Page 88 of Alone With You in the Ether

“But you said I’d finally found someone who could keep up with me.”

“Yes, I know, and in many ways she is, but also she’s moving too fast for you. I’m worried,” Masso exhaled with reluctance; with reticence, as if he didn’t want to be the one to have to pass on the message but hey, look around, there was no one else. “I worry that if you try to keep up with her, you’ll burn out, Rinaldo.”

“I don’t understand.”

Aldo’s pulse now seemed too fast, his mouth too dry, and Masso turned to face him.

“Rinaldo, we both know you’re not like everyone else,” Masso said softly. “We don’t talk about it often, but we know, don’t we? That you’re, I don’t know. More fragile,” he said, wincing slightly, and Aldo felt suddenly stiff, like his bones would splinter if he moved. “You need stability. You need someone reliable, predictable. Regan, she’s impulsive.”

Yes, Dad, I know. If she were any less impulsive, she wouldn’t be with me and I would have never known what she was, or how it felt to hold her. I would never have known what it was to matter for once; for the first time, and for the only time that I have ever known.

“Maybe I need impulsive,” Aldo said.

Masso shook his head. “Not this kind of impulsive.”

“You can’t know that.”

“No, maybe I don’t, maybe you’re right.” Masso’s voice was grim. “I only know that I loved a woman once like her, who saw the world as she does: like a flame she can’t hold between her fingers. I only know that a woman like that isn’t afraid to burn, that she will drag you in with her, and I know she will come out laughing and you will not. I only know that I don’t know what I’ll do, Rinaldo, if something hurts you—”

“Dad, that’s… You can’t be serious.”

But Masso was always serious. “Will she settle down, Rinaldo?” he pressed. “Will she want a life, a family, stability, what?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I can’t possibly know that.”

“Yes, but someone has to know for you, someone has to ask you.” He gripped Aldo’s arm, tugging him into a more secluded corner. “Where are we in time, Rinaldo?”

“I—” He felt briefly dizzied. “Dad, I thought—”

“We are in thenow, Aldo.” His father was unusually insistent. “Look around, orient yourself. You’re a grown man, she’s a grown woman, and you have to protect yourself because she will not protect you. She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she’s talented, yes. She’s intuitive and kind, wonderful. So was your mother, and Regan is restless like her. I can see it in the way she moves, the way she looks at you, it’s very familiar.”

Immediately, Aldo’s brain began rationalizing, compartmentalizing, placing things in boxes of like and unlike. “Regan isn’t Mom.”

“Of course not, no two people are the same. But I remember what it was to feel everything all at once, and I have to tell you,” Masso said urgently, “I never pieced myself back together. And now, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can watch you do the same.”

Elsewhere in the restaurant someone called out Masso’s name, a burst of laughter ricocheting from where they stood. Aldo looked over his shoulder, catching Regan’s silhouette; she’d emerged from the bathroom, smiling as someone took her hand and admired her, probably saying to her, How pretty you are, and Regan was probably saying, Oh, no, don’t be silly, as if she hadn’t heard the same thing every day, every hour, every minute of her life.

She looked up, caught his eye, smiled. She pointed to him, her lips parting to say something like, There he is.

There she is, Aldo thought.

Masso cleared his throat, following his son’s line of sight. “Rinaldo, listen—”

“You’re wrong about her,” Aldo said, turning back to his father. “I mean, you’re right, she’s impulsive,” but it’s an easy conclusion, too easy, it’s not the sum of all her parts, “but she’s not like Mom.”

He was saying, in pleasant tones: Don’t worry, Dad, I hear you, but it’s different.

But he was thinking, with iron certainty: I have spent a lifetime encountering problems that ravaged my abilities before, Dad, and none have destroyed me yet. If I’m still here, then surely it’s for something.

If I am still here, Dad, then please. Let it have been for something.

“I like her, Rinaldo, I do, I just—”

“You worry, I know,” Aldo said, and beckoned for Regan from afar. “But don’t.”

She joined them; he slid an arm around her waist; she smiled and he kissed her cheek.

“What are you two talking about?”

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