Time of My Life Page 21

  But now, looking back, I can see that Henry was still trying to guide our ship. Guide me down from my figurative step stool and back to the bunker where we would weather the storm. That, yes, we’d gotten off track, and though the night was black and the storms would be dire, I could still cling on tight and face down the spiral. Eventually, the skies might have cleared, and Henry and I might have emerged scathed but not broken, changed yet still complete.

  But like so many other things, these are the lessons that often only come in hindsight. Now I have mine. And I can only do with them what my time now allows.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Jack and I have RSVPed to Esquire’s annual black tie New Year’s Eve party. With my closet in such disarray, I’d even braved the Christmas rush two weeks back on my lunch break and bought a decidedly non-me dress for the occasion: tight and black and clingy and so unlike anything I’d ever choose to wear in my suburban life that I hardly recognized the sultry skin and firm body that flashed in front of the mirror when I spun around in the dressing room at Bloomingdale’s.

  When I wake New Year’s Eve morning, our bedroom is darkened and gray, like it’s hugged with fog, though I know that I’ve risen late enough for the sun to be up. I’d been dreaming about Henry again, as I had been nearly nonstop since Christmas and since he’s failed to return my phone call. It’s all I can do to pry open my eyes and escape the dream that feels so much like a memory, even though I know that this isn’t so.

  I yank the shades open with one willful tug, and discover the cause: Outside, it is pouring snow. Portly, tumbling flakes have piled on the windowsill, stacking up to well over a foot and barricading the light that normally spills into the room. I vaguely recollect the storm from years past. Where was I? It comes back to me in pieces. With Henry. I do remember that.

  I crawl back into bed and tug the comforter over me, then reach for the remote and flip on the TV. Red bars glare across the bottom of the screen: winter storm warnings, winter storm advisories, do not leave your home, all flights canceled.

  All flights canceled! I perch up on my elbows. Jack is homeward bound in—I check the clock—one hour. He’ll be stranded! I pull myself all the way up. Shit! What about tonight?

  It wasn’t, I considered, a grave catastrophe not to spend New Year’s Eve with Jack, but it certainly seemed depressing to have to spend it alone. Besides, I’d read enough Glamours to semibelieve the old adage that whom you kissed on New Year’s Eve was whom you were destined to kiss the year through. I was too weary to mentally calculate if this had proven true in my romantic history, but it seemed like a wise enough mantra. If I were to kiss no one, what did that mean? That this whole thing, this whole coming back here was for naught? That not only would I not end up with Jack but I’d also end up alone? No, no, this just wouldn’t do.

  I rolled over and called his cell but got sent right to voice mail.

  Five minutes later, I’m nearly hypnotized by the angry red bars that continue to flash on the screen, when my cell vibrates on the covers. It shimmies across the bed, as if it’s running from my grasp.

  “Jack,” I say breathlessly, “where are you?”

  “Henry,” a different voice answers. “And I’m in New York.”

  “Oh shit! Henry!” I actually say this out loud.

  “Nice to speak with you too.” He laughs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “No, no.” I shake my head and try to refocus. “Er, you know, just thought it was someone else.”

  “Obviously,” he says dryly but not without good humor.

  We both pause.

  “Hey, sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I was in Vail.”

  And they don’t have cell service in Vail? I think, then reprimand myself for sounding like a jealous girlfriend.

  “No worries,” I say. “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

  “No, seriously, I forgot my cell at home, so that’s why I couldn’t call back. I just got home last night.”

  “Ahead of the storm,” I say, reiterating the obvious.

  “Whoo yeah. Anyone coming in today is screwed.” I hear him open his refrigerator door and take a swill of what I imagine to be orange juice. Most likely directly from the carton. I know this because no matter how many times I asked him to use a glass, he never did, at least not when he thought that I wasn’t watching. But I was—always watching. Always there to swoop in with a towel to wipe up the residue that the carton would leave or snap at him when he’d actually use the glass but distractedly leave it on the counter for me to put away. As if using the glass was the favor to begin with and putting it in the (fucking) dishwasher was more effort than he could muster. When we first moved, I made offhand, occasional comments, “Could you please put the glass away, Hen?” or “It really grosses me out when you swig from the carton; I use it, too, you know,” but changing him was like trying to alter Morse code: It was too ingrained and thus impossible. So I stopped asking and thumped the glasses into the sink and then the dishwasher, all the while wanting to aim them more firmly at his head.

  “So, anyway, now that I have you on the phone, what are you up to tonight?” Henry says, swallowing his drink. Definitely straight from the carton, I think, though now, it all seems sort of funny, sort of hilarious, like a perverted cartoon of a mouse who keeps going back to get the cheese and gets his tail caught every time. But he just doesn’t give a shit because he wants that cheese so badly. Henry, my poor demented mouse. I shake my head as a smile spreads across my face at the thought.

  “Er, well, we have plans. Jack and I do. But, um, he’s supposed to fly home today—”

  “No way that’s happening,” Henry interrupts.

  I glance back over at the TV. The red warning bars are still pulsing at the bottom.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” I say. I can nearly hear my blood quickening, and immediately, I’m nervous.

  “Well, here’s an idea. You suggested coffee in your message, so, want to come over to my place for dessert and coffee? We can watch the ball go down and be all corny like that.”

  I snort to myself, despite my nerves. Henry loved the stupid Times Square ball. Nonchalant as he pretended to be, he was obsessed with that thing. In fact, we’d spent every New Year’s Eve of our married life ushering in the New Year by watching that glittery ball descend among a crowd of crazed, drunken revelers. I realize, suddenly, that Henry is trying to impress me today, feigning his coolness, his quasi disinterest in the ball when he is fervently hoping that I’d agree. We’re not so different, you and me, I think. We’ve both mastered the art of concealing ourselves so well that it’s no wonder that we finally imploded.

  “What about Celeste?” I ask. “Won’t she mind?”

  “Oh, she’s in Florida,” he says, as if that’s some sort of explanation.

  I pause and listen again to a news reporter who has had the misfortune of being assigned to braving the elements. “Grab your skis or snowshoes because that’s the only way anyone is getting in or out today,” she says, snot dripping from her nose; her eyes and lips are the only other exposed parts of her body.

  Jack, it seems clear, will not be here by the stroke of midnight to greet 2001 by my side.

  “Sure,” I hear myself saying to Henry. “Sure, let’s do dessert and coffee. I’ll be there around nine.”

  We hang up, and I pull the covers over my head and burrow underneath, wondering if and when I’m going to wake up and discover this, all of this, was just a mad dream or a nightmare or even a little bit of fantasy. But after I lull back into sleep and after I’m awakened by my cell phone ringing yet again and after Jack confirms his extended vacation, I look around, fully cognizant and in no way dreaming, and realize that this life, this time, might just be for good.

  HOW MAIL CARRIERS DO IT, I do not know, but per its motto, the U.S. Postal Service does manage to hurdle through what the news is now calling “the worst storm in two decades” and deliver the day’s mail.

  My
superintendent throws it against my front door, and it lands with a thud. Gingerly, because I have spent the past twenty minutes coating my nails in pillow-soft pink, I slip my palm over the knob and shuffle the letters in with my bare foot.

  I flap my hands in the air, much like a chicken does wings, until my nails seem bulletproof, and lean down to retrieve the pile and filter through it. Mostly, it’s catalogs, companies I’ve never heard of crying out for me to purchase their on-sale dog beds, their on-sale Christmas ornaments, their on-sale long johns.

  I pick up the only other noncatalog letter for the day, running my fingers underneath the lip of the envelope, which whispers out a crackle in exchange. An unfamiliar Christmas card awaits inside. Hand-cut snowflakes and silver sparkles dot the front, and some of the glitter sticks to the tips of my fingers as I flip the card open.

  “To Jillian,” it says in the ballooning scrawl of a child who hasn’t quite mastered her cursive. “Happy New Year!! I hope this is the year of your dreams!!! Love, your sister, Izzy.”

  Below it, my mother has written, “Thank you for your note. It is enough to know that you’re out there. And I hope you don’t mind the card. She wanted to.”

  I stare at the card for so long that eventually the writing and the sparkles and the snowflakes blend into themselves, creating a master composite of light and color that is only broken when I wipe away my tears and catch my breath. Then, I walk into the bedroom and slip that card into my sock drawer because I don’t know where else it might belong.

  THOUGH MY NEW black dress, short and flirty, is crying to be worn, the weather mocks me and doesn’t surrender, and trodding through foot-high snow simply doesn’t seem survivable in such a getup. Besides, I tell myself, as I wade through my closet, you are not going for alluring tonight. You are going for “we’re friends,” tonight, and friends don’t let friends wear skimpy black dresses.

  I settle on a black V-neck sweater and jeans. Innocuous enough. Deflecting enough. I stare at myself as I dot my eyes with liner and float mascara over my lashes and peck my cheeks with blush and convince myself that I am not nervous. My sweaty palms and moist underarms, however, plead to the contrary, and I swipe on an extra layer of deodorant, like that can somehow calm my sticky dry mouth and my tumbling stomach.

  The snow has finally ceased when I make my way out of my building. Though it’s stopped, the damage it has left is remarkable: Cars are buried so deeply that they simply look like lumpy igloos on the side of the street; store owners and doormen are bundled like Eskimos, shoveling their sidewalks, virtually in vain, in an attempt to make them passable; pedestrians, the few of us who are braving it, are slipping and stomping and nearly hiking their way down the block. The city is at a quiet standstill: There are no cars or buses or taxis on the roads, no airplanes overhead, nothing but a hush of recently fallen snow and the smacks of the shovels digging into the mess and futilely pushing it elsewhere.

  Henry lives only eight blocks away, but tonight, the route takes nearly half an hour, and I arrive late, panting and sweaty, my thighs aching from wading through the depths of the storm. I buzz his apartment, tucked in the back of an unassuming brownstone, and the door beeps and clicks open. As I step into the front entry, I’m dizzy with déjà vu. The scent—a touch of mildew mixed with Pine-Sol—is too familiar, and for a moment, I lose my balance, slapping my gloved hand up against the tiled wall for balance.

  Finally, the vertigo passes, though the sense of discombobulation does not, and I haul my way up the creaky steps to his third-floor apartment. He opens the door before I can knock.

  “Hey, come in,” he says, sweeping his arm out like a maître d’.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I manage, though my intestines have now somersaulted, and I suspect that a better countdown than the one to midnight might be the one to how soon I need to rush to the toilet.

  “As long as you’re here before the ball drops.” He lets out a nervous laugh and swipes his bangs, but they fall, as they always do, right back into place. “You look cold. What’s your pleasure? I have beer, wine, water, eggnog . . .”

  I catch a glimpse of myself in his front mirror: my nose cherry-engine red, my hair matted and splayed at the ends from my wool hat. Color rises to my ears as I wipe away the film of mucus that has settled in above my lip. You’re friends, I tell myself. Besides, Henry likes you when you’re immaculate, when you’re tailored and crisp and Lilly Pulitzered. Crumpled and damp is better for our purposes tonight anyway.

  I peel off my coat, hang it on the front doorknob, and exhale. Relax! Just freaking relax!

  “Wow, eggnog!” I say, moving into his living room to survey the place. “You really went all out.”

  “Full confession,” he says, hands up like a newly disarmed bank robber. “I ran down to the deli downstairs and picked up whatever they had.” He laughs. “We will be decidedly ungourmet tonight.” He pauses to survey me now that I’ve peeled off the protective elements. “You look great.”

  “Well, I’ll take an eggnog,” I answer, deflecting the compliment. You are not supposed to like me dressed like a rodent! That is not your thing! “Deli style or not.”

  I watch him for a moment in his tiny galley kitchen, barefoot in his faded jeans and rumpled navy cable sweater, then turn back toward the expanse of the apartment. It is spare, more so than I remember it, with a black leather couch and an oversized TV screen that is on but muted, and a beige rug with a tiny ribbon pattern that’s only noticeable if you’re sitting on the floor. Honey-colored built-in bookshelves line the back wall, and they’re gorged with stacks and piles of hardcovers, most of which, I already know, are autobiographies of famous explorers or historians or politicians or examinations of science and medicine and the world at large. A wooden desk peers out over his living room window, and other than a computer, it is virtually bare: no picture frames, no cluttered mail.

  Is this how I became so linear? I think. Is this why I flitted around the house to ensure that nothing was out of place, so nothing ever shifted for him? I twist my engagement ring around my finger, and remember how, when we moved to the suburbs, I was determined to pull together a magazine-worthy home, how desperately I needed to leave behind my scars from my mother and the mess of my old closet and my desk and, really, of my former life. No, I say to myself now. Henry isn’t why you became what you became. It‘s not so simple as that. Though maybe his need for order is what drew you to him in the first place.

  Henry nudges me from behind. “Your drink, ma’am.”

  I turn, taking the eggnog, foamy in a glass beer mug, from him, and smile.

  “A toast,” he says, raising his bottle of Amstel.

  “To what?” I ask, though I raise my glass just the same.

  “To . . .” He hesitates and thinks. “To life. To time. To 2001. To the way that we got here and the places we’re going.”

  A rush of tears floods my eyes, but I blink them back before he can take notice. “I’ll drink to that,” I say, then sip my actually pretty-good eggnog, though not as good as the homemade version that I’d eventually make for our various neighborhood Christmas events.

  “So what happened with your mom?” Henry asks, depositing himself on the couch.

  “Well, what’s more interesting is what happened with my dad, actually,” I reply and join him. “Turns out, he forgave her a long time ago.” I shrug. “I guess he feels like he holds some responsibility in all of it.”

  “He probably did,” Henry says simply. “Where there’s an effect, there’s usually a cause.”

  “So says your professor of a father,” I say with a grin.

  “So says he.” He smiles back. “But, I mean, for the most part, it’s true. That’s always what I’ve found most difficult about relationships, how . . .”—he swigs from his beer and searches for the phrasing—“how tough it can be to change in conformance to the other person. It just seems like one person is always changing too much and the other not enough. And then the cause and effect
just makes it worse. You feel like you’ve given too much, but then keep giving because the other person doesn’t . . .” He drifts off. “It’s just never easy. Not for me, at least.”

  “Not for me, either,” I say, wondering why Henry and I have never spoken frankly like this before, or, if we did, back in the whirlwind days of our dating life, why I’d forgotten such conversations when life pushed us in other directions.

  “But you’re marrying Jack,” he offers. “It must be different with him.”

  “It is,” I offer, though the words are neither forceful nor direct. I consider how much I’ve bent on the wedding planning, on his aimless ambition, on molding myself into a perfectly crafted version of who I thought he needed me to be. It wasn’t altogether different, I realized just as I had in Vivian’s bathroom when the image of my future self startled me into tears, from what I’d done in my marriage to Henry. And, the thought pummels me, if the problem didn’t lie with them, then it lies with me, rendering this whole trip, this whole fucking experience inconsequential because my history wasn’t what I needed to change. I was.

  “Oh, I almost forgot! Dessert!” Henry says, puncturing our pregnant silence and bounding off the couch, flushing away the morbid realization that was creeping into my consciousness.

  I hear wrappers crinkling and a minute later, he returns with a platter of powdered doughnuts, Twinkies, fluorescent pink Snowballs, a Twix bar, and a mound of Skittles.

  “Nice,” I giggle. “Very upscale.”

  “Only the finest is served here at Casa Henry,” he says, grabbing a butter knife and delicately slicing off the end of the Twix, then popping it in his mouth.

  He rests the plate on the coffee table, sits next to me, and reaches for the remote. I tear into a Snowball, unnaturally colored as it might be, and press the sacchariney coconut into the roof of my mouth until it dissolves, sending trickles of artificial flavoring and sugar down the back of my throat. Henry turns up the volume on Times Square.