Other People We Married (22 page)

Teddy was a crier. He cried at television programs and intermittently during his daily phone calls with his mother. This had alarmed Richard in the beginning of their relationship, but he’d gotten used to it. On the sliding scale of bodily functions, it was something like a sneeze. The major problem was that Teddy left used tissues in every room of the house, tissues that Richard would then have to pick up and throw away. It also meant that no matter who had started the argument, or who was at fault, Richard would end up apologizing.

“Uh-huh,” Robin said. “I see.”

On the opposite edge of the pool, several older ladies in bathing caps sat in what looked like something out of an S&M club. Shallow chaise longues made out of metal tubes sat
some ten inches beneath the surface of the pool, where bathers could experience all the pleasure of the hot springs without the bother of physical exertion. Richard and Teddy watched, only their faces out of the water, while one of the ladies rose, dripping, from the pool and shuffled around to the back of her chair, where she popped in a quarter. A moment later, bubbles erupted in her empty chair, turning the area into a one-person Jacuzzi.

“Oh my God,” Teddy said. “Me next.” He held Richard’s hand under water, and for a moment, when Teddy’s long fingers closed around his fist, Richard was in love, just like that. They treaded water, their shorts ballooning upward, and waited for a turn. Across the pool, a young couple swam by, their eyes masked by large, square goggles. The girl paused to readjust her bathing suit, and after giving her strap a tug, swam up to her boyfriend’s face and gave him a kiss. Their goggles bumped together. It was like a commercial for the place: Love in the Time of Sulfur.

Teddy had to pee and scooted over to a staircase. He had a funny, slightly ducky walk, another remnant from his days as a dancer, more side to side than up and down, and it was even sillier when he was dripping wet in his slightly too small bathing trunks. Had his stomach ever looked that way before? Richard stayed put and watched the ladies’ feet bob under the surface. One of them closed their eyes, and so he did, too. He pictured Robin’s office filled with water. There was a breeze coming from the mountains, blowing down the river that was directly behind the hotel. His face was cool and dark. In Richard’s imagination, he was so dark that he
was invisible. When Teddy came back, splashing loudly, he was smiling.

“Billy the Kid is going to come over later,” he said, and took a hit off an imaginary joint. “Before the party.”

“You really want to go to that? A party full of kids?” Richard was old; he sounded old. But he couldn’t help it. He was their teacher, not their friend. They wouldn’t have invited him without Teddy; without Teddy, he wouldn’t have gone. It was obvious.

“Well, yeah.” Teddy looked offended. “Why, you don’t? It’s like Epcot Center; kids get sent here from all over. It’s going to be fun.” He ran a hand across his head, slicking his hair back into a short paintbrush. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and the stubble was starting to turn into something slightly angry.

“What if, after this, we walked up to Doc Holliday’s grave? It’s just a few blocks from the Seashore. Isn’t that more fun than going to a party with a bunch of kids?” Richard straightened his legs and half his body rose out of the water. Steam came off his skin. If he were a woman, people would ask if he was pregnant. If he were a woman, people would ask if he was Teddy’s mother. The five years between them had stretched into ten or fifteen. Still under the water up to his neck, Teddy rolled his eyes. “Of course you’d say that.”

One of the old ladies’ bubbles was up. Teddy scrambled into the empty chair and popped a quarter into the machine, leaving Richard steaming alone.

“Five minutes,” Teddy said, with ten feet of pool between them. “Let’s talk about it in five minutes.” He closed his eyes.

They stayed until the pool closed, and someone—Billy the Kid, maybe—shut
all the lights off, and only the stars perked up the inky sky.

When Teddy decided to move in, he did it all at once, not gradually, like their friends’ boyfriends, who seemed to move one article of clothing at a time. Teddy and his U-Haul blocked traffic on Twenty-Fourth Street for an hour and a half, during which time he made Richard stand in front, apologizing to motorists. Richard had found the whole thing very romantic. Teddy didn’t care about pissing people off, he just wanted to move in as quickly as possible; their love was that important. Or at least that’s what Richard thought at the time. It turned out later that the van was a loaner from work and needed to be back after lunch. Still, Richard loved to picture Teddy breathlessly running up and down the stairs holding a lamp, a suitcase, a stack of loose papers from his desk. The honking horns and angry cabdrivers were all just part of the scenery. Richard never closed his eyes then, not even when they kissed.

Only when they were out of the pool did the smell begin to multiply, to cover every inch of their skin. Richard wrapped a towel around his chest, all the way up to his armpits, before putting his shorts back on.

“So, are we going to walk up to the cemetery? Do you want to?” Richard was thinking positively. If he sounded relaxed, then Teddy would react more favorably.

“What? No, we’re going to the party. I already told Billy.” Teddy’s face turned hard. He looked like a clay statue, still wet. There was more to cut away.

“Teddy, come on. You don’t really want to go. Don’t be stupid.” Richard knew instantly that this was a mistake.

“No, Richard,
you
don’t want to go. And you know what, you don’t have to.” Teddy had a towel wrapped loosely around his wet bathing suit, and when the towel dropped to the ground, he didn’t stop to pick it up. He just kept walking. Richard stopped and let him go, watching his shirtless upper half move side to side, side to side, until he turned the corner at the end of the block and was gone.

Robin said that Richard would have to decide, that she couldn’t decide for him. There were a number of things that Richard knew Teddy loved about him—stability and responsibility chief among them. He gave practical gifts. He did not believe in three-ways. He believed in taking out the garbage. These were not exciting features. And what did Richard love about Teddy? If Richard was the earth, Teddy was the sky. If the room was beige, then Richard was beige. Teddy couldn’t be beige if his life depended on it. Instead of stupid, the word
carefree
. The word
open-minded
. The word
romantic
. If he tried to phrase it for someone else, the vocabulary came more readily to his tongue.

Richard walked the three blocks down Grand Avenue toward the hostel. He wanted to go to Doc Holliday’s grave and pull a gun out of the ground. He wanted to send all the beautiful boys and girls back to their respective countries. He wanted to widen his stance and stomp in and terrify everyone with his presence. He thought, maybe if they’d gone to the grave, maybe Teddy would have said something so brilliant, and so
thoughtful, that he’d never have to wonder again. He pictured Robin standing at the gates to the cemetery, cheering him on like he was finishing a marathon, headstones streaming by him in streaks of silver and gold.

The Glenwood Springs Hostel was in a one-story yellow house. There was a hand-painted sign with a bright sun in the upper left-hand corner. Faded Tibetan prayer flags ran the length of the porch and hung low enough that Richard had to stoop to get to the front door. A kayak leaned lazily against the wall, as if pointing the way.

Inga from Sweden was off duty and manning the makeshift bar in the entranceway, and chatting with two dreadlocked teenagers in patchwork pants. She waved at Richard, who gave a weak wave back. Inga was the kind of girl who’d wave at anyone. She was still wearing her nametag. Without being asked, she nodded in the direction of a doorway. Other people’s boyfriends had done this before.

Teddy was in the living room, nestled into a deep, stained couch, his legs tucked up beneath him like a child. He was wearing someone else’s T-shirt, and it pulled across his chest. Richard pictured Teddy walking in, wet and stinking, and wanted to cry. Billy the Kid sat next to Teddy on the couch, too close. They were laughing. In a funny way, they reminded Richard of the way he and Teddy must have looked when they met, only with Teddy playing Richard’s part—older, wiser, broader.

“Theodore,” Richard started.

Teddy looked up. It didn’t matter that he’d been laughing—when he saw Richard, his eyes were wet. “You came,” he said. Richard could see it, suddenly, that Teddy was too old for this,
too, that he had been coming along, slowly, a step behind Richard. He was wearing someone else’s T-shirt. Who lived in this place? Richard took a step forward, and then paused. There were other people in the room—not Marlene Dietrich, but girls like her, girls with low voices, and boys, God, the young, beautiful boys. It didn’t matter. None of them mattered. Teddy sat up straight, eyes locked on Richard’s.

“Here,” Richard said, peeling off his own damp T-shirt, the pale expanse of his belly now exposed. He wanted Teddy back; he was sure. Richard held his shirt out in the palm of his hand. “Put this on.”

I am grateful to a huge number of people for the love this book has received, and for helping it exist in the world. Chief among them are the University of Wisconsin–Madison MFA program, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Megan Lynch and Geoff Kloske of Riverhead Books, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Dave Daley, Peter and Susan Straub, and my darling husband, Michael Fusco.

Thank you also to all the bookstores that have been so kind to me: WORD (Brooklyn, New York), McNally Jackson (New York, New York), Oblong Books + Music (Rhinebeck, New York), the Brookline Booksmith (Brookline, Massachusetts), Longfellow Books (Portland, Maine), RiverRun Bookstore (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), Skylight Books (Los Angeles, California), the Booksmith (San Francisco, California), the Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle, Washington), the Center for Fiction (New York, New York), Micawber’s Books (St. Paul, Minnesota), the Community Bookstore (Brooklyn, New York), Raconteur Books (Metuchen, New Jersey), and my own beloved BookCourt (Brooklyn, New York). Long may you
wave.