Crushing Crystal (27 page)

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Authors: Evan Marshall

BOOK: Crushing Crystal
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Chapter 32
W
hen I got home from dinner with Reilly, I made a cup of Sleepytime tea and slipped into my pajamas for the night. I shook out my hair, brushed my teeth and looked at myself in the mirror. Lines from my nostrils to my outer lips were beginning to form and my neck was forming what Sophie calls “tree rings.” Never had the aging process seemed less gradual.
Outside of my bedroom window, I saw the stark branches of a ginkgo tree lit by a yellow streetlight. A group of four or five tipsy young voices admired one of Daniel's sculptures in the gallery window, as the group walked by in heels that sounded as heavy as horseshoes. After checking the time, I decided to call Matt. I settled into bed and flipped the switch to illuminate my stars. As I dialed, I wondered why he hadn't called me by now. I'd been home an entire day already without a word from him. I resolved to have the big talk with him once and for all. That night, no excuses.
“Malone, I was just about to call you,” Matt said excitedly when he heard my voice. “I have got really big news. Remember the guy I met with about the film? He found us another producer and we've got the final chunk of money we need to finish the movie.”
“Congratulations, Matt, you must be elated,” I said.
“Elated is not the word, Malone.”
“I'm glad I caught you in a good mood, because there's some things I think we need to talk about.”
“I don't like the sound of this,” Matt said. “You're not breaking up with me, are you?”
I didn't like the sound of
that
. He was so casual in his delivery. If it were me I would have approached the topic with a tone of great trepidation. “You're not,” I'd say before a dramatic pause. Then I'd lower my voice as though I was announcing the war-dead, “breaking up with me, are you?” Oh well, I supposed he doesn't have to respond
exactly
the way I would have, I realized.
“No, of course not, Matt. I want to hammer down a date for our wedding, figure out where we're going to live and talk about, you know the whole kids issue.”
“Oh is that all?” he laughed.
“Actually no,” I said. “I was hoping you could tell me why we, why you ended things between us after college.”
“Malone, do we have to do this tonight?” Matt asked. “I kind of just wanted to celebrate.”
“I thought our getting things settled would be a good thing. I know it's not drinking champagne out of my shoe or anything, but it would be a good step for us, I think.”
“Drinking champagne out of your shoe? Why would I drink champagne out of your shoe?”
“Matt, it's just an expression. Can we at least talk about a wedding date?”
“Yeah, no problem,” he resigned. “Can you hold for a minute, though? The other line is beeping.”
I wondered why I even wanted to rehash something that happened between us fifteen years ago. Couldn't I let the past be the past, and just focus on our future? People grow and change after fifteen years. Why wasn't that enough of an answer for me? Why did I insist on making him a guest on my own personal
Oprah Winfrey Show?
Where the hell is that man, anyway?
“Malone, are you still there?” he rushed back. “I'm so sorry about that. It was Rick's friend, Curtis, calling about the film. There are some Pasteur descendants that are up in arms about our film, and are threatening to sue.”
As well they should. But wait, back to me, Matt.
“Matt, why didn't you ever return my phone calls after you got back from Europe that summer?” I asked firmly.
Matt sighed. “Why are we beating this dead horse?”
His dead horse reference reminded me of the scene in Matt's film where Louis Pasteur was pouring arsenic into the hay bales after the bank turned him down for a loan. Did they even do bank loans back then?
“It's not a dead horse to me,” I said.
“But it is to me,” he returned quickly.
We had a silent standoff for a few moments. “Look, I was very young. I didn't want to get tied down when you were going to be in Philly and I would be in L.A. I was twenty-two years old. I was a different person than I am now.”
“How?”
“I'm older and wiser, Malone. I don't know. What do you want me to say? I'm sure you're the one, okay?!”
“Well, what if you change your mind. Would you tell me? Or would you just disappear from my life again?”
“This is the real deal, babe. I'm never going to leave you,” he assured me.
“Okay then, the last woman you dated. Did you end it, or did she?”
“I did,” he said.
“How did you break it off?” I asked.
“I don't know, we just did,” he said, annoyed.
“Well, how? Did you take her to a restaurant and give her the ‘it's been great' speech. Did you send her an e-mail? How did you break up with her?”
God forbid he should ask me the same question.
“I don't remember, let me check my diary. We just ended it, that's all,” he grew more impatient.
“Aloud?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean did you even tell her it was over or did you just let her figure it out on her own?”
“Who fucking cares about how I broke up with Sandreen? It's you and me now. I'm sure if you talked to her today, she'd say I handled it fine.”
Sandreen the belly dancer? The one Kyara said he was more serious about than the others?
My tea was finally cool enough to sip. I unwrapped my ankle from the bandage and noticed that the swelling created a distinctly cave woman look. There was a nail file on the nightstand by the bed, so I scooted over and decided I would not let up on the issue until all ten of my fingernails were smoothly filed. This would help me resist the temptation to give in when Matt urged me to change the topic.
“Why did you break up with Sandreen anyway, Matt?”
“Why do you care about that? It has nothing to do with you and me,” he said. “Malone, I gotta tell you, I hate this kind of shit.”
“Matt, I'm just curious about you, that's all. It's not that unusual for a woman to want to know about her fiancé's last girlfriend. It's not some big scandal you're trying to hide from me, is it?”
He laughed. “Just the opposite. It just got stale with Sandreen. After a few months we were in a rut, and it just wasn't fun anymore.”
“You were in a rut with a belly dancer?!” I blurted without thinking.
“Belly dancer? Who told you she's a belly dancer?” Matt laughed.
Thank God that half-wit Kyara got it wrong. Sandreen was not a belly dancer at all. She was an assistant in a biotech lab. She was an exterminator. She stood on an assembly line stamping “Made in the USA” stickers on the bottoms of wicker baskets.
“She's a stripper,” he said.
A stripper?! He got bored with a stripper?! I am an accountant for Christ sake.
“Anyway, Sandreen is nothing next to you, Malone,” he told me as I sat in my bed wearing flannel pajamas and sipping herbal tea. “Every time I see you, it's like, I can't think of the word for it.”
Try!
“It's like, I feel really, you know,” he groped.
I don't know! Find a word.
“Awesome,” he said
Awesome?
“Matt, you know, we've only been together a total of two weeks since we've been back together,” I said. “Do you ever get nervous that life will get mundane with me too once we're married?”
“Nope,” he said. “How could it? Everything about you excites me.”
There are older couples who are still madly in love with each other. Maybe Matt and I would be one of them. We did have the advantage of marrying later in life. At best, Matt and I would have sixty years together. I could still be awesome at ninety-six. Why did I have to be so cynical and think that the way Matt felt about Sandreen was the way he'd one day feel about me? Sandreen was not me. People have one soul mate. I was Matt's. Sandreen got stale because she was not the right one for Matt, so screw her. However they ended their relationship had nothing to do with ours. I was sure I'd already given their breakup more thought than she had. Surely, she was over it by now and happily dancing naked on someone else's lap.
“So that's it, Matt?” I asked. “That's all there was to our breakup? You were young and went out to explore the world, and got distracted by all of the other new and exciting experiences life had to offer a twenty-two-year-old?”
“Basically.”
“No band of Italian reform school escapees?” I asked.
“I wish,” he laughed.
“And you didn't call me back because you were a young and foolish gutless wimp?” I asked.
Matt laughed. “I guess you could say that.”
“But that's not how you handle things now, you say. Right?”
“Right.”
“You communicate directly, now. Right?”
“Yes. Very directly,” he said.
“Okay,” I sighed to let him know I had concluded this line of questioning. “When should we get married?”
“Gee Malone, you're a real romantic,” he laughed. “Grab your calendar and let's pick a date.”
Matt and I settled on the last Sunday in June, which also happened to be my birthday. At first, I wasn't crazy about the idea because it seemed as if his marrying me was a birthday gift for me. Like he resigned with a droning, “Okay, since it's your birthday, I'll marry you.” Then of course, I could always count on the combo birthday-anniversary gifts. Finally, I agreed to it when Matt said that getting married on my birthday signified the beginning of our new life. I liked that. Corny as hell, but I liked it.
“Okay, and we've decided on Ann Arbor for the wedding, right?” I asked.
“Check.”
“Okay, here's the big one,” I treaded lightly. “Your coast or mine?”
“I guess I could be happy in New York,” he shrugged.
I dropped the phone and shouted with joy. After a few seconds I picked the phone up, breathless. “Matt you're going to be so happy here, you'll see. I promise you're going to look back at this decision as the best one you ever made. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“There's a price for this, Malone,” he said. “You need to stop second-guessing me now, and just accept the fact that I'm crazy about you. No more rehashing old shit, okay?”
“Deal,” I rushed. “Deal, deal, deal!” I sang. “Matt, you are the love of my life. Do you know that?”
“Yeah, Malone, I do. And you're the love of mine. Do
you
know that?”
“Yes, yes I do. No doubt about it. I love you, you love me.”
Speaking the lyrics to the grating Barney song reminded me of the one last issue we had to settle. To breed or not to breed. “Um, Matt. Do you really want kids?” I asked.
“Of course I do,” he answered. “Who doesn't want kids?”
“Parents,” I quipped.
He was silent. After a moment's pause, Matt asked, “You don't want kids?”
“Well, it's not that I don't want them. I just don't, I can't see how we'd, I feel like it's, you know? No I don't want them.”
“Not even one?” Matt asked.
“I just never saw myself with a child,” I said.
“I never saw myself without at least one,” Matt replied.
We both sighed. Matt said, “I compromised on the New York thing, I think you should give a little here. One kid. Deal?”
“No,” I said softly. “I don't have the patience for motherhood and I'm not going to have a child as a compromise. Don't you think a child deserves a mother who wants to be a mother?”
“I don't know,” Matt said. “Lots of women are on the fence at first and they really grow to love the kid. I think you'd warm up to motherhood once you had the baby.”
I couldn't believe I was even considering this for a moment. I closed my eyes and pictured a newborn wrapped in a blanket, sleeping in my arms as I fed him a bottle and rocked together in our chair.
Yuck!
I jarred myself out of this forced-fantasy with the realization that the little mole rat would soon shoot shit out of his four-day-old ass and I'd be the one left to clean it up. Then he'd get older and start waddling around the house getting fingerprints all over the walls. My conversations with him would be about shapes and colors. Later I could look forward to engaging topics like letters and numbers. I'd talk to other women about diaper rash and teething. Soon, I'd find myself at birthday parties and playgrounds. And by the time two years went by, my old life, my old self would spiral down the drain like the blood in the shower scene of
Psycho.

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