All This Heavenly Glory (27 page)

So but there is one incident over the weekend, the incident at the cliff, Charlotte will call it, even though it would be
more appropriate to call it the incident at the dune, since it is a dune and not a cliff, even though it seems extremely cliff-like
from the perspective of Charlotte looking down from the top of the dune/cliff, it looks to her kind of like a straight drop,
anyway at the bottom of the dune/cliff is a secluded beach, and somehow after getting out of the car, Charlotte and Colin
lag behind the Miller family and their friends Matt and his son, also known as Lucy’s boyfriend/husband Oliver (originator
of Shine!, which he learned in music class, which is basically like jazz hands except you have to also say,
Shine!
), who are down the dune and/or cliff combination, out of their clothes and into the water before Colin and Charlotte even
reach the edge, at which time Charlotte pretty much freaks at the height and cannot imagine how she might make it down, and
as moments pass and Colin tries to reassure her that it’s no big deal, goes through a progression in her head whereby everyone
present (including the dread-headed stoners around a bonfire who she doesn’t even know) has reversed their existing positive
opinions of her into something along the lines of,
Wow she’s so old she’s from like prehistoric times and who is she kidding with those tattoos we were so totally wrong about
her did you notice she didn’t take her jewelry off and how much makeup she’s wearing can you even believe she wore makeup
and jewelry to the beach you know her movies aren’t all that and wow we’ve never met anyone so lame,
but expanded considerably into something of a mental dissertation. (One of Charlotte’s few insecurities about her looks is
the sad state of her complexion, and she has perfected a non-makeup makeup over the years, but Colin will come close to convincing
her she looks better without it, close enough to get her to lose the mascara, anyway, and actually her complexion has seen
a noticeable improvement since she started seeing Colin; as he says, The
lovin’ helps
.) Colin tries to explain to Charlotte how to walk down a dune, which makes sense in the telling but not in her body, and
she tries to explain that she is trying not to cry and feels like a big loser, and he tells her it’s okay if she wants to
cry or even if she doesn’t want to go down and she says she has to go down and he says she really doesn’t and tells her he
loves her and she says she’s a loser and he says she’s not a loser and he hugs her a bunch of times and somehow she gets down
the dune and into the water just in time for the sun to go under followed by thunderstorms twenty minutes later (climbing
up the dune, particularly under the threat of lightning, will not be nearly the same kind of obstacle as the descent) and
at no time will there be any actual evidence that even a passing comment about Charlotte not going down the dune has been
made.

Things Charlotte Writes Down in Her Journal Pretty Much Every Time Colin Says Them

1. I love you
   
2. I missed you so much
   (especially if he’d last seen her, like, the day before)
   
3. I can’t wait to see you
   (especially if he’d last seen her, like, the day before)
   
4. Assorted and miscellaneous compliments often involving the words hot and foxy because the thing is that Cohn is really
   the first person to ever say number one unless you count Steven Saccavino, who she didn’t really even date and certainly didn’t
   kiss and which was twenty years ago, and so you can imagine why she might want to write that down every time until she doesn’t
   feel like writing it down anymore, because of the waiting, and plus it seems particularly great, better than she could have
   imagined because he always says it at really great times, times when she needs to hear it and times when it seems unexpected
   but never without meaning, always with lots of meaning, and so the point is that Charlotte Anne Byers is in love with someone
   who is also in love with her, and says so with meaning, even though it turns out that being in love with someone who loves
   you and says so with meaning doesn’t mean you’re not still you and you being Charlotte Anne/Charlie/Charlotte Byers means
   that even if you have a couple of tattoos and make cool movies and can stand to be around people a little better than you
   could before you reverse-aged, you still spin in your head about stuff sometimes and so might your boyfriend, and that even
   though it is apparently not in and of itself a problem solver, the love, that said, it’s pretty sweet, and she’ll take it.
   

I
N MY NEXT LIFE I want to explain homecoming to someone, enthusiastically. I want to understand what it means to say that something is the
size of a football field and I want an older brother named Jimmy who plays tight end and I want to know the names of all the
players and I want them to carry me over their heads to the bus and I want to eat pizza with them after the game. I want to
go to all the home games and all the away games and wear blue eyeliner and use Sun-In and I want to make out under the bleachers
and I want to wear the halfback’s jacket. I want to squint in the bright lights and bring a thick plaid blanket and something
hot in a thermos and I want to see my breath as I scream Rah or Whoo or Go team for the Tigers or the Hawks or the Wildcats.
I want Jimmy to get a football scholarship to State and I want to call my dad Pop and I want to beg Pop to lend me his pickup
to drive downstate to my brother’s games and when Jimmy gets suspended from the team for being involved in an “incident” with
a coed and swears he wasn’t involved in the incident I want to believe him and when he drives his car into a telephone pole
at ninety miles an hour and says it was an accident I want to believe him then too, no matter how sad he looks to be awake
the next day. I want to tell Jimmy everything’s going to be okay and I want to tell him this for fifteen years while he goes
from job to job and leaves town and comes back and when Jimmy straightens up so to speak and joins a church and marries a
girl from the church who always smiles I want to tell him I’m proud of him even though his eyes look flat now, like Jimmy’s
skipped class and he’s not coming back. I want my pop to almost not go to their wedding because it’s a dry wedding because
of the “godforsaken fundamentalist horsecrap” church Jimmy belongs to and I want my mom to ride out the storm like she always
does and I want her to cry at their wedding into Pop’s hanky and after the ceremony I want Pop to nod a reluctant approval
at Jimmy and shake his hand so no one thinks he’s gay. I want Pop to dance with Mom at the wedding and I want her to smile
at him like she did at their wedding, and I want him to tilt his head just the tiniest bit so she knows he feels the same
way but no one else does.

I want to lose my virginity in a car to a troubled boy named Cliff but I want to marry my high school sweetheart Bill. I want
the great sadness of my teenage life to be my brief pre-junior-prom breakup with Bill and I want to throw on my slightly ill-fitting
white one-shouldered prom dress at the last minute when Bill shows up in a white tuxedo with a white limo and a white corsage
and begs forgiveness. I want to maintain a solid B+ average and when I graduate I want to go to typing school to have something
to fall back on and I want to work at the local life insurance company where they award me a plaque that says SECRETARY OF
THE MONTH three months in a row but even when they raise me 6 percent I want to quit after nine months to be a homemaker.
I want Bill to have a dream of moving to Hollywood to be a stuntman and I want Bill to give up his dream because he loves
me, and I want him to buy me a ring from Zales and propose after the lobster buffet on the deck of the casino boat in the
next town over. I want to wear a lacy dress with a long train to my wedding and I want my mom to put her pearl earrings on
me for something borrowed and choke back tears when she says But you can forget to give them back and I want flower girls
and six bridesmaids and I want my wedding photo taken at Sears and I want that photo to be in the paper and I want the word
nee to be in the copy in front of my maiden name. I want my house to have a cement patio in back and pink impatiens on the
front walk and a basketball hoop over the garage. I want Bill to have tools in the garage so he can fix things and I want
him to work long hours and put off fixing things and when he comes home late I want to fix him warmed-up meatloaf with extra
ketchup, almost burnt, the way he likes it. I want him to make love to me once a month and not try any funny stuff until he
tries some funny stuff I really like and then I want him to make love to me twice a month and I want to tell my girlfriends
about it. I want Bill to flirt with a woman from out of town who supplies parts for his business and I want him to come close
to having an affair but I want him to remember how much he loves me in the lounge at the Marriott and to tell the almost other
woman he was about to make a terrible mistake and 1 want him to cancel her account. I want to suspect this is going on and
then I want to tell myself I’m wrong. I want to serve dip and pretzels and Schlitz in cans to my husband, Bill, and his buddies
while they watch the Super Bowl and holler at the TV like it can hear them and while I sit on the stoop and smoke my one (stale)
cigarette of the week from my gold vinyl cigarette case under the almost-dark five o’clock sky and look at the fast-moving
clouds and sitting there I want to think life is good. I want to live where there’s nothing to do, where people join bowling
leagues and chain-smoke and drink too much and get into fights at bars or get pregnant at the wrong time or by the wrong guy
and dream of getting out. I want to read books by V.C. Andrews and I want to watch
Friends
every night at six and laugh and be glad I don’t live in New York and I want to subscribe to
People
and I want to want to meet Tom Cruise.

I want to run into my girlfriends at the market and catch up on gossip in the soup aisle and I want to have a girl named Jenny
and I want two boys, one named Joe and one named Jason, and I want my girl to skin her knees in the street and I want Joe
to play catch with Bill and I want Jason to play with Jenny’s Barbies more than Jenny does and I want them all to bring home
ribbons for something and I want to see their pictures in the paper with the ribbons and I want them to fight over riding
shotgun and who got a bigger piece of pie. I want to use the word
varsity
. I want Jenny and Joe and Jason to be on the varsity anything, and in spite of what Bill says, I want to not assume that
my son is gay because he’s on varsity cheerleading and I want to say to Bill something like, And anyway what if he is. I want
Jenny to have a canopy bed and posters of boy bands and eat one lettuce leaf for dinner and I want her to join a program and
gain the weight back and go on a talk show so she can help others and when she’s fourteen and meets a cute goth boy I want
her to rip her boy-band posters down during a fight with me in which she says that’s not who she is anymore even though she
kind of obviously is but doesn’t want to be because of the goth boy and later I want to find the posters neatly rolled up
in the back of the closet and know that I was right. I want Jenny to sneak out at night to meet the goth boy and go almost
all the way with him on his black satin cape that he’s laid down by the lake but then decide she can’t go through with it
and after high school I want to send her to school to be a dental hygienist or a real estate agent or a hotel manager. I want
Jason to work after school so he can afford Helmut Lang pants and I want Bill to say Helmut who indignantly and when Jason
finally comes out to us at sixteen even though it’s been pretty obvious since the Barbies I want Bill to almost disown him
but later I want to find Bill on the Internet looking up PFLAG on Google and I want him to take photos of Jason pinning a
boutonniere on his prom date Todd. I want Joe to wreck his dad’s Mustang on the day he gets his license and I want him to
be fine but I want him to want something that isn’t in our town but not to know what and I want to tell him he doesn’t know
what because there’s nothing to know and that everything good is here. I want him to be the troubled boy that some hopeful
girl loves but can’t have. I want to send him to rehab twice before he turns seventeen and tell him I’m sorry if I messed
him up and I want him to say it was no one’s fault and I want him to fill notebooks with his feelings and write stories about
big cities and show them to no one and I want a hand-painted sign on Main Street to say BILL & SON. I want Jason to move to
New York to become a fashion stylist and commentator on E! and I want Jenny to get engaged to my best friend’s son and I want
Joe to get his girlfriend pregnant and I want Pop to freak out and say he’s not going to the wedding and why can’t there be
a wedding without shame and I want Mom to talk him down because Joe really does love her and I want Pop to shake Joe’s hand
at the wedding the way he does and I want to wear a tasteful suit to both weddings and I want Bill to cry at Jenny’s wedding
and pretend he isn’t. I want Mom to die of old age or a heart attack or anything but cancer and I want Pop to die in his sleep
a few months later and I want to tell people he died from a broken heart and I want them to nod when I say it and I want to
bury Mom and Pop together by the church and put daisies on their graves once a month and tell them about Jason and Jenny and
Joe and I want to know without a doubt that they’re always with me.