The Adults Part 26

"It scares me that you make references to books you haven't read," I said.

"Hey," he said. "Let's never mind that. Let's just go to the bone church."

The presumably French man winked at me.

"Le Little Mole, can you hear me?" Jonathan said. Stop staring at her, I thought. I wanted to scream in his face. The blond woman was only the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. "Le Little Mole!"

"Stop calling me le Little Mole!" I shouted at his face.

The French man was staring. The blond woman was touching her thighs. Jonathan sighed. "Le Little Mole, I need to tell you something."

"What?"

"You're not going to like it."

"Then don't tell me, please."

Which is what I should have said to my mother when she told me that she and my father were getting divorced: I don't want to know how a man can get up and leave his three-thousand-dollar desk behind him. I don't want to know if he buys a new one. It should have been what I said to Mark when he leaned over my shoulder and said, "Who's over there behind that tree?" It should have been what I said to Ester right before she admitted Laura wasn't my sister. It should have been what I said to Janice when I sat pa.s.senger in her old car: don't tell me. I don't want to know how many fingers Mr. Basketball can fit inside you, Janice; I already know. Two, sometimes three, depending on how relaxed you are. It was like I already knew: to be happy I am going to have to stop listening to everybody I love.

"Okay," Jonathan said.

"Okay," I said.

This was an example of a warning sign: as a child when Jonathan had walked into his kitchen and said, "I'm bored," his mother would make him do things like wash all the walls with a toothbrush or count out five hundred toothpicks just to put them back in the box; then she'd lean over his shoulder and say, "Are you bored yet?" He would shake his head, no no. "Good," she'd say. "Jesus was never bored."

"Just say it," I said. "You're bored with me. Is that what you have to tell me? I'm nothing like what you thought I would be."

He leaned over and covered my mouth with his. He pulled away, and we looked each other in the face.

"I'm not bored," he said. "I'm married, Emily."

The French man was calling me over with one finger. The blond woman was still touching her thighs.

"All right," Jonathan said. "I just had to say it. There, I said it. I'll say it again. I'm married. I'm married, I'm married, I'm married."

I felt the tiny fire start at the tip of my throat.

I thought maybe this was just another joke, so we turned to each other and laughed. We laughed until we were in tears. I did not look at the French man, though I knew he was staring. If I made eye contact, he became part of the joke too, which, I slowly realized, was not a joke at all. Nothing was even funny. The dog was dead. But Jonathan couldn't stop laughing, his face almost a dangerous shade of blue, so he pointed to the door and walked out of the cafe, like, Excuse me, I have to remember why this isn't all that funny so my lungs don't explode inside me.

And, to think, still. I was still definitely not an adult. No adult looked at another adult and laughed about nothing until their face turned blue. I was never going to grow up if I continued to sit here; I knew this for sure. We needed to leave. We needed to go to the bone church, bury the dead dog like responsible people, go back to the hotel, and walk through the doors and stare up at all the vaulted ceilings and trace our fingers on the French windowsills. We needed to sneak into the warm pool and swim lazily next to the gla.s.s swans, wash the chlorine off in the shower, scrub our bodies with free soap and love each other because the sterile scent of our skin reminded us of luxurious things we used to love.

But I was still there with a half-smoked joint and a dead dog and a table with stl written on it in red marker. Stl. Table. And Jonathan was married? In this underground bar with no windows, everything was dangerously without context, especially the English language: tay-bull. Mare-ead. What did that even mean?

I sat back with my head against the seat and my hands on the stl and my feet itched. It felt like there were c.o.c.kroaches at my ankles, live scorpions in my mouth, fire rus.h.i.+ng up my leg until the whole of me was devoured, my body not quick to burn, but slow to catch. Pathetic flesh crumbling to ash.

The French man slid up next to me. Jonathan was nowhere to be seen.

The French man wanted to know all about me, like my habits and hobbies and preferences regarding all things, but he didn't know much English.

"Salut," the French man said, like, informal h.e.l.lo, like, Nice pants, babe. "ca va? D'ou viens tu?" like, Where are you from, but only in a really casual way.

We discovered that our common language was functional Spanglish.

"Quiero saber you," he said. Like, I really want to know you in a scholastic way.

"Le Little Mole," I said. "Like the cartoon. I fight crime."

And then, even as I felt sure I hated Jonathan, I knew I loved him more than anything I had yet loved in my life. Soft food against my tongue, Mark and I lying on the stone wall as kids, the memory of my parents' laughter in the kitchen, bobbing in the backwaters of my brain: all slowly drowning evidence that I was worth more than this.

"Le Little Mole," the French man said, and shook my hand. I peered around the French man's head. Where was Jonathan? He could have been anywhere. Jonathan never said, "Be right back." Though why would he? Wasn't it always implied?

"Le Little Mole," he said. "etats-Unis?"

"America, si."

"Te gusta Praha?" Are you happy here?

"Pan muy malo," I said. Have you noticed there is a bread problem here?

"What es tu address en Praha?" he asked. You're funny, I will find you, like, You're already the arrow in my heart and where have you been shot from?

"No address," I said. I would never tell you where I live, WEIRDO.

"Por que no?"

"No libro." No book. I meant, No pen.

"Maquillaje. Or, how do you say, lipstick?"

"No."

"Write in mi sangre," he said, and pointed to his arm. Mi sangre, my blood. He smiled, and I sensed his instant dedication, like I was already the skin over his muscles and he had no choice in picking a covering. He put his hands in his pockets to find a pen, a pin, a tiny knife to release the sangre, and I understood I must leave before this was no longer a really weird experience. But the man had moved closer. I was lead against the leather of my seat, his hand was on my thigh, and I measured how f.u.c.ked-up I was becoming by how normal this felt.

"Here," he said. "Listo. Tell me how it is I can . . . ver . . . you . . . again?" Like, I am ready to see you again.

I thought about saying, Dumba.s.s, I'm still here-but Jonathan was the only person in the world who would have laughed at this, so I just shrugged my shoulders and felt my grasp on Jonathan slip. Even though I wasn't releasing my grip. Perhaps that was the problem; I was holding on to something that was dead. Walking around the city with a corpse in my hand. I couldn't see Jonathan anywhere through the smoke. I nearly choked understanding that this whole time, I had felt his hands against me, but this whole time, he had been married.

"Aha!" said the French man. The man found a bottle opener on his key chain.

"Escribir on mi arm," he said. "Scratch suave. Leave solo blanco marks on mi skin."

I wanted to tell this man to go away, but I couldn't say the words. I was too disconnected from my lips.

"Don't you know where you live?" the French man asked, the only thing he said in perfect English.

Cafe Red's architecture was designed to make you feel like you were dying; how apocalyptic to place a window in an underground bar.

"No," I told the French man. "No, I don't know where I live."

I could feel ghosts climbing these walls, I could feel the dog attempting escape before the snow buried us in this concrete room forever. But I couldn't even get off my chair. I couldn't even feel my own hands. It was possible that a person could live their life and not really live anywhere at all. It was possible that Jonathan was never coming back. It was possible that I didn't know Jonathan at all. It was possible that once you left, you weren't allowed back in. It was possible that the woman with long blond hair dancing by the fake ivy in the corner followed him out and that this was entirely Jonathan's motivation in faking his own suffocation. It was possible that she was a better partner than me, that Jonathan could have better partners than me, even though he was always my best. I couldn't blame him. I would stop breathing if it gave me cheekbones as high as hers. Just like that, I had stopped breathing. I was suddenly so sad, I felt I could will everything out of existence, even my own breath. But how appropriate. I was dirty and alone and in love with a married man. I should have been out of breath. I looked down at my shoes. They were filthy. But the filth always counts for something. "The filth is what proves we drive the car!" my mother used to shout at my father when he complained about the car being too dirty. "The filth is what proves your father isn't paying any attention," Ester had said to me.

I was always acting as though I never had any choices, but in the end, that was the only thing I ever really had. So I made a choice. I took the bottle opener in my hand. I pressed it against the French man's forearm.

"Suave," the French man said. "No breaky skin."

And my mother was right: the filth was what proved we were moving against things.

The French man slid his fingers through mine.

And then, "I'm backski," Jonathan said, just like that. He sat down and leaned against the back of the chair. He sighed. Even though I wanted to tear his face off, I was grateful for his return. I was always grateful for his return. Even though I had a million questions, all I wanted to do was just let go of the French man and put my head on Jonathan's shoulder. I wasn't even mad. There were too many things I always a.s.sumed. Too many people I tried to claim as mine. And that was wrong. If there was anything I learned when I was fourteen, it was that people were not yours. Jonathan was never my happiness to be had. I put down the bottle opener and decided to at least be kind to the French man next to me-Listen, go away, I don't need this. The French man looked at me and Jonathan and rolled his eyes. "Putain," he said, and walked away.

I inhaled the last of the joint and it crumbled to ash in my fingers. With my lungs now wide open, I felt calm again. I spoke to Jonathan in puffs of smoke: Nice. To. See. You. Againski. Jonathan looked back at me. Forgiveski me, he mouthed. I could see that he was sad too, but maybe this was my imagination treating him as me. Jonathan grabbed my hand. Jonathan was still the only one who understood my impatience with the world.

"Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here, le Little Mole. Let's go to the bone church."

I nodded. I agreed. It was time to go to the bone church. I grabbed the suitcase. We got out of our seats and walked out of the cafe. The night air came at me like a wave and I closed my eyes, bracing for something.

But we lived. And we walked.

"If you could put your bones in the bone church, what would you want to be?" Jonathan asked me while we were waiting for the late-night tram. He leaned against me as he explained why he wanted to be the chandelier: even after he was dead, he still wanted all his bones to be together in one place.

"I'd be the bell that tolls at midnight," I said.

"Is there a bell that tolls at midnight?"

"Fine, then," I said, and I can't explain why this felt like the cruelest thing he ever said to me.

When the late-night tram never came, Jonathan walked me back to my apartment. He wouldn't kiss me on the mouth. Now that I knew about his wife, he said it felt like cheating. He was sorry for coming. "I shouldn't have come," he said. Jonathan said he was leaving the next morning for London, and then New York. Susan was in Africa. She was coming home to be with him. I nodded like I understood something. I closed the door. I put the suitcase down. No matter where we went, we always ended up back where we started. I laid my head down on the pillow and when I tried to dream of some other life, Jonathan was right-there was no bell that tolled at midnight. But there was a garland of arms lining the entrance of the church. There were elbows flanking the altar. There were strings of skulls draped over windows like curtains, like, welcome, like, hey, like, Why don't you kneel down and make yourself at home? Why don't you prepare your bones to be something more elaborate than yourself?

This Is an Example of a Warning Sign

30.

I had a new family. I always had a new family. "Isn't that wonderful?" my mother had asked, popping blue-cheese-stuffed red peppers into her mouth on Christmas Eve.

That was how my mother liked to frame it: my stepsister, Adora, my stepbrother, Nick, and my stepfather, Bill. Bill kept his hair trimmed short and insisted on a real Christmas tree even though I reminded him that real things were too much work and pointed to his three dogs, chewing the couch. Bill smiled, stood in front of the Christmas tree, and proclaimed that this year, it was Functional Christmas.

I was twenty-six. I lived in Brooklyn, above a deli. Being in my apartment meant feeling like I was always eating something. Every day, I was forced to think of things on top of things on top of other things, or me, in this box, alone. Or the box that sat in the front window of the deli that read 3,000 PEPPER PACKETS. n.o.body ever moved it. n.o.body ever needed that many pepper packets. So it just sat there, forgotten, for a year. The apartment was too expensive to have floorboards that sank in certain spots when I touched them lightly with my foot, but it still did anyway. There was a leak in the ceiling and I called my landlord and he told me the toilet was running in the apartment above me and that was why it was leaking. "But n.o.body lives there?" I asked. Then he cut a two-foot hole in my ceiling and my heating bill doubled. I wore a hat to bed for a week and when I went home for Christmas, Bill made jokes about me being the star of some one-woman film where there were never enough vegetables.

"Santa says that when there is a girl riding the poverty line, Christmas becomes about the things she needs," Bill said to me, holding out gifts.

"This is how my new family talks to me," I told my father over the phone. My father was living in Moscow and called me to celebrate the fact that Russia had officially become a superpower again.

My father talked in jokes and Bill talked in code. Bill was always Santa and I was always this girl. Though I never sat on his lap. And we never drank eggnog and we never kissed. Heavy-cream-based drinks sat in our stomachs and made us feel ungrateful-so no eggnog, my mother said. I opened the gifts. Socks. A cookbook. Luggage identifiers. A printer cartridge. "Thanks," I said.

I was the kind of woman who got printer cartridges for Christmas, and Adora was the kind of woman who got an all-expenses-paid honeymoon to Hawaii, saying, "Thank you, Father," and then looked at me and my printer cartridges like she wished she could help in some way. My mother thought Adora was a phony, and I said, "What's she pretending to be?"

"That's what I'm not sure of yet," my mother said.

We were all pretending. Anyone who thought differently was just pretending. I was pretending that I didn't hear my mother in the kitchen crying into a cereal bowl most nights that week, and Bill was pretending that this didn't bother him. He woke up, walked down the stairs, rubbed her back, and asked her questions like, "What's wrong?" or "Are you sick?" as though her pain had nothing to do with the fact that my father was dying.

Not like I was any better. I coexisted gracefully with all of them; my conversations tended to be mere call-and-responses, ahh-choo-bless-you-thank-you-Bill. But at some point, Bill and I would both need something out of the refrigerator and reach for the door handle at the same time. "I'm really sorry to hear about your father," Bill finally said, opening the door. "I wish there was something more I could do. I feel completely helpless."

"Thanks, Bill," I said, and pulled out the last leftover slice of pizza. "Your helplessness means a lot to me."

He didn't laugh. He just closed the fridge.

"I'm joking," I said, and then he laughed a little, then I laughed a little, and he looked at my slice of pizza, then laughed a little bit more to show me how cool he was with the fact that I just took the last slice of pizza, the one he had bought last night and planned on eating for lunch today, because my father was dying, and whoever's father was dying was automatically the one who got the last slice of pizza.

My boyfriend Kevin seemed to be the only one who understood how to behave. When I told him that my father would be dead in three months, Kevin held my face in his hands. When I screamed and shouted and told him I couldn't stand the feel of my clothes against my skin, he said okay, and took off my s.h.i.+rt, and then my pants, and ran a cool ice cube down my back until it melted and I was calm.

"He calls me A," Adora complained, sorting through a pile of clothes in her bedroom chair while her b.r.e.a.s.t.s darted back and forth like nervous eyes. My stepsister, Adora, was the kind of woman who was always naked from the previous something or other. She was expressing doubts about her fiance, Orrin, as I plucked her bra from the top of her desk. "Then he slaps my a.s.s, like we're on the same sports team or something. Is that normal?"

We were in Greenwich dressing for her engagement party at Orrin's father's house, which was to become Adora and Orrin's house after they married. I was the kind, patient listener clothed in a black dress and amber earrings, hooking her strapless from the back, and I was the only one in the room, so it was my responsibility to ask all of the important questions, such as, "Is this what you really want, Adora, do you really want to be called A for the rest of your life by a man who gets his haircut from a stylist?"

"Don't worry, Adora," I was supposed to say, "we'll just call the whole thing off because this time, things aren't right."

"What do you mean?" Adora would have asked, and I would have told her what I heard Orinn's father say that morning after he thought I left the room: Do you love her more than the Mets?

Of course, Orrin said. I hate the Mets.

Thattaboy. Hate the Mets. Hate 'em hate 'em hate 'em.

I hate the Mets probably more than I love her.

I hate the Mets more than I hate your mother.

And Adora would have found this confusing, but also appalling, and then would have expressed her concerns about dying alone, and I would have reminded her that she was only thirty-two, and there was always a next time, and next time was always better, and the time after that even better, and soon n.o.body would remember this time. This time was fleeting and already forgotten, and next time would be forever: crepe black minidresses that revealed knees and ankles and s.h.i.+ns and we'd toast to your new tall dark and handsome man and we wouldn't care about anything because caring was what invited the suffering in the first place, right? Next time, maybe we would even invite Jesus-did you hear he can turn water into wine? "Imagine how much money we'd save," Adora would have said.

But I was done hooking the bra, and she was beautiful now in her engagement-party dress, a tea green that draped off her shoulders, and I was sipping on coffee, half-listening to her describe the pain of loving too much and half-listening to Phil Collins instructing us to Please Come Out Tonight.

"My name is Adora," she said, walking out of the bedroom to greet the guests. "That's what I tell him."

Adora had a beautiful name to get married in. It was perfect for the invitations, perfect in purple and pink and gold cursive. Bill had named her Adora, Italian for second person singular present imperative of the verb "adorare," Bill joked once. Then he started singing Adora for-a you-a, Adora for-a me-a, Adora for-a everybody! This is the song he used to sing to her at night in a fake Italian accent when she was a little girl, and a song he still sometimes sang when we were all together. But Bill was not here yet. Bill was not even Italian. And neither was my mother really; she was 50 percent, and if she had been there, she would have been not singing, but telling people that I spent a lot of time as a child learning how to spell my name backward.

At the engagement party, Kevin and I sipped on vodka by the yucca canes with Adora's friend from high school Melinda. Melinda was also an interior designer in the greater New York area. She had worked on Coco Chanel's house in Paris, which she got lost in three times because there were so many mirrors. Melinda and Adora were six years older than me, Orrin nine years older than I was, so this meant that all of their friends were in their early thirties, sons and daughters of minor celebrities, inheritors of three-floored town houses in Manhattan and paid tickets to the Ivy Leagues.

"Aren't you just dying to get your hands on the Capote house?" Melinda said.

I swirled the vodka in my mouth with my failing native tongue. It felt thick, like a piece of wet bread I couldn't swallow, filling with holes as it expanded to fit my mouth.

"I've seen pictures of it in Architectural Digest," I said.