Danny’s eyes sober. “That’s serious stuff. It breaks my heart to think of kids getting hooked. They don’t have the tools to get out from under it.”
On television, a child dressed as Darth Vader attempts to move a dog with his mind.
“I used to be great at weddings.” He raises his arms to hold an invisible partner. “Most men don’t get how to partner. Please stay,” he says. “I don’t have anyone to talk to.”
“I’m sorry.”
Danny writes: DON’T FORGET TO GET MARRIED on a Post-it and hands it to me. He returns to his recliner. R2-D2 lies next to him, placing his head on Danny’s knee. “Bye, pup,” I say. Then, to Danny, “It actually is a lot of fun, hanging out with the crippled guy.”
His eyes remain on the television as he flips through muted channels. “See ya.”
I hurry down the street until the chased sensation dissipates. I stop at a DON’T WALK and listen to my messages. The florist reminds me that we have an appointment. Her certainty calms me, along with a message from Rose, who says she will join me after the movie. I am an ordinary woman getting ordinary married to an ordinary man. This thought fails to soothe.
A woman pausing next to me wears a coat over a red sarong. The light turns green and we cross together, reach the adjacent sidewalk in step. Our strides match though I’m younger and wearing sneakers. How is she so fast? We move down the street in such sync we may as well be lovers. I won’t slow my pace because I want to get away. I won’t move faster for fear of appearing aggressive. I hedge, debate myself.
I pump my arms subtly so she does not notice the effort. It is important this woman thinks I am winning effortlessly. My legs are strong from running. My pelvis is uncracked. My original heart beats solid in its cage. I have time to kill and the ability to see a movie in the city. Should I acknowledge the situation? A well-timed chuckle can engender camaraderie, even in strangers, but when I dare to check her face it is blank. She engages in no interior debate, unaware that she is doing the walking equivalent of doppelgänging me on the street. She is effortless.
I fill with unaccountable anger. Am I invisible? I should never have empathized. Fuck this woman’s ease and what it reveals in me.
She stops unexpectedly. Without thinking, I halt, too. She is younger than I’d have guessed because she wears the coat of a much older woman.
“You’re trying so hard.” Her eyes are pity-filled.
“I—” I say, but have no idea how to complete the sentence, which she seems to know because she turns and proceeds down the street with enviable agility.
EWAN MCGREGOR DOES HIS BEST
The movie is called Beginners and stars Ewan McGregor, a man who could easily be mistaken for another man. Perhaps this is why he is famous.
Ewan faces the slow, ecstatic dying of his father, played by Christopher Plummer, who comes out as gay, then spends the rest of the film enjoying a predeath Rumspringa, cavorting with a hunky boyfriend decades younger. Ewan meets a girl with laryngitis who has a nose I want to cover with my mouth. She is dressed like Charlie Chaplin and they end up on a gauzy predawn Los Angeles street. He offers her a ride but she says nah. They roller-skate down the hallway of her hotel. His smitten talking dog continues to ask when they will be married. Christopher Plummer is dying. Los Angeles waits by the phone for itself to call.
The theater’s stilted, matter-of-fact air makes me capable of clear thought. Ewan McGregor’s feckless, loose kindness reminds me of my brother, though in this moment everything does.
I remember Tom’s wedding to Sara Something, when I was twenty-nine and he was thirty-two. He overdosed, survived. His tuxedo shirt slit down the middle by the EMTs, the pulsing of his blood over his chest. I wasn’t nice about it. It came at the end of years of unanswered messages, sudden criticisms, distracted tones. I left him at the hospital, ate vanilla wafers in my parked car. After that we didn’t speak.
Ewan McGregor finds himself, when on the precipice of connection, lacking. He does what he thinks is his best. It doesn’t work. He does his actual best and the movie ends.
Descending the escalator I see Rose standing in her winter coat underneath the marquee. Pale sun blurs the buildings and lights up her pretty bun. I will tell her my grandmother visited me as a bird and she will understand the complexities of impending marriage. She will help me navigate this emotional terrain because we’ve spent our whole friendship dissecting the merits of everything from marriage to ice cream sandwiches. Case-by-case basis, both. A simple and moving thought, a friend. I am already calmed by the fact of her waiting.
The lobby’s clock reads one fifteen as I push through the doors to the bright outside and say, “Rose.” I love saying her name. When I say “Rose,” and she turns, it means she’s mine. I say her name and she makes a tinny oh sound as a frown creases her forehead. It cannot be disappointment because we have history longer than the entire world. I take her into my arms. Our hug lasts longer than she seems to think it will.
I point to her wallet. “Where’s your bag?”
“At the office,” she says. “Too much to carry.”
“Not very safe in this town of crazies.”
She shrugs me off. “Thanks, Mom.”
Rose and I stood at seventh-grade gym mirrors in our sports bras debating whether we were ready to graduate to real ones. In high school we clipped boutonnieres to our dates’ lapels, took photos on the carpeted steps of her mother’s apartment. We learned to pull cigarette smoke into the part of the throat where important things go. We researched blow jobs and knew not to get so distracted by the shaft that we ignored the balls. We never, ever ignored the balls. We detailed our first sexual experiences to each other in reverent missives as we shed the veil of our baby fat. We were sacred, horny angels massaging the balls. We claimed to adore the taste of semen. We swore we were going to be famous simply for being ourselves, humble with the air of mystery of a jewelry-ad woman from our magazines, who checks her watch only to decide, fa-la, time doesn’t matter! Acclaimed for our dance moves, synchronized with outfits that didn’t match-match but winked at each other. Her mother remarried in high school and her family moved to the suburbs. My father had been dead since childhood, so I borrowed her stepfather, a heavily belted man who overused the phrase, Okeydokey, smoky. My mother couldn’t afford any of the colleges that accepted me, but Rose didn’t bring up the disparity in our situations. She never joined the others who mocked my skin color. We penned monologues to each other about our separate colleges, fascinated by who we were on the verge of becoming on our new campuses—hers leafy and liberal and mine in Queens, where I still lived in my mother’s house. Rose never mentioned my taciturn mother. I fretted in the waiting room of her abortion. When I spent a year in the hospital, she learned that ice chips allay anxiety. After we passed the age of fame she was still a celebrity to me, but after my injury, she retracted. She answered her phone less frequently and rarely accepted any of my offers to get together. Immediately after accepting the groom’s proposal I asked her to be my maid of honor. What I love most about being engaged are the opportunities to see her.
We poke at chicken salads in a Union Square deli. Rose can take long lunch breaks because she practically runs her medical journal. A large fern walks by with a serious-looking woman.