Life After Yes (10 page)

I
wake up in my own bed. Good sign.

Teeth chattering, covers to my nose, I fight a spotlight of sun. My head throbs. My thoughts jump between Sage and Cameron before landing with a thud on the control top pantyhose I'm still wearing, apparently the only thing I've slept in. Still damp. Full of runs.

Sage pulls the covers back, crouches at the end of the bed, and starts tugging at the toes of my stockings. Snow has accumulated on the bars outside the window. Only in Manhattan would you shell out a million for prison bars on a bedroom window. All of a sudden the white stuff doesn't seem so pure and innocent. This morning, the frost is ominous.

“I'm frigid,” I say.
Hardly
.

“I'm not surprised,” Sage says, and laughs. His hair sticks up. “Sexy PJs, Bug, but they aren't going to keep you very toasty.”

“Apparently not.”

Did I get you wet? I'm sorry.

Cameron. His words come back to me now.

In one final yank, Sage separates me from my pantyhose and drops them to the floor. They land in a sad moist beige pile. Hula sniffs them.

“No undies?” Sage says, flashing a wicked grin. “Now we're talking.”

I don't tell him that this isn't part of a special plan of morning seduction, but simply that hose and panties are redundant.

Sage nuzzles his nose between my legs. He gives me a sweet little peck down there, naughtiness at its most innocent, and I push him away. I push
him
away, the man with whom I've agreed to spend the rest of my life, and yet hours ago, I spread my legs in the backseat of a corporate car and let a relative stranger play me like a piano.

“What's wrong?” he says, staring up at me. I've never been one to turn away this kind of attention.

“I just
can't
,” I say, running my finger along that deep red groove those dreadful hose have left around my waist.

I look at him, his pleading blue eyes, his straight nose and strong jaw. Mom says he has the bone structure of a Disney prince.

I don't deserve him.

“You're killing me, Bug,” he says, smiling, fiddling with his boxers, reminding me of all those silly jocks in college and their blue balls conspiracy.

Mom taught me about blue balls myth. The night before I left for college. It was a footnote to her respect-your-own-body speech.

Dad's advice was not about sex—that was Mom's
territory—but tolerance. For an atheist, the man sure could preach. College—and then the real world—would be filled with different kinds of people, he said.
No kidding
. Different races, cultures, religions, socioeconomic brackets.
Yup
. I wouldn't always understand everyone I encountered, but I should respect them nonetheless.
Blah blah blah
. I nodded my head at the banal and very un-Dad-like words of wisdom he seemingly collected from some send-your-kid-to-college guidebook. He ended his homily on tolerance by becoming more like the dad I knew, by addressing the tolerance I'd in no time confront and repeatedly ignore.

Know your limits, Prue. Now, those limits might be quite high
, he said, smiling.
You are an O'Malley after all. But a limit is still a limit
, he finished, forcing away that grin that wasn't appropriate for such a sober matter.

Amen, Father
, I said, and that smile of his returned as he poured the three of us a glass of wine.

 

“Please, no references to death,” I say to Sage, unconsciously pulling that good old bait and switch. And cry. Big, fat, salty tears.

He wipes my eyes, staining his fingers with last night's mascara, and kisses me on the forehead. He doesn't say anything. I know he thinks this must be about Dad. My father died mere months ago and I'm allowed to have my moments.

“You look like a raccoon,” Sage says, presciently comparing me to that nocturnal creature known for being clever and mischievous.

“He hated raccoons,” I say. Dad was an animal lover, but never fond of the little critters who ruined his camping trips.

“Well, they
are
mischievous little fucks,” he says, and I laugh, because hearing him swear sounds so wrong and he's just described the woman he's due to marry: a mischievous little fuck.

I look at Sage, the genuine concern plain in his eyes, the blond stubble on his chin, his chapped lower lip. He smiles, trying to get me to do the same.

I cry a little harder.

“A very beautiful raccoon?” he adds, and hugs me tight as Hula chews my discarded hose.

We sit in silence and watch snow fall.

“He loved the snow though,” I say. “We used to make snow angels in Central Park the weekends he wasn't on call. They were the only angels he believed in.”

Dad was wary of religion. Said it caused more harm than good. When one of his patients miscarried, he'd never say things like
That was God's will.
No, he'd say,
Things happen.
He told me all about natural selection and survival of the fittest before any teacher did. The man had a way of explaining most occurrences in the context of the natural world.
We think we're above it
, he said.
But we're not. We're animals, in the business of surviving and dying.

“Everything will be okay, Bug,” Sage says, hurling that vague promise at me. He hops up from the bed. “You know what you need?”

Alcoholics Anonymous? A chastity belt?

“Bacon,” he says, hopping off the bed, pulling on jeans. “Bacon can fix anything.”

“What about Wilbur?” I say, and smile through new tears.

Sage smiles. “Even he'd approve this time.”

Dad read me
Charlotte's Web
when I was six. One chapter
a night, on that old porch swing at Bird Lake. I immediately fell in love with Wilbur, that fat old pig awaiting his demise. And the little spider who saved him from his bacon fate.

But then I grew up to love bacon.

What about Wilbur?
Dad would ask as I stuffed one strip after another into my mouth.

I'd shrug. No good answer for his good question.

But isn't this what happens? As children, we care deeply about a fictional pig. As children, we dream big, nurture great ideas; we practice musical instruments and collect things. We play the what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up game, and no answer is too silly, or impractical, or indulgent.

Then we grow up. We spend spare time watching TV, dying our hair blond, working out. We become doctors and lawyers and bankers. We dream a bit smaller—hoping that nothing disastrous happens, that we'll be reasonably happy, that the stock market won't crash, that our country won't be attacked again.

“I'll run out and get some,” Sage says. “Now,
this
is what the city's good for. A package of bacon thirty seconds away.” But his optimism isn't so contagious this morning and I immediately think of the things we give up in exchange for convenience: grass, affordable housing, smiles from strangers.

Before he walks out our bedroom door, he turns and looks at me. “Okay, now you're a goth raccoon. You'd scare even a friendly spider away.”

He leaves me, and I can't help but think of Dad, that rusty old swing, the little story he read to me in his gravelly voice between tears he probably thought I never noticed. Leave it to Dad to enlighten a six-year-old on the fundamental fact of lingering mortality. But when Dad talked of death, he talked
of nature, of life cycles, of ecosystems. He said death was not bad or scary, just a fact of life.

I decide to clean up while Sage is fetching bacon. On the way to the bathroom, I trip over my heels. I look at myself in the mirror above the sink. My eyes are puffy, and corners crusty. My hair is a forest of knots.

I attack my teeth and gums with my electronic toothbrush and think of Dad and his anti-technology rants. The thing stops buzzing, but my tongue still tastes like wine.

I don't remember. I don't remember coming home.

I walk into the kitchen. Three empty beer bottles are lined up on the kitchen counter.

Did I drink those?
I don't remember. I swirl my tongue around my mouth to see if I can locate the taste of Coors Light. It's unlikely that I drank these. I don't like beer. But the truth is I really don't know.

The last thing I remember is drinking wine and talking to Cameron. After that, it's blank. I feel sick.

Did Cameron drink the beers?

I imagine bringing him home to our apartment. I picture us drinking beer and canoodling while Sage sleeps in the next room.

I pace around our apartment trying to think of all the things I should do today:

Work out.

Pay bills.

Pick up dry cleaning.

Figure out whether I've cheated on my fiancé.

And all of a sudden, I'm in a shame spiral. I can't drive. My thighs are fat. I have a drinking problem. I am dishonest and self-serving. I am superficial and shallow. I am mean. I am
a fake. I am a fake blond. I am a cheater. I am a disappointment. I am a bad fiancée. A bad sister. A bad daughter. I will no doubt make a horrible mother one day.

But then I have an idea. A great one.

Frantically, I throw open the kitchen cupboards and look for it. And there it is, still in the box. My heart-shaped waffle maker.

I pull it out and plug it in, squint to read the small print on the back of the box. I pour waffle mix in and press down.

And wait.

It seems I wait too long.

The smoke alarm sounds as Sage walks in carrying two brown grocery bags. He always chooses paper over plastic.

I don't deserve him.

He looks at me, fanning smoke that pours from his Valentine's gift, and laughs. He hops up on the kitchen island and pulls the smoke alarm from the ceiling and removes the batteries.

I look up at him. “I wanted to make you breakfast,” I say.

He hops down, pulls a package of bacon from a grocery bag, and kisses me on the forehead. “We both know that making breakfast is better left to the expert.”

The smell of smoke fades slowly and I stand in the kitchen watching our little flat-screen while Sage cooks. Bacon crackles. Wolf Blitzer pontificates.

We spend the morning fighting each other for space on our striped couch, that prudent love seat the perky chick from Pottery Barn insisted wouldn't show spots, my head on one end, his on the other, our legs intertwined under our navy cashmere blanket, a big plate of crisp bacon and our cat balanced between us.

Sage lets me watch silly television, weekend gossip round-
ups, and a
Saturday Night Live
rerun. As I begin to doze off, he turns the channel to some nature program.

“What time did you get home? I didn't hear you come in.”

I don't have an answer for him. I fight back tears. “Late,” I say, trying to be casual about it, awaiting further inquisition.

“My little party animal,” he says, and tickles my foot.

“I think I drink too much,” I say, crying, competing with a family of grizzlies for my fiancé's attention.

He looks at me and pauses. “I think you might be right.”

“That's not what you're supposed to say,” I bark, sitting up straight. He's been coached for these situations. “What about
Yes, Bug, you drink a lot but you're Irish
?”

“What about honesty?” he says. “What about telling it like it is instead of following a self-serving script?”

I am silent.

“She lost one of her cubs,” he explains, pointing at the screen.

“Maybe she's an alcoholic,” I say. “Ergo a delinquent mother.”

“You slept in a pair of damp nylons and have a hangover, Bug. It's not the end of the world,” he says, choosing his words clumsily or, perhaps, all-too-honestly, rubbing my back, watching those grizzlies bound through the woods.

“I just wish I had more control over things,” I say. “I wish I could have done something.”

“Things happen that are out of our control and all we can do is react,” Sage says, sounding a little bit wise and a little like a fortune cookie.

“Thanks, Confucius,” I say, and force a smile.

Things happen.

Things happen that are out of our control and all we can do is
react.
I think of Cameron's fumbling fingers. I think of Dad, his untimely last swallow of espresso. He loved espresso; the tiny cup, the no-nonsense unfluffy blackness. I look at the lost cub, a lone shaking blob of black amidst a sea of green.

Maybe Dad had it right all along. We're animals. Am I really any different than that scared little cub?

We're in the business of surviving and dying.

My phone rings. Sage hands it to me. “It's Kayla,” he says.

Kayla. My brain does a U-turn.

“I'm not in the mood,” I say, and let the phone ring.

In the kitchen, I check my voice mail. Kayla's message blares from my phone

“Quinn, my friend, um, just calling to see if my little bitch is alive and kicking this morning after last night. It seems like you were enjoying yourself with your new, um, friend. Call me. Need to know. Don't leave me hanging or I'll track you down. Love ya.”

Sage stands there, in the door of the kitchen, looking at me. I'm pretty sure he heard the message. “Everything okay?”

“Nothing a few strips of bacon won't solve,” I say, and force a smile.

He looks at me for a minute and then gets up and walks toward the kitchen. Hula follows. He stops and turns. “Get dressed.”

I love being told what to do. Like a child. It's easier that way. It's not just men who crave instructions. We all do.

I don't ask any questions. I escape to the bedroom and pull on a pair of his plaid pajama bottoms and my boots, grab my coat and hat.