Odds : A Love Story (9781101554357) (10 page)

All day he’d been carrying the box in his pocket, alert for the perfect moment. Now he pulled it out, opening it below the tabletop like a cellphone. He could place it beside her rose so she’d find it when she returned, but thought that too passive. He needed to give it to her, to formally ask her to be his again. If he was too sudden, the element of surprise might work against him, especially after what happened in the tunnels. He didn’t want her to feel ambushed. She’d say the ring was too much, that they couldn’t afford it—objections more practical than emotional, as if their life now was just about money, or the lack of it.

The first time he’d asked her he was making two hundred a week working for a nonprofit and living in a roach-infested studio over a TV repair shop in Slavic Village. They’d been dating nearly a year, but she had a nice apartment in University Circle with her old college roommates, trust fund babies who called in sick to their temp jobs, cruised the clubs for older men, and considered him boring and unworthy of her, the best-looking of the three. He wanted to ask her to move in with him to show her he was serious and get her away from them. He knew what she made, and studied the classifieds, canvassing real estate agencies in neighborhoods he judged safe—all without consulting her.

To make his case, he chose Shanghai Garden, a Friday night
staple, where they could eat for less than twenty dollars and take home a doggie bag with tomorrow’s lunch. They sat in the back, where an oversized angelfish roamed an otherwise empty tank like a lonely ghost. He waited till they’d finished to ask her.

“What do you mean you’ve been looking?” she asked. “Like actually looking at apartments?”

“Not actually looking looking, just trying to see how much it would be.”

“Wait wait wait wait wait,” she said, holding up both hands. “You. Are out looking. For an apartment. For us.”

Instead of discussing the happy possibility of spending their days and nights together, they fought. He thought he was being thoughtful and responsible. She thought he’d taken her answer for granted. Why didn’t he just talk to her instead of sneaking around behind her back? Didn’t he think she should have a say in her own life? He had no defense save for his good intentions, which now seemed self-serving or, at best, mistaken. One of her capping arguments was that her parents would expect them to get married. The way she said it made it sound like it might never happen and she didn’t want to give them a false impression.

“Do you want to get married?” he asked.

“Come on, Art,” she said, as if he were making an unfunny joke.

“Do you?”

“Stop. Nobody’s marrying anybody. Jesus.”

From then on, whenever he was tempted to think of a future with her, he would remember how absurd she made it seem, so
that even after they’d moved in together he sometimes still felt as if he were her second choice, their situation temporary. When they finally decided to get married, it was more of a negotiation than a proposal, concerned primarily with timing, since Celia was getting remarried and didn’t want to hold off making arrangements for a whole year.

Their waitress reappeared with their drinks, and he wondered where Marion was. Their dinner reservations were at six. He’d ordered a Molson draft, the same thing he had their first time. He sipped it, trying not to get too far ahead of her. The room had rotated so he could just see the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge. They might catch part of the American Falls but not the sunset.

She came up from behind, surprising him.

“Sorry. There was a line. I almost wet my pants. Then when I came out, you’d moved and I couldn’t find you. How are we on time?”

“We’re okay.”

“There was this woman in there with her little girl, I swear she’s one of the ones from Heart. She had the eighties rock star hair and everything.”

“Which one? The blonde one or the dark one?”

“The skinny one.”

“Nancy Wilson.”

“Whoever. Her daughter was not having a happy time.”

“You know who she’s married to.”

“No, enlighten me.”

“Cameron Crowe.”

“Help me out.”

“The director.
Say Anything?
Jerry Maguire?
”

“Don’t turn around,” she said, her eyes tracking someone behind him.

She might have been right. The woman who passed at his elbow with her daughter in hand did look like Nancy Wilson—willowy, with long teased hair and a tiny waist—though it was hard to tell from the back. She had on a black leather jacket, cigarette-leg jeans and biker boots. She was probably just a fan dressed for the concert. He couldn’t imagine Nancy Wilson, with all the money in the world, eating at a place like this a couple hours before showtime, just as he couldn’t imagine Nancy Wilson with a sulky four- or five-year-old daughter.

“She’s got to be our age,” he said. “Or older.”

“All I know is, someone wants their activity book.”

“Aha.”

A few tables away, the woman turned to help her daughter into her booster seat, giving him a better view.

All he had to see were her eyes. Her face was leonine, iconic, calling up album covers and magazine spreads.

“Oh my God,” he said, whispering, as if it were a secret. “It is her.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Weirdly, she hadn’t changed. Despite the dated hairstyle, she was still striking—high cheeks, the straight nose and full lips,
the dimpled chin. Under the leather jacket she wore a frilly vermillion blouse she might have worn onstage. There was a younger woman with them, black-haired, possibly a nanny, because she was helping the girl with her napkin.

Marion sat up, obstructing his view. “Don’t stare.”

“I can’t help it.”

“She has on a ton of makeup.”

“You’d think they’d have a sound check to do, or something.”

“I thought you liked them smaller,” she said, an allusion he could either refute or let pass. The worst thing he could do was hesitate. “And younger.”

“I like
you
.”

“You’ve got to be quicker than that.”

“I do like you. And love you.”

“I don’t see why.”

The box was a lump in his pocket. Of all the possible moments, right then he should have been able to give her a lifetime of reasons, except that he felt attacked. Unfairly, he would have said, though, knowing how often he thought of Wendy—pointlessly, since it had been twenty years and in the end he’d been relieved to be free of her—he was even more skeptical of himself. He knew what he’d done. She didn’t have to keep reminding him.

“I know why,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“Because you care about everyone, you want everything to be fair, and you’ll fight for what’s right.”

“Did you just come up with that?”

“I did.”

“I’m impressed.” She raised her glass and dipped her head in tribute. “I don’t think that’s entirely true, but I’m impressed.”

“What’s not true?”

“I’m not nearly as nice as you think I am.”

“You actually helped people. I didn’t.”

“You did what you could,” she said.

“I should have never taken the job.”

“It put the kids through school.”

“We could have done it some other way.”

To confess these misgivings secretly thrilled him, and the fact that, after everything, she would defend him. At home they would have never picked apart their lives so clinically, airing their regrets as if they were some other couple’s. Like middle age, vacation provided a necessary distance, an extra perspective.

Outside it was night, blackness filling the gaps, flattening the world below to patterns of lights, a schematic view usually glimpsed from an airliner in its final descent. The room had rotated so the Rainbow Bridge was almost beside them, still packed with traffic. He thought of the house, locked and dark, the realtor’s sign a public admission in the yard, and wondered if the trip had been a mistake, the plan, everything. They could ride it out another six months if they had to.

“Melody hasn’t called,” he asked.

“I think I’ve given up on Melody,” she said, but dug out her phone.

“Not that it matters.”

“No, nothing.”

“I never thought we’d lose money on that house.”

“It was a good house,” she said. “It was the right house for us then. Oop—I can see the Falls. Look at the hearts.”

He twisted his neck. Projected pinkly onto the curtain of falling water was a plump pair of hearts skewered by Cupid’s arrow. “Very nice. The thing I worry about is the kids not having a place to come back to.”

“I think they’re okay with it. When was the last time they were back?”

“I still miss my old house.”

“I know you do,” she said.

“It would be nice to have a place for the grandchildren.”

“I think that’s down the road a ways, Grandpa.”

“Not that far, at least for Emma. I know Mark wants kids.”

“Okay, now I feel old.”

The waitress appeared, pointing back and forth between their glasses. “Another round?”

Marion looked to him, the official timekeeper. If they left now they’d have just enough time to get back and change for dinner, but he was pleasantly buzzed from the beer, and the way they were talking seemed more important than making their reservation. They could see the Falls, Nancy Wilson was sitting three tables away, and rather than cut short the moment, he veered from his plan and gave the waitress the okay.

Looking back, he would see this decision as the one that determined the rest of the evening, if not the weekend, an
obvious tipping point, as if by taking the first step off the path he was knowingly leading them deeper into the woods. Whether that was true or not—and they would fight over it—later he would blame himself, thinking he’d been greedy, but at the time, honestly, all he wanted to do was go on talking with her.

Odds of a 53‑year-old woman being a grandmother:
        
1 in 3

    They had an expensive bottle of Cabernet with dinner, and Irish coffees with dessert, and were tipsy enough that they took a cab the few blocks back to the hotel rather than risk slipping and falling on the icy sidewalk. She had to concentrate to make sense; her eyes stung from the effort. Through her window she could see the stars spread across the sky like a connect-the-dots puzzle and wondered what secret message they were trying to send her. She was hot in her coat, and struggled to free her arms as if it were a straitjacket. With his help she finally succeeded, smacking him in the lip with her ring. She laughed, then apologized, laid a hand on his jaw and kissed him to make it all better, when suddenly they were there, under the portico, the white-gloved valet opening the door for her, helping her out, telling her to watch her step.

The escalator made her sway, and she took Art’s arm. It was bright inside, the lobby achime with the ringing of slot machines, and she was relieved when the elevator doors closed, shutting it out. She leaned against the back wall, felt the rushing uplift in her legs.

“Are you gonna make it?” he asked.

“I’m good,” she said, Emma’s favorite phrase, and pictured her alone in her cozy apartment in Boston, the quiet, solitary life
Marion sometimes envied, except from her Facebook page she knew Mark was taking her out for dinner and dancing. That was better anyway, Marion thought. When she was single, she and her friends used to go clubbing every weekend, coming home at daybreak with a half dozen stamps on their hands. When was the last time she really let loose? She was tired of moping around the house, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Maybe Art had the right idea—why pretend anymore? If they were going down, they might as well do it in style.

They barely had time to use the bathroom and change. As always, the mirror reminded her that she wasn’t young anymore. She hadn’t been to an actual rock concert in over a decade. Lacking anything sexier, she’d brought her best dinner party outfit, a slimming pair of black slacks and a flashy silver top, but after seeing Nancy Wilson she felt self-conscious and grandmotherly.

“I hate what I’m wearing,” she said, “but I don’t have anything else. Sorry, what you see is what you get.”

“You look fine.” All he’d changed was his shirt, from a white oxford to a cornflower blue. He could have been going to work.

“What a couple of old farts,” she said.

“I guarantee there will be people onstage older than us.”

“
There’s
something to look forward to. Kidding. Just kidding, just kidding, justkidding, justkidding.”

“Do I need to cut you off?”

“That’s the problem, I’m sobering up.”

“We can’t have that.” He moved to the living room and used the little key to open the minibar, stepped aside and presented its contents like Carol Merrill. “Your pleasure, milady?”

“They’ll have drinks there, I’m assuming?”

“If you want to stand in line all night. Plus this is on the house.”

“What kind of red wine is there?”

“Sutter Home.”

“Ew, no. What else is there?”

There was a little of everything.

“Is there tequila?” she asked.

“Someone’s getting serious.”

“It’s a rock concert, right?”

“Rock and roll.”

“Hells yeah, rock and roll,” she said. “Take that Jack too.”

“I wasn’t gonna leave it.”

She watched him slip the miniature bottles into his socks. “What are we, in high school? You think they’re gonna frisk us?”

“You never know.”

“I can take a couple.”

“Where you gonna put them?”

“I have my hiding places.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said, though it turned out to be an empty boast. Her slacks were too snug to fit a bottle in the pockets, and she wasn’t wearing socks.

“I’d be a bad smuggler anyway,” she said. “I’m too chicken. You’re the criminal in the family.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I think I’m maxed out. I don’t want these falling out while we’re walking through the mall. Time to get our pregame on.”
He twisted open a nip of Southern Comfort and handed it to her. “To rock and roll.”

“Rock and roll,” she said, and tipped it back. She’d forgotten the boozy sweetness, the way it coated her tongue and teeth like syrup. “We really are back in high school.”