Love and Other Natural Disasters (30 page)

I groaned. "No way."

"I know you remember the words
to that. We did it like a hundred times."

"Even I remember the
words," my mother said.

"What's Together Again'?"
Ray asked.

"It's from
The Muppets Take
Manhattan,"
Charlie said. "Early in the movie, the whole cast
sings it and then Kermit gets amnesia and is separated from everyone, and once
he and Miss Piggy reunite, they sing it on a carriage ride through Central
Park. So Eve and I used to do
out
version of the Kermit and Miss Piggy
version. Sometimes we'd get really crazy with it, do a bunch of scat. It was
priceless, I tell you, priceless."

Everyone was smiling, encouraging
us. Charlie and I really had passed hours that way, and at the memory, a
feeling of warmth spread through me. "Let me just say, his Kermit is
better than my Miss Piggy. And I'm not doing any scat. I'm sticking to the
lyrics."

"Fine by me," Charlie
said. "I wish I had a harmonica so I could get the pitch right. But okay,
here goes." He whistled the melody, then stopped to address his audience.
"Just so you know, Kermit really does start by whistling." When he
began to sing, it was in a
Kermil
impersonation so
dead-on you would have thought he'd spent the last twenty years practicing.

Emboldened, I waited for my cue,
then took my solo in what I hoped was a passable Miss Piggy. Charlie and I
dueted
for the chorus, gazing
hammily
into each other's eyes, and when we'd finished, the table exploded into
applause.

Phil actually pounded a fist.
Charlie stood to take a bow, reached around to take my hand and pulled me to my
feet, with both our hands raised jubilantly a la
Rocky.

W
hen we sat down, my face was flushed. I liked that our
performance and its reception were so discordant with the overall vibe of the
restaurant, as if we owned the place and the hell with all of them.

"You're beautiful," Ray
said. He didn't even lower his voice.

Charlie was grinning at me before
he turned to Lil. She ran her hand along the side of his face in a way that
told me she could love him, if she didn't already.

Phil cleared his throat.
"Well, it seems like love's in the air. So maybe now's the time." He
shifted in his chair to face my mother, taking both her hands in his.
"Barb, you're a miracle. You're a goddamn comet, is what you are. I want
to give you everything. I want to give you my life, if you'll take it."

My mother's chin trembled as she
looked at him, disbelieving.

"I want to get down on the
floor here in front of you, but I'm afraid my knees will give out and they'll
have to take me out on a stretcher." He and my mother both laughed. "So
instead, why don't I just reach in my pocket and you can take a look at the
ring I've got in there." He released her hands and pulled out a jewelry
box. Tears starting to run down her face, she opened the box. "If you
don't like it, we'll change it. That goes for a lot of things. You don't like
them, we'll try to change them. So what do you think?" He smiled at her
tenderly. "Will you be my wife?"

"Oh, Jesus," she said.
"Of course, I will!" Her hands were shaking as she lifted the ring
out of its cushioning.

She looked over at me. "I
don't even know which finger it goes on! That's how close I've ever
gotten!" We all laughed. I realized I was crying. Charlie had the biggest
smile I'd ever seen, and Lil was wiping at her eyes.

"It's this one," I said.
I pointed at my naked finger, and cried some more.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

As we stood outside the restaurant,
my head was fizzy with more than champagne. It felt like a contact high. I
could see Lil was sharing in the sense that all is possible, all is permissible,
there's no tomorrow. She said something into Charlie's ear and he turned to the
rest of us. "We're going to Lil's house. Don't wait up," he said. He
clasped Phil's hand. "Welcome to the family, man. And thanks for the
killer steak."

Phil gripped Charlie's shoulder
with his free hand. I saw his jaw was clenched with suppressed emotion.
"It's my pleasure."

As Lil and Charlie hurried down the
street, I looked at Ray. "Where's your car?" I asked.

If he was surprised, he didn't show
it. "A few blocks away." He smiled. "You need a lift?"

I laughed at the perhaps
unintentional double entendre, peeking over at my mother and Phil to see if
they'd heard. My mother was holding her hand up in front of her admiringly,
Phil enraptured by her pleasure. They were consumed.

"Mom," I said, "I
think we're going to go out for a drink." I embraced her, then Phil.
"Congratulations, you two. Go home and celebrate."

My mother giggled. "We
will."

Ray shook their hands and said his
good-byes; I barely heard him, I was so focused on what was about to happen.
Every cell in my body thrummed with anticipation.

I took his arm as we walked in
desirous silence. When we were next to his car, I couldn't tell who had kissed
whom first, only that we'd moved together as if choreographed, tongues in
mouths, hands in hair, my back against the passenger-side door. I don't know
how long we stayed like that, how many people passed by, but when he stepped
back just slightly to look into my face, I nearly collapsed. I'd never before
felt literally weak in the knees, like I'd been making out with a matinee idol
instead of an aging community-college professor. But we were all aging, really.
And holy shit, that was a
kiss.

"Wow," he said.

I laughed, glad he thought so, too.
I'd been a little afraid it had been a figment of my imagination, the product
of too many celibate months. It had been months since anyone had touched me
sexually. Since Jon had.

"Let's go to your
apartment," I said, drowning out my own thoughts.

He hesitated.

"What? I want to. I really,
really want to." I pressed my body against his again. I could feel he was
hard.

"I know. I want to. But I
don't know about tonight."

"What's wrong with
tonight?"

"I think you might be—"
He stopped himself. "Look, how about if I make you dinner later this week?
You can come over then." He ran his finger along my cheekbone. "I
know a good bar right near here. Best dry martini in town."

"Then we go to your
apartment?" I hadn't had this feeling in—was it years? Married sex is
different—and I wanted to stoke it longer.

"Not tonight, but soon. Pick a
night this week."

I thought about my schedule, about
the kids, and it was like every horny impulse drained out of my body. I was
back to being
her
again. "Maybe you should just take me home."

"Are you mad?" His hand
paused, still on my face.

"No." It was the truth.
"Dinner will be good. I like dinner."

He pulled me closer. "I'm the
king of pasta. A pasta pasha."

My laugh was faintly nostalgic.

I picked the following Saturday. I
wanted to be able to stay over after the sex I hoped we'd be having, and both
kids were slated to stay over at Jon's apartment that night.

My libido—previously in
hibernation—had been reactivated. Lil laughed at me, how I seemed like a
teenager who couldn't wait to get some. It was true, I didn't want to wait,
though the wait was tantalizing. I was having robust fantasies about what it
would be like with Ray. I had the feeling he was an experienced lover, and I
was eager to experience everything.

Jon had been with only one woman
before me, and now that I had enough distance to reflect honestly, sex between
us had never been of the "bombs bursting in air" variety. In the
beginning, I was so thrilled to be with someone loving that anything satisfied
me; I could have an orgasm from Jon bringing me a glass of water. But as the
years went by, his repertoire never grew and I suppose mine didn't, either, not
even my vocabulary for what I wanted. That's because what I wanted was for it
all to be as effortless as it had been, and since I knew that wasn't possible,
I contented myself with what was.

Now I didn't have to. I could ask
Ray to show me what he knew, and help me figure out what I really liked.
Whatever happened with Ray, this was an opportunity. I did my best to banish
Jon from my thoughts so I could take it.

Lil seemed to be indulging herself,
too. Instead of seeing each other less that week, Charlie was going to her
house every night. I thought that maybe she'd changed her mind about him, but
when I saw her on Wednesday, she said she hadn't. "I know, I know, I've
got to let him go," she said. "But you don't know what it's like. Or
maybe you do, now." She gave me a sly look. "Now that you're aching
for the professor. Think about what it would be like if you were with someone
who could fuck like the professor kisses. Well, maybe you will be. But I am
right now." I resisted the image that conjured. "I'm going to end
it," she said. "I am."

Every night, I tried to wait up for
Charlie, thinking that he might need a shoulder to cry on. But he never came back
until early the next morning and he was always in high spirits. It hurt me to
see him prancing in, as gleeful as a little boy. He had no idea. He thought
he'd won.

On Friday morning, I was lying in
wait when he walked in the front door.

"Hi," I said, louder than
I'd intended, startling him.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed. He
threw himself on the couch next to me. "What are you doing?"

"Just reading." I
indicated the magazine I was using as a prop.

His eyelids drooped as he assumed a
dreamy expression, as if reliving the night before.

"Here's the thing,
Charlie," I said. He rolled his head toward me, eyeing me sideways.
"I'm just wondering if Lil is right for you. I mean, since when do you
want an instant family?"

"Why are you worried about
this all of a sudden?"

"Because you and Lil seem more
serious now."

"It's not serious," he
said unconvincingly.

"But you want it to be."

"Lil's a great woman, Luke's a
great kid. I don't analyze everything like you do."

"I think you're in love with
her."

"I think it's none of your
business." He stood up. "Are we done here?"

"Does she know? Have you told
her?"

"Eve, stay out of it."

I pinpointed the shadow crossing
his face. He was afraid I'd tell Lil he loved her, and that would be the end.

So he did know. Deep down, he knew
he hadn't really broken through. "She already knows, Charlie."

"She told you that?"

"Not in so many words."

He was quiet, and then a smile came
over his face.

"What?" I demanded.

"She knows I love her, and
she's inviting me over every night. It doesn't take a genius to figure this
out, right?"

Oh, God. Earlier he'd seemed to
know on some level that he was on borrowed time; maybe he'd been prepared for
things to end. Now I'd somehow convinced him that Lil loved him, too.

He took my silence as confirmation.
"Don't worry, Eve. I think everything's going to be fine. I'll even start
breakfast. I've got tons of energy."

As he headed for the kitchen, I
thought frantically about how to undo this conversation without betraying Lil.
There was no way I could protect him now, not that I ever could.

When the doorbell rang on Saturday
night, Jacob went running down the hallway, his backpack already on. "Bye,
Mom!" he shouted gaily.

"You have to wait. Your dad
has to get Olivia and her things, too," I called after him.

He'd already yanked open the front
door. "Hi, Daddy," he said. "Let's go."

I caught up with Jacob, and smiled
at Jon. "Hi."

As Jon's eyes scanned me
appreciatively, I felt myself
blushing.
"Hi. You look good." He put his hands up, smiling, and said,
"None of my business why you look so good. But you do. You look kind of
glowy
, if that's a word."

The blush intensified.
"Thanks."

"Let's go," Jacob said
again, tugging at Jon's jacket.

"We just have to get Olivia
and then we're out of here," Jon said.

"Why do we have to bring
Olivia?" Jacob was pouting as he looked up at Jon. "Then we can't do
a lot of stuff."

"But there's a lot of stuff we
can still do," Jon said. He squatted down so he was on Jacob's level.
"I got some new games for my apartment. And you know Liv sleeps a lot.
There's plenty of time for just you and me."

"It's not enough," Jacob
said.

"But you know what's happening
tomorrow? There's a Giants game on TV. I bought you one of those big foam hands
you like. I'll make you a hot dog, it'll be like we're there."