Always the Last to Know(51)
My dad squeezed my hand. “These things happen,” he said kindly. “Don’t worry, sugarplum.”
“Marriage is an outdated institution,” Mom said. Dad sighed and let go of my hand.
I cried so much that for the next month, there were salt deposits in my eyelashes. It felt like Noah had slammed the door on my pulsing heart. Why did I have to move? Why wouldn’t he even try living here? Why was there no compromise? What was this sexist bullshit?
And then I’d flip. Should I move home? What would happen to me if I did? Would I hate him for cutting my dreams short? How long was I going to try to be an artist in this vicious, competitive city? Was he right? Did I want five black-haired babies? The truth was, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t hate babies, but I didn’t stare at them or fawn over them like some of my friends.
He would wait, he’d said. Apparently in silence, because we didn’t talk to each other for a month.
Not many high school couples stay together, I rationalized. Not many twenty-two-year-old men really know what they want. Sure, I could marry Noah, and within a decade, we’d be stale and old and bitter, scratching to make ends meet in a town that catered to the wealthy. Our kids would grow up in the weighted gloom the way I had, tiptoeing around their parents’ disappointment in each other. We’d inevitably divorce, and those five kids and I would resent him. Or worse, they’d love him better. Who wouldn’t?
I’d picture his face, his wild beauty and curly hair, the rare smile with the power of the sun, and I’d cry again.
But I had to try. I’d always only wanted to be a painter, and I knew I had to give it my best shot. I had just graduated. It was too early to call myself a failure.
With a little help from my dad, I was able to rent a shared apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, the only part of Manhattan that had resisted gentrification. It was a grubby, stuffy place with two roommates, not counting the cockroaches. Mala never left the apartment and barely spoke, just sat with her face practically touching her phone, thumbs twitching away. (I had no idea how she paid her bills, if she worked, if she had friends or family . . . She never offered anything.) Sarah was a violinist and only came home with her friends to cook giant vegan meals and leave all their dirty dishes in the tiny kitchen for days at a time.
Two months after my graduation, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see Noah standing there with a duffel bag. I burst into tears and wrapped myself around him, sobbing with relief and love.
“I’ll try it. Okay? I’ll try.” His eyes were shiny again, and we fell into bed without another word.
He got a job in construction—not finish construction, which was what he did back home—trim work and custom cabinets and, occasionally, a piece of furniture. Here, he worked with a company that built skyscrapers—Juliet had connections and got him the job. So every day, he went to work with metal and cement, thirty or more stories above the ground.
Noah was afraid of heights. I remembered the summer I got him to jump off a rock into the Sound, and how he’d been shaking, how it took half an hour of my talking him into it, and when he did and we surfaced in the briny water, he’d kissed me, and I pushed his wet curls off his face and loved him so, so much. I knew he was doing this for me, just as he had jumped for me, too.
I worked, too, waitressing at a sleek restaurant in Tribeca (hoping my proximity to the heart of the art world would grant me a lucky break). I made a website featuring my artwork, dropping in the fact that I was (probably) a distant relative of Robert Frost . . . anything that would help. It didn’t. During the days, I painted in the tiny living room, my easel on the couch because there wasn’t enough floor space for me, the canvas, my paints and brushes, and Mala, staring at her phone, cackling occasionally.
Noah and I didn’t have a lot of leisure time together, but at least we were here. When we could, we’d take walks, because that’s the best thing to do in New York. We’d poke around St. Mark’s Place, or get some street meat near Central Park. I told him about the city, the history, the art, the famous people who’d thrived here and loved it here.
He was trying. I could see that. And he was failing. To him, the city was too loud, too hard, too full of chaos. He didn’t sleep well, and dark circles appeared under his eyes. He didn’t smile as much as he used to. He had always been the quiet one in our relationship, but now, he was rivaling crazy Mala in silence.
As Heathcliff needed the moors, so my wild boy needed to go home. Stoningham was as lovely a town as there was, but I knew it wasn’t the pretty streets and green that Noah loved. It was the birdsong, the tide, the sound of the wind in the marsh grass, the way a storm would roll up the coast and light up the horizon with lightning. The deep woods with their three-hundred-year-old oaks and maples, the farmland and stone walls that wandered through forest and field, marking out the history of the land. He missed working with wood; his job was now pouring cement. He missed his parents and knowing everyone he ran into.
One night, I woke up and looked at him. He was asleep, his lashes like a fanned sable brush on his cheeks, the scruffy beard that never seemed to fill out. He’d lost a little weight, and he didn’t have it to lose. With his arm over his head, his ribs seemed too sharp.
My city was hurting him.
In the morning, I made him breakfast as Mala stood near the window with her goddamn phone. “Mala, could you give us a minute?” I asked. She shot me a dark look and stomped to her room.