The Decent Proposal (18 page)

My boys . . . my boys . . . my boys
. . .

EARLY ON THE MONDAY MORNING
following this Saturday night, Orpheus began pacing the basketball courts. Upon waking twenty-four hours earlier, it had been obvious that whatever gossamer spirit of camaraderie had settled over Li—no,
Elizabeth's
—house during the night had been dissolved by the arrival of the sun. The boy had gone home almost immediately, and when Orpheus had said (after buttered toast and coffee) that he guessed he should get going too, Elizabeth hadn't stopped him. He'd felt hungover the entire day, as though he were coming down from an epic binge of conversation instead of liquor, and all he wanted was more of it, the old hair-of-the-dog trick to make himself feel better. He whipped his head from side to side. Where
was
she?

Orpheus thought back to the one day she'd stood him up, the day after he broke into her house and ruined her couch. He hadn't been invited to sleep over again after that night—not
until yesterday. But had barging in on her movie night been an infraction of equal, or even greater, value? Maybe she hadn't wanted to say anything in front of the boy. Maybe this time she'd sworn him off for good. Maybe all his efforts to keep her close had backfired. Maybe the sleepover had been his final treat, a monster's ball for a man condemned to ostracism and oblivion. Maybe he'd never feel like a real human being again.

Suddenly she appeared, two cups trailing steam behind her like a locomotive train, the familiar wax-paper parcel tucked underneath one arm. Orpheus let out a breath, and then he did something he hadn't done in years: he laughed at himself.
A monster's ball? Ostracism and oblivion?
He needed to take it down a notch.

“You look tired,” she said, handing him his buttered bagel.

He puffed out his cheeks, expelling his breath through puckered lips. He
was
tired. He'd spent the last twenty-four hours roaming, reliving his magical Saturday night like some lovesick girl in the delirious afterglow of her very first date. He'd passed out on the sand in the small hours of the morning. He was lucky no one had picked his pockets, or worse. His new clothes were already beginning to smell.

They sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the bleachers overlooking the racquetball courts. He couldn't wait to tell her how much he liked the boy he'd been set against for so long, albeit in the privacy of his addled mind. But she was staring moodily at the ocean, and he knew instinctively she didn't want to talk just yet.

He blew through the sipping slit of his coffee lid with his top lip protruding, as if he were playing a wind instrument. He took a sip: still too hot. He stuck his pinkie inside his ear, coming away with a mixture of sand and wax he flicked into the air. He ran his free hand over his new, bristly buzz cut, releasing a few dozen more grains of sand. He heard the words spill out of his mouth: “I cheated on her,” as if they came of their own volition,
but of course this was bullshit. He had meant to say them. He couldn't keep them in any longer.

Elizabeth turned. “What?” She was confused. “What did you say?”

“I cheated on her,” he said again.

“What do you mean?”

“She was another professor. In the English department. I was gonna leave Rhonda for her.”

He remembered reassuring himself that a generous alimony and partial custody would preserve him from the cliché of becoming a deadbeat dad. After the accident, this other woman had refused to talk to him despite several attempts on his part. Orpheus supposed his tragedy had been as toxic to her as it had been to everyone else, him included. He heard himself tell Elizabeth now that rising above it had never been an option, as long as he believed he didn't deserve to be redeemed. But secretly, he knew this facile sort of pop psychology was beside the point. He was not a jigsaw puzzle to be solved, piece by jagged piece. He was more interested in what Elizabeth had to say to him. He could sense she wanted to tell him about the tragedy from her past, the calamity that, once shared, would connect them even closer than before—and he rushed through his confession to let her speak.

But when he finished, she hesitated.

He held his breath—waiting, willing her to join him.

Elizabeth looked away from the ocean, toward the sun rising in the East, until it burned a tiny disk in her field of vision. It was true; she'd been on the verge of telling him why she hardly ever saw her parents, why she wasn't even sure her brother was alive: the dreaded “rough patch.”
What a stupid phrase.
She knew it would comfort him to see what she saw months ago—that they were the same, both haunted by events from the past they could never change. But even though it would help him to know, it wouldn't help her to tell. It was simply too much
to go through the hell of bringing it to the surface again, even for Orpheus.

The sunspot was gone.

“That must've been really hard for you,” she said, turning back to the ocean.

Her rejection felt like a kick in the groin, a jab between the eyes. Orpheus tried to shake it off. She wasn't ready; he should have known this. She hadn't even told him her damn
name
till two days earlier.

“Guess I'll have to get used to calling you Elizabeth now.”

She shrugged. “It doesn't really matter. You can still call me Lily if you want.”

She could tell he wanted a
moment
with her, some intimate, tender scene. And it pleased her in a juvenile way to withhold this satisfaction from him. She made a great show of stifling a yawn while checking her watch.

“He's a great guy,” Orpheus blurted out of nowhere. “Great looking too, huh.”

“Yeah, he's a real catch,” she said acidly.

“When're you gonna see him again?”

“On Saturday obviously.”

She stood up to go, but his expression arrested her. Other than the first time they met, Elizabeth had managed to avoid seeing Orpheus beg, and she wondered now if this was how he looked while carrying out the act. If it wasn't, it should have been, because the abject misery etched on his features forced her to sit down again, to repent for her petulance by fumbling for something else to say:

“Actually, I need to tell him what book we're reading next. Today. So we can do a few chapters by Saturday. I was all set on
Howards End
but now I'm thinking
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
. What do you think?”

They spent the rest of their time comparing the merits of one
book to the other. It was a frenetic banter, plugging up a silence they both knew could have been more poignantly yet painfully spent. Every time Elizabeth tried to leave, Orpheus thought up a reason to detain her. He even followed her to her car, loitering beside her window in the middle of Pacific Boulevard until finally she had to say:

“I have to go, Orpheus. I'm going to be late for work.”

Her elbow was hanging out the window. He nudged it with his fist. It was the first time he had ever voluntarily made physical contact with her.

“Go with
Tess
,” he urged her.

Elizabeth nodded,
okay
, and gave him a little wave. She drove off, leaving him in the middle of the street.

Orpheus still couldn't lose her. But he realized now the only way to make sure he didn't was to have
her
come to
him
. On this morning, he vowed to help her however he could. Respecting her privacy would be a good start: about her past, and everything else. He would have to learn to content himself with paying close attention to whatever information she volunteered, and sifting through these pieces on his own. Somehow, he promised himself, he would be of use to her, and he was convinced it would have something to do with the proposal. He still didn't trust this anonymous benefactor, this lawyer, these outrageous sums of money. He would get to the bottom of it, because for the first time in forever he was no longer at the bottom of his own life, and while he'd done it all by himself, he had
her
to thank for his exaltation, his newfound strength. Somehow he would prove his worth to her as a friend for life—one she would never want to leave.

But he would not pry.

MIKE, ON THE OTHER HAND
, had decided that prying was exactly what she needed to do. Her abandonment of Richard the night
of Keith's birthday party did not sit any better with her in the days to follow than it had minutes afterward, when she'd sashayed back inside the Factory and pretended not to feel the giant pit of regret settling firmly in her stomach. Over time the pit only grew larger, demanding further attention. It laid down roots; shoots sprouted from the top of it, filling up her stomach cavity and ruining her appetite. The shoots lengthened, vinelike, wrapping themselves around her vital organs, and she knew she had to rip it out before it did even greater damage.

In the real world, she and Richard spoke the next morning while he was buying the DP a new skirt (she purposely steered him toward a designer with larger sizes), and a few days later they patched it up more thoroughly over drinks at Chaya Brasserie:

“Sorry I hurled like that,” he said. “Hope I didn't embarrass you.”

“Eh, not really. You pretty much just made an ass of yourself.”

“Ha!” It was one of his single, staccato bursts of laughter, just as easily an exclamation of pain as of pleasure. “True. Anyway, just wanted to say sorry.”

Mike toyed with her straw. She still hadn't told him about the DP asking about her father. She decided she was over it. Everyone knew Richard couldn't keep his mouth shut. He hadn't meant to hurt her.

“I'm sorry too,” she said, and she meant it.

“For what?” It came out garbled through his drink.

“For being a bitch.”

He spat his ice back into his glass. “But you're
always
a bitch.”

“Shut up you know what I mean. I came on pretty strong with the DP, and I feel bad about not going to the hospital with you guys. I was thinking about you the whole night. I called Keith afterward to make sure you were okay.”

“I know,” he said. And then, after a pause: “It's not your fault.”

What does that mean?
Mike thought.
It's not my fault he got drunk? Well, duh. Or it's not my fault I was a bitch because he knows she asked about my dad? Or it's not my fault everything went to shit because he knows she's ruining everything and he can't wait till she's gone too?
She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and scream, “Explain yourself!” But instead she just motioned for the check. It seemed impossible to her that they had arrived at a place in their relationship wherein she was afraid to speak her mind for fear of rocking the boat more than she already had. Was this really
them
? Wasn't their relationship, in all its messy, fuzzy glory, stronger than this? Better than this? The pit remained. Mike frowned. She tried again:

“So how were things the day after with the DP?”

“Oh, fine. We just hung out at her place. And apparently we're reading
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
now instead of
Howards End
. You ever read that?”

She knew he wasn't telling her everything, but it was impossible not to allow the conversation to veer into a discussion of the book instead of the girl. Over the next few weeks, this dodge became an ongoing pattern. Every time Mike tried to bring up the DP, Richard found a way to shift the conversation. It would have taken an outright statement on her part to steer it back, and she refused to do so. In fact, as soon as she realized what he was doing, she went out of her way
not
to mention her rival. The DP became the elephant in the room, and without saying a word, they both worked to shrink her to the size of a pea. But they couldn't make her disappear. She lingered on the edge of every conversation, and if she had to be there at all, Mike concluded, it would have been better if she were in plain sight rather than some dark corner where she was always felt, but never observed, a ghostly presence that haunted their every word and gesture.

The DP was supposed to be the one tested at Keith's birthday party, but somehow Mike was the one who had failed. By abandoning Richard she had lost the privilege of
certainty
with him, the notion that she could say or do anything and he'd always stick by her. She hadn't fulfilled her end of the bargain; she hadn't stuck by
him
. She and Richard used to thrive on violating boundaries; they loved to analyze when a joke or pronouncement “crossed the line.” The fun of it was that, for them, there
was
no line. Except now there was, and it didn't matter that she'd only been able to see it once she found herself on the other side. Mike was terrified that if she asked him to choose, he would do the unthinkable and choose the interloper. It was as if she had willingly stepped aside and allowed the DP to take her place. It was enough to make her scream.

All this came to a head about two weeks after their supposed reconciliation. Checking her calendar one morning, Mike realized she had a “premiere” that evening for a client whose animated children's movie would be released direct-to-DVD later that week in Targets and Walmarts, as well as being made available for downloading through various online platforms. She stood to make more money off this single movie than all her fancier clients' art-house dramas combined, and she had no problem celebrating its success, but she had no desire to actually
watch
the stupid thing. Richard's presence would make this trial a thousand times better, so she forwarded him the invite with a subject heading that read:

            
ugh pls be my date.

But she heard nothing from him.

By the time she got to work a few hours later, she had texted him,

            
hey check your email lemme know

but there was still no response. Midmorning she IMed him,