The Push(4)

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That first apartment. I loved you the most there when it was morning. The way you pulled the sheet over you like a hood and slept some more, the thick boyish smell you left on our pillowcases. I was waking up early then, before the sun most of the time, to write at the end of the galley kitchen that was always so damn cold. I wore your bathrobe and drank tea from a ceramic cup I’d painted for you at one of those pottery places. You’d call my name later on, when the floors had warmed and the light from behind the blinds was enough for you to see the details of my flesh. You’d pull me back in and we’d experiment—you were bold and assertive and understood what my body was capable of before I was. You fascinated me. Your confidence. Your patience. The primal need you had for me.



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Nights with Grace. She was the one friend from college I stayed in touch with after we graduated. I didn’t let on how much I liked her because you seemed a bit jealous of her time with me and thought we drank too much, although I gave her very little as far as female friendships go. But still, you gave us both flowers on Valentine’s Day the year she was single. I invited her to dinner once a month or so, and you’d sit as our third on the garbage pail flipped upside down. You’d always stop for the good bottle of wine on your way home from work. When the gossip took over, when she brought out the cigarettes, you’d excuse yourself politely and open a book. One night we heard you speaking to your sister on the balcony while we smoked inside (imagine?). She was going through a breakup and she had called her brother, her confidant. Grace asked me what was wrong with you. Bad in bed? Temper? There had to be something because no man was this perfect. But there wasn’t. Not then. Not that I understood. I used the word “luck.” I was lucky. I didn’t have much, but I had you.



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Our work. We didn’t speak about it often. I envied your rising success and you knew it—you were sensitive to the differences in our careers, our incomes. You were making money and I was dreaming. I had made next to nothing since graduating, except from a few small freelance projects, but you supported us generously and gave me a credit card, saying only: “Use it for whatever you need.” By then you’d been hired at the architecture firm and promoted twice in the time it took me to write three short stories. Unpublished ones. You would leave for work looking like you belonged to someone else.

My rejection letters came in like they were supposed to—this was part of the process, you reminded me, kindly and often. It’ll happen. Your unconditional belief in me felt magical. I desperately wanted to prove to myself that I was as good as you thought I was. “Read to me. Whatever you wrote today. Please!” I always made you beg and then you’d chuckle when I feigned exasperation and agreed. Our silly routine. You’d curl up on the couch after dinner, exhausted, your office clothes still on. You would close your eyes while I read you my work and you would smile at all of my best lines.

The night I showed you my first published story, your hand shook as you took the heavy-stock magazine. I’ve thought of that often. That pride you had in me. I would see that shaking hand again years later, holding her tiny wet head, marked with my blood.

But before then:

You asked me to marry you on my twenty-fifth birthday.

With a ring I sometimes still wear on my left hand.





3





I never asked you if you liked my wedding dress. I bought it used because I saw it in the window of a vintage store and couldn’t get it out of my mind while I browsed the expensive boutiques with your mother. You never whispered, as some awed grooms do, sweating at the altar and rocking on their feet, You look beautiful. You never mentioned my dress when we hid behind the redbrick wall at the back of the property, waiting to float into the courtyard where our guests drank champagne and talked about the heat and wondered when the next canapé would pass. You could barely look away from my shining pink face. You could barely let go of my eyes.

You were the most handsome you had ever been and I can close my eyes now and see twenty-six-year-old you, the way your skin looked bright and your hair still curled down around your forehead. I swear you had remnants of baby fat in your cheeks.

We squeezed each other’s hands all night.

We knew so little then about each other, about the people we would be.

We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.

“There will be no table for the family of the bride,” I had overheard the wedding planner say in a low voice to the man who set up the folding chairs and place cards. He gave her a subtle nod.

Your parents gave us the wedding bands before the ceremony. They handed us the rings in a silver clamshell that had been given to your great-grandmother by the man she loved, who had gone to war and never come home. Inside was engraved a proclamation from him to her: Violet, You will always find me. You had said, “What a beautiful name she had.”

Your mother, cloaked in a fancy pewter-colored shawl, gave us a toast: “Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.” She paused and looked only at me. “Listen for each other’s heartbeat in the current. You’ll always find each other. And then you’ll always find the shore.” She took your father’s hand and you stood to raise your glass.