Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-One
Emil is holding two palms up for Ainsley to shadowbox against. “One. Two. One. Two,” he says in complete deadpan.
She stops boxing and puts her hands on her hips. “You gotta pump me up, I said!”
“I believe that is job for Lenny,” Emil says, and honestly, I might have agreed with him if I hadn’t also failed at the task.
We’ve got half an hour until we’re due at her school for the big dance, and we already stomped around the living room, fist-pumping and kicking couch pillows into the wall while we listened to the entirety of Jock Jams. I expected Miles to complain, but, shockingly, he had his eyes closed on the couch mouthing the words to “Whoomp! (There It Is).”
When that wasn’t enough for Ainsley, she dragged us all down to the lobby. “Don’t you know any soccer chants or something you could do?” she demands of Emil.
These nerves seem out of proportion to me for a school dance, but Reese has been gone for two and a half days already and I want to keep Ainsley’s mind off it.
“Come on, tiger,” I tell her, pulling her away from Emil. “We don’t want to be late.”
It’s funny to be heading to a dance with the birds still chirping, but this is elementary school, so the shindig starts at five.
When Ainsley sees her school down the block, she removes her hand from mine and pushes her hair back from her eyes. Her chin comes up, her shoulders go back, and she starts strutting. She takes off her purple glasses and from her pocket, materializes my cheetah-print heart-shaped sunglasses that Miles gave me.
“Where’d you get those?” I ask in shock.
“You left them on the counter a couple weeks ago,” she says. “And tonight they’re mine. ”
I can’t argue because she’s channeling rock star and it’s a good look for her. Apparently she’s going to sit with her class, so we wave goodbye in the lobby on the way in to the talent show that’s going to happen before the dance.
Miles and I take our seats in the auditorium and I have a fun time watching him try to figure out what to do with his legs in child-sized seating. The lights dim and the theater teacher comes out to introduce the talent show.
Then the real fun begins.
We watch two successive kids rock from foot to foot while self-consciously lip-syncing the same Taylor Swift song. One girl does eight cartwheels in a row (pretty neat, if you ask me). Another kid bounces a tennis ball on a racket 468 times before the theater teacher comes back out and basically shepherd-hooks him off stage. That’s when I notice that one of Miles’s knees is doing a darn fine impression of a jackrabbit. And is he…is he biting his fingernails?
“Hey.” I poke him in the side and lean in to whisper, “What’s wrong?”
He immediately stills his knee and takes his fingernail out of his mouth. “Nothing.”
Apparently he’s riveted by the girl who’s guessing which card the principal is holding. I shrug and scan the audience for Ainsley, but I don’t spot her. Then that fingernail goes back into that mouth and his knee is really making a break for it.
“Are you really that nervous about the father/daughter dance?” I lean in and ask him.
He doesn’t even glance at me. His elbows hit his knees and he slowly rubs his palms together. I’m reminded of NBA players right before they play in the championship game.
“Miles.”
He ignores me.
“ Miles. ” I tug his shirt until he’s forced to look at me. “No one is even going to pay attention to you! You just have to sway back and forth while she stands on your sneakers. No big.”
His expression instantly becomes so Can it, Lenny that I recoil and hold up two hands.
A few more acts pass and then Miles stands all at once. “Excuse me,” he whispers to the person next to him.
I grab his arm. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back.”
I watch him go, wondering if I should chase after him. If he has to go publicly vomit over an eventual slow dance with his niece, then he hates dancing more than I even imagined. Maybe he grew up in some sort of Footloose situation where dancing was punishable by eternal burning in hell.
But then the theater teacher is back out and really jazz-handing that mic. “And now!” they say. “It’s time for a new tradition here at Attain Academy. It’s the family portion of the talent show. Where some of our ambitious students have worked with a family member to put together an act.”
All the hairs on my arms rise up in unison.
“Please put your hands together for our inaugural family act, Ainsley Hollis and her uncle Miles!”
I always thought Knock me over with a feather was just a saying, but right now a light wind would literally face-plantme.
I’ve got two hands over everything but my eyes as the lights on the stage come up and Ainsley and Miles are dramatically lit. They’ve got their backs to us and they are both wearing matching black pants and ruffled gray shirts. Which doesn’t make sense to me until music starts playing.
“Oh, my God.”
The opening strain of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” is blaring from the auditorium’s speakers and Miles and Ainsley are wearing versions of what she wore in the music video.
“Oh, my God. ” I can’t say anything else. I’m frozen in a rictus of ecstasy, burning every last second of this into my brain.
They turn in unison and hit the choreo hard. Hands are tick-tocking like a clock. There are hips. There are shoulder bounces. There are—and I can’t stress this enough—body rolls.
Ainsley is an utter rock star. Maybe she inherited some stage swag from her pop-pop or maybe it’s all her, but she is rocking it. Clearly singing her heart out even though we can’t hear her over the track.
Miles, on the other hand, God bless him, has not lost himself to the moment. He’s concentrating with all his heart. His careful, technically correct movements speak to exactly how much practice he’s put into this.
I’ve had this song stuck in my head a thousand times recently. I realize now it’s because they’ve had this song stuck in their heads.
He must have practiced every day. For Ains.
“What am I seeing?” someone asks beside me as she plunks into Miles’s vacated seat.
I do a double take. “Reese!”
“I came home early,” she says dimly, one finger vaguely pointed in the direction of the stage. “Did you…”
“I did not.”
They’re really bringing it home now. Ainsley is half his size, her blond hair gelled into a Robyn coif, and her outfit really does suit her. Miles’s outfit makes him look like he’s doing a pretty bad Interview with a Vampire cosplay.
My feelings for him double-triple-quadruple and it is honestly painful to confine it all to my chest. I would very much like to lay him out like a linebacker. To kiss him into oblivion. Propose marriage, et cetera.
I finally register the fact that the audience is really responding to this performance. People are hooting and shouting, clapping along. A small contingent near the front are standing and dancing.
“This is not a very appropriate song for an elementary school,” the lady next to me mutters to her companion.
Finally, the song ends, the stage lights go black, and Ainsley and Miles get a very pleased round of applause.
“How the hell did she get him to do that?” Reese asks, looking fully shell-shocked.
It must be willful that she doesn’t already know this about him. “Reese, he wanted to.”
She blinks at me, processing this.
“If you push him,” I explain patiently, holding my hands out as an example. “Then he pushes back. But if you take him by the hand, he follows you anywhere.” She’s still blinking at me. “He’d do anything for you and Ains.”
Reese sits back and chews on this. The talent show continues on and Miles doesn’t return. The second it’s over, Reese and I bolt to the lobby.
All the talent show participants stream out of a set of double doors, the kids racing into the arms of their grown-ups and the few adult participants looking equal parts chagrined and proud. Regrettably, Miles and Ainsley have changed back into their street clothes. What a shame. I’d give a pinky toe for a photo of Miles in that shirt.
Ainsley, thinking her mom was coming home tomorrow, sees Reese and all-out sprints across the hall, launching into her arms. And yeah, that’s just what the doctor ordered.
I ready myself to jump into Miles’s arms. To tell him, in no uncertain terms, exactly how I feel about him. To ascend with him.
I am exploding with euphoria and…I watch as he registers Reese in surprise. He slides his hands into his pockets and eyes her for her reaction to the big show.
Oh. Right.
This moment is absolutely not about me and my feelings at all.
I step back into the crowd as Miles crosses the hall to Reese’s side. She says something to him and he laughs self-consciously, raising a hand to the back of his head and clearly groaning.
He straightens and cranes around, scanning the crowd. He catches my eye and I give him a strong-power thumbs-up. One step toward me but then Ainsley, from her perch in Reese’s arms, reaches out to Miles and he’s suddenly got a koala bear for a niece. I get a perfect frame of Miles smiling with his whole heart, his eyes closed as he hugs her, saying something to her and then setting her down on the ground.
Reese is grinning now too. The three of them. Happy and family and finally, at least for a moment, on the same page.
I sneak out onto the street and then Miles’s call starts buzzing in my pocket.
“Where’d you go?” he asks.
“Take them out to dinner!” I shout gleefully into the phone. “Seriously…Reese…stick a fork in her, she’s done.”
“Come with us!” he insists.
“Miles, you can do this. It’s what you do best. You think you need me there, but you really don’t. You made this moment with Ainsley all on your own. Feed them, listen to them, laugh when they make jokes, carry Ainsley home when she gets too tired to walk.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Are you heading home?”
“Call me later,” I say by way of answer, because I’m not sure if I’m headed home or not. “When you’re done with your family.”
He’s quiet again but this time I think I sense a pulse of joy coming off him. His family. “Okay. I will.”
—
The talent show ended early, so it’s only six p.m. I decide to take myself on a date. There’s a Thai food place in the East Village I used to love, so I take a chance and head there.
I’m on the train, sandwiched between strangers, hands over my face and awash in unadulterated joy. As long as I live, I’ll never forget the look on his face as he diligently executed a body roll on stage. In a ruffled shirt.
This man doesn’t even two-step and yet…
He did that for Ainsley. To show up for her. To be her uncle.
I think of him yanking me out of that dance party this summer. How nervous he was, how uncomfortable he was to be asking for my help, to offer his. And then he demanded I wake him up in the night if I needed him. He schlepped himself to Cody’s wedding and endured the awkwardness. He forced himself to learn an entire choreo just to make his niece feel supported. Does this man ever take the easy way out? No. Not ever.
The only way out is through.
Miles survived his own hell and learned that lesson. It’s the hard way or bust for him. There’s no discomfort he won’t push through to just keep on living and living well.
I glance up to check which stop the train is pulling into, and I get an idea. I’m one stop ahead of the Thai restaurant, but I dash off the train anyhow, coming aboveground among cocktail bars with outdoor seating and gargantuan heaters.
I run a block and skid to a stop in front of the giant window with stick-figure people painted in a big pile on the glass.
I laugh because it’s still here, because it hasn’t changed at all, because it’s open at six-thirty p.m.
The only other time I’ve ever been here, I was twenty. Lou and I chose this spot out of all the other hair salons in the city solely because of its name. I step forward and trace the lettering with my finger, the pile of stick figure people tumbling out into cursive. Spaghetti Head, it reads. Perfectly ridiculous. Perfectly wonderful.
I duck into the small shop. There’s no one there at first, but a woman sticks her head out of the back at the sound of the bell.
“Sorry, but I was just about to—” She steps out fully from the back and puts her hands on her hips. “Hey. I’ve cut your hair before, haven’t I?”
Her shop hasn’t changed, but she sure has. The last time I saw her she had straight blue mermaid hair. Today she’s got a curly brown shag and enormous hoop earrings.
“Good memory,” I say. “A long time ago. My friend and I came in to shave our heads together.”
Her eyes narrow in thought, and then widen in recognition. “That’s right. She had gorgeous hair. Red.”
“Yes,” I say with a nod. “She did.”
“Cancer, right?”
I nod again. “We came in when she started losing her hair from chemo.”
She walks toward me thoughtfully and purposefully. She gently picks up a hank of my hair and studies the ends. “You haven’t cut your hair in…”
I clear my throat. “About five years. When her cancer came back, she shaved her head again. But she asked me to keep mine. To let it grow.”
Her eyes track up to mine. “And now you’re here to cut it off.”
“I can’t just let it keep growing forever,” I say quietly.
She gives me a laborious sigh, meant to make me laugh, and bustles me toward one of the chairs. “I hope you tip well, I’m skipping dinner for you.”
“You got it.”
The bell dings, and a man ducks into the shop.
“No,” the hairdresser says simply. “I’m busy.”
He cowers back out to the street.
If I wanted a gentle touch for this, I’ve come to the wrong place. But who wants gentle? Hard way or bust, Lenny. The only way out is through.
She puts the poncho thingy on me and magically any modicum of attractiveness I’ve ever possessed is immediately gone. I suddenly look like a rodent that’s just gotten over the flu.
She’s studying my hair again. “Your ends are egregious but actually the rest is very healthy. How short are we going?”
I shrug. “I don’t care.”
She sucks her teeth at me. “ I don’t care is how I end up with lousy Google reviews.”
“No, seriously, I’d love a bad haircut. Any haircut. I need to take the plunge.”
She considers this with an unimpressed look. “I don’t give bad haircuts. But if you’re not worried about going too short, then do you want to donate it?”
“My hair?” I haven’t considered this before.
“You’ve got more than enough for a donation to Locks of Love. They use the donations to make wigs for kids with cancer. I can cut it off as a ponytail and send it in.”
My stomach jumps. “Yes! Let’s do that.”
“Okay. Then, how about chin length? Just long enough to pull it back into a stubby ponytail if you want? That length will suit your bone structure and it’ll look cute under a winter hat.”
“Perfect.”
She ties my hair up and pulls out a pair of shears. I lean forward all of a sudden, out of her reach, and grab my ponytail, running my hands over it. Feeling the weight of it, the smooth parts in the middle, the familiar roughness of the ends. It’s just hair. But it was with me through everything. The chemo, the hospital, the hospice, the funeral, those lost and wandering months before Miles found me.
I pat the hair at the top of my head, all my new hair. The pat turns into a pet and I’m telling myself Good job, Lenny. You’re doing so well.
I sit back up, tears in my eyes, and nod at the hairdresser through the mirror.
“Are you sure you wanna do this, love?”
“Absolutely not!” I chirp resolutely. “I’ll probably be a total wreck. Let’s do it.”
She holds up the shears and gives them a snip-snip in the air. “Yeah?”
I point one finger to the sky. “Onward.”
—
He calls me later because of course he does.
Instead of saying hello, he says, “Current location.”
The wind almost carries his voice away, out to sea. I tighten my hood under my chin. “Staten Island Ferry.”
“Really?” There was something light in his tone but it immediately tightens down. “I’ll be right there.”
“Miles.”
“Yeah?”
“Everything is okay! I’m okay!”
“What? I can’t hear over the wind! I’m on my way!”
Forty minutes later, the ferry I’m riding lands in Manhattan and a sweaty, panting Miles collapses against the railing beside me. The gorgeous, glittering, underworld version of Manhattan sparkles up from the black water. Wind takes the hood off Miles’s head.
“Hi.”
“Hey…” He squints at me. “You look okay.”
“I told you I was okay!”
“Yeah…but you actually look okay.”
I laugh and shake my head at this conversation. “I really am. Hey.”
“Yeah?”
He’s leaning elbows on the railing the same way that I am, so when the ferry kicks forward, away from the dock, I use the momentum to lift one of his arms and slide into his negative space. We’re nested together, both looking out toward the water now. “You learned an entire choreo for Ainsley.”
He hums a low, vaguely proud, vaguely humiliated noise. “Yeah.”
“And Reese saw it.”
“Yeah.”
“Miles, this is huge!”
“Yeah.”
I tip my head to the side to see him. “Hey. Be excited.”
“Okay.”
I shake my head at him and we both laugh. His hands slide over each other on the railing, enclosing me, and I’m in the safest place on earth. His stubbly chin grazes my cheek. “I am excited,” he says low as we watch Ellis Island slide past. He gives me a squeeze. “When we got back to the apartment Reese asked me to take the trash out.”
My eyebrows fly upward. “She asked you for help?”
“Yup.” He gives one happy nod.
“Wow.”
“Wow,” he agrees.
A tanker, dinosaurian and dimly lit, cuts a path toward the ocean and we watch it in silence.
“Hey, Lenny?”
“Hm?”
“Why are you on the Staten Island Ferry if you’re okay?”
I consider this. How much of my personality is grief and how much is me?
I am who I am because of Lou, but am I also who I am because Lou died?
Is it possible that I’m here both because I’m grieving and experiencing a near-perfect happiness?
“You know, I never mentioned this, but when it was time to move Lou to hospice, we picked a facility out on Staten Island.”
“Oh,” he says, surprised.
“I stayed there with her as much as I could, but sometimes I’d go home and shower and sleep and what not. So…now whenever I’m on the ferry, I guess part of me feels like I’m headed toward her.”
His arms tighten even more. “I didn’t know that.”
“Hey…you wanna see something cool?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
I turn in the circle of his arms and pull my hood back. The wind kicks up and tosses my chin-length hairdo into the sky as far as it’ll go. I’m laughing, messy, framed by monumental change.
Miles grips the railing and leans back to see me better. He is in shock.
“Len!” he gasps. And then he unhands the railing to press me into it, put two hands on my face, and just look. “ Lenny. ”
My name is the only thing he can call this moment.
“I donated it,” I say, happily sobbing because life is so fucking hard and sometimes, every once in a while, you get a win.
His eyes are as glossy and dark as the water underneath the ferry. I’m reflected back to myself as Miles sees me, wonderfully human, trying my absolute hardest, dubious haircut and an honest attempt at living.
“ You look so cute, ” he says, and his face scrunches down in the kind of pain that feels good. He drops his forehead to my shoulder for a long moment. When he surfaces, his lips land on my cheeks, my nose, my forehead and chin. “I always thought I’d kiss you and your long hair would be everywhere,” he says, and my heart soars. “I guess I waited too long.”
“Not too long,” I say. “The right amount.”
“I guess this means I’ll have to stick around for a really long time to live out that fantasy, huh? How many years until you can grow it out again?”
“Only five years,” I scowl, and he throws his head back and laughs, not because this is funny, but because he’s overflowing with the kind of elation that comes with someone you love doing something so, so right.
“Well, there’s no way only five years will be enough time for us,” he decides.
I’ve got him by the strings of his hoodie. I tug him gently toward me. “Not a chance.”
He lands in a hug against me. His hands find their way to my hair and don’t stop touching the ends. It’s a blunt cut. It’s never been more clear where I end and the world begins. For the first time in a very long time I don’t feel in danger of fading away.
“Miles,” I say, and he pulls up from our hug, bent so that our noses are just an inch apart. “I’m here to stay.”
His eyes warm; I feel a current from his heart and it vibrates all the way out to where his fingertips meet my jawbone. “I’ve always known that,” he says.
I go tiptoes and he leans down. Our lips meet and it’s that lightning storm all over again. I can feel this kiss down to my toes in white-hot streaks that form the general shape of my nervous system. His mouth is smooth and stubble-rough, and the nonsense of a kiss—why do people put their lips together when they’re in love?—has never made more sense. Because him. Because this moment. Because Miles would turn his life inside out just to make me okay. And if he gets to be the man who kisses me, well, what wouldn’t he do? And I’ll never have to know the answer to that.
He bands an arm around my back and the boat lurches and we tip our heads with the inertia. I gasp his warmth. Welcome him into my softest places. Our tongues touch and oh my God he’s shy, but not for long. His fingers have found their way clear down to my scalp as he holds me in place, because he knows me, and he knows that he has to pin me down to accept what’s good for me.
I’ve got arms around his neck, only big toes on the ground as I strain upward; he’s bracing us against the railing, tasting me, pulling back to show me his eyes and then leaning forward for further tasting.
The boat rises, slams down on a wave, and we get dappled with bright-dark water. It feels like rice tossed at a wedding. It feels like the world’s blessing. He holds me even tighter. Our tongues slide and I wish I had the strength to pull back from him, just long enough to tell him exactly how I feel.
The boat rises again and this time, when it lands on a wave, we get a proper dousing. It’s a wet slap of water across our faces and jackets.
We don’t stop kissing but we do start laughing. He softens the kiss and it becomes an offering; he walks backward, taking me with him by the mouth, and the third smack of water lands in the spot we’ve just vacated.
“Hell of a night!” a man shouts beside us.
We roll our faces cheek to cheek, thereby ending our first kiss, and bringing this man into view. He’s wearing a wool bowler and a clear poncho.
We say nothing and he doesn’t seem to realize he’s interrupted one of the most important moments of my life.
“Didn’t expect the storm!” He gestures out, distantly, beyond, to a nest of glowing clouds, lit by lightning.
I take Miles by the hoodie strings again, bringing his attention back to me and only me. “Every time I fall in love with you there’s lightning.”
He closes his eyes, opens them and there’s his brilliant love. “There’s only you, Lenny. Every time…it’s just you,” he says, muffled as he kisses me. “And you.” He kisses me again. “And you.”
I cry, of course. I laugh, of course. I hold him desperately close, of course.
We take the ferry all the way there. And then all the way back.