The Myth of You and Me (29 page)

“Well, you used to be,” he said. “The way you were at the paper—convinced every story was so important.” He shaped headlines in the air with his hands. “
CORRUPTION IN FOOD SERVICES
.
THE STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT
’
S ILLEGAL PARKING PASS
.”

“Hey,” I said. “That was crucial stuff.”

“And you cried the first time we . . .” He stopped. “I’m sorry. Anna’s rubbing off on me.”

“No more beer for you,” I said, pulling his empty bottle to my side of the table. “And I didn’t cry.”

“You did so.” He looked indignant. “Remember? You were so embarrassed that you were crying; you just sat there with your hands over your face.”

I thought of him trying to tug my hands away, his voice, half laughing, half worried, as he said, “This is happy crying, right?”

Now he leaned forward and said in a whisper, “I lost my virginity to you.”

“I dimly recall that.”

He shook his head at the memory. “I was pathetic. How many condoms did I throw away, thinking I hadn’t unrolled them right?”

“About four hundred,” I said. “I, of course, was only pretending inexperience to set you at ease. I’d been with a thousand sailors, a movie star or two.”

He gave me a half-smile. “I better get us another round,” he said. He refused to take my money. I watched him leaning on the bar, saying something to the bartender that made him laugh, leaving the bartender a three-dollar tip. I had forgotten how much I liked him, in all the confusion over his breaking my heart.

I drank some of the fresh beer, for bravery, and then I said, “You were sweet. I’m glad it was you.”

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes serious. “I mean, really. Thanks. I was afraid I’d made you regret everything.”

“Only some things,” I said.

“I want to ask you . . .” He dropped his gaze to the table, running his finger along a crack in the wood. “If you’re not a romantic anymore, is that because of me? Is that my fault?”

I laughed. “Are you asking me if you ruined my life?”

“Not ruined, exactly.” He shot me a look. “Affected.”

Part of me wanted to take this line of questioning as arrogance, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. “I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the closest I’ve come to permanent, unless you want to count Oliver.”

“Who’s Oliver?”

I was sorry I’d mentioned his name. “He was my boss. It was complicated.”

He nodded and muttered into the table, “Say no more.”

I waited until he looked up. “I’m not saying I wanted to marry you.”

He held up both hands, palms out. “Hey,” he said. “I’d never presume.”

The front door opened, and we both turned to see two young men come in, laughing and noisy. They got drinks and went to play a game of pool. Owen said, “For a long time I was worried I was a bad person. I was afraid any relationship I got in, I’d fuck it up, because it doesn’t take that much to fuck it up. Then I fell for this girl—before Anna—and after we’d been dating about a year I found out she was cheating on me.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “I tried to be understanding—you know, didn’t want to be a hypocrite—but it was over pretty quick. That’s not the point, though. The point is, that’s when I stopped feeling bad about myself and started thinking about how you must have felt. Well, okay, I didn’t stop feeling bad about myself. But when I told you that what happened with Sonia meant nothing, it was true. It did mean nothing. But when Lizzie said that to me, I couldn’t believe it. Because of course it meant something to me.”

At the pool table, one of the guys said, “Fuck!”

“Oh, ho,” the other guy said.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

Owen looked away. “Oh, I don’t know. All the usual reasons.” He lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “I’d feel stupid listing them for you. They’re true, but so inadequate.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, why did you choose her? Why did you choose her over me?”

“I didn’t choose her,” he said. “I know why it felt like that. But I loved you. I chose you. I would have always chosen you.” He grinned. “If I chose Sonia, it was for like fifteen minutes.”

“Or fifteen seconds,” I said, grinning back.

“Hey now,” he said. “Not when I’m being confessional.”

I sat back. “There’s no such thing as permanent anyway.”

“Well, I hope that’s not true,” he said.

“Sorry. I mean except for you and Anna.”

“Except for us.” He said, somewhere between joking and earnest, “I wish there were some way to make you a romantic again.”

“I am who I am,” I said. I hadn’t meant to sound like I was sad about that.

We went back to the apartment. The living room was empty. I started to speak, and Owen put his finger to his lips. He tiptoed to the closed bedroom door, then waved me over. I could hear Anna on the other side, singing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” making an effort to push her sweet, slightly off-key voice toward Dylan’s rough cadences. “That’s a lullaby?” I whispered.

Owen smiled. “In our world,” he said.

I looked at the expression on his face—the tenderness in it, the pride—and felt at the same time a new affection for him and a physical sense of the distance between who we had once been to each other and who we were now. I couldn’t imagine that only Sonia had prevented me from being the woman holding his baby on the other side of the door. Owen was a nice person. I liked him and his wife, and I thought from now on we’d probably exchange Christmas cards and have dinner on the rare occasions we were in the same town. But just as Oliver’s things lost their meaning without Oliver, so without the love I used to feel for Owen, he’d lost his meaning for me. He used to be the hero of the story, but now he was just an average person again. I thought of Will, the one my feelings put the spotlight on now, and then I tried not to think of him.

Owen guided me back to the living room, so that Anna wouldn’t catch us eavesdropping. “She’s embarrassed about her singing,” he whispered.

“Another thing we have in common,” I said.

When Anna emerged with Emmet, saying he wouldn’t sleep, I asked to hold him. He stared at me with that expression newborns have that suggests they’re perplexed and angry to find themselves in a bright world of hard surfaces and hunger. “He really does look like Owen,” I said, and Anna beamed. Owen put his arm around her and kissed her on the temple, and Anna said I had to stay for dinner.

As the evening wore on, I began to say that I should go, although Anna protested every time. We watched Emmet fall asleep in his swing. Anna offered to make me a bed on the futon, but I lied and said I was on my way to Connecticut to see some friends. I thought I’d drive until I got tired, and then I’d find another motel. I’d decide which way to go once I got on the highway. There was no place else for me to look for Sonia, and I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to Cambridge to leave the package. I’d have to mail it. Oliver would have to understand that I’d done my best.

Determined to leave, I was saying my final good-byes when the buzzer rang. Owen and Anna looked at the sleeping baby, but he didn’t stir. Together they sighed with relief. “I’ll get it,” Owen said.

Anna watched him go, radiating anticipation. “Who is it?” I asked, but she just shrugged.

After a moment Owen came back, wearing a puzzled frown. “Weird,” he said. “It’s Will Barrett.”

“Finally,” Anna said, and Owen and I looked at her. She smiled with guilt and excitement. I stood up, and she put a hand on my arm. “He called while you were out,” she said. “He said you’d leave if you knew he was coming.”

“He was right,” I said.

“But it’s so romantic,” she said. “He drove all this way.”

I looked down into her bright, hopeful eyes. “I can’t,” I said.

I went for the door. Owen was right behind me. “What’s going on?” he asked. Eight years ago I’d packed my things while he followed me around his house with tears in his eyes, saying again and again that he loved me. I’d kept my resolution to leave him without a word.

“Déjà vu,” I said. I opened the door and caught Will with his hand raised to knock. “I’m sorry,” I said to Owen, and then brushed past Will and ran down the stairs. I heard Will pounding after me, but I made it to the street before he grabbed me by the arm.

He was breathing hard. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

I yanked my arm from his grasp.

“You’re not running away,” he said. “I’m going to talk to you.”

I turned and started walking down the street toward my car. He fell in step beside me. “I want to explain,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to deceive you. I just didn’t want to ruin it.”

I nearly laughed at that. I picked up my pace.

“I was afraid if I told you, this would happen,” he said.

I reached the car and unlocked my door. He grabbed my arm again. “I’ll stand in front of the car,” he said. “I’ll throw myself on the hood. Cameron. I’m not kidding.”

“All right,” I said. “Get in.”

He kept one hand on the car as he walked around to the passenger door. I put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.

“I want to explain,” he said once he was inside.

“I think I got it.” I put both hands on the wheel and stared out the windshield like we were going somewhere. “You’re dating Sonia.”

“But that’s not what I want to explain.”

“What do you want to explain? Why you made a fool of me? Why you listened to me babble about her life and never said a word? Why you lied to me? Yes, please explain.”

He took a deep breath. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“Fine,” I said. “Why you omitted the truth.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.”

“That’s a good explanation. I can see why you drove three hours to give it to me.”

He threw his hands in the air. “Will you just let me talk?”

“Okay. Talk.”

“I’m not dating Sonia,” he said. “I’m not in love with Sonia, and she’s not in love with me, either. But when she broke up with Martin, on and off for a couple months . . . we’re adults, we were lonely. Nothing’s happened since she got engaged.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“You said you did!” He let out a shaky breath. “You remember when Sonia and I broke up in college?”

“What has this got to do with—”

“Just let me tell it!” he snapped. Then he held out his hand, as though to calm us both. “Afterward I was sitting in the airport, feeling . . . I don’t know what.”

“Sad,” I said.

He gave me a rueful smile. “Sad, yes. And then I looked up and there you were. When I saw you, when I saw that you had come to say good-bye, I thought, Of course.” He looked at me like he expected me to understand.

“And?”

“I had this crazy feeling I should ask you to come back with me, that it would be perfectly natural if you got on the plane, too. And when I opened my door the other night and saw you there, I had the same feeling.”

“That I should get on the plane?”

He sighed. “No,” he said. “That you were the one I was meant to be with. That you were the one all along.”

I thought of standing with him, watching those ducks circle, dancing with him at the prom, all the times I’d had that feeling myself. “I don’t know,” I said.

He took a deep breath. “I have to tell you one more thing.”

“What?” I whispered.

“Sonia’s in Clovis.” He was wincing as he spoke. “Her mother had a breakdown. She went out there to take care of her. She didn’t want anybody to know. She made me promise . . .”

“You knew this the whole time?”

“She made me promise,” he said. He looked miserable. “I’m breaking my word to tell you now. She may never speak to me again.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said. “It’s just the same thing over and over.”

“But it’s not,” he said. “I’m telling you I want to be with you.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do this again.”

“What are you talking about? We dated before?”

I couldn’t look at him. “I can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t be with you.”

“Cameron, please.” His voice trembled.

I closed my eyes. “No,” I said.

“Cameron . . .”

“No,” I said.

He got out of the car and shut the door gently, with both hands.

I started the car, but then I just sat there with the engine running and watched him walk away. When he was gone I leaned my head against the steering wheel. I had the heavy feeling that I was fated for departure. It seemed to me that I left everyone, even Oliver, packing my bag to abandon his house like a hotel guest fleeing the bill. Over and over my life blurred around me until I was nothing but the forward motion of my car. I left Sonia outside that gas station, and ever since I’d been driving away.

22

O
n the drive
from the Amarillo airport to Clovis it was impossible to shake the feeling that I was going back in time. I hadn’t been back to Clovis since Sonia and I had left for college twelve years before. The strangest part was not how much had changed but how much had stayed the same. Passing all the places we used to go was like being on the set of a movie about my life. I kept expecting to see a younger version of myself coming around the corner, wearing hoop earrings and a bright shirt with shoulder pads, my bangs curled and sprayed into place. There was a new mall, and signs announcing that a hardware chain was coming soon, but Main Street looked much as it had when we used to spend our Friday nights driving up and down it. Pickup trucks, dirt-brown buildings, the sun bouncing off metal and glass. The sky was so vast it seemed to absorb even the biggest and ugliest man-made things into nature, until it all became landscape, and I thought of climbing into the Bandolier cliff dwellings on that last trip with Sonia, turning to her to say, “Can you believe people used to live here?”