The Night Before(32)

“You know what’s funny, though?” he asks.

I have no idea. “What?”

“It feels good in a way. Cathartic.”

He knows how to turn the pages. I’m right there with him.

“I know. I haven’t had one conversation since I’ve been home that’s transcended mommy gossip, sports, and funny stories from our childhood. Always the funny stories. Never the other ones.”

“Same here. Even when I visit my father or my sister. We don’t ever talk about my mother, except to remember how she used to like this thing or that thing, or what she would have said about something happening in the news. None of us talks about the hole in our lives, or how it shines this bright light on death and loss. It’s lonely sometimes.”

Jonathan Fielding, you have no idea how lonely it is. Or maybe you do. Maybe you know in a different way, having had such incredible love from a parent and now having it gone. Maybe that’s worse than spending a lifetime yearning for it. Maybe the hole that’s left is just as big and the urge to fill it with other things just as strong.

I want to reach across the cheap plastic console of this car that’s all wrong and put my arms around him. I want to bury my face in the nape of his neck and smell his skin and feel the warmth of him. This man who knows. This man who understands.

I can hear Rosie scorning me. Can’t you see how these men are like a drug for you? Don’t you get it? They can’t fill the hole. They just make it bigger.

I’ll quit tomorrow, Rosie. I promise. Just one more.

I have to see if maybe this one’s not wrong. His words. His tears. How can I still not know the difference? I learned not to turn them away, the right ones. I learned how to see through the wrong ones, not construct them into more than they are. Didn’t I?

Is it wrong that I see Asshole across from me now?

Jonathan Fielding reads my mind again.

“What was his name?” he asks.

“Who?”

“The man in New York. The one who left you. Who disappeared.”

Asshole, I’m about to say. But that’s probably not the best answer.

“Kevin,” I say. True. But the word is bitter on my tongue.

There’s a pause. A long one, and he stares at me now. Payback’s a bitch. Then I feel a line slowly drawn down my cheek. Just one. It curls around my chin and stays there until I wipe it away.

“Jesus—now I’m sorry!” he says. His hand reaches across the cheap plastic console of this car that’s all wrong and wipes my cheek. Erases the line with smooth, soft skin.

“Both of us crying—I don’t know what that says about this date.”

I don’t even try to smile this time.

“He hurt you pretty bad, huh?”

“Apparently,” I manage to get out as the muscles around my mouth tremble. “I don’t know why. It only lasted a few months.”

We’re still in this car. Half an hour later and we’re still sitting here in the darkness. I feel trapped, suddenly, like I’m in a cell with no way out. But there is a way out. It’s a door handle, then an exit sign, then a street, then Rosie’s car, the way home, the driveway, front door, unlocked of course, lingering garlic, up the creaky stairs, down the narrow hall to the attic and my bed where I will fall into the fluffy comforter that smells like my nephew and I will lie there awake all night.…

It’s just another cell. This is what I realize as I sit in the car that’s all wrong with this stranger and this hope and these tears. It’s a cell where I stare at the ceiling in a state of fear about who is writing me ugly notes and why did Kevin leave me without a trace and when will I ever turn off this mind that is killing me in a million small ways every day?

Which cell is worse?

I decide to stay.

“Was he the first one you thought you got right?” Jonathan asks. “After figuring out your issues with your father?”

I move my head up and down. Yes.

I hear Kevin’s words in my ear. I love you. I feel his skin on my skin and his hands in my hair and his breath so warm against my cheek. He said those words even though I had told him everything—about that horrible night. About my fists for hands and my father who left and my mother with her men. Rosie and Joe. And Mitch Adler. He said the words in spite of everything.

“He broke it off in a text message,” I say. “I don’t know why.” It makes me sound pathetic.

“Just like that?” Jonathan asks. Even though I already told him this.

“Just like that.” I guess I have to keep saying it to convince him.

Jonathan Fielding shakes his head with wide eyes like I’ve just told him something unbelievable. But he doesn’t know my past, how many wrong men I’d managed to find in the haystack, and how they treated women. Or me, I suppose. Maybe it was just me.

“That’s just wrong. Breaking up with a text. I don’t care what day and age it is. I sure hope it works out between us because I don’t know if I can handle the modern world.”

“You’ve already been stalked. You got through that. I think you’ll be okay,” I say, trying to move away from this story. I can’t bear it. Not tonight. I’m so tired.

Jonathan pulls the keys from the ignition and grabs his wallet from the cheap plastic console. He opens his door and the dome light turns on, making both of us squint.