Reckless Years Page 5

  When the ceremony starts, I’m watching her about-to-be husband and he looks so in love, so moved, that I find myself wanting to retch. I mean literally, I feel like I could vomit. How could you think getting married was a good idea? I’m thinking. Don’t you know what’s going to happen?

  And then I am struck by such a feeling of aloneness that I almost drop to my knees.

  After the party, I crawl back to my hotel room and curl up in the bathtub. I can hear Eleanor outside the door wondering where I am, but I can’t move.

  I tried to be a good bridesmaid. I swear to God I did.

  Sunday, July 9, 2006

  June has turned into July and still Josh hasn’t left. We talk. We talk. We talk. Or rather he talks. I have nothing left to say, but I feel I owe it to him to listen.

  The one good thing in my life right now is the crush I have on my insanely cute French yoga teacher. He’s got thick brown hair that always seems on the verge of needing a cut, soulful brown eyes with sensitive, sun-touched creases along the edges, and a catlike body. My friend thinks he has a crush on me too. I love that she thinks this, but I know nothing that good would ever happen to me. That’s just not how the universe works.

  Wednesday, July 12, 2006

  Josh has decided to move to Los Angeles.

  Thursday, July 27, 2006

  It’s now been more than two months since I told Josh I wanted a separation, and still he hasn’t left. I’ve been moving from friend’s place to friend’s place. Now Eleanor’s aunt and uncle are letting me stay with them in Brooklyn Heights. They have a room on the top floor of their brownstone they don’t use. They’re so nice to me it makes me nervous. I tiptoe around and try not to make any noise or take up any space. They’re both chain-smokers, so mostly I sit in my room and smoke and look out the window and wonder if I’ll ever participate in life again.

  Yesterday, after yoga, my friend came back here with me to watch Deadwood and eat soul food from this great place on Atlantic Avenue. But Josh had been so weird earlier in the afternoon, weeping and apologizing. I couldn’t make him stop. As we put Deadwood on, I kept imagining going back to the house in the morning and finding a corpse.

  I stopped the show and called him. No answer. I called again. No answer. I thought, this is it. He’s doing it right now. If you don’t go home right this minute Josh is going to commit suicide. You will have to live with it for the rest of your life. The air in the room felt as if it were pulsating around me. But if you do go home, there will never be an escape.

  I couldn’t concentrate on the show. I couldn’t eat my macaroni and greens. I kept saying to myself, it won’t be your fault. It won’t be your fault. It won’t be your fault.

  In the morning I call again. “Oh sorry,” Josh says, “my phone died.”

  Please get out of my life! Please.

  Friday, July 28, 2006

  The cute Frenchman does seem to be interested in me. But he’s so beautiful. Also, I think he’s gay. But I don’t care. My heart beats faster when he does a correction on me.

  Monday, August 14, 2006

  It’s mid-August and still Josh hasn’t left. I’m living in a friend of a friend of a friend’s apartment on Fifteenth Street, cat-sitting for her disgusting, smelly cat. I live increasingly in my imagination. My real life of getting out of bed, failing to do any work, getting stoned, going to yoga, and going back to bed feels distant. As though it’s the dream. In my imagination, I’m with Mike Talese. We run into each other unexpectedly, hold hands, stroke each other’s hair. They’re so pathetic, my fantasies. But I long so much for even these tiny tokens of affection that the lack of them feels like the breath is being pushed out of me. It’s real physical pain in my chest.

  This is my primary Mike Talese fantasy:

  I’m in a café in Los Angeles wearing sunglasses and my hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail.

  Mike arrives.

  He takes off his sunglasses; his hazel eyes are clouded with caution. They’re not open to me.

  As we sit, though, he falls under my spell and his eyes light up.

  We finish our coffee—or meal, I don’t know, I haven’t worked that part out—and Mike stands up to go.

  I put out my hand.

  He looks at me.

  “I don’t want to say good-bye,” I say.

  He’s about to give his spiel about me being a married woman, but I cut him off.

  “Mike,” I say. “Let’s have one night. Not to have sex”—my fantasy is way too precious to be mauled by lustful hands—“but just to be close. I want one night not to pretend.”

  In this fantasy, I look incredibly beautiful as I say these things, and although the sun is shining right on me, I have no pores.

  “Don’t walk out of my life,” I say.

  Even in my fantasy, I find myself wanting to cry.

  “Okay, Heather,” Mike says. “Let’s get out of here.” He tosses some money on the table and together we leave the café, his arm around my shoulders, me huddling against him. We walk to his little silver BMW and then he wraps both arms around me and says my name over and over while the traffic flows down Santa Monica Boulevard.

  That is my fantasy.

  Tuesday, August 15, 2006

  I email my brother and tell him Josh and I are separating. “I’m sorry,” he writes back. “That can’t be easy. I guess I can’t say I’m completely surprised. Do you need anything? You should come join me on tour. We just played Barcelona. It was amazing. Come.”

  I’m sure he doesn’t mean it. But it’s nice of him to say.

  I email my mother. She calls me on the phone. “What happened?” she cries. My mother has always been crazy about Josh. I think, um, he treated me like shit for a decade? My mother gives a big sigh. “Poor Josh,” she says. “He’s had such a rough time of it. He just never stood a chance, did he?”

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but I find this crushing. I get off the phone as fast as I can so she won’t see how hurt I am.

  Today is August 15—my father’s birthday. I wonder as I always do on this day what it would be like to have a father you’d be willing to call.

  Thursday, August 17, 2006

  The cute Frenchman and I have taken to sitting on a bench outside the yoga studio and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes together. He just broke up with his boyfriend of eight years. Yes, I know: boyfriend. But I really don’t care. Frankly, it feels like a relief. We talk about taking care of ourselves and healing and all kinds of New Age crap. It’s very relaxing, and he’s so beautiful to look at. This is my bright spot.

  Wednesday, August 23, 2006

  Josh needs a car for Los Angeles, and as far as I can tell has spent the past several weeks doing nothing but obsessing over what to buy. I offer him forty-five hundred dollars. He says he needs at least nine thousand. He says he’ll pay me back over monthly installments, which I know he won’t.

  I sign the papers.

  He has a car. There are no excuses left.

  Thursday, August 31, 2006

  It’s only been a week since I last wrote, but how different I feel! I’m flying from San Francisco, where I was at a wedding, to Los Angeles to visit Summer, and you know what? I’m actually feeling pretty good. I survived another wedding! I didn’t die of misery this summer! Sure, I get stoned and drunk every afternoon, but I can almost see another life waiting for me over the horizon. Also, I weigh 107 pounds. And let’s be honest for just a second. The one upside of heartbreak is the weight loss. I don’t think I’ve weighed this little since I was born. I’m not a little on the slim side. I’m really, truly thin. I keep looking in the mirror and turning round and round just to see the lack of fat from all angles. Even my ass is small. Do you hear what I’m saying here? When I was young and taking ballet, my teacher told me I should weigh a hundred pounds. And I was like yeah, right, maybe if you cut off one of my legs. But now I’m at least in the ballpark. So sure, my life is crumbling around me, but then again, I’m nearly as sma
ll as a ballerina.

  Thursday, September 7, 2006

  Los Angeles

  My Real-Life Encounter with Mike Talese

  I wear green cotton pants that used to be tight but now have to be belted at the waist, a tiny silk camisole edged with lace, and red flip-flops. I feel very California chic. My hair is kind of wild from the ocean dip Summer and I took yesterday, and it flies out from my head in spiraling curls. I ring his doorbell. He comes out, picks me up, and spins me around. We’re both laughing. And I’m thinking, Oh God, you are so cute.

  In his apartment, I wander around. I look at his DVD collection—Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood films, Girls Gone Wild, Bruce Springsteen Live. In his fridge, there’s nothing but a six-pack of Corona in the crisper, a door full of condiments, and a freezer full of vodka and frozen dinners.

  “Jeez, you do need a girlfriend,” I say.

  We change into beach clothes and then head out. There are women shaped liked Barbie dolls in workout gear stretching on the grassy knolls at the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway and a trio of elderly Chinese women in big bamboo sun hats practicing tai chi.

  We walk across the pedestrian overpass, down under the stairs, and onto the sand.

  What do you want, Heather? I ask myself. What do you want out of this situation?

  I lie back, luxuriate under the sun. I have this feeling, though, that Mike is going to think I’m a terrible wife for being out here with him lolling around in the sand instead of home with my husband. I can’t bear for him to think anything bad about me, so I blurt it out.

  “Josh and I are getting separated,” I say. “He leaves the day I get back.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but Mike is incredibly nice about it. Sympathetic. We don’t discuss it for long.

  Heather, I think, what do you want from this situation?

  I stand up. “Let’s go into the water.”

  Mike squints up at me. “It’s freezing in there.”

  I’m wearing a little jean skirt I’d put on at Mike’s place. I start to unzip it. “I told you I wanted to go swimming in the ocean,” I say, pulling it down, kicking it off. “Did you think I was fucking around?”

  “Nooo.”

  “Then don’t be a pussy about it.”

  I start to back away from the blanket.

  Mike scrambles up to his feet and comes after me.

  When I hit the water, it feels so good, I almost can’t believe it. I dive beneath the waves. I float on my back. It’s all blue around me. Blue ocean. Blue sky. I just lie there, floating, seeing how good I’m capable of feeling. Mike comes paddling up. I think, this sure beats sitting by the window in Brooklyn. Then I come up with a plan.

  “Mike?”

  “Yes, Heather?”

  He tosses the wet hair back from his face.

  This is my moment.

  “You know that scene in Lost in Translation,” I say. “The one where Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray sit in the bar and hold hands and just admit they’re crazy about each other, just for that night?”

  Mike doesn’t say anything. He’s just watching me.

  “Well, I think we should have that scene. Just admit that right now, at this particular moment in time, we’re crazy about each other.”

  Mike looks as if something hasn’t quite computed in his brain. I can see the upload wheel spinning. Then he smiles, a long, slow smile. “So you admit you’re crazy about me!” he says, and splashes water with the flat of his hand.

  That’s not your line, I think.

  “Ha!” I say, and I start to swim away from him. But Mike is right behind me and he catches me, pulling me toward him. I feel his arms wrap around my waist underwater. I feel his breath on my neck. I think, oh my God, this is actually happening. But when he pulls me even closer, I feel something else too. I feel something stiff protruding into the back of my thigh. Hold everything! There are no boners in my fantasy!

  I get away as fast as I can. I run out of the water.

  “It’s too cold! It’s too cold!” I shout.

  Back at the blanket, Mike wraps his arms tight around me.

  His face is so close to mine I can see how thick his black eyelashes are, the creases around his eyes, the bristle from his beard. I think, I didn’t know your hair would feel this way. I haven’t seen anyone but Josh up this close since I was twenty years old.

  “Say you’re crazy about me,” I say.

  “I’m crazy about you,” Mike says.

  “Say it again.”

  “I’m crazy about you!”

  This is better than I’d even dreamed.

  When we finally get up, we’re both in a daze. There’s been no kissing, but we’ve been holding each other for nearly an hour. Back at his apartment, though, something changes. Mike pulls me toward him, sort of fiercely, and before I can turn away, he reaches a hand up under my shirt, into my bikini top, and over my breast. I feel something like an electrical current shoot through my body.

  “Mike!” It’s a plea for mercy. I can feel his desire like some kind of giant wave and suddenly have a terror that it will subsume me, drench me in blackness.

  He lets go. Runs a hand through his hair. Straightens his shirt. I don’t so much step away as stagger back.

  “Okay, well, then I’m going to take a shower,” he says.

  After his shower, Mike drives me to my car. When we get there, we sit for a moment. Mike is staring straight ahead of him.

  “Mike?”

  “Yes?”

  “You are crazy about me, aren’t you?”

  Mike sighs and when he turns toward me I’m surprised to see that he looks tired, defeated almost. Then he cups my chin with his hand and kisses me very gently, right on the lips. “Yes, I’m crazy about you,” he says. And he is so cute with his black hair brushed away from his face and his tired hazel eyes that I almost can’t stand it.

  I smile as I slip out of the car.

  When Mike drives off down Washington Boulevard, I get into my own car. I sit there not sure what to do with myself. I’m shaking. I’m cold. I’m hot. I’m ecstatic. I want to vomit. I could scream with joy and weep for the loveliness of it all. You did it! I think. You fucking rule! And I lean my head against the car seat and laugh out loud. I feel so alive. I think about calling him and begging him to come back. I pick up my cell, put it back down, pick it up, put it back down. I sit with my face in my hands, laughing and blushing and letting the waves of delight and revulsion pass over me.

  The sun is going down. It’s one of those magnificent LA sunsets where the sky is crisscrossed with long streaks of burning pinks and deep burgundies. I’m not sure how long I sit there. But it’s dark by the time I put the key in the ignition. And I think, this is me, driving off into the rest of my life.

  Friday, September, 8, 2006

  The next morning after next.

  “So listen.” It’s Summer talking. I have to leave for the airport in like half an hour, but I’ve swung by the Pilates studio she manages to say good-bye on my way back from . . . Mike Talese’s apartment, where I spent the night!

  I slept in a pair of his boxers and a T-shirt. No clothes came off, but we kissed all night long and I made him tell me he was crazy about me like fifteen more times.

  “Mike is not going to react to this in the same way you are,” Summer is saying.

  “Okay.”

  “After men have let themselves become vulnerable, they need to retreat.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, don’t be offended, don’t try to stop him. Definitely, definitely don’t be in touch with him. Let him go off into his cave and then just be there, chilling, ready for him, when he comes back.”

  I’d told Mike that I would call him the minute I got back to New York, but Summer has been dating for like twenty years, so I figure she knows more about men then I do. “Okay,” I say. “Got it. Don’t contact him.”

  Summer hugs me. “You’re glowing,” she says
. “You look beautiful.”

  I feel beautiful.

  Saturday, September 9, 2006

  “What happened to your nose?”

  It’s Josh talking to me. We’re sitting on the stoop in front of the coffee shop on Eleventh Street.

  “It looks like in the old days when we used to make out so much it would peel.”

  I frown and shrug. There’s a second where I think I might panic. I can’t tell if Josh is going to pursue the matter. I have no idea what I’ll say if he does. But he doesn’t.

  We walk back to the apartment.

  I’m helping him get the last of his things together.

  “Okay, let’s get this thing going,” Josh says, a bag over each shoulder. “The sooner I go, the sooner this will be over.”

  We’ve decided on a six-month trial separation. At times I feel horribly guilty I’m soft-pedaling the fact that I never want to see him again. At other times I believe what we tell each other. I think, yes, he’ll go out to LA, get his shit together, and then he’ll come back and we can go on with the life we were supposed to have.

  We stand together by the car. We put the two suitcases he’s taking into the trunk. We attach his surfboard to the roof. Then Josh and I are standing on the curb. He gives me this little smile that I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s incredibly tender, like he gets pleasure just from the sight of me. I forgot how tender he could be.

  “I love you, Heather,” he says. “Little one.”

  “I love you too,” I say, and I actually mean it. I’m thinking, I know you, and suddenly I am near-frozen by the realization that I am throwing away someone’s love.