“I don’t know that I’m the one who deserves sympathy.”
He drew back so we were making eye contact. “You think I haven’t made mistakes?”
“Of that magnitude?”
“As a matter of fact, I thought I got a girl pregnant in college. She missed her period two months in a row, and we were both beside ourselves. She was down at Sweet Briar when I was at Princeton, and I wondered if I could get away with pretending it wasn’t mine even though I knew I was the only fellow she’d slept with. When she did finally get her period, I never talked to her again, so how’s that for not deserving sympathy?”
“You were young.”
“So were you. And people fuck up. We just do. It started with Adam and Eve, and as far as I can tell, there’s been a steady flow of human error since. Can I make a suggestion? Let’s go inside so I can hold you properly.”
“Okay, although as long as I’m telling you everything else—Well, my mother just lost a bunch of money in a pyramid scheme, and the reason I didn’t go through with buying the house wasn’t because of the inspection, it was because of that. Oh, and I’m pretty sure my grandmother is a lesbian.”
To my surprise, Charlie burst out laughing. “Your grand—” He tried to compose himself. “Sorry—it’s just—that old girl back there is a muff diver?”
“Watch it, Charlie.”
“You have proof?”
“She has a . . . a lady friend. The woman who’s the doctor, they’ve been a couple for years. I think my grandmother has gotten too frail to travel to Chicago to see her, but they’re very devoted to each other.”
“Bully for her.” Charlie seemed genuinely admiring. “Anyone who finds women more attractive than men won’t get an argument from me. What else? This is getting juicy.”
“I think we’ve covered it,” I said. “No, I guess there’s also the fact that Dena isn’t speaking to me because I’m dating you. I was right that she’s furious.” The more I thought about it, the more it seemed Dena’s behavior had to reflect her frustration with her own life more than with me—her disappointment at not being married or having children. Perhaps she really had pinned her hopes on Charlie before she’d met him, but this seemed unrealistic on her part, and her anger at me felt excessive.
Charlie waved an arm through the air. “She’ll come around.” He pulled the key from the ignition. “I’m not cutting off the conversation, but let’s continue it inside.”
Though I don’t know if what he had in mind was sex—it probably was—that’s what happened: We stepped through the door of my apartment and he hugged me tightly, and soon we were grabbing and groping, impatient to shake off all the tension and verbiage. There had been too many words, they’d begun to overlap and run together, and now it was just his body on top of mine, his erection inside me, the jolting rhythm of our hips. You feel like a cavewoman saying it, but if there’s a better way than sex for restoring equanimity between a couple, I don’t know what it is.
After, he spooned me from behind. He said, “I want to take care of you and protect you and always keep you safe,” and this time I did start to cry, real tears that streamed down my face.
“I wish you could,” I said. “I wish anyone could do that for anyone else.”
“Turn around,” he said. I complied, and he said, “I love you, Alice.” With his thumb, he wiped a tear from beneath the outer corner of my eye.
“I love you, too,” I said, and it seemed such an inadequate expression of my affection and gratitude and relief, of my guilt-inflected excitement at all we had to look forward to. How had this happened? And thank goodness it had.
“What you told me in the car, I know that’s big stuff,” he said. We were facing each other, and he rubbed my hip beneath the sheet. “But from now on, it’s smooth sailing. It’s all going to be okay.”
MY GRANDMOTHER CALLED late the next morning while I was rinsing a paintbrush I’d used on Yertle the Turtle’s shell. “Charlie’s terrific,” she said.
I was stunned. “Are you teasing me?”
“Well, his politics are appalling, but he’s been suckling too long at the teat of the conservatives. I’m sure you can coax him over to our way of seeing things.”
“Granny, he’s running for Congress as a Republican.”
“He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, my dear. That old coot Wincek has had a lock on the Sixth District since before you were born. Anyway, I suspect it’s more a rite of passage in the Blackwell family than a bona fide attempt to win on Charlie’s part. Why not let him get it out of his system? But he’s mad for you, there’s no doubt about that.”
“And you liked him apart from the political stuff?”
“He’s adorable. Very lively, very well mannered. Oh, he’s a real catch, and your mother agrees. At this very moment, she’s tidying up your trousseau. Speaking of which—should I say I told you so about your mother and Lars, or would you prefer to say it for me?”
“I think you just did.”
“That bit about his bloating and gas, and at the dining room table—it’s clearly not Lars’s debonair manner that’s attracted her, but we shouldn’t judge her for wanting to enjoy herself.”
“Granny, you baited him.”
She laughed. “Well, maybe a little.”
“I’m glad you approve of Charlie,” I said.
“Alice, you hold on to that young man.” My grandmother sounded positively ecstatic. “You’ve found a
