Chapter 42
He gets a Manhattan and I get a Coke and we hold hands across the table.
“Hey, thanks for being so accommodating,” he says, “with having to reschedule. I really felt like I let you down.”
“Oh no, it was totally fine,” I lie.
It hasn’t been fine. It’s been hell, every day spent anxiously waiting for him to reschedule the date, and then, after he finally did, every day spent anxiously waiting for him to cancel it.
“Well, it means a lot that you’re so understanding. It’s very mature of you.”
“Oh, of course,” I say through a convincing smile.
And yet something darker lurks underneath.
A question. Is he really complimenting me?
Does he really think I’m mature? Or is he trying to validate what he wants me to be, to reinforce it and ensure it going forward, to solidify the version of me that makes his life easiest?
He puts on his reading glasses to read the menu.
Such a small gesture, but to me a sucker punch.
What other quotidian basics of his life don’t I know?
Does he snore in his sleep? What vitamins does he take?
When is he due for a physical? Does he have a tooth that’s been bothering him?
What brand of face wash does he use? All of these stupid little things suddenly seem so important.
So relevant. If only I knew his schedule, his preferences, the brand names of the household products he uses, then I might actually know him.
Then our relationship might actually be real.
Until then, it’s just a theory. A suggestion. An idea.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t,” he says. “Not really. Just sometimes to grade papers. And, evidently, to see which pasta I’d like to order. Don’t wanna miss it if they’ve got carbonara.”
He chuckles at himself and takes in his menu. I try to take in mine but suddenly my old way of looking at a menu no longer seems appropriate.
I only go out to eat a couple times a year with Mom.
Usually Denny’s, where I always get the Grand Slam so I don’t even have to open the menu.
And if we go anywhere else, I lock onto the kids’ section and order chicken nuggets or cheese pizza if they let me, a hamburger from the regular menu if they don’t.
But this is a real restaurant. And this is a real date with a real man.
So I need to be a real woman, not just the body of one with a seven-year-old’s diet.
I correct my posture. Run my finger along the items as if I’m taking the menu as seriously as I want Mr. Korgy to take me.
I jut out my chin. Spew occasional hmms, pretending the ingredients I don’t know are appealing.
Ah yes, escabeche. Cipollini. Toum. My old friends.
Is this how a woman does it? How a woman reads a menu?
The waiter takes our orders and Mr. Korgy takes a call.
“I’m so sorry,” he says to me as he backs up through the restaurant, readying his finger to swipe. “So, so, sorry.” And yet, despite how sorry he is, he takes the call.
I watch him through the window as he paces back and forth in the parking lot, rubbing out a knot in his shoulder.
I pee and come back but he’s still on the phone, so I get on mine and find myself where any lost soul finds themselves: their save-for-later section on .
I move everything to my cart and order it all.
Miniature tweezers and fuzzy slippers, niacinamide serum and Command strips so I can finally hang that picture of Mom and me that I’ve been meaning to hang for four and a half years.
A satin pillowcase, a bar of oatmeal-scented soap, and a seam ripper for itchy tags.
A night light that looks like a piece of toast. A felt elephant keychain.
Floral stickers. A bag of sour-cream-and-onion seasoning powder that supposedly tastes just like the discontinued one from Auntie Anne’s.
Our entrees arrive. I get a refill of my Coke, and as the food slowly stops steaming, something in me begins to stir. Something scalding and scary and powerful.
“Whew, I’m so sorry about that,” Mr. Korgy says as he finally takes a seat.
I will myself to push it down, to force it down, to shove this thing so far down it won’t ever break the surface.
“No worries,” I say, but it comes out tighter than I mean it to. Clenched and constricted, like the lie that it is.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” he says, studying me. “I feel terrible. Your food probably got cold.”
“It’s fine.”
He twirls his fork in his pasta.
“What?” he asks.
“What do you mean ‘what’?”
“Something’s the matter.”
“No, nothing’s the matter. Everything’s—”
“Fine?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Something’s wrong. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“I can’t read your mind, Waldo. Much as I wish I could. Please talk to me.”
“Really. There’s nothing to say.”
“Okay, fine then. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Good.”
We each take a bite of our food and take too long to chew and I pick off a petal from the single-rose centerpiece.
“Can you stop taking her calls around me?” I finally ask, a few decibels too loud and with a piercing hostility.
Panic floods his face for a moment so fleeting it’s almost imperceptible.
Almost. But I saw it. That look of terror, of Oh no, we’re out of the honeymoon phase where I can do no wrong.
She’s starting to see through me. She’s starting to break through the surface, like all women do, all of them the same with their endless pool of wants, their infatuation all too quickly blurring into hatred.
It was a micro-moment of truth, of raw, animal emotion that he was able to edit so quickly, to correct so seamlessly that it scares me. If he’s able to manipulate his own emotions so well, what might he be able to do with mine?
“You’re usually so understanding,” he says, his face settled with a milky look of concern.
It’s a masterfully chosen phrase, a way of pinning the problem back onto me, like he’s just the timid guy trying to make sense of his girlfriend’s “outburst,” which he quantifies as any emotion that makes him remotely uncomfortable, which is any emotion that isn’t happiness or horniness.
I would be impressed if I wasn’t so livid.
“Yeah, I say I’m understanding, to please you,” I tell him. “But I’m actually really hurting. It hurts. When you talk to her in front of me.”
“I took the call outside so you wouldn’t have to hear…”
“I get so little time with you and then whatever time I do get is constantly interrupted by her calls and her texts and you tending to her.”
“She’s my wife.”
I nod and look out the window like Jessica Chastain in any of her meaty roles, the weight of womankind in her deep, beautiful eyes.
“Look, I’m really sorry,” he says. “That I have to take Gwen’s calls. I’m sure that’s hard on you.”
“Well can you just stop? Can you fucking not take calls from her when you’re sitting across from me?”
The older couple next to us looks over. Mr. Korgy’s pleading eyes meet mine.
“Waldo, I’m doing this for us. How am I supposed to keep seeing you if she’s on to me? If she gets suspicious?”
I stir my Coke with the straw, sulky and petulant. I want more, I want to say. Or whine. Or scream. Give me more. But I just keep stirring.
“Look, Waldo,” Mr. Korgy says, repositioning himself. “You’re in control here, okay?”
He says the words with such conviction that I want to believe them.
I want to believe that he knows something that I don’t.
That his version of reality is the real one.
That there’s some shade to this that I’m missing.
Something I’m not seeing because of being so wrapped up in it.
So obsessive about it. So fanatic. If only I could zoom out.
Then I could see what he sees. That I am, in fact, in control. Instead of feeling so out of it.
“I want to do this on your terms and your terms only,” he says.
“If this ever stops working for you or feeling good for you, we can stop. We will stop,” he says, as if it’s a kind thing to say.
And I’m sure that it is. I know that it is.
That he’s saying it to protect me. So why then does it feel like a threat?
“I don’t wanna stop,” I say, my eyes hungry and wild, survival mode clicking in.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
I’m not sure how in a matter of ten seconds I somersaulted from being the one seeking reassurance from him to being the one asked to give it to him but regardless I want to stick the landing.
“I’m sure,” I say. “I don’t want to stop.”
And so we agree to drop the issue and have a good night together.
He tells me about his teenage summers at his aunt’s house in Cape Cod, eating salt-and-vinegar chips and watching the Independence Day parade while the uncle he didn’t like very much told him how he ought to live his life.
He tells me about the year he was vegan, the year he spent backpacking through Thailand, and the year he worked as a baggage handler for American Airlines and how that taught him to never overpack again.
I tell him about Mom sneaking me into matinee movies under her coat, R-rated ones I probably shouldn’t have seen at four, Bridesmaids and Like Crazy and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
I tell him about summers at Frannie’s and how our friendship is slowly dissolving the more we figure out who we each are.
I tell him about the time Mom booked tickets for us to go and visit my dad in California once they’d reconnected in their mid-twenties and she believed they might get back together.
Mom scheduled a haircut and a spray tan, and mani-pedis for both of us at a place downtown where the acetone smelled like cotton candy.
We packed our bags, woke up at four in the morning for our flight, and got all the way to the airport when Mom saw that some bitch tagged him in a picture on Facebook.
We didn’t take the flight. There was a Cinnabon near the gate, though, so we got one to split.
On the way out Mom sucked the cinnamon goo off her finger and said, “Never get on a plane for a man. No man is worth the price of airfare.”
Mr. Korgy and I order two desserts, a seven-layer cake and a crème br?lée.
We crack the crème br?lée and we eat the cake and Mr. Korgy pays the tab and he doesn’t even have to count on his fingers to know how much to tip.
We scooch out of the booth and a hostess taps Mr. Korgy on the arm and says, “I just have to let you know, you seem like such a good dad.”