Leap Year (27 page)
Authors: Peter Cameron
“Stay for a minute.”
“How was your trip?” asked David. “How’s Gregory?”
Loren sat down on the other side of the bed. Kate slept between them. “He dumped me,” she said. It was funny how easy it was to say. It was a fact like the news or the weather. It’s sunny, it’s cold, the person who loved me doesn’t, it’s raining. The problem was saying it didn’t mean you accepted it or understood it. It was like faking a knowledge of current events. You just hoped you weren’t called on it.
“What do you mean, he dumped you? Is he seeing someone else?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he just got fed up with me. Kind of retroactively fed up.”
“Are you okay?”
Loren nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I realized…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. That it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for me to be by myself for a while.”
“I thought you really loved Gregory.”
“I do. I think I do. But maybe I don’t. I mean, who knows at this point? Sometimes I think the older I get, the less I know about love.”
“I know,” said David. “It just gets more and more complicated. It was very simple in the beginning.”
“The beginning is always simple.”
They were quiet a moment and then David said, “I can still remember this feeling I used to have when I lay in bed with you. It was as if I had found my place in the world. Like when I lay down with you all the bad things in my life lay down and were still. And it’s gone. I don’t know what to do about it. Sometimes I think my heart is broken—I mean irreparably. Like I’ll never fall in love like that again.”
“I don’t think your heart is broken,” Loren said. “I think you have a very sweet, intact heart. It’s just disengaged. And not very brave.”
There was a tiny celebratory roar from the living room. They sat and listened to it.
“Happy New Year,” Loren said. She leaned across Kate and kissed David. “Why don’t you stay a while? Take off your coat.”
“No,” said David. “I’m going home. Should I take Kate now?”
“Don’t wake her up,” said Loren. “Plus, all her stuff is downtown.”
“I’ll pick her up tomorrow, then.”
Loren stood up. “Listen, are you sure you won’t stay? We could all go out for breakfast or something?”
“No,” said David. “I’m just going to sit here with Kate for a minute.”
“Will you say good night before you leave?”
“Sure,” said David. “Listen, I’m sorry about Gregory.”
“Thanks,” said Loren. She came around the bed and touched David’s shoulder. “Will you do me a favor?” she asked.
“What?”
“Will you promise me you won’t go home and mope?”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” said David.
“Yes you were. I can always tell when you’re descending toward mopedom.”
“That’s a hard thing to promise,” said David. He paused. “What did you mean before about my heart not being brave?”
Loren moved her hand from David’s shoulder to his chest. She felt his heart beating. “Maybe I was wrong about that,” she said. She left him alone with Kate.
David couldn’t resist waking his daughter. He kissed her and then blew on her cheek. Kate opened her eyes. “Daddy,” she said.
He took her warm hand. “Hi,” he said.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You’re at Lillian’s. This is Lillian’s bed.”
“It’s big,” said Kate. “Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s in the other room. Lillian’s having a New Year’s Eve party.”
“I went to a New Year’s Eve party at Kate Wallace’s. I didn’t get kidnapped, though.”
“That’s good,” said David. “I didn’t like it when you were kidnapped.”
“Why not?”
“Because I missed you. Because I love you so much.”
“Were you ever kidnapped?”
“No,” said David.
“I’d miss you if you were kidnapped.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. Neither one of us will ever be kidnapped. We’ll always be together.”
“Except when I’m at Mom’s,” said Kate.
“Yes,” said David. “Except for then.”
Lillian was right: Her party was a get-together. It hovered at that awkward stage between everyone sitting down and everyone standing up. She and Loren surveyed it from a corner of the living room.
“Isn’t Adrienne coming?” Loren asked.
“No. She’s gone on a lesbian cruise to the Greek Islands.”
“I didn’t know Adrienne was a lesbian.”
“She’s not. It was just a freebie, and you know Adrienne. She’d take a cruise to Hell if it were free.”
“Who’s that woman with Julian?”
“Her name is Eva. She’s South American.”
“Whatever happened to Betsy? I thought she and Julian were getting married?”
“She choked. It’s the Galton sibling curse: We’ll never get married.”
“Never is a long time,” said Loren. “Any word from the French chef?”
“Nada.”
“Good riddance,” said Loren. “We can be single together again. It will be fun.” She raised her glass.
Lillian was unconvinced. Sometimes I think the only reason I’ve gotten this far in my life is because people keep telling me the next part will be fun, she thought. But she raised her glass anyway and touched it to Loren’s.
David left Lillian’s and took a cab home. Life is strange, he thought. The streets of our hearts are poorly lit and dangerous. All the traffic lights are amber. All the signs say
DON’T WALK.
The cab emerged from the park and found its way to David’s building. He sat for a second, looking up at its ugly facade. He could picture his apartment, how it would look in the dark before he turned on the lights: the silhouettes of the furniture, the gleam of Ms. Mouse’s eyes. He could picture himself moving about the small rooms, drinking a glass of seltzer, brushing his teeth, undressing, setting the alarm, getting into bed. The cold sheets and silence.
“Didn’t you want 124?” asked the cab driver.
“I’ve changed my mind,” said David. “I want to go someplace else.”
“Where?” The cabdriver turned around.
“I want to go to the Cafe Wisteria. It’s downtown, on Church Street.”
The driver grunted and swung back into the traffic. He turned left and headed south. The beautiful city flew by outside. The taxi stopped at a red light and was instantly surrounded by pedestrians and honking cars. David sat back and looked out the window. He thought he saw Judith on the sidewalk, but when he looked more closely he realized it couldn’t possibly be her: This woman was passionately kissing an Asian man, something that Judith would never do.
The light turned green.
Lillian was trying to clean up enough so that she could go to bed and not dream about soiled glasses and rinds of cheese when the phone rang. Somebody must have left something here, she thought.
“Hello,” she said.
“Lillian?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Happy New Year,” the voice said.
“Who is this?” Lillian asked.
“It’s Claude. Remember me?”
“Vaguely. How are you?”
“Cold,” said Claude.
“Where are you?”
“Down on the street. I’m on your corner.”
“What are you doing there? I thought you never came to New York.”
“I never did. Not once, in all of 1988. But it’s not 1988 anymore. Can I come up and talk to you?”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” said Lillian. Like a pregnancy, she thought.
“Oh,” said Claude. “Just for a minute? I’d really like to see you.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Well, I guess tomorrow would be okay. Are you mad at me?”
“Not mad, really,” said Lillian. “More like frustrated.”
“Will you listen for just a minute? So I can explain?”
“Sure,” said Lillian. “For a minute.”
“I made a resolution last year—actually I made two. One was to stay out of New York City and the other was to refrain from having sex.”
“Are you planning to join a religious order?” asked Lillian.
“No. They were important resolutions for me. My life was very fucked up in New York. I told you that. And I, well, I decided to do something completely different. To regain control. So I moved upstate and started Chez Claude and lived by myself and everything was okay till I met you. You probably think I’m totally messed up, but I’m not. I mean, comparatively speaking, I’m not.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this last summer?”
“Because I knew if I told you about the resolutions I’d break them. It had to be a secret. But it’s over and it’s 1989, and I want to come see you. It’s the first thing I want to do this year.”
“You may not want to,” said Lillian. “There’s something you should know about me.”
“What?”
“I’m seven months pregnant.”
“Wow,” said Claude. “Talk about resolutions. What’s going on?”
“Not much,” said Lillian. “That was the problem.”
“I mean, are you involved? Who’s the father?”
“I don’t know. Actually, I think I do, but technically I don’t. I went to a sperm bank last May.”
“Wow,” said Claude. “And I was going to suggest we go skating tomorrow. I brought my skates and everything.”
“I’m not exactly in skating shape,” said Lillian. Not that I’d be caught dead skating if I were, she thought.
“Listen, my money’s running out. Can I come up? Just for a second?”
Lillian paused, but not for long. “Yes,” she said.
Heath kept thinking he saw David’s face in the crowd, but he was consistently mistaken. Finally he gave up on him, and once given up, it seemed ridiculous: the idea of David dancing with him in the Cafe Hysteria.
At midnight he was asked to make a speech, but he refused. He had done his testifying for the year. He decided he would be having a much better time at the party if the party weren’t for him. The fact that everyone expected him to be euphoric only made him feel worse.
He danced with Tammi and Gerard, who had come down from City Center postperformance, in a tight little triumvirate. As the evening wore on, the music seemed to get louder and louder. It was nice to just dance. To forget things and dance. Heath closed his eyes.
He felt a hand on his arm. He opened his eyes. David was standing there. Tammi and Gerard had disappeared. It seemed to have gotten darker. David was shouting something Heath couldn’t hear.
Heath shrugged. “I can’t hear you!” he shouted.
David smiled. He leaned up so that his lips almost touched Heath’s ear. “Later,” he said.
***
Kate awoke during the taxi ride home. She looked at her mother. “Hi, pookie,” whispered Loren. “Happy New Year.”
“Is it late?” asked Kate. She sat up and looked out the window.
“It’s very late. It’s tomorrow already.”
“It’s past my bedtime,” said Kate.
“It’s way, way past your bedtime,” said Loren. “It’s past
my
bedtime.”
“I like New Year’s,” said Kate.
“I know,” said Loren. “It’s nice to start all over again.”
“You only start when you’re born,” said Kate.
“Well, you can pretend to start again,” said Loren.
“But it’s not a real start,” said Kate.
“I need a hug,” said Loren. “It’s cold.”
Kate hugged her mother and then resnuggled herself on Loren’s lap. Loren stroked her hair. “When we get home, will you carry me up?” Kate asked.
“Maybe,” said Loren. “If you’re asleep.” Kate closed her eyes. She felt the pattern of streetlights cross her eyelids. She felt her mother stroking her hair. The taxi stopped. Loren leaned forward and paid the driver. Kate shut her eyes tighter. She felt herself being lifted. The cold of the street was followed by the sudden fragrant warmth of the vestibule. Kate heard the clanking doors of the elevator pulled open. She felt her mother’s arms around her. She felt herself going up.
Leap Year
was originally published in
7 Days.
The author wishes to express his gratitude to Adam Moss, Diane Cardwell, and especially to Pat Towers, for their generous contribution of ideas, criticism, and encouragement. He also wishes to thank the MacDowell Colony, where a portion of this book was written.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1990 by Peter Cameron
cover design by Andrea C. Uva
978-1-4532-5033-4
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA