by CD Reiss
He turned away and looked out the window. I knew it was because he was smiling. Even when he reached for my knee, then my thigh, he looked away.
“Stop smiling,” I grumbled.
“Can’t.”
“Were you this irritating when we met?”
“I was charming. Very charming.”
“Where did Mr. Charming go?”
“That guy didn’t have staying power.”
“But Mr. Irritating? He’ll stick around?”
“Unfortunately. Go up to the top please.”
I went past the gate at Barnsdall and up the hill. His hand crawled up my thigh, and my body had the usual response, which was something between highly aroused and melting into lava.
I parked.
Barnsdall Art Park sat atop a low hill in East Hollywood. Frank Lloyd Wright had designed and built a residence with a theater and art gallery overlooking two sides of the city. Because the parking lot was the only piece of the puzzle at ground level, the park was historically underused, making it a great place for a pro baseball player to walk around without being recognized.
He put his arm around me and led me over the grass. A few couples and trios sat in the stone alcoves, chatting and laughing in the late afternoon shadows. He led me to a ledge overlooking the north side of the park, in view of the Hollywood sign and the high contrast lighting of the setting sun over the hills. He brushed dirt off the top of the stone wall and offered me his hand.
I took it and sat on the ledge overlooking the city. He hopped over, onto the side of the hill.
“This is nice,” I said.
He stood and wedged himself between my legs. “Vivian?” He linked his fingers together at my lower back.
“Dash.”
“Seeing you behind the dugout meant a lot to me. I want you to be at every game.”
I put my forearms on his shoulders and locked my fingers together. “I want to be there, technically.”
“Technically?”
“I have work until the middle of June.”
His expression was hard to read it changed so fast. But with the narrowing of the eyes and the tightening of one side of his mouth, I knew he hadn’t considered my job an issue. Maybe he didn’t consider it a job worth staying at in money or satisfaction. Both. Neither. Something else entirely.
Then I felt his fingers tap on my back, and his gaze went deep into the middle distance.
“You’re counting,” I said.
“I have seven weekday away games between now and June 10th.”
“And? You think I can just take those seven days off?”
“Yes.”
“As what? Sick days?”
“And after that, you just travel with me.”
“That’s nuts.”
It was. How many red-eyes was that? How many mornings would I show up at school on no sleep? And how was I supposed to get away with that? Teachers only worked nine months a year, so unless we were actually sick, we were expected to show up.
“Listen.” He pecked my lips before continuing. “You give notice now, and they have all summer to find another librarian. They’ll be fine.”
I pulled back. “What? No. Dash, really, I’m not quitting.”
“Why not?”
What the hell? Had he lost his mind? How could he even pretend to not understand the issue here? It was so obvious to me that he was asking me to give him everything that mattered to me in exchange for… what? I didn’t even know what was on the table.
“I’m not ready to change my life all around,” I said.
“We change each other’s lives. That’s what we do.”
“A couple of months ago, you couldn’t even commit past March. Now you want me to quit my job and leave my father so I can travel with you?”
He couldn’t step back much because of the slope of the hill, but he backed up as much as he could and put his hands on my thighs. Mine were folded in my lap.
“I know,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being cautious. But I want to reassure you that I’m serious.”
I took his face in my hands and put my nose on his. He was a good man. A sincere and worthy man. I had a million reasons to drop everything and run away with him and only a few very important reasons to refuse. “I know you’re serious.”
“I don’t think you do. I think I’ve made mistakes with you, and that’s what’s making you balk. So I want to undo those mistakes. I want you to know how much you mean to me.”
“I get it but—”
“Marry me.” He reached into his pocket.
No. Oh no. I grabbed his hand before he could dig in there and pick out what I knew was a ring. A ring bought too soon and for the wrong reasons. Maybe the only ring I’d be offered in my life, but nevertheless, one I couldn’t accept.
“Don’t,” I whispered urgently. “Don’t do this.”
He’d obviously expected a different reaction. “Why not? I need you.”
I shook my head to get the thoughts out. The ones where he was using me to fulfill his superstitions, the ones that demanded I tell it to him straight and lose him forever. They pushed against the filter, bulging and pounding against it.
“You need me for the wrong reasons,” I said, pushing the rest of it back.
“What do you mean?”
That was all that thin membrane holding the truth back needed. The words burst out too fast, and they were hard and unkind.
“I’m not—”
Your good luck charm
Responsible for your failures
A toy
I bit it all back so hard I nearly coughed. I couldn’t do it that way. I couldn’t cut him down. The crux of what he was going through was lack of confidence, and I’d almost played into it.
“You’re a gifted person,” I said. “You don’t need superstitions to be successful. Me, I’m just a trinket right now. But the talent is with you. All you.”
“You’re not a trinket. How could you say that?”
Of course he picked the one thing that would deflect the conversation from the real problem. I wanted to talk about his confidence and his ability. I didn’t want to talk about what I thought of myself.
“You have to work on this idea that you’re not good enough,” he said. “You have to know that we’re that good together. That you’re different. Special. Better for me than any woman I’ve ever met.”
“And you love me?”
“Of course I do.”
Yeah. That was bullshit. I was honored and flattered. I was even tempted. His pseudo-declaration of love was the best he could do, under the circumstances, which were just awful.
“My father,” I said, then I corrected myself. “My biological father. He and my mother got married in a whirlwind. He was an actor on the verge. Clint Eastwood was casting this western. He’d directed stuff before, but everyone was talking about how this was going to be a big deal for him. My father thought he was getting cast in it. It’s hard to do forensics on a guy I never met, but he was vulnerable when he met my mother. His success was about to crush him, and from what my mom said, success was scarier to him than failure. She was that successful. She was in magazines and fashion shows. She’d survived it. She was a symbol of what he wanted to become and what he feared. He felt safe with her. They met and married in the space of two months.”
Dash shook his head as if to clear it. “Wait. Who’s your dad?”
“Nobody. Really nobody. Richard Harris got cast to be English Bob when my mom was pregnant with me, and my father flipped. Nothing she did brought him back to reality, and he blamed her. He said if she hadn’t been pregnant, he would have gone out more, made more contacts. And when Unforgiven did well, everything crashed. They weren’t strong enough to get through it, and he left her with nothing but a baby and a house she couldn’t sell.”
“That’s not me.”
I was torn. I felt the depth of his disappointment
and disorientation, yet I couldn’t change my mind to soothe it. “No, it’s not you. Because you have real talent.”
He looked away from me, and only in that redirection did I see how confusing this was for him and how I couldn’t make it better. He’d exposed his deepest vulnerabilities, and I’d thrown them into the pit of his fears.
Well done, Vivian. Way to go.
“I love you,” I said.
Those words should have come before he asked me to marry him, and he looked back at me as if he was shocked to hear them.
“We should go,” he said.
That wasn’t the answer I’d been looking for, but what could I expect?
He helped me down from the wall, but his touch was cold, and his eyes avoided mine.
forty-five
Dash
Before Ithaca winter set in, we got a cord of wood for the fireplace. My father bought rough brown twine to tie it together in manageable bundles. The sisal came in a tubeless cylinder, and we pulled the end from the center. There’s a lot of wood in a cord, and we used yards and yards to bundle it, pulling from the center of the cylinder to take a length. We could use ninety percent of the spool, and the size of the thing never changed. It just got emptier and emptier, but it looked the same on the outside.
Until the last few yards. Then the shape would start to collapse, and the entire thing disappeared as if the invisible man had gotten undressed, and boom, I’d see how empty it had been all that time.
I walked her to the car and drove it back to her house, but my shape was crumpling. I was about to be stripped down to invisibility. I’d looked pretty fine and felt okay until she refused me, then I’d realized how little I had left at the core.
“I’m sorry,” she said when we were halfway to her house.
It was the point in the drive where I could have gone in either direction: to my place, and a night of fucking, or her place.
“I understand.” I didn’t understand a thing, but I couldn’t talk. I was about to fall apart, and talking would only use up the few yards I had.
I held her hand because it would reassure her and she’d stop talking. With that touch came a new unraveling. Had I lost her? Did my desperation drive her away? With that thought, I was one layer of twine from complete collapse.
I parked and got out before we could talk this through more. I opened her door and helped her out. At the top of the steps, I stopped.
“The game tomorrow…” I said.
“Yes.”
“Will you come? I have the seats for you.”
“Yes.”
“Will you still walk the bases with me?” I asked. I needed her to. For luck, yes. Because I needed the routine. But also because it meant she was beside me.
She barely hesitated, and that told me the truth of her response. “Yes.”
“We’re playing San Diego next.”
“I want to go. Can I just go to your games when I can?”
“Yes, I”—take a breath—“I need you there. Whenever you can.”
“Dash, you’re fine with or without me. You have to believe that.”
I put my fingers to her lips. I couldn’t hear another word. She turned her head until my palm cupped her face, and she pressed it to her cheek, letting her eyes flutter closed.
I’d hurt her. I hadn’t thought it was possible to hurt someone with an unopened ring box, but I had, and with that, the last of the string got pulled away.
forty-six
Vivian
“Why do you look like that?” Dad asked when I got inside. He was in his robe and slippers, boiling water for tea. His amber med bottles were out. If it was midnight and he was up with painkillers, the arthritis was flaring.
I got a cup from the cabinet, deciding to stay up with him.
“He asked me to marry him.”
“Mazel tov! Where’s the funeral?”
“I said no.” I pushed my mug toward him, and he swung a teabag into it. “It’s too soon.”
“It is, it is.”
“Why do I feel like crying?”
“I want to tell you something you don’t know. Do you remember that boyfriend you used to have?”
“Carl?”
“That one. He used to call here all the time. After you broke up, I mean.”
“What?” The teapot whistled just as I said it. “Why?”
Dad turned off the heat. “He wanted to know if you were all right. And I didn’t like the guy. I didn’t like what he did. I was mad at him. But he was very upset.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why should I? He was wrong for you. If I told you how much that stupid ass cried for you—you with your good heart?—you’d just try to comfort him.”
He poured hot water into my cup, and the water went from clear to pale yellow, releasing the waxy florals of chamomile.
“I don’t have the energy to be mad at you,” I said.
“Have the energy to realize it’s hard to say no to someone you care about. Even for Carl the schlemiel.”
I dunked my teabag, pinched it, and put it to the side. Carl had put a stake in my heart. I’d thought I’d never get over it.
And Dash? What had he done by moving too fast? Whipped the rug out from under me, from all my view of how things were and should be, and I was going to make contact with the floor. Hard.
“I’m afraid he’s going to leave me.”
When I said the words, my face tingled and crunched. That was my hard place, and by refusing him, I’d angled my body to hit harder and faster. My mouth filled with gunk, and my eyes burned with tears. In a second, I couldn’t breathe unless I gulped.
Dad was there. He held me right there in the kitchen for a good ten minutes while I sobbed as if I hadn’t been proposed to. I sobbed as if I’d been dumped.
forty-seven
Vivian
Are you up?
It’s 2am. Of course
(…)
(…)
You have a game tomorrow. You need to sleep
I can’t
(…)
(…)
I’m sorry
No. I’m sorry
forty-eight
Vivian
My phone lit up. He was calling. The thing to do was to answer it. Talk to him. Tell him I loved him and accept his love even if he felt half-heartedly trapped into expressing it.
Or not.
Who was I to doubt him?
I was the sensible one, that’s who. I started saying things to myself as the phone vibrated in my hand. Bad things.
I was an object.
When he got to know me, he’d dump me.
He couldn’t hear me crying, and I didn’t want him to. I rejected the call.
I’m not functioning well. I can’t talk
He didn’t answer for a long time. And why should he? He was the one who had put his heart on the line, and I was the one who was protected and fortified. Not only had I rejected his proposal, I’d rejected his call.
I’ll walk the bases with you tomorrow
You don’t have to
The next text came right after.
Your tickets are at the will call if you still want to come to the game. Otherwise, I’ll see you another time
Another time.
Simple and polite. Nonspecific. Not demanding. Move along. Nothing to see here. Nothing but nothing. I couldn’t call him and reassure him. I’d already said I couldn’t talk.
Good night
I hit Send and started on the next text before the first even went through.
I love you
Both messages were delivered. The screen said so, but nothing came back. I had no way of knowing if he even saw them.
I tried to sleep and failed. My brain was too busy winding guilt around justification, knotting me into a braid of righteous self-reproach.
I should have just said yes.
Bu
t I couldn’t have.
I fell asleep, sure I’d lost him, and woke up an hour later when the birds started whistling. Dash was the first thought on my mind. I didn’t look at my phone. I was afraid of what I’d see.
I was tired. Tired of all the limits I’d put on myself. Tired of the box I’d built around my heart. I wanted to change but didn’t know how.
Padding into the kitchen, gunk in my eyes and sleep in my veins, I found Dad already up. I loved him. I loved him more than my heart could even fit. The way he bent in front of the fridge so slowly, careful not to twist his joints, made me doubt what I’d decided during the walk across the house.
“Dad,” I said.
“Good morning.”
“Would you be mad if I moved out?”
He stood cautiously, closed the refrigerator, and leaned on it. “Mad?”
“Disappointed. Or whatever. Maybe the question is, ‘How would you feel if I moved out?’ But not far. As close as I could afford.”
He laughed quietly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you the same thing.”
I hadn’t even considered the idea. This was Mom and Dad’s house. This was my home base. My life was in this single-story O-shaped modernist masterpiece, and even if I was gone, it had to be here.
“You can’t—” I stopped myself at the apostrophe. “Where will you go?”
“Somewhere smaller. I’m feeling all right with the new pills, but the steps aren’t good in the long run. And this is really your house.”
“What? No! It’s yours.”
He waved me off, which he’d done a million times before without annoying me. That morning, however, I was in no mood.
“You made sure Mom got this house, and when she was gone, you’re the one who paid the mortgage and made it a home,” I said.
“I only stayed so you had some consistency when your mother died. And now it’s just a habit. Honestly, I don’t even like it.”
I had to swallow that hard. It was a complete turnaround. I had to sit down. “You don’t like it?”
