Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Well, sunshine, bluebirds, I’m sure you can imagine.
Actually, it’s kind of cloudy from what I can tell and we don’t wake up to the sound of bluebirds chirping, we wake up to Vin’s phone ringing.
“Hi, Ma,” he says, gravel in his voice as he rolls over and half sandwiches me between him and the mattress.
I’m on my belly and his cheek is on my back.
I can feel his voice reverberate through my own rib cage.
“Oh, yeah? Right…right…Well, let me ask her…He’s not picking up?
I’m sure he’s fine. I was with him last night… Okay. I’ll call you back.”
He tosses the phone to elsewhere on the bed and I roll to my back. He tucks one arm over my hips. “What was that about?”
“Everil canceled their Fourth of July plans. I guess he’s going on some retreat out west.”
Everil is Vin’s mom’s “man friend.” He knits his own sweaters and wears secondhand Crocs.
I’d call him a real find except for that about six times a year he goes on spiritual retreats where self-proclaimed gurus feed him lentils and tap water and take big wet bites out of his retirement fund in exchange for enlightenment.
If you want my opinion, if you have to purchase it with all the money you saved from your lifetime position as a bank teller, it probably isn’t all that enlightened, whatever it is.
“So she wants us to come keep her company?” I guess.
“So she wants us to come keep her company.”
I squint at my phone and Vin reaches one gigantic arm across me and hands me my glasses. “The Fourth is tomorrow,” I say. She’ll want us to drive out today—Sunday—and spend the night there.
“I have off work.” He clears his throat.
“Traffic’s gonna be a nightmare,” I groan. And then I toss the blankets off. “We better get going.”
And so we race off to his mother’s, at a glacial pace. Just outside the Holland Tunnel eight different cars honk at Vin for the high sin of…changing lanes. He pushes his Yankees cap even higher on his head and leans over the console for another bite of the breakfast sandwich I’m holding for him.
A little question mark forms between my brows as I watch him select the longer route on Google Maps.
“Why are we going the long way?” I ask him.
He glances at me. “Less traffic. Less stress.”
This is very unlike the Vin of yore. I mean, he’s a born New Yorker.
Traffic does not bug this guy. Get there and be done with it, that’s his motto.
But…he’s choosing the path of least resistance.
I ponder this. This and broken glasses of orange juice.
This and Vin’s reaction to Lauro jumping out at us last night.
But really, I’m just pondering Vin. Vin post-accident.
“So,” I ask him after we’re out of the hairiest traffic and onto the two-lane highway that leads to his mother’s pretty little house on the side of a hill. “Less stress…Is that because…Are you…This PTSD thing, you really think we have it?”
“My therapist thinks that I do.”
“And based off that…do you think that I do, too?”
“I don’t know. I know that…you are different than you were before the accident.
And not in a bad way. But…you…used to come to me with all your problems. And not to have me solve them…
but just to lay them down somewhere…Which I loved.
That I could be that person for you…But…
you don’t do that anymore. And…I’ve wondered if the…
rift between us wasn’t…so much because of the accident itself…
but because of the things we’ve had to do since the accident…
personally…individually…to heal from something like that.
” He’s glancing at me as often as he can peel his eyes from the road. “Does that make sense?”
I consider this. “Are getting super stressed out at the drop of a hat and never knowing why you’re so fucking off-kilter signs of PTSD?”
He quirks his eyebrows and I laugh. “Oh, fine,” I say. “I probably have it, too.”
I survey him. So familiar it hurts. “You want my problems, you say? You miss hearing them?” I ask.
He nods.
“Well. You asked for it. Here I go. You could feed all of New York City every night with the food that restaurants and cafeterias toss into their dumpsters. That’s a problem I have.
I want to feed the whole world. I want to be beautiful.
And not just for me but because you’re aging like a fine fucking wine and it’s a perpetual fear that people will look at the two of us and think, Why the hell is he with that hag?
I want to look at someone and know exactly how to draw their collarbones.
I want the sort of fine motor control that Degas had.
I want to understand how I’m feeling at any given moment and not take it out on you because you’re there and you love me and you, apparently, won’t leave me.
I want to go back to the day before we got these scars and hug you and tell you that in a year everything will be okay. ”
He nods after each point, laughs after some of them, and holds my hand after the last one.
I don’t pester him while he gathers his thoughts.
“If one of us is aging like a fine wine,” he says, “it’s you.”
“Oh, please!” I crow. “Check out what these diabolically strategic bangs are covering.” I lift them and show him my forehead. “It’s like an accordion up there.”
“Everyone has an accordion up there if they do that with their eyebrows.”
“Well, someday soon it’ll be an accordion whether I’m doing that with my eyebrows or not.” I’m brushing my bangs back down with my fingers.
“Roz, you know that getting old with you was like the whole reason I signed the paperwork, right?”
“Did you just refer to our wedding as ‘signing the paperwork’?” I’m glowing, burning, twisting on the inside, but playing it cool on the outside.
“Name one other thing we did at our wedding besides sign paperwork.”
Well, he’s got me there. Eloping is desperately romantic when you’re leaving behind a jilted fiancé and racing to the other end of the country to start your new life, or something.
Eloping in real life is just showing up to the county clerk with your marriage license and waiting in line like you’re at the DMV.
Vin and I repeated after the nice lady and then signed the papers.
After that she leaned forward and told us we could kiss.
“Kiss!” I tell him. “That’s one other thing we did at our wedding.”
He assents. “It was a really good kiss.”
“You know, at the time,” I say, “a small part of me wondered if that was why you were signing the paperwork.”
“What’s the that?”
“The physical stuff. Our chemistry. It was so good and so easy…I think I worried that whenever the sex faded…”
It occurs to me that the sex did fade. More than fade. It evaporated this year. And all that was left was our problems. But…that’s not right. If all that was left was our problems, then we wouldn’t be sitting in this car together. Having this extremely productive conversation with each other.
“You know what? Never mind. Don’t even reply to that,” I tell him. “I’m not worried about that anymore. Maybe I never was. Speaking of sex, I’m really looking forward to getting back in the sack with you.”
He’s staring out the windshield, likely a little whiplashed from this conversation and who could blame him.
But a few minutes later, he’s still said nothing in reply and I begin to suspect he’s hit an internal roadblock over there.
“Vin? You all right?”
“I. Am. Thinking,” Vin says.
And if you could not laugh at that delivery, then you’re a better human than I am. “Thoughts. Are. Happening.”
He finally glances at me, treating me to a light flick. “You said you need more words from me! So this is the type of poetry you can expect.”
“Well, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking…I…want you…a lot…”
“Yes, great. Love where this is going.”
“I…am also…scared.”
I stop needling him immediately. “Wait, really? Of what? Sex?”
The car is on cruise control. He’s leaning back in the seat, one hand on the wheel, his legs spread as wide as they can and one knee jumping. “Look, Roz…when I…As much as it makes me want to fucking puke to say this…but…I’m different. Since the accident.”
Ah. I flash back to the last time we attempted anything like sex. Vin on top of me. Both of us pushing the other away, breathing hard, stinging tears, the defeat in the set of his shoulders.
“Okay,” I say, to show I’m listening.
“Dr. Colewood says…that the reaction I had…that night…in bed with you…Look, I’ve struggled with this PTSD stuff a lot. Which makes sense, you know? The accident was…terrible. But for a long time I struggled with PTSD…without…without realizing that’s what it was…”
“Okay.”
“Turns out I’ve been getting…what’s called a freeze reaction.
There’s fight-or-flight but there’s also freeze.
So…when something puts me…triggers me…like loud noises…
or yelling…or sirens…or, you know, tension with you…
or…” He looks so sad on this last one that it brings tears to my own eyes.
“Or seeing your scar…it makes me freeze up and freak out…Like what happened the last time we tried to have sex. I freaked out and panicked and couldn’t…
get control. And it…scares me…the idea of that…
getting in the way of…” His eyes flick to mine.
“Being with you. And…it makes me feel…really…small…the idea that I couldn’t take care of you in that way.
All because I’m having this stupid fucking reaction. ”