Five Things I Can't Live Without (19 page)

I flushed the toilet and returned to bed.

“Are you okay?” Dan asked. “Is your stomach bothering you?” He must have inferred that from my flight.

“A little.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Come here.” He enveloped me in his arms and stroked my hair. “I could go buy you some ginger ale.”

“That’s sweet. But I’ll be okay.” I laughed and pulled him tighter. “You’re the only person I know who believes completely in the healing power of ginger ale.”

“Well, you’re the only person I know who completely underestimates the power of ginger ale. So there.” He kissed my neck. “I was thinking that we should take a little drive this weekend, maybe go up to wine country. What do you think?”

“I’d like that. But who’s driving home?” I added teasingly.

“Whoever does less drinking.”

“That’s probably a bad setup.”

“We could stay overnight in a bed-and-breakfast,” Dan suggested.

This was my first indication that maybe he thought we were in a rut, too. I seized on it and immediately began brainstorming. “Most of the good places in wine country are booked up way in advance, and have a two-night minimum on weekends. We could try to stay in one that’s a little less chichi. I could look up some places on the Internet and—”

“That sounds like a pain in the ass. Let’s just do something else then. Drive along the coast or something.”

His immediate dismissal of the idea at the first impediment made me wonder if I’d read him wrong initially. Maybe he thought everything was fine, that this was the normal course of a relationship. Maybe it was.

“That sounds really nice,” I said, squeezing his arm. “Let’s do that.”

“Yeah. Let’s do that.” His voice was drowsy. “Good night.” With one final hug, he rolled away and went to sleep.

I noted that he hadn’t tried again to have sex. But I told myself things were fine. It was all perfectly normal. We were just your average tired, normal couple. Except that Dan was, once again, the only one sleeping.

“Why didn’t Dan want to come to this? It seemed like it’d be right up his alley,” Larissa said loudly into my ear, trying to override the cacophony of the bar.

“The whole thing’s just too close to his bookbar idea,” I answered. “He prefers to pretend it’s not happening.”

“He’d better move on that idea soon. Anyone in here might get to it first.” Larissa rotated her straw, then took a sip of her drink. Her third drink. It was our first bar, and she was already on her third drink.

“What time is the first reader anyway?” I asked. I was getting antsy. I generally didn’t like bars this crowded. Someone kept elbowing me in the back, but by the time I turned around, I couldn’t tell to whom the offending elbow belonged. I felt like a dog chasing her tail.

“Relax.” Was she actually slurring? She looked at her watch. “It was supposed to start five minutes ago.”

“I didn’t expect there to be this many people. I thought they’d all be down the street at the bar with the travel writers.”

Larissa nodded in agreement. “I thought the hipsters would all be at blog writing over at the Irish pub.”

“I guess that’s why we’re not hipsters. We can’t even guess what they’re into.”

“This topic must be so unhip that it’s hip.”

“Oh, right. It’s always coming around again, isn’t it?”

Every year, San Francisco hosted a literary festival that kicked off with a night of readings at staggered times at different bars, all within walking distance. There were at least four readings going on in each time slot, so you had to choose which was most interesting before going on to the next bar an hour later. There were about five slots before last call. Larissa and I had gone together for the past three years. To lessen the hipster intimidation factor and, in her case, increase the chances of picking up a smart guy, we tried to pick the most unpopular events in each slot. So this year, we’d selected “Postmenopausal Writers on the Meaning of Life” for our appetizer. And now here I was with a welt on my back. This city never failed to surprise me.

The crowd was actively quieting; people were shushing and pointing toward the makeshift stage. A woman of about sixty had clambered onto it. She had silver hair pinned up in a bun, and was wearing a long velvet skirt that nearly brushed the floor. “I’m Sonora Watson,” she said, her voice scratchy but warm, like vinyl. There was polite applause, a few scattered whoops. She lowered her head slightly to indicate her humility. Since I didn’t know who she was, the gesture left me with the reverse impression of arrogance. “I must confess, I was surprised to be invited to this gathering tonight. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even know young people were drunkenly stumbling through the streets once a year in the name of literature.” Larissa and I laughed along with the crowd. There was something inviting about Sonora, a magnetism that we were all feeling. Well, we had all been drinking. It was the advantage of reading in a bar. You got a loose audience.

“I’d like to read a piece that I’m not entirely sure is finished,” Sonora continued. “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to tell by your reaction just how much work is left to do. I don’t know how strictly it adheres to tonight’s topic, but here is my inherently flawed, hopefully worthwhile attempt to approach ‘The Meaning of Life.’”

Sonora went on to read a first-person account of a twenty-three-year marriage, with each year allotted one paragraph. Every word of every paragraph was perfectly tuned; there wasn’t a wrong note. I found myself wanting to believe it had been her own marriage, though I reconsidered when the husband died midway through the final year. That last paragraph contained the narrator’s remembrance of her husband’s wedding vow, when he swore that he’d never be afraid to let her change him, especially if it was for the better.

The crowd froze for a few seconds after she had finished, as if she had asked for a moment of silence. Then we exploded into applause. She stood in the spotlight with what appeared to be tears in her eyes, repeating her earlier head bow. I tore through the literary festival program to see her bio. Each participant in the festival wrote their own. Hers said, “Sonora Watson is a retired psychotherapist living in Napa, California. Her first story, ‘The Stanislavski Method,’ was published in a literary jou

rnal she’s sure you’ve never heard of.”

“She’s a therapist,” I hissed.

“Go to her!” Larissa said passionately. She said it as if this were the penultimate scene of a romantic comedy, and I had to catch Sonora at the airport before she left me forever.

“She’s retired,” I said, realizing how disappointed I was.

“How beautiful was that?” Larissa sighed.

The next speaker was taking the stage, and she and Sonora briefly embraced. The woman said something into Sonora’s ear that could only have been praise, and then Sonora stepped down from the dais. As she tried to move through the crowd, she was waylaid by audience member after audience member. I had never seen so many people simultaneously moved by a performance.

“I want to talk to her, but what would I say?” I asked Larissa. I monitored Sonora’s progress with a sidelong glance. Within minutes, she might be right next to me and that would be my only chance. I needed to think quickly.

“I don’t know. I guess tell her how much you liked her writing?”

“Everyone’s already telling her that,” I said, almost in despair.

“Well, what are you trying to get from her?” Larissa’s question was surprisingly cogent for someone who’d just polished off her third drink in under an hour.

“I want her to come out of retirement and help me.” I didn’t really mean that, except that I did.

“Do you think that’s realistic?” Now, that question was the caliber I’d been expecting.

“Of course I don’t think it’s realistic.”

“You keep thinking. I need to find the restroom.” She tottered away on her three-inch heels.

I wasn’t even listening to the reader onstage. I was staring at Sonora. She was talking to three twenty-something women. Or were they in their early thirties? And actually, Sonora wasn’t saying anything. She was just listening. They seemed to be bombarding her.
We’re all looking for the secret
.

Suddenly Larissa was back and grabbing at my arm. “We need to leave,” she said, panicked. “Right now.”

“Why?”

“Dustin’s here. And he’s with someone.” She was on the verge of tears. “And she’s really, really cute.”

“Did he see you?”

“No. That’s why we need to get out now. I can’t talk to him. I’m a mess. I don’t want him to know I’m a mess.” Tears were streaming down her face.

“Are you sure that he’s
really
with her, that they’re not just friends?”

“She’s hanging all over him. And I didn’t even get to pee!” she wailed. “I got out of line when I saw them.”

“Let’s go then,” I said resignedly. “We’ll catch the end of travel writing, or at least use the bathroom.” I took her arm and we fought our way out the door. I cast a last, sad look back at Sonora, who was being accosted by yet another animated female. It was just as well. I still hadn’t found anything to say. I’d once seen Bono in a restaurant and had the same problem. I knew I couldn’t just go up and expect him to say something brilliant; I’d have to say something first that would inspire brilliance. I had to make them
want
to be brilliant for me. I didn’t end up talking to Bono, either.

I tried to comfort Larissa as I led her to the next bar and it seemed to be working. But when we were almost at the door, she shrank back in terror. “I can’t go in there,” she said, shaking her head frantically.

“We don’t have to stay. Let’s just use the bathroom, and then we’ll go home.” I made my voice as dulcet as possible.

“What if Kevin’s in there, with his wife? Or Sean, with his fiancee? Or Phillip, with his wife? What if I just keep seeing them?” She leaned against the front of the Laundromat next door. The elderly Asian woman inside looked out at us curiously, then resumed her folding.

“Your exes won’t be there. Especially not Phillip. I bet he’s illiterate.”

Larissa started out laughing, but then she was crying. “I bet Dustin’s engaged to that girl. I bet they were standing there listening to that story and thinking that would be them in twenty-three years.” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat. “Except for the cancer part.”

“I’m sure he’s not engaged. He was just on a date. You’ve had dates since you two broke up.”

“What does that matter? I’m never getting married, Nora. I’m never going to have the meaning of life.” She sank down to the ground, her back pressed against the glass.

I sat down next to her. I could smell fabric softener. “First of all, that’s not true. But second of all, who says that’s the meaning of life? It was a beautiful story, but if you actually think about it, it’s kind of hokey.”

“There’s nothing hokey about loving someone with all your heart and having them love you the same way.” Larissa looked offended that I would ever suggest otherwise. But at least she stopped crying. “And that’s the thing, Nora.” She welled up again. “That’s not how anyone has ever loved me. That’s why they leave me. And then as soon as they do, they meet the love of their life. It’s happened again and again and again. They break up with me, and a few months later, they’re engaged. A few months after that, they’re married. The year after he broke up with me, Kevin’s wife was having a baby. I’m everyone’s good-luck charm, but mine.”

I didn’t know what to say or do as she sobbed. I hurt for her, but her accounting of history was accurate. It wasn’t impossible that Dustin really was engaged to the girl at the bar. When he left Larissa, he told her he’d been “mentally gone” for over a year; he just hadn’t ended things because he thought it would destroy her. I was furious when I heard that, furious at his egotism and furious that he would actually tell her that. But Larissa said that she’d kept at him for hours, trying to remind him of all that they’d had so that he’d change his mind. She came to believe that in his own way, Dustin had been doing her a kindness by telling her that. He was helping her give up hope.

She was right, though. There was nothing hokey about a great love to span a lifetime. In Sonora’s story, years three, seven, twelve, and (obviously) twenty-three had been painful. Some years had been boring. But put them all together, and it was a life of great love. That was how it was done. I thought of Dan, and his offer to get me ginger ale. I was in love with him. That was never the question.

The previously empty sidewalk was now jammed with people shuffling to their next literary event. I held Larissa as they streamed by.

Chapter 13