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“OK, OK.” He held his hands up in surrender. “You can have the robe.”
I actually hadn’t thought of his robe.
“Thanks.” I got to my feet and walked to the kitchen.
He undid the belt and coolly shrugged it off his shoulders, and handed it to me, standing dressed now only in his tartan slippers and the silver chain I had given him for his fortieth birthday the previous year. I laughed and took the robe from him, but he held on to it, the robe firmly in his grasp. He turned serious.
“Please don’t go outside, Sandy.”
“Gregory, don’t,” I mumbled, tugging on the robe, not wanting this discussion again, not wanting to go through the same thing all over again, fighting about it, talking in circles, resolving nothing and apologizing for nothing but the insults fired between the main issues.
His face crumpled. “Please, Sandy, please can we just go back to bed. I’m up in four hours.”
I stopped tugging on the robe and looked at him, standing before me naked but revealing more in the look on his face alone. Whatever it was about that face, about the way he looked at me, the way he yearned for me not to leave him, the way it seemed so important that I be with him rather than away, something inside me stopped fighting.
My grip relaxed on the robe. “OK.” I gave in. I gave in. “OK,” I repeated more to myself this time. “I’ll go to bed.”
Gregory looked surprised, relieved, and confused all in one glance, but he didn’t push it, he didn’t question it, he didn’t want to ruin the moment, spoil the dream and chase me away again. Instead he held my hand and we went back upstairs to bed, leaving the clutter of my scattered clothes and wash bag on the floor by the door. It was the first time I’d turned my back on the situation and headed in the other direction. It was apt that it was Gregory leading me.
In bed I laid my head on his warm heaving chest, felt his heartbeat beneath my cheek and his breath on the top of my head. I felt loved and secure and thought everything in my life couldn’t possibly be any more perfect and wonderful. Before he fell asleep, he whispered to me to remember that feeling. At the time, I thought he was referring to us being together, but as the night slowly moved on for me and the niggling returned, I knew he had meant for me to remember the feeling of walking away and the reason that led to that decision. I needed to hold on to that, store it in my memory and call upon it whenever the moment raised its ugly head.
I was restless that night. I only meant to go back downstairs and tidy my belongings away. And then when I had done that, I only meant to go out into the wet night to search my car. But then when it wasn’t there, I forgot the feeling that I’d tried to hold on to while in Gregory’s arms and Gregory’s bed.
He woke up alone that morning and it pains me to imagine his thoughts when he felt around the bed and his hand rested on the cold sheets. Meanwhile, as he was asleep in his bed pretending in his dreams that I was alongside him, I had returned to a cold bedsit to find my toothbrush still in its packet, lying on the table. For once I got no solace from finding. I was emptier after finding the toothbrush than I had been before. It seemed the more things I found when I was with Gregory, the more I lost inside. I was alone in bed at five in the morning after leaving the warm bed of a man I loved, and who loved me. Of a man who would, as a result, no longer take my calls. A man who after thirteen years of wanting to learn all there was to learn about me had finally given up and wanted to know me no longer.
For a while, I gave up on him too until I became too lonely, too tired, and my heart became too sore from pretending I cared more about a whole series of nothings with nobodies rather than a single episode of something with somebody. I told myself that morning to hold on to that feeling, to remember the foolishness of leaving warmth to walk alone in the cold, the ridiculous loneliness of leaving something for nothing.
He took me back on one condition. That I recognize my problems and attend a monthly meeting of a group called the OCA. The first thing you learn while in OCA is that you can’t be in OCA for anybody else but yourself. It was a lie from the very begi
Years and years of going to the meetings and I was still the same as the twenty-one-year-old who sat on the concrete steps opposite Dr. Burton’s office building every week, with my elbows on my knees, chin rested on my hands, watching the world pass by as I waited to cross the road.
Every single time, Gregory crossed over for me and met me on my side. I realize now, I don’t think I ever met him in the middle. And I don’t think I ever once said thank you for that.
But I’m saying sorry now, I shout it a thousand times a day from this place that he can’t hear me from. I say thank you and sorry and I scream it through the trees, over the mountains, pour my love into the lakes, and I blow kisses in the wind, hoping that they will reach him.
I went to the OCA meetings every month. I went because every month that I was there I knew it was another month of deserving to be with Gregory.
I missed it this month.
39
After returning from an afternoon rehearsal at the Community Hall, Bobby and I sat around the pine table with Helena and Joseph in their home. Wanda sat opposite me, her head of messy black curls just about visible over the table, and her arms pulled up in a giant effort to clasp her hands together, imitating how I was seated. Joseph had just a
I don’t know why, but I found the day-to-day ru
“So what’s such a big issue that would cause a meeting to be called?”
“You,” Wanda said perkily, and I could tell her legs were swinging under the table from the way her shoulders rocked.
A chill went through me. I chose to ignore her, a