Charmed Thirds (29 page)

Henry, now all of seven years old, treasured this photo more than anything else, more than his trick yo-yo, his Lionel train set, his Babe Ruth baseball card. He pinned it to the wall above his bed. Every night, he knelt on the floor and spoke to her like he was supposed to be speaking to God. “I love you, Lulu” were, for a long time, the last words he whispered before falling asleep.

Years passed and both Henry and Lulu grew older. Lulu’s Hollywood career was curtailed by the emergence of the talkies, as they cruelly exposed that she had a rather strident, nasally voice that was unpleasing to the ears. Her popularity quickly waned, and by the mid-1930s, she could no longer be found onscreen or in the pages of any magazines.

Henry wasn’t so fickle. In fact, Lulu’s absence only made his ardor grow stronger. Her picture stayed on his wall all throughout his childhood and adolescence. It became a sort of curio among his family and friends, a relic from a bygone era, a conversation piece. But to Henry, it meant so much more. It meant hope and wonder. And so, it was one of the few personal items he took with him when he was deployed to the South Pacific during World War II. Other guys could have their Betty Grables and Rita Hayworths—for Henry, it was all about Lulu Livingstone. And he took the photo with him to New York City when he enrolled at Columbia University, courtesy of the GI bill. And it was with him even when he met, married, and moved in with Barnard College student Edna Goldblatt. Edna, a sturdy, wide-hipped blonde who looked nothing like Lulu, made light of her husband’s adoration, and even had the old 8 × 10 framed. Throughout their fifty-seven-year marriage, until her death from ovarian cancer at age seventy-nine, Edna cheekily referred to the woman in the photo as her husband’s “girlfriend.”

After Edna’s death, Henry had no desire to stay in their sprawling house on Long Island. So he moved into an assisted-living community in Morningside Heights near his oldest daughter, who happened to be a professor at his alma mater. There, as one of the healthier, more mobile men in the community, Henry kept his own room and a number of fawning old biddies at bay. In that apartment, among numerous photos of his adored wife, four children, eleven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, was that old 8 × 10 glossy of Lulu Livingstone. It was badly faded after all these years, the message only legible to those who already knew what it said. But Henry gave it a special place away from all the rest, on the kitchenette counter next to his heart pills.

One day, about a month into his new residence, Henry didn’t make it to breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Concerned, one of the on-call nurses, Dora, came by his room to see if he was okay, or more specifically, still alive. Henry was still indeed breathing, feeling fine, but had decided to make his meals for himself that day because he wasn’t in the mood to fend off the advances of the lusty ladies in the dining room. On the way out of his apartment, Dora spotted the picture of Lulu on the counter and stopped in her tracks. She’d seen this photo before in one of the other residents’ rooms. Had Henry, she asked, ever met a woman named Lucille Greene?

Her hair was brittle and white. Her skin was mottled with spots. Her bosom had shrunk, her neck hung loose. Her lips were concealed by an oxygen mask. But her eyes, oh, her eyes were unchanged, still radiant with hope and wonder, despite being confined to the bed.

Just one look and Henry knew that this old woman was Lulu Livingstone.

For the next two months, Henry visited Lulu every day. He wheeled her around the halls, cut up her food, changed the channels, read books, played music, kept silent company while she slept. But most important, he entertained her with stories about his life. After a few weeks, Henry felt brave enough to show her the cherished photo and Lulu blushed with coy embarrassment over his devotion. It was that afternoon he also mustered the courage to say, “I love you, Lulu,” as he had so many times before, alone in the dark. But this was the first time those worshipped lips responded in kind. “And I love you, Henry.”

They talked of marriage, but only in the abstract way one talks about things that will never come to fruition. They both knew what would come next, but never talked about it, choosing instead to spend their limited time together in happiness. And they did, until the morning that Lulu Livingstone died in Henry McGlinchy’s arms, barely two months after they had finally met, and eighty years after Henry had first pledged his love.

When he was done with his story, all of us, Henry, Bastian, and I, had lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes. Finally, after a few moments of reverential silence, this ornery old man took off his crumpled hat, held it to his heart, and spoke.

“Love,” he said, “has the longest arms.” And then he walked downtown.

My tears turned to sobs. Heavy, heaving, heaping sobs. I wish I could say it was because I was so moved by this man and the certainty with which he pursued this pure, devoted love, but I’d be lying.

Henry and Lulu made me start thinking about my grandmother Gladdie and Moe, her “beau” from the nursing home where she spent the last year of her life. They too met and fell in love in their nineties after a lifetime spent with someone else. Were they fortunate enough to find true love twice? Or were Henry and Lulu, Gladdie and Moe, passing the decades with someone merely good enough before they found the brief but true love they were always meant to have? I’ll never know the answer. Even if I had been brave enough to ask Moe, he died less than six months after my grandmother. Both Gladdie and Moe are buried next to their spouses, separated for eternity.

Love may have the longest arms, but it can still fall short of an embrace. So I wasn’t crying for Henry and Lulu. I was crying for Marcus and me.

And that’s when I decided to fuck Bastian.

“I want to go to your place,” I said, wondering if Bastian could read my real message.

“Let’s go now,” Bastian said in a tone that let me know he knew exactly what I had in mind.

Despite the sidewalk-scorching heat, we ran the ten blocks to his apartment, lugging our beach chairs and camcorder and
TELL
US A
STORY
board the whole way. When we first took off, I felt reckless and romantic.
I’m going to fuck Bastian! I’m going to fuck Bastian!
But sprinting past mountains of wilting garbage and hurdling curdled rain puddles did little to enhance the mood. By the time we trudged up the five stifling flights to his front door we were both dripping in a manner that is sexy in the movies, but rank in real life. Bastian’s shirt was translucent with sweat, sticking to clumps of chest hair in a way that was more vile than virile. And he smelled . . . meaty. Like chorizo.

I don’t think I presented such an olfactory offense to Bastian, however, as he practically attacked me as soon as we shut the door behind us. I instinctively swerved away.

“I’m sorry!” we both said.

“I just feel so . . . gross right now,” I said as I stretched out the front of my T-shirt to fan myself. “Can I use your bathroom to, you know, freshen up?”

“Of course! No problems!” These were the words he spoke, but his contracted center frontralis said otherwise.

As I made my way to the bathroom, I noted that Bastian’s apartment was not unlike other grad students’ apartments: dark, cramped, and crammed with thick, academic books. I noticed that there were framed photos throughout, but I made a concerted effort not to take a closer look. His wife and kids were visiting family back home in Spain. I needed to revert to my dream scenario in which they didn’t exist anymore and I didn’t want photographic evidence to the contrary.

I slipped inside the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water on my face and neck and what would be called my décolletage if I had any. I examined my face in the mirror. I looked greener than usual, the effect of fluorescent lighting and nausea. The longer I stood in that bathroom, the less I was sure that I ever wanted to come out.

“Would you like some chilled wine?” Bastian shouted.

Wine is such a
mature
drink. Bastian would never offer me a Monkeyfucker.

“Sure!” I called back.

But I wasn’t sure of anything. I sat down on the toilet and made up one deal-breaking absurdity after another.
If I were meant to fuck Bastian, why would I have nasty stubble on my legs? Why would he have one of these horrible fuzzy toilet-bowl covers that give me that ick feeling? Why would I have had garlic knots for lunch?

“Bella,”
he said, right outside the door. “I’m waiting for you . . .”

And then I saw it. My sign. The one that told me what I already knew: Dexy was right. I’m not the type who can sleep with married men.

If I were really meant to fuck Bastian, why would his two-year-old’s rubber ducky be perched in plain sight on the edge of this grimy, soap-scummy bathtub?

NO! NO! NO! Seeing that indisputable sign of his real life, I knew that the fantasy of fucking Bastian would be far better than the reality. All summer I had succeeded in stripping him of any real identity other than the foreign lothario porno stereotype I’d first created for him. But Bastian wasn’t just an oversexed, misunderstood man who needed me to emancipate him from his loveless marriage, he was an actual person. Except I had no idea who that person was because I never bothered to find out.

“Lo siento mucho!”
was all I could say as I pushed past him and out the door.

the thirtieth

I stuck my key in the mailbox lock and twisted until it clicked. I reached in and picked up the black-and-white postcard inside. On it, a couple crashed into a passionate embrace. My mouth went mothbally, my stomach spun, and sour sweat arose from my fevered skin. My brain buzzed with bits and pieces of poetry:
soul disease heavenly happenstance rare creation furious flutter hummingbird heart hello hello . . .

And intuitively, I knew the word that would be written in his hand before I actually read it. The word that would tell me why I can’t let go. The word that made me discover the bittersweet truth about our relationship for the very first time:

With Marcus, I’m clinging to what might have been. And not what was.

December 15th

Dear Marcus,

LOVE
.

All semester you had me wondering, waiting, watching the mailbox. Could you have chosen a more compelling word? What better way to keep me wanting more?

I
WISH
OUR
LOVE
. . .

You wish our
LOVE
what?
What would the next word be? What would the next postcard bring? Oh, sweet mystery. It was the perfect cliffhanger, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.

That said, I feel obliged to express my disappointment over the holiday message I received today:
WAS
. So now I’ve got: I
WISH
OUR
LOVE
WAS
. This pretty much puts me where
LOVE
left me four months ago.

Which is nowhere at all.

Are you losing your touch?

How long do you plan on sending these postcards anyway? Months? Years? How long will this go on?

And what makes you think that I’ll still be waiting for the answer?

Respectfully,
 J.

the twentieth

There is only one thing worse than walking in on two people having sex.

Walking in on two people having sex and having those two people be
YOUR
PARENTS
.

Even more harrowing is walking in on your parents when they don’t even have the decency to be doing it in some totally boring position but one that is way more porno than parental and on the couch in the living room instead of under the sheets, in their bed, in their room, in the dark, where sex among the dimply of butt and bald of head belongs.

The only response to such a sight?

“AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

And the slam of the front door.

I stood on the front steps and contemplated my next move. Should I stare into the sun until my retinas sizzle? Or play dead in a snowbank and wait for the crows to pluck out my eyeballs? I could always stab myself in the corneas with an icicle hanging from the portico . . .

Of course, these solutions weren’t solutions at all. I could destroy my vision, but I could never blind my mind’s eye. The memory of what I had just seen (and heard!
shudder!)
would surely stay with me until the day I died. Oh yes. Let’s just bypass the obvious, Freudian ways in which it would show up unannounced—BAM!—and ruin all my future sexual activities. It will most certainly pop up when it’s most unexpected and inappropriate, like when I’m contemplating the long-term impact of right-wing appointments to the Supreme Court, just to remind me that it—BAM!—is still here. Years might go by, and I might be on the verge of not even remembering that I had been witness to such horror and—BAM!—the memory will surely come back in all its shame.

Then I had a thought: Maybe I was at the wrong house!

I’m still getting used to my parents’ condo on the bay in the appropriately named Bayside section of Pineville. Yes, Pineville. You would think that with all this talk about following one’s dreams, it might have led my mother further afield. But no, it brought her just five minutes away from their old house in Pineville, albeit in a decidedly higher tax bracket because many Manhattan commuters are buying in this area, one of the last underdeveloped waterfronts in the state.

They bought something called the Belize Royale model, which I thought was just about the most ridiculous sounding thing ever, especially when I found out that the only thing that makes it different from the regular old Belize model is an extra half bath (which prompted my dad and me to joke about “taking a Royale,” which my mother did not think was at all funny). The inside looks exactly like every other condo I’ve ever been in: white walls, hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances. Everything so new and so . . . cold. Obviously, I have another reason for not getting too excited about the place: I associate it with the education my parents aren’t paying for. That Jacuzzi tub? Six credits! Those marble countertops? Nine credits! The vaulted ceiling upgrade? Twelve credits!