She Has Your Eyes
Authors: Elisa Lorello
Also by Elisa Lorello
Faking It
Ordinary World
Why I Love Singlehood
Adulation
Friends of Mine: Thirty Years in the Life of a Duran Duran Fan
Translated Works
Vorgetäuscht (Faking It)
Deshalb liebe ich mein Singleleben (Why I Love Singlehood)
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2014 Elisa Lorello
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
ISBN-13: 9781477848128
ISBN-10: 1477848126
Cover design by Mary Ann Smith
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013941699
For Nora Ephron, Larry Leitner, and Jo Ensanian in loving memory
contents
chapter one
Labor Day weekend
“I’m not saying I’ll never marry you,” I said. “I just want more time to think about it.”
The outdoor thermometer topped ninety degrees as a last-ditch-effort-to-save-summer heat wave invaded the Northeast. David and I bought one of those kiddie pools, the largest we could get, filled it with water from the garden hose, and slouched in it on opposite sides facing each other, motionless, listening to classic rock. Doing anything else produced a sweat.
No doubt the marriage conversation had been prompted by the previous day’s barbecue. David and I resumed the Labor Day tradition Sam and I started when we got married. Like Sam had once done, David manned the grill and flipped the burgers and steaks with such finesse he could pass for a celebrity chef. Our guests were a mix of my friends from Northampton University and some of David’s friends and clientele from the art world. We covered a catering table with burgers, hot dogs, steaks, salads, chips, cold cuts, platters of veggies, cookies, and, when the time came, gallons of ice cream. Shaded underneath the table sat two enormous coolers of water, beer, sangria, margarita mix, soda, and YooHoo. My brothers Joey
and Tony came, set up their amps and equipment on the deck, and played Beatles songs until the cops showed up to warn them about the noise (although the cops put in their own requests and lingered for a while).
The bash had run late into the night. Our friends and family clustered around the deck with citronella candles and Bug-Off spray, talking loudly and finishing off the coolers’ contents. Their kids were asleep inside. At one point in the midst of a bout of laughter, I looked at David, who had become so comfortable with my friends, so much a part of their lives and this house. And I was filled with contentment, the kind I’d thought would never return following Sam’s death. David had caught my gaze and looked at me curiously.
“What?” he’d asked, as if we were alone.
“This,” I said. “This is nice.” At that moment, the others disappeared as he took my hand. “I want more of this.” I didn’t know if it was deliberate, but his thumb traced a path along my ring finger.
When David and I had gotten back together for good last year, after spending almost the entire night making love and promising never to be apart from each other again, we’d negotiated several things in our relationship. For one, we decided to live in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, apartment for the first couple of months before moving into Sam’s and my Northampton house permanently. Two, I’d stay on at NU as “visiting faculty” and he’d cut down his hours as an art buyer. Since Sam’s death, I had come to see time as a precious commodity to be spent on things other than work (the Italians’ pleasure ethic had rubbed off on me), especially since we were in the fortunate position of being financially solvent.
The third, of course, had been the marriage thing.
We’d agreed on a “marriage moratorium”—one year without bringing up the subject, with an option to renew every six months.
“The year isn’t quite over yet,” I said in the present moment, flicking water at him with my fingers in a teasing way.
“But I figured now’s a good time to start talking about it,” said David. “So, give me your reasons for not wanting to get married.”
I sat up. “Well…” I drew a blank. “You’ve caught me off guard. I haven’t had the time to put together my argument.”
“I figured you knew it by heart.”
“Yeah, but who can construct a coherent thought in this heat?”
“Wanna go inside?” he asked.
Neither of us budged.
“Well, let’s start with the practical reasons,” said David. “If, God forbid, something were to happen to me, you’d be taken care of if we were married. Legally and financially speaking.”
“Aren’t I already your primary beneficiary?”
“Yes, but there’s all kinds of tax stuff to consider, now and after I’m gone.”
“But there’s such a thing as common law,” I said. “If you’ve lived with the same partner for seven years or longer, the state considers you married.”
“Not in Massachusetts. Or at least not without jumping through a bunch of hoops.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked it up.”
I wondered when and why he’d taken the time to do such a thing. Perhaps he’d been doing some preliminary research for when the time came for him to make his case?
I ran a cup through the water and dumped it on my head several times.
“OK. So what else?” I asked.
He stared at me blankly.
“Well?”
“I don’t know, I just want to,” he answered. “I know that’s a kid’s answer, but I don’t know how else to put it. Besides, you’re supposed to be making
your
case to
me
. Tell me why you
don’t
want to.”
My reason was no more substantive than his. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said, trying to gauge his body language. He didn’t move a muscle, however. “I’m just not sure.”
“About what?”
“Why mess with a good thing?”
“You think this is a good thing?” he asked, gesturing between us.
“I do.” In many ways I felt like we were already married. We’d grown into each other in ways I’d never expected. Companionship had never been hard for us. David and I had known each other for a little over ten years despite having been out of each other’s lives throughout the duration of my courtship and marriage to Sam. But once I’d been truly able to move on following Sam’s death, David and I had found a way to be both independent and a couple. Neither of us had a problem traveling without the other, for example. It made our together time even more meaningful. We were good together, and I had come to appreciate life again. Life with him, especially.
But I knew he wanted to make it official. And although I’d just delivered the words “I do” with certainty, they left a dry taste in my mouth. Or maybe it was just the heat. Regardless, officially marrying David would mean closing the door on
Sam once and for all, or so I thought. Although death had already taken care of that, hadn’t it?
“Are you not happy, Dev?” I asked.
“I just want more, and I think you do too.”
“What’s a marriage license going to give us that we don’t already have?”
“Proof,” he said.
“Of what?”
“That we’re a family.”
The word
family
struck a chord. I’d never considered the connotation beyond my mom and brothers, or David and his mother and sisters, or Sam and his brother. Sam and I had rarely used the word in reference to each other, and despite our love for our cat, Donny Most, we weren’t the type of people to call ourselves “parents” or him “our baby.”
So that was it. David wanted us to be a family.
