Why We Broke Up

by Daniel Handler

  “I am a basketball player.”

  “But today you’re a sugar thief.”

  “We steal the sugar to make the cookies,” counting on your fingers in your arithmetic voice, “and get Trevor to get champagne, and you and Joan and Al for music.”

  “The igloo,” I said.

  “The igloo,” you said, “and figure out where to have it, and send invitations to this movie star we followed.”

  “December fifth. Tell me, please tell me that it’s not a game day.”

  You brushed hair from my face. I kissed you and stopped to look at your mouth. It was little, it was not sure of itself, but it was a smile. “You do know,” you said, “that we don’t know for sure it’s her, so it’s crazy to—”

  “But we think so, right?”

  “Yes,” you said.

  “Yes,” I said, “and even if it isn’t—”

  “Even if it isn’t?”

  “Maybe that date’s familiar to you. December fifth.”

  You bit your lip strange and blew down at the leafy ground. “Min, you told me your birthday, I swear to God I hope I’m remembering, isn’t until—”

  “It’s our two-month anniversary.”

  “What?”

  “It will be, that’s all. Two months from Greta in—”

  “You think about things like that already?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the time?”

  “Ed, no.”

  “But sometimes?”

  “Sometimes.”

  You sighed very deeply.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” I said quickly. “Are you—you’re freaking out.”

  “I’m freaking out,” you said, if you remember, because something tells me that you might have decided to remember it differently, “I’m freaking out that I’m not freaking out.”

  “Really?”

  I lost my breath again, with how you smiled. “Yes.”

  “Should we go?”

  “OK, to steal sugar. Oh, wait, to the coat place.”

  “Shit, Thrifty Thrift doesn’t open until ten. I learned the hard way. We need to wait.”

  Now, you kissed me in this great place with a confidence, a joy, with no shrug, hungrily, eager. “Gosh,” you said, your eyes blinky with pretend wonder, putting down your coffee as far from us as you could reach, “I wonder what me and my girlfriend can do for an hour or so in a hidden part of the park?”

  Clark Baker couldn’t have said it better. This was the first time we were both naked, our clothes in separate piles and us sitting together, so close that in a shot from above, the light basking and trickling down to us through the goosepimply breeze, you might not know, not see, whose hand was whose was where. You looked so gorgeous naked in the lovely lilty green light, like some creature not quite from Earth, even with a few smudges of mud on your legs, particularly afterward, your chest heaving slower and slower with a little sweat, or maybe just damp from my mouth, on the small of your back, your hands cupped together bashful between your legs until I made you move them so I could see and start all over again. And me, I never felt so beautiful, in the light and in your arms almost crying. Two last sips of your cold coffee and we got dressed to go, trying to brush off what we could, socks reluctant to unroll, my bra cold at the underwire, my shirt, my coat. But I was warmer now, from the brightening sun and from everything, so I just wadded up my cardigan and held it under my arm as we left Boris Vian Park with the guy with the stroller wondering where we’d come from, and left it in your sister’s car the rest of the day, so not until I was home stomping upstairs, yelling back bored at my mother, did I toss it onto the bed and see this bounce from someplace onto my floor, and I picked it up and flushed thinking of how it got mixed in with my things. I put it in my drawer, whatever it is, and then in the box, and now it’s for you to flush and regret about. Who knows, a seed of some kind, a fruit, a pod, a unicorn loping through the underbrush where we lay together. Put it in water, I could have done, taken care of it and who knows what might have grown, what might have happened with this thing from the park where I loved you, Ed, so much.

  And here’s the coat I bought you, so happy to spend the eight dollars. “Let’s see what we can hide in it,” you said, and pulled me to you, and we giggled as you buttoned up around us both, kissing me cocooned against you, and you tried to walk that way to the cash register, a stride like a vaudeville hobo, with me kissing you and leaning my head back until I thought the buttons would burst, and I unpeeled away to open my purse and look at you, look at you, Ed.

  So—fucking—beautiful.

  “Will you wear it to school?”

  “Not a chance,” you laughed.

  “Please. Look at the pattern. You can tell people I made you do it.”

  “After the sugar caper I never want to see it again.”

  Here it is, Ed. Nor I, you.

  Some of the sugar has spilled and scattered at the bottom of the box. The opposite of how I feel, everything in here tinged with sugar. But, let’s face it, it went without a hitch. Lopsided’s served us breakfast, fruit and toast for me, two eggs with bacon, sausage and hash browns and a short stack of hotcakes and a large orange juice for you, coffee with extra cream and a three-sugar pour from the dispenser for both of us. We talked a little and I paged through the recipes, waiting for you to finish and to wipe your mouth, which finally I had to do myself. Here and there I felt leaf bits and blades of grass on my skin, my clothes pressing them in deeper like a ceramics project I did once. In the bathroom mirror there was even a smudge of dirt on my neck, and I wiped it off in a hurried flush, the cheap paper towel so rough against my skin that I looked for a scrape in my reflection and then, meeting my own eyes, stood for a sec and tried to figure, like all girls in all mirrors everywhere, the difference between lover and slut. EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS was the answer. Back at the booth the other diners ignored us, or looked at us in envy or admiration or disgust, or there weren’t any other diners there, I don’t know. To stop staring at you, I kept fiddling with the sugar until you stopped my hand with yours.

  “Isn’t that like visiting the scene of the crime?”

  “The crime hasn’t happened yet,” I said.

  “Still,” you said, “maybe don’t call attention to the sugar that’s about to vanish.”

  I stopped. “I’m a virgin.”

  You almost spat out orange juice. “OK.”

  “I just thought I’d tell you.”

  “OK.”

  “Because I didn’t before.”

  “Listen, it’s OK.” You coughed a little. “Some of my best friends are virgins.”

  “Really?”

  “Hmm. No. I guess not anymore.”

  “All my friends are virgins,” I said.

  “Oh!” you said. “There’s Bill Haberly, shit, wasn’t supposed to tell anybody.”

  “See, the fact that that’s remarkable—”

  “No, no. I’ve known, you know, lots of virgins.”

  “So they weren’t virgins after you met them, is what you’re saying.”

  You went bright red. “I didn’t say that, that’s none of your business, wait, you were teasing, right? Kidding?”

  “I guess it turns out I wasn’t.”

  “Look, it’s hard for me to talk about this stuff like you can.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “That you’re talking about it, yeah.”

  “No, that I’m—”

  “Yeah. I guess. I mean, you had that boyfriend last year, right? John, that guy.”

  “Joe.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You knew that?” What I meant was, Ed, you were looking at me then?

  “Annette told me, actually. So I guess I was surprised.”

  “Well. No. We didn’t.”

  “OK. That’s OK.”

  “I mean, we wanted to. I mean, he did. We both did, I wasn’t sure.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “Yeah?

&n
bsp; “Yes, what did you think? That I’m some—asshole?”

  “No, I don’t know. I just, it’s because it’s the same again.”

  “What is?”

  “I’m not sure, I mean.”

  “Whoa, we don’t have to.”

  “No?”

  “No,” you said. “This is, like, early, you know? Isn’t it?”

  “For me, but you have a different thing. I mean, your crowd, the bonfires and everything.”

  “It’s all talk at a bonfire. Mostly, anyway.”

  “OK.”

  “Wait, are you saying what we—in the park, or, you know, last night—you didn’t want to—?”

  “No, no.”

  “No? You didn’t—?”

  “No,” I said. “Yes. I just wanted to tell you what I told you.”

  “OK.”

  “Because I didn’t before, like I said.”

  “OK,” you said, but then you knew that was wrong. You tried, “Thank you?”

  And I almost said I love you. Instead I said nothing and you said nothing. The waitress came to refill us and left the check. We split it and then, with the pile of bills on the little tray, looked at each other. Maybe you were just feeling buzzy and full, but I was feeling—happy. Grateful, I guess, and light. Lovely even, plus the new coffee shivery inside me. And I almost said it again. Instead—

  “Now.”

  “What?”

  I leaned forward to you, your forehead warm against mine. “The sugar,” I whispered. “Now.”

  But Ed, you’d taken it already.

  This is one of those things, Ed, where you’re not going to know what the hell it is. “This really is different,” Joan said when we walked in, although I couldn’t tell you how she said it, pleased but also suspicious somewhere in there. The kitchen was oniony, Hawk Davies on again. “You asked to borrow the car, and you’re back before you usually get up. What are you two, smugglers?”

  You didn’t answer her but plunked down the sugar on the counter, next to a towel where hoop earrings, it looked like, were set out to dry or cool.

  “And what’s that coat?” Joan asked. “It looks—”

  “Min bought it for me.”

  “—dapper.”

  “Good save, sis. I need a shower. Back in a minute.”

  “Your towel,” she called to you already bounding up, “is on the floor where you left it from your shower four hours ago that woke me up!”

  “You know what you’re not,” you replied in a yawn. A door slammed. Joan looked at me, brushed hair out of her eyes as the water went on upstairs. I’m here again, is what I thought.

  “What about you, Min?” she asked. “Do you need a shower?”

  “I’m good,” I said. There was a vibration in the kitchen, Ed, that you left me alone with, that I wasn’t catching.

  “Are you,” she mused. “You always look like a rabbit in the headlights when he goes upstairs. Come in, come in, tell me what’s on your mind.”

  I leaned against the counter. Onion rings, they were, and Joan plucked them one by one to mix into a big bowl of noodles and basil and tofu.

  “Vermicelli?” she offered.

  “We just came from Lopsided’s.”

  “So I see. Isn’t diner theft a little freshman year?”

  I held up the book and started to explain. Your sister munched over my shoulder, tilting her head a little when she wanted me to turn the page because her fingers were a little lime-juicy. She didn’t say anything, just kept chopsticking her lunch or breakfast, so I kept saying things—Lottie Carson, Greta in the Wild, eighty-ninth birthday. Her eyes widened, and closed in slow blinks, but still she didn’t say anything, so I told her everything, Ed, everything except two-month anniversary and fifty-five dollars.

  “Wow,” she said finally.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “I really should lend you my film books,” she said, and put her bowl in the sink.

  “That’d be cool,” I said, “and Hawk Davies too.”

  “I like how you think,” Joan said, and then looked at me very seriously, waiting.

  “Thank you?” I said.

  “And my brother,” she nodded at the stairs you’d run up, “is going to help you make these fancy foods for a film star’s birthday?”

  “Do you think it’s,” I said, “I don’t know.”

  She grabbed two apricots, gave me one. “Think it’s what?” she said gently. “Crazy?”

  “Possible, I was going to say, feasible.”

  She sighed. The apricot was juicy, and I put down the book, open at Lottie Carson’s smile, and wiped my hands. “It might be complicated, Min.”

  “Yeah, the igloo’s crazy, right? I mean where do you even get—”

  She said that wasn’t what she meant, and the kitchen felt so strange that I just pushed on through, kept talking, and threw the pit in the trash. I had a feeling, but I did not know what it was. “The cookies seem easier.”

  The shower turned off. She sighed again and looked at the recipe. “Yeah, pretty straightforward. Where are you going to get what is it, Pensieri?”

  “I have a plan,” I said, shrugging at the ceiling where you were drying off. “Somehow I’ll do it, and soon.”

  “Maybe tonight?” she said. “Did Ed tell you? He can’t hang out tonight, he has a family thing.”

  “He did not,” I said, “tell me.”

  Hawk Davies ended. “Yeah,” she said carefully, “that sounds like him not to tell you,” and I did not know what was going on that I was feeling. She was looking at me in a delicate way I guess, like I’d used some word wrong and she was afraid to tell me, or like I was the basketball star and it was her brother the virgin up in his room, like she was protecting something. My hand felt grippy, my eyes hot.

  “Should I go?” I managed to say.

  Joan exhaled and touched my shoulder. “Don’t say it like that, Min. We just have, a thing I said, a family thing tonight. We have to get ready for it before too long.” With a little clamor, she put a few things in the dishwasher, nudged it closed with her slipper, picked up a bright blue sponge. She was surprised, I remembered, that we had come back so early. Now it was almost too late. “You must be tired anyway, huh? You were up almost as late as he was.”

  Was that it, is what I thought. That I’d kept you up too late? But she didn’t say anything more.

  “Let me just say good-bye,” I said, and she said, “Of course of course,” and I bounded up the stairs, the cushions in the living room, I noticed, back on the sofa. Your mom’s door closed again like always. Your room I’d only seen for minutes at a time, the ugly dresser, basketball guys on the wall, a shelf of the books people gave you who didn’t know, or knew but hoped not, you’d never read. Protractor, other geeky math whatnot on the also-ugly desk, crowded with crap and dirty plates. The radio muttering, shades still down, sweaty sweaty smell, mostly disgusting but not, what’s wrong with me, entirely disgusting, no.

  You were in bed so perfect that at first I thought you were doing it for a joke, playing possum asleep with the towel around you slipping a little, your leg bent at the knee and your arm over your face like you were hiding a smile. But then you snored like nobody would pretend, and I stood in the doorway watching you sleep. I waited just to see you at that kind of peace, I wanted to be beside you, I wanted you to wake up slowly or startle, or just half awaken and turn over and go back to sleep or murmur my name. I wanted to watch you forever, or sleep beside you forever, or sleep forever while you woke and watched me, something forever anyway. I wanted to kiss you, rumple your hair, rest three fingertips on your hip bone warm and smooth, wake you that way or hush you back to sleep. To see you naked at rest, to cover you with a blanket, there’s not enough ink and paper to say all I wanted. But I couldn’t stay long, so I just went back downstairs where Joan was waiting with a kind smile. “He’s asleep,” I said.

  “You wore him out with your adventures,” she said, handing me the sugar and books. �
��See you soon, Min.”

  “I didn’t leave him a note or anything,” I said.

  “Good,” she said with a snort. “He hates reading.”

  “But tell him to call me.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Keep the sugar.”

  “No, Min, take it home. Otherwise I’ll cook with it and you’ll have to steal more and you’ll end up in the big house and it’ll all be my fault.”

  That made me smile, the big house. “But you’d break me out, right?” I said. “You’d lend Ed the car again for a getaway? Oh, wait, my sweater’s in the car.”

  We walked out together into the drizzle, and she unlocked the car and handed the sweater to me. Now I had quite a pile in my hands, far from home with nobody to help me carry anything. “See you, Min.”

  “Bye,” I said. It was strange and wet, burdened like that, with Joan already stepping fast back to your back door. “Thanks for the book,” though I wanted to say, for some reason, Sorry.

  She shut the door. Alone on the bus, all my items on the seat next to me like an inventory, the cookbook more expensive now looking at it by myself, less charming. And clenched in my hand I found this towel, the oil from the onion rings in permanent circles on the cloth. I kept it instead of giving it back to Joan the next time I visited, because I don’t know why. Each of those things she made waiting for her brother, each one crunchy and unburned, feasible as can be, I can see it. Her elegant life, the way she cared for people in her house. And those traces on the towel I stared at on the way home to sit quietly, friends for once, with my mother, Earl Grey tea, toast. Wanting to cry a little bit, folding the towel to keep it in the box, not knowing if those circles looked wide open, a laughing mouth, a bright moon, a rising bubble, or just how I see it now, a square of zeros in invisible ink from the kitchen. I thought it was one thing but it was the other, it was zero zero zero alone on the bus, while you slept in the room I had to leave, and that’s why we broke up.