“Yeah, I remember that. Now he’s your boyfriend?”
“I think so, yes, but I’m not sure for how long.”
“Honey, why didn’t you tell me? That’s so great for you to be seeing someone. I mean, obviously not if he’s a schmuck. But still, good for you! Why the secrecy?”
“Gill, c’mon, we talk so rarely, and by the time I get home from the store I just want to collapse, sending long e-mails about boys seems like the last thing on my mind.”
“I know, I know, mea culpa. I’m a terrible sister, I never write, I never call, I don’t make you a priority, but I love you and of course I want to know that there is a boy. Yay you. So now fill me in, bullet point it for me.”
Gilly and I have gotten good at bullet points, both in e-mail and on the phone. Actually our relationship has always been, in many ways, bullet pointed—small concise bits of time, specific tasks or events, everything at its most fundamental and unadorned. We aren’t excessive with each other, but our love is strong. We don’t need each other generally, but when we do, the need is deep and the response is instantaneous. “We started dating, it’s been great, met his family and love them, sex is fantastic, makes me laugh, makes me feel like me, but we are having our first real fight, and I don’t know if it is something minor or something we’re not going to come back from.”
“I see. So congrats, and I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, kiddo.”
“Blue-ish alert level?”
“I’m at cornflower. I was azure yesterday, and midnight on Tuesday, but I’m hoping to downgrade to sky later tonight when I see him for dinner.”
“Okay, so I don’t need to hop a plane to kick his ass and make you pie?”
And this is what I love about Gillian. Because if I said yes, she would pay through the nose for the next flight out, and be here before the day is through. And somehow, for whatever else our relationship is, this is what makes it special and important. “I’m okay. We’re grownups, we’ve had time to cool off. He called yesterday to apologize and sent a lovely bunch of flowers, and I’m assuming that tonight we will both have a chance to express ourselves in a less emotional way and figure out why we both ended up so hurt and upset. I’d always rather you make plans for a real visit, when I’m in a good mood and we can do fun stuff.”
“I know, me too. Tell you what, why don’t I come for Fakesgiving?”
When Gillian first moved abroad, I always wanted her to come home for Thanksgiving, but it is such an awful time to travel anywhere for any reason, and it isn’t like she got the days off from her job in London, so we invented Fakesgiving; we’d pick a weekend when flights are cheap, and I’d make a full Thanksgiving dinner, and we’d watch our DVD of the 1985 Super Bowl when the Monsters of the Midway routed the Patriots, just to have some football on the television while we napped after dinner. We haven’t done it in the last couple of years, and I miss it. I think about all the people I now have in my life, and think about how much fun it would be to do a Fakesgiving with all of them included.
“I would love that. You pick the weekend and I’ll make sure to keep it clear for you.”
“I’ll check my calendar tomorrow with my assistant, and send you some dates. In the meantime, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry your ex is such a complete and total butt munch, and I’m sorry that your boyfriend is behaving badly, and I’m really sorry that I’m not there to get you drunk.”
“Thanks, little girl.”
“Love you, sis. And please, keep me in the loop, I really do want to know everything that’s going on with you, ’kay?”
“Promise. And don’t forget to send me those dates. I want them in red ink on both our calendars.”
“Promise. Bye, honey.”
“Bye.”
Nate is picking me up from the store, and I’ve arranged for Nadia to take my car home. I’m nervous, stomach fluttering, more nervous than I was on our first date, even more nervous than I was the first time we made love. I have very little vocabulary for relationship problems. With my dad gone, my mother took the attitude that she had already had “her husband,” that she had no time or inclination for dating, that me and Gilly and her friends were enough company for her. So I never saw her dating, never watched her work through any sort of relationship difficulties. My own dating life, pre-Andrew, was placid, the men I chose were mild in every way, and I was quick to have the “let’s just be friends” conversation at the slightest sign of potential problems.
Andrew and I never fought. We didn’t bicker, we didn’t rail, we didn’t disagree. I know it seems amazing to think of, people who lived together for nearly eight years before marrying, and stayed married for another nine, but frankly, there was never really much to argue about.
We both made plenty of money and carried no debt beyond car payments and our mortgage, and we lived within our ample means, so there wasn’t any financial tension. We had the same politics, liked the same music, wanted to see the same movies, and we both loved food and sex more than anything. With no real family to speak of, there wasn’t any need for either one of us to get defensive about the behavior of our kin, no need to bicker about how to split up the holidays. We were both neatniks, slightly anal about keeping the house tidy. And though we certainly both had interests the other didn’t share, it never caused tension. Andrew was an avid art collector and I never really understood what moved him about pieces, but he never brought anything home I thought was ugly. And I collected DVDs nearly obsessively, especially classic black-and-whites from the thirties and forties. But while Andrew didn’t know why I had to own them, he liked to watch them with me, and even had special shelves built in the library to house them.
Of course we had the occasional cranky moments, when someone would snap at someone for forgetting to do something or agreeing to a social engagement without checking in with the other one first. He hated the way I drove, aggressive and impatient, and I hated how poky and conservative he was on the road, so any time in the car could be a little bit tense. Occasionally one of us might say something unintentionally hurtful, but when called on it, we both were quick to apologize, to forgive, and to get naked to make it go away. But really, I can’t remember a single major fight, neither of us ever raised a voice to the other or said something mean until the day he told me he was leaving me and confessed to the affair, at which point I unleashed on him all of the fury I possessed.
I have no mental framework for dealing with a problem like this. Today was spent in endless discussion. I had filled in Kai and Nadia and Delia about the fight, and the vote was split. All three agreed that Nate handled the situation badly, considering, and thought he should have saved his ire for later when emotions weren’t so high, especially since he would have had to know I hadn’t intended for him to be hurt. But while Kai and Nadia were both of the mind that he had no reason to be upset, Delia insisted that she fully understood where he was coming from, and thought that even if he dealt with it badly, there was a lot of validity to his feelings.
Then they tried to make me call in to an advice radio show at lunchtime, to talk to a couple of sisters that Nadia says “are like TOTAL relationship gurus,” Kai deems “fierce,” and Delia calls “very Oprah-like, for a couple of white girls.” I’ve heard of them, they are local celebs, and getting some national attention now that they have a television show in the works, and I know that they are very well respected, but I thought that hiding in the office to ask advice from strangers on the radio during the lunch rush seemed silly at best, and if, at forty years old, I can’t find a way to talk openly with my boyfriend about my feelings, then what use am I?
I get ready in the tiny back bathroom, letting my hair out of the tight bun I keep it in when I’m working so that I don’t have to deal with it or worry about it falling in the food, changing out of my chef’s coat and black pants and into the skirt and blouse I’ve brought with me. I throw some mascara on, a little concealer, some blush and lip gloss and figure that if it’s possible I’m headed to a breakup dinner, I’m not getting overly fancy for it.
When I come out of the bathroom, Delia and Nadia are waiting for me.
“You look great!” Nadia says as I hand her my car keys.
“Very lovely.” Delia nods approvingly.
“Thank you both very much for your hard work today, and for all the advice.”
“I’ll hope to not see you at home later,” Nadia says lasciviously.
“Oh, child, really? Is that necessary?” Delia shakes her head, believing that any entendre is unnecessary and vulgar for a woman.
Nadia laughs at Delia’s discomfit, and grabs her in one of her patented attack hugs. “Oh, Mama Bear, loosen up. If they have to have a fight, then at least I can hope that they make up in such a way that requires long hours of the night!”
I didn’t know that it was possible for an African American to blush, but Delia’s color deepens noticeably as she gives herself over to laughing at this elfin child purring like Mae West, her eyebrows performing tricks above eyes that sparkle a little too knowingly. Delia smacks her on the bottom, making her jump.
“Don’t think I won’t take you over my knee for sass, little miss. Get over there and close out that register before you work my last nerve!” Delia winks at me. Nadia feigns subservience, and heads over to run the credit card report.
Delia turns to me and her mouth goes straight. “If he is a good man, then he is worth having, but only you know if he is a good man. Sometimes no man is better than the wrong man. I know you been hurt, I know this is new and hard for you, and I know that now that this man is in your heart it is so easy to just go along to get along. But if he wants you to change, then you might want to think about whether you worked this hard to be who you are just to let some man tell you that who you worked to be isn’t good enough for him. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.”
I look at her impassive face, no different from if she had told me that the beets I ordered were moldy, or that she thinks she has an idea for a black-eyed-pea dish. I look into her eyes, which show the wisdom that only comes from knowing the worst that man is capable of, and all I can do is nod. She smiles softly.
“You are enough for any man, and any man that doesn’t see that, doesn’t really see you.”
I hear a knock at the front door and see Nate’s face in the window.
She pats my shoulder and I head out to meet the man I love, but don’t fully trust.
“So,” Nate says.
“So.”
“I thought it was a good meal. That apple dessert was amazing!”
“Yeah, they do a wonderful job.” We are in the car leaving Prosecco, a fine-dining Italian restaurant where I know the sommelier, and where I am always able to get a delicious and relatively healthy meal.
“I liked your friend. I usually don’t pay that much attention to wine, but everything he picked really enhanced the food, I thought.”
“He’s very talented.” The meal was good, conversation focused on work for both of us, some family updates on his end, current events. Light and easy, but with the obvious underlying tension of what we have been through. I don’t want to bring it up, but as much as I’ve been dreading having to have the conversation, I’m suddenly eager for it to begin, even if it is just to get it over with.
“Did you want to come over?”
“Did you want me to come over?”
Nate sighs. “I’m not good at this, Mel, never have been. There are many reasons I’ve never been married, and even my ego isn’t so huge as to not be able to recognize that at least a part of that is related to how I deal with communications. In my work I’m either alone, or with a skeleton crew, and their job is to take direction from me. I like to think I’m collaborative, but ultimately, it’s my vision they are there to support, and my opinion counts more. It’s hard to shut that off. I’m sorry about how I handled things the other day, as I said on the phone yesterday, and I know that just apologizing doesn’t fully take care of anything, because obviously you and I have very different perceptions of what happened between us. But I love you, and I have heard your side and shared my side, and I hope we can try to understand each other better. So yes, I want you to come over, and I hope that we can have a drink, and talk, and then I hope that you’ll stay over and that tomorrow we will wake up together in a better place. But I also know that this whole thing between us is still in the early stages, and maybe you might feel like it’s too soon to be having deep relationship conversations, and that you might just want a little space to ease back into things. It’s your call.”
“I’d like to come over. But you’re right, I don’t want to make more of this than necessary. It was a strange situation, a unique set of circumstances, and I’d like us to recognize that and not belabor it too long, if that makes sense. I think we’re both independent, wary of needing anyone, reluctant to trust, I know I am. But I also know that if we focus too much on it, it becomes bigger than it needs to be, and we have every chance of getting into another tiff over it. I love you, and I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.”
“I love you too. And I’m sorry I was insensitive to you and upset you.”
“Then take me home.”
And I think that we’ll be okay, that this isn’t going to be some long, horrible thing, that for all my worrying, it isn’t going to go the way I feared.
We get back to Nate’s place, share a brandy, and go to bed. But for the first time, we seem somehow out of sync, bumping teeth when we kiss, knocking noses. I can’t relax enough to come, and Nate’s erection waxes and wanes, until finally he mutters something about not being as young as he used to be and that he shouldn’t have had the brandy on top of all the wine. He kisses my forehead and pulls me close, but after a few minutes he rolls over and settles into sleep, leaving me in a lonely space next to him, trying not to doubt myself, trying not to think that the fight has made me less attractive to him. I try to hang on to Delia’s statement: I am enough.