Life After Yes (25 page)

Our best men.

And the plane bumps along. For the first time, the turbulence lulls me. It's normal. Nothing but a reminder—at once humbling and oddly comforting—that we are always up against something bigger than we are.

“Sage,” I say. “I don't like flowers.”

He nods and smiles. “Okay. Anything else I should know?”

I pause. “I'm not your other half.”

He nods, and it seems he needs no explanation. “I know,” he says.

His smile says:
You are that girl I met.

“Now I have one question for you,” he says.

Cruelly, he pauses, and fear rushes through me. I do what a well-trained attorney does so naturally: I contemplate answers to questions not yet posed.

“How does this hypothetical story of yours end?” he asks, those blue eyes brimming with hope and fear, promises and apologies.

I look at him and leave him with those words a good lawyer knows not to utter too often, those words my fourth grade teacher deplored: “I don't know.”

I
'm losing my freckles,” I announce from the bathroom.

“Congratulations, Bug,” Sage says, laughing. “One less thing for you to complain about.”

One less thing for me to hide.

He packs his things in the bedroom. Tomorrow is our wedding day, and per tradition, we're spending the night apart. Tonight, Sage will join the rest of the wedding guests at the Clubhouse, the rickety old lodge that perches on the edge of the lake. Modest rooms, ancient mattresses, communal bathrooms; it's just like camp.

“But they're being replaced by wrinkles,” I say, studying my face in the mirror. “Lovely souvenirs from my past year.”

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been,” he says.

“Thanks, Mark Twain.”

“You're beautiful,” he says, coming at me from behind, wrapping his arms around my waist. And as we watch our
selves in the mirror, he kisses my bare face, lingering longer than usual, pinning me with a look of pride and anticipation and victory. And for a moment, I'm envious of the seemingly effortless optimism that buoys him and I wish that it were contagious, that it could pass, like the common cold, through a simple kiss. Or that it were genetic like freckles. That at least our children, when and if they come, will more often than not see things brightly too.

He returns to the bedroom, grabs his bag, and pulls his tuxedo from the closet. And leaves something behind. That suit his mother got him, a milky tan.

Another peck on the cheek. “Until tomorrow,” he says, grinning, drying his eyes.

“Don't go,” I say, and grab him.

And on the night when we are supposed to separate gracefully, sleep in solitude, and contemplate a future of togetherness, I miss him even before he goes. Because as long as he's next to me, as long as I can see him, things are okay.

“A night free of my snoring,” he says. “It'll be a treat.”

I grab his face and memorize the blue of his eyes before he walks away.

“Make sure to steam it in the morning,” I say, pointing to his tux.

He shrugs and smiles. “Nothing wrong with a few wrinkles.”

“See you tomorrow,” I say, coyly, casually, as if tomorrow's just another day, the logical consequence of today, just the next in line.

“Walk me out,” he says.

So I do. I walk him onto the porch. Into the moonlight. As I lead him to the screen door, he resists. Pulls me in the other direction.

He walks me to the porch swing. Where Dad read me stories. We sit. Swing slowly. The lake glows.

“Quinn, do you remember the morning after we met when my mother called?”

“I do.”

“You called me a mama's boy. And you were right. I am one. After I hung up, you jokingly asked if I told Mama that I'd found The One?”

I nod.

“Well, I didn't,” he says. “But what I did tell her was that I found my blackberry girl. A girl whom I wanted to know, whom I wanted to know me, everything about me, even the difficult things. I wanted you to know about Henry. That's why I told you about him on that very first night. And I was right. You're not perfect. In fact, you're often quite a mess, but you're it for me. You're my blackberry girl.”

“Your blackberry girl?” I say as the tears come.

He nods. Crying like that very first night. A little boy again. “And that's why my mother's had such a hard time. Because I told her you were it. I announced loud and clear that you were the girl.”

“Your blackberry girl. I love that.”

“Good,” he says.

Something strikes me. Something silly and cheesy and true. “You know what, Sage? You are my Cheerio guy.”

“Your Cheerio guy,” he says. “I'll take that.”

And here we are, late in the game, speaking our very own language. A simple, childish language. A beautiful language that's all ours.

But then Sage reminds me of something. “Blackberry girl. Cheerio guy. You know these are just code words for The
One, right? That concept you hate, Bug. These are also code words for other half. They all mean the same thing.”

And I hate it and I love it, but he is right. Absolutely right. “We strive so hard to be original, but life is all one big cliché,” I say. “But I think I can live with that.”

“I have something for you,” he says. He pulls a small fly box from the pocket of his khakis. He opens the transparent plastic top. And I peer in. At the Woolly Buggers and the Jitterbugs and the Hula Poppers and the…

Ring.

My ring. A ring he chose all by himself.

It's far smaller. A simple round cut.

He reaches for it.

He takes my hand. Holds it for a moment, studies each finger. He pulls the ring, the one his mother picked, from my hand.

“Will you marry me, Bug?” he says, his words so simple they are profound, so profound they are simple.

“Yes,” I say, smiling at him, looking at the lake.

And miles from Paris, centuries from Plato, next to him, I feel a flash. Of happiness.

 

Mom and Michael are sleeping, and once Sage is gone, the only noises are those I make—clumsy footsteps fueled by bundling nerves, a hairbrush yanking through stubborn knots, the cracking of knuckles. Without these sounds, the silence overwhelms. Suddenly, I crave the city sounds, the staccato of sirens, drunken laughter floating from sidewalk revelers, snippets of rap music blasting from speeding cars, garbage trucks halting clumsily to cart away our trash.

In the living room, I boot up Mom's old computer. Black
Berrys don't work here. I dial up and the connection is slow. Though I am a fan of speed and instant gratification and efficiency, tonight the slow motion is welcome, the rainbow images a retreat.

I type in “freckles.” I learn what I pretty much already know: They are genetic, rare on infants, common on children, less common on adults.

I log into my e-mail and there's a message from Kayla. I open it.

Just then, a reminder flashes across the screen. It's the little paper clip guy with the googly eyes. “Today is your wedding day!”

I shut down, return to my room. I rummage through everything I've brought—the clichéd stash of honeymoon lingerie with tags still on, the box of thank-you notes I'll write on the flight, and I find it.

Phelps's flannel. I hold it up to my nose and inhale. One last time.

I wander out to the porch, sit on that old wooden swing where Dad read me stories, where Phelps and I grew up, where Sage finally spoke up, and stare out onto the lake. The lake Dad loved like a child, where we would've scattered his ashes if given the chance. Like me, the lake appears calm, and stone-still. But under its deceptively placid surface, chaotic currents roil.

And soon the haunting silence is filled in. Bullfrogs gulp good night. The whippoorwills croon their nightly lullaby.

I step into Dad's old wading boots that wait like they always do by the screen door on the porch.

The moon is bright and lights my way. Leaves crunch underfoot. And soon I'm there. At our spot near the dock, under the mess of scraggly branches. For some reason, I fold the shirt, out of respect for childhood firsts and fond memories perhaps, and place it down, on the damp ground. Where he will find it. Or won't.

I look at it, the small square of faded plaid on the dark ground. And I begin to walk away.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

Phelps. He too is in pajama pants and fishing boots. He smokes a cigar and carries a plastic baggie of cheese curds and a bottle of red wine.

He waves the bag of cheese in my direction. “Wisconsin's finest,” he says.

I shrug and take a curd. Pop it in my mouth and chew slowly, waiting for words to come.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“For your wedding,” he says, smiling.

“No,” I say. “
Here
.” I point around us.

“I come here sometimes,” he says. “When I can sneak away. It reminds me of happiness. The kind of happiness before you know any better. When everything seemed possible. Why are you here?”

“To return something,” I say, picking up that shirt again, handing it to him. “The problem with keepsakes or relics is that they work. They make you remember.”

And it strikes me that we can try to control what we remember and forget but it doesn't really work this way. Some things leave us and some things stay. It's not up to us.

He smiles. “I like to remember.” He holds the flannel, his
old shirt. In his eyes, sadness gives way to something different. He hands me the bottle of wine, and puts the sweating cigar between his lips. He puts one arm and then the next through the old shirt.

It still fits him. Barely. Differently. But still.

“That's not going to help me forget,” he says.

“Good.”

He smiles and walks toward the dock. I follow. To our boat.

Wordlessly, I climb in behind him and grab the anchor.

“Remember when we carved this?” he says.

“Of course I do.”

And there they are, our clumsy initials scratched into the side of the aging and waterlogged fishing boat.

“It's interesting the lengths we go to make things immortal,” I say.

The moon highlights errant strands of silver amidst the blond, the fading scar I left above his lip, the wrinkles, the bags under his eyes. And it occurs to me, foolishly for the first time, that he too will be an old man.

No one's immune to time.

“Congratulations,” I say. “You're a daddy.”

His smile is vast and proud.

“Didn't want to give the poor boy his own identity?”

He smiles again. “It's interesting the lengths we go to make things immortal.”

And then he speaks a new and beautiful language, the words of which I imperfectly understand. That little Phelps was colicky at first. That he loves tummy time and to be swaddled. That his head is in the seventy-fifth percentile, but is a bit flat because they sleep him on his back for fear of SIDS.

“And he loves breasts just like his daddy,” Phelps says, and laughs.

“He'll be drinking beer and fishing in no time,” I say.

Phelps nods and rows to the edge of the lake, chasing the moon. And stops. “The scene of the crime,” he says.

I look around. The same canopy of lilting trees, the same dark water, the same old rowboat.

But now, two different people.

He offers me another cheese curd and says, “Nothing wrong with a late night snack.”

But this time I refuse.

Tonight he wears his ring.

“The good husband's back?” I say.

He smiles. “It's too easy being good,” he says, clumsily quoting himself from years ago.

He puts his hand on my knee and squeezes. As he leans in, through the adult haze of cigar smoke that surrounds this grown man, this father, I breathe in that old familiar smell of a boy I once loved.

He kisses me. And the sky rumbles, a cosmic warning perhaps, and I wait for a moment before pulling away.

I'm gentle. Polite. I don't slap him, or yell, or reprimand.

And I don't say it, but it's loud and clear.
I'm taken
.

I'm all his.

“You don't want to?” he says.

“No,” I say. “I don't.”

“Ah. Not prudent to be rendezvousing with an old flame within hours of your vows?”

And I think we both know this, but this time, I'm not being coy, or fumbling with nascent sexuality. This has nothing to do with caution or practicality or the fact that it's my wed
ding day. No, this has more to do with beginnings and ends, and how sometimes in life they're not clearly demarcated but bleed into each other.

And, under snoring thunderclouds, swaddled in fresh air, I realize for the first time that endings don't have to be catastrophic like the murderous collapse of a landmark or dramatic like the loss of a heartbeat. Endings can be quiet and satisfying.

Even if they do sneak up on you.

“Phelps,” I say.

“Yes?”

“I've always told myself I didn't know why. That it was one of life's many mysteries. But I think I know. I think I knew who I was going to become with you. I think I would have spent my days answering questions instead of asking them. I think I would have stopped dreaming.”