All This Heavenly Glory (20 page)

“You look sleepy, son,” the woman says to Tim. “Have a tissue.”

“I’m okay, thanks, Grandma. You met the girls?” The woman in the housedress nods, wipes her nose, and goes back to her crossword
puzzles.

The dates retreat to the rec room to discuss plans and the boys offer Jenna and Charlie a joint, which they decline, miraculously
in this case not leading to a conversation about why they don’t get high; Charlotte Anne suspects that in the history of high
school there has never been a conversation about why anyone
does
get high, and has learned from experience that when declining drugs it’s always best to act like you were already stoned
(an uncomfortable incident at a pot party the year before in which she had actually said, “No thank you,” to a joint passed
her way by Clarisse Benjamin resulted in a roomful of laughter, indicating to Charlotte Anne that manners were an inappropriate
formality in the pot-smoking universe and that in the future some sort of lie would work best), or that you were hungover
and therefore had a solid reason for abstaining. Having to drive is a nonissue for the unlicensed Charlotte Anne/Charlie and
Jenna, but it’s a questionable excuse anyway, since C.A./C. Byers knows that some potheads have a weird pride thing about
driving better when stoned, which she thinks is a big bunch of bullshit that she generally opts not to challenge since challenging
potheads tends to be a kind of
Who’s On First
exercise in absurdity. Jenna and Tim quickly go out to get a paper to see what’s playing, leaving Charlotte Anne alone in
the basement with her stoned, platform-shoe-wearing date for the longest half hour of her life (which half hour is curious
in and of itself since she’d noticed a newsstand on the corner when they got there, and notes, upon their return, a suspicious
lack of Lip Smacker on Jenna Ritter’s lips). Chuck Farley tries to ask her some questions about sports (one minute), some
questions about what kind of music she likes (four minutes; he claims not to like disco [making the marshmallow shoes an even
more inexplicable fashion choice] and puts on a Steppenwolf album that is harboring some pot seeds), some questions about
college (two minutes—she will go wherever she gets in and he will go into the merchant marines with Tim. Charlotte Anne/Charlie
really has no idea what the merchant marines are but doesn’t ask), and some questions about what movie she wants to go see
(two minutes—she wants to see
Annie Hall
and he wants to see
The Omen,
which divergent choices pretty much sum up the entire evening for her, not to mention she’s thinking they could make a movie
about his shoes called
The Omen
). After that they pretty much just sit and listen to Steppenwolf until Tim and Jenna come back, with Chuck occasionally air
drumming along, glancing over to smile at Charlie during the air-drum solo, which causes her to wonder if this is some kind
of Brooklyn dating ritual, since Chuck genuinely seems like he’s meaning to impress her with the air drumming. Tim and Jenna
have no newspaper in their possession, which is just as well if it means they don’t have to sit through
The Omen
. Tim says, “Let’s just go,” which is not questioned by the girls, and they leave in Tim’s white Firebird, the hood of which
displays the Firebird’s portrait. Charlotte Anne and Jenna, city girls (and there is no telling either of them that people
from the outer boroughs are also entitled to describe themselves with the
city
adjective), are years away from obtaining driver’s licenses and are therefore unfamiliar with the whole car-culture thing,
but Charlotte Anne has a good idea she’s supposed to be impressed with the Firebird even though she very much isn’t.

About a half hour later, the girls, in the backseat, begin to realize that they’re kind of just driving around, and Charlotte
Anne musters the courage to ask where they’re going. “We thought we’d just cruise,” Tim says. “Did you want to go somewhere?
Should we go get something to eat?”

Charlotte Anne/Charlie looks over to Jenna, who doesn’t seem much like she’s into driving around either. The appeal of cruising
is lost on them, and due to their having just seen
Saturday Night Fever,
Charlotte Anne somehow imagines this ending with one of them hanging off the Brooklyn Bridge for “fun.” “Okay,” she says,
and they drive around some more looking for a restaurant until she notices that the gas needle is on E and dares to point
it out, hoping they’ll stop at a gas station.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Tim says. “There’s always a few gallons left when it’s on empty.”

“Let’s stop anyway,” Jenna says, having heard that line before and found herself stranded in Brooklyn more than once. Tim
pulls into a gas station and Chuck hands him a single. Tim hands two singles to the gas-station attendant, who looks at him
unsurprised and knowing he isn’t going to get a big tip on the 2.4-gallon fill. They’re about to pull away as soon as the
needle budges slightly over to the right side of the E, but Chuck comes up with an idea. “Let’s just eat here,” he says. Charlotte
Anne surveys the gas station for an adjoining restaurant. There are some vending machines. Tim hands him a dollar, and as
Chuck opens the car door, he spies a fat wallet lying on the ground. “Alriiiight!” he says, showing the wallet to Tim with
a celebratory air drum. “Dinner aborted. Let’s go shopping!” Chuck pulls out twenty dollars and a BankAmericard. Jenna, never
one to cause controversy but whose good moral standards will not, like Charlotte Anne’s, be corrupted for most of the eighties
into drink, says, “No. Give it to me. We have to give it back. “The boys laugh at first, but there is no doubt that their
chances of any action with the girls that night will be drastically reduced if they don’t (although sadly for Chuck, his chances
couldn’t be lower than they already are), and Tim places the wallet in Jenna’s care.

Cruising continues for another hour, Charlotte Anne seeing no sights or particular activity that will enhance Brooklyn or
Chuck Farley’s chances with her in any way (Chuck’s expression of disappointment in not happening on a fight or even a fender
bender will finally seal this deal against him), and the shoes, the wallet scandal, and the dollars plus her having figured out that her married name would be Charlie Farley, that they’d be Chuck and
Charlie Farley, end his chances of ever seeing her again and result in a temporary’ restoration of Charlotte Anne Byers’s
original name. The boys finally drop the girls back in the city around quarter to one, Charlotte Anne thrusting her hand toward
Chuck’s to avert a kiss, the trajectory of which she can’t be certain. Chuck Farley calls several times to ask her out again,
which she dodges by saying she has plans until she’s eventually able to bring herself to lie and tell him she’s seeing someone
else. The following year, after she has her “real” first date, with Eddie Greenfield, she will deny that the Brooklyn date
ever took place.

S
O IT TURNS OUT that he’s depressed. This was not on the list I came up with when I imagined, over the last two months, all the many reasons
he rejected me and all the many reasons everyone has ever rejected me, and when I say many I am meaning to say very many,
none good, really, none involving much in the way of anything having to do with the other person, all involving me being essentially
unlovable and ending with me trying to reconcile this, the fact of my unlovability, since there is no possible chance that
there is any other reason I have been rejected by him, and by everyone; why no one will ever come out and say that that’s
what it is is the ultimate unsolved mystery to me, because it seems to me like it would be so much more merciful if one honest
representative for all men out there would once and for all admit the truth, maybe send out a form letter to say,
We are sorry, Charlotte Byers, but the reason we are not interested is because you are manifestly and singularly unlovable.

But people seem to think it’s better to say,
It’s not you
. I don’t know why anyone would think that’s useful, because so often it is you, and if they would only admit that it is you,
and if they could further explain in exactly what way it is you, it seems to me like they would ultimately be doing you a
service, that if someone would say,
Charlotte, although you are presenting overt manifestations of classic physical beauty and are clearly pleasing to the untrained
eye, you are in fact minus one or more of the following: moon-shaped freckles, night-blooming jasmine that sprouts from the
crown of your head like a halo, bracelets of butterflies alit on your wrists, a laugh that emits diamond-studded soap bubbles;
furthermore you do not drool on your pillow in the shape of puppy dogs, your leg hair does not grow into pleasing designs,
you are minus a habit of making sculptures out of dripping candle wax so endearing that men will incur thousands of dollars
of debt keeping you in candles, you are lacking the tendency to cause weekly fender benders due to mindlessly wiping your
spilled chai tea from whatever you’re wearing, additionally, I personally have a strong preference for a woman who sneezes
like a Siamese kitten, so even if you drooled real puppy dogs I would not be interested,
then you could at least have some useful information, because if you were forced to accept that you will simply never drool
in a desirable way, that when you were born, you were genetically defective in this one area, unalterable by any available
chemical compound or by psychotherapeutic, medical, or holistic treatment of any kind, that it is something that you simply
must accept as immutable fact, then you might possibly, if you have any interest, be able to take it as a loss and attempt
to enjoy the other, nonromantic parts of your life.

But this won’t happen. What happens instead is that they make excuses. Sometimes, as here, the excuse is in some part or is
even entirely true, but is still an excuse, an extensive but true back-story set forth some time later at a length of several
hours over coffee, the primary goal of which is still to avoid saying that it is me, and the whole unlovable thing.

* * *

So unhhh. It was the most debilitating crush I’d had in years. It had been so many years, in fact, that I thought, in the
best way, that it might never happen again. It had only happened a handful of times, but the results were always so devastating
that I hoped it would never happen again. Or I hoped it would be entirely different than what I thought it was. It seemed
like something I should have been able to control, and I thought I actually had controlled, and then I met Matteo, and it
became clear that it wasn’t controlled, that it was only lying dormant, accelerating like a tailgater who isn’t even late,
without my knowledge. I’d been dating but hadn’t had any strong feelings about anyone in such a long time that I’d been thinking
I never would. Considering what I knew about him, which was more or less nothing, it was essentially inexplicable. We had
met briefly about a year before at a garage sale at my friends Janet and Tony’s place. Matteo, a friend of Tony’s, stopped
by to say hi, and I can’t say I was overwhelmed at that point, but I did think, He could be cute. I tried and failed to get
Tony to fix us up once or twice after that, and Tony didn’t say he wouldn’t, but he also said that Matteo had just broken
up with someone and it might not be the best time. I eventually forgot about it.

Almost a year later I saw him again at Janet and Tony’s wedding. It was one of those marvelous and rare weddings where you
know the couple is really in love but you also know them both well enough to know that it’s not some fairy tale, that they’re
two real people with problems like anybody else who’ve worked pretty hard to be together. Janet and Tony had asked people
in advance to participate in the ceremony in any way they cared to as long as it was about love, which was something of a
struggle for me, since what I know about it isn’t good, and about a day before the wedding I finally came up with something,
the gist of which was,
Well what I know about love isn’t good, but Janet and Tony give me hope.
After the ceremony a cute dark-haired guy came up to me and said we could probably have a long discussion about what we both
didn’t know about love, and I said,
Matteo?
because it had been so long I had forgotten what he looked like. I still wasn’t sure how cute he was to me, although anyone
in a nice suit and a gardenia in his lapel bumps up a little, but later I saw him on the dance floor. In retrospect I should
have probably hurled myself from the bell tower of the church right then. Instead we danced and I made attempts at flirting
and he was still dancing when I left so I told Tony to give him my number. Not entirely thought through since Tony and Janet
were about to go on their honeymoon.