Yeah. That was bullshit. I was honored and flattered. I was even tempted. His pseudo-declaration of love was the best he could do, under the circumstances, which were just awful.
“My father,” I said, then I corrected myself. “My biological father. He and my mother got married in a whirlwind. He was an actor on the verge. Clint Eastwood was casting this western. He’d directed stuff before, but everyone was talking about how this was going to be a big deal for him. My father thought he was getting cast in it. It’s hard to do forensics on a guy I never met, but he was vulnerable when he met my mother. His success was about to crush him, and from what my mom said, success was scarier to him than failure. She was that successful. She was in magazines and fashion shows. She’d survived it. She was a symbol of what he wanted to become and what he feared. He felt safe with her. They met and married in the space of two months.”
Dash shook his head as if to clear it. “Wait. Who’s your dad?”
“Nobody. Really nobody. Richard Harris got cast to be English Bob when my mom was pregnant with me, and my father flipped. Nothing she did brought him back to reality, and he blamed her. He said if she hadn’t been pregnant, he would have gone out more, made more contacts. And when Unforgiven did well, everything crashed. They weren’t strong enough to get through it, and he left her with nothing but a baby and a house she couldn’t sell.”
“That’s not me.”
I was torn. I felt the depth of his disappointment and disorientation, yet I couldn’t change my mind to soothe it. “No, it’s not you. Because you have real talent.”
He looked away from me, and only in that redirection did I see how confusing this was for him and how I couldn’t make it better. He’d exposed his deepest vulnerabilities, and I’d thrown them into the pit of his fears.
Well done, Vivian. Way to go.
“I love you,” I said.
Those words should have come before he asked me to marry him, and he looked back at me as if he was shocked to hear them.
“We should go,” he said.
That wasn’t the answer I’d been looking for, but what could I expect?
He helped me down from the wall, but his touch was cold, and his eyes avoided mine.
forty-five
Dash
Before Ithaca winter set in, we got a cord of wood for the fireplace. My father bought rough brown twine to tie it together in manageable bundles. The sisal came in a tubeless cylinder, and we pulled the end from the center. There’s a lot of wood in a cord, and we used yards and yards to bundle it, pulling from the center of the cylinder to take a length. We could use ninety percent of the spool, and the size of the thing never changed. It just got emptier and emptier, but it looked the same on the outside.
Until the last few yards. Then the shape would start to collapse, and the entire thing disappeared as if the invisible man had gotten undressed, and boom, I’d see how empty it had been all that time.
I walked her to the car and drove it back to her house, but my shape was crumpling. I was about to be stripped down to invisibility. I’d looked pretty fine and felt okay until she refused me, then I’d realized how little I had left at the core.
“I’m sorry,” she said when we were halfway to her house.
It was the point in the drive where I could have gone in either direction: to my place, and a night of fucking, or her place.
“I understand.” I didn’t understand a thing, but I couldn’t talk. I was about to fall apart, and talking would only use up the few yards I had.
I held her hand because it would reassure her and she’d stop talking. With that touch came a new unraveling. Had I lost her? Did my desperation drive her away? With that thought, I was one layer of twine from complete collapse.
I parked and got out before we could talk this through more. I opened her door and helped her out. At the top of the steps, I stopped.
“The game tomorrow…” I said.
“Yes.”
“Will you come? I have the seats for you.”
“Yes.”
“Will you still walk the bases with me?” I asked. I needed her to. For luck, yes. Because I needed the routine. But also because it meant she was beside me.
She barely hesitated, and that told me the truth of her response. “Yes.”
“We’re playing San Diego next.”
“I want to go. Can I just go to your games when I can?”
“Yes, I”—take a breath—“I need you there. Whenever you can.”
“Dash, you’re fine with or without me. You have to believe that.”
I put my fingers to her lips. I couldn’t hear another word. She turned her head until my palm cupped her face, and she pressed it to her cheek, letting her eyes flutter closed.
I’d hurt her. I hadn’t thought it was possible to hurt someone with an unopened ring box, but I had, and with that, the last of the string got pulled away.
forty-six
Vivian
“Why do you look like that?” Dad asked when I got inside. He was in his robe and slippers, boiling water for tea. His amber med bottles were out. If it was midnight and he was up with painkillers, the arthritis was flaring.
I got a cup from the cabinet, deciding to stay up with him.