Torn Apart(Charles E.J. Moulton) Torn Apart
I felt like fleeing, running away, not facing him, discarding him, forgetting the reasons for his words, the background noise that entailed the key to the riddle.
Everything my soul ached to persevere told me his spiteful comments actually aimed to penetrate my pride. Of course, my penetrated pride arose only half-way from him and half-way from me. In my mind, he shoved his hand into my chest and ripped my heart out with his words. Symbolically speaking, his words flew at me across the table. They struck me like a thunderstorm, my knees shook from way beneath my skirt.
I looked away onto the street, looked at the cars whizzing by, the couples sweetly cooing and cuddling next to us, the summer breeze stroking their hair, the soft music kissing their souls. I tried to maintain a little of my pride, just in spite of the fact that I felt like screaming. Other couples wining, dining, eating, laughing, drinking.
When I looked back at Peter, his face subtly lit by the oncoming dusk, his eyelids wavered up and down just like they always did when I knew his fear overwhelmed him. First the hatred, then the fear, then the remorse.
Peter pleaded, pleaded, cocking his head and giving me his cocker spaniel-look.
I asked for the waiter’s attention, ignoring Peter’s words.
One hand, one finger, actually, raised in the waiter’s direction made the waiter gaze over. The blonde twenty-something guy walked up to me, inspecting my gaze.
“Could I pay, please?”
“Only your bill, miss?”
I nodded, trying to remain calm.
“The man will pay for himself,” I spat sarcastically, looking down and not daring to look into his eyes.
The waiter looked at my agonized face, a trifle dumbfounded for a moment, gazed over at Peter and then back at me. He nodded, hesitantly, and tried to give me a smile. The waiter gave me a slow nod and left.
This guy, had I not met him somewhere? Maybe he just resembled my gay brother.
“The man?” Peter said, his voice trembling. “Is that all I am to you now? The man?”
“All I am to you is just a statistic.”
The scenery, this place, our romantic encounters here through the years rushed back into my heart, my fear rushed through my stomach and hit my head, the wine hit my lips and I found myself searching for words.
I looked down, trying to collect my thoughts. Peter’s reactions proved to me his entire focus devoted itself to his own feelings. I tried to hold back my tears, in spite of all that damn French wine. The hard part still waited for me, trying to keep cool in spite of the fact that I knew Peter sometimes went crazy when I threatened to leave him.
His hands began fidgeting with the napkin when he realized that I kept my mouth shut. He made little boats with them, little ships that sailed away on their own sad sea. Our shipwreck. He then finally put the napkin away, shook his head and swallowed a few times, quite loudly, a real froggy-like gulp, before he spoke.
“I don’t have to explain this, do I? Not after that scene with that washcloth yesterday? What was the problem, dear? That I took the blue one instead of the green one?”
I looked him straight in the eye, winced.
“They have different functions,” I said calmly.
“Love,” Peter said. “We have to stop playing that game. It is a socioligical sickness. Men playing the stupid brutes and women playing the hurt victims. We can relate to ourselves as people. We don’t need to be stereotypes.”
“I relate to you as someone I love,” I said. “Not as a cliché.”
“Then let us stop this,” he said. “I will stop taking everything seriously and you will stop constantly complaining.”
“Look, Peter,” I groaned. “You asked me out, you reserved this damn table. I am pregnant. Who am I kidding, God in heaven, who the hell am I kidding?” I screamed. “I am a just some damn statistic. How many girls did you hump to get to where you are?”
“It’s useless,” he said, shaking his head and leaning back, looking the other way.
Even that gay waiter in the corner turned around. I wanted to sink into the floor and forget that I existed. My face throbbed.
“What is that supposed to prove, Peter?” I whispered, quietly, trying not to speak louder than the audial width of this table. Peter leaned forward and, honestly, I thought he really turned sincere for a moment. He hoped for my love. I wanted it and yet I didn’t.
“You think I am saying that it all seems to prove that women use their men and that emancipation is a bunch of crap. But that is not what I mean. I am talking about something very different.”
“What? What? For Pete’s sake, what?”
“Respect! We agree on the importance of equality, emancipation, mutual fulfillment, the works. The only thing lacking, on your part, is respect.”
“You cheated on me, damn it! You talk about respect!”
“Where else am I supposed to get tenderness, girl? If I ask you on my hands and knees for tenderness and all you do is tell me that I didn’t clean up my mess. Is cleaning up more important than me? You want a washcloth, not a man.”
I hollared, my entire inside turning inside out. I felt like throwing up, my heart looking at this man I thought I knew. I thought I knew. Why had I married this strange man? Why? My heart started accelerating in speed. I wanted to cry, turn the tables over, spit and curse.
Peter leaned forward, gritting his teeth, speaking through his closed ivories.
“You are making a scene. Be quiet!”
I wanted to say the D word, but I dared not.
After all, I had known this guy since grade school.
Very softly at first, he spoke like a little boy afraid to tell his angry teacher the truth. He had been caught with the hand in the cookie jar and, according to him, his wife was the Commander General whipping up a storm because of it.
He whispered, his voice trembling again, fearing his own words. “Are women the weaker sex? No. Of course not. Women are stronger than men. They always have been.”
“What are you driving at, Peter?”
“That because, in the past and in other cultures, women have been pushed down. We need to fight that. But we fight it the wrong way. So, in the western world, we go to the other extreme and turn many relationships into a complete female dominated scenery, where the male never tells his wife the truth. Why? He knows he can’t. She will undoubtedly just explode. If she would cool down, he would. Calm honesty helps.”
“So, I am a bitch?”
“No, you are the love of my life. Just cool down. I am on your side with all the emancipation here. But half of all domestic abuse is commited by women. That is a truth that no one speaks of, because, heck, males are stronger. So they say. Women in the western world are so angry at men because of what past generations have done. But that ain’t my fault. Why blame me? I’m okay. We men need female strength. It is vital for our survival. But we don’t need female abuse.”
“Does that mean that women abuse their men mentally?”
“It means that, in spite of the fact that I love you, you should try to control yourself! Cool down.”
“Then why did you invite me here in the first place?” I spat, my heart beating like crazy now, I felt like punching him in the face.
“Because I thought we could have a civilized conversation in this place. I guess I was wrong.”
I leaned across the table, giving him a glimpse of my cleavage. I knew that he loved my cleavage and now I used it in order to give him a ride he would never forget.
“Take a good look at them, Petie,” I spat. “Because it is the last darned time you a getting any of this.”
He shook his head. “Come on, Barbie ...”
“Don’t you Barbie-me,” I screamed. This time, several heads turned in our direction and this time I didn’t care at all. In fact, I wanted everyone to hear this. “I’ll tell you what can’t go on like this,” I bellowed, feeling the eyes of all of the other guests upon me.
Now, he shivered. He shook. I felt afraid, too, but I also felt strong, strangely so, as if I to cross a mountain in order to do this. A mountain I could cross, but one I feared crossing. I knew nothing what was on the other side.
“What?”
The corners of his feeble smile shivered.
“You,” I kicked him with my voice. “You jumped into bed with that crumpet and I still stayed with you. That is over, Bubba. Over and out. End of message.”
He started shaking his head frantically, almost to the point of looking like one of three stooges.
“You painted me into a corner, Barbara,” he spat. “I fled.”
I laughed in his face. That really dropped the bomb on me thoroughly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I sing-songed. “Poor little squirrel, dominated by the dragon-lady.”
“Susan was the only one who gave me any sort of sweet understanding. That’s what I meant. You are so angry at men for what happened generations ago, that, by Jove, you take it out on me.”
“What is this? Huh, Peter? What is really going on here? Testosterone? Oestrogen? Adrenaline? Male self respect? What? Tell me, Bozo, ‘cause I am dying to know.”
“Okay, I‘ll tell you,” he spat. His hands shook more than ever now and the courage that it took for him to say this would electrify the entire city. That obvious fact almost made me laugh. “Damn it, every woman seems to be acting this way these days. You never used to be this way. You spend too much time with all these divorced women. 2 million men were assaulted by their wives last year.”
“Come on, man. I am not every woman, damn it, Peter. I am your wife.”
“And I love you. But you get so angry sometimes, I just want to split my whistle. One woman even killed her husband accidentally, because of rage. She was waving a knife about and shoved it into his belly.”
“You have got to be kidding me. You can’t possibly compare that to our relationship!”
“You told me that if you had a gun ...”
“Are you any better, Peter? Speaking to me of some damn cliché.”
“I try to keep cool.”
“Cool? Cool?!” I screamed. “I’ll give you cool!”
I catapulted out of my seat, picked up my glass of 2011 Chateau St. Michelle and threw it in his face.
“I’ll give you a statistic, creep,” I mused. “According to new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 full-time employed women earned just 80.9% of the salaries their male counterparts did, down more than a full percentage point from 2011 when the number hovered over 82%. Google that and stick it where the ssun don’t shine.”
I dug nervously in my leopard skin purse, my hands shaking like crazy, feeling like a lunatic. I found my wallet, took out two twenty dollar bills, crumpled them and threw them into his half-eaten steak.
“See you in court.”
My right hand now shaking to the point of insanity, my tears streaming down my face, I pointed at him, feeling like some damn hot potatoe stuck itself in my right cheek and refused to let me speak.
I deliberately swung my ass really seductively as I walked out, giving him the chance to sit there with my white wine dripping all over his suit and tie. He still sat there like an unhappy dog, motionless, as I quickly told the maitre-d’ that my former husband was paying for the useless steak.
As I walked out from the gates of the outdoor seating in front of this chique restaurant, tables and tables aligned with lovers, I saw, no, felt in my deepest soul, how everyone looked at me. Men, many of these brutes, anyway, felt with Peter, sure. The women, at least some of them, felt that I was in the right. At least, I thought so.
Every action froze to a halt. My knees shook to the point of lunacy. I felt like turning back and trying to talk this out. Help me, but in some weird way I loved him. His eyes were on my neck, wanting to go after me. I really knew he didn’t want to make a scene. Choleric outbursts, of course, being the reason.
That line from Star Wars came to mind.
Fear will keep the systems in line.
But, holy crap, I wasn’t Governor Tarkin, was I?
I wasn’t even Darth. Not even Yoda.
I had my reasons.
Infidelity.
Go after me, Peter, I felt myself thinking. Fight for our marriage. Please. I haven’t fought so long for you to have it end like this.
That other part of me hated him and his stupid words of disrespect. Had I disrespected him? Bossed him around?
High heels clicking away from that horrid creep, I stepped onto the pavement, wondering if I should turn back. Obviously, I didn’t. My feet feeling like overcooked spaghetti and my feet like chicken sandwiches, I strode onwards away from the L’auberge Francaise, feeling like a very scared cat, pretending to be strong. Strong? I had no idea what I was or who I was now with Peter throwing his statistics at me. Every woman? Me? I had always prided myself in being special. Never every woman. Now, my husband was calling me a cliché.
As I walked away from what used to be our favorite restaurant, my head made leaps and turns, my brain aching, my head spinning, I think, in reality, everything turned topsy-turvy inside me. I heard my brown high-heeled shoes clicking on the pavement, I felt my hair swinging to and fro on my back, I knew that the men were turning around to take a closer inspection at my buttocks and maybe get a glimpse of my swinging breasts and that in spite of their girlfriends.
Gosh, why couldn’t they just look away?
I felt hurt. I cried, moaned, producing loud sobs. Yes, yes, yes, I knew I was choleric. My outbursts were legendary. Peter was a poor sod. But he always came with these bloody accusations about domestic abuse carried out by women, that emancipation had good awry, that females pushed down males in western society more than males did females. Hogwash.
I left the restaurant behind me and headed for ... where ever, whatever the case may be. Not our penthouse, anyway.
I stopped at a traffic light, in my heart hoping that Peter would come rushing behind me, drying his stupid face off, still munching on his last ounce of beef and the waiters screaming at him from behind.
While the DON’T WALK sign still blinked, I took a glance behind me, hoping to see him rush up and say that he was wrong. Of course he didn’t. Guys were glancing at my butt, sure. Peter? He probably sat by his table, crying, glancing at his half-eaten steak.
I turned back toward the stop-lights.
“Damn it,” I whispered to myself. “Horseshit.”
My feeble, shallow breath caused me to tremble worse than ever.
My feet felt like they wanted to go back and discuss this with him. Maybe I had overreacted. What if he had been right? What if I really overdid it?
Go back?
I turned around, facing the other way. What kind of impression would that make? Go back? Solve this? Talk to him? I couldn’t ...
No. No. No. And no again. I had some pride left.
The WALK sign now blinked and I hesitantly walked onto the street, along with some dog-walkers and teenagers and old farts holding canes. My hands, I don’t know why, automatically grabbed into mypurse again and took out the cellular phone. I flipped the pages and looked for Peter’s number. Without thinking about it, I dialed.
God, what was I doing? Little woman, feeling scared, calling her hubbie. Soon, that gorgeous looker would be beaten and calling the abused women’s association. Darn it, before I could react I heard the tone beeping on the other end. His phone was ringing. Oh, no. Then, I would have to say something. I arrived at the other side of the street, a few teenagers giving me the double whammie. I felt scared and very abused. I didn’t want to be a sex-object right now. No answer. No ... answer.
I felt like screaming at them to get the hell away.
But I didn’t.
Oh, shit. I ... Now, the tables were turned. I was calling him. He was ignoring me. This was bad. I was turning into the bad girl. Or ... was he ... oh, no. I couldn’t ... wouldn’t be responsible. Live without him. Horror. Damn it. He loved me. I loved him. Damn it.
He wasn’t answering the phone.
Oh, heck, he played that game with me again.
Or was he?
Nothing was clear anymore.
I sighed, hanging up the phone, pressing it to my Revlon lips, closing my eyes. I trembled. Trembled. Tears by now streaming down my face, I felt like a leaf being thrown back and forth in the wind, my insides shoved up toward my throat.
I opened my eyes again and saw that damn lipstick on my phone, as if that meant anything at all. Traces of all that beauty I displayed stuck on an Asian scrap-crap of technology. I looked at the red mark I had left, as if all of the answers lay imbedded in that little leftover of all my female cosmetic bliss. Wondering what had just happened, I stood there for a bit on the sidewalk, thinking. The world seemed to pass in record speed past my vision. Cars, loud cars passing by and yet: all that noise didn’t seem to matter.
Elegant houses that remained empty. Crowded streets remained abandoned. Noisy streets, lonely alleyways. Hate him? Sure, I hated him. Love him? Sure. Love him. But divorce him? And yet, it all seemed so remote, so strange, so foreign. Need him. Sure. Need him. Badly. Very badly. Oh, God. Where was the answer?
My hand with the phone sunk down toward my skirt. I could feel my hand trembling. Numb. Really numb inside, it felt as if I really had no choice but simply stand there and wait for my spirit to make a decision. No single thought appeared in my brain that was clear. Not even a clear sense of hatred. Why was he saying this? Why call me a stereotype? Me, bossy, choleric, disrespectful? I ached, too. I ached and hurt inside. Infidelity kills.
I exploded often. Sure. But I had reasons.
People didn’t seem to notice me anymore. I simply stood there, about five minutes away from my home, watching the world go by and crying, calmly, silently, to myself, watching that damn lipstick glued to my phone. Me, silly and angry me, wondering what to do, where to go, what decision to make.
I was right.
I was wrong.
I was weak.
I was strong.
A lover, a monument, a mouse, a bitch, a saint.
So, in spite of making a decision, any decision, I made none.
I took a walk down the street. Aimlessly, I passed by cafés on the streetcorners, fast food-joints, shoeshiners, theatres, supermarkets, all the time wondering if my husband still sat there with that wounded look on his face. I circled the block five times and wondered if he really meant what he had said.
God, I couldn’t live without him.
In spite of all that fighting, I was addicted to him, carrying his child.
Half of domestic violence due to female abuse? Where had he got that from? Some porn site? My anger, no, that extreme rage had now been replaced by a very deep sadness. A sadness I rarely had felt in my life. Peter? Sure, his male egotism kept challenging me all the time. But was he right? Had I expected too much of him? Had I really given him too hard a time back when he chose to go to bed with Susan instead of with me? Had I been difficult back then? Had he actually slept with Susan because I wouldn’t listen to him? Because I kept making fun of him at parties and screamed at him to clean up his mess? Did he feel disrespected? Was I the reason?
As I circled the block in this posh part of town, aimlessly as ever, I wondered why things had gone like they did back then. I tried to remember. What had happened? He had been promoted, right? There was that really difficult situation at his workplace with the ... What had it been? God, I couldn’t even remember. The company from Japan that cancelled all their orders left them with a terrible debt.
I hadn’t listened. Was that it? Not listening had driven him away?
I think I stood there for quite a while until I realized what was going on.
I had to go back.
I stopped in my tracks, blocking all of the pedestrian traffic and having people walking around me. It didn’t matter. I was on a sidestreet, somewhere in an area I rarely strolled around in.
In fact, the more I thought of it the more I realized that during that entire time I had never ever listened to him. Okay, his words were way out of line, but he was hurt and I had to talk this out. If he was still an asshole after that, then so be it. The brick walls of that strange sidestreet spoke to me of solitude. The dead end I faced gave me no comfort. What would the future be like without Peter?
Right now, the prospect of actually divorcing him would leave a hole in my soul. I began crying, sobbing, leaning against the wall. I couldn’t. Peter, the love of my life. My shaking hands reaching for the kleenex. I searched for it beyond my mascara and unfolded it. When I dried my tears, I realized what I mess I was in.
God, I sobbed. I had to talk this out with him. I really had to. At least I had to ask.
This fault, I shoved it all on him. Sure, his infidelity shocked me to my bone and I really needed a divorce at that time. I had even called my attourney. Now, although his mistake evidently shone on my face like the Statue of Liberty shone in the face in my mind’s eye, my mistake also became increasingly more clear.
We never really talked. Not anymore, anyway.
We fought.
Anything he said, I contradicted. Was that true? My God, it was.
What kind of a future would that be to my unborn child?
Living with a mother who never took responsibility for her own actions, who said that father always was wrong and discarded any opnion he had out of a male cliché.
A silent guy, who was laughed at any time he dared to speak, of which one said that he spoke too much when he said nothing at all.
I did not want to be a cliché and neither did Peter.
People. We had always been proud of being people.
Had I ever had the patience to listen to what gave him grey hairs back then? Not really. I had been so preoccupied with my forty hour week at the nail studio and my quarrel with that awful ... what had her name been? Linda? Luisa? Laila? Whatever. I realized, then and there, that I, partly was to blame. Partly.
I shook my head. Holy crap, my girlfriends would throw garbage on me for thinking this. But, obviously, my husband had been very hurt. Still was. Choleric. Had my reaction been normal just now? Peter had his own faults. No question. I had faults, as well.
I turned around and faced the other way, slowly walking from where I had come. My mascara now runny, my tears streaming down my face, I picked up the kleenex again and tried my best to wipe off whatever marks still were on my face.
As I faced the main street again, I heard my high heels clicking on the ground. It seemed like somebody else’s heels. Emancipation. A good thing. But wasn’t a relationship supposed to work both ways. If I didn’t listen to my husband, give him a right to speak his mind, what good was I? He respected my opinion. He listened to me. He rarely raised his voice. He had now, but that was rare. I should respect his opinion. Had he listened to my problems with that girl, whatever her name was? Yes, he had. Had he really ridiculed me in front of my friends? No, only when I ridiculed him.
My steps now increased in speed like a train that leaves the train station. I saw myself running away yet again, a victim of the lack of tolerance of my time. A nervousness, like butterflies in my stomach, ached in my belly. Those butterflies circled even faster when I found myself back by the pedestrian crossing. More and more cars passed by on the street and the more cars passed, the more nervous I got. Night now covered the streets, a laugh echoed from across the dead end street where I had just spent one minute contemplating my fate.
I smelled the sting of the night. I smelled it like a bee would smell the nectar of a flower, just like a smelled the food being served over at the restaurants. Suddenly, I felt Peter leave my soul. Strange, how that feels when somebody loses hope.
I knew him too well, I could not leave him.
The traffic light changed to WALK and I began running down the street toward the restaurant, having realized that I really needed to solve this or disintergrate. Now I didn’t only smell the night. I smelled my own panic, my own fear of having overreacted. My high heels clicked in presto-speed over the sidewalk, I cried to myself, hollared in hope that my husband would not have left me.
“Peter,” I mumbled to myself. “Please let us talk about this. Explain to me what you meant. Explain. Give me hope.”
The word Explain came out so many times while I ran down the street that, finally, it mumbled out as Splay. I must’ve seemed like a crazy person in my high heels running down the street toward the place that I had left around an hour ago.
I arrived back at the restaurant. Arrived? I stopped, I felt like a statue. Suddenly, my heart trembled. The pain in my heart of again seeing this place hurt my pride. I wanted to save face and leave. The other part, the honest part, forced me to stay.
I saw waiters cleaning away dishes, smelled a few steaks half-eaten, heard a song half-played, saw a couple half-drunk, a few scattered guests here and there, but my entire scene had obviously cleaned up business pretty well. The waiter I thought was gay gathered himself around a table by the door to the terrace. A couple just leaving the outside area saw me and the woman looked over, obviously wanting to say something. I saw compassion in her eyes. Something had happened while I had been gone, but ... what? I opened my mouth in order to ask and I saw her getting ready to tell me. Maybe she had been sitting at the table next to us and witnessed what Peter had done. The man, whoever he was, pulled her with him and made her come. She shrugged and left.
As they left, she hollared at her boyfriend to let her go, or else.
I saw myself here, completely alone, without Peter.
A marriage ended without an explanation, without a reason why.
Because of harsh words?
How sad.
How feeble.
After all these years of love.
How quaint.
I watched the couple leave, feeling like someone whose heart had been ripped out of her chest. Alone, I stood here alone. Peter long gone, I rummaged my handbag again for a new klennex.
Maybe he sat on a bench somewhere.
As I dried off new tears, I looked around, feebly hoping to find some reality in the situation. Hoping to find him. One small ray of light entered my heart and again I hoped to be able to talk with him, seeing that he had not meant harm. Something very wrong had happened right now and, God in heaven, my outburst had triggered it.
I smelled the pain in my heart. I smelled it in the whiff of the last steaks and the last desserts that were cleaned off the table, the last cappucinos that were delivered at the tables with the last remaining guests seated at the tables of the restaurant. I smelled my own pain like I smelled the roses that bloomed outside by the sidewalk.
I turned around, trying to find him. Onwards past the L’auberge Francaise there were only small shops and a few trees, a school and a park, a few dog walkers. Girls, whose laughter sounded ominous in their mirth. A wierd looking moon. A topsy turvy sidestreet.
Hopeless.
“Excuse me, miss?”
Startled by the strange voice, I smelled the perfume of the waiter that I had perceived as gay. Brushing away my hair from my face, my eyes gazed at the young man holding a note. The expression on his face conveyed sympathy. I watched his lips slowly form a smile, a sadly sympathetic one. Hesistantly, he looked down upon the note.
For a moment I felt sympathy for the man standing opposite me. At least until I realized that this man actually felt sorry for me.
I passed him a questioning gaze.
He waited for a moment, his lower lip quivering in mid air for one moment, his voice producing little grunts. I tried to give him a kind smile, for one second forgetting my own pain. Trying to, at least. My Lord, I felt like screaming and shaking. I felt like someone holding on to play-doh, while she felt it slipping through her fingers. Slowly and surely, I felt like Peter really disappeared out of sight down a very long tunnel. I could still see him, but once he vanished I felt that he would be out of my life forever. I felt like shaking the man and asking him if his senses and his mind had left for coffee.
“Your partner told me, in case you would come back here, to give you this note.”
He handed it to me.
My hands began shaking again. I felt like I was holding the key to a very dark secret, maybe a very frail rose that could fall apart at any time.
My face seemed to project great insecurity. I still sensed the pain of being so close to where I had thrown my wine onto my spouse’s face just an hour ago.
A few scribbled words on a left over receipt. How quaint. How ... what was the word? Strange? The words seemed to be dampened by ... sauce. Maybe a tear, maybe white wine, resided there on that note.
That silly, dirty, wonderful note.
A cry from my belly hit my vocal chords. Biting my lip, I slapped my hand against my left cheek, my left eyelid shaking. The waiter put his hand gently on my shoulder.
I shook my head. Violently, I think. The waiter hesitated, just like before and stood there for a bit. The smell of the food I had enjoyed an hour back felt as if it rumbled in my stomach, getting ready to reappear from my insides. Too many harsh words and hatred indigestable for a female belly.
“Mister,” I said, my voice trembling and shaking, tears streaming down my face. “Please tell me where he went.”
The waiter looked like he actually tried to find the answer to his own insecurity right down toward where the DON’T WALK sign now blinked. He shrugged.
He looked at me, pursed his lips in a sort of helpless fashion.
He pointed toward the sign.
“My boss is going to wonder why I am not waiting tables,” he whispered. “I know you. Don’t I?”
The pleading look on his face told me that he really wanted to know me.
I pulled my head back in a gesture of shock. I saw myself now an infamous loon. I know you? Was I now a famous freak?
“What do you mean?”
“Your brother was my colleague back when I was still on Broadway,” he said. “Waiting tables is now my main occupation.”
He waited, made a long pause, smiled.
“Kevin Arnold?”
He shrugged. “Me and your brother were never meant to be. You and Peter, however. You were always meant to be. Please don’t waste that ...”
Now, there was fear in his eyes.
“My God, this is way past my turf. But I just wanna say that he really loves you. That note proves it. Do something. Even ... No, go to him.”
Kevin pointed toward the DON’T WALK sign.
“Peter went that way.”
I nodded, holding back my tears.
After putting his hand on my shoulder one last time, he left. That insecure gaze back across his shoulder told me that everyone had witnessed our fight. I expected everything and gave nothing in return. I gave him dirty looks at the end of the day, screamed at him when he didn’t mop up the kitchen and called him stupid in front of his friends.
Walking back toward the main road again, I looked at the note that Peter left me with that waiter.
Now those tears that never seemed to stop burned my cheeks. The sadness went full circle. I felt so sad that I almost enjoyed it, but only almost, and I really didn’t care, where I walked in that darkness, if the people still out and about wondered who the crying woman was. The closer I came to the street lights, the more afraid I got. Just closed up homes and a few hardware stores. One homeless bum picking his nose and a cat chasing a mouse. That homeless bum stopped short and called out some sentence from behind a tree. I couldn’t understand him. Only that I didn’t care. I had made a mistake. One that really might prove to be completely irreparable.
Back at the streetlights, I wondered to myself what gay people felt when they had love trouble. The same thing that I did right now, probably. Love never changes. Love never changes, ever. Pain never changes, ever. Pain is eternal. At least, that is what I thought.
Love is love. Love is spiritual. Love has no gender.
My brother was happy with his boyfriend and Kevin was probably happy living with whomever he lived with, if anyone. Me? As I waited for the stupid light to click into the WALK sign, dammit, I realized that I had probably just missed my husband as he walked after me. He had probably had his phone sounds off when I called him. I then disappeared and he had followed me.
The poor sod had followed me and I had just missed him. Now, I walked across the same pedestrian crossing looking for someone I hated ninety minutes ago and couldn’t stop thinking about now.
I laughed and cried at the same time.
Okay, this guy defied gravity with those stupid comments of me being stereotypical and all that.
But this was a sensitive guy, right?
We were sensitive people.
All of us.
No one was different.
I saw that in Kevin.
Sensitivity ruled humanity.
Some people grew hard with raging sensitivity.
Some people grew soft and mellow.
Some became confused, bewildered, oversexed, overfed, overdrunk, overslept, oversick, overhungry, overmouthed.
I strolled and strolled away from the corner where I had called him. I passed the spot where he had asked me to marry him many years before that, I passed the spot where I had danced with him the first time by the lake one night at two o’clock at night to the music of his old transistor radio. He had made a waterlily in the form of a napkin and given it to me as we danced. God, how I complained at his habit of folding napkins. Now, I missed those napkins. Then, back then, in the beginning, we walked back to his little flat and made love to the sounds of Hall & Oates singing “Your kiss is on my lips”.
Now, so many fights later, I walked all the way through the darkness of the night, crazy me, close to Central Park and stood there close to that darn place I knew so well and waited and waited. I waited, I hoped. Maybe he had lost all hope.
God, I waited so long that I cried.
I looked at the note again.
“If you still want me now, after all this,” it said, “then come to the place where we kissed for the first time. Otherwise, I will kill myself. It’s better that way.”
I don’t know what happened, but, in spite of all that bottled up anger, all my sorrow came pouring out. Convulsions attacked my body, tears streaming down my cheeks, so hot they left red marks on my cheeks. Again.
“Please, God,” I whispered under my breath, afraid that anyone would hear me. “Please send me an angel. Please send me my husband.”
I took two staggering steps back toward the wall of that little street corner where we had kissed for the first time so many years ago. I could still smell his after shave, his cheap, two-dollar after-shave from Woolworth. I smelled my own fear now. My own fear of choleric outbursts. I smelled his anger, I smelled my own hatred of male chauvinism. But I also felt my own love.
“You bring me closer to my own heart,” he had told me back then. “If a partner shows you how to feel your own soul, this is heaven.”
His age-old words rang in my ears like the bells of the Sacre-Coeur on a calm Sunday in Paris.
Crumpling the note to my chest, I declined picking up a kleenex to dry my face. I just leaned my face against the wall of the side street of that hotel, torn between my own screams of divorce and my deep love for losing a best friend. Cars whizzed by, dammit, and people walked by without even noticing me. I saw Peter actually at the bottom of the Hudson River and me, stupid me, powerless to stop it.
Just when I really lost all hope, that little voice within me reminded me that there was a little soul resting in my belly. Me, a mother? God, a mother? Pregnant, who would believe it? But Peter? He had to know. I wailed into giant panic. My husband would never see his child. Where was he? What if he killed himself and I could never tell him that I wanted him to be there when his child was born. I would never be able to leave this place for fear that I would miss him when he came. I would be one of those crazy women who waited for her husband for decades, her child pleading for her to come home now, mom. After all, this was the place where he had summoned me. But ... no. Wait.
I looked at the note. His handwriting.
At home? I picked up my handbag again, fumbling for my phone. Lipstick, nailpolish, money, kleenex, mirror, keys, no. Where? No phone.
That was when I saw it.
I small, yellow flower. Not a real flower, mind you. Just one made out of a napkin. A yellow lily. The only yellow lily in the world made out of napkin.
A man held on to it, his hand shaking, his lip trembling. I could still smell my own fear. The fear of being abandoned. That old two-dollar after-shave had been replace by a more expensive brand. But, gosh, it was the same old crazy guy that claimed women were stereotypes, saying it, knowing it wasn’t true, could never be true.
Apprehensively, I took the napkin away from his right hand and looked at that silly flower.
Now, I saw that his eyes were bloodshot.
Now, my lower lip trembled. I laughed, my eyes shifting from his bloodshot eyes to his stupid little flower. My shoulder bounced a few times up and down from the relief cry I experienced.
Gosh, I was emancipated beyond belief. I, if anyone, would fight a man to the grave for equal rights. But I also realized that I had given my husband a horrible time and I never wanted to do that again. I knew he had given me a horrible time and that I would kick him in the nuts if he ever did that again or compare me with other women ... oh, God.
As I admired the paper flower my husband had made me, I noticed a homeless bum, another one this time, clutching his bottle, burping, uttering his lovely hiccup, looking at us. It was his private show. No, wrong. That bum, an angel? A messenger? He waited for a kiss. God, yes. I needed a kiss. Not from the bum, from my husband.
I looked back toward my husband and noticed he also gazed at that old codger.
The bum gestured for him to make a move.
Peter smiled and, as he did, he looked down in that silly way I loved so. I lift my hand and caressed his cheek.
“Please, Peter,” I cried. “Just let me be your wife. No more. No less.”
He nodded, trembling. Looking me in the eye, his eyes closing half way, he shook his head, pleading with me in a quiet fashion. Not with so much noise, but like a squirrel would plead with a bear not to eat his last nut, his special nut. Me.
“Could I then ask you not to go crazy if I use the wrong wash-cloth to clean the balcony door?”
I chuckled, sadly.
After one moment’s thought, I nodded.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
When our lips met, somewhere near Central Park in New York City, that toothless bum started cheering. We didn’t care, because we could stand here kissing for hours.
And we did. Hot kisses, as enjoyable as the tears that had streamed down my face ten minutes before.
And we knew exactly what music to put on once we were home.
Our kid is going to be such a big Hall & Oates-fan.
Because, God knows, his kiss will always be on my lips.

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