Ordinary World (34 page)

“Shut up!” he yelled. “You’re one of them, you know. Hell, you were the
ultimate
—you needed more saving than any other woman, and I met some pretty miserable, fucked up women in my day, believe me.”

There was a time when those words would have sent me into rage; but I felt unfazed by it in the moment, as if I was impermeable to such cold-heartedness.

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. So what good is a relationship that’s based on needing to be saved? Why do you think it didn’t work out the first time around? I didn’t need you anymore, Dev. I’d gotten to the point where there was nothing else to hide. You helped me confront and heal the shames of my past. You took away my anxieties about my inexperience by giving me a safe place to gain that experience. I will always be grateful to you for those things. Without them—without
you
—I couldn’t have had the wonderful years I had with Sam, or been the confident, experienced, comfortable friend and lover and wife I was to him. And I never would have been able to receive all the love he had for me.”

He refused to look at me.

“Dev, I am so glad I chose the wrong door that day in Rome. Maybe on some cosmic level, it wasn’t even the wrong door. But I don’t know who I want you to be: Devin the rescuer, or David, who I sometimes don’t really know. I want to be fun-loving, easy-going Andi Vanzant again. But to be her, I need
Sam
back, and I can’t and I get so paralyzed by the powerlessness of that. So what’s left?”

“I don’t know.”

I put my arms around him. We held each other and I felt his damp cheek brush up against my own.

I stood on my tiptoes and spoke softly into his ear. “I’m not going to say ‘no’ to you, okay? But there’s no way I can say ‘yes’ right now, either.”

“I understand.” He sounded like a boy who didn’t get the puppy he wanted.

He let go of me and took a few steps back. I held out my hand—my left hand—and lightly touched his cheek.

“I’m so sorry, David. I know this wasn’t what you wanted tonight. I’m sorry I ruined it all for you.”

He said nothing.

“Do you want me to go?” I asked.

“It’s almost three-thirty a.m.”

“Do you want me to sleep on the couch?”

“I want you to come to bed with me,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

He hugged me again, tightly.

“Please.”

Leaving the ring in its box on the floor, amidst gobs of crumpled tissue paper and ripped wrapping, David turned off the tree lights, and the room went black. He followed me to the bedroom, where we crawled into bed and didn’t bid each other good night or fall asleep. Five hours later, I got up, got dressed, and went home. He didn’t try to stop me.

Chapter Thirty-eight

W
E DIDN’T SEE OR SPEAK TO EACH OTHER FOR THE rest of the week. I thought about calling Melody; about driving down to Brooklyn and showing up on Maggie’s doorstep; about flying to Rome and going back to the Fontana Di Trevi to make another wish; about finding a fortune teller to ask what happens next.

Instead, I called Miranda and invited her out for coffee at Perch on the day before New Years Eve. She patiently listened to me tell her the story, beginning with the midnight mass and ending with the proposal and my noncommittal answer.

“You’re looking for the ordinary world,” she said.

“Dead giveaway, Rand. Melody’s influence.”

She raised her eyebrows and nodded, proud in a way.

“I know, but she’s right. You’re just looking in all the wrong places. When I heard that one of the planes that hit the towers was from Logan, I knew—I just
knew
that Jade was on it. And I knew my life had just turned upside down and all I wanted was to go back to the day before.”

“Yeah, unfortunately I know that feeling,” I said, nodding in validation. “Never mind the day before. I wanted to go back to the hour before—hell, the very
minute
before Sam walked out that door. Still do.”

“But you get what Melody means, don’t you? Good or bad, we are in this world. We live. We go on. That’s a blessing.”

I contemplated this.

“So, do you think you’ve found your ordinary world?”

“I think I have, but it’s new and different. You make a new world, a new normality for yourself. And it includes your loss and all the pain and senselessness that go with it. But it also includes
grace
. You learn a way of being in the world without your best friend. But it can be a world that is happy, normal, peaceful. Any world is going to include the sorrows and pains and turbulence, too. Even your world with Sam wasn’t utopia. We sometimes distort that image in the midst of our grief.”

Again I nodded in validation. “It’s funny, but I can hardly remember the fights we used to have.”

“I know. Me too.”

“I don’t know what to do, Miranda. I still miss Sam so much. And I love David, but it’s like I want to put it all in a blender and come up with a new concoction: the familiarity of Devin with the qualities of David and the happiness I felt with Sam. I miss the world I knew.”

“But don’t you see, Andi? This is a good thing. You’re ready to take a new risk.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. Feels like I’m hurting someone I really care about—
again
—and am going somewhere even less familiar than ever. How is that the ordinary world?

“It’s about making something
else
. And it’s exactly what you need to do. You’ll never get back what you lost. You’ll never be the same, and David will never be the same, either. And if you had lived with Sam for another ten or twenty or fifty years,
he
wouldn’t have been the same. People and places and things change. Only the spirit is eternal.”

I stared at my muffin for several minutes before asking my next question. “Do you think you could ever forgive the terrorists?”

She took in a deep breath and exhaled, as if she’d just taken a drag on a cigarette.

“I’m working on it. Most days I want every single terrorist to eternally die a slow death. Other days it’s the war that makes me mad.” She paused and took a sip of her mochaccino. “Do you think you can forgive the drunk driver?”

“You know what’s crazy? Sometimes I don’t think I’ve even forgiven Sam.”

“Not crazy at all. I was furious at Jade for not having the foresight to know that something bad was going to happen when she got on that plane. The thought may be irrational, but the feeling isn’t. It’s part of grief.”

 Shifting the conversation from terrorists back to my love life seemed incredibly shallow; nevertheless, I did so. “So what should I do about David? I don’t wanna lose him, but there’s no way in hell I’m ready to marry him. I don’t wanna hurt him again either. I already broke his heart the first time I left.”

“I think that if you’re afraid to lose him, then you’ve got to be on your own for a little while. You’ve got to be at the place where you know you’re going to be okay no matter what. Otherwise you’re holding on to David more out of safety than love.”

Miranda could tell by the look on my face that that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. And yet, she wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know and hadn’t heard a thousand times before, either from Melody or Maggie or Marta or my own voice that kept me awake at night.

“I hate to be so cliché, but if you two really love each other and are really meant to be together, you will be,” she said.

“It’s the
not
knowing that terrifies me,” I said. “The
if
. What if it takes too long? What if he finds someone else and marries her? What if I never fall in love ever again?”

“All the more reason to be on your own. The only way you can alleviate that fear is to confront it. Be okay with
not
knowing.”

“As a writer, you have no idea how frustrating it is to not know the outcome. Even worse, to not be in control of it.”

“Control is an illusion,” said Miranda.

I rolled my eyes. “Geez, would you please stop being Melody?”

“At least I charge by the mochaccino!”

We both laughed and clinked our coffee cups, toasting our friendship.

***

On New Year’s Eve, David and I went to a party at the gallery of an owner for whom he consulted. I watched him in full Devin mode—charming all the women, yukking it up with all the men, talking about the artwork as if they were his children. I loved seeing him in action. This was where he lived, his world. This was the guy I loved. And it was so much easier to love him from this place, from afar.

Despite our estrangement, he was attentive to and introduced me to every person as if I were the guest of honor. We left before midnight, however. I wanted him all to myself at the stroke of twelve, I told him. He said he was happy to oblige.

New Year’s Eve had never been a big deal for Sam and me. We’d split a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and watch the
Twilight Zone
marathon on the Sci Fi Channel. Our resolutions consisted of promises we’d make to each other:

“I resolve to pick up my dirty laundry off the floor and to clean the bathrooms when it’s my turn,”
he’d say.

“I resolve to not nag you to pick up your dirty laundry and clean the bathrooms,”
I’d say.

We went back to David’s place; how I wished we were back on the balcony in Rome. We listened to Sarah Vaughn on the stereo and danced slowly for a little bit. His arms felt strong and protective. Then we turned on the TV to watch the ball drop in Times Square as the crowd drunkenly counted down the final seconds to midnight in happy anticipation.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five!

Four!

Three!!

 Two!!

One!!!

Our eyes met—those sienna eyes, mixed with love and sadness, were reflecting my own green eyes, mixed with love and sadness.

That was it. That was the ordinary world. A world of sadness and joy. Loss and love. Agony and ecstasy. Co-existence.

I wasn’t there yet. But I could see it.

I kissed him. Kissed him again and again. I wanted to make love to him, to feel our bodies pressed against one another, to know that feeling of certainty, that for that moment, all is right in our world, and the world was ours.

It was my turn to take care of him for the night; to make him feel like he was the only man in my life; to make him feel cared for and protected and safe; to make him feel full. I gave him everything he wanted that night. I gave him all of me—all that there was of me to give. Because I knew what my resolution was going to be. It was going to be for all of us: Sam, David, my mother and father, my brothers, Maggie, Jeff, my students, Miranda, and most of all,
me
.

It was time for me to go. And I was going to be okay. I was sure of it.

Chapter Thirty-nine

January

T
WO DAYS LATER, WHILE SITTING IN THE STARBUCKS on

Church Street

, I announced my plans to David.

“I’m going away again.”

His eyes widened. “Where?”

“First to Hawaii, I think. Someplace I’ve never been.”

“For how long?” he asked. I heard a note of worry in his voice.