend when Peter appeared in the doorway—without his crutches or his cast, standing on his two feet and scanning the circle until he saw me.
Then he said, “Lanie, can I see you a minute?”
My freshman-year roommate's ex-boyfriend protested. “She's supposed to suck on my ear.”
There was a pause, until a girl with a nose ring said, “I'll suck on your ear.” And I was released.
Peter and I walked down toward the boathouse. There was lightning flashing in the sky, and occasional deep rumbles of thunder, but no rain yet. Peter's doctor had just taken off his cast on Friday, and Peter still walked a little gingerly. Not the walk I was used to.
“I'm late,” he said.
“I noticed,” I said.
“I forgot to meet my ride,” he said.
“You forgot?”
“I was writing music,” he said. “Did you know I play piano?”
“I did know that,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “if music comes into my head, I can't think about anything else until it's on the page. I can't function, actually, until I've written it down.”
“Weird,” I said.
“It's horrible,” he said, like he needed to lay it all out for me. “I forget to eat. I forget to sleep. I miss classes. It's like being possessed.”
“Wow,” I said.
And then he got to his confession. “It makes me a bad boyfriend.” He met my eyes. “I've stood up every girlfriend I've ever had. I missed my prom because I was composing. My girlfriend waited two hours in her dress and heels before driving there by herself. And I didn't even apologize for two days.”
“Because you were still writing music?” I asked.
“Because I was still writing music.”
We had reached the water, and we sat down on a dock. I felt so grateful to Peter for arriving at last.
Then I said, “This party's been a little bit like a prom.”
“I don't doubt it,” he said.
“And you've missed most of it.”
“But not all.”
“Well,” I said, “I'm glad you made it.”
Peter gazed at me until I felt nervous. “Me, too,” he said. He was watching my eyes. “Because I was hoping to see you.” He looked down at the water, then, and asked a question I never would have expected him to ask. “Were you hoping to see me?”
And here, in this moment, I was brave. I'm not sure if I was just tired of the uncertainty, or if I was encouraged enough to hope for the best, or discouraged enough not to care, but I only hesitated for a second before laying it on the line. I met his eyes and did not blink. “I hope to see you every day.”
I thought he might kiss me then, but instead he said, “I need to tell you something else.”
“What?”
“The music I wrote today is a rhapsody. And it's for you.”
And that's when I grabbed the fabric of his T-shirt and pulled him closer. As it started to rain, I brought his mouth to mine and gave him the very first of a lifetime of kisses.
Chapter 26
The morning after Peter left for L.A.—or possibly just left—was a zoo. Children, as they say, are very intuitive, and they always seem to know when you are aching for a few minutes of calm to clear your head—and that's when they really let you have it.
Everything should have stood still without Peter, but, instead, life seemed to speed up. From the moment I woke up, I was troubleshooting one disaster after another. There I was, on duty alone from six in the morning on, in my PJs, no bra, teeth not even brushed, eyes still puffy from a long night of weeping and writing Peter long letters I eventually threw away.
Before we'd even had breakfast, Alexander had broken a slat under the bed he ‘d been jumping on and then almost crushed himself by tumping over the chest of drawers in his room. Toby had spilled a full glass of ice-cold water all over my lap and fallen headfirst into the empty bathtub. And Baby Sam, ready to outdo everybody, had poked me in the eye with a fork, thrown a bowl of cereal and milk across the kitchen, and—unbelievably—started walking and crawling within the same five minutes.
Baby Sam had been able to sit up on his own, of course, for many months. Then a few weeks back, he'd added pulling up to a stand. He'd teeter next to the couch and watch everybody go by and wail in frustration until somebody moved him to a new spot. He did not, however, show the slightest interest in moving his own feet or in using his body to get places. Until that day.
His wispy hair was going everywhere that morning. He was pretty calm, but his brothers were all over the place. I kept having to pull Toby down off the kitchen table, and then Alexander locked himself in the bathroom and needed help right away. And meanwhile, Baby Sam decided he wanted this little wind-up car across the kitchen. He reached for it, screeching like an eel, but instead of being a mother who responded promptly to such noises of distress, as I usually tried to be, on this morning I just kept saying, “Work with me, Baby Sam. I'll get to you when I can.” Finally, Baby Sam just got tired of waiting. The shrieking disappeared, and, only a few minutes after I had picked the bathroom lock with a paring knife, I noticed the house was quiet and saw him standing on the other side of the room.
“Baby Sam! What did you do?” I asked.
He lifted up the toy car so I could see—and then he took about six steps in my direction, fell over and, undaunted, continued toward me by crawling. It was unprecedented. Walking and crawling on the same day! In the same five minutes! I would have given anything to have had Peter there with me at that moment. To have had a witness, and not just anybody, but Peter, to share it with and go over and over the minute details with later. But it was just me. I jumped up and down and clapped, and I tried to get Alexander and Toby to do the same, but they had other things going on.
So then the worry that I'd been toting with me about Baby Sam for so many months just kind of disintegrated, there in the kitchen. I closed my eyes and tried to feel waves of relief washing up against me. But I couldn't. Because, as often happened, before I'd gotten rid of one worry, a bigger one had already taken its place.
I tried to analyze everything that had happened the night before. I tried to diagram Nelson's kiss in my mind. How long had it lasted? It couldn't have been more than two seconds. He got in, he got out. His timing, really, was pretty good. It was too short a kiss for me to, say, rack him. But it was long enough to make an impression.
And what had I been thinking during the kiss? Most likely, some
thing like: “Holy shit! Nelson is kissing me!” But I truly couldn't remember. I just kept obsessing over those two seconds. Short as they were, they were one second too long. Surely, during the first second, my brain was just catching up to what was happening. But what was going on during the second one? It should have been a reflex action: Nelson grabs me, I push him away. And yet, though I'm confident I would have pushed him away eventually, I hadn't—at least not in reflex time.
It wasn't that I doubted myself or my motives. I was not, on any level, attracted to Nelson. I had not waited passively through that second second because I was enjoying myself, or trying him out, or hoping for more.
Partly, as crazy as it sounds, I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. The man had just quit drinking and declared his love, for crying out loud. It didn't seem supportive to reject him harshly. Pushing him away mid-kiss would have added humiliation to his rejection, and I certainly didn't want him to get in the art van and head straight to a bar.
Part of that second second also had to do with just not knowing what to do or how to put a stop to things. Shove him? Kick him? Scream? I didn't actually have time to form a strategy. For a person like me—a worrier who liked to take a full forty-eight-hour period to stew over just about any decision—having to formulate and execute a response in one second was a tall order.
And then, if I was really honest, I'd admit there was another reason I hadn't pushed Nelson away more quickly. I was worried, in that short moment, that I'd done something to bring the kiss on. I'd figured out Nelson's crush months before, and I hadn't done anything to put him off. I didn't encourage him, either, though. To be fair, there might not have been that much I could have done, since his feelings were unspoken. I could not, for example, have marched over to Nelson during a photo critique and said, “I sense that you have a crush on me and you must shut it down right now.” On some level, my only option might have been to continue on as I had. I hadn't flirted with him or promised him anything or even been terribly friendly. But I had liked that he liked me. It had seemed harmless enough as time went along. But right at that moment of the kiss, I suddenly wondered if he'd known that I liked it, had felt it somehow, and had taken my liking being liked as my liking him. When the two things really had very little to do with each other.
Everyone Is Beautiful Page 18
