Page 82 of A Happy Catastrophe

“Ha ha,” he says. He goes tentatively toward her and holds out his hands, and she comes into his arms. It’s awkward at first, and then he pulls her closer, and after a beat of hesitation, she responds, and so he kisses her soft, warm, familiar mouth, and then reaches up to touch her hair. And then, at last, he closes his eyes.

When he can speak again, he says, “Um, why isn’t this the best of cases?”

“Well, obviously because this proposal is coming from you missing me so much. Which may be simply a temporary state.” She whispers in his ear, “It’s not really real.”

“It is real. It’s not temporary. I’m a beaten man. I know that I can’t go on without you.”

“Maybe I don’t want a beaten man,” she says lightly.

“Okay, rephrasing. I’m a changed man.”

“What’s gotten into you, Patrick? What changed you?” She pulls back and looks at him closely. “Really. What happened? Are you just sick of doing childcare? Are you lonely at last?”

“Could we adjourn to the tub? It’s kind of a long story. I’m going to need to have my clothes off for this one.”

“You are, huh?” she says.

She goes with him, and he helps her unbutton and unsnap and unzip everything, which she allows—but he can tell she’s still holding back. She doesn’t lean into him. She keeps her eyes open, fastened on the ceiling. He loses his breath at the sight of her naked in front of him, has to take a deep breath. Maybe the bath wasn’t such a great idea. He may wreck everything by jumping on her. And it’s too soon for that. Her wariness hasn’t gone away, and he doesn’t blame her, but he also has no freaking idea how to shift the mood, except maybe he needs to stop being so jokey and tell her everything. So he does.

It starts like a rickety train going up a mountain. He tells her he loves her. And then he tells her the rest: how the horror of the fire never left him; how he would wake up in the middle of the night hearing Anneliese screaming; how in some kind of really screwed up way, the more he let himself fall in love with Marnie the louder those screams became. How scared he was that he was a man who wouldn’t ever be able to love.

Real, true words. And now he has to get to the hard part.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

MARNIE

Rule Number One of Seeing a Man You’re Broken Up With: do not agree to take a bath with him.

That should be obvious, I know. Probably the dating rule books don’t even mention it as a caution. Any ninny would know that you need to keep your clothes on so you have your wits about you. Bad enough that he’s looking at you and looking at you, and that you know him well enough to read all that love on his face. And on his body. It takes everything to keep reminding yourself that what he’s feeling is love now, not love he’ll remember next time when he’s unhappy, or when his dead girlfriend rises up in his head and marches him back to the spaceship.

But here we are anyway, climbing in the tub, our old place of comfort, and he’s determined to tell me a bunch of stuff, which judging from the urgent look in his eyes, I probably need to hear. He sits in the back of the tub, and I lean back against him. Too much of my skin is touching too much of his, I think. It’s affecting my ability to focus on what he’s saying.

And the more he talks, the more I get irritated. I turn my head around and glare at him. “Why didn’t you trust me to talk about it with me? That’s what I don’t get,” I say.

“Because . . . because, damn it, I came from people who settled the West and plowed the fields and minded their own business and didn’t know how to talk about their feelings and so never showed me how that was done, and because I thought I was supposed to always be strong, and because I knew it was time I got over this, and because I loved you so much, and because I knew at some level it was ridiculous, and that I had so much to be grateful for, and why couldn’t I let myself feel it?”

“Okayyyy,” I say. I lean back again. “Believe it or not, Patrick, I actually have the capacity to understand all that.”

“And then . . . well, it got so much worse. I was being dragged under. It was like being crazy. Voices inside my head, blaming me.” He swallows and drags his hand through the bathwater, as an illustration. His hand grazes my breast, and I jump. I have to bite my lip, and he moves his hand away. “I think . . . I think that completing those paintings—and those sculptures—although it didn’t feel like it at the time, now I think maybe it was me healing. Only to do it, I lost sight of everything that was important.”

He leans down and kisses my neck.

I pull away and turn and look at him, mad all over again. “I couldn’t reach you. What good is love that goes away when there’s a big problem? That’s what I want to know.”

“Marnie, I swear to you it didn’t go away. You were always the important thing I was trying to fight my way back to. You’re so different from anyone I’ve ever known. You’re Christmas morning and a Fourth of July parade both happening at once, and you have so much optimism and joy and love. You always think the best of everybody, and you want the tallest Christmas tree and the biggest crowds around the table, and the creamiest ice cream cones, and the longest, sweetest, slowest kisses—and for some reason, you see sparkles when you look at me, so how could I possibly tell you how far down I had fallen? And how fucked up I was? I’d look at you living life and making plans and I would feel like I was at the bottom of a well. Don’t you get it? You’re a happiness genius.”

“A happiness genius? I don’t think that’s a thing.” I lean back against him.

“A happiness genius is obviously a thing. And I was a happiness school dropout. And when I realized that I had pushed you away, and that it was totally my fault that I had to live without you, I was . . . well, I lost my mind. I can’t do that. I can’t go back there.”

The tap is dripping slowly. Plink. Plink. Plink.

We’re silent for a while, and then I say, “How can I possibly believe in this?”

“I guess I just need you to trust me. I’m willing to wait for as long as it takes. I’ll do my time in love jail, if you want.” He swirls his hands through the bathwater again, turns on the tap with his toe to warm it up. In a different voice, he says, “I’ve been through worse. Like, while you were gone, Fritzie got really, really sick—the kind of sick where I, at least, thought she might die. Like really, seriously die.”

“What? You didn’t tell me that part.”

“I couldn’t tell you. It took all of me to take care of her. I sat by her bed trying to get her to drink liquids. I literally thought I’d snuffed out another person I loved. And I think Bedford and Roy might have agreed; they sat right there, too. Days of it. And when she didn’t die—I don’t know, I guess part of the relief I felt was that I’m not a toxic human-destroying monster who should be forced to wear a warning label on his back. Also, I figured out that absolutely everything is going to be lost at some time in the future—all of this, even Blix’s wonderful bathtub—and that I can’t let myself live in total fear of that happening. Turns out I’m one of the survivors. And as you pointed out one time, that’s a good thing, surviving. I could see my life again. I can take care of us, Marnie. I can do my share and more. When you let me out of the love jail, of course.”

o;Ha ha,” he says. He goes tentatively toward her and holds out his hands, and she comes into his arms. It’s awkward at first, and then he pulls her closer, and after a beat of hesitation, she responds, and so he kisses her soft, warm, familiar mouth, and then reaches up to touch her hair. And then, at last, he closes his eyes.

When he can speak again, he says, “Um, why isn’t this the best of cases?”

“Well, obviously because this proposal is coming from you missing me so much. Which may be simply a temporary state.” She whispers in his ear, “It’s not really real.”

“It is real. It’s not temporary. I’m a beaten man. I know that I can’t go on without you.”

“Maybe I don’t want a beaten man,” she says lightly.

“Okay, rephrasing. I’m a changed man.”

“What’s gotten into you, Patrick? What changed you?” She pulls back and looks at him closely. “Really. What happened? Are you just sick of doing childcare? Are you lonely at last?”

“Could we adjourn to the tub? It’s kind of a long story. I’m going to need to have my clothes off for this one.”

“You are, huh?” she says.

She goes with him, and he helps her unbutton and unsnap and unzip everything, which she allows—but he can tell she’s still holding back. She doesn’t lean into him. She keeps her eyes open, fastened on the ceiling. He loses his breath at the sight of her naked in front of him, has to take a deep breath. Maybe the bath wasn’t such a great idea. He may wreck everything by jumping on her. And it’s too soon for that. Her wariness hasn’t gone away, and he doesn’t blame her, but he also has no freaking idea how to shift the mood, except maybe he needs to stop being so jokey and tell her everything. So he does.

It starts like a rickety train going up a mountain. He tells her he loves her. And then he tells her the rest: how the horror of the fire never left him; how he would wake up in the middle of the night hearing Anneliese screaming; how in some kind of really screwed up way, the more he let himself fall in love with Marnie the louder those screams became. How scared he was that he was a man who wouldn’t ever be able to love.

Real, true words. And now he has to get to the hard part.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

MARNIE

Rule Number One of Seeing a Man You’re Broken Up With: do not agree to take a bath with him.

That should be obvious, I know. Probably the dating rule books don’t even mention it as a caution. Any ninny would know that you need to keep your clothes on so you have your wits about you. Bad enough that he’s looking at you and looking at you, and that you know him well enough to read all that love on his face. And on his body. It takes everything to keep reminding yourself that what he’s feeling is love now, not love he’ll remember next time when he’s unhappy, or when his dead girlfriend rises up in his head and marches him back to the spaceship.

But here we are anyway, climbing in the tub, our old place of comfort, and he’s determined to tell me a bunch of stuff, which judging from the urgent look in his eyes, I probably need to hear. He sits in the back of the tub, and I lean back against him. Too much of my skin is touching too much of his, I think. It’s affecting my ability to focus on what he’s saying.

And the more he talks, the more I get irritated. I turn my head around and glare at him. “Why didn’t you trust me to talk about it with me? That’s what I don’t get,” I say.

“Because . . . because, damn it, I came from people who settled the West and plowed the fields and minded their own business and didn’t know how to talk about their feelings and so never showed me how that was done, and because I thought I was supposed to always be strong, and because I knew it was time I got over this, and because I loved you so much, and because I knew at some level it was ridiculous, and that I had so much to be grateful for, and why couldn’t I let myself feel it?”

“Okayyyy,” I say. I lean back again. “Believe it or not, Patrick, I actually have the capacity to understand all that.”

“And then . . . well, it got so much worse. I was being dragged under. It was like being crazy. Voices inside my head, blaming me.” He swallows and drags his hand through the bathwater, as an illustration. His hand grazes my breast, and I jump. I have to bite my lip, and he moves his hand away. “I think . . . I think that completing those paintings—and those sculptures—although it didn’t feel like it at the time, now I think maybe it was me healing. Only to do it, I lost sight of everything that was important.”

He leans down and kisses my neck.

I pull away and turn and look at him, mad all over again. “I couldn’t reach you. What good is love that goes away when there’s a big problem? That’s what I want to know.”

“Marnie, I swear to you it didn’t go away. You were always the important thing I was trying to fight my way back to. You’re so different from anyone I’ve ever known. You’re Christmas morning and a Fourth of July parade both happening at once, and you have so much optimism and joy and love. You always think the best of everybody, and you want the tallest Christmas tree and the biggest crowds around the table, and the creamiest ice cream cones, and the longest, sweetest, slowest kisses—and for some reason, you see sparkles when you look at me, so how could I possibly tell you how far down I had fallen? And how fucked up I was? I’d look at you living life and making plans and I would feel like I was at the bottom of a well. Don’t you get it? You’re a happiness genius.”

“A happiness genius? I don’t think that’s a thing.” I lean back against him.

“A happiness genius is obviously a thing. And I was a happiness school dropout. And when I realized that I had pushed you away, and that it was totally my fault that I had to live without you, I was . . . well, I lost my mind. I can’t do that. I can’t go back there.”

The tap is dripping slowly. Plink. Plink. Plink.

We’re silent for a while, and then I say, “How can I possibly believe in this?”

“I guess I just need you to trust me. I’m willing to wait for as long as it takes. I’ll do my time in love jail, if you want.” He swirls his hands through the bathwater again, turns on the tap with his toe to warm it up. In a different voice, he says, “I’ve been through worse. Like, while you were gone, Fritzie got really, really sick—the kind of sick where I, at least, thought she might die. Like really, seriously die.”

“What? You didn’t tell me that part.”

“I couldn’t tell you. It took all of me to take care of her. I sat by her bed trying to get her to drink liquids. I literally thought I’d snuffed out another person I loved. And I think Bedford and Roy might have agreed; they sat right there, too. Days of it. And when she didn’t die—I don’t know, I guess part of the relief I felt was that I’m not a toxic human-destroying monster who should be forced to wear a warning label on his back. Also, I figured out that absolutely everything is going to be lost at some time in the future—all of this, even Blix’s wonderful bathtub—and that I can’t let myself live in total fear of that happening. Turns out I’m one of the survivors. And as you pointed out one time, that’s a good thing, surviving. I could see my life again. I can take care of us, Marnie. I can do my share and more. When you let me out of the love jail, of course.”

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