Number Theory (2 page)

He got uncomfortable, then stood up and
started to leave. I knew I couldn’t abandon him, not that night. I
told him to go home, put on some comfy party clothes and come back
in two hours to celebrate. He looked a little confused but, also,
there, under his pale skin and his controlled, mathematical veneer,
I saw a twinkle of joy. He smiled so softly, the Mona Lisa would
have looked at it and thought,
right, that’s how it’s
done
.

I called everyone I knew and told them I
needed them. I have friends. Good, good friends that will come when
I need them. I don’t abuse this gift. I wasn’t one of those
pathetic girls that calls her friends when she gets her period or
has a bad date. I did my drinking, sulking and self-pitying – and
smoking - mostly alone. So, my friends knew when I called and said
I needed them, it was serious.

Within one hour, my apartment was full of
people, food, booze and other manners of recreation, chemical and
biological. I briefed them all, told them to make a big deal of
Henry because, and I meant this, he was a big deal. Someone had
picked up the cake and the tubes of decorating goo. What the hell
that stuff is, I will never know. Probably the food the room of
bearded men we call ‘they’ subsists on. My friend Maury, an artist,
went to work on the cake and created a beautiful piece, an homage
to math and Henry.

At precisely the two-hour mark, there was a
knock on the door. I opened it, and there was Henry wearing a
Hawaiian shirt. Everyone yelled
Congratulations, Henry
, and
I swear, the poor guy burst into a laughing/crying fit like I have
never, ever seen. I pulled him into a hug, whispered that we were
all there to celebrate him, and he held me
so
tight.

It was a great night. My friends were
gracious and took turns sitting with Henry, listening to his math
joy. They really did like him, because Henry is a truly likable
guy. He drank, and he laughed and when the night was over, after
everyone had left, he sat on my couch and his smile... I could have
read a book by it, it was so big and bright. I walked him to his
door, across the hall and, he kissed me. It was tentative,
cautious, tender. I let it happen because it was his night, and
when it’s your night, I think people should do what they can to
make the night as special as possible. Within reason. Henry was
reason personified so, I had no worries.

When the kiss ended, and his heart was
pounding hard enough that his Hawaiian shirt was dancing, he
thanked me. I didn’t know if he was thanking me for the party or
the kiss, but it didn’t matter. He looked different. He wasn’t that
lost, friendless little boy on my couch any longer. I told him it
was my pleasure and went home.

I meant it, you know. I meant that truly. It
was my pleasure to make Henry smile. To celebrate his achievement.
Yes, I wasn’t completely sure what his achievement was all about
but did that matter? Here was a guy, a good guy, with a need to
shout to the heavens
look at me, look at what I did
.

It’s those moments, when you need to shout
that loud, that far, that you sometimes discover your voice just
isn’t loud enough, just doesn’t have the... the
oomph
to
reach the ears of God. That can be a hard thing to deal with, all
that shouting to do and no voice to do it with. Henry deserved to
be heard, so I helped him pump up his volume. And I was happy to do
it.

***

I didn’t see Henry for several days after his
party. I worried a little, I usually saw him almost every day. I
assumed he was being lauded by his peers, and that was a
nightmarish image - a room full of math men, yikes - so he was
probably busy.

A week after the party, on a Friday night,
Henry knocked on my door again. He was excited and nervous. I
invited him in, except I really had no choice, because he sort of
pushed his way into my apartment. He had me sit on the couch and,
he gave me a presentation. He gave me handouts, and he had a chart
that he stuck to my wall with that blue, sticky stuff. He started
talking, quickly, passionately.

Slowly, like stepping out of a fog, I
realized what was happening. Henry was proving to me,
mathematically, that we were meant to be together. He talked for
about forty-five minutes. Thankfully I was not chemically altered
in any way because, heaven help me, I would have
seriously
blacked out on this one. When he finished, he put down his laser
pointer - yes, he had a laser pointer he used to emphasize certain
points on the wall chart - and stood silently staring at me.

When you’re younger, and no one wants you,
and you get rejected when you take a breath and risk it all to ask
a guy out because, if you wait around for him to ask you, you will
be a gray raisin in a rocking chair on the porch of the forgotten
old folks home…

When he says no or, laughs, which is what he
did, you have a choice. First, you can take it, turn it into rage
and spend the rest of your days getting revenge. Second, you can
take it, hold it inside and let it fester then spring it on
someone, some unsuspecting, some undeserving, poor fool who has
taken the courage. Or third, you can forget about it. Take it in
stride and say, well, that’s what happens to me. Go home, cry into
your pillow, sing Beatles songs into a hairbrush, write in your
journal, know that it will build character and then, with time,
dates, back seat wrestling matches, fighting to protect the
sanctity of the bra and regions beneath, you forget about it. You
forget about it until it suddenly snaps back into the present at
the most inopportune time.

That time had come. I wasn’t interested in
Henry as more than a friend. There was no spark when he kissed me.
He was sweet but, beyond that, there was nothing there. I felt
sick. He was a good man, a decent man and yet, I was not interested
in him romantically. I had no real reasons beyond I just wasn’t
feeling it. I recalled my moment of bravery, and how Stephan
Mercer…
That
was his name, I didn’t think I’d remember
that... Anyway, I remember him laughing at me when I asked him out.
He was a monkey of course but, right now, I admired him. He didn’t
care. He had no guilt, no remorse. He thought he was awesome and
so, when a not-awesome-enough girl asked him out, he just laughed.
I did not feel like laughing at Henry. I did not see Henry, this
moment, as a way of assuaging all my girlhood angst about men. I
was deeply, deeply sick about what I knew I had to say.

He waited, smiled and then asked me what I
thought. I hesitated. I couldn’t figure out how to even start.
Then, he asked me if he should dress up when he presented his
findings. He asked if he should bring flowers when he gave his
presentation to her. He asked if he should do it at her place or
invite her to his place. It slowly dawned on me that Henry was
using me to rehearse asking out
another woman
. I wasn’t the
one.

But wait… Why
wasn’t
I the one? What
the hell was wrong with me? I... I gave him a party. I kissed him.
Now, he was showing me charts and graphs, handouts and...
PowerPoint... thingies... for another woman. I felt sick. Another
kind of sick. A different sick from the sick I was sick before. I
held it together though, told him to dress nice but casual, bring
her to his place, serve her wine and some nice food. He would feel
more comfortable on his turf. He agreed. He packed his things and
started to leave. I was livid. I wanted to smack him and then, at
the door he stopped, turned to me and made it all better.

He said that he had never had a friend like
me. He said that, if he hadn’t met me he never, ever would have had
the courage to finally ask out Hilary, the girl who the charts and
graphs were for. I thanked him and then, he took my hand and said
that he had tried, he had tried for a whole week to make the math
of us work. He tried every configuration but, in the end, he had to
admit that we just didn’t add up.

“It was the first time I ever hated math,” he
said and I almost cried. He left. Two days later, he gave his
presentation and... it was a stunning success.

There’s someone for everyone. It had been
mathematically proven.

***

There is a danger in saying things like that.
An even greater danger in believing things like that. If you say to
someone, to make them feel better, to give them hope or simply just
to shut their noise and stop their complaining, that
there is
someone for everyone
, they may actually believe it. And once
they believe it, they spend their lives waiting for it, looking for
it. When it doesn’t come, when all around them they see others
finding their “one” and yet they continue to go home alone, eat
alone, sleep alone, drink alone... They can start to feel that
there is something wrong with them.

Oh, who am I kidding, all this “they” and
“them” and “their” just scratch that... replace it with
me
.
I believed, for the longest time, that there was someone for
everyone and that meant there was someone for me. I started to
think I was owed this... this divine
gift
, this promised
man. Moses, lead me to the promised man! The Lord has sent us these
ten condoms, use them wisely.

I was angry that
he
wasn’t showing up.
I was deeply disappointed when date after date turned into nothing.
I was hanging all my expectations, all my future happiness, on each
time a guy opened the door for me, or picked up a check. I
compromised myself to appear better, more worthy, more...
what
? I don’t know. I do know that if I had half the orgasms
I faked...

Well, the point being, I faked a lot
because... Because I thought that would bring me
the
one
. Because if I was responsive and easy to please in bed,
I would find the one. Counterintuitive, sure. Desperate, sure.
Pathetic and sad, sure. I freely admit all of that, but, what else
could I do? I wanted my someone. I had completely given over my
true self because somewhere at some point in my life, probably as a
little girl, probably by a well-meaning family member or TV doctor,
I was told there is someone for everyone and I drank that cup of
Kool-Aid and waited for the results.

One October morning, broccoli and cheese
omelet, side of bacon, cup of coffee... I stopped. I finally,
fully, completely stopped. My dear friend, Karen, walked into the
corner joint, the Windsor Diner, where I was having breakfast that
lovely, clear, crisp, October morning, and she was with a man. They
had the tussled look of lovers who had spent the morning in bed and
decided to go out, get coffee, without showering or changing into
new day clothes. They held hands and giggled at each other. They
brimmed with the confidence of lovers together daring the world to
see them as they were, to realize they smelled of sex.

Let me explain this: When I say ‘my dear
friend’ what I mean is, Karen is a woman I worked with who drove me
to the edge of reason and sanity every single day, whom I would
liked nothing more than to staple her face shut, who is dumber than
a bag of clams, but, who means well, tries hard and truly hurts no
one. She was just the fingernails on the chalkboard of my life. She
is a dear woman who is just unaware. Also, and I say this with all
kindness, she wasn’t that interesting. But there she was, cooing
and nuzzling with a good-looking man. I watched them. I ignored my
omelet, which was astounding because, I don’t know if you’ve ever
had a broccoli cheese omelet at Windsor Diner, but, they are not to
be ignored. Really. I once saw a man try to ignore one and the
omelette got up from the plate, poured hot coffee into the guy’s
lap, threw the orange slice garnish at his face and screamed,
eat me you bastard
. I may have been tripping my brains out
at the time but, that’s beside the point.

What
is
the point is that Karen’s
arrival with what was obviously her new boyfriend caused me to
ignore my omelet. She saw me, waved and then, once they had
retrieved their coffee and croissants… Seriously, what is it about
new love that makes people want to eat French pastry for breakfast?
I swear the whole croissant craze was fueled by Tom Hanks and Meg
Ryan romantic comedy movies. She brought her man and her trying
self to my table.

I didn’t stand up. I didn’t greet them. I
looked up at them from my, prior to this moment, comfy breakfast
chair. She introduced him as Chad, or Charles, or Chip, or...
Chewbacca... I have no idea. It was just a name. The name of a man
who was with Karen. The name of a man who was with someone else,
not me. They were in love, they were happy, they were... everything
that I was not.

I smiled, I nodded, I did a stunning
impersonation of a woman who really cared about Karen and her new
love. She and... Man Who’s Name Began With a C, left, and I ate my
omelet, had a second cup of coffee, walked out of the Windsor
Diner, and I stopped. I gave up.

Actually no, that’s not true. I let go. Yes,
that is the truth. I let go of the childhood hope, the girlish
desire that was fueled by a cruel lie. I stood on the street,
flipped off the universe, let go all the neediness, the sickening
hope and decided to just move forward.

Because
this
freedom,
this
release, was not fueled by drugs or alcohol, or a clever
combination of both. Because it was
not
done in a haze, late
at night while I was weeping and giving myself one of those sad pep
talks. You know what I mean? One of those, bedroom mirror, bottle
in hand, assuring myself I was hot but, not just hot, oh no, I was
smart and driven and nice and blah, blah, blah... I was passed out
on the floor with a shoe under my face. Because
those
were
not the circumstances in which I decided to finally let go, it
seemed real to me.