Chapter Twenty-Eight
Goodnight
For spring break, our friends planned a road trip to San Simeon to visit Hearst Castle. Jack, Jenny, and Charlie picked me up at my apartment in the afternoon, and we caravanned behind Luke, his girlfriend Krystal, and a few other friends.
I sat in the back seat with Charlie. The four of us played the alphabet game and I Spy.
When it started getting dark and we started getting sleepy, Charlie took out a CD and handed it to me.
“This is for you,” he said.
“What is it? Can we play it now?”
“Sure, if you want to.”
Jack took out Zapp & Roger and inserted the new disc. It was a rich and romantic recording of Charlie playing “Goodnight.” I waited with crazy anticipation for the chorus.
Goodnight to my thoughts of you
They’re all I have, my thoughts of you
And I know you won’t stay
I know you won’t stay
I wish I could steal one waltz with you
We’d waltz in rags among flowers
But I know you can’t stay
I know you can’t stay
And, oh, I know you’re the right one ‘cause you’re leavin’
To stay would be the wrong way
Oh, I know you’re the right one ‘cause you’re leavin’
To stay would be the wrong way
I’m listening for something I haven’t said before
Common words are for common hearts
So many should have beens
Too many should have beens
You don’t even know you’re the star
Three wishes, too many; I wish that you were my star
So many could have beens
Too many could have beens
And, oh, I know you’re the right one ‘cause you’re leavin’
To stay would be the wrong way
Oh, I know you’re the right one ‘cause you’re leavin’
To stay would be the wrong way
Goodnight to my thoughts of you
They’re all I have, my thoughts of you
And I know you won’t stay
I know you can’t stay
Charlie’s song ended with tear-jerking minor chords. The car was silent for a moment as we let it sink in.
I sat with my arms crossed, trying not to assume the song was about me.
“It’s awesome,” Jack said. “That is a great song.”
Charlie looked right at me. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s beautiful,” I said.
I looked out the window, feeling teased. I remembered the last time a guy played a song for me. It wasn’t about me.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked.
“The lyrics—you know, the chorus—it was hard for me to understand.”
“It was?”
“I mean it was hard for me to understand what it was about.”
“It’s about true love,” he said. “It’s like a paradox: the right one is leaving.”
“That’s really cool.”
“So you like it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I smiled. “I love it.”
That night we ate at an obscure pizza parlor. I ordered a salad and sat down at a table by myself. Charlie joined me while he waited for his pizza.
“You want some salad?” I asked.
“No, that’s OK.”
“Here.” I handed him my fork with an artichoke heart on it. “Here, do you want my heart?”
He took it and smiled. “No, I can’t take it.” He handed it back.
“Why not?”
“It’s your only one.”
“But I want you to have it. Take it.”
“OK. If you insist.” He laughed.
Later that night at our motel room, the eight of us took turns in the bathroom to shower and get ready for bed. While Charlie was taking a shower, his friends sneaked in and poured a bucket of ice-cold water over the top. Charlie screamed.
“That’s our tradition,” Jack said with a huge smile on his face.
Charlie yelled from the bathroom, “You’re next, Jack! You’re next!”
The next morning we continued driving and then stopped near the beach for lunch. It started drizzling, but we stayed anyway, rolled up our jeans, and ran in the wet sand. The girls wrote “Spring Break” in seashells on the sand and took a picture. The guys kicked the soccer ball around. While walking back to our car, I jumped on Charlie’s back, and he carried me the rest of the way.
“Aww, look at the lovebirds!” Jenny yelled.
Finally, we made it to our destination: Hearst Castle. Before we toured the castle, we had to take a group photo at the souvenir booth.
“OK guys, when it’s our turn, we have to walk into the room like this.” Jack showed us this stiff bird walk, kicking his legs in front of him before each step, and we practiced it in the hallway. When they called our group number, we entered the room all crazy and laughing like maniacs. Charlie bought the photo set and gave me the 5x7 copy. Then we took a picture of all of us leaning over a wall that overlooked the ocean. Basically, it was a picture of our butts.
On our drive home we stopped in Pismo Beach for lunch. Charlie walked with me to get clam chowder from Splash Café, and then I walked with him to a Mexican restaurant to get a burrito. By the time we met up with our friends on the pier, it was crazy windy. Charlie tried to pour water in Jack’s mouth, and the wind blew the water away. The guys tried throwing the Frisbee around, but it just blew into the sand.
Last, we stopped in Santa Barbara for a stretch. Charlie and I walked along Stearn’s Wharf together. Jack took a picture of Charlie and me looking over the railing to the horizon. Then Charlie went to a nearby cliff and began to quickly draw the bluffs in his sketchbook.
It was the Wednesday before Easter when we arrived back on campus. Everyone headed home except for Charlie and me.
“Hey, we should hang out tomorrow, you know, since we will both be in town,” I said when Charlie dropped me off at my apartment.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
“Do you want to go hiking tomorrow?” I asked. “I feel like I need some exercise after sitting in the car all day.”
“Yeah. I’ll come by at 8.”
“How about 10? I am not a morning person.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He arrived right on time. While we were hiking, Charlie told me about his family and his Italian and Mexican heritage. He told me about his grandfather.
“He was the anchor for our family,” Charlie said. “He and my grandma. When my parents got divorced, my grandparents were the only intact family I felt a part of. I would go to their house and eat a home-cooked meal around the table. My grandma—she’s an amazing cook. I can’t believe that my grandpa is gone, and she’s living alone now. My grandparents had their rough times too. My grandpa fought in World War II, and I guess he had a mistress before he was married. He had a child with this mistress, but he didn’t know it. When my grandma found out about it—she found a letter in the mail from the other woman—she burned the letter before he ever saw it. She felt bad and finally told him about his child. She also told us how she cheated on my grandpa and left him for a while, taking her kids with her. But then she came back—he took her back. He was that kind of man. He would do anything to work it out. He loved her so much.”
We walked uphill for a little bit, and then he told me more.
“When my parents got divorced, it was my mom who left my dad. She moved to Nevada for a while, but she didn’t take us with her. Then my dad started dating someone he met online, and he got her pregnant. Suddenly, we had a stepmom and a stepsister. It was so weird. We were like, ‘Who are you guys? Why are you living in our house? Why are you sleeping in my mom’s bed? You want us to call you mom? No, we have a mom.’ Our house became their house. One time when we were fighting, they locked us out o
f our own house. My brother and I were inseparable after that. We only had each other and my grandparents.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“My childhood—before the divorce—was like a dream. It wasn’t real. Boat trips, camping trips, holidays—they’re all fiction. They’re memories of a family that doesn’t exist. Do you know what divorce is like? It’s like suicide. To the kids, the parent is gone. It’s like they chose to kill themselves. You miss them and want them back so bad. But then, suddenly, you see them at a restaurant or driving down the street with another person, with someone else’s kids. And it hurts worse because they chose to kill their life with you but go on living a life with someone else. And then they want you to pretend that their life is better than the one you started with. They want you to be happy for them. And you are, because you want them to be happy. You want your parents to be happy. But it’s so wrong to have to pretend that you are happy too. How can you be happy when you are grieving the suicide of your parent? The suicide of the love between the two people who created you? The death of your own identity?”
I was quiet. My heart hurt for him, and I had to wipe the tears from my eyes.
“It makes sense to me now,” I said. “You know, how you have a hard time believing in true love.”
“It is so hard to say goodbye to my grandfather. He is such a good man—was such a good man.”
“So where is home for you? At your dad’s house? Your grandma’s house?”
“I’m Jack and Luke’s roommate right now.”
I laughed. “Isn’t that the truth! You guys are like brothers.”
“And I’m God’s child. I try to treat everyone like family. When I have my own family—then I will have a home.”
We trekked a bit further in silence.
“Tell me about your family,” he said.
“Well, my dad is German, and my mom is Italian.”
Charlie stopped. “No. You are Italian too?”
“Yes!”
“Have you ever made your own pasta?”
“Of course. I grew up eating spaghetti.”
“No, I mean have you made your own pasta noodles?”
“From scratch? Can you even do that?”
“That’s it. Tonight we are making pasta noodles. I have a pasta maker. It’s so easy. I’ll show you how. You just mix the ingredients and run it through the press like play dough. The noodles dry overnight and then they are ready to cook.”
“That sounds fun! Let’s do it.”
We continued hiking and talking about our families. When we got to the top of the hill, I gave him a big hug.
“Thank you for hiking with me,” I said. “And thank you for telling me about your family. You know, when my parents used to fight a lot, my sister Anna and I would tell them to get divorced. Then they would laugh at us. We didn’t even know what we were saying. All we knew was that it seemed like everyone’s parents were divorced.”
“What you meant was ‘stop fighting,’ ” Charlie said. “Treat each other well.”
“You’re right. But those words never seemed to get their attention.”
Soon we jogged back down the hill. It started to drizzle. We went faster so we could make it down before it got too slippery.
Charlie met me at my apartment later that afternoon with a bag full of surprises. He had an Atlas Pasta Machine that could roll out different pasta shapes. He also brought Italian rolls, capocollo, mozzarella, and Italian cookies with pine nuts on top.
We spent the rest of the evening making long pasta noodles—which was kind of hard to do—and arranging the noodles on wax paper to dry overnight.
“We’ll cook it tomorrow,” Charlie said. “You’ll be here, right?”
“Yes. I can’t wait.”
The next day was Good Friday. I called my mom to get her tomato sauce and garlic bread recipes. Even though I had watched my mom make spaghetti sauce a million times, I had never done it on my own. But how hard could it be?
By the time Charlie came over to cook the pasta, I had the sauce simmering on the stove and the garlic bread ready to go in the oven. Charlie mixed a salad with Italian dressing. He had also made tiramisu. While the pasta noodles boiled, we set up a camera and took pictures of ourselves in the kitchen wearing aprons.
The food smelled delicious, and when everything was finally ready, we took off our aprons and sat down to eat.
“Wait,” Charlie said. “You’re going to love this.”
He turned on the song “Bella Notte” from Lady and the Tramp.
“It’s perfect!” I said.
We held hands and prayed and thanked God for the food and for each other. Then we started eating.
I wish I could say the food was perfect. It was terrible. The noodles were too thick and grainy, the sauce tasted like straight tomato paste, and the garlic bread was wet with too much butter. But we just laughed and ate it anyway.
After some delicious tiramisu, we talked for a little bit, cleaned up, and moved into the living room. Charlie sat down on the couch.
In a split second I made a decision to do something crazy. I sat on his lap.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and looked at him. His eyes were wide, looking straight ahead.
Suddenly, the line I had crossed was evident to both of us.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to like anybody!” I said playfully.
He was quiet for a minute, and we sat together in comfortable awkwardness.
“Do I need to say something?” he asked.
“No.”
“I want to.” He looked straight into my eyes. He paused.
“I love you,” he said.
“You do?” I asked, even though I knew it was true.
“Yes. I do.”
“And you know I love you.”
“Yes.”
He continued to look into my eyes. “I want to know you for the rest of my life. Wherever you go in life, I just want to know who you are forever.”
I smiled and gave him a squeeze, my arms still around his neck. “Your song—‘Goodnight’—is it about me? Leaving for Vancouver?”
“Of course.”
“I can’t believe I’m leaving.”
We held each other there for a while longer. Then I got worried that I was too heavy, and I got off his lap and leaned back on the sofa, away from him. He came back to me, leaned over, and placed his hand on the side of my face. Then he very gently brushed his lips across my forehead, back and forth. I closed my eyes. It was like a dream. I could have stayed in that moment forever.
Very slowly, his lips brushed back and forth down my right cheek. When he got close to my lips, he stopped, went back up to my forehead, and then slowly brushed his lips back and forth down my left cheek. It was like he loved every inch of me, every part of my face, with a tender, respectful, patient love. When he got close to my lips, he stopped again.
“You are the best,” he whispered. “I don’t care if I get to have you or not. I just love you.”
He left me on the couch by myself, went into the bedroom, and came back with a guitar. Charlie sat on the ground next to me with Jocelyn’s guitar and wrote a song. I closed my eyes and listened to his perfect voice, falling asleep as he sang.
Heavenly…
I have the feeling this isn’t the last time that I’ll see you
Maybe twice; maybe more; maybe forever
But as for now I’ll watch you fall asleep once more
It’s heavenly being here now with you
I have the feeling this isn’t the last time that I’ll touch you
You’re lips are smiling, even when you’re asleep
But as for now I’ll let you fall asleep once more
It’s heavenly being here now with you
Then he kissed my hand, put it to his nose and on his cheek, whispered goodnight, and left.