Parts Unknown (30 page)

“You have a lot more rules than that,” I returned. “You just never said them out loud. I know them all. And they’re choking me. I can’t breathe. I’ve only been half-alive for years, and I didn’t even know it. And that life can’t be what’s best for Lucy. It just can’t.”

I breathed in deep, gasping gulps. “You always knew your mother hated me.  And what she’s doing to Lucy . . . you never stopped her. You never thought anything was wrong. She’s not my family, and she never will be. So forget your number-one rule, alright? It doesn’t exist, and it never did. And you and me—it can’t work. Not anymore.”

I saw that George was pale and shaking. “Are you okay?” I asked, concerned.

“The plan,” he said hoarsely. “I should have known I couldn’t count on you.”

“It was always your plan,” I said. “Never mine.”

He threw the cut-glass bowl on the coffee table against the wall, hard. It had been my gift to him on our third anniversary—glass, the traditional gift for that milestone. With a crash, the bowl exploded into millions of tiny little pieces. They caught the light briefly, glittering tiny prisms, before tinkling into the rug, disappearing into the beige so you couldn’t see them, not even one.

“I should never have trusted you. I can’t believe what a collosal mistake I made.” He’d put all his anguish into that throw, and was glassy-eyed now, limp.

Mrs. Schusterman’s window scraped up downstairs and she yelled, “Keep it down up there, for God’s sake!”

“Sometimes you have to go out on a limb,” I said, quieter now. “Marrying me—it was really brave, George. Maybe the bravest thing you ever did.” I touched his trembling hand, and he grasped my fingers for a moment, then let go.

“I thought it would turn out differently,” he said brokenly.

I gave him a watery smile. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, didn’t it?”

 “I should have listened to Mother.” His voice was so sad. “I let my emotions get the better of me, and now I know. It won’t happen again.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said urgently. “It was all worth it, just to have Lucy.”

“Of course you’re right. She’s the only good thing to come out of . . . this. You must stay nearby. With her.”

I said carefully, “I don’t think so. It would be better for us if I went away for a while. I know you’ll miss Lucy, so of course you can come visit us whenever you want. We’re probably going home, to San Jose.” The word “home” felt surprisingly comfortable. I could almost see the glowing plastic stars on my ceiling, shining down on me as I slept, safe, in of all places, my parents’ house. He didn’t say anything, so I dared, “I promise, wherever I go, I’ll be near a university that offers statistics courses. If you wanted to live near Lucy.”

I’d gone too far. He looked grimly down at his hands, clasped his thin fingers together. “You don’t get to . . .” He shook his head and caught himself. “That’s a conversation for another time. You can go for a little while, sure, but I need to be near Lucy in the long term.”

Nervously I kissed his mouth, a light brush, feeling a momentary reprieve. “Thank you, for everything you did. Everything you tried to do. And I wanted to say, I’m so, I’m just so sorry . . .”

“I don’t want to know,” he said. “Don’t tell me. When I think about . . .” He clenched his fists.

“Okay,” I mouthed silently.

And then I drifted off toward the bedroom, closed the door, and locked it. I heard the vacuum cleaner whirring into action. How like George, to clean up any mess.

I huddled in the bed, my hands balled into fists, hating Josh. He was the one who had started all this. I’d been perfectly content with George. We could have easily gone along as we had been for years, for decades, for our whole lives. In this little apartment together, loving Lucy together, and letting the days go by, me always secure, safe, and cared for.

Josh had ruined it all. Now I would always know what I’d be missing. Instead of secure and safe, really I was trapped, imprisoned, living with someone who loved me but who had never understood me. The carved satyrs on the bedposts leered at me. I hated them too. I tossed and turned, tears tracking one by one down my cheeks, sliding slippery and warm down my neck. Funny how I’d met them both near a fountain, the sun shining, children playing, on days pregnant with possibility and change. And in the end, the only two men who had ever loved me were the two I could never be with.

The front door closed softly, but it didn’t matter.

~ ~ ~

Monday morning, Josh and I made love with the desperation of two people who don’t know when, or if, they’ll see each other again. But there’s only so long that can go on for, and soon I was itching to get out of that apartment. We’d hidden ourselves in here every day for a week, and I was sick of it. My sense of consequences was minimal. When I’d awoken that morning, the only sign of George was a crumpled sheet and blanket on the sofa, and a body-shaped indentation where he’d spent the night. There was no going back to where George and I had been just the day before. Just two weeks before.

“Get dressed,” I told Josh—the first time I’d ever ordered him to do anything. I hastily buttoned my pants, and then we stepped out into the sunlight, the brightness disorienting me. Exiting Josh’s apartment felt like leaving a movie theater after a film so absorbing that asphalt, movement, people seemed confusing and strange. As if the real world I’d stepped into wasn’t as true as the fantasy life I’d been wrapped up in.

The funny thing was, Josh looked different outside the duplex on Vista Street. Now I could see the frown lines around his mouth. How his lips habitually turned down instead of up. The calculating look in his eyes. He’d been someone else entirely, hidden away with me in that dim bedroom with the curtains partway drawn all the time. Unfortunately, once you’ve given your heart completely to someone—no matter which way their mouth turns—it’s very hard to get it back. I’d never given all of myself to George, so over the last weeks it had been easy to collect the bits and pieces I’d handed away and reassemble them inside me. But I’d entrusted Josh with some crucial puzzle piece, and I was convinced that no matter what he could possibly do—leave me again, hurt me, deride me—I’d still love him. Unwillingly, angrily perhaps, but I would never stop.

He brushed his hand along my cheek. “So, where to?”

“Let’s go have breakfast,” I said spontaneously. “I’m going to take you to my favorite place. Let’s just eat like pigs. Masses of pancakes. French toast. Food that’s bad for you. Let’s have so much food that we can barely move when we’re done.”

“Oh-kay . . .”

“We’ll go to Du-Par’s at the Farmer’s Market. They have the best pancakes. And we’ll sit outside. Who cares if anyone sees us.”

“Alright then,” said Josh, linking his arm with mine, but he hesitated slightly before saying so. What did he have to lose that was greater than what I’d lost?

We walked west on Third Street, past Pan Pacific Park, a big green park spanning a city block. Walking past the park, the temperature was cooler, breezes wafting from the trees. Then through Nordstrom into the Grove, quiet on a weekday, but still seductive. The exclusive stores beckoned, flanking the small main street of the manufactured outdoor shopping village. They promised perfection, rightness, plastic beauty—if you shopped here, if you lived the lifestyle promised by the mannequins in the window, your life could be that airbrushed, too.

We walked down that perfect little street, where workers were busy polishing the lampposts and the railway track for the one-block-long trolley. It wasn’t lost on me that I’d gone to Josh’s book signing a little more than a week ago at the Barnes & Noble right here. Perhaps our love affair of this last week was as manufactured as the faux-real American Girl dolls in the appealing, brightly colored storefront near the bookstore. We had built our own pretend reality—as if making love in that duplex for a week could replace the real lives we had at home. It couldn’t, but the problem was, I’d gone too far. The dream had tipped the real life into oblivion. There was no going forward, and no going backward. I clutched Josh’s hand so tightly that he winced.

The Grove ended at the Farmer’s Market, a true slice of old Los Angeles. Turning left into the partially covered Farmer’s Market, we wove our way through a warren of small eateries and shops. Ice cream and donuts mingled with Mexican food and fruit sellers. Kitschy mugs and postcards in the souvenir shops gave way to not one, but two gourmet fruit-and-nut purveyors. Senior citizens lounged in green folding chairs around round tables; so did kids cutting school, halfway familiar-looking TV personalities from the nearby CBS lot, and exhausted-looking young mothers rocking strollers with their feet while sipping coffee. Everyone here was comfortable, in a city where it was so hard to feel truly at home. I always felt like I belonged, here in this unpretentious place, sometimes more so than at my apartment. At the far end was Du-Par’s, and Josh requested an inside booth. No declaring our love to the world, after all. It was probably just as well.

When the white-aproned waitress filled our mugs with coffee, we clinked them together. I wasn’t sure what we should toast to. “Cheers,” said Josh, meaninglessly.

“Cheers,” I returned. “So, how did you spend your weekend?”

“I visited my sis in Van Nuys. We didn’t do much, but it was nice, just being with them. Her boy, David—he’s ten—he’s a mean Scrabble player. I’ve barely got a chance with him. My sister is a great cook. I ended up staying through dinnertime; I didn’t mean to, I was going to visit my high-school buddy Jack. But Lissa made this amazing dinner—it was totally worth hanging out there, even though I hate the Valley. Strip malls everywhere, just driving to her house gave me the creeps. But her brisket, you wouldn’t believe it; it’s just like I remember my mom making when I was a kid . . . You know, I wonder if Lissa made Mom give her the recipe. Mom guards it with her life; it’s got some secret ingredient you can only buy at Western Kosher market on Fairfax. But she’s gotta pass those recipes on to the next generation eventually.”

 He talked about his family with such frank affection suffusing his face. He’d looked at me with passion, desire, and intensity—but never with such uncomplicated happiness. I might as well be in love with that New Kids on the Block poster I had on my wall as a preteen. I’d smooch those paper cheeks every night before I went to bed. I’d imagined love reflecting back from Donnie Wahlberg’s face, too, smiling sweetly back at me.

The pancakes were delicious. I savored every bite. We didn’t talk much. There wasn’t much to say. Near noon, Josh said, “I guess you have to pick up Lucy soon.”

We walked back the way we came, reversing from the crowded, crazy-quilt market back through the broad, thoughtfully laid out thoroughfare of the Grove. Back through Nordstrom, back past the park, the same chill breeze blowing up from its huge interior bowl-shaped depression.

Left onto Vista Street to my car, parked in front of the duplex. Wet tracks swerved around my car and a ticket waved on the windshield; I’d forgotten it was street-cleaning day. I had maybe two minutes before I needed to get in, make a U-turn, and drive to Happy Hands preschool.

I hugged him. “Thanks,” I said quietly, pressing my cheek against his.

“I’ll call you next week,” he promised.

We kissed, gently and briefly. I was the first to pull away, because I knew Josh had already left.

Chapter 17

I knew he wouldn’t tell Caroline. I knew he wouldn’t call me and say, “Come to Santa Fe and be with me.” But still I hoped. After all I knew, and guessed, about him, I was always a fool when it came to Josh.

At 9 am the following Monday, his number flashed on my cell phone.

“Josh?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“So, did you tell Caroline?”

Silence. Then, “I didn’t tell her.”

That’s the way our story went: love, taking place in the spaces between actual events, for such a small time that it can easily be counted on the fingers. Each day dropping one little marble in an echoing well of time.

“Listen,” he told me urgently. “It was all so intense because we were looking for transformation. Don’t you get it? You go to another country, halfway around the world, to step outside your own skin for a while. So you can live a different life, so you can be a different person. And we found each other. That doesn’t mean that it’s meant to be, anywhere else in the world, or any time besides that one month. And maybe last week.” Did Astrid coach him on this, or something?

“Is that what you really believe?” I was almost surprised, which was silly—I’d already guessed what he’d say. “Or is it something you’re just saying?”

“I don’t know! Listen, it’s what I have to believe, okay? Because I have a family. And so do you. And the last thing I want to do is hurt them. Family comes first, you hear?”

Ironic—just what George had said last week.

“And I’m not family,” I clarified.

 “No, you’re not. Much as I wish you could be, you aren’t.”

“Didn’t this last week mean anything to you?” I choked. “You said you loved me!” I was sounding like a child; I didn’t care.

“I do love you,” he protested. “You’re the one person I’ve ever really loved, with all of myself. And this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done—to say goodbye to you again.”

“So, then why can’t we . . .” My fingers were starting to tingle with electricity. With anger. I clutched the phone, too tightly. It wasn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done, at all. It was the easiest thing. It’s always easier to walk away.

“Sometimes we meet someone who is so right. And if anyone’s the right person, it’s you. But it’s just never the right time, to be together. It can’t happen, Vivian. I wish it could, but it can’t.”

“That’s a lie!” I shouted. “You’re just selfish. You won’t give up a thing; you’re too scared to. You’d rather walk away from me than tell your family you love someone they won’t accept. You’ll never make the hard choice, will you? So it’s not really love. I guess this week was just one long thank-you fuck for the writing jump-start I somehow gave you in London.”