The Animators(81)
That night, he comes to bed quiet before scooting over to me and saying, grudgingly, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to get as upset as I did.”
“You were entitled to the way you felt. I was being a dick.”
“No, there was no reason to get that irritated with you.” He leans back into the pillows, runs a hand through his chest hair. “She and I broke things off not long before I met you. There wasn’t any overlap, but it cut pretty close, time-wise. I guess I feel a little guilty about it.”
I respect him for this. For sticking to his guns. For making an apology in the light when he could have snapped off the lamp and done it in the dark. I prop myself on my elbow and say, “You have a strong moral compass. You know that?”
He looks surprised. Says, “Well, so do you.”
—
Teddy is a natural manager. He changes the feeling of a room merely by walking into it. It’s in the tone of his voice, rarely loud yet arresting, and in the easy, affable way he makes decisions. He is responsible, transparent. Living with him is quieter, more controlled, than what I am used to. It feels like I can share the reins a little. I no longer have to mind the clock and pay the bills for two people. Even for all the moments of self-consciousness, wondering how I sound or seem to him, it feels nice. He has incorporated me into his home, given me not ownership—not yet—but ground, the promise of a claim in the air, that delicious, foregone conclusion. It is new and exciting. Feeling older without fear of getting old.
We only really talk about the pictures one more time.
“I’m struggling with it,” he tells me. We are driving out into the country. It’s an unanticipated warm night, close to seventy degrees. He wants to show me an abandoned farmhouse that he loves close to the Indiana state line.
I ask how he’s struggling.
“With the decision I made to show you those,” he says. “It’s a responsibility thing. I am responsible for exposing you to it. You said it yourself. Just remembering it was traumatic for you.”
“You were eleven,” I say. “Eleven-year-olds do not make decisions. In no way were you responsible.”
“I disagree.” He flicks a look over at me before returning to the road. He likes these conversations, the long, winding philosophical disagreements. “Eleven-year-olds make life-changing decisions all the time. They have all the weight and responsibility of any other human being.”
“Those decisions are uninformed. Or they’re informed by what’s in front of them. Eleven-year-olds have no idea what the fuck they’re doing.”
“I know several people who have always been their own decision makers,” he says. “From three feet high on. Present company included.”
“Well, I’ve made some pretty shit decisions,” I say. “So.”
“I shared an incredible burden with you,” he says slowly, “forced it on you, actually. And I’m having a hard time forgiving myself.”
He’s silent for a moment. It’s dark. The hills are beginning to roll larger, giving our car the feeling of a boat on smooth and even waves. A college station is spinning an entire Wilco album we’ve discovered we both adored years ago, a soft song with a sweet radioed buzz, falling in and out of frequency. Distance has no way of making love understandable.
Suddenly there’s a crack in the sky, a flash of pale orange light tearing down the horizon to the ground. “Heat lightning,” Teddy says wonderingly.
I love this life. I love being in the safe, shadowy cell of this car, speeding by farmhouses spiked with the warm yellow of interior lamps. I can’t remember the last time I felt such gratitude for what I have. I can’t remember the last time I felt so lucky to be right where I was.
I reach over and take his hand.
—
We all get together on Friday nights for dinner, Mel and the boys toting plastic bags from Kroger up the stairs and filling the kitchen with noise and flour dusting and splashes of tomato sauce everywhere, seemingly, whether or not the recipe calls for tomato at all. They kill a couple of six-packs while they cook and everyone’s drunk by the time we sit down to eat. The meals are big, hot, yeasty affairs: homemade Sicilian pizza, frittata, meatloaf. Tatum makes dessert for every production, assembling it at home in a cast-iron skillet or an old-school blue-and-white Corningware dish. They are touchingly exquisite. A flaky apple pie so good it would have made Kent rip his hair out. Layered baklava that leaves us all sucking honey and olive oil from our fingers for two sweet days. “That’s our lil treasure,” Mel says, corking a wet willie into his ear. Tatum and Ryan follow Mel around the kitchen, deferring to her, looking to her approval for jokes, opinions, even the way they harass each other. Mel’s always had disciples, the most striking of the New York followers being Fart—big, burly guys with a certain amount of social anxiety—but these two are a package deal, and she is good to them. We watch movies after dinner and I usually fall asleep on Teddy’s lap, awake to him shaking me, saying, “Sweetheart, everyone’s leaving,” Mel and Tatum and Ryan behind him, bundled into winter coats, giggling at each other, cigarettes tucked behind their ears.
Mel and I both put on some weight. Our cheeks fill out and bloom up red. We’re more polite, suddenly remembering all the staples of social nicety that New York makes you forget—opening doors for people, saying please, making brief, nonthreatening eye contact.