Forever is the Worst Long Time: A Novel Read online

  “I feel like I just won the lottery.”

  “You did. You really did.”

  “You’ll be my best man, right?”

  The wedding. Of course, there was going to be a wedding. I squinted at him. “When is it?”

  He frowned. “Does it matter?”

  My conscience kicked in, thank God, and I was able to string together the phrases that I should have immediately blurted out. “Of course not! Stupid question. Get married on New Year’s Eve—or my birthday, for that matter. I’ll be there with bells on, and would be honored to be your best man.”

  “That’s great, James.” Rob took a sip of coffee, then looked at me. “You’re like a brother to me, but better. No one knows me like you do, and if you’re there, it means I’m making the right decision.”

  “Right.” I nodded, wishing that the sofa contained a portal that would suck me in and transport me back in time, or forward, or to any point at which I was not bending beneath the horrible weight of the lie I was about to utter, and all the lies that would inevitably follow. “I’m already looking forward to it.”

  The internet was a fairly new thing in those days, and I didn’t have a personal computer, let alone a cell phone, on which to conduct impulsive searches for useless trivia. And so, on Sunday night as my plane lifted over LaGuardia, I scoured the cobwebbed corners of my mind for a few lines I had read years earlier as an undergraduate.

  The plane was touching down at Detroit Metro when they finally came to me. They were Neruda, too, but from a very different poem. I could not recall the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of, dark things must be loved secretly, in the space between the soul and the shadows.

  Oh come on, you ridiculous sap, I chided myself as Lou’s sparkling face surfaced in my mind yet again. It was true that I knew—just as sure as you know you’re alive when you begin to rouse in the morning—that she would be an important part of my life, and not only because she was going to be Rob’s wife.

  But was it really love? Or had I simply placed Lou on a pedestal and given myself permission to idealize her, all things right and rational be damned—and this decision set love in motion?

  I still wonder about that. If I had made different choices then, such as telling Rob what I really thought about his impending nuptials, he would have married Lou all the same. Then I would have estranged myself from him—from both of them—and everything else that came next would have been different. And that, I will admit, is a version of history I can’t bear to imagine, as fraught as the following years may have been.

  But as you know, that’s not where this story ends.

  TWO

  November 1998

  “So, douche nozzle, are you sure you’re ready?” I shouted at Rob, who was standing next to me at the crowded dive bar where we had gathered for his bachelor party. “Really ready?”

  It was the week before Thanksgiving, and Rob and Lou had recently arrived in Michigan for their wedding. Lou’s family was scattered across the country, and your grandmother—a troubled woman, though I’m still sorry you never had the chance to meet her—claimed she no longer believed in the institution of marriage and refused to attend the wedding. Because of this, the ceremony and reception were to take place in Rob’s and my hometown and would be primarily paid for by Rob, who was already making three times as much as his father.

  Being Rob’s best man, I was expected to plan a raucous night out for him and the rest of his groomsmen. This group included a bunch of his friends from business school, his cousin Justin, and our other closest friend from childhood, Jason, whom everyone called by his last name, Wisnewski.

  We had just arrived at our third stop of the evening, and I was doing what many a best man before me had done: making sure the groom was actually prepared to yoke himself to his beloved for the rest of forever.

  Plenty of people get married in their twenties and do just fine, but somehow Lou’s twenty-three and Rob’s twenty-six felt tragically young. It was not just that my opinion was muddied by misguided longing. It was that Lou seemed more like Rob’s quarter-life crisis than a true match for the rest of his adult existence. As long as I had known him, he had favored tall, glossy girls who played tennis and lacrosse and spent their summers somewhere other than their primary residences. Their enormous white teeth lined up just so, and they were in possession of or in the process of accruing multiple degrees they intended to use only until they began producing flocks of perfect offspring. Lou was petite, unmoneyed, and—well, nothing like those other women. How could Rob be so certain that she was more than just a phase?

  “Never been so ready for anything in my life, dick widget,” slurred Rob, who had already been much fêted by the beefy wunderkinds who had flown in from Manhattan and Boston for the celebration.

  “That’s great,” I said. I was on the verge of being stone-cold sober myself and waved in the direction of the bartender, who glanced my way and took the order of the woman standing behind me. As I turned my attention back to Rob, I realized his eyes were wet. At that point I had never seen him cry. I wasn’t sure how to react, so I just stood there nodding like an idiot.

  “I only hope to God you find someone who makes you feel like Lou makes me feel,” he added, and took a swig from his pint.

  As much as I was tempted to make a snide remark, I understood that this was his soon-to-be wife we were talking about and that I was to endure his sappy inanity and at no point mention that my dinner was resurfacing in my throat. (Funny, isn’t it, how we can’t stand the behavior of other people in love yet turn around and act the same way when we’re smitten?) Anyway, I was used to it. Every call from Rob included a fresh anecdote about how curious and bright Lou was, each email a laundry list of their most recent adventures.

  “To love,” I said to Rob, raising my empty glass.

  “To love!” hollered Wisnewski.

  Rob smiled drunkenly in Wisnewski’s direction. I was relieved to see that his eyes, while still moist, were no longer threatening to drip sentimentality into his beer. “And to think you guys knew me when. To love,” he said, though it came out as tuh luff. He turned back to me. “How’s Karen?”

  “You mean Kathryn?”

  “Right!” barked Rob.

  I had attempted to break it off with Kathryn Pierce, but she had not taken it well. And by not well, I mean she simply had not taken it: “I don’t believe you, James,” she said, arms crossed over her chest. “We spend hours together without getting bored. We like the same movies and restaurants. We even have similar taste in books.” (This last part wasn’t actually true. She was wild about the Williams—Shakespeare and Faulkner—neither of whom I could muster much enthusiasm for.) She was an English professor and a well-reviewed novelist; I was her student when we began dating, though I’m a little ashamed to admit this to you. She had high cheekbones and perfect prose, and when she continued to show up at my door, I invited her in because I didn’t understand how hurtful it could be to say yes just because you weren’t sure how to say no.

  I laughed. “She’s fine—but you’re not. We need to get you home soon.”

  “Nah,” said Aidan, another one of Rob’s groomsmen. “It’s bad luck if he doesn’t puke.”

  I eyed Aidan’s left hand. His ring finger was bare. “You ever been married?”

  “Nah,” he said again. “Not for me. But I’ve been to a lot of bachelor parties.”

  “‘Not for me’—I said that once,” said Rob, wobbling a bit. “But look at me now.”

  I was looking at him, and beneath the fluorescent bar lighting, it appeared he would soon be lucky all over himself. “How about some food?” I asked. “A burger, maybe? Some fries?”

  “Fries sound like just the thing.” He threw his arm around my neck. “You’re a good friend, James. The best, even. Way better than a brother.”

  “Thanks, man. You, too.” It was true, even if it was a shame that it took alcohol to get us to confess such things.

 
Eating gave Rob a second wind, which led to more celebrating, and we didn’t make it back to his parents’ house for two more hours. The back door was open, just as it always was. I managed to get Rob down the stairs into the basement, where I deposited him on the worn leather couch where he had slept more often than his own bed during high school. He passed out as soon as his head hit the cushion. I left his shoes on and located a bucket in the laundry room, which I placed on the ground beside the sofa.

  I tiptoed back up the stairs, hoping that I had not woken up Rob’s parents—or Lou, who I assumed was asleep in the guest bedroom. I had just reached for the doorknob when I heard someone say, “Hey, Jim.”

  “Christ on a cracker!” I yelled, jumping straight up like a spooked cat. As I looked over the kitchen island, Lou came into focus.

  “It’s Cheesus to you,” she deadpanned from the recliner in the corner of the living room.

  I laughed, even though I was cringing inside. Against my better judgment, I had been looking forward to seeing her. Yet I was bone tired and presumably splattered with Rob’s vomit (even after the fries—or maybe because of them—he had bent over and spewed on the sidewalk next to me on the way home). My looking forward involved more alert, sanitary conditions.

  In the nine months since I had seen Lou and Rob in New York, I had completed my master’s program and had been hired as an adjunct writing instructor at the university I had attended. The position didn’t pay much, but it kept me mentally and logistically occupied, which in turn kept me from spending too much time ruing Rob’s poetic waxings about Lou. In the evenings, I had started writing a dystopian novel that I hoped would put me on the literary map—or at the very least, land me an agent and a minor sale to a major publisher.

  My thoughts of Lou swung from frequent to sporadic. But every time I was doing better, Rob would call to tell me about some clever thing she had done; or I’d see some knockoff version of her walking around campus; or I would read a poem and find myself wondering what Lou was reading, and whether her own work was any good—and I would resume acting like a man who has been lobotomized.

  During these periods, I had to shove so many questions and conflicting thoughts onto the cluttered shelves of my conscience. How could I occupy dozens of hours thinking about someone with whom I had actually only spent two days, total—and in the company of her fiancé, who happened to be my closest friend?

  And now there she was, wearing an oversize t-shirt and a pair of footless tights, exhausted and weary and every bit as beautiful as I had remembered her. As I met her gaze, still neither of us smiling, my mind flooded with nonsense. What did she look like sleeping? Were her eyelids light lavender or the palest seashell pink? Did she leave her hair in a pile on top of her head while she slept, or did it float around her like seaweed in a shallow pond?

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Hi. Were you there the whole time?”

  She rose from the recliner and walked over to the kitchen island. “Hi yourself. I just came downstairs. How bad is he?”

  “Fine,” I said, walking into the kitchen. “Well, not really, but fortunately the wedding isn’t tomorrow.”

  She rested her elbows on the counter and cracked a smile. “There’s that, at least.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other. “How are you, Lou?”

  “Great,” she said, but her eyes flashed with something—doubt? Uncertainty?

  I glanced around. There was the floral wallpaper, bleeding from the kitchen into the dining room. The hunter-green sofa and matching recliner. The framed photos of Rob at various stages of his early life, scattered on shelves and nailed to the walls. These domestic trappings were more familiar to me than those of the apartment I had lived in for the past three years. But they were new to Lou.

  “Is it weird being here?” I asked, though I already knew it was; maybe asking was my way of telling her it was okay.

  “No.” She sighed. “Yeah, a little. It’s . . . I grew up, um. Kind of not like this. You know? And the Logans, they’re just—”

  Like the newbie professor that I was, I pressed for detail without letting her work it out for herself. “How has that been? Have Bobby and Nancy been nice to you?” Bobby was much like my own father: quiet but prone to flashes of anger directed at the state of the modern world. Nancy was friendly in that distant Midwestern way, though once you got to know her, it was impossible to overlook her frenetic anxiety. I leaned in toward Lou conspiratorially. “Has Rob’s mom been picking up your glasses and washing them before you’ve had a second sip of your drink?”

  I expected another smile—a small laugh, maybe—but she bit her bottom lip and looked toward the stairs, like she thought Rob’s parents might be listening in. “They’re really lovely.”

  I was no longer tired. “Remind me, where did you grow up?”

  Lou unbent her torso and rested one foot on the inside of the opposite knee, flamingo-style. “Here and there. Mostly Virginia. And Pennsylvania, a bit, and Ohio for a while.”

  “You’ve lived everywhere.”

  “If you consider interchangeable coal-country towns everywhere.”

  I chuckled. “I guess I don’t.”

  “Nor should you.” She yawned, her nose scrunching up as her mouth opened. Then, God help me, she rubbed her eyes with both hands, looking so sleepily adorable that I wanted to scoop her up into my arms.

  Instead, I balled my hands into fists, forcing myself to concentrate on the sensation of my fingers pressing into my palms. “Well,” I said in what I hoped was a neutral tone, “we should probably go to bed.”

  Lou arched one eyebrow, and all of the blood in my body made a beeline for my face. “I didn’t mean it like—”

  She held my gaze for several electric, terrifying seconds. Then she laughed. “Of course you didn’t.”

  “It’s my foot-in-mouth-itis,” I said limply.

  “Oh, I remember. Sorry to see that you remain afflicted.” She smiled. “I suppose I should go check on Rob and head upstairs. Need to get my beauty rest for the wedding, or so they say. I’ll see you tomorrow at the rehearsal, if not sooner, yes?”

  “Yes. Looking forward,” I said as she made her way around the kitchen island.

  She was at the top of the stairs when she turned and glanced at me over her shoulder. “Me, too, Jim.”

  It was nothing. Whatever I had sensed while Lou was looking at me was the result of my being a writer—a person who, for all intents and purposes, lived in his own head and was prone to fantastical thinking. Even if I hadn’t imagined it, it didn’t matter. Rob and Lou were about to publicly proclaim their intent to spend the rest of their lives together. The rest of their lives!

  As for me, I was a grown man with free will. I could, and would, rein in my thoughts.

  These were the things I told myself that night as I walked back to my father’s house, where I was staying for the weekend. I reminded myself of them yet again as I dressed for the rehearsal the following evening, and as I drove to the church, walked into the nave, and watched an ecstatic Lou and Rob practice their vows.

  See? I thought as I pretended to hand Rob a ring, which he pretended to put on Lou’s finger. Forever was forever. By the end of the rehearsal and dinner afterward, I had almost convinced myself my fabricated convictions were true. After all, Lou had been beaming at Rob all through the preparatory ceremony. And Rob: I had never seen him so happy. This was how it was going to be, and it was time for me to adjust accordingly.

  The actual ceremony was lovely, as these things usually are. With Lou’s father out of the picture, Rob walked her down the aisle himself. Prayers were said, poems were read, teary vows were exchanged. There was a passionate, lingering kiss, then applause. Rob and Lou strolled back down the aisle as husband and wife, to much cheering. With their bright eyes, flushed cheeks, and shared air of exuberance, I was able to forget my tangled feelings and wish them a beautiful forever.

  The reception was more of the same. Silverware clanking. C
hampagne glasses filled, raised, and drained, again and again. Then it was time for my speech. I had labored over it for days, trying to find the perfect balance between generic and honest. Truth be told, I didn’t know all that much about what made a marriage happy—or how Rob and Lou were together. They seemed happy enough, though most couples do at first. Were they? Their day-to-day life remained a mystery to me. Their shared dreams were equally elusive. How many children did they want? Were they planning on a big house in the country or a jet-setting life with apartments in various cosmopolitan destinations?

  Having been together less than a full year, perhaps they hadn’t figured out these things yet. The most I had gotten out of Rob was that he would do everything in his power to give Lou the life she deserved. The particulars of this deserved life remained undefined.

  So I centered my speech on Rob. “When Rob asked me to be his best man, of course I said yes. But as so many of us here can attest, he’s the best man here. He’s always the smartest guy in the room, but never acts like he knows it. He’s bighearted, and—” I glanced at him and chuckled. “Well, he’s just big, period, and I’m not just talking about the fact that he’s six four. Everything he does is larger than life. When he told me about Lou, I assumed she was going to be like the hundreds of other women he dated.” (For this, I received requisite laughter, and a few hoots from his business school buddies.) “But of course, if she had been, Rob wouldn’t have told me about her.” (More laughter.) “And then I met Lou and—” I was standing at one end of the long table where the wedding party was seated. Over bouquets of pale purple flowers, Lou’s eyes bore into my own, questioning: What will you say?

  Breathe, I told myself. Swallow. Speak.

  “This lucky bastard found a woman who, while a heck of a lot smaller than he is, is also larger than life, and just as amazing. Lou, I’ve never seen Rob happier.” Raised glasses, murmurs of approval. I shifted my attention back to Rob. “May the two of you find meaning and much joy in your life together.”