Let's Pretend This Will Work

by Maddie Dawson

“You poor man. It’s like you’ve never seen even one romantic movie about love. You don’t have any idea how regular people become each other’s families.”

“But don’t you get it that things are never going to be settled down, as you call it? You have a family. You have responsibilities, and you’re always going to have them. When you marry me, that means that I’m officially a part of your life. That’s pretty much the basic definition of marriage, becoming a participant in the other person’s life.”

I’m talking about real, real love, the kind that moves into your heart and won’t let you go. The only kind of love that’s worth having, if you ask me.”

She laughs. “I still think you’re delusional,” she says. “But I love you anyway.”

wasn’t ever that great at dating in the first place, and I’m certainly not good at it now. Lauren just kind of came along and plucked me out of the pack, and that was that. And now I don’t ever want to do it again.”

“No one does,” I say. “I wasn’t ever good at it either. Awful!”

reconnoiter.

“What is your real life? Are you serious?” He stops kissing me and touches my cheek. “Your real life is the life we’re going to make together. It just got detained temporarily; don’t forget that part. You even have a ring now. In fact, let me see it. Did anyone mention it?”

“See? They’re not your people. I’m your people.”

We just have to make sure we’re finished with everything before Ren arrives. I don’t want to go through that kind of scene again. It makes my stomach hurt, seeing the two guys together.

last days were so much worse than we’d ever anticipated—we were all just devastated. I never knew before how grief drives people apart. Everybody in their own private suffering.

“Jesus, Jamie. That’s the kind of nice that can kill you if you’re not careful.”

“Also, may I just go on the record as saying that other people don’t get to run your life, no matter how much they love you or how supposedly nice they are. You get to run your life.”

He is not a fighter. I get that. I’m not a fighter either. Are we always doomed to be bumped around by people who claim they know what’s right for us?

And I’ve become obsessed with this man quite without my own permission, and now he’s going to move away.

Who am I to tell him he’s got to follow his own heart, when I’m not even on a first-name basis with my own heart?

I see him laughing and waving his arms at them, and then he says something to Judith and pushes the wheelchair forward. They’re a family. That’s what hits me. They are a complete unit, needing nothing else in the whole world.

They’re each other’s painful carbuncle on the heel of love, but it’s love, nevertheless. I feel it at the core of me. They love each other, and it puts them through hell, but they’re in it just the same.

Maybe conflict doesn’t

mean that love is dead. Maybe sometimes it me...

So there you have it; he said that’s the way a marriage crumbles, in little slights, arguments, cold stares, distances, hatred.

“I’m breaking up with you,” I say. “What? What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about how it’s over between us. I’m done.”

He lets out a low whistle. “It’s always so fascinating what people say right after you’ve broken up with them, the projections they let slip.”

“Well, I just think that when that first love comes along, it brings with it a huge thunderclap of feeling—something so amazing that we get overwhelmed with it. And that it’s tempting to think that it’s the only love there ever could be in the world. But then it ends. Most of the time it ends. And then, a long time later, we look back and see that that whole experience of love was just a little kiddie pool we were paddling around in.

And that actually a really huge ocean awaits us.”

I think that when you see bitter people out in the world, people

who’ve been married for forty years and they tell you that love isn’t really real, that it never works out, those are the people who settled for the kiddie pool, and it dried up, and they never knew what was really out there for them. Saddest thing in the world.”

“A whole day?” she says sarcastically. “I think it’s possible you’ll find that workdays aren’t really a great substitute for sex.”

I’ve never felt so tuned in to another person.

His hand touches mine, and he unlocks the car door on my side, and I slide in, and

then we’re kissing and kissing, deep, perfect kisses, each one a whole paragraph of meaning. I realize I’ve never wanted anybody more.

His place is like him, comfortable and messy, sweet and chaotic—and as we walk inside, I feel like I’ve gone through a portal that leads me directly into his tender, careful heart.

It occurs to me that Ren never gave me an opportunity to want him.

It was sexy most of the time, but now I see there is something holy about longing.

I want a child. This thought hits me so hard.

Oh my God, if working at this daycare has taught me anything about life, it’s shown me that I want a baby and the whole catastrophic earthquake of a life filled with messiness and laughter and chaos and kisses. I can’t be who I was before.

Bring on the ruckus, I think. I ...

I feel like an orphan watching through the window. I have this teeny-tiny little opportunity to see this breathtaking view of family life, even with this tattered remnant of a family. Let’s face it: Jamie and Alice simply do not have the numbers. Being here, looking around, I just want to join their little team. Where is the sign-up sheet?

“Some days are better than others.

So we’re just being.”

“Honey, I don’t see that that’s going to be a problem,” she says and hugs me. “Also, I just want to say: How did we get so lucky to find you?” As I’m hugging her back I suddenly know the answer to that: I was sent.

La Starla said there would be children. And love. And call me crazy, but these are the ones she meant.

“There is a zero percent chance of that. Also, could you not mention anything about the Jamie situation and me? It’s very . . .” “New,” she says. “I know. But he loves you, too.” “He does?” “Of course he does. Is it possible that you two are the only ones who don’t already know this?”

I stand up, done with this conversation, done with him, done with all of it.

walk away. I shouldn’t have said the “not ready” part. That implies that sometime I will be ready, and I don’t ever want to be ready for another talk about this. It’s hopeless. I am really and truly done with him. I hear the clanking of the gate and realize that I’ve gotten my wish. He’s gone.

The neighbors stick around, mostly for pizza and beer, and I hear one of the other men say that he thought this was the craziest place on earth and now, he says with a laugh, he sees that he was right.

More guitars come out, more beers appear from the cooler, and Jamie goes in and fetches the cake and shows it off. It says, in loopy letters across the top: THANK YOU TO OUR OCTOPUS.

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. I can’t remember feeling so happy.

Nobody wants to call it a night.

I lie down on my back and look at the starry points of light up so high, feeling full of love and relief and kindness. I belong here. You did magic today, La Starla’s voice says to me in my head. This is what I’ve been talking about.