Page 120 of Promise Me Sunshine

He doesn’t say the words but they rise up between us, and some of my confusion about his reticence vapors away.

“Dance with Jeffy,” he says instead of finishing his thought. “Text me when you wanna go home? I’ll call you a cab so I know you’re safe.” He’s standing up, really readying himself to leave. I twirl on the stool and grab him by the shoulders. But he won’t be stopped. “Havefun,okay?” He says it like he really means it, takes my hands off his shoulders and, for a moment, just holds them. He gives them a quick squeeze and then drops them.

He waves goodbye to Jeffy at the bar and is gone.

What happened?Jeffy mouths to me with big, illustrative movements. I shrug and shake my head. Hell if I know.

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Breaking: a mancanresist the bend and snap.

I know this because I performed one in front of Miles and he only expressed mild concern that I’d just slipped a disc.

Now that I know he eats his heart out when I’m in an oversized tee and torn jeans, I’m curious about stretching the bounds of my power. He claims our connection is notcontingent on sex appeal. But I’m interested in speeding this mythical “timing” along a bit.

He’s not avoiding me nearly as much as before, but neither is he accepting my advances. Of which there are many.

I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with pornographic enthusiasm. He rolls his eyes and checks his email.

I spread my legs à laBasic Instinct,but I’m wearing granny panties and cargo pants besides and all it accomplishes is Miles telling me to get my feet off his kitchen table.

I pretend to fall asleep on his couch and he pokes me and tells me to hit the road.

A week of this bullshit and I’m about ready to give up the whole endeavor.

“He can’t be seduced!” I shout into the phone.

“I don’t think other daughters say this kind of thing to their mothers,” my mom placidly replies.

“Well, you asked!”

She did, indeed, ask how things were going with Miles when she called and I answered.

“I’m thrilled you answered the phone, Lenny, but I don’t think I’m going to be much help here. I’m not an expert.”

“You’ve been with Dad for thirty years.”

“Exactly. Which means I haven’t tried to get something started with someone in thirty years. But how hard could it really be? He’s obviously gaga for you.”

“Are you sure? Like, really sure?”

“No one comes to Sunday dinner and lets a man force-feed him grappa unless he’s hoping that man will be his father-in-law someday.”

“I see you’ve conveniently excluded the duck from the list of things Miles was force-fed.”

“See? He clearly loves you. The duck just proves my point.”

Mom signs off with me because she’s standing out in front of her pottery class and she doesn’t want to be late. I continue my long walk through Central Park, stopping only to stand with a big group of birders and pretending to see what they see when one lady repeatedly points it out to me.

I keep on going, winding my way through the twisting paths. It strikes me that I feel at home here. As a lifelong Brooklynite, I’ve settled into the Upper West Side over the last few months. It’s disorienting to not be lost up here.

It strikes me that all the hardest stuff in my life—spiraling out from grief, abandonment of my former loved ones, retreat from my entire life—that somewhere along the line the hardest stuff might have become…the easiest thing to do.

And now the hardest stuff in my life is no longer the plummet into despair. Now it’s trying to pull myself up out of it.

I’ve unintentionally started speedwalking, and by the time I make it back to the studio apartment I’m breathing hard and have broken out in a sweat. I’d like to change clothes, but I don’t really have any clean ones so I take this energy and I haul everything to the laundromat and back. I put all my clean and folded clothes away. But now that the dirty clothes are clean, all the other clutter is bothering me.

I straighten everything up, wipe down all the counters, take out the trash and recycling, and dig Miles’s tiny little dust buster out of the tiny little closet. When everything is neat as a pin, I call it a good job and go take a shower. The sun’s gone down in the meantime so I deem pajamas necessary.

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