The Blessings (13 page)

“What?” she asks, standing over him, squeezing her long wet hair in her fist.

“What?”

“You,” she says, and lets the hair drizzle onto his pale chest. “You have this big goofy grin on your face.”

At the end of the session with the family counselor, she recommended Alex get some therapy of his own. That was how she put it—
get some therapy
, like taking his car in for an oil change. Alex didn't want to get some therapy. Just because his family was screwed up, that automatically meant
he
was screwed up? But he went, because he always did what he was supposed to and because in some distant part of himself, he was afraid she could be right.

His therapist's name was Jocelyn, and Alex saw her a total of three times. Jocelyn was thick all over—her waist, neck, upper arms. She wore long skirts and noisy silver jewelry that rattled when she moved. As Alex talked, Jocelyn's eyelids drooped slowly, over and over, and he couldn't tell if she was dreamily listening or falling asleep in the chair. She asked about his family, his sister. She asked him to describe how he was feeling. He thought for a moment, then said, “Tired.”

“But tired isn't an emotion, is it?” Jocelyn replied, with a triumphant note, as if his answer had somehow proven her right.

So Jocelyn gave him a list of emotions: a worksheet with different cartoon faces on it expressing different feelings. Happy Face, Sad Face, Angry Face. He felt as if he were in first grade. “For homework,” she said, she wanted him to keep a journal. Three times a day, he was to stop and write down what he was feeling. Alex did it, because he always did his homework, but he felt ridiculous. After finishing a lab or studying for an exam—it was his second semester at Princeton—he'd find a moment alone and extract the little spiral notebook from the bottom of his backpack. He would stand very still, trying to feel what he was feeling. Finally he wrote:
Exhausted. Stressed.
Or, many times:
Don't Know.

At the third session, Jocelyn wanted to talk about ways to express his emotions. “Little ways,” she said. “For instance…” She stood up, her arms straight at her sides, to demonstrate. “Say you and your partner are waiting in line at McDonald's. You could rub your partner's back, in little circles, like this.”

Jocelyn began moving her left hand in circles, pantomiming rubbing someone's back. “It's a nonverbal way to show affection,” she told him. Her clump of bracelets rattled as she moved. Alex felt himself reddening. It was mortifying—being schooled on how to rub a person's back in a McDonald's, the implication that something so basic needed to be explained. There was something almost repulsive about the way she stood there, her skirt pinching at her thick waist, left hip rocking slightly. That night he left a voice mail at her office saying he wasn't coming back.

On Saturday, Uncle John's anniversary, Alex is awake before Rebecca, staring at the rotating blades of the ceiling fan. He thinks of calling home—it would be the middle of the night there, two in the morning. His mother would panic if she heard the phone. Rebecca is still asleep beside him, her hair spilling over the pillow, smelling like suntan lotion. Alex doesn't wake her; he's just as happy not to tell her where he's going. He dresses quietly and leaves. On the street, he orders a
café con leche
and starts walking through the village, but without Rebecca, he quickly feels disoriented. The streets all look familiar, nearly identical, yet somehow he recognizes nothing. He glances at his wrist from time to time, out of habit, but the watch is dead, sitting back in the hotel room, the face white and clouded over. He starts walking uphill, pretty sure the little pink church is somewhere at the top.

So do you go to church every week?
Rebecca asked when they first started dating.

Not every week.
He shrugged.
Just sometimes.

Like what times?

Just when I feel like it, I guess.

So you believe in all the rules?

I don't really analyze it.

You're a scientist, Alex. A rational thinker! How can you not analyze it?

But there was no way to explain to Rebecca that, unlike science, being Catholic wasn't about facts. It wasn't even really about believing in it or not. It was something more abstract, a feeling of comfort from his childhood. A sense of ritual, an allegiance to his family. It was about his grandfather and his uncle, who, despite being a rational thinker, he believed were in heaven. One hundred percent.

As Alex keeps climbing uphill, his stomach churns from the coffee. In a few hours his family will be lining the pews at St. Bonaventure's, the church where they had Uncle John's funeral when Alex was sixteen. He remembers how worried he was, picturing his uncle's body in the coffin. How his mother didn't cry. How his cousin Stephen showed up with a black eye. When Pop died, Stephen had been sobbing, but a year later, his face was blank and bruised, as if he'd come dressed up as a tough guy.

By the time he reaches the top of the hill, Alex is sweating through his shirt, but there it is: the pink church. The doors are wide open. When he steps inside, the congregation is standing, and Alex slips into a pew in the back. Giant fans are turning, slow and languid, on the ceiling. Already his face feels cooler, his lungs more relaxed. In front of him stands a young Spanish couple with a baby, black-haired, wearing a fancy white dress. The baby is facing Alex over her mother's shoulder, white collar poking up around her ears, peering at him with liquid brown eyes. Alex smiles. The priest speaks from the altar and the people respond in unison. Alex can't understand the Mass in Spanish, but he recognizes the rhythms. He knows just where he is.

“Where did you go?” Rebecca demands. It is late morning by the time Alex gets back to their room, and she is dressed and ready, hair swept up into a high ponytail, wearing the dangly turquoise jewelry she'd bought the day before, after confidently negotiating with a street vendor.

“Church,” he says.

Her eyebrows lift. “Church?”

“It's my uncle's anniversary.”

“Oh,” she says, and her face softens. “Oh, right.”

“My whole family is getting together today. You know, sort of to commemorate it.” He's talking quickly, maybe from the coffee. “It's kind of a big deal and I'm missing it.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I mean—we couldn't go.”

“You could still tell me,” she says. “We could still talk about it—”

“I don't want to talk about it,” he snaps, then feels guilty. “I just mean…there's nothing to talk about. It's a party.”

She smiles. “Party?”

“Not a
party
party. We all just get together, you know, for the anniversary.”

“Really?” Her mouth remains quirked at one corner. “You don't think that's a little unorthodox?”

“Unorthodox?” Alex says, genuinely surprised. More than surprised—he feels angry. “No,” he says. “I don't.”

“You don't?” she says, and stops smiling, fixing him with her curious, probing gaze. “How do you see it?”

Alex's face is hot. He doesn't want to analyze his family, to defend them and explain them. It's like having to explain going to church. He shrugs and says, “You know my family. We celebrate everything,” and turns to the mirror, hoping the conversation is over. But it is the moment he knows with certainty that he and Rebecca won't stay together. He doesn't know when it will end, just that it one day will, because the person he decides to marry won't be someone who thinks the party for his uncle is unorthodox or funny. She'll get it. And get that he doesn't want to dissect it. For now, though, Alex just wants to move on. They're in Spain, in a hotel in Spain—there's nowhere else to go.

Rebecca moves in closer behind him. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I didn't realize this would be such a hard day for you.” As she wraps her arms around his chest, Alex steps away. She drops her arms, face collapsing.

“I'm fine,” he mumbles. “Let's just go out. It's our last day.”

For their final night in Spain, they're going out to dinner at the fancy-looking restaurant they spotted the morning they arrived. They walk, so they don't have to worry about drinking. It's just before nine when they head out, according to their phones—Alex's watch never did recover—but the sun is still high and hot. Rebecca is wearing heeled shoes, which seems foolish, but Alex doesn't mention it. By the time they reach the restaurant, his shirt is soaked completely through. They sit at a table outside, sun beating on their faces, and order a pitcher of sangria. Alex quickly drains his first glass.

“This is strong,” Rebecca says. She's wearing a dress he hasn't seen before, a dark blue strapless one she must have been saving. Her hair is pulled into a long, smooth ponytail, ironed flat, which she arranges over one shoulder as if it's on display. “Particularly strong, don't you think?”

“I guess,” Alex says, fishing fruit from the bottom of his glass with two fingers. A fly is circling above Rebecca's head. “But it's not like we have to drive.”

“Well. True.” She runs a hand over the top of her hair, whisking the fly away. “Still,” she says.

There is tension between them: It's been there ever since the conversation in the hotel room. An odd stiffness, a formal inch of distance. It's there as they spoon up their gazpacho and as they finish the pitcher and order another, picking their way through the tapas platter—fried shrimp balls, mussels and olives, green salad, slices of cheese grown soft in the sun.

“I love these longer nights, don't you?” Rebecca says.

“Kind of,” he says, lifting his glass.

She turns to him with a teasing smile. Alex can see the beads of sweat on her nose. “You're telling me you prefer the freezing cold nights in New Jersey? When the sun sets at four thirty?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes I just like to be inside.”

“Well…,” she says, smile wavering on her face. “That's true. I guess you do.”

She looks out toward the hills, the sun reflecting off the green pools of her sunglasses. Alex drains his third glass, a pile of dead fruit accumulating at the bottom. He knows he isn't being easy, but he feels weirdly detached from the moment, unable to summon the energy to care, to feel the things he should be feeling and steer himself back on course.

Then Rebecca abruptly pushes her sunglasses up onto the top of her head. She peers at him. Her skin looks soft, malleable, kind of purple. It reminds him of drunk Jane.

“What?” he says.

“You,” she says, studying him with a slight smile. “What's going on with you? Are you nervous or something?”

“Am I nervous?”

She nods.

“Why? Do I seem nervous?”

“I don't know. It's just…” She shrugs. “Something.”

But she's still smiling, which is weird. It's a coy, knowing kind of smile, and it occurs to Alex then that maybe Rebecca thinks he's going to propose. That what he's been interpreting all day as tension between them was really something else, some extra notch of anxiety, anticipation.

“I'm not nervous,” he tells her. “I was just thinking.”

“Oh,” she says, and her smile falters a little. She looks as if she's about to say something else, then pushes her sunglasses back on, eyes hidden behind the seawater-green lenses, and picks up her drink. A fly is stalking the rim.

After a moment, she says, “You're really hard to read sometimes.”

“I know.” Then he adds, “I'm sorry.” He owes her at least this. She looks away, and Alex follows her gaze, toward the road that leads back down the mountain.

They hold hands as they walk back to the hotel, hooked by just one finger. It's cooler now, the sun finally dropped out of sight. Alex can only guess at the time—eleven? midnight? More than once he looks at his wrist but finds only his bare skin, his old watch line obscured by sunburn. Rebecca is drunk, her high-heeled stride both extra careful and extra shaky. Her sunglasses perch on top of her head, new leather bag swats her hip. The tension still hangs between them. Alex wonders if this is what it felt like to be his parents. If they lived with this feeling all the time, this tick of discomfort, like an unseen fly in the room.

“I liked the gazpacho,” Rebecca says. “Didn't you?”

“It was good,” he says.

“I think it was my favorite gazpacho we've had.”

He murmurs agreement. But it's empty talk, nothing talk, the kind Rebecca hates. He focuses on the spot of pressure between their hands, weirdly aware of the place their fingers meet, the bend of her knuckle and smooth metal of her ring.

Then he says, “I thought maybe, tonight, you thought I was going to propose.”

Rebecca stops walking and turns to face him. Strangely, the little smile is back on her face. “You did?”

“I just thought—maybe.”

She looks pleased for a moment, then her expression puddles into confusion, and hurt. “Oh,” she says. “Well, I didn't. It never even crossed my mind.” She looks over his shoulder, eyebrows arched indifferently, but her eyes are shiny and Alex wonders if she's telling the truth.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Don't be sorry.”

“I just wanted to be honest with you.”

She lets out a short, disbelieving laugh and looks at him with tears in her eyes. “You really don't understand anything, do you,” she says, then turns and keeps on walking.

Alex follows, though Rebecca stays a few deliberate paces ahead of him. He watches her feet, the heels kicking up little puffs of dry dirt. At first he feels nothing, then the nothingness yields to a sharp sadness, sort of like homesickness, one he remembers from childhood, a mixture of loneliness and loss. At home, he thinks, it is the middle of the afternoon. The party must be in full swing by now. His family is all gathered around the pool at Aunt Lauren's, eating the burgers that Uncle Patrick grilled and the potato salad with little bits of celery and the pink fluff and pickles wrapped in ham. They're talking about Uncle John, thinking of the day he died, going through it again and again. Alex feels tears building, hot and stinging. When Rebecca stops and turns around, he stiffens, preparing for her onslaught of concern. But she says only: “What time should we leave in the morning?” The road swims up before him, olive trees blurring into the dark sky. It doesn't seem possible that Rebecca doesn't see his tears. How can he feel so much but show nothing? What more would it take? Yet she's looking right at him, waiting for his answer, unable to see what's happening on his face.