I like it that you’ve got morals. It’s a good thing. It’s refreshing.”
“Besides,” I added, “think of it this way—maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe I’ve saved you the trouble of waking up alone, tied to your bed, feeling used, trying to decide whether you’re more insulted by the fact that you’re covered in raspberry jam, or that your f lat-screen TV is missing.”
When he arrived to pick me up for brunch two days later, Jon brought along a bouquet of white lilies. Pinned to the cellophane was a Polaroid of the inside of his freezer, containing only two frozen lasagnas and a copy of that morning’s New York Times. This was a man I had every reason to believe I could trust.
It was the morning after the blackout, and I nearly tumbled out of bed to grab my cell phone. I often slept closer to the window than to the bedside table, but since Jon had already slipped into the shower, the ringing jolted me out of my comfortable state of goofy-grinned, postcoital malaise. He had sprung out of bed muttering about how the lack of electricity for the alarm had caused him to sleep late. As he scrambled around the apartment in search of his clothes, I grabbed his watch off the bedside table, squinted and announced that it was eleven a.m. Since the city was still shut down, I told him, there probably wouldn’t be any customers lined up yet for lunch outside Peccavi. Then I settled into the spot where he had been sleeping, and drifted back into my dreams. In the moment between waking up and opening my eyes, I could smell him on myself. The walls were red, the air was still and I was back in love—that suspension of disbelief, borne of instinct, nursed on hormones, cloaked in a warm, blinding light. I grabbed and f lipped open the cell phone.
“Hello?” I chirped as if I was the lady of the house, savoring her rockin’ tan the morning after she had had her way with the pool boy.
“Hello?” the caller asked.
“Um, yes, hello. Who is this?” I sat up in bed, pulling the sheet over my breasts even though I was alone, and began to finger the knots out of my hair.
“Who is this?”
“Well,” I joked, determined not to let the caller’s attitude ruin my morning, “you called my cell phone, so you probably already know who I am.”
“No,” she explained as if I were riding the short bus, “I called Jon’s cell phone.”
Assuming she was a salesperson or an investor in the restaurant, I chose not to accept the negative energy. I would kill her with kindness instead.
“Oops, I’m sorry. I must have thought that his was mine. His phone, I mean. We have the same cell phone. Anyway, he’s in the bathroom. But I can give him a message,” I cooed, scrambling naked around my apartment in search of a pen, and feeling like the Lady of My Own House again. “Who may I say was calling?”
Booboo watched my stumbling from underneath the desk chair, tentatively, as if preparing to pounce.
“Lissette. The mother of his son, that’s who. Who the hell are you?”
I doubled over.
Have you ever seen a photo of someone you used to belong to, and wondered if that’s really how they looked? So strong was my faith in the decency of this man that I might have been less shocked if advised by my pedicurist that she had discovered an additional toe. I was aware that the sentiment made me a cliché, but all I could take in at that moment was how much I hated that I had no idea.
His what?!?!?! Whose son? Wait a minute…“son”? Wait…What? Even as my throat was swelling shut, I kept trying and failing to swallow.
“Hello? Hello?” she asked again. “Who is this?” She sounded like someone who might punch me in the face over a pair of shoes on clearance at Macy’s.
“I, um…this is Vina,” I managed, eyeing the bathroom door and wondering if I should tell her anything else. Feeling dizzy, I had to take a seat.
“I…I didn’t realize he had a girlfriend,” I continued, squeezing my eyes shut. “Or wife? Or, um…look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to know. I mean, I’m not sorry…I didn’t know about you or the…the baby? Believe me. I’ll give Jon your message. And I’ll throw him out. But can I just ask you something? How old is your kid? I mean, I know this is awkward. But I need to know.”
“Two months,” she replied after a pause. And then all I could hear was a dial tone ringing inside one ear and the glub, glub, glub of my own blood pulsing inside the other. Booboo yawned and stretched across the window sill, having had his fill of me. I thought that blood was supposed to be rushing right now, although I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be rushing toward. Mine seemed to be draining out of my head like beer from a bottle turned upside down.
I curled up naked on the couch, the cell phone pressed to my face. With my lips apart and a hand to my throat, I listened to the torrent of water from the shower, and speculated what would come next.
I always loved waking up in Jon’s bed to find our cell phone lights blinking in unison. It was as if they were dreaming the same dreams on the nightstand, of a charger for two plugged in beside the four-poster bed, in the master suite of our country home. My parents would complain about the lack of spice in the meals Jon conjured up from the ingredients in our backyard garden. An Amish handwoven straw mat, which was far too quaint for our Manhattan apartment, would welcome visitors at our door.
I missed waking up with him wrapped around me like a teddy bear, so that the hair of his forearms danced with my breath. I missed how he would tighten his grasp and pull me closer when I tried to get out of bed. When he slept, he looked like an angel to me, and when he woke, he would tickle me relentlessly. Grabbing my ankles and kissing my feet, he would ask how I managed to balance on a pair so small. When we went to bed angry, with our backs facing one another, his foot would search out my own during the night, coming to rest once it was wrapped around my ankle.
Jon was inside another woman when he was supposed to belong to me. So why did the thought of it make me feel so disgusting?
By the time he emerged from the bathroom the lights were back on, and I was determined not to let him see me cry. An hour ago I had belonged to him, but now he was a trespassing dog. And I was getting ready to fire a warning shot. I could get through this if it was quick; I would have to rip him off like a Band-Aid. I would not give in or attempt to rescue him when he squirmed. I would not give him the satisfaction of reacting to the knife that was sticking out of my heart.
“I don’t need anything from the store,” I told him flatly, while avoiding eye contact by feigning interest in Booboo’s attempts to scratch his way into my closet.
“Am I going to the store?” He cocked his head, perplexed.
“Well, I don’t know where else you’re gonna get diapers for your son.” I was as matter-of-fact as all hell.
He stood frozen with that idiotic smile erased, as if I had slapped it right off of his chin. Stupidly, typically, maternally, I felt sorry for him. Old habits linger even after they die. I bit my lip to stifle a tear, though I wasn’t sure which one of us it was for.
“Oh,” I added, my voice beginning to shake, “and Lissette called while you were in the shower. Don’t worry. I told her the lights are back on in midtown.”
The
