When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

he also swept the glass off the floor when my brother died. He reads stories to Johnny. He’s taken away my loneliness. He’s flawed. He’s made mistakes. I soften, the anger dissipates…

Um, Gigi, you’re getting carried away here, I know you love him but he lied to you, can you get to that part please—

Shit, right, OK. “OK, so, why didn’t you tell me any of this before? It was so obvious when you saw her tonight.”

“You’re right. But you and I had just started dating, it felt like such a lot to explain and I’m not a hero in this story. That day, when you saw us, I was taking her to a surprise brunch with all their New York friends, her first-anniversary present, and Rupert wanted as many people from the wedding there as possible. He asked me to take her. It was humiliating, but we were in too deep by then. When you saw us we had just met up to go. I should have refused; I was so spineless. And what would you have thought of me? I thought I’d lost you forever and suddenly there you were, and I just didn’t want…I thought you’d leave.”

“Come here,” I say, and put my arms out for him to join me at the edge of the tub. I close my eyes for a minute and ask myself if this is OK. I put my hand on his knee, he puts his hand over mine. I ask myself if this will be good for my boy. If I’m doing the right thing.

He interrupts the silence: “I’m sorry, I’m…It was a mistake. What a cock. But if it cost me you too—”

I stop him. “You loved her. Love’s fucked-up sometimes.” He looks at our hands, fingers interlaced. I don’t say that men are fucked-up sometimes too. How they would do anything—anything—for a beautiful woman. How a man will reach for that beauty and tell lies for her even when a real woman—the right woman, not beautiful but loyal and full of heart—is standing right next to him. I know Harry doesn’t love her, but he will always know he had her; he will always secretly hang on to that fact, that he had a beautiful woman once. He doesn’t love her but all it took was her hand running down his sleeve to put her between us tonight. And she did it because she’s beautiful and she knew that she could.

I tighten my grip on his hand. “Don’t lie to me again.”

“I won’t,” he says, clutching me to him, wanting me to feel how much he means it.

“You’re asking me and Johnny to move our whole lives here. You have to give us your whole life too. Even this stuff, this shitty stuff.”

“I promise,” he says.

“OK,” I say, pulling away from him up to standing.

“OK?” he asks, unsure.

“OK already, you’re right, it’s a really nice tub.” And as I push him into the bath he pulls me in with him, and we’re a tangle of clothes and robes and bubbles and water. We sit there for a while like that in the tub, laughing, water flowing over the sides, sloshing through the leftover bubbles.

He picks up my left hand and says, “I was going to prop—”

“No. Don’t say it.”

“But, this weekend, it’s all been ruined now, but I brought you here to—”

“Don’t talk about it. Just do it right.”

“But I…Do you want—”

“No. Just do it right. You’ll know when.”

He pulls me out of the bath, picks me up, sits me on the edge of the sink, presses me against him, carries me, kisses me in the doorway of the bathroom, one arm up on the frame to brace himself. We stumble and laugh, tearing off wet clothes, pushing up against the walls, falling to the floor. The air of the room is cold on wet skin, but it makes everything better, heightened. I run my hands through his wet hair. We find the space we fit in together.

Staten Island, March 2014

“So, what, you’re really doing this?” Ma barks at me from her usual position: sitting in her vinyl armchair, cigarette in one hand, other hand resting on her beer in the built-in cup holder. Her belly resting on her thighs, forcing her legs apart, filling the whole chair with her flesh and disappointment. It’s only ten in the morning so she’s trying not to drink the beer too obviously in front of Johnny and Harry.

“Yeah, Ma, we are.” I come into the living room from the kitchen and stand to the side of the TV because getting in the way of Wheel of Fortune will only make this more difficult.

Harry stands behind me, grabs my hand, speaks to the back of her chair. “Donna, we wanted to invite you to the ceremony tomorrow.”

“How romantic.” She takes a drag of her cigarette, staring straight ahead while Vanna turns the letters.

“Do you want to come to City Hall?” I ask her even though I don’t want her there and she doesn’t want to be there. But we go through the motions of this conversation. Harry said he didn’t feel right doing it unless we asked her. He’s not related to her, though.

“Granma, will you please come? Did you know Jeej is getting married? I have a suit,” Johnny says to her, sitting on the floor by her chair, his little hand absentmindedly rubbing the terry-cloth top of her slipper. He’s learned that that’s the closest he can get to her. He doesn’t, can’t, understand that he’s too much for her. Just the fact of him, a little boy, is too hard, too close to the deepest part of her heart, even though Frankie was a grown man when she lost him. This is the most love that she’ll allow and the only memory he’s going to have of her; sitting on the floor next to her feet, rubbing the top of her slipper and watching Wheel of Fortune. Or sometimes The