I guess I must be in love with him, because the next night when my brother calls me, he says I sound like I’m in a good mood and asks me what’s new. “I have a boyfriend, that’s what,” I tell him. Which, despite who I am—and maybe only because of the secrets I’m determined to withhold from Orion—I do. I have a handsome Italian-Chinese boyfriend who has a nice apartment and a good job and who keeps calling me. A boyfriend who’s had sex with me three times now and has a nice body and is not afraid to say the word love.
For the next several weeks, things go great between Orion and me. He takes me out to nice restaurants, or else we stay in at his place, eat takeout or the meals he cooks, and then watch TV. Sometimes we have sex afterward, and sometimes we just get in his bed, cuddle, and drift off to sleep. He’s only been to my dinky apartment twice, and both times I’ve felt embarrassed and a little bit scared about what it might say about who I really am. The first time he came over, he noticed the wobble in my coffee table, turned it upside down, and said he could fix it. The second time, he brought a screwdriver with him, tightened the screws, and now it’s good as new.
I’ve told him some stuff: about how, after my mother died, my father turned into an alcoholic and I had to go into foster care. When I tell him about how scared I was having to go and live with strangers, he says something weird but really sweet. “Too bad I didn’t know you back then. I would have come and rescued you.” Like he was Prince Charming or something. Which he is, in a way, because he’s rescued me from the simple, uncomplicated life I thought I liked until I realized how much I was missing. How lonely that life had been: going to work, going home and watching TV, going places by myself on weekends. He knows I didn’t go to college, but not that I didn’t even graduate from high school and got my G.E.D. instead. I’ve told him nothing about Albie or my miscarriage. One Saturday, after I’ve mentioned how much I like museums, he drives us up to Boston and we go to this amazing museum which used to be some rich lady’s mansion and now is open to the public. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to, and when I tell him that, he says he can’t wait to show me more stuff. Take me to other places that he knows I’ll love. That this is only the beginning. Maybe that’s what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try new things but still makes you feel safe. But that’s only my side of it. What I still don’t really understand is what’s in it for him. Why he keeps saying he loves me.
I get nervous when Orion tells me he’s going to introduce me to his mother. She lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and works at a ritzy private school teaching talented and gifted kids—the kind of student I wasn’t. There’s some big summer conference at the university where Orion works, and she’s coming up for it. We’re driving over there, picking his mom up at the dormitory where she’s staying and taking her to lunch.
When Orion goes in to get her, I move to the backseat. Maria is plump but pretty, and real Italian-looking. She sticks her hand between the front seats, shakes mine, and says she’s happy to meet me. “Happy to meet you, too,” I say. When I tell her I like her blouse, she laughs and says she’s had it for years. So? I can still like it, can’t I? It was a compliment. Orion kind of resembles her but kind of doesn’t because of his Chinese-shaped eyes.
On the way to the restaurant, he asks her how her conference is going, and she tells him a bunch of stuff that I’m not really listening to because I’m thinking about some of the things he’s told me. How his father wouldn’t marry his mother after she got pregnant. God, even Albie wasn’t that much of a heel. Poor Maria! After Orion was born, he said, he and his mother had to go live with her parents, which they did all while he was growing up. . . . Orion’s told me about the first time he met his Grandfather Oh. It was when he was going into his fourth year of high school. He and his mom went up to the restaurant he owned in Boston because Orion wanted to go to Boston University, and Maria needed him to help pay for it. Which he agreed to do, even though he wasn’t too happy about it. That was pretty brave of her, to do that. Pretty ballsy, as Priscilla used to say. Shit, I wish I hadn’t just thought about Priscilla. What if, in this car, I suddenly go temporarily insane and say something like, “Hey, Maria, I’m not only having sex with your son, but I’ve had it with a woman, too—orgasms and everything.” Thinking about saying that makes my stomach do flip-flops and I have to crack open my window and get some air. It’s just nerves, I guess. I’d never, ever say something like that, even if I did go crazy because I’m so . . . what do you call it? Not depressed, but it sounds like that. I’ve heard Orion say it about some student he’s been seeing. Oh, I know. Not depressed. Repressed. . . . Orion said his grandfather was real rude to his mother that day when they went to see him, but that he was nice to him. And that, after Orion was at Boston University, sometimes him and his friends would go to his grandfather’s restaurant for Sunday dim sum and they always got to eat for free. When I asked him what dim sum was—I was starting to ask him stuff by then without feeling like he was going to think I was stupid—he said he’d rather show me than tell me. And the next weekend he drove us back to Boston, to Chinatown, and we ate at the place his grandfather used to own before he died. It was upstairs in this big, noisy dining room where these little, unsmiling Chinese women wheeled the food around in carts and you chose whichever of the little hors d’oeuvrey things you wanted and most of them were delicious, except for the batter-fried chicken feet which, when I realized what they were, I spit out in my napkin and made him laugh. He laughed some more after he showed me how to eat with chopsticks but I kept dropping things. Then he had one of the Chinese women get me a fork. She nodded but acted kind of put out and when she came back with my fork, she threw it on the table instead of placing it. And Orion said, “Excuse me. Don’t throw it at her. Please pick it up again and hand it to her.” And after she did and walked away, I thanked him and he said no thanks were necessary. That he liked coming to the aid of damsels in distress. Which, even though it’s not like I was tied to the railroad tracks or anything, I thought was so sweet. Protective, kind of. . . . After we ate our dim sum, instead of driving right back, we walked around the city. And when we got to the Prudential tower, Orion took me on this zooming elevator ride to the top. When we went over to the windows and I looked down, I felt a little dizzy and went, “Whoa.” He put his arm around me to steady me, and the two of us looked out at all the buildings and the boats on the river. And when I said that I’d never been this high up before, Orion said, “No? You’ve never ridden in a plane?” I shook my head and he said, “Well, we’ll have to see to that.” Then he said again how much he liked showing me things, and that that was one of the reasons he loved me. And that maybe someday he would hire someone to take us on a ride in one of those balloons so that we could float through the sky. Like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, I thought, but didn’t say it. Then he started talking about the kinds of things astronauts must see when they go on space flights, but I wasn’t really listening because I was thinking: balloon rides, plane rides, dim sum: Yikes! . . .
And so, sitting in the backseat of Orion’s car and looking at his mother’s head on our way over to the restaurant we’re going to, I think about how I really want to like her, and more than that I want her to like me. I just hope he hasn’t told her that we’re having a sexual relationship because, you know, it’s his mother.
Our lunch is at this place, The Depot, that used to be a train station but now it’s a restaurant. We sit in the little caboose that’s attached to the main building, at a table that’s really just for two people. Orion sits across from Maria and me, and me and her are kind of squashed in together, which is a little uncomfortable, especially since I’m left-handed and she’s right-handed, and our arms keep bumping into each other. Mostly, it’s just the two of them talking because I feel so self-conscious, and also because I can tell that whenever Maria asks me something, it’s only because she’s being po
lite. “Oh, I heard from Thea a few weeks ago,” she tells Orion. “Her dissertation has been approved and she’s already gotten a job. At Emory University, tenure track.” When I ask who Thea is, Orion says she was an old girlfriend of his. “Well, she was a little more than that,” Maria tells me. “They were engaged.” They were? Orion was engaged? “Brilliant girl,” Maria tells me.
“Huh,” I go. “Wow.” Because I can’t think of anything more “brilliant” to say. And then, reaching for the bread basket, I knock over Maria’s water glass and the water spills into her lap. I’m dying about being such a klutz, but Maria says that’s all right, it’s only water, it will dry. Except she keeps dabbing at it with her napkin even after our salads come, and asks the waitress for extra ones because of “our little mishap.” By which she really means my little mishap. “So tell me, Ann, what is it you do for a living?” she asks me. Orion answers for me—tells her how we met at the dry cleaner’s where he gets his shirts done. “Yeah, but that’s just my temporary job,” I lie. “I’m saving up to go back to school. College.”
Orion looks at me funny. “You are?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, looking over his shoulder. “Yup.” When his mother asks me what I’ll be studying, I say the first thing that comes into my mind. “Art.”
“Art history?”
“No, just . . . art.”
And she goes, “Aha. Interesting.”
After we finish our meals, the waitress asks us if we’ve left any room for dessert. I shake my head because I can’t wait to get out of there, but Orion and his mother decide to share this custardy-looking thing with a crust on top that they break with their spoons. Orion keeps telling me to try some, but I keep going, “No, no thanks. I’m stuffed.” Which I’m not, really. If his mother wasn’t here and it was just me and him sharing it, I’d be digging right in, maybe even as much as his mother is. She’s eating like 75 percent of their dessert instead of 50 percent. Boy, she sure likes her sweets.
When we drop Maria back off, I tell her again that it was nice to meet her. “Likewise, Ann,” she says. They get out and walk to the front door of the dormitory. I watch them share a laugh about something (me?), and hug each other good-bye. Ann, I think: not Annie or my real name, Anna. To her, I’m just some random Ann that he’s wasting his time with. She’s probably just told him he should end it with me and go back to that Thea person—that he’s making a mistake. When Orion gets back in the car, he asks me how I liked her. “Great!” I say. It comes out fake, a little too enthusiastic, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He says she liked me, too, and I think, ha! That’s a laugh. Tell me another one. He wants to know if I want to go back to his place and I tell him no, that I’m kind of tired. Which I am. All this effort with his stupid mother has exhausted me.
Back at my apartment, I flop down on my mattress and fall right to sleep. Which was something I hadn’t done much of the night before because I was so nervous about meeting his mother. It’s dark by the time I wake up, and I sit up and start thinking about the dream I’ve just had. Well, more of a nightmare than a dream, I guess. Orion was screaming at me, saying with this angry face that he doesn’t love me—that he never loved me. And for some reason, I was standing at an easel, painting a picture with my own blood.
A few nights later, I’m over at Orion’s. After we make love, I get up to go but he grabs my arm and tells me not to—that he wants me to stay over, even though it’s not the weekend. So I do. Except I can’t get to sleep. Instead, I just lie there, wondering what that Thea was like, and why they broke their engagement. I decide it must have been her decision, not his, because Orion’s too kind to break someone’s heart. Which is probably why he hasn’t broken up with me yet. He’s restless tonight, tossing and turning in his sleep and mumbling mumbo jumbo. Maybe he’s wrestling with wanting to dump me but not wanting to hurt me. The last time I look at his clock radio, it says 3:13. . . .
But I must have fallen into a deep sleep after that, because the next thing I know, it’s light out and I’m waking up to the sound of him in the shower. My panic’s gone now. Why would he say he loves me, wants to show me new things and take me to new places, if he doesn’t? That was just my scared middle-of-the-night thinking. My worrying for nothing. “Morning,” he says when he comes out of the bathroom wearing just a towel. I smile. Watch him. Sometimes in the middle of making love, he whispers that I have a beautiful body and I have to stop myself from correcting him, pointing out all my flaws: stubby legs, smallish boobs. The truth is that he’s the one with the beautiful body. Those wide shoulders and runner’s calf muscles. The little line of hair that starts beneath his belly button and goes down. When he pulls off the towel, I watch him walk across the room to his dresser, his penis bobbing. In the months we’ve been together, I’ve gotten to know his body inch by inch. And then I think about Thea—how she must have known it as well as I do. How, maybe when she thinks about him now, she realizes she made a mistake. Wishes she hadn’t ended it with him. She could call him tomorrow—today, even!—and tell him she wants him back.
Tying his tie in the mirror, he tells me he has to go in early for some meeting. The coffeemaker’s gurgling in the kitchen, and I ask him if he wants me to get him a cup. No, he says. I should stay in bed and relax. “You don’t go into work until noon on Tuesday. Right?”
It touches me that he knows my schedule. “Right.” A few minutes later, he brings me a cup of coffee, kisses me on the forehead, and reminds me to lock up when I leave. He goes out the door whistling.
I’ve been alone in his apartment before, but until this morning I’ve never snooped. I don’t know Thea’s last name, so I go through his whole Rolodex and there’s no Thea in it. There’s no evidence of her in his bedroom closet, either. But when I think to look under his bed, I pull out the plastic storage bin that’s under there and take off the lid. It’s mostly his old college stuff—papers he’s written, notebooks with notes in them. But there’s a thick envelope in here, too, and I take it out. Spill what’s in it onto his bed: pictures, letters. Most of the photos are of him and this same woman who must be Thea. She’s thin and beautiful and has long brown hair, long fashion model legs. There’s one of Orion and her in dress-up clothes, and a bunch of pictures of the two of them at some fancy resort or something. The one of him kissing her has writing on the back in what must be her handwriting because it’s not his. O and me at the Ocean House, July ’77. O, she called him instead of Orion. Even her penmanship is pretty. In the picture I hate the most, Orion’s between Thea and his mother, his arms around them, the three of them smiling. I hear Maria say what she said at that lunch we went to: Brilliant girl. Talented and gifted, I think. The kind of girl she thinks her son deserves.
When I’m done looking at the pictures, I notice that one of the letters he’s saved has a return address that says Thea Kingsbury, 64 Egmont Street Apt. 3-C Brookline, MA. I take it out of the envelope and read it. They must have just had a fight or something, because she says she’s sorry about what she’s said—that she’s been under a lot of pressure lately and didn’t mean to be such a “dolt.” Until we had that lunch with his mother, I’d been thinking that maybe—maybe—he and I might have a future together. Ha! If she wrote him another letter like this one, he’d drop me like a hot potato. I stuff everything back in the bin and shove it under Orion’s bed. Everything, that is, except the picture of him and Thea with his mother. I rip that one up and bring the pieces into his kitchen. Turn on the faucet and the garbage disposal and watch them disappear down the drain. There’s a bowl of peaches on his counter. I grab one, bite into it hard, and my teeth hit the stone. This peach is like life, I think. Juicy and delicious on the outside until you get to the pit.
After I leave his apartment and go home, I call work and say I’m sick. Which I am, except not with a stomach virus like I tell Mrs. Skiba. It’s my first sick day since I started working there. “Bananas and toast,” Mrs. Skiba says. “That will settle your tummy.” All day long, I
go back and forth about what I should do. Or shouldn’t do. And by late afternoon, I’ve reached my decision.
It would be too painful to break up with him in person, so I do it over the phone. At first, he doesn’t say anything. Has he hung up on me? No, because I can hear his breathing. “I just don’t get it,” he finally says. “Have I been missing something? Because if I have, let’s talk about it. Work through it.” Like he’s my psychologist, which he isn’t. I tell him I can’t talk about it. He goes, “Why not?” Because if we did, I might start telling him everything. That I snooped around in his apartment and found those pictures. That his mother doesn’t think I’m good enough for him. I might keep going until I told him every single thing I’ve kept from him. “I thought things were going so well for us. Jesus Christ, Annie, the least you can do is give me an explanation.”
“It’s just that . . . we’re a mismatch. And it’s better we face it now than later. I have to go now. Bye.” I hang up on him and start to cry. And when he calls right back, I don’t answer the phone. I don’t answer it the next two times either. Or the next day. Or the one after that. Then the phone stops ringing.
He usually comes in with his shirts on Tuesdays, my late day, except the following Tuesday, he’s a no show. I’ve been dreading seeing him all afternoon, but now that it’s closing time, I’m disappointed. When Mrs. Skiba asks me what’s wrong, I tell her I don’t want to talk about it and she backs off. I miss him so badly that it’s like I hurt physically. And hey, I do hurt physically: headaches, stomachaches, diarrhea. I keep thinking about calling him and telling him I was being a dolt, but I don’t. Better that I ended it before he could have. Or that he didn’t end it but wished he had. He’s probably already reconnected with Thea by now, his real girlfriend. Which is probably why he’s stopped calling me and started going to a different dry cleaner’s. Every day when I go into work, I check the slips to see if he’s brought his shirts in and I just missed him, but I haven’t. He’s probably getting them done at the Troy Laundry now.