I'm Glad About You

by Theresa Rebeck

  “Well, that is exciting, that Alison is going to be on television!” she announced. “I haven’t met her yet, but Kyle has told me all about her. The love of his life!”

  “You are the love of my life, Van,” he laughed, pretending this was easy. “Which would be why I married you.”

  “Awwwww,” said Susan, making an annoying but playful face. “Here, let’s drink to that.” She grabbed two of the glasses Kyle had already poured, a decent inexpensive merlot, and passed them around. “Here’s to Kyle and Evangeline, how many months is it already, Van?” Susan had been the one person who questioned the speed of the engagement and the marriage, and she did so with so much heat that Kyle had actually told her he’d never speak to her again. But when you have only one sister and your parents are in their seventies, forgiveness is more easily accomplished than otherwise. They weren’t like some Catholic families, so many kids across so many years that half of them didn’t even know all their siblings’ names. In a family that size you had the option of letting things fester—Alison had an older sister she hadn’t spoken to in years, and when the subject was touched on she could go on for hours; the history of betrayal and mutual dislike was as long and complicated as some bitter Sicilian feud. Kyle and Susan didn’t have that choice. She had quickly moved past her objections to the suddenness of her little brother’s marriage, and now she was the picture of sisterly acceptance. She went out of her way to tell Van how pretty she looked. She asked Van about her work at the law office. She made approving comments about Van’s clothes. Susan’s interest in Van’s life was terrible in its perfection, but there was no question that she was trying.

  Kyle felt deeply the achievement of his parents in these quiet, steady dinners. His father worked full-time well into his sixties as a senior managing officer at a medium-sized firm which made cooling towers. His mother was a cheerful and steady woman who never wavered in her housekeeping or her cooking or her gardening, and all with a perfect hairdo, it was true. The popular media had left these people behind, or somehow managed to make them all look like crazy Republican cranks, an attitude which Kyle found offensive in its carelessness. His father worked hard his whole life, paid his taxes, attended church, and gave money to the poor. That didn’t mean he only watched Fox News.

  And Van had appreciated them both from the start. Which was, truth be told, not that long ago. Shortly after his last and clearly final breakup with Alison, Kyle had had no plans to pick up a new girlfriend anytime soon. If anything, he was annoyed by the entire gender; all the too-smart girls in his class at med school frankly put his teeth on edge. So when someone calling herself “Evangeline Shelly” texted him out of the blue to ask if he’d like to see a movie with her, it took him a moment to remember who she was. He finally placed her—a dinner party at a friend’s apartment, apparently he’d been too stupid to realize he was being set up—but before he could get out of it she had more or less arranged the entire date. The movie was fine, but when he finished the glass of wine she had insisted on after, he assumed he would never see her again. That was when she invited him to spend the weekend at a hotel located on some island in the middle of Lake Erie.

  It was such a bold suggestion Kyle had actually laughed at it.

  “Why are you laughing?” she asked, tilting her head with a gesture that was both knowing and innocent. “Have you ever done it? You can take a ferry out to Middle Bass Island for seven dollars, there’s a terrific old Victorian inn that’s walking distance from the pier. I’ve never been there but it sounds so easy to do, and then you’re just out there, in the middle of Lake Erie. Take a couple bottles of wine. I think it sounds fantastic.”

  Kyle looked at her, aghast, and almost started laughing again. He was used to the boldness of his female contemporaries, and until Alison had completely stomped on his heart he had even enjoyed it. But this invitation was in a league of its own. He thought for a minute that maybe he misunderstood her intentions.

  “What would we do out there?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, “I think we would go to the inn, drink one of the bottles of wine, and see what happens next.”

  “Well,” he said. “That is a—remarkable proposition.”

  “Is that a yes?” she asked him, allowing her eyes to stay on his face, unwavering.

  “I think I maybe need to think about it,” he told her. Which was completely ridiculous, of course, as his erection, fortunately hidden by the tablecloth, was straining at the front of his trousers. This young blonde’s direct gaze was proving a welcome assault on his untended manhood; he wanted to have sex with her right then and there. He almost shuddered as her hand crept up his leg and fingered the taut fabric with a light, feathery touch.

  “I don’t think you should think about it, actually,” she told him. “I think you should just say yes.”

  The fact that there was no romance in this was what, finally, landed him. If this young woman had even once leaned forward, breathless, looking for a kiss, his sore heart would have revolted. But she didn’t go looking for kisses, not in the restaurant, and not at the door of her apartment, when he walked her home. She smiled at him mysteriously and shut the door in his face, but by then he had agreed to join her on her proposed expedition Saturday at noon. And while he was more on his guard as they greeted each other on the windy pier, the weekend moved forward as smoothly as anyone might have hoped had they bothered to think about it. Kyle’s reluctance was seemingly narcotized by Van’s blonde femininity, as well as her unapologetic sexual assurance. She chatted carelessly on the ferry ride and allowed herself to be charmed by the starkly uninteresting resort town. She located the inn quickly and picked up the key to their room without letting the clerk involve them in any needless conversation. And then she didn’t bother with the wine. Once in the room, she approached Kyle with that direct gaze, laid her hand on his crotch, and smiled. He hesitated, but only long enough for her to undo the top button of his jeans.

  Kyle considered himself a moral person, but as this educated young woman whom he barely knew twisted her fingers into the waistband of his pants he allowed his mind to go completely blank with desire. Acting on an animal instinct which consumed him with alarming speed, he shoved her into the room and pulled her convenient skirt up past her panties, which he forced off her barely in time to push his erection into her vagina. The sex was violent and thrilling, and left both of them exhausted, embarrassed, and hungry to do it again.

  By Sunday at 10:30, Kyle and Van had had sex four times, and were trying to figure out if they could go one more round before the inn’s stated checkout of 11 a.m. There was no question of love between them, from Kyle’s point of view, but if he was not besotted, he was at the very least drunk on sex. He had been living the last year of his life as a monk in a cell, and this blonde stranger had somehow understood how to turn the key. This considerable accomplishment was made easier by one noteworthy fact, of which the blonde stranger was completely unaware: Up until this moment, Kyle had been a virgin.

  The fact of Kyle’s virginity was neither careless nor accidental. His physical appeal was considerable—many nubile young things had been attracted to him over the years, not to mention Alison, whose passion for him had been consistent, overwhelming, and doomed, in spite of the fact that he returned it. His parents had taught him to respect the church; his teachers had taught him that his destiny was to become a man of God. This he believed not as a simplistic call to vocation, which he had rejected in childhood, but as an overarching commitment to his life’s journey. He was no prude, as Rose Moore—who had caught him far too often entwined beyond the place of reason in the arms of her daughter—could attest. But he believed what he was told: Sex is a sacrament, which belongs in marriage. He loved Alison and he refused to have sex with her. For the six years on and off of their volatile courtship, they had explored every possible way to satisfy and frustrate themselves sexually, short of actual intercourse.

  Evangeline Shelly’s assault on thi
s young idealist’s sturdy vow of celibacy would perhaps have been even more assured if she had known all the facts; his hesitancy and confusion were charming enough on their own merits, as was his gratitude when she finally and simply took charge. She moved ahead solely on what she knew, which was that she was lonely, and that men like sex. Her instinctive seduction—so wildly and instantaneously successful compared to the years of Alison’s frustration—was as much a matter of timing as it was of approach. Kyle was exhausted, Van was a stranger, he was attractive, she was willing, and he wanted to fuck somebody. While he would never admit it to himself, the level of hostility he bore toward all women at that particular moment was not insignificant. She and Kyle managed to fuck each other one last time before the maid knocked on the door to remind them about checkout, and both of them were so racked with the passion of it that they almost forgot to call out and stop her from letting herself in.

  —

  SIX MONTHS LATER they were engaged. It wasn’t a shotgun situation; the weekend of fucking out in the middle of Lake Erie had passed by without sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy, but what it had set in motion was irrevocable nonetheless.

  The passing months had only proven to Van what she had sensed from the beginning—that Kyle was one man among millions and she would never find another to match him for intelligence, grace, and steadiness. With him in the palm of her hand she felt herself balanced uncertainly on a tightrope. She actually didn’t want to be some liberated feminist who insisted on having a career in addition to marriage and children, that sounded like a lot of work and for what? The law? She didn’t have any passion for the law, finally; the only thing in her life, she felt, that she had ever had a passion for was Kyle. And now she was running around to one interview after another fiercely explaining to everyone why they should hire her for jobs that were boring and didn’t pay enough. For months she and Kyle carefully discussed what her options were, what offer was the one she was most passionate about, which might lead to the ideal job, how long they might have to be separated if she took the children’s advocate position she had been offered in Pittsburgh, how much commuting would be possible on weekends between Cleveland and Pittsburgh or maybe Cincinnati, if that was where she ended up. She tried to stay focused and discuss these choices rationally but there were so many levels of internal deception involved she couldn’t keep track of who should or did care about what. She became dull and evasive. Finally when he asked her what was wrong she burst into tears. The make-up sex was mind-blowing.

  And so they decided to move to Cincinnati, where she could become a junior associate litigator and he could do his residency in a major pediatrics partnership in an affluent suburb. Once they had untangled the solution from the endless parade of questions, their sense of relief carried them giddily through planning the wedding, buying dresses, introducing families to each other, and dreaming about their future together. They drove back and forth between Cincinnati and Cleveland dozens of times, looking for the right apartment which would be both cozy and affordable—although both of them would be making a decent wage, they both had substantial student loans to manage. In no time the marriage and the move were accomplished, the apartment was furnished, and the new jobs begun. In spite of obstacles others might have considered significant, Kyle and Van had gotten themselves transitioned into a whole new life without so much as a significant pause.

  The one fly in the ointment, of course, was Alison. Kyle would have loved to rub it in her face how effectively he had moved on, but she had made no effort to contact him and he would not be the one to break the silence between them. He suspected that the few friends who were still in touch with her would be filling her in on every detail of his whirlwind marriage and that suspicion provided his heart with the occasional stab of glee. Unfortunately, this was not quite as true for Van. With her easy blonde grace and charm, she was used to having the field to herself without acknowledging even the breath of competition from other women. So no matter how distant her rival was in this situation, the mere fact of Alison’s presence—her significant presence—in Kyle’s past was an unacceptable irritant.

  “So Alison Moore is on television tonight,” she noted to Susan, pretending to be cheerfully interested and uninterested at the same time. They had moved past the wine pouring and on to the serving of dinner, a lovely pecan-crusted chicken cutlet with a humble mustard-and-mayonnaise sauce. “Can we watch it? Everybody says she’s terrific and I’ve never seen her!” Susan didn’t immediately respond. She seemed absorbed by the culinary necessity of moving the chicken onto the plates and then doling out portions of the sauce fairly. So Van’s cheery question hung in the air a second longer than it should have done.

  “What show is it? Law and Order?” his father asked Kyle, as if he were the one who had mentioned it in the first place.

  “I don’t know,” Kyle shrugged. “Susan was the one who heard about it, not me.”

  “It’s one of those crime shows, I can’t remember the title,” Susan admitted with a sudden unwillingness to share the rest of the details. “Eleanor just said her mom said they were real excited. She thought I maybe had heard about it already.”

  “Why would you hear about it?” asked Van, a little arch, like this was a stupid thing for other people to assume.

  “Cincinnati is still kind of a small town. A local actress on a big network television show, people get excited, although you’re right, it’s not that big a deal.”

  “Well, is it a big part?” Van asked. Her brittle tone had gone on for really too long now. She was, after all, the one who was keeping this horrific subject alive; it seemed unfair that she would also be so patently annoyed by it.

  “Apparently it is a pretty big part, that’s what I’m told,” Susan responded, the breath of annoyance entering from her side now. Van’s bright femininity most definitely had an edge, which someone like Susan was never going to particularly forgive. A nurse, she dealt daily with people who were in a lot of pain, and she didn’t like a lot of foolish small talk. Not that Van was a fool. But she was, to Susan, an exquisite annoyance. Susan had a long plain face and a sturdy build, and she worried about being left alone in the world. It galled her that her handsome brother, who could have had his pick of any girl out there, went for this, whatever she was. It also galled her that this Van had clearly gotten Kyle to have sex with her and that his idiotic dedication to their parents’ mid-fifties version of Catholicism had doomed him. Susan felt her life moving through her like a curse.

  Kyle knew he had to step in and smooth the waters before they got any more roiled in these mysterious female ways. “I talked to Dennis, he talked to Alison last week, and he said that apparently you never really know what’s going to happen until it airs.” The room fell silent at this, as if he were imparting news of great import. Dennis Fitzpatrick had been one of Kyle’s best friends for sixteen years, and he was a great favorite with all the Wallaces. Dennis also had known Alison since the first day Kyle laid eyes on her, and it was to be expected that Dennis would still have some loyalty to her. There was nothing incriminating about Kyle getting information through Dennis. The most natural thing in the world.

  “Oh, Dennis talked to her?” Kyle’s father noted. “And she told him about it?”

  “He talks to her all the time.” Kyle nodded, trying to match his father’s politely disinterested tone. Once again he was embroiled in the last thing he ever wanted to do again, as long as he lived, which was talk about Alison. But this whole sorry conversation was seemingly unstoppable.

  “What I don’t understand is why all those shows have to be so violent,” his mother sighed, shaking her head with a quiet but decisive disapproval which Kyle had learned to dread in his childhood. “Everyone acts like there’s nothing you can do about it but I say turn it off! They’ll just keep putting that garbage on television unless we stop watching it. There didn’t used to be shows like this on all the channels. Now it seems like no matter when I turn it on, it’s
all killing and shooting and sex. I’m sorry that Alison thought it was a good idea to get involved in something like that. I thought she had more sense than that, I really did.” Kyle’s mother had never forgiven Alison for breaking her son’s heart not once but four or five or six or seven times—who could keep count how long those two made each other miserable? She was a smart girl and pretty and she had had every chance in the world. But there was clearly something wrong with her character.

  “Well, we don’t actually know if she’s shooting people or not, do we, Kyle?” his dad asked with a good-natured contrariness. “Maybe she’s getting shot.”

  “She’s not shooting anybody or being shot either, as a matter of fact,” Kyle informed them, grinning at his father’s subversive levity. “She’s a witness.”

  Before Van could react to the fact that Kyle did, actually, know rather a lot about the show, his father stepped in. “So that’s not so terrible,” he observed, decisive. “A witness is an honorable role to play. We are all witnesses to our Lord and his creation. And now Alison is getting paid for it, which is always a good thing for our young people. Let’s say grace.” He bowed his head, folded his hands, and eased elegantly into the prayer over the meal. “We thank you, Lord, for this beautiful food, prepared with loving hands by Susan and Margaret for our nourishment. Look kindly on us as we gather in your name, and keep an eye on your daughter Alison, who has run off to the big city to follow her dreams. Some of us think that may have been a mistake and that she will need your guidance there, as we need it here. Amen.”

  There really was not much you could say to that. Dad started cutting his chicken with gusto and told Susan that it all looked terrific. Susan thanked him and said that she had gotten the recipe out of that church cookbook Mom had gotten from St. Bernard’s almost ten years ago now. Mom said something about how many good recipes she had found in that old thing, it was maybe the best cookbook in her kitchen. Van took a bite and told Susan it was so good, she’d heard about pecan-crusted chicken but she’d never had it before, she always thought of it as a Southern dish. Bill started to explain how in many ways Cincinnati really was a Southern city, sitting right there across the river from Kentucky, and how it was one of the first stops on the Underground Railroad. They had a lovely dinner, everyone went home early, and nobody watched Alison make her television debut.