Alone

by Michelle Parise

BITS AND PIECES

  “You’re amazing — you’re so on top of things, your life is so in order,” says Revival, usually a man of few words, but not tonight for some reason.

  “Are you kidding? I’m a mess.”

  “Man, you’re not a mess at all. You’ve got it all happening for yourself! You manage it all!”

  “But I’m so tired,” I say, and he gives me a squeeze. He pulls me onto his chest and I nestle my face there against his smooth, smooth skin.

  “I wish you could just sleep over,” I say for the first time ever, and I mean it.

  “I wish I could, too,” he says. “I wish a lot of things.”

  I’m overwhelmed by his sudden candour, the way he’s speaking about me admiringly, as if he’s speaking about someone else, not me, not the woman who just lets him come and go, the woman who asks no questions. And so we lie there, 3:00 a.m., wrapped up in each other, two strangers in a way but also weirdly connected. This is what it is. This is me, taking the little bits and pieces that the men in my life offer.

  Revival asks me how it’s going with The Man with the White Shirt, and I sigh and roll my eyes and complain like a heartsick teenager as I tell him. “Why do you want a boyfriend so badly?” Revival asks, and then before I can even answer, “It’s not all that, you know. It’s a pain in the ass to be in a couple, don’t you remember?”

  Of course I remember. I remember it’s a pain in the ass, but I also remember that it’s wonderful. How it feels to fall asleep beside the person you love each night, to have someone know you, really know you. “It’s worth the pain-in-the-ass parts to me,” I say, ever The Saddest Optimist. He smiles. I watch him put his clothes on. We kiss. And away he goes.

  When I lock the door, the first thing I think of is The Man with the White Shirt. His face, his smile, his smell. Him. Lying beside me all those nights, how we’d talk and talk until we fell asleep. How opening my eyes in the morning and seeing him there filled me with a kind of joy I miss and crave so deeply.

  How each moment with him felt like a gift, something special for me, but never really mine to keep. A placeholder. A million-dollar necklace to wear to the Oscars that you have to give back the next day so some other woman can have it for a night.

  Something that sparkles, casting a perfect glow on you, before it turns and shines on someone else.

  BLINDNESS

  So, I’m a monogamous person in a non-monogamous relationship. I live for the next time I can be with him again, the man that makes me feel whole, even while the situation splits me in two. Ugh. How did I get here?

  It actually begins at the beginning, where if we’re really honest with ourselves, we both could have seen this coming. Like, from Day 1, the day of our very first date.

  The Man with the White Shirt and I, standing on Dundas West, outside of the bar we were just in, where he had a beer, I had a ginger ale and we had great conversation. Out on the street, we linger to see what will happen next.

  I think we are probably going to kiss, but instead he says, “I need to tell you something.” And I say seriously, “Me, too. I have a kid. And an ex-husband.” I hold my breath. We’ve just had an amazing night and he is so hot and I want to take him home with me, and usually I don’t tell guys about Birdie and The Ex-husband but I want to tell this man for some reason.

  “Wow, cool,” he says, and asks how old she is and how long it’s been, the usual questions. I ask what he has to tell me.

  “I see other women,” he says, and I say, “Yeah, obviously,” because we just met. Of course we see other people!

  At the time, I didn’t understand what he really meant. But also, he didn’t really tell me. If he said, more clearly, that he was polyamorous, or that he didn’t believe in monogamy, maybe I would have cut my losses right then and there. If he said, “Being in a monogamous relationship isn’t right for me,” it’s possible that despite how hot he was and how special he seemed, I would have decided not to get involved.

  But he didn’t say that. And I heard what I wanted to hear. I heard him saying he’s non-monogamous until he meets the “right one.” Just like me.

  We kiss in a doorway. Our first kiss. And this is the moment where we both choose blindness, however subconsciously. In this doorway, I tell myself he will probably just be okay in bed. Or maybe it will be amazing, but that will be it, it won’t amount to anything more. I tell myself that even though we don’t know each other that well yet, it’s possible that because we saw each other across a room and had that fireworks moment just the night before, that thing they call Love at First Sight, maybe he will turn out to be my second great love.

  You can think a lot of contradictory things during one kiss.

  We decide to go back to my place. And there’s this moment where we are trying to shove his bike into the back of my tiny car, arguing like we’ve been a couple forever, Put it here! No, move it this way! … an unusual foreplay that, for me, adds to the magic. Because it’s comfortable and intimate, the way we negotiate the bike’s placement, forcing it to fit in my tiny hatchback so we can close the trunk.

  Already, we were trying to make things fit that didn’t. Or at least, didn’t fit easily. I don’t know how I didn’t see that until now.

  MAYBE

  After a particularly hard week of torment and tears over The Man with the White Shirt, I arrive at work one morning to find a Tupperware container on my desk with a tiny note attached to it. It’s an entire brisket, from my friend Pint Size, and her note restores all the power back to my heart for a bit. It says:

  I don’t know the answers to your questions about love,

  but I know that this meat will make you feel better.

  Later, we meet in the kitchenette for tea. I try to hug her and say thanks for the brisket and her kindness but she is very no-nonsense and won’t stand for my mushy stuff.

  “Listen, it has got to be a Fuck Yes! or it isn’t worth it,” she says to me, like a tiny scolding schoolteacher. I roll my eyes and say, “Yeah, I knowww …” and sometimes I can’t believe I’m forty and these are the conversations I’m having.

  “Have I told you my Jenga Principle of Dating?” says Pint Size. “It’s simple: If you both aren’t taking a block from the bottom and putting it on top, then forget about it!”

  I laugh because I always feel like I’m in a sitcom when she talks, and I sigh, because she’s always right. Because up until now love had always been a resounding Fuck Yes! in all my relationships, but with The Man with the White Shirt it was nothing but Maybe?? So many maybes. And I’m willing to cry into my brisket for the maybe, because I believe we are different, that he’s special, and we are special, that one day he’s going to see that and change his mind and go all-in with me.

  So for now our relationship is just the two of us driving round and round in a parking lot where he can never find a spot that’s good enough, and I’m just shouting “Squeeze in there!” and “What about there?” because any spot is fine as long as we just fit ourselves into it.

  ROAD TO NOWHERE

  It’s a Sunday. Sometime in the second summer after The Bomb. I’m dropping Birdie off at her father’s and he makes me an espresso. It’s in one of my grandmother’s old cups — dark brown ceramic, a bolt of my childhood served up by my ex-husband.

  Here in his apartment, we sit at my old Formica table, having a coffee in my nonna’s cups as we fold and separate Birdie’s laundry. She’s playing in her room. We’re just talking about regular stuff, nothing to do with anything in particular, when he suddenly grabs me and kisses me hard. Long. With so much passion. He’s never done that before. I mean, since the breakup we’ve only ever kissed while having sex, so I’m taken a little off guard. We just do that for a while until I casually stop him. We finish the folding and I leave soon after.

  Does it melt some part of me? I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t. But so what. Between The Ex-husband and The Man with the White Shirt, I’ve had it with these sporadic bursts of love and affe
ction. The reeling in and casting out. This isn’t the love I want. I want to be loved the way I love, with conviction and risk in equal parts, wholly invested and hopeful and honest. The way it seemed for us both when we first met, back when he was still just The Scientist to me. Back when he was the most fearless person I’d ever met — besides myself. We were well suited then, it seemed, because life was a thing we both approached with the same spirit — a mix of adventure and independence and fortitude and enthusiasm.

  There was this time once, at the end of 1999 and the beginning of us. We were twenty-five. The Scientist had a rented car and one of us suggested Let’s run away somewhere for a night, so we drove north of the city with absolutely no plan and no belongings and telling no one. Look at us, on the run! we laughed, escaping the city and our lives and feeling more free in running than we did standing still. We just drove and drove, only stopping when we were about to run out of gas. At an old motel perched on an exit off the highway, we got a room for the night.

  We didn’t even know where we were and it didn’t matter, but it’s funny now, isn’t it? The first trip we took together was to nowhere.

  THEY MEET

  I’m sitting on the edge of the playground, half-watching as Birdie plays. It’s the usual scenario — me sitting alone, surrounded by happy couples chatting and laughing with other happy couples while their multiple children run around screaming. But today, I’m not as bothered as I usually am by these loving, intact families.

  Today I’m sitting here with butterflies swirling around my head. Not literal ones, but the lovey-dovey gooey complicated butterflies that come with having fallen for The Man with the White Shirt. Complicated, complicated butterflies.

  White Shirt is texting me. He’s on his bike and going to drop by the park, he says. I think hard on this. I don’t want Birdie to meet any man in my life unless that man and I mean serious business. Serious in the traditional sense. He’s gotta be my boyfriend. And White Shirt, as we know, is not my boyfriend. He’s The Not-Boyfriend.

  Birdie is six years old at this point, and isn’t very physically affectionate. She refuses to be hugged or touched by almost anyone but her dad and me. Even then, she manages to worm her way out of our arms in a matter of seconds. It’s like she has no use for most people. She’s met a lot of my friends, both men and women, and although she’s friendly and polite, she doesn’t usually pay all that much attention to them. So I figure there’s no harm in The Man with the White Shirt coming by the park to sit with me a bit. She won’t even notice.

  When he arrives at the playground, it’s like extra sunlight was ordered in. And a wind machine. And sparkly mist. I can smell every single flower in the park. He gets off his bike and smiles, and I have to remember to breathe. Fuck. He hugs me and I’m super stiff. I don’t know how to reconcile the volcanic eruption in my body with the wholesome family-ness of the playground. As we sit down, Birdie, who never pays attention to me or anyone in the playground, suddenly comes running over.

  “Hi,” she says to The Man with the White Shirt. She doesn’t acknowledge me at all. “Do you want to see Sir Mew?” Sir Mew is a tiny eraser in the shape of a white cat.

  “Yeah I do!” he says, and before I know it, they’re playing with eraser cats and laughing and talking like it’s no big deal. It’s a big deal to me. My two worlds are colliding, and I’m freaking out. I really thought he was just going to drop by for a bit, but instead he’s deep in storyline creation with Birdie and this is all so … unexpected. Here she is, draped over him, touching him, even. Why hasn’t she gone back to her friends on the playground? What is going on?

  White Shirt suggests we get some frozen yogourt and Birdie is thrilled. I agree but it’s like I do it from a great distance. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She isn’t supposed to love him so immediately, like I did. He isn’t real. His love is only partial. It has limits. I need to protect her but it’s all happening so fast. This can’t be good.

  We walk through the park, the three of us. My child who touches no one reaches for his hand and he takes it. And just like that, walking along the path, we look like a family. Just like that, it’s so easy for my heart to be swindled.

  Frozen yogourt with sprinkles. And cookie dough. And … jujubes? He obviously loves kids, but has never been a parent. She’s laughing with that husky Janis Joplin voice of hers, and it makes everyone in the shop smile. My obstinate child is suddenly delightful. In public! It’s hard not to make it about him. It’s hard to not be swept away by the fact that his presence has calmed my little tempest of a daughter. The exact way he made me feel when I first met him. Calm.

  On the street we say goodbye, but Birdie won’t have any of it. She jumps on The Man with the White Shirt. Like, takes a running jump onto his back screaming, “Nooooo, don’t go! Take me with you!” He laughs and hugs her and doesn’t seem uncomfortable at all. “We’ll hang out again!” he promises her as I try to pry her off his body. She is unbelievably strong and will not let go of him. Her mother’s daughter, through and through.

  White Shirt is beaming. He’s had so much fun. But my insides are a mess as I cycle through the contradictory facts: He can’t be in a monogamous relationship. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to be in a committed relationship.

  “I LOVE YOUUUUU!” Birdie shouts as we cross the street. And this is how they meet, The Man with the White Shirt and my Birdie.

  Their relationship becomes so deep, so quickly. It grows easily into its own thing over the next several years. He teaches her to play the drums. They walk his dog together. They build elaborate LEGO structures. She hugs him like hugging is what she does. He picks her up from school. Or watches her on summer days while I’m working. They call it “Camp White Shirt.”

  For years there will be one or two nights a month where I get home from work to find him cooking dinner while Birdie happily plays nearby. I always look forward to these nights. The anticipation of the life going on inside. The warmth of light and food and other human bodies that floods me the second I walk in the door. The warmth. The three of us at the table, joking and eating like a family. The way they cut each other off trying to tell me a funny story. How she writes our dessert orders on a little notepad, then returns with three pudding cups and three espresso spoons neatly laid out on a tray.

  In these moments, I glow. Watching them, listening. Feeling whole again. But his phone keeps beeping. Soon he’ll be gone. Out … somewhere, with … someone. And Birdie and I will be back to a family of two. The warm light slightly dimmed.

  The Man with the White Shirt comes in and out like this for years and years. I let him. I encourage it. I want it, even if it’s occasional. We are not a couple to her. We don’t kiss in front of her, he doesn’t sleep over. In her eyes, he’s my best friend and I’m his. Which is true. Except I have never been so attracted to a best friend in all my life. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anyone more, in a way that I imagine addicts want drugs. It defies all reason. But she doesn’t need to know that. She will only know us as friends, unless a miracle happens and we ever become a real couple in a real relationship. This is a thing I never stop hoping for. A thing I wait for, even while I move forward. I can do that, you know, move and wait at the same time.

  Birdie told The Man with the White Shirt she loved him the very first day they met. Just look at them together. That’s why I know that one day he will change his mind and be ready to commit, not just to me but to us. From the moment they met, she loved him. It was a sign.

  It was a sign. Wasn’t it?

  SIGNS

  Yeah, about signs. You might be rolling your eyes at me. The way I find magic in every coincidence. The way I think the universe is always telling me something. It’s like everyone wants to make sure I understand life is flat and boring, that coincidences are just that, coincidences, they don’t have meaning.

  The truth is, to me these signs are just little Easter eggs, there for us to unearth in this game we live in. Sometimes the Easte
r eggs give us power or extra life when we find them. Sometimes they make things worse. But most of the time they’re just fun to find. It feels fun to find them. It feels special because not everyone finds them and experiences them. That is what these signs are to me, these coincidences I imbue with extra meaning and magic. The meaning and magic is that we unearthed them. What’s so wrong about that?

  The night I first met The Man with the White Shirt, he gave me his phone number and I couldn’t believe it. The last four digits were the numeric pin code I’ve used for practically my whole life! And then I saw his bike. There, on the crossbar in a 1970s script, was one word. A word from my childhood, the title of my favourite Paul Weller song, and my most common password at the time. Wildwood. There on White Shirt’s bike for me. I mean, yeah, it seems silly now that I’m saying it, passwords! But I like this stuff. It feels special to me. He feels special because of these things.

  So, you don’t have to humour me about all this hippie shit, okay? I just need to know you understand me. Signs or no signs, to me there is only him and everyone else is fifty stories below that. He’s in the penthouse. He’s the entire top floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THERE, THERE

  FIREWORKS

  Every time I see The Man with the White Shirt, it’s just like the poets said, it’s fireworks. Actual goddamn fireworks. Inside me, above his head, all around us, everywhere, boom boom boom. And he’s talking about whatever, talking about what I don’t know because I just see his lips move and it’s all boom boom boom and my whole body just melts beside him, every ligament is taut and every neuron is firing and every hair stands on end and every bit of my skin wants to touch every bit of his, boom boom boom.

  Listen to me, I whisper as he sleeps, you are loved like a fireworks display. Your very presence is fireworks.