“Two weeks ago you may have been the happiest guy on earth, but at what cost? If making yourself happy makes me miserable, what have we got?”
His shoulders slumped, face etched with misery. “Don’t go, Libby.”
I felt overwhelmingly sad, for him, for me, for the circumstances, for the fact that my dad was dead. What would my father say if he could see all this?
“Michael…” I didn’t know what to say.
“You know how long I was single before I met you? Fifteen years. And I was fine. I figured I’d had my chance and it didn’t work out. You know how hard it is to meet someone at our age?” I nodded. “And then I met you.” I swallowed. “And you changed my life.” Don’t tell me any more, I thought. “I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have a great life—I did. I had friends, I had a good business, I traveled. And all that was terrific. But you know what? It was a hundred times more terrific with you in it.”
I went to sit beside him and he moved over to accommodate me. I couldn’t speak for a moment. I took his hand. “I know what you’re saying. I’ve felt some of that myself. It is nicer to have someone to share things with. And it’s even better if you have a great life to begin with. I think you appreciate it even more then.” He nodded and I started crying then. “I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world,” I said. “And I don’t want to lose you and everything we’ve built together. But you’re right, I’m not myself right now. I’m doubting everything—you, me, my own feelings, my goals, what I want out of life. The bottom line is, I can’t tell you I won’t go see Patrick. Don’t you see that I have to be sure? No matter how I feel about you, I need to be sure. I’m too old to have regrets.
“You’re so important to me,” I said. “But would you want to get married if I’m not sure? What chance would we have?”
He said nothing. He put his elbows on his knees, head down. I reached out but my hand just hovered over his shoulder, and I withdrew it.
He stood up then, and rolled his head on his neck. “I think we’d be fine,” he said, straightening. “I think once you made the decision you’d realize how right it is.”
“I wish I could be sure of that.”
“I know.” He shook his head, picked up his glass and took it into the kitchen, leaving me and Rufus sitting there. In a minute he came back and said, “I’m gonna go.”
“Don’t leave yet,” I said. I thought if we talked it through I’d unearth something important. Maybe together we’d figure something out. I didn’t want him to leave with all this emptiness, and my guilt, hanging between us.
“Why not? What else is there to say?” he said. “You made your decision to go see Patrick. What that says is pretty clear to me, Libby. I don’t need an instruction manual to see I’m not on your agenda.”
My throat felt tight. Why was I doing this to him? “I’m sorry, Michael, I really am.”
He didn’t look as if he believed me but he said, “I know.” And then, “But really, so what?” I flinched. He sighed, smiled thinly and walked to the front door, head high, shoulders square.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, I’m just peachy.” He turned. “Have fun, Libby. Have a great time with your boyfriend. But don’t expect me to be waiting when it doesn’t work out.”
I watched him walk out and close the door behind him. I stood there waiting for him to come back in. And as I stood Rufus wound himself around my legs.
But Michael didn’t come back, and I realized I had just doused that bridge in gasoline and ignited it.
A painful thing settled inside me while tears coursed down my face.
Thirty-five
Thursday morning I went for a long run, hoping the exercise would exhaust my brain enough that it would stop functioning for a while. I didn’t want to make any more decisions. I didn’t want to overthink what I was doing. Should I go? Shouldn’t I? Should I call Patrick and tell him I wasn’t coming? Should I call Michael and suggest we just go to city hall and get married?
When I ran past my favorite house, Michael’s house, I felt sick to my stomach. It could be the perfect home. Michael had no problem spending the money to make it whatever I wanted. Hadn’t I always wanted to live there? Hadn’t I always said that you’d just have to be happy if you lived in a house like that? Ultimately, though, I knew that that wasn’t true. It was just a house. It had no power to make anyone happy.
Jill and I went to Mom’s later in the day. She had asked us to help her clean out the closet and sort Dad’s things. “See if Sophie can come, too,” she’d said. “Dad thought of her like another daughter.” So the four of us stared at his side of the closet, at all those suits lined up like soldiers: white shirts, then blue, shiny wingtips underneath.
“Let’s do the dresser first,” my mother said. We opened the drawers and pulled out sweaters, T-shirts, socks. I held his sweaters up to my face and breathed in his smell. How could we give these away when he was still alive in them? “I’m going to take a couple of these,” I said. “Maybe Michael will wear them.” I wasn’t kidding anyone—Michael was much larger than my father—but no one felt compelled to point that out. Sophie stacked handkerchiefs and pajamas on the bed and Jill sorted them into boxes while my mother and I went through his workout clothes: velour sweat pants with matching jackets in varying jewel tones—emerald, garnet.
“Remember when he rode his bike up to the Botanic Garden?” Mom said. It was at least forty miles from here and he’d set out in the morning with a bottle of water and three granola bars. “It started raining in the afternoon and it was dark before he got back. I was so worried, I was about to call the police when he finally walked in the door looking like something the cat dragged in.”
“He was in bed for a week after that with a bad cold,” Jill said. “He got lost on the way back, but god forbid he should ask someone for directions.”
“He was a stubborn one,” Mom said with a heartbreaking little smile.
Inside I felt as empty as those drawers by the time we moved on to his jewelry box.
“I want you all to take some things,” Mom said. There were about twenty sets of cuff links, rings and pocket watches, penknives and money clips, tie tacks, coins, some of which I remembered buying for him when Jill and I were little. There was a bracelet made with tiny beads of turquoise and silver that I’d made for Father’s Day when I was in Girl Scouts. He never wore it, except the day I gave it to him—he never wore bracelets—but he’d kept it all these years. I put it in my pile.
There was a small silver frame on his dresser with a picture of Dad with Jill and me when we were about three and five. He was kneeling on the grass with an arm around each of us and we were in matching plaid dresses, our hair in pigtails. I put that in my pile, too.
Mom had put out the tea set we’d always loved, the white porcelain one with pink cabbage roses on it, and dainty cups with fragile handles. We sat in the living room in front of the fireplace and drank tea spiked with brandy and told Dad stories: the time he chased the neighbor’s dog through the yard in his boxers because the mutt had stolen the newspaper. Or the time he decided to be a good guy and do the family laundry and accidentally washed Mom’s favorite watch, the one he’d given her for a wedding present.
“Can you girls come back tomorrow and help me with his office?” Mom asked.
“Sure,” Sophie and Jill said. My mother looked at me.
Uh-oh. “Um, I can’t,” I said. Because I’ll be in Florida cheating on my fiancé.
“Why not?” Jill asked. Sophie sipped her tea.
“I’m going away for the weekend.”
“Oh, where are you going?”
To hell, probably. “Florida,” I said boldly, as if there were nothing wrong with this picture.
“What’s in Florida?” my mother asked.
Jill’s eyes grew wide. “Patrick!” She said it as if she’d discovered gold. “You’re going to spend the weekend with Patrick?” I nodded. “Is Michael going with
you?”
Sophie let out a little choked laugh and we all looked at her. “Sorry,” she said.
My mother drank her tea, knobby fingers grasping the cup, pinky in the air. “What does Michael think about that?” she asked.
“I’m sure he’s thrilled,” Jill said. “Did you leave the tags on that wedding dress?”
I fingered the sweater in my lap, my dad’s sweater, the light blue cashmere one.
“Patrick told me he loves me.” The silence was thick around me. Everyone stared. Mother put down her cup. “I know,” I said. “It seems pretty silly, doesn’t it, after all these years?”
“Wow.” Sophie.
“Jesus.” Jill.
“Oh, Libby.” Mom.
Her disapproving tone caught me off guard and made me feel fifteen. How old do you have to be before you feel like a grown-up with your parents?
“How do you feel about him?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know. Attracted. Confused. Overwhelmed. Guilty. Excited.”
“Don’t get caught up in this, Libby,” my mother said. “He’s a very appealing man and I can see how you’d be attracted to him, but he’s not in love with you.” How did she know? Maybe he was. It was possible, wasn’t it? “It’s absurd,” she said. “You haven’t seen each other since high school.”
I bristled. “Jeez, Mom, one minute you’re telling me you think Michael’s right enough.” I said the words with disdain. “Not Mr. Right but right enough. And now when I think you might be right and that I should check this out, you say it’s absurd.” Jill tried to head me off with a placating look but I paid no attention. “Who knows? Yeah, it’s unlikely, but it’s not absurd. Strange things happen in life.”
“I just don’t want you to throw away everything you have with Michael for a man you hardly know.” She leaned forward. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“Mom,” Jill said, but I interrupted her.
“You know what, Mom? I don’t need you to tell me how stupid I’m being.”
“Libby. I’m not saying you’re being stupid.”
“I already feel terrible for Michael and I’m sorry I hurt him. I feel terrible that we’ve gone so far with the wedding plans and that I bought that dress and that he bought that damn house.” I couldn’t stop my voice from getting louder. “I should have listened to my instinct in the very beginning and given us both time to think about it. But I didn’t and things got out of control and I didn’t know how to stop it. And then Patrick comes into my life and fucks everything up.” I stopped. I’d never said anything more than “shit” in front of my mother. “Sorry.” She waved it away. “But the fact is, I have feelings for him.”
She looked small and troubled. “Excuse me,” she said and left the room. So now I could add her to the list of people I’d injured. This woman who’d just spent the last few hours sorting through the belongings of her dead husband, the man she’d lived with and adored for more than fifty years. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just nod and tell her yes, I’d think about what I was doing?
Sophie came over. She put her arm around me and spoke quietly. “Relax, Lib. Your mom’s just trying to help.”
“You mean talk some sense into me, don’t you?”
“No. She’s just worried.”
Jill said, “She wants you to be happy. She doesn’t care who it’s with. She already told you that. She’s just afraid that you’ll figure out that Michael’s who you should be with and by that time he’ll be gone.”
“I’m afraid of that, too,” I said. “But what should I do? Marry him and regret it later? That’d be fun, to have three divorces under my belt. You know what? You guys are all making me crazy. You’re so wishy-washy—yes Michael, no Michael, yes Patrick, no Patrick. What? Make up your minds!”
Why couldn’t they just tell me what to do once and for all, step by step, complete with a diagram: how to handle everyone, what to say, when to say it, what to do and how to live with the consequences.
Shouldn’t life be simple by the time you’re fifty?
“It’s not our minds that need to be made up,” Jill said. “It’s yours. Just explain to Mom how you’re feeling. She’ll understand.”
“No, she won’t. My whole life she’s judged me. She never thought I knew what I was doing. She always thought I should do things differently. I should have stayed married, I should have stayed in my job—”
“No, I didn’t,” my mother said. I turned to see her standing in the kitchen doorway. “I always thought you were very brave in your decisions because your decisions always scared me.” She sat down across from me. “Your father and I just wanted you to be safe. I guess we wanted you to be more like us, more conventional. It frightened us to see you taking so many chances, from the time you were a little girl. You rode your tricycle blocks and blocks before we could catch you, you went out for the hockey team when you could have been a cheerleader, you went to college a thousand miles away, you quit a good-paying job to start your own business. It all scared the hell out of us,” she said. “We wanted you to be safe and secure. We wanted you to be content. But you never were. You were always moving on to the next thing.”
“Is that so terrible?” I said, tears pooling in my eyes.
“No, sweetheart.” She took my hands. “We were always in awe of you. You’ve lived your life the way you wanted to and you’ve been successful. You’ve made some risky decisions but they’ve mostly paid off and we couldn’t have been prouder. Your father was so admiring of your guts.” Now tears were dropping onto my dad’s sweater, plop, plop, plop. “Do what you feel is right, Libby. Go to Patrick, if that’s what you feel.”
“I feel like if I don’t check it out I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life,” I said, my voice cracking.
“Then go. If that’s how you feel then you need to go. You need to be happy. And whatever makes you happy is my happiness, too.” She took a napkin off the table and wiped my fifty-year-old face. “I’m not saying I won’t worry, though.”
I hugged her, hard. The bones in her back felt sturdy and I let that energy seep into my core. The coziness of the living room consoled me, this room I’d spent my life in, each chair and pillow and doily utterly cozy and familiar. I grew up independent and powerful in this house, confident and strong. I grew up making my own decisions and dealing with the consequences no matter how they turned out.
As if she were tuned in to my thoughts, my mother said, “However it turns out, everything will work out for the best. You’ve always been good at figuring things out and working through obstacles that come your way. You’re unflappable, Libby. You need to follow your own heart, not someone else’s. Including Daddy’s. Go. See what happens.”
Thirty-six
Friday. Finally. I hadn’t slept much so I was up early folding a pair of jeans, two pairs of shorts, some capri pants and two shirts and placing them in my suitcase. The weather was in the eighties, Patrick had said. I had no idea what we would be doing. Kayaking? Hiking? Lying on the beach? I threw in a bathing suit and a long skirt that could be casual or dressy with the right top and accessories. The air in the bedroom shimmered around me and I felt lighter than I had in weeks, maybe months. I packed a pair of tan sandals, some black strappy shoes, my running shoes. What else did I need? Something to sleep in. But what? I folded an oversized T-shirt and laid it carefully in my suitcase, and at the last minute I added a sexy, short nightgown. Just in case.
Traffic on the Kennedy Expressway was heavy and as the taxi inched along I imagined my reunion with Patrick. In my mind I could see him standing there waiting, a big smile lighting up his handsome face. I could see us hugging while people moved all around us smiling approvingly. I couldn’t picture what would happen next or where this would lead, but there was a balloon of anticipation all around me.
The terminal was crowded as I walked to my gate: businesspeople off to work, vacationers in T-shirts and sandals, families happily heading toward their adventures. I walke
d briskly, smiling at little children passing by, admiring the glazed doughnuts in the cases along the concourse. Bright sunlight shone in through the windows, freshening the tile walls. At the gate the ticket agent told me, “Sorry, but I only have center seats left. In the back.”
I smiled brightly. “That’s great, perfect, thank you so much,” I said, as if I’d just scored a front-row seat for a Paul McCartney concert.
As we flew over North Carolina I thought about Patrick when we were young, clearly remembering the details of his eighteen-year-old body—his jutting hip bones, smooth muscular back, firm butt. I thought about how his narrow, hairless chest felt against mine, and the size and hardness of his penis, the first I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help comparing it to Michael’s, thinking it was a little smaller but appreciably harder. But how fair is it to compare the erection of an eighteen-year-old to that of a sixty-year-old, especially when thirty years had passed to distort the image?
There was a sob from the woman beside me and I turned to look at her. She was looking out the window, wiping her eyes and shoveling food into her mouth from an assortment of snack-sized bags.
“Are you all right?” I asked. She stopped chewing and shoveling, and was completely still as if waiting for me to vanish. When I didn’t she turned to look at me.
“Are you talking to me?” she asked in a small voice. She had messy dark hair that framed her small face. Her skin was elegant and unlined. Baby skin. She’d cried all of her makeup off except for small smudges of black under her eyes.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to intrude, but are you okay? Can I do anything for you?”
“I’m fine,” she said and attempted a smile. It failed, and tears trailed down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face as if that would make the tears disappear. She had a southern accent and a musical voice. Her fingernails were chewed up and her red nail polish chipped off.
What More Could You Wish For Page 19
