Impossible Things (20 page)

He stood up when she came in and asked, “What are you doing here?”

She looked around; avoiding his eyes, and saw that the apartment was a disaster. Clothes, her clothes, were scattered everywhere, on the floor, on chairs and in a trail leading from the bedroom. She leaned over and picked up a dress, one of the only ones that she’d brought to London with her and saw that it was ripped.

She held it up to Sam and he had the decency to blush. “I’m sorry ba-
,” wisely, he didn’t finish what he was going to say.

He coughed and stepped towards her and tried again. “I’m sorry Lucy. I was mad and I took it out on your things. I didn’t think you’d be coming back for them.”

She didn’t say anything. She was too angry to speak as she went through the apartment gathering up her clothes and putting them into trash bags that she took from the kitchen.

She went into the bedroom and saw that not a single item of hers was still hanging in the closet or folded in the dresser. Even her bras and panties were scattered across the floor and many of them had marks on them from the bottom of his shoes.

She picked everything up, no matter how torn up it was, and put it in a bag. When she turned around he was sitting on the bed holding her nightgown in his hands. As she watched he lifted it to his nose and smelled it. “It still smells like you,” he said.

She took it from him and stared down at him. His blond hair was messy and she saw that he needed a haircut. He must not have been awake for long because there were still pillow impressions on the left side of his face. All of the things that had once made her feel tender towards him now left her feeling sad and empty.

“I’ll give you money so that you can buy new things,” he said and she almost told him no but realized that she couldn’t. She didn’t have the money to replace them and he
was
the one who had destroyed them.

She moved to the foot of the bed and sat down on the wooden chest that held their blankets. She still wasn’t sure how they had come to this. He was the man
that she had loved for nine years, the one she had shared a life, a home, and her body with. Now he seemed like a stranger.

“Why didn’t you ever say?”

Not understanding the question she shook her head. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t enjoy sex with me?”

That was it? That was all that he got from everything that had happened between them? That was what was bothering him? She felt like screaming at him but she was too tired, so she only said, “When we got together I was too young. I didn’t know any better. I thought it would get better.”

He looked at her. “But it didn’t?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But you were able to…to…you know, by yourself?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Sam how is it that you can’t even say the word orgasm?”

His face actually turned red. “I wasn’t raised like that Lucy.”

She was incredulous. “And I was? My parents never talked to me about sex Sam. Never. But I’m a grown woman. You’re a grown man. We can talk about sex. We have to! Sex is a huge part of any marriage and if we can’t even talk about it then what are we doing getting married?”

“I love you,” he said.

“If you loved me you’d want to please me the way that I wanted to please you. You never wanted to try anything new. You spent so little time on foreplay that it was ridiculous and you would never try oral sex. I did it for you-“

He interrupted her. “I didn’t ask you to!”

“No you didn’t but that’s what couples do. It’s what people who love each other do.”

“No one ever showed me how!” he cried and she reached out and curled her fingers. She wanted to wrap them around his throat.

“No one showed me,” she said, “But I tried because I wanted to give you pleasure. I wanted us to enjoy each other’s bodies. I wanted to be able to enjoy my own body.”

He shook his head. “Lucy I was never going to be like you. You’re beautiful, confident, and natural. You’re comfortable with that kind of stuff I’m not.”

“I’m not confident, don’t you see that? Because you made me think that there was something wrong with me, with my body and with my desires. I know it may not seem like it now Sam but I did try.”

He nodded. “I know. You tried for the both of us. I was always just too worried about failing you.”

Their eyes met and she saw all of the mistakes that they had made. Instead of talking about what was wrong in their relationship they had just avoided it, hoping it would get better, but instead each of them felt worse and worse about themselves.

“Do you remember that time you suggested we rent a dirty movie?” he asked and she nodded.

He laughed. “I had never been so turned on in my life. I wanted to rip your clothes off and do all of those things to you but when I turned to look at you, you were so beautiful, so perfect looking, that I couldn’t. I was afraid.

She shook her head. What she had hoped would spice up their sex life had instead made it worse. It had been an unsatisfying tumble in the dark.

Taking a deep breath she asked him, “Did you ever sleep with anyone else?”

He looked down at his hands in his lap. “You mean while we were together?”

She nodded, “Yes.”

He turned and looked at her. “Twice. Once with that girl Megan in my department and once with a woman I met when I went out with my friends.”

He searched her face, looking for anger or hurt but she didn’t feel either emotion. She felt sorry for him and for herself. They had put each other through so much pain, all in the name of love, which obviously neither one of them understood.

“Did you?” he asked, and she nodded.

His voice was thick, “When?”

She looked away and took a deep breath. She didn’t want to hurt him, but he had been honest with her, she owed him the same. “Here in London.”

His voice was sharp with pain as he asked, “Rodrigo?”

“What? No!” she said in surprise. “No. Why would you ever think that? He’s my grandfather!”

He shook his head and laughed at that. “Come on Lucy he’s not that much older than us and he’s gorgeous. Even I can see that. You have to wonder what a guy like that’s doing with your grandmother.”

That hurt her far more than his admission of adultery had and she told him so. “Don’t talk that way about him or about my grandmother. They’re my family and they love each other. I understand that you can’t see that, you can’t understand it, but it’s true. Love doesn’t have an age limit Sam. Real love is about seeing someone for who they are, not how they look.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m just not used to that. I’m a small town boy from the Midwest. We don’t see things like that. We don’t see things like you.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled and it was the boyish smile that had won her over in the beginning. “I saw you walking across campus one day and I couldn’t believe that someone who looked like you even existed. When you talked to me, when you agreed to go out with me, I couldn’t believe it. None of my friends could believe it. They wanted to know if I’d drugged you.”

That was all news to her and she looked at him in surprise. He was a good-looking man, no, not in the league of Rodrigo or Lucas but he was good-looking in an all-American way. He looked like the kind of man who would have been the quarterback on his high school football team, in fact he had been. She had been the one who felt like the ugly duckling in their relationship.

“They were so jealous of me. Hell even my dad said something the first time he met you. He told me not to let you get away and my mom said we’d make beautiful babies.”

She felt a little sick at that. They were all judging her on how she looked, how they perceived her, and she had just been trying to fit in, to be accepted and loved by them
, and while they had been admiring her, she had felt ugly and lost.

“So you stayed with me because people thought I was pretty.”

He nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, but yeah. You’re so sexy and you don’t even see it. I guess I was just waiting for the day when a better looking guy would come along. I was waiting for you to see that you could do better.”

He had finally managed to hurt her. She felt tears in her eyes as she said, “You never tried to get to know me Sam. You never wanted to know who I was inside. All you cared about was how I looked.”
              He shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. I knew you, I know you now. I know who you are Lucy. We shared a life and we shared a bed. I saw exactly who you are.”

She tried to stop the tears but she couldn’t. She looked down
and watched as her tears fell on her hands which were folded in her lap.

“Don’t cry babe. Please. I love you so much.”

She looked up at him, and tears were still pouring down her face as she said, “You don’t love me because you don’t know me. You’ve never once asked me about my hopes and dreams. You never asked me what I wanted in life, you made a plan and we lived your life, your dreams, never mine. You used me for your own ends.”

He snorted. “I think we both used each other.”

Shocked, she jerked her head up. “What? How did I ever use you?”

He was smiling and it was a bitter smile as he said, “You used me to bring you to London.”

It was her turn to snort. She wiped her face off and stood up. She finished gathering her things and then went to the bathroom for her toiletries. She put them in a separate trash bag and went out to find that he was still sitting on the bed.

She gathered her bags up and went to the door. Before she left the room she said, “Sam I would have been in London a long time ago had it not been for you. I gave up my dreams for you. London was the least you owed me.”

And it was true. She had given up everything for him, most of all her self-confidence and her dreams and London seemed like small compensation for it.

She picked up her coat and purse and trying to manage all the garbage bags she opened the front door only to find her mom standing in front of it with her hand raised to knock.

“Please, please don’t go back to him,” her mom said. “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

Lucy shook her head at her mom. “Don’t worry I’m not. Can you help me with these bags?”

Rosaline nodded and grabbed some of the bags. Lucy closed the door behind her, and followed her mom out to the street and the waiting car.

The driver loaded her things into the trunk and she and Rosaline got in the car. “Would you go out to lunch with me?” her mom asked and Lucy nodded.

They were silent on the ride to the restaurant and she was okay with that. She needed time to think, time to process her conversation with Sam. They went to a small bistro by Hyde Park
. From their table they had a great view of the park. Because of the cold there weren’t many people in it but Lucy enjoyed looking at it.

They placed their orders and sat in silence for a few minutes before her mom started to speak. “When I was young I had a lot of boyfriends.”

That was news to Lucy and she realized again how little she knew about her mom’s life before she met her dad.

“None of them meant anything,” her mom continued, “until I met Jeremy. I was eighteen and had just finished school. A friend and I went to Paris and I met him at a bookstore. It was instant. From the moment that I looked into his eyes I knew he was the one.”

Lucy looked at her mom in shock and Rosaline smiled. “We had a whirlwind courtship. It was two weeks and it seemed to last a lifetime and yet somehow also pass in an instant. When it was time for me to go home, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave him.”

The waiter came and brought their food but both of their plates sat untouched as Rosaline told her story. “My two week vacation turned into six months. Mom understood but dad didn’t. He wanted me to come home and to go to college, I didn’t care about college anymore I just wanted to be with the man I loved.”

Lucy watched her mom’s face and she was startled at the difference in it, just talking about this other man, the man before Lucy’s dad, made her mom’s cheeks glow and her eyes bright.

“
My dad and I fought for the very first time in my life. He said that he would take away his financial support if I didn’t come home, but I didn’t care. Jeremy had an apartment and a job; he would take care of me. A few months after that mom came to see us in Paris. She had talked dad into allowing me to go to university in Paris. I enrolled the following spring and life was good.”

Rosaline’s eyes dulled and Lucy felt her stomach clench. She knew it hadn’t ended well or her mom would have never met her dad and Lucy wouldn’t be hearing this story
now. The look on her mom’s face made her not want to hear the ending.

“Later that year I found out I was pregnant.”

Her mom looked up and their eyes met and Lucy saw that Rosaline had tears in her eyes. She pushed her plate to the side and reached across the table to take her mom’s hand.

Rosaline took a few deep breaths and continued, “We were over the moon. I can still remember how happy Jeremy was when I told him. He asked me to marry him and I
said yes, of course. It was all I had ever wanted. With our news my dad came around. He reinstated my money and he and mom came and helped us to pick out an apartment. Then-“