Anyway, I won’t have to comfort and console him when he smacks into a brick wall of disappointment. It’s not like I expect him to still be around when he discovers that the good Christian people of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties have no intention of giving him an opportunity to pat their impressionable young sons on the ass when they make a free throw. Harold is a temporary thing, no doubt about it. It’s hard to believe it’s sustained itself for three months. It’s still surprises me that he wakes up in my bed most mornings, brushes his teeth (with his own toothbrush, nestled in the cup beside mine), chugs a glass of orange juice, and says “call you later” as he walks out the door. He calls by noon, every day, for no reason at all, not because he has to, only to ask “how’s it going” and we decide where and when to meet after work. And every morning at 11:45 I start to fidget, growing irritable, because I’m certain that this is the day he’s not going to call, then the phone rings and by 12:15 I’m content and satisfied, a man with plans and someone to be with. Someone whose odd little tics are more endearing than irritating.
Usually.
Harold can barely carry a tune, but he loves to sing. Actually, his taste in music isn’t bad, even if he refuses to concede that his beloved Jesus and Mary Chain ought to pay the Velvets royalties for ripping off their songbook. He says it wouldn’t hurt for me to try to appreciate music recorded after the invention of the compact disc. Robert says it’s all very romantic. I think it’s preposterous, this thing with Harold. Robert asks what’s so preposterous about falling in love? God, he’s so young. Where does he get these ideas?
I’m about to call Harold to warn him we might run a little late. But I drop the phone, dumbfounded, not knowing how to greet my surprise guest.
“Fucking Jesus, I don’t fucking believe it! Oh Jesus, I’m sorry, damn, I wasn’t thinking!”
“It’s okay, Andy.” Alice laughs. “I think Bradley is a little young to be permanently scarred by your dirty mouth.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, forgetting my manners. “I mean, I’m glad to see you. It’s just, well, I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
The baby is fussing, demanding her undivided attention. Alice looks like a suburban sherpa, saddled with her infant and an overstuffed, oversize canvas bag.
“Here, let me take that,” I offer.
“You can call him Bradley.”
“No. No. I mean the bag, not the baby,” I say as I roll my chair from behind my desk.
“Thanks,” she says. “Can you get the bottle out of the bag? Is there a microwave around here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Ah well, we’ll make do, won’t we, kiddo?” she asks.
I start to answer, then realize she’s talking to her son. Baby Bradley is soon sucking away, drifting into sleep.
My wife, by Bellini, Madonna and Bambino, placid, content, destiny fulfilled at last.
“He’s beautiful,” I say.
“Don’t forget we were together for twenty years. I know you think all babies look parboiled.”
“Other people’s babies,” I say. “Not yours,” I add quickly so there’s no room for misinterpretation. “But what are you doing in Gastonia? You didn’t make the trip to our fair city just to see me.”
“We came to Charlotte to spend the weekend with Barry’s parents. I drove over to Gastonia to see you.”
“Well,” I say, embarrassed. “It’s good to see you.”
“Thank you again for the baby gift. It was lovely.”
“It was nothing.”
“Well, it was a lovely nothing.”
“Your thank-you card was sweet.”
“You look much better than the last time I saw you.”
“I was a mess. I don’t think I ever thanked you for coming to the funeral. I wouldn’t have made it through the day if you hadn’t been with me.”
“I wanted to be there.”
The baby is squirming again.
“Would you like to hold him?”
“No. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to hold him, but what if I drop him? I’m not very experienced.”
“You’re not going to drop him,” she says as she lays him in my arms.
“He smells like a baby,” I say, amazed by the sweet powdery scent of his pink skin.
“Enjoy it.” She laughs. “Sometimes he smells like a goat. I’m warning you. He can turn in a second.”
I squeeze him gently and tell him what a lucky, lucky boy he is.
“You would have made a wonderful father,” she says. Knowing her as well as I do, I detect the slight hint of regret in her voice, the what-if, the if only.
“I hope I would have been a better father than I was a husband.”
“You were a good husband,” she says firmly, leaving no question her opinion is not open to discussion.
“I doubt Curtis would agree with you on that subject.”
“What my father thinks is beside the point.”
And now I know. The obvious can no longer be denied. Curtis hadn’t ended my marriage. Neither had Barry. It was my wife.
“You may not believe it, but you’re back in my father’s good graces.”
“You can’t be serious.”
She lowers her voice several octaves. Her impersonation of the King of Unpainted Furniture is still pitch-perfect.
Goddamn it, not one of these cocksuckers is half the salesman that little cocksucker was.
We’re laughing, tears in our eyes, and Baby Bradley is protesting at having his nap disturbed. I don’t know how long Harold has been standing at the door to my office. He looks a bit forlorn, like he’s just stumbled across a party to which he hadn’t been invited.
“Oh, hey,” I say. It’s awkward being stranded between Alice ’s curiosity and Harold’s self-consciousness. A moment passes, then two. I can’t seem to kick-start the introductions.
This is…the woman who shared my life for twenty years. Sorry I can’t be more specific. “Wife” isn’t accurate. “Ex-wife” sounds harsh, too full of bitterness and regret. “Friend” would be an insult to our history; it can’t describe the bond between us, even now.
This is…a pal, a buddy, the man who’s been falling asleep beside me for the past few months. “Boyfriend” is too juvenile; we’re not in high school and he hasn’t asked me to go steady. He’s definitely not a “partner” or “lover.”
A half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary and I can’t find two that fit.
“ Alice, this is Harold. Harold, this is Alice.”
“Nice to meet you,” she says.
“Nice to meet you,” he mumbles, shyly approaching her and extending his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No, please, it’s okay,” Alice and I say in unison.
“I’ll call you later,” he says as he backs out the door.
“No, no. We’ll just be a minute.”
“Really, I was just getting ready to leave,” Alice says.
“We’re driving to Durham. We need to be there by seven,” I explain, offering a reason for his palpable anxiousness.
“ Durham?” she asks. Harold doesn’t know the subtext to her question.
“Alice and I used to live in Durham,” I explain.
“I thought you lived in High Point?”
“Before that, when I was at Duke.”
Another fact in my personal history Harold doesn’t know.
“It was nice to meet you,” he repeats, excluded, the odd man out. “I’ll wait downstairs.”
“I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”
“He seems very nice,” she says after he’s gone.
“He is.”
“How did you meet?”
“Believe it or not, he pursued me.” I laugh. “Harold has very low expectations.”
She rocks little Bradley in her arms, saying nothing, knowing her silence will compel me to babble on.