CHAPTER TWENTY-9
He didn't show. How was it possible that they'd shared such an amazing night together and he didn't even want to see her? Was he playing pool somewhere else? Why not at Scott's? Diana couldn't make sense out of it. She wished he'd left his phone number so she could call him. She wished she knew his last name. Maybe in fifteen years, he'd show up someplace freakishly coincidental and reveal it to her, just like Barry had done with Carr. But she didn't want TJ to be another Barry. She didn't want to lie awake dreaming of him until she was forty-seven years old. She wanted to lie asleep, dreaming next to him—now. Didn't he care about how sexy she was in her new, and completely comfortable, fourteen from Jillie's? Didn't he care that she'd lost six pounds since he'd last seen her naked and that she'd managed to do it while increasing muscle mass through aerobic exercise? Maybe he'd died. That was a possibility. After all, what did Diana know about his life? He could be a drag racer, a bullfighter, a stunt double or even a professional asshole that slept with women who worshipped him and routinely avoided them afterward. A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker . . . oh, where the hell was TJ?
Diana wanted to burst into tears. She'd been at the bar since 10:15 waiting—waiting for a half-assed delusion to spontaneously come to life. Who had she been kidding? Did she really think that TJ was going to ride into Scott's Tavern on a white horse and whisk her away to a perfect life? Well, maybe not. But she did believe they'd shared something special, something he would at least want to rekindle after a few drinks on a Saturday night. What was wrong with her? Was she bad in bed? He didn't seem to think so, at least not while it was happening. But what if, in retrospect, he did? What if her fifteen-year gap in sexual experience had been evident and, worse yet, a turnoff? What if he were carrying around the mental image of Diana naked with stretch marks and a bright pink, control-top-panty hose gash encircling her stomach?
The fears ran wild in Diana's head. They were unstoppable. But even more troubling was her tremendous sense of failure. Everything had been going so well, and now this. What if this signaled the inevitable end that, as the saying goes, all good things must come to? What would happen then? Would everything good, all the wrinkles in her world that she'd finally ironed out—her weight, her mother, her job, her self-image—would it all begin to slip away until the favorable order she'd longed for, and had finally managed to make real, was reversed? She didn't want to turn back into a 178-pound woman wishing on azaleas and searching the sky for blimps. Just the thought of returning to her old self and never knowing a thinner moment or what it was to like life again made her sick—sick enough to make her vow, Never again. As she downed the night's final sips of beer, Diana made herself a promise: No matter what happens with TJ, I will not let myself get fat and pray for death. Regardless of whether he loves me, laughs at me, or never shows up in my life again, I'll continue to refuse the old Diana sunlight. Never again will I let her see the world.
It was time to go by the time Diana realized she was drunk. She'd guzzled five beers during those torturous hours of waiting for nothing. Things had seemed fine while she was seated and, as she saw it, merely nursing her buzz with baby sips. But four hours of baby sips make more than just a buzzed baby, Diana thought. They make a drunk mama. Suppressing the urge to giggle out loud at her stunning inner wit, she made one last trip into the bathroom. She hadn't visited since beer number three when she was, in her opinion, sober, and judging by the way she bumped into practically every barstool on this final trip, it seemed that those last two beers were the ones that had pushed her over the edge. She didn't know how she was going to get home. Calling a cab was out of the question. It was just too shameful and sad. For to this day, and dating back more years than she could readily count, every time Diana saw an intoxicated person get out of a cab, she'd think of Bernie and want to cry.
Bernie was the neighborhood drunk of Diana's childhood. Between the ages of eight and ten, she was awakened nearly every night just after two by the sounds of a taxi door slamming, metal trash cans falling to the ground, and, in the warm weather when her bedroom window was open, Bernie belching and hiccuping his way to his mother's front porch, onto which he'd usually collapse, crashing down on the wooden boards like a comatose elephant. Diana had always found his solitary, stumbling shadow somewhat intriguing. But it wasn't until she'd heard Mrs. Christopher refer to him as "the lousy drunk three houses down who's thirty-five, unemployed, and still living with his poor, old mother" that she really began to take an interest in him.
Many days, she'd see Bernie sitting outside on her way home from school, and his empty eyes would follow her along the sidewalk as he sipped dark liquid from a brown paper bag. He didn't look so lousy to her, but rather like a portrait of the loneliest man in the world. One afternoon, she finally dared herself to wave. After all, everybody needed at least one friend. Perhaps, she could be his. To Diana's amazement, a smile actually stretched across his face, making his stubbly, sunken cheeks round and bringing a glimmer of light to his eyes. See, she had told herself, all he needed was me. Every day after that, Diana made a point of waving to the nice man that nobody understood and watching him, if even for a second, become a happier person for knowing her.
Lying in bed every night, awakened by the sounds of his homecoming, Diana created a life for Bernie, and it was a life filled with loneliness and more than one man's share of sorrow. For as she figured it, his mother was old and sick and a little out of her mind, his father was dead, he'd never had a wife, and drinking was the only way he knew how to dull the pain of solitude. After a while, she no longer waited to be lured out of sleep by his noisy arrival, but instead found herself purposely staying awake each night ,just waiting to hear that cab door slam shut so that she could run to her window and make sure he got home okay. And despite the knocking into things and falling all over the place, he always did. Until one night, when he didn't.
Diana was ten when she watched Bernie trip over a dead bird and crack his head on the sidewalk. She was ten when she saw the blood spilling from Bernie's head, blood she tried to tell herself was from the bird, the same splattered bird that had been lying by the curb for nearly two days and couldn't possibly have had that much blood left to lose. But Diana couldn't bear for Bernie to hurt, and so the pain and the blood, and the terrible fear that must have been caused by both, just had to belong to the bird. With her hands held tightly over her ears—as if the sound of a bleeding man were too deafening to scream above—she'd yelled, "It's only bird's blood! Bird's blood! Bird's blood! Bird's blood!" until Mrs. Christopher awoke and raced into her daughter's bedroom, encircling her with the pink, fluffy sleeves of her bathrobe and shielding Diana's eyes. Diana had struggled with her mother that night, twisting violently and elbowing her in the stomach while yelling over and over again, "Let me go! You're killing him!" until the sound of the ambulance siren gave her the strength to knock Mrs. Christopher to the floor. She had then rushed downstairs, as fast as her trembling feet would allow her, arriving at the front door in time to see three paramedics carrying the stretcher away from the curb, their faces solemn but not nearly as sad as they should have been. For on top of the stretcher was a white sheet shaped like a man, with a bright red stain growing where the head was.
As Diana ran out of the house and into the street, she could hear her mother ten steps behind her, anxiously calling her name in a voice that begged her to come back inside. Diana reached the ambulance just in time to watch its doors slam closed on the only man she'd cared about since Daddy, a man whose life had just been extinguished because no one had ever reached out their hand to help him—not even when he was dying. She had begun to help him, but it hadn't been enough. She shouldn't have stopped at the waving. She should have talked to him, gotten to know him for real, seen if the life she'd created for him in her head was anything like the life he really led. She should have been a true friend. Now it was too late.
"NO!" Diana had screamed as the ambulance seemed to fade away in slow motion. And it was the loudest scream the town had ever heard. Maybe it was for her father. She'd killed him, too. But she'd been too young to fully understand what she'd done to Daddy. She'd never really learned the details of his accident. But she did know what she'd done to Bernie—she'd let him die. And that was just as bad as killing someone. She should've run out to help him before her mother woke up. Maybe, then, she could have saved him—that poor, misunderstood little man who'd never hurt anybody but himself.
Her scream spawned a united gasp, more startling than her desperate cry, and she turned to see an entire neighborhood staring at her, like she was some kind of possessed demon-child from a horror film. Not one of them put their arms around her or told her it would be all right. Middle-aged suburbia in their coordinated pajama sets and His and Hers bathrobes. The same people who had always rejected Bernie as an untouchable freak now looked at her the same way. The worst part was seeing Mrs. Christopher amongst them and recognizing that very same appalled look of rejection in her own mother's eyes, staring at her from the front porch like Diana was a stranger and no more a part of her than she was of anyone else in the neighborhood.
Diana had remained motionless after the ambulance disappeared, standing still for what felt like days, as she waited for her mother to come to her and take her back inside. But Mrs. Christopher never did. And all the other neighbors eventually tired of the freak show and went back to bed, leaving Diana alone in the street, staring at her mother, who eventually turned to go back inside herself. "Come on, Diana" was all she'd said. And with the exception of "You don't have to go to school today if you don't want to" the next morning at breakfast, Mrs. Christopher never so much as hinted at the subject ever again.
Bernie's mother, on the other hand, had slept through the entire thing and had died in that very same sleep by morning. The neighborhood had called it creepy, but Diana had figured that even in her sleep, his mother had somehow known what had happened and had finally allowed herself to die, having been ready for a long time but never wanting to leave Bernie all alone. She viewed it as a bittersweet ending to a terrible tragedy. She thought it was nice.
Diana definitely didn't want to be the town Bernie. She didn't need to pull up to her building in a cab in the middle of the night so that all the tenants could wonder about her life, assume it was pitiful, pass judgment on her, and when the time came, refuse to shed a tear for her death. She would just walk home and hope not to knock over any trash cans along the way. I'll be fine was all she had to keep telling herself. Well, that, and TJ is an asshole. The mantra kept her focused and carried her steadily homeward without any accidents.
Glen Vali Suites looked different after five beers, and so did the moon. It was as if she were normal, and everything around her—the moon, the stars, her building, and each jumbo, white, night-blooming flower on the vine that climbed the gate—was drunk.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" A gentle voice penetrated the silent summer night, causing Diana to spin around nervously and crash right into the arms of the intruder.
"Sorry," she apologized, without looking up.
"It's okay." The voice was familiar. It was Barry.
"What are you doing here?" Mrs. Bartle hadn't said anything about him coming.
"Well, I figured you might need someone to catch you when a strange man's voice in the dark made you spin around and lose your balance."
"Oh, is that so?" Diana wanted to appear sober, so she thought it best not to attempt any witty responses of her own.
"No, actually it's not," Barry admitted. "I was just taking a walk."
"At two o'clock in the morning?"
"Well, actually it's almost three. Which gives me reason to return the inquiry." Barry leaned forward. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here."
"Are you in the habit of wandering around unaccompanied at 3:00 a.m.?"
"Well, what's your excuse?" Diana asked.
"I'm still on California time," Barry said. "It's not even midnight there yet."
"Ah," Diana returned, raising her eyebrows with an exaggerated nod.
"Good time at the bar tonight?"
His words hit her slowly. The atmosphere had begun to spin around her a bit, but aside from that, she thought she'd been hiding her earlier whereabouts rather well. "What makes you think I was at a bar?" she asked, sinking suddenly toward the ground.
"Whoa, I've gotcha," Barry said, putting his arms around her as he helped her to the lawn. "By the way," he continued, whispering in her ear, "I hope you were better at stuff like this when you were a teenager."
"Better at stuff like what?" Diana squinted at him, confused. They were both seated on the lawn, facing the beautiful white flowers on the vine along the gate—the kind that opened at sunset and made the air smell sweeter than the most delicious dessert.
"I don't know," he laughed. "Better at coming up with reasons for why you were out walking at the very same time the bars close, better at covering up beer breath, better at not falling down. God, if I were your mother, I'd have been relieved to have a kid whose dishonesty was so transparent. I'd always know when you were lying to me."
"Like the way you 'knew' I was over eighteen?" Diana teased, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back a little.
"What?"
"Remember?" she asked, facing him. "That night in your truck? We went outside and it was cold—totally unlike tonight—and you led me over to your—"
"I remember," he interrupted. "But believe me, I wouldn't have done it if I'd known how young you were."
"I was just a little girl, Barry," Diana said, smiling, loving the game.
"I know that now," Barry said, his deep brown eyes piercing her with a sudden seriousness that, in the drunken moonlight by the flowers, made the moment seem intense, pivotal even.
"I was a virgin," Diana whispered, staring at him solemnly.
"I know," Barry admitted. "I mean, I didn't know . . .at first," he stammered. "But then I, uh . . . well, I felt something and I knew."
"You felt something?" What was it? A psychic broadcast announcing This girl is a virgin? An angel on his shoulder beseeching him to stop? An overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and protect her precious and until-then-totally-untouched chastity for the rest of their days?
"Blood," he said, his face cringing awkwardly.
"Oh, right." Duh. "I guess that was kind of a turnoff, huh?"
"No, not really," Barry said, looking down. "Quite the opposite, in fact."
"You mean it turned you ON?"
"You don't have to say it so loud," Barry protested lightly, keeping his eyes on the lawn. He was embarrassed; Diana could tell. In fact, if she were sober, and it weren't so dark outside, she'd know for sure that he was blushing. And even through her moonlit haze of inebriation, she found his fumbling sincerity endearing. After a few moments, he looked up. The seriousness had returned to his eyes. "I'm really sorry I never called you afterward."
"Barry, you didn't have my phone number."
"I'm sorry I never asked for it."
"You are?" Mrs. Bartle had been right about Barry Carr all along. He truly was a good guy.
"I was different then," Barry explained. "I was young and stupid, as the saying goes . . . Diana, I was intimate with a lot of women. No. Intimate . . . intimate isn't the right word. I . . ." As Barry searched for a suitable euphemism for had sex with, one that wouldn't seem like a justification, Diana wondered if she should tell him that he had no reason to feel guilty over her, that even though the tissue thing after the climax of his performance had been a somewhat tacky way to end the show, she wasn't screwed up over what they had done, and she never had been.
She wanted to say, Hey, you were the only man that had ever made me feel sexy. What we did was both the ultimate grand prize to end a shitty adolescence and the white knight of a very lonely adulthood. If you only knew how many times the memory of that one night has kept blood pumping through my veins, even when I've felt like the biggest, fattest loser on the planet—when I went through my entire twenties without ever once having sex, when my mother or Mick made me realize, through some supposedly harmless suggestion or joke, that I was a fat failure, when Dr. Mason explained the rarity of immaculate conception, and even when he scheduled my biopsy—if you knew how that night in your pickup truck made me forget the world and pray for passion, giving me a reason to think my life had possibilities and an emergency dose of self-esteem when I needed it, you'd realize that apologies now are beyond unnecessary. My father, my mother, and everyone I have ever known (with the exception, of course, of your brilliant and beautiful aunt Rose)—anyone else, including myself—could, and is welcome to, take the blame for what, up until a few weeks ago, was a not-so-wonderful life. Anyone except for you. You, who for one night broke up the monotony and made me feel like the most special person in the room in a way that no one had done before and no one had done since until. . .
Crap. She'd managed to forget about TJ for a little while—in the fragrant air of summer flowers that only bloomed when the sun went down and in the company of her first fling who was doing such a good job of making her remember their magic—and now, here he was, Travis Whatever-the-Hell-the-"J"-Stands-For Last Name Unknown, intruding upon the non-depressingness of everything. What a bastard.
"I was a slut," Barry finally concluded. A strange confession for a man to make, but an admirably honest one nonetheless, and at least it had rescued her from another round of TJ-bashing, one that would have undoubtedly transformed itself into the evening's second What-is-wrong-with-me? marathon.
"A slut?"
"That's the only explanation I can give you."
"Barry, I don't need an explanation."
"But I do."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I was a slut. I slept with a lot of women, some of them married even, with absolutely no regard for how they felt afterward or for what it would do to their lives."
"Yeah, but Barry, these married women were the ones who were cheating, not you. I think you're being too hard on yourself." Seriously, Diana thought, what had the man done that was so awful? These married women were the ones breaking all their vows of loyalty and tampering with a life they'd created for themselves in front of God and all of their relatives and friends. Barry had been a solo operator, free to sleep with whomever consented, and not guilty of coercion or betrayal when some married woman decided to risk everything. Maybe the alcohol had maimed Diana's objectivity, but she couldn't see what was so bad about what he'd done.
"I slept with Clara Sutton." And there it was. Diana felt like she'd just had the wind knocked out of her. Not Mrs. Sutton. Not Sarah and Jack's mom. Not the woman whose life Diana had spent her teenage years looking to as a prototype for what a functional wife and mother should be.
"Barry, you didn't! That's horrible! She had a family!"
"Well, so did these other women. And you just said I was being too hard on myself about them," Barry said. But Diana just stared at him, unsure of how to react. She wasn't exactly mad at him, and truth be told, she didn't really give a rat's ass now about Clara and Clifford Sutton's marriage and what happened to it back in the decade of big hair and shoulder pads. It was more like . . .she was jealous. "Do you forgive me?"
"Well, that depends," Diana said, trying to act playful and unaffected. "Was it before or after me?"
"Which answer would get me off the hook?"
"I'm not sure, so just be honest."
"After." Now that she'd heard it, "after" was definitely the wrong response. Diana knew Barry had been with other women since her, but having a visual of one of them definitely detracted from what now revealed themselves as the complete delusions of grandeur she'd been having ever since Mrs. Bartle said—and Barry's actions implied—that she was special. "And before."
"What?" Was he toying with her?
"We had an affair."
"An affair? As in long-term?"
"As in she's one of the two reasons I left Baltimore. I didn't go to Los Angeles just to start an auto body chain. I could've done that here. But I needed to leave, and Clara was one of the reasons why."
"What was the other one?" Diana asked.
"You."
"Me?" He was definitely toying with her.
"Between screwing up Clara's marriage and realizing you were a virgin—that both of you would remember me and what we'd done for the rest of your lives . . .well, I suddenly saw myself a little too clearly, and, needless to say, I didn't like what I saw."
"What did you see?"
"A man who used people and threw them away. Someone who messed up people's lives and moved on, without ever offering a hand in helping to put back together what I'd so selfishly—and thoughtlessly—torn apart."
"But, Barry, it wasn't like that with us. Don't you see? I was like you. I wasn't looking for anything more than you gave me. In fact, what you gave me was exactly what I needed, and I've never had any regrets." Diana could not believe how bold the night had made her. Here she was—on the brink of telling Barry how she'd really felt about him for the past fifteen years. "You were never like the guy you thought you were. At least not in my eyes."
"Well, that's very comforting to know," Barry said, grinning warmly. "But I'm glad I didn't have the consolation back then."
"Why is that?"
"Because I may have never changed. And then I might have never had the chance to tell you that you were special."
"I knew," Diana teased, letting her smile get as big as it wanted to.
"Oh, is that right?" Barry asked, shoving her playfully. Diana wanted so badly to ask him about his marriage, about Jennifer and how they had met, about what had made him think she was the one. But she felt greedy. Barry's whole middle-of-the-night gut-spilling session shouldn't have left her craving more dirt—the dirt he'd already given her should have been enough.
"What?" he asked suddenly, sensing in her silence that something was amiss. But Diana just shrugged, too embarrassed to ask about the one thing he hadn't divulged. "You're probably wondering how my divorce plays into all of this." Diana was amazed—the man had to be psychic.
"Actually, I already know about it," Diana said, playing it cool, not wanting to sound too eager. "Your aunt told me everything."
"Everything?" Barry asked, pretending to be impressed.
"Yes, everything," Diana answered haughtily, returning the sarcasm.
"Oh, okay. So I guess I don't have to tell you about Jennifer."
"Fine," Diana said, wondering how good she was at pretending she wasn't dying of curiosity. Barry smiled to himself. Sitting with his knees to his chest, he harbored the devilishly smug expression of the playground know-it-all who claimed to know exactly how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop but wouldn't tell anyone.
"Oh, come on, tell me!" Diana suddenly burst out. Apparently, she was the kid on the playground who was too eager to realize that feigning disinterest was a surefire way of getting the secret-keeper to spill. After all, privileged information was only fun when it could be used to torture other people.
"Nope!" Barry said, remaining tight-lipped as he stared up at the stars above them. It seemed he was planning on torturing Diana for as long as he could hold out.
"Oh, come on. Don't tease me," Diana begged. But the truth was that she enjoyed it. She hadn't had such childlike fun since her father was alive. Barry's resistance reminded her of the way Daddy used to hold out on her, when he'd pretend he didn't know where he was taking her on their special day out or what flavor of ice cream he'd bought at the market.
"I'm not teasing," Barry explained. "I'm just wondering.
"Wondering what?"
"Why you never answered me."
"About what?"
"The flowers."
"What are you talking about?" Diana didn't know this game.
"The flowers right there," Barry said, gesturing toward the big, white flowers they'd been facing since Diana's loss of balance had sent the two of them to the ground.
"You never asked me about the flowers."
"Well, that shows what you know. I absolutely did ask you about the flowers." Barry leaned over, lowering his voice. "I was the stranger in the night who startled you."
"Oh, yeah," Diana said, remembering.
"Oh, yeah," Barry mimicked her.
"Well, fine, Mr. Carr, I'll tell you what I think of the flowers."
"I'm listening," Barry said.
"I think . . ." Diana didn't feel drunk anymore, just peaceful and uninhibited, with a clarity she'd never really possessed before. "I think," she continued confidently and with full conviction, "they're not as lovely as azaleas."
"Azaleas?"
"Yes, azaleas. These flowers are beautiful. But there are no flowers more magical or more powerful than azaleas."
"And why is that?"
Diana moved her face closer to Barry's in what was probably a subconscious attempt to protect the sacred nature of what she was about to disclose from any unsympathetic elements in the atmosphere that may have been lingering between them. "Azaleas brought my father back to earth," she whispered. Barry's face turned as serious as stone, and neither of them spoke until he broke into a smile and sighed, hanging his head in a charmingly self-imposed shame, like he was the last one at the party to get the joke.
"He was an astronaut," he said matter-of-factly, looking up again to meet Diana's curious stare.
"No, he was dead," Diana replied. Blazing with shock, Barry's bulging eyes appeared to be contemplating a jump from their sockets. "Well, he is dead," Diana continued. "He's . . . Did your aunt ever tell you about my cancer scare?"
"Your cancer scare? No. What happened? Are you all right?" All signs of amazement had disappeared from Barry's face, and the only thing evident was genuine concern. Diana wondered if it would be evil to pretend that maybe she wasn't all right, just so that she could hold on a little longer to this feeling of being cared about by a man. But she figured it was bad luck to play tricks where her health was concerned, and Barry was too nice of a guy to torment. So she decided to go with honesty.
"I m fine."
"Oh, thank God," Barry said, putting his hand to his heart. It was a reaction she'd gift wrap and distribute for free to every woman in America if she could. It would come in so handy when all men seemed like unfeeling assholes who just didn't care, which, in many women's lives, was probably most of the time. Barry's response made her want to tell him everything.
"Anyway, it was a few weeks ago when my doctor said there might be a tumor in my fallopian tube," Diana began.
"A tumor?" Barry seemed frightened.
"Barry, I'm okay," Diana said, reassuring him with her giant smile. "It turned out to be benign. But during my one day of not knowing, I went to sleep and dreamt the most beautiful dream."
"What was it about?"
"Azaleas."
"Azaleas," Barry repeated, as if the word had suddenly become its own island of mystical elegance, too sacred and wonderful not to be echoed.
"I was in a beautiful garden full of them, a garden that just radiated with their bright, pink color, when out of nowhere, a giant tumor blimp appeared in the sky."
"A tumor blimp?"
"Yeah, kind of like the Goodyear blimp but only with the word 'tumor' painted across it, instead. And my father was inside of it. He wanted me to pick some azaleas for him. He didn't say a word, neither of us did. But I knew that's what he wanted, so I gave him as many as I was able to hold in my hands, and . . ." Diana sighed, looking away and remembering how great it had felt to be with her father again. "We flew away on that blimp together."
"And then you found out it wasn't cancer," Barry said softly.
"And then I found out it wasn't cancer," Diana reflected, still looking away. After a few moments, she began to drift back into the present and started to worry that Barry might think she still had a death wish. She was thrilled that he had understood her in the first place, for she'd never intended to share that dream with anyone, not even Mrs. Bartle. But she didn't want him to think she was a suicide case or, in any sense, still suffering from delusions of blimps. Spinning around to face him, she broke the silence, announcing, "I'm lucky to be alive."
"Yes, you are," Barry agreed, guiding her head onto his shoulder. "We all are."
It felt wonderful to be held by a man. The world seemed like home, and everything felt safe and sweet. She wanted things to stay this way, for as long as they could.
"Tell me about your name."
"My name?"
"Mrs. Bartle has been talking about you for years," Diana explained. "Silly me, I never stopped to think her great-nephew, William, might have been the Barry I once knew."
Barry laughed, making Diana feel witty and adorable. "Well, Barry comes from my middle name, Barron."
"I kind of figured that."
"Hey, do you want me to explain this to you or not?" Barry asked, feigning offense.
"Sorry, please do."
"All right. See, William Barron was my uncle Billy's name. He was my mom's brother. Her maiden name was Barron. My uncle Billy died before I was born, so that's who I was named after."
"Well, why don't people just call you William?"
"Well, people do call me William. Not many do, though—pretty much just my parents, grandparents and Aunt Rose. But, you know how when you're younger you want your friends to have a nickname for you? Like, for instance, what did people call you when you were growing up?"
"Diana," she said, providing no help.
"Well, you were probably a dork," he teased. "But for the rest of us, we like a nickname. I didn't want to use Billy since that's what everyone called my uncle, so I thought it would be cool to go by Barry."
"Why not Will?"
"I wanted to be different."
"Well, Barron's different," Diana said. "You should have just had people call you Barron."
"Would you like to call me Barron?" he offered.
"No."
"Are you sure? Because I'm sensing you feel cheated for never getting to call me William, Barron, Will or Billy. I don't want there to be bad feelings later," he joked.
"I'll get over it," she assured him. And then changing the subject, she said, "Tell me about Jennifer."
"Jennifer?" Barry sighed. "Well, there's not too much to tell, really, or I guess I should say 'unfortunately,'" Barry began. "I mean, you already know about the divorce. So all that's left is, well, Jennifer. And quite frankly," Barry sighed, "she's not too interesting."
"Why'd you marry her?" Diana asked. She could feel her butt sinking into the lawn as her head continued to become one with Barry's strong and comforting shoulder. Sitting like this and listening to him talk was as soothing as hearing an old-fashioned bedtime story, the way her father used to tell them.
"I married her because I was ready. I'd moved out there to change, and after a few years, when my business was established and I started thinking about finding someone I could share my life with, I met a beautiful girl from a well-respected family, and thought, 'Why not? I'm ready to settle down. And if I can't make it work with this girl, I won't be able to make it work with anyone.' "
"Do you still believe that?" Diana asked.
"No. Especially not now that I know how 'beautiful' is maintained . . . Did my aunt tell you that Jennifer never wore sweatpants?"
"Sweatpants?" Diana had closed her eyes.
"Yeah, sweatpants. She wouldn't wear them. Not even to lay around the house in. And do you know what the reason was?"
"Hmm?"
"Sugar."
"Sugar?"
"Yeah, as in God forbid one of the neighbors should want to come over and borrow a cup of sugar when she wasn't sporting full makeup and a flattering outfit."
"I've never had to borrow a cup of sugar," Diana said, too at ease to worry if the comment made her seem big or not. After all, being in steady supply of sugar was not something she'd ordinarily boast about.
"None of the neighbors ever had to borrow any either," Barry said. "But that was her reasoning. 'What if Karen or Eric or one of the Steins should pop over for a cup of sugar? Oh no!'" The mock horror in his tone made Diana giggle. "It was like the world would end suddenly and tragically if someone rang the doorbell when her lipstick wasn't fresh or her hair had a tangle in it. You know, she actually kept a hairbrush tucked away in a drawer in every single room of the house—and I mean every room, laundry room not excluded."
"Are you serious?" Diana asked. She'd thought checking her face in the Blue Horizon napkin dispenser had been vain.
"Unfortunately, yes," Barry said. "The woman was constantly grooming. I mean, she couldn't even laugh without running to the nearest mirror to make sure the movement hadn't caused any permanent damage—like, God forbid, one of those little lines around the mouth that prove you weren't as still as stone your entire life but actually had occasion to smile now and then. Jennifer lived in fear of those, too. If she went out to lunch with a girlfriend and worried she had laughed too much for a single afternoon, I'd catch her doing facial exercises in front of the computer while she searched the Internet for magical laugh-line sealant. Anyway," he continued, becoming serious, "I guess I loved her—for a while. I mean, everyone has those little qualities that make you resist the urge to completely cut them out of your life—even when that urge is justified and the bad far exceeds the good. But then it gets to the point where you realize that you deserve more than being tied indefinitely to someone who hurts you." Barry stopped talking and looked down at Diana. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder. And as he sat there holding her, in the predawn stillness of the summer night sky, he brushed one of her strawberry-blond curls away from her face and whispered, "If only she were the kind of girl that dreamt of azaleas, we probably would have made it."