Love in the Present Tense (12 page)

I lay on my back on the bed with just my jeans on, with Leonard by my side.

“Light a candle?” he said, and I did.

He curled up against my arm, hugging it the way an adult hugs a whole human being, a kind of miniature spoons position. “Thanks,” he said. “I'm sorry you're sad.”

“It's okay.”

We were quiet for a while, and then he said, “Do you know what forever love is?”

“I don't think so.” I couldn't really think. But if I had been able to think, I don't think that would have helped. I think I really didn't know.

“Pearl taught me. It's when you love somebody so much that no matter what happens that'll never change. Like even if you're gone. It's still the same. Even if you die. You die, but not the love. Not forever love. Know what I mean?”

I thought he was trying to refer to something between me and Barb, because that's where my head was, and in that context, no, I wasn't sure what he meant.

He reached out and put his hand on my chest, feeling around for a heartbeat. Pearl must have done this with him, I thought. A kid this young doesn't make these rituals up on his own. Or does he? I wasn't sure.

When he was sure he had my heart, he held his hand still, and it felt warm against my skin. “That's how much I love you, Mitch. Okay? Do you feel better now?” Then a second later he said, “I didn't mean to make you cry, Mitch.”

“No, it's okay. It's a good thing. Thank you. Thanks for the forever love. It helps.”

“Yuh,” Leonard said. “I know.”

When I was sure he was asleep, I reached for the phone. Managed to inch over slightly to get it without disturbing him.

I dialed her cell, because I knew she couldn't be home yet.

Two rings. She answered by saying, “Hello, Mitchell.” Then, “Just got him back to sleep, did you?” We were both silent for a beat or two, and then she said, “I guess I don't understand why you feel the need to keep him.”

I could feel the weight of him on my arm. The candlelight flickered across us and made us look like all part of the same being somehow, a complex but single organism. I wondered if I could answer without crying again.

“I'm lonely,” I said. “Can you understand that?”

Silence on the line and I thought maybe I'd lost her, in more ways than one. Maybe she'd gone out of range.

“Of course I can,” she said at last. Her voice sounded soft. Softer than usual. “I just can't fix it for you.”

Then the connection broke up, and I lost her completely, so I clicked off the phone and just lay there, hoping she'd call back. But of course she never did.

I lifted Leonard's new glasses away from his face, carefully angling the earpieces off from around his little ears. I held them up to the candlelight, to see them better. The lenses were clear, new, unscratched. So light compared to the old ones. So much more like what he deserved. I set them on the bedside table and watched him sleep for a while.

He'd put his hand on my heart and vowed to love me forever. And all I'd done was taken him to an optometrist and bought him a decent pair of glasses. I still owed him big-time.

After a while I blew out the candle and rolled in his direction. Threw one arm over him so I was more or less hugging him back.

Forever love.

I said, “I pledge you back, buddy.” That probably wasn't fair, to tell him while he was sleeping, but at the time it was what I was able to manage. I said, “You're not going blind on my watch, buddy. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Before I could even finish the last sentence, I'd fallen back into wondering what all this was going to cost. In any number of different currencies.

The moment she walked in the door of our little work-place, everybody fell quiet.

Nobody knew she had been “gone,” not really knew. Except me, and possibly Leonard, though we hadn't discussed it out loud. But there was some kind of tension in that room, she'd brought it in with her, and it ran through everybody like electricity, and nobody made a sound.

Cahill made a point of trying to catch my eye, and Hannah made a point of avoiding it.

My stomach felt all cold and shocked inside, a kind of prehistoric flight response, and I was thinking how awful it would be if she had just come on some business-related matter, and wasn't feeling one bit warmer toward me. I knew this was when I would find out if it was really over. I felt dizzy.

She strode through all that silence with her confidence intact. Came around behind my desk and put her hands on my shoulders. Very quietly and close to my ear, she asked if she could speak to me privately for a moment. We took it in the kitchen. The loft would have been a lot more private, but it's my bedroom, so that might have seemed a little weird.

I leaned back on the counter, and she came within one step of me. I could smell her perfume and her shampoo. Please don't let this hurt, I was thinking.

“How can you not like Leonard?” I said. I thought it was brave of me to just come out with that.

“I do like Leonard. Of course I like Leonard. He's a great kid. How could anybody possibly not like him?”

“That's what
I
wanted to know.”

She glanced over her shoulder to the open kitchen doorway. “Do they know enough not to come in here?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

And she walked right in and put her arms around me. Rested her head on my shoulder. I held her in return, strangely aware of my hands on her back. Strangely aware of my breathing. I worked at swallowing but it wasn't the usual piece of cake. I actually had to work at it.

After a while she lifted her head and pressed her cheek against mine. It put us nearly ear to ear. “I don't want it to be over,” she whispered.

I tried to say something back, but it was all such a jumble inside me. Trying to find one single thing to say was like trying to unwind fifty feet of tangled rope without any backtracking or hesitation.

“I can't go back to the way it was before I met you,” she said. “I can't. I need this.”

I tried to pull my head back, to look at her, but she stopped me. Stopped me with one hand on the back of my head. “No,” she said. “Please. It's hard for me to say things like this. So don't say anything and don't look at me, okay?”

A moment of silence which must have passed as my assent. It had to. I wasn't allowed to say anything. Her body, pressed up against me like that, was driving me insane. Not even so much a sexual thing; there was too much on the line for that. It just drove me to get even closer, like I could climb inside her skin and lose this damn separateness that threatened to implode me.

“I've been behaving like a spoiled child,” she said. “And I just hope you can forgive me. I still think you don't know what you're getting into, but it's your business. I reacted the way I did because…” Breathe, Mitch. Swallow. Don't say anything. “I guess I was enjoying being everything in the world to you. Don't even say it. Don't even tell me how selfish and unreasonable that is. I know. I'm sorry.” A long moment of her breath against my ear. Then she said, “You're not saying anything.”

“You told me not to.”

“Oh, that's right. Well, say something.”

But that was harder than it sounded.

I wanted to say, Well, you're human. Imagine that. I wanted to say, How incredibly wonderful that you were jealous. I wanted to say, You're back, nothing else matters. I wanted to say, My God, you actually told me something real.

But I never got the chance. Just then we heard Cahill's voice bellow in from the front room. I had never heard Cahill say anything so loud.

“Hey! Marty!” he shouted. He sounded like he might have learned the voice from Harry. “Marty Broad! How ya doin', Marty?”

Barb jumped back a step and I let my hands fall.

I heard Marty say, “Uh…I'm fine.” Obviously confused by Cahill's enthusiasm. As anyone would be. Anyone who knew Cahill knew he had no enthusiasm.

I looked up, and Leonard was standing in the kitchen watching us. I thought about all the things he might possibly say in front of Marty.

I made a mental note to have a serious talk with the kid.

LEONARD,
age
5:
what love isn't

Later that evening, when everybody was gone, Mitch said he wanted to talk to me. It sounded kind of serious.

“Yuh,” I said. “Okay.”

“It's very important,” he said, “that you never talk to anybody about Barb. About seeing her over here, about anything that you might see while she's here. You must never tell anybody that she's here at night. Especially never say anything in front of Harry or Marty or anybody from Harry's office, but I think the best way to not make a mistake with that is to not say anything to anybody at all.”

“Cahill and Hannah and Graff already know,” I said.

“Yeah, they do. But they know better than to say the wrong thing to the wrong person. And I just want to make sure that you do, too. Do you understand?”

“No,” I said. “But I won't say anything.”

“What don't you understand?”

Why would love be a secret? That's what I didn't understand. It was pretty confusing. But I didn't really want Mitch to explain it to me. I didn't really want to talk about this anymore.

All I asked was, “Is it wrong?”

He breathed a lot, and didn't answer for a minute. “I'm not sure how to explain this,” he said. “They would think it's wrong.”

“Who?”

“I don't know. Anybody.”

“But it's not?”

“It's complicated,” he said. “Maybe somebody could even get hurt. But I can't say I think it's wrong.”

“But everybody else would.”

“Some would,” he said. “But you won't know who would and who wouldn't until it's too late.”

I thought maybe if almost everybody else thought something different than me, I might think they were right and I was wrong.

“Someday when you get older, you'll understand,” he said. “For now, I'd appreciate it if you'd just go with me on this.”

“Yuh,” I said. “Sure, Mitch.”

I wasn't looking forward to talking to anybody about anything so confusing ever again.

LEONARD,
age
17
:
what love isn't

I still remember my first lesson about love. Not forever love, but the other kind, the kind people use every day. The kind that only works with grown-ups. The kind that always seems to self-destruct after a while.

Really it's the opposite of forever love when you think about it. It's more like a time bomb, and the only real question is how the clock is set. How long it will tick before the explosion.

I walked into the kitchen one morning while Barb was in there with Mitch. I knew she was in there, too, and I think that's why I walked in. She had just come back, after that time when I'm pretty sure Mitch thought maybe she never would.

In one way I knew they wanted to be alone in there, but in another way I could feel their intensity rolling out of the kitchen like waves. I could smell it, the way something heating on the stove sends its good smells out to the people in the living room, and makes them want to come and get it.

I just had to go in.

Mitch was leaned back on the counter, and she had her arms around him, and her head on his shoulder, and they both had their eyes squeezed shut. Then she picked up her head and put it near his, so their faces were touching all along one side.

I knew they were saying quiet things to each other, but they must have been really quiet, because my sense of hearing is great.

I could see his hands on her back, and there was something hungry about them.

I couldn't stop watching, and I couldn't stop wondering, if this is love, why does it look like it hurts?

But it really looked like love, to the point where I couldn't imagine what else it could be. It was so intense. I figured it was just a kind of love I'd never seen before. So I waited to see Pearl in it, but she wasn't there.

Funny, I thought. They both seemed so sure. Just for a minute even I got fooled. But it was not the real deal. It had failed the simple test.

Then Marty came, and Cahill said his name real loud from the other room, and they jumped apart like they'd been caught doing something wrong. So, right there it failed another basic test. How could love be something wrong? Why would you need to make sure anybody didn't see it?

Then Mitch looked up and saw that I was standing there. And even though I could see that he minded me less than he minded Marty, he seemed uncomfortable.

It was all very confusing at the time.

Years later I developed the simplest litmus test of all. And found the simplest possible way to communicate it. If it takes you apart, that's not love. Love puts you back together.

Eventually I even shared this theory with Mitch, though of course I approached the whole topic as reverently and sensitively as possible.

But, predictably, he had no more understanding of my theory than he might have if I'd explained it all in Latin.