THIRTY-FOUR This New Life
W yatt had rehearsals for the fall play that evening—he’d been cast as Happy Loman in Death of a Salesman —and I was already in town to drop Jessie off after our trip to the cemetery.
My blood thrummed with energy; I felt twenty years younger and a thousand pounds lighter. I could have used that energy to get some work done at the Sea-Breeze, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
Instead, I drove to Mendoza Meat & Fish. It was almost five in the afternoon, and the carniceria closed at four. His usual practice was to be at the shop for at least an hour after closing. He opened at six in the morning, and he didn’t like to take work home with him, so he did his books after closing, when the shop was tidy and whichever of his three employees had gone home.
Roman’s truck was the only one in the small employee lot at the back of the shop. I parked beside it and went to the back door. It was locked, so I rang the service bell and waited.
About a minute and a half later, the door swung open, and Roman was there. He had his reading glasses on and his apron off. He stood there in faded jeans, a pale yellow Oxford-cloth shirt, top two buttons undone, cuffs rolled to the tops of his forearms.
Salt-and-pepper curls, dark stubble with a pinch of salt. Beautiful, warm smile.
That smile shaped his deep brown eyes as he looked at me with absolute delight.
“Hey, querida,” he said. “What’s up?”
My love for this man, still new and shiny but fully formed, burst through my body like a comet. In this moment, fresh from my graveyard epiphany, what I felt for him was unburdened by worry or fear. The realization was so powerful it made my knees shake.
I lunged at him, threw my arms around him, planted my mouth on his.
If I’d surprised him, he recovered quickly, chuckling into my mouth as he embraced me, pulled me into the shop, and kicked the door closed. He turned us and put me against the closed door, and we stood there, making out like horny teenagers, until I was almost too dizzy to stand.
“What brought this on?” he asked in a breathless murmur when we finally took a break.
His face was so close to mine I could almost actually see into his eyes. “I love you,” I answered.
“And I love you. But it feels like there’s something else.” He squinted at me, as if his focus could be any sharper. “Something feels different.”
I smiled. “Well, I guess I had what might be called an epiphany this afternoon.”
“Yeah?” He ducked in and kissed my neck. Then he started a tasting tour, kissing his way around my neck, up to my jawline, tracing that with his lips as well.
“Yeah,” I gasped, closing my eyes and tipping my head back so he could have all the room he needed. I lost interest in conversation and fell into the sparkling delight of his mouth on my skin.
“What kind of epiphany, querida?” he asked as his lips found my ear and began to suck.
“I went to my mother’s grave today,” I mumbled, not caring about epiphanies anymore. I wanted to tear our clothes off and have sex right here.
But that sentence stopped Roman’s roaming mouth. He stood tall again and looked down at me, frowning. “What?”
I hadn’t told him about this plan, because it hadn’t been a plan until today.
He knew I’d had a lunch meeting with Jessie. An actual meeting with lunch, not a wine-soaked friend’s lunch. I’d wanted to talk about some artsy ideas I had for the Sea-Mist. The flood had caused such damage that what would have been a clean-up, repair, and refresh had turned into a full renovation. Between my line of credit and the insurance payout, the money was there (as long as I was careful), but the work would take months. It had occurred to me, however, that there was some silver in that cloud: I could make the Sea-Mist truly mine. My vision as well as my property. My vibe was more artsy than kitschy, and I didn’t care about the whole Bigfoot thing. Or the cutesy carved bears that were the other main tourist aesthetic in the California forest. Since I was all but starting over, I wanted some style to the place. As much style as my budget could support.
It was that business discussion—what kind of artsy touches I was thinking about, who did Jessie know who did that kind of work, how much would it cost, and so on—that had ultimately sent us to the cemetery. The idea of making the Sea-Mist truly mine from the ground up, of claiming a life free of her influence had, in the way comfortable conversations do, shifted without intention to a discussion of my mother, and my life with her, and my life without her—and my worries about whether I could ever make the life I wanted.
And Jessie had said told me, You are never going to be able to set aside your worries and doubts until you deal with feelings about your mom. You never stood up to her, Len. You’ve been running away from her or trying to bury her in the back of your head, but until you face her down, all that stuff will be there. You have to stop and let yourself understand it.
Wise words from my very-in-touch-with-her-feelings friend.
I didn’t want to get into all that with Roman right now, so I said, “I was talking with Jessie at lunch, and I realized I needed to finally face my mother. So I went where she is.”
Still frowning, but still holding me with his gentle strength, Roman asked, “And what did that do?”
“I don’t know if seeing her grave did anything itself. But it was the place where I let myself think about things I hadn’t before.”
“Such as? Do you want to tell me, or is it too private?”
I smiled. “That’s why I’m here, silly. Well, I’m here to jump your bones, but also to tell you I’m not afraid anymore. I left my mother’s demons at her grave.” That sounded a little crazier aloud than it had in my head, so I started to clarify: “I mean I—”
“I know what you mean.” Roman cupped my cheek in his palm—and I saw a new sparkle in his eyes. Incipient tears. “I did something like it at Carla and Gabriel’s graves. Not the same, I’m sure, but in the same ballpark. Or, I guess, graveyard.”
I tilted my head at him. “What do you mean?”
“After the first night we had dinner at my house. That was when I knew that what I felt with you was deeper than anything I’d felt since I lost them. And I knew being with you gave me real ... happiness for the first time since then. It felt like breaking open a cocoon—and it also felt ... not wrong, but not right, either. I guess there was guilt, as if falling in love with you meant falling out of love with Carla. So I went to talk to her about it.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I don’t think she talked back. But sitting with them, I don’t know ... it shaped the thoughts in my head, and I understood. Loving you doesn’t mean loving Carla less. It just means that I’m still living. I left there feeling ... lighter.”
Roman had just described almost the same experience, the same epiphany, I’d had in the same place.
He brought up both hands and framed my face. Peering into my eyes, he became very still, and so serious it could only be called solemn. “I want to marry you, Leo.”
My heart stuttered and my eyes blurred, but not with fear. With love, and with joy. I wanted to marry him, too. Oh god! That was the next life I wanted, for myself and for Wyatt: here, in Bluster, my hometown, full of people who’d understood me more than I’d realized and who’d welcomed me home like a long-lost daughter and embraced Wyatt like a native son. I wanted the Sea-Mist, made over in my image. And I wanted Roman, who loved the me I wanted to be, and who instinctively loved my son like his own without trying to force him into a Gabriel-shaped box.
I wanted to marry this man.
But I also wanted to be smart, and careful. What I’d come to see while sitting at my mother’s grave was brand new, and I understood that that fragile new tendril could not sustain on its own. My ‘casting off’ of my mother’s demons was at that moment mostly symbolic. I still had work to do. On myself, on the Sea-Mist, on this new life.
So I cupped my hands over his cheeks and smiled, but I shook my head. “I want that, too, but not yet.” When his expression shook a little, I hurried on, “I am all in with you, Roman. But I need to do some work on myself before we take that step. I’m going to find a therapist and hopefully turn off the doomsday machine in my head. And I don’t want to feel completely dependent on you, so I want to make sure the Sea-Mist is going to turn a profit—or if it won’t work, I’ll need to sell it. When I know that I can stand on my own, when I have that kind of faith in myself, I want you to ask me again. Can you wait until then?”
He stared at me without answering long enough that I began to worry that I’d ruined it already. But then he smiled. “I can wait forever, querida. If that’s what you need, I will wait, and I will do whatever I can to help you reach your goals. But I have a counteroffer.”
I couldn’t hold back a smirk. “A counter? We’re negotiating? Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Say yes. You say you want what I want, so let’s make that promise to each other. But it will be only a promise until you’re ready to make it a vow.” He bent down and brushed his lips over mine, feather-light. “Say yes, querida,” he whispered. “Say yes.”