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“The first time. In my apartment. With the house and the lawyer and the room for Tova.” I make myself finish it. “I need to know whether I was one more thing you could fix.”
He does not answer fast. He does not joke.
“You’re the only thing I ever tried to fix that told me no.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the start of one.” He looks toward the piano, then back at me. “I put a house on the table because that’s the only way I ever knew how to ask anybody for anything. Give them a reason, so they stay. You handed it back and sent me home. Then you came back without a folder and asked me yourself.”
“Yes.”
“I asked you to stay because when you’re in this house, I don’t have to be good for anything.” He lets that stand there between us. “Took me a floor and a piano to figure that out. I’m not giving it back.”
He walks toward me and stops before he reaches me.
Close enough that I can touch him.
Far enough that I have to choose it.
He looks down at my hand. He does not take it.
I put mine into his left hand.
His fingers close around it.
His eyes shut. Just once.
“I love you,” he says.
I kiss him.
He lets me start it. He does not let me finish it alone. His left hand stays in mine and his right finds my jaw, and for a long time the kitchen is very quiet.
When I pull back, he does not let go of my hand.
“You will do it again,” I say. “Solve something before you ask.”
“Probably.”
“So will I. I called a woman a bitch at the art show.”
He does not understand me at first. Then he laughs, all at once, the first real one tonight.
“Brantley’s wife?”
“In her ear. In a school hallway.”
“That’s my wife.”
“Then we ask first,” I say. “Both of us.”
“And hear the answer.”
“And give one.”
“So,” he says.
“So.”
