I lie in bed and long for Kieran to be here bringing me soup and stroking my hair. I calculate the time difference between New York and Dublin over and over in my mind.
Oh, the sympathy I have for my single friends. I had no idea. I used to listen to them going on about this guy or that, dissecting phone calls and emails, parsing conversations like they were lawyers in discovery. And I used to think, oh Christ, get a grip. Have a little perspective. He called; he didn’t call. He’s more affectionate one day and less the next. So it goes. Get some self-respect and think about something else for a while. And now, here I am, in the midst of this horrible tragedy, and I’m going over every word Kieran ever uttered, rereading every line of every email exchanged, cringing over a single phone call days ago—all as if there were some secret code that with enough study I could crack to explain why I’m lying here alone.
Dear Single Friends, I apologize for my lack of sympathy. I apologize for my smugness. It’s true. I thought I was better. More evolved. Cooler and smarter. Forgive me, Single Friends. I plead ignorance.
Why won’t he let me lavish him with love? I have so much love to give if only he wanted it.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Marie is going to be let out of the hospital in two weeks. I haven’t heard my brother’s voice sound so strong in weeks. It’s like warmth spreading in my chest.
Later
I have to get out of my house, so I go to the coffee shop across the street.
The amateur pugilist comes in. He’s got stains on his coat and is wearing baggy wrestler’s pants. I can’t believe I considered even for a fraction of a second going on a date with him.
“Hey, Heather. How were your holidays?” he says.
The amateur pugilist has very close-set eyes and a tremendous amount of nose hair. I always wonder, doesn’t he see it when he looks in the mirror?
“I considered suicide,” I say.
“No shit,” he says. “How were you going to do it?”
“I have this fantasy of walking out into traffic.”
The amateur pugilist waves his arms wildly in front of him. “What, are you crazy?” he says. “You wouldn’t die. You’d just break a leg or something. It would be a total disaster.”
“I don’t know then. Poison?”
“What, so someone could find you and rush you to the hospital where they’d pump your stomach?”
“It’s funny,” I say. “I think there are two kinds of people in the world, homicides and suicides. Me, I was always a dedicated homicide. But now I’m starting to see the upside of suicide.”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” the amateur pugilist says. “No competition. But it’s got to be a gun to the head.” And he makes the motion with his hand, forefinger at his temple, thumb pulling back an imaginary trigger. “There’s no other way.”
“Well then, I’m out,” I say. “I’d never have the nerve for that.”
He shrugs, as if to say, your loss. Then he wanders out of the coffee shop, and I go back to my paper.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Shit is falling apart.
Down in Baltimore, Faith has locked herself in her bedroom with the children. I’m panicking because she’s panicking and Faith never panics. Faith may look sweet in her sweater sets and matching jewelry, but don’t let it fool you—she is tough. The woman was a union negotiator and then a social worker specializing in violent children in the South Bronx.
Yesterday she called me, ecstatic. She’d kicked Derrick out of the house. “I want to be an emancipated woman like you,” she’d cried. I’d thought, emancipated. I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Turns out Derrick had been having an affair. Also, last month she’d discovered receipts for a number of guns. Guns.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I nearly shouted at her. “Faith, you have to talk to people!”
She’d been too euphoric, though, to do anything but laugh. “I did it, Heath! I did it!” she kept saying.
But now she’s just called and Derrick is, she thinks, coked up and threatening to come to the house and take the kids. I’ve never heard Faith sound so scared. I don’t know what to do. I’m running up and down the hallway, trying to figure out if I should go down there. She won’t call any of her friends who live in Baltimore. She doesn’t want anyone to know. I say, Faith, you can’t live like that. Her father is in DC but she’s too ashamed to call him. I can’t think of what else to do, though. I call her mother and get her mother to call her father, who agrees to go spend the night with her. I stay on the phone with Faith until he arrives.
I can’t stop running up and down my hallway, though. Even after Faith’s father calls to tell me she’s gone to sleep. What has happened to us all? What has happened?
Monday, January 1, 2007
Last night was New Year’s Eve.
Before my friends come over, I’m on the phone with Seth. They’re all up at Valhalla with Marie, who is beginning to eat a bit. Ben has brought Alex up for the first time. When I ask Seth how it’s going, he says, “It’s going okay, Heath. It’s going okay.”
When my friends get here, we order Chinese food and drink champagne. We’re coming up with slogans for the next year.
“Care less about other people: 2007,” I say.
The aspiring novelist says, “That’s funny.” But I’m not kidding.
Then I say, “Oh Christ, I just need a sign. A sign that next year will be different.”
They groan because I’ve been talking about signs all night.
We realize it’s 11:55 and we’re going to miss the fireworks in Prospect Park. The others are for blowing them off, but I say, no way.
“Every year I miss them, and every year I say, eh, next year. I cannot start another year knowing I’ve already failed in the very first thing I wanted to do,” I say. “Off your asses, everyone.”
We hear the fireworks start just as we’re crossing Sixth Avenue. That’s when I start running. At first we’re all in a pack, but one by one the others fall off until it’s just me, sprinting up Eleventh Street. My breath starts to feel raspy, scratchy in my throat. I can hear myself wheezing, and my thigh muscles burn from the sudden expenditure of effort. But I feel somehow as if the whole of my next year depends on me making it to the top of the hill and seeing those fireworks. I don’t care if I make myself sicker.
Right as I hit Prospect Park West and my breath is near entirely gone, a round goes up into the air. There are lights in the sky, erupting over the trees before me. Dazzling and bright, halos of color, sparkling and whirring and fizzing. I’m panting so hard I have to bend over, hands on knees. I’m light-headed, everything spinning around me, but I’m also laughing out loud. My friends trot up behind me just as the fireworks are finishing. We all cheer and jump up and down.
Lying on a blanket looking up at the stars in Prospect Park, I think, if my neighbor weren’t here, I’d definitely make my move on the aspiring novelist. But as a five-some, it would be awkward.
We get back to my house around 1:30 a.m. to finish off the Chinese takeout and down the last of the champagne. I see something shiny and purple hanging from the front door of my apartment building. It’s a cone-shaped hat with the words “Happy New Year” written in silver glitter on it. I turn to the right. I turn to the left. I look behind me. No other door has a hat like this on it. I think, is this my sign? When I was about six, I woke up New Year’s morning to find my mother had brought me back a hat just like this—same color, same writing, same everything. I remember this hat, because I’d been desperately jealous of my mother getting dressed up to go out for the night, while I was just a child who had to stay home. It had been like a souvenir from another world; it told me that out there, beyond our crumbling house, beyond the nightmares and terrors, beyond the loneliness of nights without my mother and the sheer disappointment of being only me and not Ginger Rogers in Top Hat, there was something else, a place where someday I would go and words would be written in silv
er glitter.
My friends are stamping their feet in the cold and clamoring for me to open the door. I take the hat and turn to them.
“Do you see this?” I say. “It’s a sign.”
“Oh, shut up!” they cry. “We’re freezing out here!”
Inside, we drink the remaining champagne and crack open our fortune cookies. I pull my slip of paper out. It reads, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” I have the sudden feeling of tears welling up in my eyes. I know what you’re thinking. A fortune cookie? She has had a psychotic break. But I don’t care what you think. I think of Ben and Marie and my brother and Cecilia and the horror of the last month. And I feel a tremendous surge of optimism in my chest—a glimmer of the light that shone in Dublin. I put the slip of paper on my refrigerator with a rose-shaped magnet. I don’t care if it’s from a fortune cookie. I believe it. Surely the dawn is near ready to rise for me.
BOOK FOUR
SUMMERTIME
Friday, June 1, 2007
I have not been keeping up. It’s been six months since I last wrote. You will just have to forgive me. What can I say, first I was too miserable and then I was too busy—and now? Now I’m just too psyched to make any promises about anything. It’s SUMMERTIME! Summertime. Do you know what this means? It means the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and the days are long. I can go swimming every day at the Red Hook Pool, and I’ve got more cute boys on my tip than I can handle. There are seven guys on my bench. That’s right, count ’em up, seven. And after several months literally thinking I was going to be foreclosed on, I have managed to eke out enough money writing magazine stories to pay my bills. Oh, and I’m now a contributor to All Things Considered. Hey. Hey. Hey. How you like me now?
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
My garden, as of today:
1 pink rosebush
2 pink hydrangeas
1 border of purple and yellow pansies (not yet bordering anything, but soon)
1 purple azalea bush
1 blueberry bush
6 sweet-smelling thyme bushes (planted between the flagstones)
6 ivy vines (planted to hang over raised flower beds)
2 foxgloves
1 dogwood tree, so beautiful, it hurts me to look at it. (And now I know why we make prisoners dig ditches. It fucking sucks. I nearly broke my back getting that thing into the ground.)
1 redbud tree (ditto, my back)
1 white butterfly bush
All, all glorious
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I saw Josh this spring. In LA, when I was there for a story. We went to the Griffith Observatory, a creamy-white fascist-looking monstrosity atop a hill overlooking the city. The sun was enormously bright and there was no escaping it up there. Josh and I walked around in sunglasses, squinting, our hands up to our foreheads shading our faces. Josh told me not only the history of the place but also the history of all telescopes—how a guy named Hans Lippershey patented the earliest one and may or may not have also invented the microscope. We talked about man’s endless quest to stretch beyond his own physical and mental limitations. It was so interesting I lost all track of everything except what Josh and I were saying. Then there was a pause, and I was back in the sun on top of that hill, standing next to Josh, my ex-husband, who’s lost thirty pounds, gotten a job, and knows everything in the world there is to know. I found myself wondering what it would be like to kiss him. The curiosity felt like it could have burned a hole in me so I ran away into the observatory’s café.
In the café, Josh was drinking orange juice. Then he tilted his head to one side and shook it at me. Then we were both clutching each other with laughter, because this is a joke from the first week we met, back at Gabriel’s funeral, and no one knows the joke but Josh and me and Mac.
We both had to wipe the tears from our faces we were laughing so hard. Josh was looking at me with his brilliantly green eyes, and there was love coming out of them that takes a lifetime to build. I thought, you broke my heart with your negligence and abuse. I will never meet another person as fascinating and wonderful. I hate you.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Yesterday
At Shea Stadium with the hacker—he’s an Indian guy with a firm little potbelly and big metal glasses I met at a party last week. I’m reading the New York Times and eating some vegan snacks I brought along. We’re talking about the effects of globalization on advanced capitalism. The hacker says, “I’d sure like to scan God’s database and see if anyone else here is having the same conversation. What do you think?”
To get home, we sneak our way onto a water taxi.
Then we go to the Red Hook Pool and practice flip turns.
Then we go back to my place and watch Deadwood. Sitting on my couch with the flickering of the TV for light, I’m waiting for the hacker to make his move. But he’s focused on the TV like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. He’s all, “wow, great shot,” and “interesting choice.” I’m thinking, man, your priorities are messed up.
At the door, he finally goes in for the kiss. Our teeth knock, but otherwise it’s nice. Then when he pulls away he seems really shy all of a sudden. He says, “I’m scared, but I want to try.” I’m thinking, try what? We’re not going to have a relationship here.
Oh yes. Summer 2007.
Friday, June 15, 2007
“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. Men don’t want to be reassured you like them. They like not knowing.”
It’s Eleanor berating me. I’d been thinking about the hacker after our day of fun and how he was kind of nerdy and probably didn’t go out with that many women, especially such stunningly hot women like myself. So I’d written him this really nice, long email to let him know I thought he was awesome. I told him I’d love to see him again and as long as he didn’t try and have any relationship conversations with me I’d be happy to date him.
“You are so crazy,” Eleanor says. “Of course he didn’t write back. You probably totally freaked him out.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “I was being straightforward. And I just felt sorry for him. He’s obviously such a great guy.”
Eleanor can’t stop laughing at me.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Joined a softball league today. Never been interested in softball in my life, but my writers’ space has a team in the New York Media league, and I figured it would be good for meeting new people, especially the kind of people who are boy people.
And oh my, is it.
There’s this guy on the other team with the most incredible jawline—like something a superhero would have. I’m trying to give him the eye from across the field, and then the next thing I know one of our batters slides into second base and everyone is laughing and joking about whether he’s out or not—but this guy, the guy with the jawline, starts screaming, “Come on! Give me a break! He’s out!” And the next thing I know he’s almost coming to blows with our second baseman. I’m thinking, what a dick. Who comes to a softball game of writers and almost gets in a fistfight? But I’m torn, because, you know, the jawline and everything. And then the game is over, and he’s taking off his baseball hat and under it is a head of dark hair so thick it’s hard not to walk up and run your hands through it. And oh my goodness, he’s got blue eyes like the Pacific Ocean on a bright day. So I’m like, that’s fine, you can be a dick, and I slide him my number on the way out.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Summer says I’m on a roll. And I laugh, but inside I’m thinking, this ain’t no roll. This is me. Turns out I am smarter and cooler than all those other single women after all. Oh yes.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Sixty people showed up for my barbecue last night even though I only sent out the invite on Tuesday.
I made gazpacho, cucumber yogurt soup, and cold potato soup. It’s terrible party food, but it was so much fun to welcome people with “Let me show you the soup bar.”
The economics reporter
for NPR got into a heated discussion with the Middle Eastern correspondent from the Nation about drone policy on top of my pansy border, and I had to yell at them to move before they destroyed the whole thing.
The game designer came.
The hacker came.
Both softball teams came.
I hadn’t noticed before what a square chest and nice forearms the hot dick has.
My neighbor came up to me and said, “Who is that hot guy out there? Blue eyes? Thick brown hair? Square chest?” Her husband said, “Oh, I talked to that guy. He’s a dick.”
The aspiring novelist, who I never got around to conquering, was there. Handing him a bowl of cold potato soup, I thought, I should give that another go.
I had the Flaming Lips on shuffle. Some guy who just moved here from Seattle to host a new radio show—I have no idea who brought him—congratulated me on the excellent music. I thought, oh, you’re cute.
By 2 a.m., there were just four of us left in the backyard. The hacker, me, one of my good friends from the neighborhood, and her horrible geek-hipster crush. The geek-hipster crush and the hacker got into an argument about whether or not Tupac was an authentic hip-hop artist despite his commercial success. I was thinking, oh my God, why are you both so annoying? Hacker, hello, can we just move to the part where we’re making out?
At 3 a.m., my friend and her asshole crush left and the hacker started acting like, oh, maybe I should go too. I said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’re spending the night.” But by the time we lay down I was so tired, I really only had the energy for a couple of kisses and then I fell asleep.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Reckless Years Page 14
