“Don’t worry about babies,” Natalie used to tell him. “We’re covered on that front, hon.” He wondered what the panting, the salty taste of popcorn on Natalie’s full lips, had to do with the glib banter between Nick and Nora Charles.
Lisa liked to wait until the last possible moment, after she’d urged him inside and he was well past controlling his impulses, to whisper, “Come on, come on, that’s it, you can’t resist me, can you, honey, I’ve taken care of everything.” He’d never bought a condom, not once.
He understood he tended toward the “passive” (a term he’d learned in an introductory psychology course, junior year). He knew he should take more initiative in life, but somehow, preparing for sex, premeditating it, always felt to him like the morning his mother had caught him pawing through her panty drawer. He’d been — what? — nine or ten. Frightened. Embarrassed. After her sputtery scolding that day, he stayed out of women’s spaces, though his curiosity often swelled, like the smell of mothballs in a bolted closet.
Two years ago, when he’d met Meg at a jazz bar on lower Westheimer, he learned right away that she was the take-charge type. She introduced herself to him — “Larsen,” she said, “Meg”—and bought him a drink. She asked him home a week later, after their second date. It was her idea that they move in together. She was the one who ended the affair.
In all that time, it didn’t occur to him to ask her about birth control. Of course she’d see to it. She saw to everything. To even raise the question would have insulted her organizational skills, on which she prided herself keenly. “You know that book, The Five-Minute Manager?” she asked him once. “I do it all in three.”
Each night she whispered herself to sleep, ticking off tomorrow’s tasks until she was still and lost beside him.
These attempts to order life’s sloppiness Henry found touching — the way she stacked her pillows on her side of the bed, folded her clothes neatly in the laundry hamper. His things — wallet, ties, handkerchiefs — sprawled around the rooms like relaxed, friendly guests.
One morning, shortly before their second anniversary together, Meg pressed him, “Do you think you’d like to be a father someday? What do you think of children?”
They’d never even talked about marriage. “Don’t you think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves?” he asked. He didn’t mean to stall; he’d honestly never considered kids.
“I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about,” Meg said.
“Well, how do you feel?”
“I asked you, Henry. Don’t turn it around on me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Forget it, then.”
“Well, I don’t.”
After that, she acted impatient with him whenever he broached the subject. He still didn’t know how he felt; on the other hand, he had no trouble at all picturing himself with a little girl or boy, playing catch on a lawn, scribbling dragons with crayons, or singing the child to sleep with tales of princes or cows. These thoughts even warmed him — maybe he knew how he felt after all.
But Meg wouldn’t talk about it now. She looked more exhausted than usual each evening when she returned from her job at the advertising agency. One night she went to bed immediately after supper. “What’s the matter?” he whispered. She flinched when he touched her.
“I’m tired of having to make up my mind, and yours, about every little thing, Henry.”
His hand stiffened on her hip. “That’s not fair, Meg, and you know it.”
“No?” He caught the scornful edge in her voice, a quick swipe in the air like a lawn-mower blade. “I’ve tried and tried to get you to act — ”
“Exactly! You even want to plan my taking control!”
“That’s not true.”
“When you’re ready to discuss something, we have to decide on the spot, right? I like to take a little more time, honey, be a tad more careful — ”
“Damn you, Henry!”
“Well, damn you too!”
“I can’t stand it!”
“Who’s asking you to?”
That night he spent, angry, on the couch, listening to her wracked sobbing in the bedroom. In the morning he apologized; so did she, and that evening they baked a nice lasagna together (she insisted on adding a dash more basil after he’d stuck it in the oven), and made love after dinner.
Two weeks later, she disappeared for a couple of days, a Thursday and a Friday. When she showed up again, early Saturday morning, looking washed-out and weary, she wouldn’t tell him where she’d been.
“For God’s sakes, I was frantic, Meg. I was ready to call — ”
“I had to be on my own for a while, to think things through.”
“What things?”
“Our things.”
“You had me worried sick.”
“Henry.” She touched his arm — more gently, he thought later, than she ever had. “I want you to move out,” she said.
He woke with the sliver of a hangover, a piercing ache right above his left ear.
At lunch, he called Kate from work. “How are you feeling?”
“Better today, thanks. It’s such a relief to wake up and not see those boxes. Thank you. I’m afraid I was a bit of a pill last night — ”
“Not at all.”
“No, I was in a pissy mood. I know I wasn’t pleasant. If you’re still game, I’d like to see the Cocteau film. My treat, okay? Make it up to you.”
He assured her she didn’t owe him a thing, but they agreed to meet at the theater at seven. He spent the afternoon tracking the quarterly losses of a local shoe company, a raggedy wholesale outfit whose CEO had come to him for help. Their books were a tangle, and by the time he got off work he was beat.
Kate in her yellow smock perked him up. She’d tied her hair in a lazy bun; it wasn’t going to stay, and he found himself gleefully eager, waiting for the soft and sexy tumble.
The theater was sparse, stale, cramped. The film — an old, scratchy print — broke twice, blurred: Beauty looked as bristly as the Beast. The crowd booed. Henry didn’t care. He was happy, holding Kate’s hand. He cried at the end, when the handsome lovers kissed.
Afterward they walked to the hamburger shop to split a basket of fries (“I’m craving grease,” Kate said, “platters and platters of grease”). Kitschy paintings of Marilyn and Elvis lined the light-green walls, old 45s (“Telstar,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Love Potion Number Nine”) stocked the restored, ancient jukebox, and a pair of fifties’ car fins crowned big silver doors marked “Guys” and “Gals.”
The Cokes came in thick glass cups with paper straws.
Henry loved the good-old-days decor, the laughter, the talk. Men and women at play. “They do nostalgia very well here,” he said. “Kind of romantic.”
Kate nodded.
“Anything wrong?”
“No. Well. Ben and I used to come here.”
“Oh,” Henry said. “Of course. Of course. We can go somewhere else.”
“It’s not the place, Henry. Really. I like it. It’s … when you mentioned nostalgia …”
“What?” He touched her hand.
“It hit me: that was Ben’s whole deal. I mean, look where I live.”
Henry reconsidered the tables. He noticed the curves of the booth seats, the plump leather angles that spilled people into each other, accommodating the body’s desires. “I’m not a college kid,” Kate said. “But here I am, right in the middle of the Nikes and the back-assward baseball caps. Why?” She shook her head. “Ben wanted to ‘stay young.’ He liked living like a student. Reminded him of his best days, as a fraternity jock.”