I'm Sorry You Feel That Way (23 page)

The next day, while the boy was at a birthday sleepover, I went to a sleepover, too, at Al’s house. We ordered a large pizza with everything and ate the whole thing while I beat him at Scrabble, twice. I took both games by a wide margin, more than two hundred points. Then we had sex.

Afterward, I told him one of my secrets.

Not the secret about what I had done the night before, how I soaked in a hot bubble bath while studying
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary
because I had every intention of kicking his ass. I learned big-point-scoring words like
qat
and
qaid
and
qoph, xu
and
xi, jo
and
jee
and
jeu
, and also challenge-winning words like
aa, ab, ae, ag, ai, al, ar.
I was out to win because I was out to impress him.

The secret I told him is this: I believe it can be done. I believe you can trick someone into loving you, you can bully and cajole someone into loving you, you can show off until the one you love is impressed enough to love you back.

“No doubt about it,” I said. “It can be done. That’s a fact.”

Al said he didn’t agree, and I said I was sorry he felt that way, and we left it at that.

In the ten years since that day, Al has beat me at Scrabble only once, and that was when I was sick with West Nile virus and too fevered to cheat.

 

 

 

 

 

Al and I had been having a beautiful friendship for about a month when I said he should let me and the boy move in with him. Didn’t he have a house with three bedrooms and a yard? Yes. Didn’t we make a nice couple? Yes. Weren’t we having sex in the daytime when I came over? Yes.

“If you let me move in with you,” I reasoned, “we could have sex at night. Nocturnal intercourse! That is probably the only major thing in your life that will change.”

“Except for you and the boy living with me,” Al agreed. “That’s probably the other major thing that would be different.”

Then, no doubt just to shut me up and get me off his back, he said he’d think about it. This was an enormous tactical error, one that buoyed me not with hope but with certainty. At some point in the future, my son and I would be living with Al.

In the days and weeks, months and years, to come, Al would say what he always said when I started in on him about moving in: he said he’d think about it.

Then he’d try to explain.

He said the problem was he’d been living alone for such a long time. He’d known quiet and order and obligation only to the self for so long he’d become selfish. He was a selfish man, he said. It was hard for him to imagine any other life, especially a life that asked him to be responsible, reliable, and depended upon. Especially since I had a child. It made him anxious to think about being depended upon by a child. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said.

“So have you given any more thought to me and the boy moving in with you?”

Why was I so obnoxious? Why was I such a nag? My wants so often got the best of me, and what I wanted was to be loved by this man. It’s easy to make me love you: pretty much all you have to do is be nice. Al was nice to me, so I was nice to him. Because we were nice to each other, I figured it must be love even if he didn’t know it yet.

What else could it be? He cooked up a big pot of mashed potatoes, made extra good with a stick of butter, lots of salt and heavy cream, which we then ate directly from the pot with a gigantic serving spoon. He grilled my steak the way I like it, medium rare, and he brought me coffee, two sugars and heavy cream. On my birthday, he came back from the grocery store with a carrot cake, a gallon of vanilla ice cream, an issue of
Cosmo
, batteries for my remote control. He gave bums on the street the change in his pocket. He picked up the empty beer bottles someone else left by the river. He drove my son to school and taught him how to ride a bike. Al wanted me to lock my doors, lock my windows, close the curtains. He programmed the numbers for the local FBI and Crime Stoppers into my cell phone because he knew how bad things happen, random things, tragic and heartbreaking, and he wanted me to be prepared. Twenty-two years before, Al’s only child, a boy of age five, died in an act too violent to imagine, too unpredictable to prevent. The man who murdered Al’s son was in prison, serving a sentence of twenty-six years to life. Every so often, he came up for parole, and Al, along with everyone else who loved that boy, wrote letters to the parole board, letters that included the shocking, the ugly, the graphic, the very simple facts; they wrote these letters with the hope that this guy would never be released.

The facts surrounding this crime are shocking and ugly, tragic and painful, and the first time Al told them to me—on the couch, in his living room, in the dark—he recited them as if reading from a newspaper. The facts—the how and the where, the when and the who—came out of the part of him that thinks, that knows, that can repeat what it’s been told.

But when Al tried to put the loss of this boy into words, what it meant, how he felt, he spoke in starts and stops. It was too big, too terrible, the pain never far from reach. He said he’s never known how to respond when someone asked him if he has any children. It’s an innocent enough question, one that should be easy to answer. But saying yes would inevitably lead to him revealing the circumstances of his son’s death, while saying no would be a kind of betrayal. Either way he answered felt uncomfortable and wrong, but I don’t think that’s his fault. I don’t think there is a way that anyone could say
I know exactly what you mean
about something like this. Because you can’t.

But then I don’t think saying
I can’t imagine
is right, either. Because though that sentiment may be more accurate, it’s also too cold. It leaves the other person alone with the unimaginable. The first time I listened to Al talk about his son, all I could think to do was squeeze his hand, all I could think to say was
My God
again and again until he said you have to let go, you’re going to break my fingers.

When I asked my five-year-old son what do you think of Al? do you like Al? do you think he’s nice? the boy said he liked him.

“But why?” I asked. “What do you like about him? Take your time. Think about it.”

The boy said he didn’t need to think about it. “I like Al because when he goes places with us, and I have to go to the bathroom, I don’t have to go to the girls’ bathroom.”

Al would be protective of my son. He wanted to know about the boy’s friends and their parents, who they were, what sort of people. He didn’t like to let my son loiter by himself in the toy aisle at Kmart or ride his bike alone, not even around the block, not even when I thought he was plenty old enough. The day I told the boy he could ride his bike solo to the park, he wasn’t gone thirty seconds before Al said he didn’t like it, he didn’t feel right, he was going to make sure that kid got there all okay. We climbed in Al’s Jeep, tracked the boy down, then stayed on his trail, following him to his destination like a pair of undercover cops.

We would do this more than once.

 

 

 

 

 

Several years into our beautiful friendship, Al and I went to a wedding reception where, even though it was a cash bar, I got drunk, and I am not a graceful drunk, I’m not sly and articulate and able to conceal that I’ve been drinking.

The bartender was a former English composition student of mine—a kid who must’ve been happy with his grade, since he poured me three glasses of red wine for every one I paid for—and, pie-eyed, I started up, reliable as a Buick, asking Al wouldn’t it be nice to have someone living in the house who could fetch you a roll of toilet paper from the linen closet during times of emergency? Yes. Hadn’t the three of us become a family? Yes. What time did he want to come help me pack? He said he’d been thinking about it, he was thinking about it still, he’d think about it some more.

“Baby, you just take your time,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The next morning, I woke up in Al’s bed, my contacts still in. I was wearing pantyhose, and my blue silk dress was bunched up around my armpits. My mouth tasted sticky, I was thirsty. There was a red splotch across my pillow. My head pounded, as if two little boys, one behind each eye, were clashing cymbals, and the room was spinning, and what was that red splotch?

At first I thought maybe I’d hurt myself somehow. Maybe it was blood from a head injury. But it smelled. Sour. Fermented. Like red wine.

I’d thrown up in bed.

I thought:
I will never be more disgusting.

I thought:
Didn’t Jimi Hendrix die from throwing up in his sleep? Didn’t he choke to death on his own vomit? I am lucky to be alive.

I thought about what I was (a sloppy drunk, a puker-in-bed, an obnoxious insecure egomaniac who cheated at Scrabble and believed a man could be nagged into falling in love) versus what I wanted to be (good, nice, normal, reasonable). I vowed if Al would let me move in with him, I would make a bigger effort to become all those things.

I thought:
I barfed in bed. If Al sees this, he will never let me move in. Not in a million years.

He was snoring beside me. I flipped my pillow over and waited.

Hours passed before he stirred, stretched, before he slipped out of bed and headed to the bathroom. In the time it took him to wash his face, brush his teeth, and pee, I stripped the sheets, I had them soaking in the washing machine, I smoothed the wrinkles out of my blue silk dress. I got the coffee dripping, I pulled some chicken out to defrost for supper later, I was fluffing a feather duster across his windowsills.

“Whoa,” Al said sleepily when he saw me. “You’re ambitious this morning.”

I asked if he was impressed. I told him if he let me and the boy move in with him, it would always be like this. I said that letting us move in would be the best decision he’d ever make. It would be the best thing that ever happened to him. He would be so happy. I would see to it.

Okay, okay, he sighed. Sure, he said. Okay. Fine. Why not.

I said great. “You won’t regret it,” I told him. Then I excused myself, I went to the bathroom, I threw up some more.

 

 

 

 

 

It was, of course, terrible.

We argued. Not a lot, but enough, and when we did, it was bad enough to leave me breathless, wondering why I’d ever given up my apartment.

We never raised our voices. We never raised our hands. We never fought about the things one might consider worth fighting about. Not God. Not money. Not sex. Any one of our arguments was so petty and absurd it was hard to believe we were having it.

We argued about whether or not eating hot soup in the summer makes you feel hotter (he says no; I say yes). We squabbled about whether or not purchasing holiday wrapping paper to wrap Christmas presents in is a waste (I say no; he says why can’t it be whatever wrapping paper you have on hand, even if it’s got canoes and mallard ducks on it, isn’t the fact that it’s wrapped what counts?). We quarreled about whether or not ketchup is an appropriate condiment to slather over a charcoal-grilled porterhouse steak (I say don’t you dare ruin that piece of meat; he says try and stop me).

Once, a friend of ours asked me what we were bringing to the potluck. When I said green bean casserole, she said bleck. I thought her response was rude, Al said it was just honest, and for hours, we bickered about whether it was better to be polite or honest.

One argument began innocently: as a discussion about the identity of the Most Beautiful Girl in the World. While we offered up possibilities—Lana Turner or Veronica Lake; Wilma Flintstone or Betty Rubble; Stevie Nicks or Linda Ronstadt—Al stirred the enormous pot of chili he’d made to take on his camping trip. He’s proud of his chili, he believes it’s the best chili you’ll ever have because it’s the best chili he’s ever had. He figured he’d freeze this batch until time came for it to bubble over a campfire. He had an industrial-sized plastic Miracle Whip container to put his chili in, courtesy of an elementary school lunch lady he knew.

Al and some of his friends took this camping trip every year, and though I myself didn’t care to sleep on rocky ground in a tent or pee in a hole where thousands before me have peed, I didn’t begrudge him going. In fact, I always sort of looked forward to it, the space it provided, the chance it gave us to take a break from each other. Al looked forward to it because he liked to sit in a lawn chair drinking beer, fishing for trout, and eating his chili.

We took our debate into the living room where the television was on some talk show. Renée Zellweger happened to be a guest that day, and before changing the channel, Al said Renée Zellweger was the Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

I urged him to put some more thought into his choice for Most Beautiful Girl in the World. I said the only reason he said Renée Zellweger was because he’d just seen her on television. I thought he needed to think about it a little more. It was an important title to bestow. I smiled at him, raised my eyebrows, tossed my hair.

Think carefully, I said.

Take my choice, for example, I said. I gave my choice a lot of thought.

Al asked who was my choice for Most Beautiful Girl in the World; I said it was me.

He said he was sorry I felt that way.

Something clicked. Something turned. Something crashed. A moon rock to the earth. A bird against a window. A car into a building. We were arguing. One of us said why do you have to be so emotional while the other said why don’t you have any emotions. One of us said you’re hotheaded; the other said you’re cold-hearted. We both said we were just kidding, why do you have to get so mad; we each said the other wasn’t funny. One of us said you’re full of shit. One of us said fuck you.