Crazy Love You (8 page)

•  •  •

Anyway, her parents turned out to be a bit of a surprise.
Daddy
picked us up at the train station the following weekend in a brand-new champagne-colored Range Rover that I knew cost about $100K. I knew because I wanted it and couldn't afford it. (I did all right, but there's money and then there's
money
.) I had an old Scout that I kept up in The Hollows, parked in the garage of a house I couldn't stand to visit. I went up and got it on the very rare instances that I was inspired to leave the city.

Daddy
leaped out of the vehicle as we approached, looking fit and youthful, and gave his daughter a big bear hug, planting a kiss on the top of her head. Then he turned to me.

“Aw, man, Ian Paine,” her dad said. He pumped my hand, and wore a bright, goofy smile. “I'm a big fan of
Fatboy and Priss
. I've always wanted to do a comic book.”

I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped open. Even though “comic book” wasn't quite right (these days we called them graphic novels), I was still flattered.

“Wow, thanks,” I said. “I'm honored to meet you, sir.”

Maybe he was just blowing smoke up my ass, trying to be cordial. But it was nice. And I felt like a jerk for not reading even one of his books before we made the trip out to his home. That would have been the respectful thing, the grown-up thing to do.

But you're not a grown-up
, Priss had said once.
You're a man-baby. Your self-involvement is so total, you don't even know that you're supposed to think of something other than your own appetites and neuroses.

I didn't know if she was right about me or not. Sometimes she was, sometimes she wasn't. But I suppose I was as self-involved as any jerk-off my age. If Megan's dad—
Call me Binky, everyone does!
—was offended by my not mentioning his work or even pretending that I had any familiarity with it, it didn't show.

That afternoon passed in a happy blur—starting with a blustery blue-gray walk along the white shelly beach. Megan held hands with her dad and I trailed behind a little, but okay. I already knew she was a daddy's girl. Her mom whipped up a lovely meal of homemade gnocchi and butternut squash and salad, which I helped to serve, putting down plates on a table set with flowers and fresh-baked bread in a basket while Megan poured water into crystal glasses.

Her father broke out the perfect wine—a 1997 sauvignon blanc from New Zealand. (Anyway, Binky said it was the perfect wine. What did I know? It tasted good enough to me.) There was a fire in the fireplace; her mother's amateur oil paintings on the wall. And we talked—like, really talked—about life and the world, and current events. There was zero bickering, no arguing. There were no lashes of anger, subtle trading of insults. They liked one another—husband and wife, parent and child. Megan's father asked about my work, my process, the union of art and story. I found myself waiting for someone to get impatient, to say something crappy. But no, nothing. There was one light nudge from Megan's mom about when Meg might think about moving on from her nanny job and “get more serious” about her writing. Megan still hadn't let me read her novel, but I knew it had to be good. She had a writer's soul—she was a compassionate observer, a careful, gentle person, a beautiful spirit who saw a reflection of that beauty in everything around her—even me.

“It's a good job for me right now,” she said to her mom, without a touch of defensiveness. “I can write when Toby naps and at night. You don't want me to move home, do you?”

Her mom smiled. She was a stunner like her daughter—dark hair, fair skin, a kind of radiance that was more than the sum of her features. She wasn't someone you'd hit on, exactly. But Julia was someone you would admire, like a painting or a sculpture.

“I'd love it if you moved home,” Julia said. And anyone could see that she meant it, in a kind of girlish, let's-have-a-slumber-party way.

“But that's not the way you raised me, is it?” Megan lifted a glass to her mom, gave her a mischievous grin.

A mock sigh. “I suppose not. See, Ian, when you raise a strong, independent child to honor her own ideas—that's what you get.”

“Besides,” said Megan. “Toby makes me a better person—more loving, more patient, more forgiving. And I think those things make me a better writer.”

“Just wait till you have one of your own,” said her mother. She laid a hand on her daughter's and the moment was almost too sweet to be real.

My inner skeptic railed and raged inside.
No one's family is like this!
he said.
It's an act!
My own family, even at the best of times, had been the exact opposite of this one. I suppressed the urge to do something horrible, like knock over a glass, just to see how they all reacted. Would anger flash across Julia's face, or annoyance across Binky's? Would Megan rush to clean it up, worried that the peace had been disturbed? Would a thousand little fissures be revealed? Truth dwelled in the first moment of surprise. It had a way of pulling back the curtains. But I behaved. I didn't
want
to break the spell.

“Mom,” said Megan, blushing. She cast her eyes down, pushed some gnocchi around her plate.

“No rush, dear,” said Julia. “I'm just saying.”

Julia was a real woman, with a full, lush body and thick tresses. There was just enough gray—slivers of white throughout—to know the color, still rich in tone and natural highlights, was natural. She ran a hand down the back of Megan's hair, a gentle, loving gesture. No clinging subtext, no nitpicking or teasing.

•  •  •

Megan and I cleared the table and did the dishes together. It was easy—easy to be with her, easy to be with them. As I was rinsing the dishes, the red of the sauce mingling with the orange of the squash and the pearl white of the soap bubbles in a beautiful gory swirl, Megan came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my middle, resting her head against my back.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For being here,” she said. “It means something to me.”

“To me, too,” I said. I turned around and took her into my arms; she rested against me. Megan did a lot of hugging, a lot of wrapping me up in her arms, cuddling in bed, snuggling when we watched television. I'd never experienced this with anyone before, not even with my mother, as far as I could remember, who was always affectionate enough before Ella came. It was very easy to get used to. I'd taken to hugging my pillow when we slept apart.

“This is really nice,” I said.

Julia, who was coming in with wineglasses, stopped in the doorway and smiled at me, then quickly turned around and left to give us privacy.

•  •  •

Before we left that weekend, I found a quiet moment and asked Binky if I could marry Megan. I hadn't really planned to do it this the first weekend, but I was a little swept away by Binky and Julia's domestic bliss. The whole asking-for-permission thing seemed like a silly and antiquated tradition, but I knew that's how Megan would want it. Binky was surprised, but polite enough not to be an asshole about it.

“You haven't known each other that long, have you?” he asked. We sat on the porch in two heavy Adirondack chairs looking out at the Atlantic. The ocean beat against the shore, a churning mass of gray and green and white. The sky was an ominous gunmetal gray and a flock of gulls were screaming, diving into the surf and coming up with thin silver fish writhing in their mouths.

“Did you know Julia very long before you knew you loved her?” I asked. “Like
knew
you would love her forever?”

“About five minutes, actually,” he said. His gaze stayed on the sea for a moment, then rested on me. “And her dad told me to fuck off when I asked for her hand. He didn't want her marrying a writer. He wanted her to have some stability.”

I had to laugh. I couldn't imagine anyone more stable than Binky—he was the dad you always wanted, loving and present, kind and wise. We should all be so stable.

“But it's not just about those first five minutes,” he went on.

“Is this where you tell me that marriage is about hard work and commitment?” I was trying to keep the moment light, and I felt like we already had a pretty good rapport. But his face was serious, though not unkind.

“No,” he said. “This is where I tell you that
life
can be hard, really hard. And you know a thing or two about that, I guess. Megan told me some about your history.”

I kept quiet. Normally, I didn't like it when rich old men tried to tell me something about life. Because those dinosaurs never seemed to know as much as they thought they did. But Binky was different. He moved in the country-club set, but he was born and raised in Detroit. His dad worked on the line at Chrysler for thirty-five years. His parents struggled to make ends meet, and he got beat up on the playground, and he paid his own way through school. So I took a sip of the beer he'd given me and shut the fuck up for once in my life.

“But I don't mean the big stuff—tragedy and money problems,” he said. “I mean the day-to-day, the workaday world, marriage and paying bills and parenthood. It can wear you down, if you let it. And that love, that passion that brought you together? The shine rubs off a little. Never forget those first five minutes, when you thought how much you loved each other was the only thing that mattered. Because in truth it
is
the only thing that matters. That love is what gets you through all the other stuff.”

“That's good advice,” I said. But it didn't mean anything to me, not then. I look back on who I was in that moment—a punk, stupid and arrogant. I am ashamed of that guy in ratty jeans and scuffed-up Vans, a Death or Glory T-shirt. Even my tattoos, which I really loved, only seemed to prove what a child I was. I had the Batman symbol inked on my left pectoral, and Dark Phoenix down my right arm. Dark Phoenix, her form, her raw power—she ate a star and caused a supernova that destroyed an entire planet—was a big part of my inspiration for capturing Priss on the page. That tattoo was a full panel including the famous quote
You and I are quits now, X-Men. Our paths will cross no more. My destiny lies in the stars
. Even though I was wearing a jacket and neither tattoo was visible at the moment, we both knew they were there. I think Binky knew that I could never make Megan truly happy. She wanted a man like her father. And I was half the man that Binky was, if that.

I could tell he wanted to say something more, but he didn't. He just raised his glass to me.

“Welcome to the family, son,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. As we clinked pilsners, the flames on the Dark Phoenix tat licked out from my cuff.

You don't belong here
, Priss would surely say.
And you know it.

Ever take a dodge ball to the face? It hurts. It also makes you mad. The body doesn't like it when the head is threatened, and it releases a blast of adrenaline to make you stronger, faster, to defend yourself. That might have been part of the reason I lost it in gym class that very first time I
really
lost my temper.

Ah, gym class. Remember it? Institutionally sanctioned torture for society's misfits. God help you in America if you are not thin and fit, attractive, athletic, and coordinated, driven to win at any cost. God help you if you are broken or sad, or even just cerebral, or artistic, or just want to be left alone. You will be told in a million different ways—directly, subliminally—just how deficient you are. But nowhere will the message be delivered with more naked brutality than in a middle school gymnasium.

Mikey Beech was the king of my nightmares, big and muscular, even at twelve. Charming, handsome, athletic—baseball in the summer, wrestling in the fall. And, for whatever reason—maybe because I was his foil, his physical and energetic opposite—he had it in for me. Once upon a time, in kindergarten, we'd been friends—when we'd had the same
Star Wars
lunch boxes and I used to go over to play with his new puppy. Now he wrote
BABY KILLER
on my locker, aimed at my gut when he pitched softballs to me, fake-coughed when I was up at the board in algebra, pushing out his various taunts—
Fatboy, Lardass, Shithead
—under his breath.

Mostly I just bore it, ate it, swallowed it whole. I was a pussy like that, not equipped to push back. But it was the dodge ball that was the final straw, delivered hard and fast, a direct hit to my face. I was stunned, blood gushing over my shirt onto the floor.

“Oh, shit,” he said laughing. “Shit, Fatboy. I'm sorry. It was an accident, Coach.”

I sat on the bleachers for a while, ice on my face, seething, thinking dark, horrible things about Mikey Beech. Then, even though my nose was still bleeding, Coach Jackass seemed to think a few laps around the court would do me good.
Walk it off, Paine!
As soon as he had an opportunity, Beech tripped me. I went down on my face.

Again.

The pain was so white hot, so electric, that I saw stars. As Beech emitted his very particular brand of derisive, mocking laughter, and all the other kids joined in, something happened to me. A kind of red veil came down, a white noise crowded out all other sounds.

Witnesses—the other kids who stood around gawking, and the teachers, too—said I turned into a berserker. I issued a string of expletives so vicious and foul that I nearly got expelled for those alone. I leveled unspeakable threats. They said I rose up to my full height, which was quite impressive even then, and launched myself at Beech, but was stopped by the coach and the other boys before I could land on him. With the blood pouring from my face and my hands raised in big claws over my head, one of the girls claimed that I looked like a “horror-movie monster.” They say Mikey Beech cowered and ran.