Love Is Red (22 page)

He turns fast, stumbles, and grips her hand.

Two nights ago he wakes up and Momma is sitting on the bed, looking at him. Mrs. Kaskow tells him Momma is past, but she is not past, she is here, because she is sitting on his bed, looking at him with so much love in her eyes that he wants to cry out—

MOMMA!

—but she shakes her head and puts her finger to her lips, be quiet, so he will not wake Mrs. Kaskow, so he asks in a soft whisper voice if she is hurted and she shakes her head, no, and he asks if she is still dead like
the Halloween ladies and she nods her head, yes, and he wants her to hug him—why doesn't she hug him?

But she shakes her head and she is pointing and he knows what she wants, what she is pointing to, and he is sad and he doesn't want to but Momma looks at him and looks at him and he knows it is important, so very slowly he puts it down next to the bed and he lies back and closes his eyes and his cheeks are wet but he isn't crying, because he is a big boy and big boys don't cry so he isn't crying, and then he feels Momma lean over him, he feels her soft lips on his cheek in a kiss like she always kisses him good night, and he feels not so sad and he keeps his eyes closed.

And when they open it is morning and he looks and his lucky green rabbit foot is gone, but he never tells no one because it is a secret.

Hours later in the dark, we lie in a sweating, panting heap.

Then I tell him to get off me.

“Katherine.”

“Now.” I give him a shove and maneuver myself, lying as far away from him as I can along the side of the bed. I can sense him lying there, not saying anything. I can hear him breathing. I hate him, almost more than I hate myself.

It was seeing Lucas go. Walking away with that woman, his small hand engulfed in her shovel-like one. Trying to turn around. His eyes wide, wondering why he was walking in the wrong direction, getting into the wrong car, instead of coming with me.

And Sael is there, and all it takes is a nod. A nod and we go back to Leigh's place.

Once inside, he follows me to my room. The guest room, gray and white and minimal—there's nothing personal. Which suits me.

I turn out the light. I don't want to see him. In the darkness we take off our clothes, not seductively but businesslike, as I do when I'm alone, and then I drag him down onto the bed.

And briefly Lucas's eyes are not in my mind.

Now I tell this man on the side of the bed, breathing, “Please go.”

“Katherine.”

“I mean it.”

“I will,” he says, “but I need to tell you something.”

“I don't want to hear it.”

“It's a final story.”

“No.”

“One last story, and then I swear you'll never have to see me again.”

I don't say anything. I close my eyes and wait for him to tell it and be done and get out.

He takes a huge breath, like he's about to dive into a swimming pool. “I met Sara in college. It was through David—I mean David was sort of hanging out with this girl Rebecca, and she and Sara were friends. That's how I met her.”

So it's about Sara. I'm disappointed; it's going to be a “the thing about my wife” kind of story. How clichéd.

“Anyway, we hooked up at a party, and pretty much started going out soon afterward. It was easy; she was beautiful and smart and we had the same group of friends. I guess the relationship kind of fell into my lap. A no-brainer. Everyone expected us to get married after she graduated.

He pauses now. “Only thing was that there was this little voice in my head. And it would say:
You don't love her.
I would sort of push this voice down but occasionally I'd hear it, at odd moments, sometimes I'd be running or at the computer or just grabbing a cup of coffee and the voice would say:
You don't love her.

“But time was passing, she graduated, my business was beginning to take off, and the summers became filled with weddings and everyone started looking at us. I know women have it worse. I can't imagine what they might have said to her.”

I'll bet
, I think, but I don't say it. I'm listening now.

“I remember this one horrible bitch at some drink party at her law firm saying, ‘So when
are
you getting married?' As if it was any of her damned business. But Sara was pretty feisty. She'd said, ‘I don't know. When was the last orgasm you had with your husband?'”

I can hear his grin in the dark. Against my will I start to like her, his feisty dead fiancée.

“But it got me thinking. So I organized this weekend in San Francisco and at this restaurant overlooking the harbor—you know, one of the ones with Chinese lanterns and waiters who tell you every detail about your meal, that kind of thing. I took out a ring and got down on one knee and Sara started to cry.”

He falls silent for so long that I think it's the end of the story. I turn over, and take a breath to say,
Thank you, that was lovely, now please get out—

When he says, low, “She didn't stop crying. She was crying so hard that she couldn't even talk. Eventually I had to get up and pay really fast and get her out. The worst thing about it, looking back, is how embarrassed I was. That I cared more about what people thought than why Sara was crying so much. Maybe that should have been a red flag.

“We got back to the hotel we were staying at and eventually she calmed down enough to talk. I was furious. I was yelling. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?' She didn't answer so I said, ‘I thought that's what you wanted.' She turned to me and she said, ‘Yes, but—'”

My voice startles us both. “‘But it's not what
you
want.'”

Sael sounds rueful. “Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what she said.” Then he sighs. “That would have been the moment to talk about it. Right then and there. That was the moment. But I didn't. I guess I have to live with knowing that for the rest of my life.”

I don't like the sound of this. Not just what he's saying, but the way his voice is regretful yet just like he's stating the facts. Somehow it's worse than if he were being dramatic.

Sael takes a deep breath and continues. He's strained but making an effort now. “Of course, I wouldn't take no for an answer.”

“Wow. Really?” He ignores my sarcasm. Just as well. I'm shaken. I don't really mean it but I'm scared to hear what he might tell me.

“So I went about convincing her. It took a year and a half but I wore her down. She'd been doing it for me, after all, I guess. The next time I proposed she said yes and that was that.

“Everyone was thrilled. Everyone said,
It's about time!
Fuck, people are stupid. At least Sara was happy, though. She was happy. I had convinced her and she really loved me.” He says this without self-consciousness. “She was up to her ears in wedding plans and I was content to let her do everything. I was working hard, building a business. I had a million excuses. Of course, I was hiding out.”

Hiding out. I take a moment to look around the room. I guess I can relate.

“It was the vows that got me. Sara had a thing about those stupid vows. I can see her now, hair up in a pony, big T-shirt, looking at me, saying, ‘I don't want to bug you, babe, but how's it going with the vows? Have you started your vows yet? How are they coming along?'”

I roll back to look at him. His voice is rising but I don't think he's aware of this.

“Finally I had to. We were going to practice with David the next day. He was going to officiate.

“So I sat down. I couldn't think of what to say. I was staring at a blank screen. Writer's block. So I thought,
I'll start by writing about how we met.
So I did that. Then it got a little easier and
I kept writing, and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I had gotten into a kind of zone, I guess, and I couldn't stop. It was like coding. Then my phone rang and I looked up. I had been sitting there for three hours.”

Even now, three years later, telling this story in a dark bedroom, he sounds genuinely amazed.

“I got up and took the call; then I ran out, went to the gym, picked up some milk, that type of shit. When I got back I saw there was a blue Post-it note from Sara on my computer screen.”

Now he's slowed down. Against my will, I'm listening.

“She loved those damned Post-its. She was using them to coordinate the wedding. They were all over the apartment like insane neon butterflies. So I read it. It was only three words.”

“What does it say?” I'm thinking
“I love you.”

“‘We should talk.'”

I don't say anything but I grimace.

Sael seems to sense this because he answers just as if I had said something.

“Yeah, it's the universal way of saying, ‘You're in deep shit.' So I plopped down at my computer to read over my vow essay. It starts well, but as I keep reading . . .”

“It was bad?”

“Worse. It was honest, but brutally honest. Like, how I loved her but I wasn't in love with her and how I felt like a fraud and a shit and I didn't know what to do. The ultimate Dear John. And you want to know what the worst thing was?”

Why do I always end up feeling sorry for Sael's women? “There's a
worse
thing?”

I can feel the bed rock. His shoulders are shaking. He's weeping. But then his head goes up. And I see that he's laughing now.

“She had fucking corrected it!”

“What?”

“Yeah, she had edited it, put in punctuation, everything. The man she's going to marry in under three weeks has just written a long, insanely cruel letter saying that he doesn't love her, and she corrects his punctuation and his grammar.”

There is something so fantastically ballsy and classy about this that despite everything we are briefly united in mutual admiration. “She sounds amazing.”

“She was.”

“What did you do?”

“I went in there and talked with her.”

“You did?”

He laughs. The sound of his self-disgust is awful. “Of course not. I went right back out and got shit-faced at a dive bar.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” he says matter-of-factly and with some relish. “This is the story where you find out that I'm a useless, cowardly, pathetic, sack-of-shit excuse for a human being.” He pauses. “Well, you think that anyway, but this is the proof.

“I can't remember how I got home. I passed out on the couch. When I woke it was morning. I went to our bedroom, feeling like death, but she wasn't there. For a moment I thought,
Well, that's it, she's left me.
Then I realized that day was her early-morning yoga class. I'd dodged another bullet.

“I spent most of the morning throwing up. The curse of cheap beer, crappy vodka. Lay on the bed with my eyes closed, going in and out of sleep. Waiting for Sara, waiting for her to come home.

“My phone rang at about quarter to twelve.”

He falls quiet.

I wait.

Finally he says, so low that I barely hear him, “Do you know what my first thought was when they told me that Sara had been hit by a car?”

I don't think I want to hear this. I say nothing. It doesn't matter. He's going to tell me.

“I thought,
Thank God.
” His voice is horribly flat. “I thought,
Thank God
, because, Katherine, I dodged a bullet.
Thank God
that my fiancée was dead.
Thank God
because we wouldn't be having ‘the talk' after all.”

From outside I can hear the clank of a truck driving over a pothole. The air conditioner humming.

“Her mother wouldn't stop hugging me. Her father was crying and crying. He said, ‘No matter what happens, Sael, you'll always be a son to me.'”

I turn to him, to Sael. In the fuzzy light of this New York bedroom I can see that tears are streaming down his cheeks. He makes no move to wipe them away.

After a moment he coughs, sniffs. “I decided then that I would never, ever let myself be in a serious relationship again. Sex was fine.
Flings
were fine. But love, or marriage? That was done. I thought maybe I was emotionally dead. There had to be something wrong with me. I think women felt it too. Most of them knew what the deal was—they didn't push.”

I think of Andrea talking about this kind of man.
You don't want to be around him when the fuse burns down.

“Then I met you. Jesus. I was so pissed with you for pulling that stunt . . .” His voice trails off. “But I was intrigued. I felt awake somehow for the first time in years.

“Anyway, when David introduced you as a girl he was seeing, I thought,
Well, that's that.
I was determined to walk away, to have nothing more to do with you. You know how well that turned out.”

I say nothing. I don't know what to say.

“And after we slept together, I thought I'd gotten you out of my system. That it was all about the chase. But it wasn't.

“When I found out that David was seeing you again I wanted
to kill him. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. And you wouldn't see me. I guess I went a little crazy.”

I think of him standing on the fire escape. The glow of my phone.

“I wanted to hurt you as badly as you had hurt me. I invited Margot to the gala—I knew you'd be there. It was stupid. When I saw you I knew it wasn't going to work. Then when you left I felt worse and worse. Then when I found out—” His voice breaks, cracks. “Oh God. When I found out that that fucking monster was in your apartment. He killed Andrea. I thought,
Oh my God, he could have killed Katherine.

He swallows. “I thought,
She would have never known.
” He takes a breath “I thought,
I would have never have gotten to tell her
.”

He turns to face me fully. For the first time he looks at me, really looks at me and I see that his struggle is over. There is no anguish, doubt, or uncertainty in his eyes. His voice is calm and quiet.

“Katherine, I love you. I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I love you. I will always love you.”

Then he reaches out to me. He reaches out through the dark to me and I think that maybe this is what love is. This hope, this belief, this reaching out, reaching understanding that the other person might never reach back.

But I do.