Читать книгу Alone: A Love Story - Michelle Parise - Страница 28

“I can see where this is going. I can see we’re going to fall in love,” says The Man with the White Shirt. “You think we’re going to fall in love?” I ask, and he says, “Of course! Look at us. Look at how we feel already!” This conversation is his attempt to explain why we should stop seeing each other. Again. He says he will never be in a committed relationship. He doesn’t believe in labels.

It reminds me of a conversation with The Husband, a month before The Bomb. It was day one of what I like to call The Blitzkrieg, five mini-bombs, dropped on me one at a time, starting on Christmas Day 2011, and ending the night before we got on a plane to go on a trip to Jamaica. The Blitz lasts five days before the big finale, atomic in scale and efficiency, drops on me and changes everything, irrevocably, for the rest of our lives.

With all the surprise of a lightning war, I am hit on that Christmas Day as we’re driving to his parents’ house. As soon as Birdie falls asleep in the back seat, The Husband says, “So, I’m not really sure I believe in this whole modern marriage thing.”

Modern. Marriage. Thing.

We have an abstract conversation, about marriage and the whole modernity of it. We talk about men and women and gender roles. He says men have no idea how to be men anymore, since they’ve grown up with no role models. I mention that our female role models were just as bad, but my heart is beating so loudly maybe he can’t hear me. He just goes on and on and on. Eventually, I say, “Is there anything specific you want to talk about?” And he says, “Sometimes I’m not sure I want to be married anymore.”

Just like that.

He stares out at the endless grey highway, hands fixed hard on the steering wheel and says, so quietly, “Who am I? I don’t know who I am.” At this, I give the most impassioned impromptu speech of my life. “Who are you? You’re you. You are the you you were before and the you you’re going to be. You’re thirty-eight. You’re funny and weird. You’re really tall but you always bump your head as if you have no idea how tall you are. You always want to help strangers, and you do. You laugh at the stupidest movies and that sound is my favourite thing in the world. That’s who you are.”

I say a bunch of other things, too, things I love about him or admire, things that make him who he is. And I realize I’ve just managed to give a two-minute description of him without saying anything negative. This gives me hope.

He’s so quiet. He puts his hand on my hand and squeezes it. I stare at the side of the road as it whizzes by. I close my eyes and brace myself for whatever comes next. I believed my speech, but all I keep hearing is “modern marriage thing.” He’s not sure he believes in it. Marriage. The thing we are in.

A few years later, when I fall hard for The Man with the White Shirt, here it is again. A thing he doesn’t believe in, even though he’s in it. Here he is, White Shirt, back in my bed one morning, staring at me the way he does as if I am the dreamiest thing. And that’s when I say to him, “Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you fall in love with me anyway?”

“Yes, I have,” he says, “and I think it will destroy me.”

I throw my arms up in the air, I roll my eyes, I do all the motions of exasperation because come on. I say, “But love should be the opposite of destroying!” because it should, it really should. What is the matter with everyone?

He has no response, and we just look at each other across my white sheets. His eyes are the best eyes I’ve ever looked into. They’re like the master switch for me, turning all the lights on at once. I run my hand slowly down his face, ending at his chin, where I scratch lightly at his beard. We lie there, limbs inter-locked, still looking into each other’s eyes, endlessly searching for what, I don’t know. And I want to just shake him and everyone, all of you, for being afraid to love because it might hurt.