Chapter Seventeen #2
He stills, nothing moves except for his green eyes slicing to mine. “And if I was?”
“If you were…I’d be…confused.”
His eyes drop back to his hand. “Why?”
“Because you asked for space! Our marriage is in shambles! You sleep in the guest room, we are never on the same page, we haven’t slept together in a year and—”
His eyes are still on his hand and I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t believe that I’ve been in a cold war with the person I, apparently, infinity.
“Vin!” I shout, about to snap right in two. “Lease or not! Are. You. Leaving. Me?”
Green eyes. “Literally never.”
And I just absolutely break.
“What. The. Fuck?”
These are the same ugly tears I cried into his shirt last weekend.
This is the bad stuff fighting its way out of me with dinner forks.
I’m shaking and disconsolate, hiding my face in my arms and praying for air.
My muscles are seizing, my fingertips digging into my biceps as I hug my legs.
When I open my eyes, Vin is staring at me desperately, his hands folded on the top of his head, his eyes wide and stressed.
“Well.” I point at my general devastation. “Help!”
He lunges across the couch and gathers me up in a ball.
He’s pushing my hair behind my ears, squeezing me, rubbing my back in big circles.
He’s telling me I’m all right. He’s saying I’m doing a good job.
He guides my face into his neck and it’s so scratchy-warm-familiar in there that I nearly start these terrible tears anew.
“How could you say literally never when you signed a lease to move out, Vin?”
I pull back and even the beard can’t hide the worried tenderness on his face when he swipes his thumbs below my swollen eyes, brushing away the tears.
“I keep trying to tell you. I didn’t.”
“What? Yes, you did, you just said it!” If he’s taking it back, I swear—
“No. No. That’s not what I mean. I mean I didn’t sign it. I never signed the lease.”
I flash back to the other times we’ve talked about the lease.
When you signed that lease, I said. I didn’t, he’d replied.
Well, you’re the one who signed this lease, I said. I haven’t, he answered.
I scramble up off his lap and he resists for just a moment, like he doesn’t want me to get off him.
But I can’t be stopped. I’m through to the kitchen, lifting trembling fingers to the Coney Island magnet that keeps the grocery list pinned over the top of the lease.
Gravity sweeps the papers to the ground and there, poetically, on top of my bare feet is the last page, signature line completely blank.
“I…I never checked,” I say dully. “I never checked if you signed it.”
And then he’s there, in the kitchen with me, lifting me out of the wreckage of the hated lease, and setting me on the countertop.
“I tried to tell you over and over that I hadn’t signed it.”
I’m stumbling over concepts here. “Tried? What do you mean you tried?”
“Whenever you brought up the lease, I tried to explain—I wanted you to see it the way I see it. I didn’t want you to think that I’d already signed it.”
“I’m sorry.” I’ve got two hands up. “What do you mean the way you see it? And if you didn’t intend to sign it, then why didn’t you tell me that? Vin, it’s only three words! It’s not signed. That’s it! You couldn’t have said even that?”
“Roz, you’re so quick in arguments. Making sure you understand what I’m saying is hard for me.”
“I get it, Vin. I mean, I’m starting to get what you mean by that. But this is just a few simple words! Extremely important words that could have changed everything for me if you’d just said them!” I’m equal parts irate and elated. I want to scream.
He’s nodding, his hands on the counter on either side of my hips. Resolve is forming in his expression. “You want to talk about words? Let’s talk about words. Fine was your word,” he says in a low voice. I’m eye level with those baby greens and, baby, they are killing me right now.
“What?”
“Just now. When I said the thing about how I know how to cook and you know how to change a lightbulb. I wasn’t saying So therefore I’ll be fine if I move out. Those were your words. I was saying the opposite.”
“What? Explain! I don’t get it.” I’m shivering. He’s rubbing big hands slowly up and down my arms, trying to warm me.
“I was trying to say that the reason you cook for me isn’t because I literally can’t.
Just like the reason I carry groceries and retile the kitchen floor isn’t because you can’t.
I do it because that’s what I do for you…
And…And if I really did leave, because you wanted me to…
I wouldn’t be fine. But I would feed myself, if you didn’t want to anymore.
And I would still do things for you. Everything that you’d let me. ”
Tears and more tears, but these ones are the kind that everyone wishes they could cry. Big, fat, and demure, rolling down my cheeks and over my trembling lips.
“How can you say the most romantic thing ever about moving out? Jesus, Vin! What’s wrong with us?”
“I told myself when I married you, Roz, I’d give you anything you needed. I’m like…hardwired to do that.”
The boxes are for Raff. He didn’t sign the lease. He’d do everything I’d let him do.
I can’t help it. My body takes the wheel and thanks, girl, because what a great idea. My legs go around his waist, my arms around his neck.
I’m mad. I’m confused. I’m holding him so tight I’m not even on the counter anymore. It’s got to be painful for him, this hold, but he just nuzzles into my hair, one arm under my butt and the other cinched against my back.
I feel a quake against my chest. One big compression and a throat clear. I release him, to see for myself, and sure enough, Vin’s eyes are squeezed closed. When he opens them, they overflow. I treat my thumbs to being his windshield wipers for once.
“I missed you so much,” he whispers, pressing his forehead into mine.
He sets me back on the counter and we’re hugging in all the positions a person could possibly hug.
If it were sex, it would be unrealistically pornographic, but as it’s just hugging, it’s incredibly soul-healing.
His hands slide up my arms, to my shoulders, to my neck, to my chin.
He’s holding me, his green eyes as clear as tide pools.
His gaze drops to my lips, he’s leaning in—
“Hold the phone.”
He freezes, his gaze lifting from my lips to my eyes. Holding.
“We have not gotten to the bottom of this motherfucking lease.”
He laughs, probably because I look ornery and grouchy and dizzily in love all at once. “Let’s clear it up,” he says.
I tug at his shirt for emphasis. “Well, I get that you didn’t sign it.
And that’s nice. Wonderful. A really, you know, crucial piece of information.
That I would have liked to have had when I first found it.
But why did you have it at all? If you weren’t going to sign it, then why was it in our house in the first place? ”
“Right.” Vin’s eyes are downcast. He’s daunted by all he’s about to have to explain to me. I wish I could set him up like a movie projector and let his brain just shine the story on a blank wall. Alas, we’re humans. Alas, words.
“Okay. So…” He picks me up and walks me across the apartment, dumping me with a bounce on the guest bed. He steps back and looks at me, hands on his hips. Then he turns on his heel and walks to his closet, pulls out a big blue sweatshirt, and stuffs me into it. “I can’t watch you shiver anymore.”
“Vin!” I clap my hands. “Focus!”
“Okay.” He nods again. I’m starting to think okay is his power word. “So…”
He drops to his knees in front of me. At first I think, Bold! I didn’t let him go in for a kiss and he’s going straight for gold. But no, he’s just digging under the bed for…the wrapped frame I picked up from St. Michel right before Vin’s mother’s birthday.
“Vin!”
“You never opened this.” He hands it to me.
“Why would I open it? It was for your mother.”
He shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
I’m slightly irritated. Because I was the one in charge of the whole project. “Vin, this was your Mom’s birthday gift.”
He shakes his head again. “No…My mom’s birthday gift was mailed to her house.”
Now he’s got my full attention. “What are you talking about?”
“The family portrait you had framed? The one of all of us on the beach?”
“Right…”
“St. Michel mailed that to her house. Gift-wrapped and all. It’s over her mantel right now.”
“What?” My incredulousness is so exaggerated he laughs.
And then pulls out his phone. He scrolls for a second and comes up with a photo.
It’s of his mother grinning from ear to ear with one hand on her mantel.
Above it is the framed photo that, for weeks, I’ve been thinking was in this brown paper package.
I zoom in on the framed portrait. The one I’ve been avoiding even thinking about.
There we are, Vin’s mom, Vin, Raffi, and me, all smiling with our arms around one another.
The lighting, ambient and diffused, is lovely.
The ocean is a dignified gray in the background, we’re all wearing shades of blue, as mandated by me.
The feeling I had that rainy night returns. It’s a family photo. Of a family I was about to exit.
My fingers tingle just looking at it. It’s all so surreal. I zoom out and see Vin’s mom’s smile. It hurts. She loves us so much. Her entire, intact family.
Vin’s peering over my shoulder at the phone. “I never thanked you for that.”
“For planning her gift?”
“Yes. For considering her birthday. Choosing the photo. Choosing the framing that would look best. But…you organized that photographer too. Told us all what to wear. Picked the perfect location on the beach.”
My fingers are tingling even harder now, my gut flips. “It’s the beach. Any location is the perfect location.”
He ignores my casual belittlement of myself. “You did all the work for this.”