Slide - Kyle Beachy [42]
“Good night, sport.”
After a while, I stood from the TV and walked stiffly through the living room to the basement door, then descended. I found the boxes I'd hauled across the country and had to tear open several before locating the right one. Then I went upstairs to lie in bed naked on top of the covers, one arm at my side, the other holding the book I suddenly wanted very much to read. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White's The Elements of Style.
I listened for squirrels but heard nothing.
july
one
her family never liked me. This was a message passed with little subtlety. The surgeon father and med-school brother glared at me with delirious conviction: this young man does not deserve our Audrey. Even before the cheating, the screaming and slamming. At dinner during the first Portland visit, I was sure med-school elbowed me in passing. The business-school sister pretended I was either too small or too dumb to address. It didn't take long to realize that general disinterest and prevailing rudeness were symptoms of an issue more basic than whether or not they cared for me personally. The problem was my love. Whether the decision was communal or something each came to alone, none of them bought that I was in love with Audrey. They decided quickly and unanimously that my claim to love was insincere. And thus why bother? Why even pretend civility? It made sense. Of the four, only the cardiologist mother spoke to me as a wholly rational and worthwhile human being. Given the same data, she interpreted my alleged nonlove as a signal of inherent weakness, an unfixable character flaw, and thereby found reason to pity and speak softly to me with tender condescension I had no trouble gathering she enjoyed.
“Families worry,” Audrey said. “They need to believe that I'm in good hands.”
She took my hand and pressed it to her mouth and made clear that her faith in me was deep and unqualified.
“You love me. I know. If they don't know now, they will eventually. Just you be Potter and I'll be Audrey. Like normal. They'll see. They have to see. They're not idiots.”
Before I left this first visit, they stood together once more in a line so I could observe their considerable force. Gathering to see me off, aligned as if to say, In the permanent reality of our family, this, too, we know, will pass. Littered waste cleared off their lawn. And on the way to the airport Audrey avoided excuses, because you don't have to excuse family, and we spoke predictably of missing and longing and the number of days before we'd see each other again.
The second Portland visit occurred winter of junior year, post Jim and the blonde in the basement. And this time I explicitly focused on the impression I made. I cleared the table and washed dishes and poured the med-school brother wine. I brushed the small of Audrey's back in passing, leaned and whispered into her ear in full view of the parents. She crept into the guest bedroom and we made silent love, then lay staring at the ceiling.
“Stop worrying about them,” she said. “Just be Potter. I'll be Audrey.”
Trembling at the sound of her voice, I recognized the girl at my side, epicenter of my world, was capable of mass demolition. That she could disappear, or die, or declare this whole thing over. At any given second she could crush, kill, destroy, with a word. Twin bed, musty guest room, hostile environs: where I came to understand just how much of love was based on fear.
And still the family didn't buy it. This time no phalanx, hardly even a goodbye. Airport drive, I squeezed Audrey's hand