by Pamela Ribon
And this is why later that night, even though Andy has her right hand under the table in his with a white-knuckled, nail-digging grip, when Matthew quietly asks Charlotte out to dinner, she says yes.
21.
I sit across from Matthew and for a moment, it’s forever ago. Nothing bad has ever happened between us. It’s before. It’s the past. We’re just going out to dinner, like we’ve done a million times.
“Thanks again for coming to Mom’s party,” I say. “I never asked why you decided to go.”
Matthew’s attention is on the back of his collar, which he’s pulling from underneath his sweater. “You wanted me to go,” he says, and his eyes meet mine. The corners of his mouth twitch, almost grinning. “It seemed important to you.”
“It was,” I say. “I don’t think I knew how much until you showed up.”
“Well, then, I’m glad I did. And I’m glad you said yes to dinner.”
It’s the longest conversation we’ve had lately that hasn’t turned into something spiteful. Anybody at this restaurant who might look at us would think, “Well, there’s a lovely couple. How nice to be in love.”
“I’m glad, too,” I say.
“I was hoping it meant you’d made a decision.”
“About?”
“About us.”
The waiter interrupts us to hand out menus and discuss specials. I don’t hear a word he says. Am I supposed to have an answer right now? Do I have to decide by the end of the meal? Did he come here expecting a decision about the rest of our lives over whatever soup special this guy standing between us is describing? Because I don’t have one.
Is that why he really showed up at my mom’s party? To get a decision out of me? To force me to choose?
The waiter leaves and Matthew turns his focus to the menu, his head shaking back and forth in a way that always makes me think he reads by keeping his eyes still while he somehow rotates the world around him. Right now he’s planning his entire meal, computing and calculating each calorie, from the wine he’ll have before the salad to the dessert he will finish with a cup of decaf. Matthew is a planner, and the second part of creating this plan involves the question he’s about to ask me. I know it like my own heartbeat.
“What are you having?” he asks in a way that would make most people think he was talking to himself. Under the sweater, I see he’s wearing the dark blue button-down shirt I got him for Christmas last year. He tugs at his cuffs as he leans over the menu, rocking his head.
Most people might take this moment to tease him about looking like Rain Man, but instead I quickly answer his question, deciding what I’ll have as I tell him the words. “The salmon.” It’s important that I already know, because it eases his anxiety.
I watch his eyebrows settle. They shift like little caterpillars prepping for a nap. I know I’ve answered correctly for him, and the world is now safe. At least for another few minutes.
It took years for me to be able to navigate around the illogical logic of Matthew’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. Some of it is absolutely insane.
That is why right now he’s adjusting the position of the salt and pepper shakers. They must align with the left side of the table. If we get seated at a round table, the salt and pepper shakers need to be in the exact middle. I used to ask how one was supposed to eyeball such a thing, but something inside Matthew knows the answer, knows the placement. At some point I figured out the trick: the actual center is Matthew. For some reason he is convinced that the world only exists because he obeys these rules that only he knows. He also knows that this is impossible, but it doesn’t mean he can stop these feelings from happening.
He tried to hide these thoughts from me at first. He made it through three months or so without my noticing the fact that after a red light his fingers had to tap the top of the steering wheel five times with one hand, twice with the other. He turned it into a little drumming beat so he seemed chipper rather than driven by compulsions. When he passed a car on the left, he had to reach over and touch my knee. He covered it by pretending to be a DJ, scratching my knee like a record on a turntable. It took a while for me to realize he wasn’t just repeating his jokes; he was obeying mental orders. It wasn’t that he wanted to touch my knee; he had no choice.
Eventually Matthew had to break down and tell me about his OCD because I was convinced his erratic behavior was due to his having decided he hated me.
Back when he had his own small apartment and I was first starting to spend the night, I’d wake up in the mornings earlier than he did. I’d tiptoe into the cramped living room/kitchen, quietly make a pot of coffee, and pull a book I hadn’t read from Matthew’s overflowing bookshelves. In order to get the best light and make the least amount of noise, I’d drag the little wooden chair he had next to the front door over to the window. I’d perch with my mug of coffee resting on the windowsill and spend an hour or so alone, reading and listening to the hum of Matthew’s wall clock. His neighborhood was quiet in the early morning, peppered with the occasional clamor of someone going through the trash bins for recyclables.
At first I thought Matthew just resented my early-morning nature. I used to be the kind of person who never got up before ten unless I was getting paid, so I understood the grumpiness that could ensue when someone had already had part of a day before you’d even brushed your teeth. But I could tell pretty quickly that Matthew wasn’t even thinking about me when he was grumpy those mornings; he didn’t always answer my questions the first time I asked, and sometimes he’d leave the room while I was talking. He was distracted, and I thought he was losing interest in me.
One morning I put down my book and went to the bathroom for a few minutes. When I returned, the chair was back by the front door.
I was apologetic. “Oh, I was going to move it back,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s okay,” he said, sitting cross-legged on his couch still in his pajamas, staring into his laptop screen. “I don’t mind.”
I moved the chair back by the window, explaining, “I wasn’t done with it yet.”
An hour later I got up to refill my coffee cup. When I returned, the chair was by the front door again. This time I didn’t say anything as I moved it back to the window. I did, however, give him a really good glare that he might not have seen, as he was busy answering email.
It was when I’d left for fifteen minutes to grab us a couple of sandwiches, only to come back to find that the chair had been moved again, that I finally said something.
“Should I go home? Because I think I might be unwanted here.”
Matthew’s eyes widened and his mouth opened. Over time, I’d come to recognize that look as, “I have no idea why this lady is tripping.”
“What—What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The chair. You keep moving it.”
He exhaled, a little too forcefully. “I’m sorry, but . . . it goes over there.”
“Well, I was going to put it back. I like the light over here.”
“I know.” He began to choose his words carefully. “It’s stupid but . . . but the chair goes over there.”
“I was going to put it back, Matthew!”
“That’s the thing! It goes there all the time!”
“All the time?”
“ALL THE TIME!”
And then it was quiet. I looked around the room, realizing everything had to be where it was, all the time. I put things out of order. I was unsettling. There was no place for me.
I stayed at my apartment for the rest of the week. When he called with his fifth apology for yelling at me, I made a decision. I was going to find a way to fit in, to work with his anxiety. I’d be something that fit in a certain place in his life, too.
I knew I’d succeeded the first time we vacationed together, driving up to a cabin in Big Bear. We stopped to take our picture next to a lake, right at sunset. There was snow on the ground. Matthew placed his camera on the hood of his car and set the timer. He r
an to join me, posed, and then trotted back to the camera to check the shot. He hadn’t gotten it the way he wanted it. He was mumbling to himself animatedly, like a scientist close to discovery. He tried pushing me gently this way and that, studying the light in front of me, the scenery behind me.
Back and forth, he ran and snapped, positioned and posed, studied and adjusted.
He must have taken thirty photos. Matthew kept taking our picture until there was no good light and our toes were burning from the cold. Not once did I ask if we could leave. Nor did I ask him why this was so important to him. I knew it wasn’t just a picture. This image of the two of us had been elevated in his head as one of the things that kept the universe in order. I was happy to have become a part of his un-understandable madness.
I wasn’t a saint about it, though. There were times when Matthew’s need for order and the “right way” of doing things went against how I wanted to go through my day, and I would rebel. I’d leave a pile of folded laundry at the foot of the bed, knowing that Matthew was going to check on it several times a day until I put it away. Perhaps the laundry was at the foot of the bed because I was too busy buying groceries or at work. If it bothered him that much, I’d think, he could put it away himself.
Matthew’s strict guidelines of how the world had to be arranged could include me, but I wouldn’t allow them to govern me. An example: we have a few glasses that bother Matthew’s fingerprints. When he holds one of the etched glasses in his hand, he feels like the grooves of the design are cutting into the swirls of his fingerprint. For him, it is the tactile equivalent of hearing nails on a chalkboard. He claims my fingerprints are tinier, and therefore that’s why I’m not bothered when I hold the glass. I don’t think it’s so much that I have smaller skin patterns as that I’m more . . . let’s go ahead and use the word . . . normal. When Matthew is one step away from needing a sippy cup, I don’t toss out the offending glassware, or only drink from it when he’s not home. I drink out of the etched glasses, and he uses something else. The world doesn’t need me to stay away from the etched glassware. Only he has to beware. He’s the one who needs to check the burners on the stove three times, even if it means going back into the house after he’s left, just to make sure. The fate of the world rests on his shoulders. Check the burners three times: everything is okay. Check them only twice: destruction and chaos.
Nobody else is this well-versed in Matthewisms. Just me. I’m the one who knows why he does what he does when he does it. How will someone else ever learn all his weird little quirks? What if the next girl isn’t as patient?
Maybe he already knows the answer to this. Maybe that’s why he came back to me.
I say, “You look good.”
“Thanks. You too. You changed your hair?”
No, I lost ten pounds. But close enough. “I guess I’ve just sort of changed in general,” I say.
“Do you like the wine?” he asks. He’s rubbing the stem of his glass with his thumb. I notice his fingers trembling.
“It’s good.”
Matthew instantly brightens. “It’s great, right? When I saw it on the menu I got excited, because I didn’t think I’d see it here.”
I’m confused. “Here, like this restaurant?” We’d never eaten here before. Matthew, in a completely un-Matthew move, had suggested this cozy place closer to my apartment than the house. His house.
“No, here, like Los Angeles. I was looking when I got back, but I could only find it online.”
“Back from where?”
Matthew is reaching for a piece of bread, but he stops. And I mean he stops everything. I might have to check his pulse. Then he says what he always says when he’s found himself in a situation where he’s caught and needs more time: “Hmm?”
I know he knows what I just asked him, and I know he knows I know he knows what I just asked him. So instead of answering, I wait.
“I went somewhere,” he says, his robot voice having returned, talking to me like I’m a tiger about to pounce.
I don’t want him to feel like I’m testing him, or trying to trick him. I try to sound normal. Casual. “You can go places, Matthew. You’re a grown-up.” I try joking. “I mean, it’s not like you went to Hookerville, right?”
Matthew laughs, his eyes still focused on his plate, his head nodding, but more relaxed. “No, I did not go to Hookerville.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I went to Italy.”
A muscle somewhere near my diaphragm, or perhaps it is my diaphragm, immediately forms a fist and tries to punch through my stomach right into Matthew’s face. My knees jolt. My fingers clench. All at once. My heart, my head, my lungs, my skin, all at once, all of it wants to destroy.
“Italy?”
He sighs. “I had a feeling you’d react like this.”
I don’t answer right away. I keep my face in my water glass, taking carefully measured gulps. I’m upset that he went, but I’m also upset he’s making it sound like I failed some big test of his by being upset.
“You can understand why that might hurt my feelings, Matthew,” I say finally.
“I wasn’t even going to tell you.”
“Well, thanks.”
“What I mean is,” he starts, but takes a breath when he realizes he’s starting to yell. Then he gets much, much quieter, dropping in pitch to almost a monotone. “If I was going there to hurt you, wouldn’t I have told you I went? Or told you before I went? Or told you when I was there? Sent you a postcard?”
The logic isn’t quite working on me. “There are lots of other places in the world. If you wanted to travel, why not try any one of them?”
“Oh, so I guess even if we don’t work out, I never get to go to Italy? Is that it?”
“I would say any time you ever went to Italy without me means you were going to make sure that you went there. Without me.”
He rubs the back of his neck while he looks around the restaurant, like he’s looking for backup, like everybody else should be staring at him with total empathy. He raises a cocky eyebrow and says, “It’s probably not just Italy. Maybe you should give me a list of all the places where I’m not allowed to go. Or maybe you could just keep my passport.”
“I didn’t get to go to Italy,” I say. “I stayed here, working on this decision that apparently you think I’m supposed to make before dessert.”
Matthew stretches his arms out like he’s trying to hug the room. “Do these people get to go to Italy? Or is Italy completely blocked off from all people forever? What if you met someone new and he wanted to take you to Italy? Would you say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. But my ex-husband and I had plans to go there a million years ago, so that entire country is just off-limits.’ Bullshit.”
He called himself my ex-husband. And he used this voice, this mocking shrill sound that I certainly do not make. His cheeks are flushed and his forehead is dotted with sweat. Consequently, he’s rearranging and organizing the table. He unfolds and folds his napkin. He switches the positioning of his fork and his knife and then edges the candle closer to him.
I see him thinking: “If the napkin stays this way something bad will happen, so I will move it. Maybe if I move it, she will stop being mad at me. Regardless, I must move this fork closer to me, so that I have a weapon. And if all else fails, I will set her on fire.”
As I struggle with what to say in response, my jaw sets. I force myself to release it, thinking of my mouth guard, remembering the pain in my head I used to have upon waking a few weeks ago. I take a deep breath, but with that comes the familiar swell of tears from somewhere in my throat. I choke them down, determined not to cry. I’ve cried in more restaurants than a two-year-old.
It’s like we’re constantly on the edge of a major decision. We’re always about to irreparably change our lives. Funny how we planned on spending the rest of our lives together, but now we can’t even make it through a dinner without wondering whether or not this should be the last time we ever speak.
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry,” he says, as I watch him let something inside drop.
“I’m sorry, too,” I say. “It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t get mad at you. I didn’t mean to—”
Matthew raises his hand, gently, easing me to stop. I do.
We both say no to dessert.
22.
You should go to London. Or Mexico. Or the cold place you were talking about.”
“Iceland?”
“Yeah. I have no idea why you’d want to go there, but you should go there.”
“I can’t just go somewhere. I have to work.”
Francesca is trying to pace my office, which means she’s pretty much turning in circles on her heels. “If you were that blond lady with the book, you could go all over the place. You’d meditate, have sex, and then have Julia Roberts play you in a movie.”
I crumple another piece of wastepaper and toss it into the open desk drawer by my side. I’m storing up reserves for the next time I’m engaged in a paper-wad battle with Jonathan. I never know when the next missile will strike, and I’m determined to be ready with a stockpile he never saw coming.
“I’m not rich enough to go flitting around the world,” I tell Francesca, as if this is not obvious. “I can’t have a fancy-lady breakdown. Also, didn’t she go to Italy? Italy is closed!”
“Okay, fine,” she pouts. “Then let’s go to Australia.”
“Sorry. After I left my lawyer husband, I spent my savings repurchasing an entire life’s worth of supplies. Therefore I rarely eat, I don’t pray, and I’m done with love.”
Francesca drops back to the wall and flops down on the floor in front of me, tossing herself like a rag doll. Bang, whap! “You’re officially no fun,” she says. “If I were you, I’d be in Paris right now.”
