“Is it because I’ve been gone so much?”
“No. It’s me. My problem.”
“How long have you been sleeping with him?”
“I haven’t.”
“You haven’t slept with him?”
“No.”
“So . . . we can work through this. People get crushes, it’s not a big deal. Stop. Stop packing.”
I went to the closet and hefted a chunk of my clothes, hangers and all, into the suitcase. Threw in some shoes and belts.
“I thought you were smarter than this, Grace. Do you think he’s going to actually love you? Just you? Women offer themselves to him and he takes them up on it. A girl I work with fucked him. I heard her telling her friend about it in the lunchroom. A meaningless, drunken fuck after one of his ‘gigs.’ He uses women and discards them. Are you going to waste yourself like that? It’s disgusting, if you think about it. The possibility of disease.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you listening to me?”
I nodded.
He sat beside me. “Maybe you need more time to think about it.”
“No.”
He pulled me to him and put his head on my shoulder. He held me too tightly, leaned too heavily. Then he cried. I actually felt afraid; he had me in such a grip that I couldn’t move. I made myself breathe and stay calm. Bear his weight.
After a while he sat up. Not looking at me. He wiped his face on his sleeve.
I stood up and tried to close the suitcase. God knows what I had crammed in it. Steven helped me zip it shut. He carried it to the living room and I followed, snagging my laptop bag along the way.
I started to open the front door but he stepped in front of it. “Did you love me?”
“I . . . Steven, I respect you. So much. And . . . I do love you . . . as a friend and good person and . . . oh, Steven . . . I’m sorry.”
He was looking at my mouth. “I didn’t know I had kissed you for the last time. I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t, either.”
“One more time,” he said, closing in.
It was the best kiss we’d ever shared. I would have liked to have told him so.
STEP FIVE: Move in with Peg.
Peg came from one of those old New York families that used to have money. She was somehow distantly related to J. P. Morgan. She had bought her apartment in the West Village when she was right out of college in the mid-eighties, with down-payment money she’d inherited. It was a large, two-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up. The bathroom alone was larger than many studio apartments, with an old iron skylight over the bathtub. To open it, you turned a crank thing with a long, hooked pole.
The comfort of being able to come back at a time like this was immeasurable.
She buzzed me in.
“Is the guy here?” I whispered.
“No, he’s hardly ever here. He’s in school at NYU and he has a job. Do you want some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
“Have you eaten anything this morning?”
“Not yet.”
She made me two slices of buttered toast and milky tea. She sat across from me at the table and watched me peel the crusts off with trembling fingers. “Want me to cut those off?”
“No, I’ve got it.” I took a tiny bite of the toast and chewed. Washed it down my dry throat with a swig of lukewarm tea.
She waited patiently the full five minutes it took for me to eat the first piece of toast before she asked, “What happened? Did you sleep with Ty?”
I set my mug down. “Why would you ask me that? Have I ever behaved inappropriately with him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“We almost did it on the ground in the woods.”
“Almost?”
“It was close, but I stopped it.”
“That must have been Herculean, for both of you. You guys have been heading there for a long time.”
“I wasn’t heading there!”
“Well, Ty certainly was.”
“No, he wasn’t! He didn’t try anything during the whole trip.
What happened—I started it.” “What were you doing out in the woods?”
“He took me there. To show me a waterfall. And I was looking at the water, and looking at him, and it was like something in my brain moved. And I realized that I love him.” I pictured his face at my moment of clarity and the tenderness washed through me again. “I love him.” My voice was starting to shake.
She moved over to the chair beside me and rubbed my arm gently. “That’s okay, Grace. It’s good.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not.”
“Why?”
“I got so scared! Terrified. And my heart was beating hard, and strangely, and I couldn’t breathe, and my face and fingers were tingling.”
“Sounds like a panic attack.”
“It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had. He helped me, stayed with me till I calmed down, and when we were going back to the house I just—I leapt on him. And then we were on the ground, and I was half-naked, and about one minute away from total disaster I stopped it.”
She handed me a paper napkin and I blew my nose. “Well, you did the right thing.”
“I know.”
She nodded. “It wouldn’t have been clean for you. Honorable.”
“I know.”
“What about Steven?”
“It’s over. I went to get my clothes and I was going to leave him a note because I am such a coward, but he was there and I told him. He was so angry and hurt. It was awful.”
She set a warm hand on my shoulder. “We’ll put the air mattress in my room, and you can sleep there until the guy finds another place and you can move into your old room.”
I couldn’t believe there was any water left in my body at this point, but still more ran down my face. “Peg, I love you.”
She patted my hand. “You just need to chill out and settle down and take things very slowly for a while now.”
I nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“And probably with Ty, too.”
I grabbed another napkin.“I won’t be seeing him again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that’s not something that’s actually going to happen, me being with him in any way!”
“You’re confusing me. You just told me that you love him.”
“Well, who doesn’t?”
“But he loves you. He told you so.”
I stared at her.
“The night after Joe’s Pub?” she clarified.
“He was drunk!”
“But it was true.”
Why was she trying to make this difficult? “Even if it were, it just wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
God. Where to begin. I grabbed at a few of the innumerable issues whirling in the cyclone of my mind and tossed them at her, in no particular order of importance. “Peg, he’s late. For everything. No . . . no grasp of time management! He doesn’t plan. He grew up in a house that was orange and is now pink and purple. He shoots animals. Deer! I saw the dead deer that he killed. Its head is on their wall.”
“Really?” She looked a little queasy.
“Yes! He’s practically Ted Nugent.”
“Ew. Did he use a crossbow?”
“I guess—no wait—I don’t know! What difference does it make? He killed Bambi’s father!”
“Okay. The deer thing requires a little adjustment.”
“Also: He didn’t go to college.”
She shrugged. “Does he need to?”
“And he drinks. A lot. He smokes marijuana. His parents are potheads who gave him whippins when he was a child. His dad is a Hell’s Angel. His sister is Xena. His grandmother is . . . well, she’s just plain awful.”
“Grace—you hear yourself, right?”
How could she still look so unperturbed? “Okay, how about this: He talked me into doing drugs.”
Finally, she was appropriately taken
aback. “What do you mean?”
“I smoked marijuana with him.”
“Grace!” She looked amused.
“It’s not funny.”
“Well, it’s interesting.”
“Peg. Look at his life. The late nights in bars and clubs. You’ve seen all the girls, and you know he takes full advantage. He is on a wild ride right now, and loving it.”
“Grace, I’m certain you mean more to him than those girls.”
“Maybe. But come on! Artists and musicians are not people you can seriously hope to have a life with.”
“So this is about your dad.”
“No! It’s about loving this man and knowing that I want so much more from him than he is going to be able to give. Peg, I have to stop this thing, whatever it is, now. I have to take care of myself.”
I could see that she was finally hearing me, but it had been hard work. I slumped in my chair, exhausted.
“Okay. But I think that you should ask Ty what he wants. Just ask him. To be sure you’re doing the right thing.”
“I won’t be seeing him again. He’s disgusted with me about what happened. He didn’t even say good-bye when he brought me home. And he’s going away. Probably forever. Could I lie down on your bed for a while? I haven’t slept much.”
She came into her bedroom with me. I lay down and she covered me with a knitted afghan. She patted my back. “Everything is going to be all right, Grace.”
“Yeah,” I said tiredly. “This is all good, Peg. Because I don’t want a boyfriend. Or a fiancé. Or a friend with benefits. I just want to be with me.”
“Grace, I’m curious. Why do you think you got so scared, when you realized you love Ty? Why would love be scary?”
“I don’t know. . . . Maybe just the impossibility of the whole thing.”
“Hm. Do you want a little Reiki, to help you sleep?”
“Yes. Please.”
She made some mysterious motions in the air and moved her hands in a light, warm hover around the top of my head, my face, over my heart.
I slept.
Big Green declares independence me, too
Peg went to a friend’s house in the country for Thanksgiving, just for the day. Besides having to come back on Friday for work, I think she didn’t want to leave me alone for too long.
The guy who lived in my room was gone, too, to be with his family in Michigan.
Steven and I had planned to spend the day with his parents, out in Kew Gardens. It worked well for me that Julia and Dan thought I had holiday plans and didn’t pressure me to be with them. They would never know I stayed home alone on the couch in my underwear, wrapped in a quilt, alternately sleeping and watching the same stories over and over on CNN.
Edward came with me on Saturday to get the rest of my belongings. Steven wasn’t there but he had boxed everything up for me and stacked it all by the door.
Edward looked at the neat boxes. “That’s more than any of my exes have ever done for me when we broke up. You sure about this?”
“Please be helpful.”
I started to write a note to thank Steven, to wish him well, but what could I say that wouldn’t sound hollow?
I left the key on the kitchen counter.
At work I had recently been assigned to help Edward project-manage a junior high textbook, U.S. history to 1877. I tried to focus and be productive, but those first couple of weeks were hard. I cried several times a day at the most innocuous triggers: no mayo on my sandwich from the deli; snagging my sweater on the rough edge of a binder; dropping my last, just-unwrapped tampon on the bathroom floor. Edward telling me that we were about to get a revised edition of the Chicago Manual of Style sent me home for the afternoon. I crawled onto my air mattress and buried myself under pillows. I had the current edition memorized. How dare they do this to me at a time like this, those Chicago Manual bastards!
Peg’s guy roommate did find another place and was moving out December 20, but none too cheerfully. I tried to be friendly and smile at him when I saw him, but otherwise, I hid in Peg’s room.
And it was Christmas in two weeks. I had no idea where to begin. There was no answer for it, I would have to try to do all my shopping online and hope for the best.
I was in terrible physical shape. My shaky stomach lasted a while, so I force-fed myself toast and crackers and matzoh ball soup. Buttered white rice. Ginger ale. Then I started to have a small appetite, but only for appalling non-foods. Count Chocula cereal. Gummy bears. I ate so many scorching Atomic Fireballs and stinging salt-and-vinegar chips in one twenty-four-hour period that the top layer of my tongue peeled away. In three weeks I lost seven pounds and was well on my way to developing rickets and scurvy.
And then, the unthinkable icing on the cake: I lost Big Green. I was coming home from a visit to the Cloisters and in a disastrous moment of mental fog I left it sitting on the train. As the doors were closing I realized what I had done. I stood on the Christopher Street station platform watching it ride away. My cell. My wallet. My lists. Everything Else I Might Conceivably Need was in that bag. It was my safety net, my portable contingency plan for so many possible New York City challenges. Now I would have to rebuild even that from scratch.
I had my second-ever full-blown panic attack. A young Indian-American man saw me hyperventilating and crying and led me to a bench. He gave me his unopened water bottle and sent another concerned stranger off to tell a nearby policeman about my runaway purse. He sat with me through the arrival and departure of three more trains, until I felt well enough to get myself home. When I thanked him and said good-bye, he asked if he could take me to lunch or dinner some time. In another life I might have said yes. He was cute.
“I’m not fit company,” I said, and walked away. Pity party in full swing, but also exasperated with myself. I knew I needed to do something.
That night I wrote down the plan for Part I of the rest of my life. I would start by finding another job after the holidays, some kind of work that I could feel good about, that would put my strengths and passions to good use.
I would practice self-care. I would eat kale and go to yoga. Give my hair a hot-oil treatment once in a while. Buy a premium subscription to the New York Times online.
I would maybe try to increase the time I spent with Dan. He had been so helpful, with his advice during my night at the Waldorf.
I would get a much smaller bag than Big Green, and try to live life a little more bravely and spontaneously.
I went to bed and lay in the dark, feeling almost positive after weeks of despair. Then I remembered what had been in my wallet. Ty’s college ID, with the ridiculously adorable photo.
“You were going to get rid of it anyway,” I said out loud.
“Yeah right,” I said back to myself.
I said something else to me, but I couldn’t understand it because by then I was blubbering.
A couple of days after I lost Big Green, I had a meeting with Bill, Edward, and people from Production to review some of the proposed visuals for the U.S. history text. I handed Bill the folder of images we had amassed so far.
We had a gorgeous painting of Chief Agüeybaná greeting Juan Ponce de León on the shores of Florida. A 1612 map of Virginia, published by John Smith. The elegant first page of the original treaty of the Louisiana Purchase (people used to have such nice penmanship!). A photograph of Harriet Tubman. Bill flipped past them all, which meant we were in good shape.
At Thomas Jefferson, the famous 1805 painting by Rembrandt Peale, he stopped flipping.
“What is it, Bill?” I asked.
“Well, I’m just thinking. All this stuff is so dry. It’s for eleven-year-olds, right?”
“Yes, sixth grade.”
“So let’s do something fun. Like, instead of this boring dead president picture, let’s have one of a bowl of ice cream.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, didn’t I read somewhere that Jefferson invented ice cream?”
“I
don’t think he invented it,” Edward said. “He just brought a recipe for vanilla ice cream to America from France.” He wrote something on his legal pad and nudged me under the table.
I read: Close your mouth.
“So let’s give them something to look at that will actually interest them. All kids like ice cream.”
“Bill,” I said, “what about nutrition?”
Bill waved a hand. “This book is for Wisconsin. They’re big on dairy there.”
“I don’t know . . .” I said. “I mean, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. I really think we ought to have an actual image of him.”
“They see him all the time. He’s on the quarter, for God’s sake.”
“The nickel,” Ed said.
“Whatever,” Bill said.
I gathered up my pad and pen and folders.
“Where ya going, Grace?” Bill asked.
“Would you please excuse me? I’m not feeling well.”
“Sure, go ahead, Ed and I will finish up.”
I went back to my cubicle and Googled “New York City nonprofit jobs.” From there I went to Idealist.org and found several positions that seemed worth applying for—executive assistant and coordinator openings at organizations for the homeless and people with disabilities. Then I read a posting that made my dormant life force spark and flare—briefly, but brightly. A city health organization was looking to hire people to do community sexuality education. They would even do the training. I sat up straight in my chair. I could do that! I would like to do that. It would be wonderful to do work that was helpful. It might even be a chance to clear out some of that Healthy Teen guilt I was carrying around.
I reread the listing carefully, then spent the next hour writing a letter to the director. An impassioned letter, about how I would love the opportunity to help ensure that people, especially youth, receive complete, accurate sexual health information.
I opened up my resumé and looked it over. I had done work-study as a receptionist at the campus health clinic at school. I could perhaps add that I had taken a couple of classes in gender and sexuality studies; otherwise, it was all publishing, ever since graduation. All I had ever been, wanted to be, was an editor. Not really the trajectory for becoming a community health educator. And I had to assume that there were hundreds, thousands, of more qualified people hitting Send right now. But I was doing something about my pathetic life, and that felt great. It was a start.
Grace Grows Page 16
