But Rita doesn't wait for me, the great never-poet, to even try, and takes one last sip of her breakfast. She wipes her mouth and loops a hand through her bag handles, leaving a dollar for the tip.
"I'm leaving," she says, rising. "Goodbye."
"Wait a second."
"I haven't even finished my breakfast yet."
"You eat fast. You'll be done before I'm in my car."
"Can't you humor me just a little?"
Rita sits back down, eyes afire, and says in a whisper, "You have a lot of fucking nerve."
"I do?"
"Yes, you do," she says, leaning forward. "Because you don't even care how obvious it is, what you're doing. You have no clue what you're saying or what it might mean."
"That Jack and Theresa think the world of you? I don't have to hide what that means. It means you can't just up and leave their lives. You're almost their stepmother."
"Oh please," she says, gathering up her things again. "Do you know how silly that sounds? Almost stepmother? Anyway, they're not concerned. They know they'll see me again plenty.
It's you, Jerry, like always. You're the one never budging from the center of the show. You're forever the star."
"If that's the guy who's got to do all the worrying, then so be it."
"Right," she says, with an unappreciative smirk. "Why don't you just say what you want to say. I know it's not that you're so worried about Kelly."
"Hey, you said yourself she'll be fine. At least she's in good hands," I say, though now I'm regretting how I unpadlocked her. "It's you I'm not so sure about."
"Me? You've got to be kidding."
"How can that guy be right for you? How do you stand him?
He has no idea how ridiculous he looks. Sir Richard of Chukkah. Does he imagine that they'll let his dago ass into Piping Rock or Creek Club?"
Rita says, "He's a member of both, actually. Not that I find that impressive. So what else?"
"Okay, then. What's he do all by himself over there at Tara?
And why did his wife leave him? I bet he screwed around on her, for years. And then worked some legal hoodoo to boot her and the kids out."
"She cheated on him, and ran off and married the guy. She didn't want the place. And his kids and grandkids stay with him for most of the summers. And for what he does around the house, he likes to garden and read. He practices tai chi. He's also a very good Asian cook, Thai and Japanese."
"I always took you to Benihana's."
"Yes, you did."
So I say, full of it, "He sounds like the ideal man."
"He certainly isn't!" Rita says, like she's tired of the idea.
"But at least he's interested in things. He's still curious. He never complains about being bored. He's always searching, but riot in a stupid or desperate way."
"Sounds sort of pathetic to me."
"That's not a surprise."
"So why don't you marry him, then?"
"I'm thinking about it," she answers, with a little oomph.
"He's asked you?"
Rita nods. "The other night."
"Christ. You've barely been seeing him six months."
"We're not young people."
"He give you a ring?"
She pauses, then takes a jewelry box from her bag, cracks it open. Voila. It's huge, a rock and a half, the size of something that you get from a gumball machine tucked inside a plastic bubble. It's frankly amazing, its sheer objecthood, this token-become-totem. Having nothing to counter with, I feel ushered aside already, obsolete, biologically diminished just in the way I'm supposed to be by another man's splendid offering.
"Of course Richard wants me to take my time, really think it through."
What I'm thinking is, Richard is a dope.
I say, "Only fair and right."
Rita says, "But I don't want to linger with this. No way. I'm not going to do that."
"Listen," I tell her, bearing down now "you're not someone who makes quick decisions. It's not in your nature. You shouldn't do so, especially now. It's no good."
"You think I should do what I did for the last twenty-one years? You think that was good for me?"
This is the part where I usually answered that our legal union wouldn't have made things better than they were, and where Rita would say that she'd have something now, after all she put into our relationship and my family, and where I'd point out that it was her unilateral decision to leave, to which she'd respond that of course it wasn't about money or property but respect, meaning my respect for her and for myself. This is the part that is hardest to speak about, because all along I'd thought I was treating her like a queen. Maybe I didn't shop at Tiffany or Harry Winston, but I always bought her very nice jewelry from Fortunoff's, and we took plenty of trips to sexy all-inclusive resorts, and I never expected her to keep working as a nurse, if she wanted instead to just stay home and garden and cook and read (all the things she's clearly doing with Richie). The aforementioned seems, at least from my view, to be as good as it gets with a guy like me, or maybe with anyone who isn't an emotionally available millionaire or professional masseur (the two life profiles of men women desire most, according to a magazine at my doctor's office). But I guess I'm dead wrong again because the sum reality of my efforts is that I'm sitting here trying desperately to say something she'll believe, or that at least will gain me a temporary stay.
"You can't marry Richie" is what I muster. "You just can't.
Can't."
Rita waits for the reason, the angle or argument, though soon enough she realizes there is none coming, just this obtuse plea from her just freshly aging former lover, who is limply waving a serrated grapefruit spoon. Can't. She wants to scold me, throttle me, certainly say hell all and scram, but she doesn't yet move, God bless her, she doesn't bolt.
"You make me so tired," she says, slumping back a little.
"You should leave me alone."
"I was trying."
"You have to try harder. Otherwise, I can't see you. I won't."
Her meaning: Ever.
"Don't marry Richie," I say, though sounding funny to myself, like I'm a lamentable young man in an old summer-love movie, flesh-and-blood wreckage. "Marry me."
Rita giggles, then laughs, out loud, with enough hilarity that the jelly roll gang hunched at the lunch counter turn around half smiling, to see what the joke is all about.
"I'm serious, Rita. Marry me."
Rita stops laughing. She glares, then picks up her handbag A. L o F T
and walks out. I head outside after her, calling her, but she ignores me and quickly gets into her car, which she never locks.
The windows are never rolled up either, and I stand right over her as she tries to get the old motor going, karumph, karumph, and if you didn't know any better you'd think I was a rapist or stalker or three-eyed space lizard, the way she's cranking that thing. I can tell she's flooding the engine, but I say nothing. Our waitress has followed me out, waving the check, but I'm not paying attention because this is a not-yet-depleted moment in what seems to be my increasingly depleted life, and I'm telling Rita to stop trying to leave as the waitress keeps saying, "Hey, buster," and tapping my arm, and finally Rita steps out of the car and whacks me hard on the chest, not quite open-handed.
"She's talking to you, Jerry! Listen!" Rita digs a ten-spot from her bag and gives it to the waitress, who shoots me a kickin-the-shins smirk if there ever was one. Rita shouts, "What's the matter with you?"
"I'm serious," I say, feeling the stamp of her hand bloom hot on my skin. "I really am."
"Doesn't matter," she answers, now getting back in the driver's seat. She tries to roll up the window, but it only goes three-quarters of the way. "You think our not getting married is still the issue, don't you?"