January to August, 2005, New York, New York

By Amanda Cargill

Josh Goldman, who wore Dockers and didn’t celebrate Christmas. We were an odd pairing, from the start. But we had mutual friends and no one to go home to, so….

I remember the night we met. He was playing the harmonica in some no-name Lower East Side Bar. I remember watching him slide his lips along its ridges and blow so hard his cheeks puffed up like Dizzy Gillespie. If he can do that with a harmonica, I thought. I leaned in to the bartender who knew him. “Introduce us.” And he did.

We closed the bar that night, then left together. I carried his guitar and we stopped at every corner along DeLancey for a kiss. This surprises me still. Neither of us was the public display of affection type. But we were the lonely type. And we had found each other, so….

I didn’t go home with him that first night. He didn’t ask. But he did call the next morning, and we made a date for three days later. Three weeks after that we were official. Officially, a couple.

We went to the ballet. We had quiet dinners for two in cozy West Village bistros. We took dancing lessons at Lincoln Center Out of Doors. We traveled together. He took me to his family home in Nantucket. I scrubbed up and got dressed on the morning I was to meet his parents. “You’re not wearing that, really?” he asked when I emerged from the bedroom. I lowered my chin to be sure my bra wasn’t on the outside of my tee shirt. “This is Nantucket, not the Bahamas.” I went back into the bedroom to change.

After two months, I told him I loved him. He smiled. He said he wasn’t ready to tell me the same. He was older and had been single for a long time. So I waited.

We had more dinners. We went to the theater. We took flying trapeze lessons 60 feet above the West Side Highway overlooking the Hudson. When the instructor asked who wanted to go first, I volunteered. I climbed the ladder, held the crossbar firmly, and when I heard the “hep” that was my cue to jump, I jumped. I pointed my feet so hard I thought I might slice the sky in half. I was flying, soaring. I swung my hips, pulled my knees to my chest, and released the bar just as I had been told to. Josh approached the net after I dismounted. “You are fearless,” he whispered in my ear, pulling me down and planting me firmly on the ground beside him. I used to be, I thought.

We stayed in that night. It was Sunday and we always stayed in on Sundays. I suggested we make dinner, instead of ordering our usual Mama Buddha, and he agreed. I asked if he had anything to drink at his place. “Do you always have to drink?” He popped his head out from behind the stainless steel refrigerator door. I didn’t answer. “It’s Sunday anyway. Nothing will be open.” He slammed the door shut.

Blue laws. Josh laws. Propriety and pragmatism. I went to shower while he made stir-fry. I closed the bathroom door and let the hot water run until the air was cloudy and thin, then wiped the steam from the mirror in front of me and stared at my naked reflection. I saw what he told me to see — a garish, laugh-too-loud girl who would always be dressed for the wrong occasion and drank red wine for no reason. In his mirror, I wasn’t worthy of “I love you” at all. I couldn’t change and was tired of waiting.

We broke up that night. It wasn’t working, we both agreed. I gathered my things and left. He called the next day to tell me I had forgotten the book I was reading. Seven Types of Ambiguity, I think it was. When I stopped by to pick it up, he invited me in. We talked. I cried. He said he thought we’d made a mistake. We should try again. So we did.

I splashed cold water on my swollen face. We were going to the White Horse Tavern to celebrate our reconciliation. We had memories there. Our first date. Josh’s 39th birthday party. My 31st. I cupped my hands together beneath the faucet to rinse the soap from my eyes, then reached for my toothbrush. I kept it on the shelf next to Josh’s electric version. It wasn’t there. I looked in the medicine cabinet.

“Josh, where’s my toothbrush?” I shouted. He crossed to the bathroom and leaned against the door jamb. “I threw it away yesterday. Here.” He dug under the sink until he found what he was looking for. “You can use a guest toothbrush.”

Josh was wildly organized and stockpiled things like toothbrushes and toilet paper as if he ran a hotel.

“You threw away….”

I started crying. He closed the lid on the toilet and sat down, exasperated.

“Come on,” he rolled his eyes.

Standing over him, I could see a tiny bald spot atop his head. It was mesmerizing, a hurricane of blond hair swirled artfully above it. I stared at that spot, hard. I counted to ten, blinked, and then stared again.

Josh continued sighing and moaning about expectations and histrionics. One, two, three….

By the third round of ten I had stopped crying. Josh looked up at me.

“You know I love you.”

It was the first time he’d said it. I smiled and turned toward the mirror.

“I love me, too,” I said, and without waiting for a response, hoping for a change, fearlessly walked out.

Amanda Cargill lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is currently working on her first book, a collection of short stories about dating and relationships.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 | Email This Post

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