Any Place I Hang My Hat (44 page)

In the elevator, I bent over to stretch my lower back and hamstrings. A Mr. Appropriate might come along sometime in 2003 or 2004. It could already be that I’d met him—Steve Raskin. But there would be no Mr. Right until I stopped thinking about John every day. I stood straight and set my jaw at a brave angle, hoping all that body-mind theorizing had some value.

Not being able to see weather from my apartment, I discovered when I got outside that it was a fine spring morning. That day, Central Park South was scented not only with its usual horseshit and exhaust fumes, but with apple blossoms or bluebells or whatever sweet, intoxicating flower bloomed in mid-April. The air was velvet on my face.

The park was jammed with walkers and runners, so many that it slowed me down to a trot. I wove between slowpokes while keeping watch for the legions of runners faster than I. The crowd was understandable. Who could fight going out on a morning like this? Even the most inert would pull on shorts and a shirt to run their annual four-hour mile.

If my life were one of those romantic comedies, what a delightful scene this would be: Running with my hair flying beautifully, I would collide with a stud with an IQ over 150. At first the two of us would be combative, throwing clever insults. Then we would stomp off in different directions. Two scenes later, we would meet on the way into someone’s campaign headquarters. The rest of the movie would consist of antics, arguments, and a bittersweet parting. Then we’d realize we were madly in love and meant for each other. But I couldn’t sustain such a fiction, not when what I found myself doing was eyeing the male runners coming toward me to see if one of them would turn out to be John.

Of course, I’d planned exactly how to deal with him should the situation arise. I’d say, Hiya, John, and keep going. There was no way I would be at a loss upon seeing him any place because I’d imagined every possible scenario.

On the slim chance he’d call again, I would hang up after a courteous I’m sorry, no more conversations. I already knew the nod I’d give him—less than forty-five degrees up, then down—along with a self-possessed, no-teeth-showing smile if I ever ran into him and he was with a woman. Dignity, that’s what I’d offer him. No wisecracks, no hostility. I kept searching the crowd.

While it is true that Manhattan can sometimes seem like a small town, the people you most often see are your periodontist’s receptionist, your best friend’s aunt, and Darren Kaminsky from fourth grade who could squeeze his palms together and create monster fart noises. So while I ran past an ex-Times reporter who had taken an early retirement package, I did not see John Orenstein.

I wanted so badly to see him. Immediately after that thought, I found myself slowing down so as not to work up the usual cascade of sweat that would be flowing for a half hour after I’d stopped running. Then, without even asking myself, Are you crazy? I exited the park at West Seventy-second and jogged to John’s building. For a microsecond, I suppose I entertained such familiar, humiliating fantasies as 1) John would be living with a woman, probably La Belleza—though that would mean he’d be at her place because there wouldn’t be room for her clothes in his apartment. 2) Unlike me, who could see neither sky nor sidewalk from my place, he had a view of both, and seeing me approach his building, he would call the doorman, order him not to let me up, and, if I grew insistent, to call the cops. 3) He would let me come up and then, without offering me even a glass of water or a seat, he’d tell me, with slightly more pity than disgust, never to call or come to his apartment again because he was sure I wouldn’t want any—he’d search for the right word—unpleasantness.

“Hi,” his doorman said. I doubted if he had any idea how long it had been since he’d last seen me. But maybe he studied acting at night. “Can you believe it, how beautiful it is today? Is he expecting you?”

“I’m not sure.” I was uncomfortable with this misrepresentation, i.e., lie, because I didn’t want the doorman, a nice guy who reminded me of a young Mr. Magoo without glasses, to catch hell from John.

“Go on in,” he told me. “I’ll call and tell him you’re on your way up.”

When the elevator door opened, the aroma of coffee from four or five competing pots seemed to invite me in. I stepped into the hall. John was already outside his apartment door waiting. He’d pulled on jeans and what looked like yesterday’s T-shirt. As I walked down the hall I could see he hadn’t yet combed his hair, much less shaved. He looked like one of those tough-beard guys in razor blade commercials. I was scared: Any second he would demand I get out. I slowed, not wanting to hear him say it, and nearly tripped as the inner sides of my sneakers merged for an instant. No, he wouldn’t order me out because he wouldn’t want to be nasty. That wasn’t his style. And bickering in hallways wasn’t his style either.

Then I was before him with not a thing in my mind to say. He said, “Hey, Amy.” My reflexive reply should have been Hey, John, but the words wouldn’t travel from brain to mouth. I stayed where I had stopped, a foot away from him, staring up into his lovely light brown eyes. I’m sure I was slack-jawed by then, and since I was considerably shorter than he, the fillings in my bottom teeth were no doubt on display. Probably I was standing pigeon-toed as well, thus offering a top-to-bottom portrait of utter idiocy.

Random responses flitted through my consciousness. I could throw myself at him. Or how about saying: This is a terrible mistake. I apologize, then turning and running down five flights of stairs. Or he would say Goodbye in a voice so icy that passersby a half block away would shiver. Except none of that got started because I could neither move nor speak.

“Amy.”

I think I said something elegant, like “Huh?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Guess what? I met my mother.”

He reached for my hand. It was so comforting that I automatically stepped toward him, stood on tiptoes and kissed him. No big wet thing. More like a healing touch.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

“Me too.”

His eyes filled with tears. As they started to overflow, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his T-shirt. Only when his cheeks became wet did he comprehend he was crying. Then neither of us knew what to do until John finally said: “I was so tempted to call you so often. But each time, I kept hearing myself telling you how we were over for good. I couldn’t stand hurting you again. I don’t know. Maybe it was more that I didn’t want you to say, Listen, I gave you a chance. You blew it. Now I’m involved with someone else.”

“I tried that. It didn’t work. The only one I was involved with was you.”

“Do you want a frozen blueberry waffle or do you want to go out for breakfast?”

“Is that from the same package you bought a year ago?”

“Yes. Remember? We shared that one waffle and we both spit it out, so there are three more left.”

I waited in his living room while he took a fast shower and dressed. I could have gone into the bedroom and talked over the sound of his electric toothbrush, but I held back. Maybe I was afraid of spotting someone else’s hair clip.

Holding hands, we walked south on autopilot to our customary breakfast/brunch place. When we stopped for a light on Broadway and Ninety-third, I inquired: “We’re not doing friendship here, are we?”

“No.” Maybe it was his nature, maybe it came from doing so much editing for his work, but one of the things I loved about John was that when it came to matters emotional, he was both direct and succinct.

I drew his hand toward me and held it for a moment against my chest. “I’m having this big internal debate,” I explained. “I’m too overcome to cry. Except if I don’t, maybe you’ll think I haven’t changed at all and that I’m holding back my feelings because crying would be an attempt to evoke sympathy and I’m afraid to appear vulnerable.”

The light changed and as we stepped into the street, John said: “Relax. You don’t have to cry for me.”

“I don’t want you to feel I’m shortchanging you anymore. I’ll give you all the great, traumatic moments of my childhood. If you ask me to stay for a day, I’ll stay for a year.”

He smiled. “I like that.”

“Let’s make a deal,” I said. “If you feel I’m hiding my emotions by pulling back just let me know.”

“Deal.” We walked in silence for a moment, then he said: “So we’re together again?”

“She wasn’t your lover, was she? The Mahler woman.”

“No. She was my producer. I’ll take you to PBS to meet her.”

“I’m sorry.

“Okay. Now, any other conditions?” I glanced up, possibly on the verge of giving him a dirty look for being snide, but I saw he’d simply asked a question. His brows were slightly raised, waiting for an answer.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t see this as a negotiation. Either we’re going to work or not. All I ask is that after a few days or weeks, if it doesn’t feel right to you, tell me.”

“All right. And you tell me.”

“John, we both care about each other so much. With that caring, I know there’s a desire not to hurt the other person. But if it’s not as good as you want it, dragging it out won’t help. It would be more of an injury than a favor.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Are you waiting to tell me about your mother until we’re sitting down?”

“Yes.”

“How did you break your ribs, for God’s sake?”

For two more blocks, I filled him in on my ribs, the simultaneous adorableness and undesirability of Dr. Shea D’A, and the nonpublic story of the happily-ever-after reconciliation between Freddy Carrasco and Thom Bowles. I didn’t mention the lawyer who had nothing wrong with him. John told me about a proposal from the History Channel for a three-part series on the Ottoman Empire, which he was dying to do—except the money was more suitable for a kid’s allowance than a professional’s fee.

We sat across from each other in a truncated, two-person booth at the Doughnut Hole, a place that served breakfast from five in the morning until two in the afternoon, when it closed because the owner needed time to read, although John and I had always preferred to believe it was a CIA front. “I hope you’re planning on paying for this,” I told him, “because all I have is my key.”

He patted his pocket. “Thousands in unmarked bills.”

There was only one waitress at the Doughnut Hole, an ox of a woman who always wore a T-shirt, white painter’s pants, and a cross nearly large enough for Calvary. She shuffled over to our booth in her customary rubber beach thongs and, as always, asked: “What do you want?” There was no saying the usual because every customer, whether a rare tourist who wandered in or a seven-day-a-week regular, was treated like a stranger who was about to make some irritating demand. The owner, a tall man with the posture of an apostrophe, grilled, fried, and toasted, but never said a word to the waitress.

“Small grapefruit juice and poached eggs on buttered whole-wheat toast,” I told her. Now, as about half the time, the right side of her upper lip twitched in either disgust or an Elvis impersonation. “I’ll take my coffee now, please.”

“A large OJ and waffles,” John said. “Nothing else on the plate.” His saying that insured there was only a 60-percent chance that his waffles would share the plate with hash browns, bacon, or white lumps the waitress insisted were grits. “I’d like my coffee now as well.”

By the time the coffee got to us, I’d had time to tell John all about tracking down and meeting my grandmother Rose Moscowitz. Then I recounted, in detail, how I’d finally met my mother. When I got to the part where I blocked off her Volvo, our knees came together. For the same instant, we rubbed knees, shins, and calves and went mutually mindless, aware only of each other’s touch. Rationality returned a moment later. Both of us sat straight, pressed our spines against the backs of the booth, and returned to the conversation.

“I always thought that if I heard one more person use the word closure I’d become homicidal,” I told him, “but that’s what I got.”

He put his hands on the table and took mine. “No closure for us. Okay? Only open-sure.”

For a minute I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to feel pressured, but then I thought, Screw that. “Most of my life I was so proud of how I was able to fit in any place. In the visitors’ room at the prison, at an Ivey alumnae tea, in any smoke-filled room. And then with our breakup and everything else, I realized that fitting in every place wasn’t all that great if you didn’t have one place to belong.”

“That’s what you want?”

“That’s what I want.” I hesitated because I was sure my next sentence would make him pull a twenty out of his pocket, smooth it down on the table, and walk out. Well, I decided, better now than in six months or a year. “I want a family. I hope that will turn out to be a husband and kids. If not, it will be me and a kid or two.” I figured mentioning a dog might be the tipping point. “I want a place where I can hang my hat.”

He squeezed my hands. “I’ve got the place to hang it.” What does that mean? I was so tempted to say. So I said it. “It means that I want what you want,” John told me. Then he took a deep breath, a sip of water, took both my hands again and added: “Marriage.”

“To me?”

“Do you know someone better?” I thought we were having a staring contest, but we both became grinning fools. “Do I have to ask formally?”

I started to cry, but as we were still holding hands two tourists at the counter gave each other an Aren’t they sweet? look. “Before you can ask anything formally,” I declared, “you have to tell me something.” I took a napkin, dabbed my eyes, and blew my nose so delicately I would have made Grandma Lil proud.

“Tell you what?”

“The three little words.”

“You say them first, Amy.”

“Why? For my own good?”

“For your own good.”

I leaned over the table toward him and he leaned toward me until our heads were nearly touching. “I love you, John.”

What did I expect, that he’d get up, laugh uproariously, say The joke’s on you. Now that you’ve said it, I’m leaving? Maybe, but he said: “I love you, Amy. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

“Yes!” We said I love you a few thousand times more and then I told him the honor was all mine.