This Is Between Us (12 page)

…

I liked the idea of a third child. It would be a combination of the two of us. But I wondered if the very idea of our own child would damage the other kids. It might create a sense of half-ness that they wouldn’t have known before. They might feel like the separate halves. The lost halves.

…

You had a dream that I was a bright-green spider about the size of a tennis ball. You usually hate spiders, but you said I looked too exotic to kill, so you slid me onto a morning newspaper and took me to the back porch. You set me down in a sunny spot, and I crawled away from you slowly, sometimes stopping and looking behind me.

You almost wanted to crush me, but you said there would be too much blood. Too much of a
crunch
sound and gross green fluid.

You said I went to the edge of the lawn and parted the blades of grass like curtains. Your eyes hovered after me, following me like helicopters. You said you woke up missing me.

…

There was a woman named Joan I dated twice. She bored me by constantly trying to be funny. I laughed only to humor her, and because she was desirable. We came close to having sex but didn’t. A couple of months later, she emailed me and told me I was boring. She said I had the strained expression of someone who wanted to kill himself but couldn’t gather the courage. She said I was a threat to her happiness.

…

I saw your brother, Daniel, walking on Hawthorne Boulevard and I crossed the street to avoid him. I wasn’t sure how he felt about our situation and I didn’t want a confrontation.

Maybe this moment of fear grew out of something that happened to me when I was twenty and a girl I had just broken up with sent her brother to my place to beat me up. The girl’s brother was smaller than I was but he still managed to punch me several times before I could fight him off.

I went into a vintage clothing store and looked at shoes for ten minutes until I thought it was probably safe to leave, but as I was getting ready to leave, I saw Daniel walking in. I hid behind a rack of belts. I watched Daniel looking at suit jackets and then I saw him take out his phone and text someone. He was frowning as he did so. I wondered if he was texting you. I wondered if maybe you would walk in soon. This was during a bad week for us, when we were trying to avoid each other.

I waited for Daniel to turn around so I could sneak out. He picked up a jacket and walked to a mirror to try it on. I walked toward the door and glanced over to see him. It looked like he was posing in the mirror, hands on his hips, one knee bent, chin up. He saw me in the mirror but didn’t turn around. I stopped for some reason and waved halfheartedly at him, like I’d been caught. He relaxed his pose and smiled. He winked.

I left without saying a word.

…

I wanted to call you when I was crying, so you could hear it. I knew it would be selfish, but I wanted you to have some of the pain.

Some days, when we were with each other and we were crying together, it almost felt good. Like we were making love again.

If the day comes when you can’t make me cry, it means I’ve been worn out too much—too many highs and lows might eventually turn me numb. No more tears will mean I don’t love you anymore.

…

I wanted to see how long I could go without texting or calling you. It was like seeing how long I could hold my breath underwater. It made my neck tense and my shoulders scrunch. My body coil up.

When I had to interact with people at the hotel, I didn’t smile so much. I bit the inside of my cheek and hoped my face formed a pleasant shape.

…

You said you only smoke cigarettes after sex. I saw you in your car with a guy I thought was your cousin, stopped at a red light, exhaling smoke.

…

Sometimes, when you were upset, I’d be afraid to ask what I could do. You sometimes snapped at me and said, “If you really loved me, you’d know what to do.”

I’ve always thought this was an unfair belief. Some kind of theory that has never been scientifically proven. Because I do really love you, and I still never know what to do.

…

We saw each other at a housewarming party when we were separated. Our friends became tense, like we were going to get in a fight right there in front of the chips and salsa and baby carrots. But we just smiled at each other and stayed civil. was a grown-up party, with soft music, button-up shirts, and children sleeping upstairs.

Your friends swarmed around you, like they wanted to hustle you out of there. You held your hands up to them, as if to say,
Calm down. I’m okay
.

My friends, many of them mutual friends of ours, didn’t swarm me, but they did move closer. They looked at me, subtle and sideways. Then they looked at you, grimacing. Then they looked at me again. They were trying to translate what was happening in the air between us.

We were there for most of the night but didn’t speak to each other. It was like that game we played sometimes, where we put our faces as close together as possible without actually kissing (we called it “movie kiss”). You looked good—a little different, somehow. I wondered if you felt different too. I looked the same as I always do. People started to leave, but we stayed. My hands began to sweat, but my head felt good, a slight buzz giving me a new social confidence.

Around midnight, one of the hosts, a new mom named Maureen, went upstairs and returned minutes later with her six-month-old boy. “Look who woke up for the party,” she said. The baby looked wide awake. His sea-blue eyes were the brightest thing in the room, and his mouth bent into a smirking half-smile. He lapped up some fawning affection from the remaining party guests and then turned his attention to his mother’s blouse. He grabbed at her buttons and bra.

The last few friends said their rushed good nights, leaving you and me as the final stragglers. The husband of the house said he wanted to give us some of the leftover desserts. “To bring home to your kids,” he said. We stood there, still without a word between us, waiting for him to Tupperware the cake and pie. We saw Maureen sit down and lower her bra strap, then we turned away shyly.

“Look how hungry he is,” Maureen said. She was inviting us to look, so we turned and watched. I stared at the baby’s small mouth, the cheeks sucking in and out. I noticed his eyes slowly closing in peace and Maureen’s eyes following suit. “He’s been partial to the left one,” she said with a quick laugh. “I think it’s sweeter on that side.”

We watched the baby feed for a few more minutes, and then the husband came out of the kitchen with our take-home treats in one container. He stood next to us, happy and tired. I let my right hand open up and float closer to yours. You reached out and grabbed it. We held hands until we got outside. We still didn’t say a word, but we smiled before we let go and got into our cars.

…

I saw you out with someone else, and for some reason it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it might. He was taller than me, but slouched and thinner. His glasses were sleek and expensive-looking. I came to some unexpected realization that it would be okay if we weren’t together for a while, even if that “while” became permanent. I somehow thought—and maybe even felt—that we would do what was best for both of us. What was best for the kids was still a mystery.

But then I went to your new apartment and spent a couple of uncomfortable hours talking to you. We had trouble verbalizing what we wanted in our lives, as if the bridge between us was already burned.

Then, before I left, we hugged, and you held on to me longer than I expected. You made some soft, breathy sounds, and I couldn’t help but get hard. It had been almost three months since we touched. You started to kiss me and we walked instinctively—me forward, you backward—our mouths still stuck together, into your bedroom. We took our clothes off quickly, before I remembered the person I had seen you with. I wasn’t sure if this was a new guy you were dating or even if you’d had sex with him, but I started to imagine you with him, even as I went down on you. I thought, at that moment, that’s what we both wanted—for a third party to rewire our circuits, to lessen the pressure of our overflow. I wanted to see you suck another man’s cock, your head turned to the side, his belly against your forehead. I would slide inside you and fuck you hard enough to watch your tits bounce.

It was the first time I had thought about you as something less than a lover. Or maybe more than a lover.

…

“I like how memories work,” I said.

“I don’t,” you said. “It’s annoying. Everything reminds me of you.”

We were talking on the phone, trying to pretend we weren’t hashing things out.

“I listen to Mazzy Star and it reminds me of you,” I said.

“I don’t like it,” you said.

“You don’t like Mazzy Star?”

“No. I mean I don’t like that it reminds me of you. And that movie. And that book. And that ice cream place. And this shirt. Even my fucking car reminds me of you.”

“Your car?” I asked.

“Yes, my car. No matter what I’m doing.”

“Go on a road trip with someone else, then,” I said.

“I can’t transfer memories off to someone else,” you said.

There was a long pause.

“You got to do all that stuff first with me,” you said. “You got here first.”

…

There was a night when I wanted to see you but you weren’t answering your phone. I drove by the library to see if you were working. I sat in my car, in the parking lot across the street. I was parked next to a big truck, partially obscured so you might not see me when you came out. Your car was parked just down the street. When I drove by it, I was tempted to stop for a moment and peek into it, just to see what was inside. Maybe I’d see a book or
CD
or something that would signal how you were feeling lately.

The library had just closed and it was getting dark outside and I had my engine off. My radio was on at low volume, playing some sad new folk band’s song. I just wanted to see you walk out to your car, see what you were wearing, maybe listen to you talk to a coworker, say good night the way you say good night (“g’night”). I waited for twenty minutes and you hadn’t come out. The small parking lot I was in was next to some kind of medical building. There was a dumpster off to my left and I saw a group of rats scurrying around. They were tearing apart a white garbage bag of something. They were making a mess. If I had had a gun or a slingshot I could have shot them. I could have done some damage. But they didn’t even know I was there.

I waited another ten minutes and saw two other library employees leave but not you. I turned my car on and eased out of the parking lot with my headlights off. The rats stopped what they were doing and sat staring at me. I rolled my window down about halfway and gave the one with the biggest chunk of bag a nod, as if to say,
It’s cool, man. This will be our little secret
.

I took a wide, slow, mulling route through the next neighborhood and then drove by the library again to see that your car was gone. I wondered if you had seen me parked there and made your escape after I left. I pulled back into the parking lot for some reason—maybe to see what the rats were doing. They weren’t around anymore either. I made little kissy sounds out the window, like I was trying to call them back. “Where did everyone go?” I heard myself say.

…

When we lived together—when we fell asleep and woke up together in
our
bed—we made love. That’s what we called it.

When we found ourselves apart, it turned into something different. An uncertainty and desperation strangled us like a choke chain. We had to settle for just fucking. There was no sleeping and no waking up. No beginning and no ending. We tried to work our way out of the middle of our mess.

…

It felt so strange to be in the apartment with just Vince. And when he was at his mom’s, it was just me. There were days when I felt an exciting sense of freedom that I hadn’t felt in years. I tried to remember the last time I wasn’t in a relationship or living with someone. Maybe when I was twenty-one.

I had a dream one night that I was on an inner tube attached to a big boat by a long rope. Everyone on the boat was having a good time but would sometimes look out to the water and frown in my direction. Eventually, the rope became untied and I drifted off by myself. I looked around and saw no sign of land.

“Hey, Dad,” Vince called to me from his room one day. It was a Friday, but there was no school. “What are we going to do today?” he asked me.

I didn’t know how to answer. My mind could not lock onto anything. Then I noticed that he still had a photograph of him and Maxine on his dresser. They were sitting on a Ferris wheel, holding hands. My heart squeezed tight in my chest. “I’m sorry, Vince,” I said. I started to cry and sat on his bed. I put my hand on his leg. “I’m so sorry,” I said softly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m screwing things up.”

We sat like that for a while and I started to wonder if crying in front of your son was a bonding experience or a traumatic one. I was on the verge of hyperventilating. He was looking down at my hand on his leg. “It’s okay,” he said. “Things will turn out,” he said.

I wasn’t sure where he’d heard that expression before. Maybe from me. We plopped back on his bed and lay side by side. “Let’s just rest for a moment,” I said. “Let’s look at your ceiling together.”