“Okay, okay.”
“—run across the bar the moment you left it, slip out the door behind you, and follow you through the city on empty, quiet streets in hard-heeled shoes.”
“Okay, I said. Okay.” She gestured at his suit, his white shirt, his handsome raincoat. “You’re just very put together so I’m trying to wrap my head around the part where you don’t really like yourself. Because you, my friend, exude confidence.”
“In a dickish way?”
“Actually, no.” She shook her head.
“Most times I am confident,” he said. “The rational adult me? He’s got his shit squared away. There’s just this tiny splinter-me that can be accessed at midnight in a dark bar by a woman who asks what I don’t like about myself.” He turned fully toward her again and waited. “Speaking of which . . .”
She cleared her throat because for a moment she feared she’d tear up. She could feel it threatening, and it was embarrassing. She’d covered a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on an island already racked by poverty beyond most humans’ ability to imagine. She’d spent a month in a housing project walking solely on her knees in order to duplicate the perspective of a child in the same circumstances. She once climbed to the canopy of a tree, two hundred feet above the ground in the Brazilian rain forest, and slept there overnight. And today, she’d barely managed to drive thirty miles from the suburbs to the city without cracking up.
“I got divorced today,” she said. “I lost my job—no, correct that, my career—six months ago, as you well know, because I had a panic attack on the air. I’ve grown terrified of people, not particular people, but in general, which is worse. I’ve spent the last few months a virtual shut-in. And honestly? I can’t wait to get back to it. Brian, there’s nothing I like about myself.”
He said nothing for a minute. Just looked at her. It wasn’t an intense stare, didn’t feel like a come-on or a challenge. It was an open look, forgiving, uncolored by judgment. It was impossible for her to characterize until she realized it was the look of a friend.
She noticed the song then. It had been playing for maybe half a minute. Lenny Welch, one of the earliest but most enduring one-hit wonders, singing “Since I Fell for You.”
Brian’s head was cocked to it, his gaze gone to another place. “This played on the radio once when I was a kid at this lake we’d go to. All the adults were funny that day, a blast to be around. Took me years to realize they were all high. I couldn’t understand why they kept sharing the same cigarette. Anyway, they danced by the lake to this, a bunch of stoned Canucks in nylon bathing suits.”
Where did it come from, what she said next? Could that impulse be traced? Or was it simply chemical? Neurons firing away, biology trumping intellect.
“Wanna dance?”
“Love to.” He took her hand and they found the small dance floor just past the bar itself in a dark room lit only by the glow of the jukebox.
Their first dance then. The first time their palms and chests touched. The first time she was close enough to smell what she would always identify as Brian’s essential smell—a hint of smoke entwined with the smell of his unscented shampoo and a vaguely woodsy musk to his flesh.
“I sent you the drink because I didn’t want you to leave the bar.”
“Because you had to go to the bathroom, I know.”
“No, I went to the bathroom because right after I sent the drink, I freaked out. I just, I dunno, whew, I just didn’t want to see you look at me like some fucking stalker. So I went to the bathroom to, I dunno, cringe? I just went in there and stood with my back against the wall and called myself stupid about ten times.”
“You did not.”
“I did. I swear. When I used to watch you on the news, you were honest. You didn’t editorialize, you didn’t wink at the camera or wear your biases on your sleeve. I trusted what you said. You did your job with integrity. And that came through.”
“Even with the cat that barked?”
His face grew serious though his tone remained light. “Don’t minimize what I’m saying about you. I go through a day, sometimes a week, where everyone lies to me, everyone’s trying to play me. From the car salesman, to the vendors, from my doctor trying to upsell me drugs because he’s trying to fuck the pharmaceutical rep, to the airlines and the hotels and the women in the hotel bars. I would get back from a trip, and I would turn on Channel 6 and you—you—wouldn’t lie to me. That meant something. Some days, particularly after my marriage blew up and I was alone all the time, that meant everything.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was unaccustomed to compliments lately and unfamiliar with trust.
“Thanks,” she managed and looked at the floor.
“This is one sad song,” he said after a bit.
“It is.”
“You want to stop?”
“No.” She loved the press of his palm at the small of her back. It made her feel like she’d never fall. Never be hurt. Never lose. Never be abandoned again. “No, let’s keep going.”
11
APPETITES
The beginning of their love affair injected her with a false sense of calm. She almost convinced herself the panic attacks were a thing of the past, even though their most recent onset had been the most acute.
Her and Brian’s first official date was a cup of coffee the morning after they met. Too buzzed to drive the night before, Rachel had splurged on a river-view room at the Westin Copley Square. It had been over a year since she’d stayed in a hotel; in the elevator, she’d imagined ordering a snack from room service and watching a movie on-demand, but she fell asleep somewhere between kicking off her shoes and pulling back the bedspread. At ten the next morning, she met Brian at Stephanie’s on Newbury. Tendrils of vodka still shivered in her blood and in the mild gumminess of her brain. Brian, on the other hand, looked great. He was actually better looking in daylight than in bar light. She asked him about his job and he told her it paid the bills and let him indulge his love of travel.
“There’s gotta be more to it than that.”
“Not actually.” He chuckled. “Here’s what I do, day in, day out—I negotiate terms with lumber suppliers based on whether there’s a lot of lumber this month or a little. Was there a drought in Australia or did the rainy season last too long in the Philippines? Those factors change the price of lumber, which changes the price of—where do we start?—that napkin, this tablecloth, that sugar packet. I’m falling asleep talking about it.” He took a sip of coffee. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Will you ever go back to journalism?”
“I doubt anyone would hire me.”
“If they would? Say someone who never saw that video?”
“And where would I find them?”
“I hear Chad has terrible Internet service.”
“Chad?”
“Chad.”
She said, “Well, if I can ever get on a plane again, I’ll take a run at the news stations in . . .”
“N’Djamena.”
“Capital of Chad, yes.”
“On the tip of your tongue, I’m sure.”
“It was.”
“No, I know.”
“I would’ve gotten it.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Not with your mouth maybe,” she said, “but with your eyes.”
“Yours are remarkable, by the way.”
“My eyes.”
“And your mouth.”
“You can hang with me anytime.”
“That’s the plan.” His face grew a bit somber. “Did you ever think you might not have to go as far as Chad?”
“What do you mean?”
“I wonder if you’re as recognizable as you think.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I was on the news five nights a week in this city for almost three years.”
“You were,” he said. “But what’s the viewership? About five percent of a city of two million? So that’s a hund
red thousand people. Spread out over however many square miles make up the greater metro area. I bet if you polled everyone in this restaurant, only one or two would recognize you and maybe only because we asked and made them take a second look.”
She said, “I can’t decide if you’re trying to make me feel better or worse.”
“Better,” he said. “Always better. I’m trying to get you to see, Rachel, that, yeah, a few people remember that video and a smaller percentage of those connect it to you when they see you out in public, but it’s a shrinking demographic and it shrinks further every day. We live in a world of disposable memory. Nothing’s built to last, not even shame.”
She crinkled her nose at him. “You talk pretty.”
“You are pretty.”
“Awwwww.”
Second date was a dinner on the South Shore near her place. Third date was back in Boston, another dinner, and afterward they made out like high school kids, her back against a lamp pole. It started to rain, not the soft mist of the night they’d met but a pelting that coincided with a plummet into raw cold, as if winter was taking one last desperate bite out of them.
“Let’s get you to your car.” He tucked her under his raincoat. She could hear the drops hitting the outside of the coat like small stones, but everything remained dry except her ankles.
They passed a small park where a homeless man lay on a bench. He stared out at the street as if he were trying to spot something he’d lost there. He’d covered himself in newspaper, but his head shook persistently in the wet. His lips quivered.
“It’s a mean spring,” the man said.
“And almost June too,” Brian said.
“Supposed to clear by midnight.” Rachel felt anxious and guilty about owning a bed, a car, a roof.
The man gave that news a hopeful pursing of his lips and closed his eyes.
In her car, she got the heat turned on and rubbed her hands together. Brian leaned into the open window for a short kiss that turned into a long one and the rain battered her roof.
“Let me drive you home,” she said.
“It’s ten blocks in the wrong direction. The coat’ll keep me dry.”
“You don’t have a hat.”
“Ye of little faith.” He stepped back from the car and produced a Blue Jays ball cap from his coat pocket. When he put it on, he curved the bill with a snap of his fingers and saluted her with a cocked grin. “Drive careful. Call me when you get home.”
“One more.” She crooked a finger at him.
He leaned into the car one more time, kissed her, and she could smell the faintest hint of sweat from the underside of his cap brim and taste scotch on his tongue and she pulled hard on the lapels of his coat and deepened the kiss.
He walked back the way they’d come. She turned on her wipers and went to pull away from the curb, but her windows had fogged up. She turned on the defrost and sat watching the glass clear before she pulled onto the street. At the next corner, she was about to turn right when she looked to her left and saw Brian. He stood in the small park. He’d removed his coat to lay it over the homeless man.
He stepped out of the park, turning his shirt collar up against the rain, and ran up the street toward his home.
Her mother, of course, had a whole chapter devoted to what Rachel had just witnessed: “The Act That Causes the Leap.”
Their fourth date, he made dinner at his apartment. While he was loading the dishwasher, she removed her T-shirt and bra and came to him in the kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of tattered boyfriend jeans. He turned just as she reached him and his eyes widened and he said, “Oh.”
She felt in complete control, which of course she wasn’t, and free enough to dictate the terms of their bodies’ first engagement. That night they started in the kitchen but finished in his bed. Started round two in the bathtub and finished on the counter between the his-and-her sinks. Then went for the trifecta in the bedroom again and did surprisingly well, although there was nothing left to come out of Brian at the end but a shudder.
Throughout that summer, the giving of the body went spectacularly well. The giving of everything else, however, was a slower process. Particularly once the panic attacks returned. For the most part, they descended when Brian was out of town. Unfortunately, the first rule of accepting him as her boyfriend was accepting that he was out of town a lot. Most of his trips were quick two-nighters to Canada, Washington State and Oregon, twice a year to Maine. But others—to Russia, Germany, Brazil, Nigeria, and India—took much longer.
Sometimes when he was first gone, it felt good to return to herself. She didn’t need to see herself in terms of being half of a couple. She’d wake up the morning after he’d left and feel ninety percent Rachel Childs. Then she’d look out the window and fear the world and remember that ninety percent of herself was still at least forty percent more than she liked.
By the second afternoon, the thought of going outside came laden with barely suppressed hysteria swaddled in more manageable everyday dread.
What she saw when she pictured the outside world was what she felt when she dared enter it—that it came at her like a storm cloud. Encircled her. Took bites of her. Inserted itself into her body like a straw and sucked her dry. In return, it gave her nothing. It thwarted all her attempts to engage it in kind, to be rewarded for her attempts to be a part of it. It sucked her up into its swirl, spun her, and then spit her out of its maelstrom before moving on to its next victim.
While Brian was in Toronto, she froze in a Dunkin’ Donuts on Boylston. For two hours she couldn’t move from the small counter that looked out onto the street.
While Brian was legging back from Hamburg one morning, she got into a cab on Beacon Street. They’d driven four blocks when she realized she’d entrusted a complete stranger with carrying her safely across the city for money. She had him pull over, overtipped him, and got out of the cab. She stood on the sidewalk, and everything was too bright, too sharp. Her hearing was too acute, as if the ear canals had been cored; she could hear three people on the far side of Mass Ave talking about their dogs. A woman, ten feet below on the river path, berated her child in Arabic. A plane landed at Logan. Another took off. And she could hear it. Could hear the cars honking on Mass Ave, and cars idling on Beacon and revving their engines on Storrow Drive.
Luckily there was a trash barrel nearby. She took four steps and threw up in it.
As she walked back toward the apartment she shared with Brian, the people she passed stared brazenly at her with contempt and disgust and something that she could only identify as appetite. They contemplated nipping her as she passed.
A Scientologist accosted her at the next block, shoved a pamphlet in her hand, and asked if she’d like to take a personality test, she sure looked like she could use some good news, ma’am, might learn things about herself that would—
She wasn’t ever positive but suspected she might have thrown up on him. Back at the apartment she found specks of vomit on her shoes, but when she’d puked into the big barrel she’d been certain it had been all net.
She removed her clothes and took a twenty-minute shower. When Brian came home that night she was still in her robe and almost to the bottom of a bottle of pinot grigio. He made his own drink, single malt with a single cube of ice, and sat with her in the window seat overlooking the Charles and let her talk it out. When she finished, the disgust she’d expected to see in his face—the disgust that surely would have lived in Sebastian’s—wasn’t there. Instead, she saw only . . . What was that?
Good Lord.
Empathy.
Is that what it looks like? she thought.
He used the tips of his fingers to brush her wet bangs back and kissed her forehead. He poured her more wine.
He chuckled. “You really puked on a Scientologist?”
“It’s not funny.”
“But, babe, it is. It really is.” He clinked his glass off hers and drank.
She laughed, but then the laugh
died and she thought of who she’d once been—in the housing projects, in the prowl cars on ride-alongs, in the halls of power, in the streets of Port-au-Prince, and that endless night in the squatters camp in Léogâne—and she couldn’t connect that Rachel with this one.
“I’m so ashamed.” She looked at this man who was better than any she’d ever known, certainly kinder, certainly more patient, and the tears came, which only deepened her shame.
“Ashamed of what?” he said. “You are not weak. You hear me?”
“I can’t even walk out the fucking door,” she whispered. “I can’t even get in a fucking cab.”
“You’ll see someone,” he said. “You’ll figure it out. You’ll heal. In the meantime, where would you want to go?” His arm swept the apartment. “What’s better than here? We’ve got books, a full fridge, an Xbox.”
She dropped her forehead against his chest. “I love you.”
“I love you too. We can even do the wedding here.”
She took her head off his chest, looked in his eyes. He nodded.
They got married in a church. It was a few blocks away. Only their closest friends attended—on her side, Melissa, Eugenie, and Danny Marotta, her cameraman in Haiti; on his side, his business partner, Caleb, Caleb’s wife, Haya, a stunning Japanese immigrant who was still struggling to learn English, and Tom, the bartender from the bar where they’d met. No Jeremy James this time to walk her down the aisle; she hadn’t heard from him in two years. As for Brian, when she’d asked if he wanted his family there, he shook his head and a darkness settled on him like an overcoat.
“I do business with them,” he said. “I do not love them. I do not share the beautiful things in my life with them.”
When he spoke of his family Brian didn’t use contractions. He spoke slowly and precisely.
She said, “But they’re your family.”
He shook his head. “You’re my family.”
After the wedding, they all went for drinks at the Bristol Lounge. Later, she and Brian walked home through the Common and the Public Garden, and she’d never felt better in her life.