I'm Glad About You(27)

“Oh, let me!” Dennis said, smiling his devil’s grin.

“I’m not a f*cking child, Dennis; I can get my own f*cking drink,” she told him, pulling out her potent ability with the word “f*ck” in an unflinching warning.

“Well, I guess you need one,” he informed her, as bitchy as an old theater queen.

“That’s right, I do,” she shot back, as she turned away from them both. She knew that this would instantly become a part of the lore surrounding her unpromising meeting with Kyle’s idiotic blonde wife. Good, she thought.

Across the room and behind a pillar Kyle watched Alison turn, her pride and her anger flashing like a sword in battle. Then, there it was: The color rose to her cheeks and he recognized the quick shame which overcame her every time she let her temper get the better of her. The sight of her—vulnerable, stylish, alone—unmoored his heart beyond reason. She looked taller, somehow, and more slender than he remembered. Her hair was longer, and cut into subtle layers which revealed the occasional auburn highlights buried in the dark, textured browns. He had told himself, in the past, that those hidden streaks of auburn were his alone; as he came to know every inch of her they had revealed themselves readily to his seeking hands while remaining elusive to the unknowing eyes of others. Now that some clever New York hairstylist had uncovered them with a swipe of the scissors, he felt lost and adrift. Those hidden glints of red were no longer his, and neither was she.

But that was on her; it was all on her. She was always the one to end things, usually with no warning; they would be completely drunk on each other in every way possible, and then it was like she would simply turn the spigot off and disappear inside herself. Then the other Alison showed up, the one who was cold and clinical and determined that it was long past time to end this. That Alison wouldn’t even discuss things. It was like dealing with someone who had multiple personality disorder, frankly. He remembered all the times he would show up at her house, or her dorm at college, or that exhausted apartment she shared with those hippies in Seattle. Every time she would open the door, his nerves would stand completely on edge, waiting to find out which one of her was in charge. If she smiled and threw her arms around him, they were going to have an amazing night. If she couldn’t meet his eyes, not so much.

But the first Alison—the one he was in love with—always returned to him. That was the reason he held on with such determination, even during the months of separation and break-offs. Those times always seemed to be merely necessary, part of the cost of adulthood, and education. They had fallen in love in high school, for crying out loud, and even though they started applying to colleges at the same time, there was no discussion, ever, that they might apply to the same school. It wasn’t done. They were too young. Too young and too sensible. His parents had sat him down at the well-worn Formica table in the kitchen and told him soberly that they thought it would be a bad idea; they loved Alison and they knew he did too, but college was a time to broaden your world as well as your mind, and going to school with your high school sweetheart would cut you off from all that. He nodded and accepted everything they said, swallowing the panic that threatened to rise up like gorge from his stomach; he was an essentially obedient young man, and the idea of defying his parents on a point so patently established in the local cultural lore was not in his skill set. When he presented this reality to Alison, she thought about it only briefly, then shrugged. Her parents had not given her the same speech—there was too much chaos over at the Moores’ for things like parental guidance, honestly—but she had assumed that this would be the lay of the land.

“Well, if they’re going to split us up for four years,” she said thoughtfully, “we need to get busy.” And with that she climbed onto his lap, straddling him with those long legs, reaching under his shirt, and kissing him with a passion that never ceased to thrill him. They were sitting on a floor in the corner of the Moore family room behind the piano; it was one of the few relatively private spaces in that small house full of people but it wasn’t like they couldn’t be seen, if someone went looking. Alison didn’t care; she never did, even after her mother had found them one night so close to having sex they might actually have fallen off that cliff if Rose’s spot-on timing—and enraged disgust—hadn’t intervened. Kyle remembered every one of those make-out sessions with a vividness which still frightened him; at night, when he would return to these memories obsessively, living in the heat of the past, he wondered if they would ever wear thin. As of this instant, they had not.

It was a spectacularly delusional dance. He truly hated her, and had already laid full responsibility for the creeping mediocrity of his marriage at Alison’s feet. But even as he privately nursed this whisper of blame—for a disaster which hadn’t even occurred yet—he simultaneously drowned, every chance he got, in the memories of their time together. Outwardly, no one would ever know. He barely knew himself, the cost of holding those two opposing psychological rivers right up next to each other, day in and day out. But he had a powerful mind, and an even more powerful will, put in place by years of Catholic indoctrination. No one would ever have to know.

The question now, of course, was how to get out of there without having to speak to her. He was furious with Dennis, who had told him in no uncertain terms that Alison had not been invited, and that there was no chance whatsoever that she would show up. He was furious with Van, who had insisted on coming even though he tried to beg off a half dozen times, on the off chance that in spite of his protestations Dennis actually might try to pull something like this. And he was furious with Alison, who he knew in his heart had come to check out and judge the woman he had married instead of her. Instead of her. He hated thinking of the two of them in the same sentence; his past and his future were completely different lives and there was no point in comparing the two women, and even if he did—even if he did—Van clearly was the superior choice. She was more beautiful, and there was a supple grace to her blonde loveliness which was, frankly, relaxing. “Relaxing” was the last word you would use in regard to any aspect of Alison. Van was every bit as intelligent as Alison, if not more so; Alison’s erratic emotionalism always crippled her in an argument. And Van was loyal. He knew that she would never turn on him, or abandon him, under any circumstance. The same could not be said of Alison.