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First of all, he looked dangerously handsome. He was wearing the charcoal jacket that I bought him with a floppy, blue satin bow tie-ish thing he’d found somewhere. It made him look like he should be writing French poetry. (Expressly to seduce virgins.) My mom asked him if he was wearing a scarf.
And second, I knew that he was being so engaging only because he loved me. As a favor to me. I felt like his good behavior was overwhelming proof that he cared. I shouldn’t need proof, but proof can be very reassuring.
During dinner, Chris went outside to smoke and get away from my family, and when I found him outside the back door, he acted as happy to see me as I was to see him. “Are you mine now?” he asked.
He told me I looked beautiful. He kissed me. He told me to take off the cardigan. “Let’s go home,” he said.
I told him that I couldn’t go, that I’d promised my sister that I would dance. She didn’t want one of those receptions where only toddlers dance, so all the bridesmaids swore to stay on the floor at least until the Chicken Dance.
“Then I guess we’ll dance,” he said, and he took one last drag of his cigarette. He has this way of tilting his head down and looking up at me as he inhales; I get why 12-year-olds think it’s cool to smoke.
So we went back into the reception and danced to every song. Sort of danced. It was mostly holding each other and swaying and Eskimo kissing.
Remember when I was obsessed with that little Lithuanian restaurant downtown? And it was only ever open when the grumpy old woman who ran it felt like opening? I’d stop by every day for a week with no luck. And then, when I’d pretty much given up on ever tasting Napoleonas torte again, I’d drive by and see the open sign in the window.
Well, being with Chris is like trying to date that restaurant. I never know when he’s going to be there and how open he’ll be to me. Almost never is he all there, all in. Almost never do I get the Chris that I got the night of Kiley’s wedding—open sign, cold cucumber soup, rouladen, poppy seed kolaches.
I found myself thinking that this is how I would want to dance at my own wedding. (Minus all the Dixie Chicks and Alan Jackson songs.) The kind of dancing that’s more like touching to music. That’s more like closing your eyes and trying to think how you would tell someone that you loved him if you didn’t have words or sex.
Chris had one arm around my waist, and he was winding his fingers in my hair. He kissed my forehead, smiling. He looked at me, straight into me, and I felt like I was in love with the sun.
And then—it will be impossible for you not to laugh at me now—the deejay played the song “Rocky Mountain High.”
I f**king love “Rocky Mountain High.” I don’t much care for eagles or lakes or Colorado. But “Rocky Mountain High” is what euphoria sounds like. When you hear John Denver sing, “He was born in the summer of his 27th year …” how can you not feel your heart open to the cosmos?
So “Rocky Mountain High” came on, and I started kissing Chris like I couldn’t wait to get to the chorus, all adoration and vulnerability and “I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky.” And Chris kissed me right back. And when he pulled away—about the time that the songwriter is admitting to a life that’s full of wonder, but a heart that still knows fear—Chris said, “Beth, I love you. I love you more than I ever meant to. More than I ever say.”
And I started to tell him that I loved him, too, but he stopped me, kissed me and said, “Wait, I’m not done. This is important.”
Will you think I’m foolish if I tell you that I thought he might be getting ready to propose? I wasn’t sure of it. I probably would have bet against it. But if he were ever going to propose to me, there could never have been a more likely—a more perfect—moment.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I love you so much that I can’t stand it. Sometimes, I just don’t have the energy for it, to have something this big coming out of me. And I can’t stop it or turn it down.
Sometimes, I get tired just knowing that I’m going to see you.”
I wasn’t ready to let go of my reverie. I was thinking, “Good tired, right?”
“I’ll always love you,” he said, “but I need you to know that I am never going to marry you.”
I must have looked like I wasn’t getting it because he repeated himself. Emphatically. “Beth. I am never going to marry you.” He was still looking at me with soft, loving eyes. If you were watching us from a few feet away, and you saw his face, you might think that he did just propose to me.
What I found myself thinking, at least immediately, was that there was a certain violence to putting it the way he did. That he wasn’t going to marry me. Couldn’t he have said that we were never going to get married? Couldn’t he have implied that it would be a shared decision? Wouldn’t that have been a bit more polite?
And then he tried to kiss me, to continue our kiss actually, with all the love and passion and John Denver that we were sharing before his pronouncement. But I felt like there was more to talk about. So I pulled back and said, “Do you mean that you’ll never get married? Or that you’ll never marry me?”
He thought about it. “Both,” he said, stroking my hair, “but mostly the latter.”
“Mostly that you won’t marry me.”
He nodded. “But not because I don’t love you. I do love you. I love you too much. You’re too much.”
I pushed away from him then, and started to walk in a weird circle around the dance floor. I kind of wandered through the dancers and eventually out the front door. I walked around the parking lot for a minute before I realized that I didn’t know where Chris had parked and that he still had my keys. (If I were the sort of person for whom falling in love meant eventually getting married, I would let my bridesmaids wear dresses with pockets.) I looked back and there he was, standing in the VFW doorway. “Don’t do this,” he shouted.
“I’m not doing this,” I said. “You are.” And then I decided I would be damned to hell if I took one step toward him. So I told him to throw me my keys. He wouldn’t, he said he was going to drive me home. And I was like, “Don’t come near me. Throw me my keys.”
“I knew you wouldn’t get this,” he said. “I knew you’d take it wrong.”
How was I supposed to take it?
He said I was supposed to see the truth. “That I love you enough to be honest with you.”
“But not enough to marry me,” I said.
“Too much to marry you.”
Even in the state I was in, I managed to roll my eyes at that.
“I wasn’t built for this,” he yelled. “Look at me. You know it’s true.” And for the first time, maybe ever, he didn’t sound cool. He sounded a little panicked. And a little angry. “I don’t want to love someone so much that they take up all my head, all my space. If I knew I was going to feel this way about you, I would have left a long time ago, while I still could.”
I kept yelling at him to throw me my keys. I think I called him “a great horrible bastard.” Like I was swearing in a second language. He threw me the keys, and they hit the car behind me like a baseball.
“Don’t come home,” I said. “I don’t want to see you.”
“I have to come home,” he said. “I need my guitar.”
Have you ever seen The Goodbye Girl? Don’t watch it if you still want to enjoy romantic comedies.
It makes every movie ever made starring Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock lash itself in shame. Also, don’t watch The Goodbye Girl if it would trouble you to find Richard Dreyfuss wildly attractive for the rest of your life, even when you see him in What About Bob? or Mr. Holland’s Opus.
I n The Goodbye Girl, at the very wonderful end, this character (Marsha Mason, looking like a bruised pixie) who has given up on true love after being abandoned by a string of loser actors, realizes that the Richard Dreyfuss character really is going to come back to her like he promised he would because he left his guitar in their apartment. That’s how she knows that he really, truly loves her.
When Chris brought up his guitar, that’s when I knew he really, truly didn’t love me. That’s when I lived that Marsha Mason scene in reverse.
I got in my car and drove until I thought he couldn’t catch up with me on foot, even though I didn’t really expect him to try. Then I pulled into an Arby’s parking lot and attempted to cry, but I was still too dumbfounded. I was still stuck in that split second after you get punched in the gut, when you don’t have enough breath to say, “Holy crap, that hurt.” I felt tired, overwhelmingly tired, and like I couldn’t go home; I was pretty sure Chris would be there. And everyone who would let me spend the night was still at the wedding. So, I checked into the Holiday Inn across from the Arby’s and watched free HBO until I fell asleep.
I slept until checkout time and left that Satanic dress in the room. (I had gym clothes in the car.)
Then I went back to my apartment.
Chris was there, of course, making tea. He’d just taken a shower. His hair was still damp and curly, and his T-shirt was lying over a chair. I swear he’s three miles long from the bottom of his throat to the top button of his jeans. He said he’d been worried about me.
“I didn’t want to see you,” I said.
“Didn’t?” he said, pouring hot water into two mugs.
“Don’t.”
“Beth …” His cool was back. He looked at me like he thought looking at me would be enough. “You can’t walk away from what’s between us. I’ve tried …We’re a spell,” he said. “We’re magic.”
I told him that I didn’t want magic, that I wanted someone who wouldn’t leave me if he could. Who wouldn’t feel like being committed to me was such a burden.
“I’m committed,” Chris said. “I’ve never cheated on you.”
Which wasn’t even what I meant. “You said you get tired when you look at me,” I said.
“I said that sometimes it’s too much.”
“Well, I want someone who doesn’t think so. I want someone whose heart is big enough to hold me.”
“You want someone whose love will fit around your finger.”
“You should write that down,” I said. “It sounds like a song lyric.”
It was a cold thing to say, but I was losing my nerve. I was looking around the kitchen, looking at him, thinking that it was a nice life, really. Thinking that it was absurd for me to break up with him for saying something out loud that, deep down, I already knew. Thinking how warm and loving he would be, what a wonderful day we could still have, if I could just let this go.
“I want you to leave,” I said.
“Where am I going to go?”
“I can’t let that be my problem.”
“You can’t? You’re unable to care about me?”
“You can stay with Stef. Or your parents.”
“This is my home, too.”
“Then I’ll go,” I said. “You’ll have to sign a new lease.” That was a lousy thing to say. I know he can’t afford the rent by himself.
“Beth, come on. Stop doing this. Look at me.”
“I can’t look at you anymore.”
We argued for a while longer before he agreed to leave. I left then, so that he could pack. I went over to my parents’ house.
My parents …who were jubilant when I told them what happened. I think they were happier about my breakup than Kiley’s wedding. “I knew it was a mistake to let him be in the family picture,” my mother said. “My smart, strong girl,” my dad kept saying.
Chris called me once while he was packing to ask about the record player. It’s mine, but he’s the only one who ever listens to records. I told him he could take it and the rest of the stereo equipment, too. “Jesus,” he said, “if I knew you were going to be so nice, I wouldn’t have already packed all of your CDs.” That made me laugh a little. “Yesterday,” he said, “you were all mine. Every freckle. And today, we’re talking about who gets the VCR.”
“I get the VCR,” I said.
I haven’t talked to him since. He calls me, but I don’t call him back. I’m too weak. He left one of his sweaters in the closet, and I’ve been crying into it for five weeks. I feel like I kicked one of my own kidneys out of the apartment.
Okay, I think that’s it. That’s what happened at my sister’s wedding.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Beth …I’m speechless. I’m practically type-less. Why did you wait so long to tell me?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I tried to call you from Arby’s, but you weren’t home, and when I called you that Monday, I found out that you’d had an even worse weekend than I’d had. Once you told me about the baby, I couldn’t tell you about Chris. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to waste even a tiny little bit of energy on me.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> You’re such a good friend.
I’m just shocked. I really didn’t think you’d ever break up with him.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Even though you wanted me to.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Sometimes.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I always knew he was selfish and self-indulgent and kind of lazy; those are practically prerequisites for playing lead guitar. I also knew that music was pretty much the only thing in life that he felt was worth the hassle. But I thought I was part of the “pretty much.” How could I stay with him, once I knew that he felt like being in love with me was his cross to bear?