As I reclasped my pants he began to slow down, to try to catch his breath. He blew his nose a few times. I said, “That’s it, there you go,” which made him cry a little more, perhaps just politely to acknowledge my words. Finally it was all quiet.
“That felt really, really good.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was incredible.”
“I’m surprised. I usually don’t cry well in front of other people. It’s different with you.”
“Does it feel like we’ve known each other for longer than we really have?”
“Kind of.”
I could tell him or I could not tell him. I decided to tell him.
“Maybe there’s a reason for that,” I ventured.
“Okay.” He blew his nose again.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Give me a hint.”
“A hint. Let’s see . . . actually, I can’t. There are no little parts to it, it’s all big.”
I took a deep breath and shut my eyes.
“I see a rocky tundra and a crouched figure with apelike features who resembles me. She’s fashioned a pouch out of animal gut and now she’s giving it to her mate, a strong, hairy pre-man who looks a lot like you. He moves his thick finger around in the pouch and fishes out a colorful rock. Her gift to him. Do you see where I’m going?”
“Kind of? In that I see you’re talking about cavemen who look like us.”
“Who are us.”
“Right, I wasn’t sure—okay. Reincarnation?”
“I don’t relate to that word.”
“No, right, me either.”
“But sure. I see us in medieval times, huddling together in long coats. I see us both with crowns on. I see us in the forties.”
“The 1940s?”
“Yes.”
“I was born in ’48.”
“That makes sense because I was seeing us as a very old couple in the forties. That was probably the lifetime right before this one.” I paused. I had said a lot. Too much? That depended on what he said next. He cleared his throat, then was silent. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything, which is the worst thing men do.
“What keeps us coming back?” he said quietly.
I smiled into the phone. What an amazing thing to be asked. Right now, tucked into the warmth of my car with this unanswerable question before me—this might have been my favorite moment of all the lifetimes.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. I quietly leaned my head against the steering wheel and we swam in time, silent and together.
“What are you doing for dinner on Friday, Cheryl? I’m ready to confess.”
THE REST OF THE WEEK glided by. Everything was fantastic and I forgave everyone, even Clee, not to her face. She was young! Over a standing-up lunch in the staff kitchen Jim assured me that young people these days were a lot more physically demonstrative than we had been; his niece, for example: very physical girl.
“They’re rough,” I said.
“They aren’t afraid to show their feelings,” he said.
“Which is maybe not such a good thing?” I suggested.
“Which is very healthy,” he said.
“In the long run, yes,” I said. “Perhaps.”
“They hug more,” he said. “More than we did.”
“Hug,” I said.
“Boys and girls hug, unromantically.”
The conclusion I came to—and it was important to come to a conclusion because you didn’t want these kinds of thoughts to just go on and on with no category and no conclusion—was that girls these days, when they weren’t hugging boys unromantically, were busy being generally aggressive. Whereas girls in my youth felt angry but directed it inward and cut themselves and became depressed, girls nowadays just went arrrrgh and pushed someone into a wall. Who could say which way was better? In the past the girl herself got hurt; now another unsuspecting, innocent person was hurt and the girl herself seemed to feel just fine. In terms of fairness maybe the past was a better time.
On Friday night I put on the pin-striped dress shirt again and a very small amount of taupe eye shadow. My hair looked great—a little Julie Andrews, a little Geraldine Ferraro. When Phillip honked I scooted through the living room, hoping to bypass Clee.
“C’mere,” she said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating a piece of white toast.
I pointed at the door.
“Come here.”
I went to her.
“What’s that noise?”
“My bracelets?” I said, shaking my wrist. I had put on a pair of clangy bracelets in case the men’s shirt made me look unfeminine. Her big hand closed around my arm and she slowly began squeezing it.
“You’re dressed up,” she said. “You wanted to look good and this”—she squeezed harder—“is what you came up with.”