Textherazade

"Sherry, will you marry me?"

I spoke from down on one knee, arm extended, offering up to her a tasteful engagement ring with a modest but clear diamond in a black velvet box. She looked down on me, expressionless, her big brown eyes devoid of all emotion -- the emotions I had hoped to evoke and anything else.

"It's me. It's Shay," I joked, waving with my free hand. "Hello?"

Flop sweat began to condense on my forehead, and I had the horrible feeling that I had completely misjudged the situation. I had genuinely thought she was expecting this. After all, it was the first anniversary of the day we met. She was beautiful that day, like every day, and I was immediately attracted by her freshly scrubbed good looks, a wholesome beauty of which she was barely aware.

There was something else about her, a certain bemusement in the expressions of her eyes that I could not label or summarize as anything as straightforward as simple emotion. It made her seem thoughtful, vulnerable, and just the tiniest bit sad, like the runaway truck of life had tried to run her over and somehow missed, leaving a burnt rubber-smelling fear behind to harass and remind her. There was something in her posture, in the way she carried her soul that made me want to fold her up in my arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay and then devote myself to making sure that the promise I had made to her was kept.

She took some time to warm up after we first met, but after that everything had gone swimmingly. Sometimes I sensed a certain reluctance, but I thought that it was my own insecurity being reflected back at me. It seemed like a reasonable bit of psychoanalysis. At some nebulous point our time together stopped being a date and started being, well, life. I can't pin down the exact instant. It was gradual, like the old chestnut about boiling a frog.

We regularly spent the night together, although it was always at her place. Sometimes her touch was sexual, but at other times she seemed to want only comfort, and I did my best to tailor my desires to the signals that she sent. I wasn't always correct, but then her signals were sometimes mixed. I tried not to take the moments of physical rejection personally, but it was hard not to.

For the sake of convenience I was issued a drawer in her dresser and six inches of dowel rod in her closet. I also received special berths for my preferred soap, shampoo, shaving cream, razor, toothpaste, toothbrush, and hair brush.

Sherry ran a tight ship when it came to monitoring the boundaries of the space she had given me with precision. When I was out of bounds she told me to put my things away. When I suggested that I needed a second drawer or a few more inches of closet she balked, saying that she needed the space even though half of her clothes were draped on chairs or piled on the floor at any one time.

"My place, my rules," was her terse defense. "If you don't like it, don't stay over." It sounded like something my father would say, which made it odd and incongruously prickly. Even though I bristled at her tone, I didn't want to stop sleeping over, so I didn't push it. Besides, it was the only thing she ever really got miffed about. Sometimes it is the flaws that highlight the greater perfection of the whole.

Nine months into our relationship I began hinting that we should perhaps consider getting a place of our own with space for all of our things. I tried to soft-pedal it, but she was either oblivious or acting that way, so I finally worked up the nerve to ask her directly about the prospect of conjoining and consolidating our assets.

"No," she said flatly, firmly.

"Why not? Don't you love me?" I asked.

"Yes, Shay. You're handsome and kind and you clean up nicely. That's not the issue. I'm just not ready. Is that an answer you can live with?"

"Sure," I said, having no choice but telling myself that I meant it. Why didn't she want to move in? Why didn't she love me enough? It was then that it dawned on me that she wanted a solid commitment before taking the cohabitation plunge. Hence the fancy restaurant, the champagne, the ring, and the knee that was getting stiffer by the second.

"Sherry?" I asked.

Without uttering a syllable or changing the iron neutrality of her face, she rose and walked toward the exit of the restaurant. I got up too, my flop sweat now running down my face and onto my collar. I had no idea what to do next. Not once had it occurred to me that the evening might not go as I had planned it. I had no Plan B -- all my chips were down. Resisting the urge to run after her to plead or apologize, I looked around at the diners who had been seated near us, people who had overheard enough to be waiting to applaud when Sherry played her part and spoke her line.

"Go after her," a older man suggested with the directness of one who has little time to waste.

"No, don't do that. Give her her space," his wife replied. They began to argue the point. I remember thinking idly that they probably weren't the best source of advice.

Knowing I needed to do something, I tried to move in all directions at once like a startled yearling, which perhaps I was at that moment. I paused for a few seconds to get my bearings, and then I too headed for the exit. When I got there, she was gone. The street was empty. For lack of a better plan, I went home, the refused engagement ring pressing down on me, fitting into my pocket and digging into my thigh like a cannonball.

I had spent so much time at Sherry's place in the last several months that my own apartment looked strange to me. I wandered through its rooms, picking things up and examining them. I could have been at a garage sale for all the attachment I had to the furniture and kitchen utensils and knick-knacks. As I reacquainted myself with my own belongings, I called her cell phone repeatedly. Each time it sent me straight to voicemail. I began leaving messages that ran the gamut from understanding to concerned to angry, finally coming to rest as a profound state of worry. I wanted to call her friends, but I didn't even know their last names, much less their phone numbers. Ditto for parents, siblings, other relatives. She might have fallen out of the sky for all I had learned about her in the past year.

Not knowing what else to do, I laid down on my couch and watched CNN Headline News until I fell asleep, my phone clutched loosely in my hand. When it finally buzzed and woke me up, the faintest hint of the end of that long night was peeking through the windows.

You're not the first one to ask, her text said.

R U ok? I sent back.

Wrong question.

I was still groggy, but the fact that she was playing some sort of game probably meant she wasn't in any immediate danger -- not physically, anyway. Mentally, though, I didn't want to speculate. One of the things I loved about her is that she didn't play games. She had always seemed eminently cool, calm, and collected. Sometimes I'd get the feeling that she was upset about something, but I had long ago determined that that was my perception, not reality.

I got off the couch, undressed, put my phone in the charger, neurotically checking it three times to make sure it was charging, and got into bed. I was glad it was Saturday and I didn't have to go into work. There was no way I'd be able to focus or care about buying luggage for the department store chain for which I worked. I'd spend the day biting people's heads off instead.

I was almost asleep again when I realized what Sherry wanted me to ask.

Who was it? I tapped out to her.

A boy. He was 19. I was 16. His name was Laurel, but he went by Laurie. He was beautiful. His hair was long, and when he ran he would shake it out of his eyes in a way that was almost girlish.

I didn't know how to respond to that, so I didn't text back anything at all. Eventually I fell back to sleep, my mind conjuring up unbidden images of an elfin boy running in slow-motion through a field somewhere.

Once again I thought about everything I did not know about Sherry. I had met her friends, work acquaintances really, and they seemed to be nice enough. We had the obligatory talk about our ex's, and she never mentioned a beautiful boy, not once, much less a marriage. I would have remembered that. After I introduced her to my parents I asked about hers. "I love you too much to inflict them on you," is what she said. When I asked her why, she deliberately and pointedly changed the subject. A second topic became verboten.

When I awoke a second time that Saturday I could tell from the color of the light streaming through the windows that it was late in the afternoon. I sat up in bed.

Did U marry him? I sent to her.

Yes.

Why?

I loved him. And I was pregnant.

I was either murderously angry or slack jawed with amazement. I had thought that the course of her life had been the same as mine. Childhood, college, adulthood, career. A straight classic middle-class trajectory through life. Picturing her pregnant at sixteen was as ludicrous as the Statue of Liberty flipping the bird. What made me angry was that some little punk had gotten a commitment out of her, and I had failed. He had ruined it for me. Our marriage would not be a venture into the unknown, at least not for her. I was number two, the second banana. Everything I said and did had been and would be superimposed on and compared to the blueprint she and her beautiful boy had made.

Why didnt U tell me? I asked.

Nothing.

Its ok. U can tell me.

More nothing.

Answer me!

Still nothing. I became disgusted. I threw some clothes on and walked the twenty-two blocks to her apartment, enough for my more negative emotions to dissipate. I leaned on her bell for quite a while, but there was no answer and no reciprocal buzz of the inner door being opened. She was in there. I knew she was. All that was between us was this one (albeit sturdy) door and the will to push a button.

I pressed another bell.

"Who is it?"

"I have a delivery for" -- I read the name on the doorbell -- "for D. Cameron."

Alas, the buzzer did not unlock the door.

"I'll be right down," said the presumed D. Cameron. Since I had neither a package nor a delivery service uniform disguise, I had no choice but to walk away. Briskly. Orange is not my color.

Day 2 of Sherry on the lam:

When I started to show my parents called me a whore and threw me out. Laurie was living in a room above his uncle's auto shop. It reeked of oil and gas, but it was rent free. I thought we were lucky to have it.

There was that sadness in her again. I had thought I was imagining it, but really I had been catching it out of the corner of my eye. It disappeared when I looked straight at her.

Day 5:

Laurie worked hard, long hours. I missed him, even though he was just a floor below. I would waddle down the stairs no matter how uncomfortable I was to bring him lunch and watch him eat.

Day 8:

We did this until the baby came. It was only four months, but months were longer when I was sixteen.. When I remember it, it seems like we lived like that for years. Good years.

I dont know what 2 say, I sent back to her. She ignored it.

Day 13:

Laurie loved her the second he saw her. We both did. We were so scared of hurting her that we handled her like she was nitroglycerin. The nurses laughed at us. We laughed too.

Day 17:

We named her Cherie. Laurie thought it was funny. Cherie, Sherry, and Laurie. It was his idea, probably the only word he remembered from his high school French class.

Day 22:

Now there were three of us over the garage. Cherie's baby things took up a lot room, but I kept our space neat so we could move around.

The texts stopped for over a week. It took all the self-control I had not to prompt her. Meanwhile, my life had taken on a completely different flavor. My cell phone went from being a convenience to an indispensable appendage. I checked it constantly. I kept a hand on it as much as I could so I wouldn't miss its vibration.

Sometimes it felt like she was near me. Sometimes she might as well have been on the moon. I trudged on through my life, ordinary in all aspects except for Sherry's texts. Those texts made me feel special. I was living a mystery that most people only watch on TV. I didn't tell anyone about them. They were ours and no one else's.

Day 33:

The day came. Cherie was three months old. Other than that, it started like any other day.

Day 36:

Laurie was working on a car alone in the garage. It was cold outside, so the garage doors were shut. He put the exhaust hose on the tailpipe of the car so he could adjust the carburetor.

I could see what was coming from a long way off, like the iceberg that sank the Titanic. There was plenty of time to think about how awful things would be and not a damned thing to be done about it. I dreaded the next texts for Sherry's sake. I hoped I was wrong. I could settle for a schmaltzy ending if that would make her story end happily. In fact, I had never wanted to hear a schmaltzy ending more in my life.

Day 40:

The hose must have come off somehow. He suffocated. They said he probably never knew what was happening.

Day 47:

The CO2 made it up to our room. Cherie died with her father. The only reason I survived is because Laurie's uncle got back from wherever he had been and saved me.

Day 50:

For a long time I wished he hadn't.

Day 52:

I buried her with her father.

I'm hardly sentimental, but that last text got to me. I cried for an hour. It burned. I cried for the baby, for Sherry, even for Laurie who I didn't hate anymore.

Day 55:

My parents showed up after the funeral. They said it was a "blessing in disguise." I'll never forgive them for that.

Day 57:

My parents said that I could pick up my life where I left off. High school. College. The future they had planned for me.

Day 59:

I said yes. I had nowhere else to go. I did what I was told, and the day I got my college diploma I cut them off and went far far away.

Day 60:

I live this every day. I will until I die.

Day 65:

Do you still want to marry me?

This story may have a happy ending after all, I sent back.