“You’re acting like you’re mad at me.”
“Ty! Ever since the hospital you have been telling me the most upsetting stories. The broken wrist. The near-drowning. The splinter in the eye. The nail in the foot. Need I even mention the incident with the
chainsaw
?”
He shrugged. “I was just a typical boy.”
“Dear God.” I laughed humorlessly. “That cannot be true.” I continued briskly toward the park gate, done with him for the day. Maybe forever, I mused. Yes! Done with him forever. For my own good.
“I like telling you these stories.”
“I know. Because you love torturing me.”
I could tell, peripherally, that he was smiling. As usual, it made me want to smile, too. My sense of humor peeked out at me to see if it was okay to come back now. I ignored it and him, not ready to give in.
We reached the street. I raised my hand and a cab veered toward us.
“I like how much my stories bother you.”
“Stop.”
“I do.”
“
Don’t.
” I kept my eyes on the approaching car.
“Grace. . . .” And that was unnecessary, by the way, how close he was standing. Probably looking at my mouth.
He did that a lot.
One time over coffee I told him about the Webbers and the abstinence-only health textbook. I told him how worried I was about teens not being given real-life information and skills.
“That’s retarded,” he grumbled. Then he got all fired up. “What is their problem, anyway? Fucking is fun! Natural! It’s good for you.”
“Darn, if only you’d been there with me at the meeting with Delilah and Forbes.”
That wasn’t the only thing. I told him about
imagine
. You know it’s something bad when it makes Tyler Wilkie become grave and quiet.
“Shit,” he finally said. “Those people are really fucked up.”
“I know.”
“What are you doing, Grace?”
“What?”
“Why are you still working at that place?”
“Ty—”
“Doesn’t it matter to you what you do with your life? With your mind and your heart and your hands?”
“Of course it matters! You’re being simplistic.”
“I like simplicity.”
I got quiet.
He nudged my foot with his under the table. “Just be real, Grace. That’s all I’m saying. Try to be real.” He nudged me again. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are.”
“I’m getting my period.”
He smiled. “You are so full of shit.”
Except for minor excursions across the flirtation line, Ty was pretty cool to spend time with. Probably because he was having a hell of a social life. Really, the guy was just fine without me.
He got phone calls from girls all the time. He’d either look at who was calling and let them leave a message, or he’d answer, but keep the exchange brief. Monosyllabic even. He’d hang up and then not look at me right away. He’d jump right back into the thing we’d been talking about.
One time, walking up Sixth Avenue together, he did meet my eyes. I smiled teasingly. He smiled and looked away.
“One word, Tyler,” I said. “As your friend.”
“Go ahead.”
“Prophylactics.”
He studied the ground ahead of us. “That is not an area I need your advice on, Grace.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I really, really was.
The week before Memorial Day, I e-mailed Julia and Dan to let them know that Steven and I were going up to Rhinebeck for the weekend.
Julia called me. “Something important is going to happen, don’t you think?”
No point in denying it. “Probably so.”
“Are you excited?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the matter?”
I put some energy into it. “Nothing! I’m excited!” Anything, to cool her jets.
Dan IM’d me at work:
DanB:
Have fun, but don’t do anything you don’t want to.
SueGBee:
What do you mean?
DanB:
I had a dream.
SueGBee:
Oh crap. And?
[three minutes of cliff-hanging]
SueGBee:
Don’t make me come over there.
DanB:
Sorry. FedEx, downstairs. The dream: you were driving a car with bad brakes. You wanted to stop it, but you couldn’t.
SueGBee:
I don’t like that. Would it kill you to dream something nice?
DanB:
Sorry . . .
DanB:
Are you there?
SueGBee:
Sorry. Thinking. I guess that brake thing could maybe apply to a few things in my life.
DanB:
Apply it then, my darling.
Friday morning I got my hair cut for the summer in breezy layers, chin-length, with bangs. I looked about twelve years old.
I went to work just for a couple of hours, to do some filing and show Edward my hair.
He touched it with faux-reverent fingers. “Shiny.”
Edward was in holiday weekend mode already, too, jeans and a linen shirt. He and Boris were going to the Jersey shore.
“Be careful,” I said, “you may run into my mom and José there.”
“Lord no, not Julia Barnum.”
“I’m serious. They’re going to Ocean Grove. Staying in one of those little tent house things.”
“Those are so cute! And you and Steven are going to Rhinebeck?”
“Yeah, he found this three-hundred-year-old farm house B-and-B. We’re going to play golf.”
“Golf.” He made a face.
“He swears it’s not boring. We’ll do other things, too.”
“And you still think you’re going to come back with a ring on your finger?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
I hated when Edward got all older brother on me.
“Don’t give me that look,” he said. “I’m just making sure.”
“I know.” I hugged him.
Steven picked me up at work in a Zipcar. A convertible!
He hadn’t seen my new look yet. I got in beside him and buckled up. He touched my hair. “Where did it all go?”
“Locks of Love. Let someone else deal with all that. It won’t even hold a curl.”
“If you’d told me you were going to do this, I think I’d have asked you not to. But it looks real pretty.”
“Oh . . . really? I just wanted a change. I thought it would feel good for summer.”
“Yeah, it looks great.”
“Sorry.”
“Grace, it’s not a big deal.”
“Sometimes you have to just go ahead and make yourself do things you’re chicken about, you know?”
He eased us into the flow of traffic on Sixth Avenue with a wry little smile on his face. “Tell me about it.”
The place where we were staying was rustic and colonial, situated in the middle of a retired apple orchard. Exposed beams in the very old kitchen with hanging copper pots and bundles of herbs. A handmade quilt, on our bed.
Breakfast on Saturday was pear pancakes with smoked bacon. After that we played golf. Me, for the first time. It was not good. Then we had an afternoon spa visit. It was good. I had a facial and a full-body massage, and went back to the inn jelly-kneed and very pliable.
Steven took me to a fancy French restaurant for dinner, where we were seated in a lovely little private alcove. After my lobster salad but before my filet de boeuf, he took a small box out of his pocket. I set down my wineglass.
“You know what this is.” Steven’s face was turning red. And his hands were shaking, trying to open the little case.
“Do you want me to do it?” I offered, although my own hands had just gone numb.
“Got it!” He showed me what was inside. It was stunning. Platinum, with not one, but
three
antique-cut diamonds.
“Oh my goodness,” I said faintly. My heart was trying to stomp its way out of my chest.
Steven got up from his chair and knelt beside me, just like in the movies. “Grace, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
“Okay.” Even though I had known this was coming, I still didn’t know what to do with it. My body was discombobulated, too. I felt like the top of my head was about to lift away from the rest of me and float up to the ceiling. Not having a paper bag handy, I cupped my hands, held them over my nose, and aggressively inhaled my own carbon dioxide.
“What are you doing?”
“A little light-headed. Just give me a minute.”
The floaty feeling subsided. Steven handed me my glass of ice water and I gulped too much, too fast. Ouch.
“Better now?”
“Much,” I lied.
He picked up my tingling hand and slid the ring onto my finger. It stopped on the second knuckle and refused to go farther. He pushed harder, but it was a stubborn ring.
“I think my finger’s too fat,” I giggled, though I am not generally a giggler.
“Nonsense. We’ll just have to have the ring resized. I’ll make an appointment for us at Fred Leighton as soon as we get back.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Otherwise, it’s so perfect.”
He leaned forward and kissed me. Steven was always so steady and kind. I sighed and set my arms over his shoulders and smiled ruefully.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said, definitively. “Very, very sure.”
blue Fiji swimming head
I didn’t see Ty for all of June. I think he went to Philly to play a few times and I was just so busy with work and spending time with my fiancé. But Ty called to remind me that July 13 was his birthday. Rather than commit to his East Village birthday party, which would be heinously drunken and loud, I talked him into letting me take him to dinner at a sidewalk café on Second Avenue. I made an 8:30 reservation but told him to be there at 7:45. I watched him amble down the street toward me at 8:14. I took him by the elbow and walked him away from the restaurant.
“Hey, isn’t this the place?”
“Yeah, I told the waiter we’re coming right back.”
I situated him on the corner of Second and Thirty-fourth, slid a pair of Ray-Bans on him, and turned him westward. “Look.”
“Oh,
man
! Awesome!” he said, squinting.
The sun was setting on the horizon, bold and round and orange, in perfect alignment with the street. A lot of people were around us looking/not looking at it.
“Manhattanhenge. It happens a couple times a year. Happy birthday!” “Yeah. Happy birthday to me,” he mused absently. I could see that there was a song starting to brew while his retinas were frying.
“Stop looking at the sun now,” I said.
“Okay.” He smiled happily at the big blue dot he was probably seeing instead of my face. We walked back to the café.
We reclaimed our table and ordered. Then we looked at each other. It had been a while, five weeks at least.
“Your hair’s longer than mine now,” I said.
“Yeah, you look like Scout.”
“Edward said Ramona the Pest.”
He shyly slid a CD across the table to me. It had a charming black-and-white picture of him on the cover, in profile, laughing. He had the nicest nose.
“My new demo. It has all your songs on it.”
“
My
songs,” I laughed. “Please.”
He smiled.
I gave him his presents. A book: Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slapstick
, and a CD: Kate Bush’s
The Kick Inside
.
He examined the book suspiciously. “It better be fucking hilarious.”
“It is! Look, even the title is funny.”
“Did they make it into a movie?”
“Um . . . I think maybe they did?”
“ ’Cause maybe we can watch it when I finish.”
I smiled. “I’ll Google it.”
He picked up the CD. “Hey, this was on your list!”
“Yeah, I can’t wait for you to hear it.”
Our food came and for a while we just ate and watched people go by. That was something I liked about doing things with Ty. He could talk, quite a lot. But companionable silence was easy, too.
I figured I should let him know I was getting married. All my other friends knew. I was inexplicably nervous about telling him, but now seemed like a good, mellow time.
“Hey, by the way,” I said. “I’m getting married.”
He had been watching a red-haired woman swish down the street, but his eyes came back to me and his chewing slowed. He looked at my hand, resting on the table. At the big shiny piece of metal and mineral I was wearing. He drank some beer and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He looked at me, hard.