How Do I Love Thee? Read online

  She had said a little hesitantly last night, ‘If I ever needed more of that, how would I find you?’

  Gerard had wordlessly reached over to the pocket of his crumpled trousers to retrieve a pen.

  Alyssa watched him write both his home and mobile number on the back of a bank statement (balance: $43.95) and took that as a sign that he might like to hear from her.

  But tonight she is having trouble. For one thing she is a lot more sober. He can’t see my hands shaking. He doesn’t have to know that I’m nervous, she tells herself, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and dials his home number.

  He answers in a chirpy voice.

  ‘I need to see you again,’ she says in what she hopes is a sexy voice without any hint of tremor.

  ‘I was hoping you’d call,’ he says. ‘You could come around after I finish playing.’

  ‘Should I bring anything?’

  ‘Could you bring something to drink?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Alyssa is pleased to discover he lives only ten blocks from her house. She enters his number permanently into her mobile.

  After the greeting and the pouring of wine, an awkward silence descends upon them.

  ‘Tell me a bit about your work,’ he says, stretching out in his green tracksuit on the orange lounge.

  ‘Actually, I’d prefer not to tell you anything much about myself,’ Alyssa says, looking straight at him. ‘I want you to know nothing about me and for me to just …’

  ‘Be a mysterious woman that came into my life twice then disappeared overseas?’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiles.

  Alyssa doesn’t want to do the whole cards-on-the-table thing where you talk about your hopes and dreams and how many lovers you’ve each had. After all, this is only a two-night stand and she may never see him again.

  ‘At least tell me which country you are from and what star-sign you are,’ he smiles.

  ‘I noticed your bookshelves are full of that sort of stuff.’

  ‘We already know a bit about each other then,’ he says.

  ‘My parents are Malaysian but my three sisters and I were born here,’ she informs him, then puts an end to the talking by leaning in and kissing him. Wineglasses are moved to one side and the two of them, like liquid, spill off the lounge and onto the floor. The crumbs in the rug irritate Alyssa’s carpet burn a little but she is determined to maintain her non-speaking role.

  ‘You are one sexy woman,’ he whispers into her ear as he crouches over her from behind and grabs a handful of her black waist-length hair.

  That is exactly what Alyssa wanted to hear.

  Alyssa can’t help herself. She visits Gerard the next night and the next. On the fifth night she ties rubber bands around her fingers so she can’t press the numbers on her phone. Then she sits on her hands. At ten-thirty, he calls her.

  She can never stay over in case her mother rings her first thing in the morning, as she is prone to do, and finds her gone. She sneaks back to her own place at three or four in the morning, switching off the headlights a few houses away from her driveway so she won’t disturb the neighbours.

  On Christmas Eve she arrives at Gerard’s home to find that he has left the door unlocked and has placed a line of tea-light candles along the hallway leading to his bedroom. The first few visits were passionate and lustful, then sensual and romantic, and finally—as the thirtieth of December approaches and her flight is imminent—tinged with sadness as well. Little by little Alyssa and Gerard do talk and they discover mutual friends, matching star-signs, and that they enjoy many of the same interests.

  After six nights of fever, and seven days of thinking about what is happening between them, Alyssa and Gerard face separation. He plaits her hair into a long braid and places a small white flower into each space all the way down her back. She writes down their email addresses for each other. She stands on tiptoe and they kiss one last time.

  ‘I’ll email you every day,’ she calls over her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll compose a song for you,’ replies Gerard.

  Alyssa smiles to herself as she leaves his driveway. Gerard isn’t the most practical man but he is certainly romantic.

  The next morning, instead of packing her bags, Alyssa is in Will’s lounge room again, but not as happily occupied as last time.

  ‘I don’t know him that well,’ says Will. ‘But I thought you’d have things in common. He’s hopeless with money. I had no idea you guys had been seeing each other so much. Didn’t think he was your type really.’

  ‘I didn’t think I would get so attached,’ Alyssa says, fiddling with a lounge cushion. ‘Do I have a type, do I?’

  ‘You generally prefer the gym junkies …’

  ‘They’re not gym junkies, but I know what you mean. I have, in the past, been known to go for the physical looks rather than the guy’s personality. But this time it’s entirely that: how he thinks and how he forces me to think about things! I’m a much better person for knowing him. I like the person I am when I’m with him.’

  ‘You are giving up a lot when you don’t really know how he feels …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, if you are really sure about it …’ says Will.

  ‘How can we ever be sure about anything?’ Alyssa mumbles to herself as she gets up to leave.

  That evening Alyssa takes a big breath after the entrees are cleared away at the restaurant. She looks at her sister opposite her. ‘You are not going to like what I have to say, but please hear me out before you interrupt.’ Alyssa tells her of her decision not to go to America.

  ‘But the flight! It’s tomorrow! The fellowship! You have worked so hard!’ Mei-Lin says.

  ‘I know, it’s true. But I have to follow this path while it’s being offered. I’ve looked into getting a refund on my flight, and postponing the fellowship for six months, but I can’t do either.’

  ‘Damn,’ says Mei-Lin.

  ‘I’m going to let it go. It was something I wanted to do when I had nothing much else happening in my life, but now I do. I won’t regret it.’

  Alyssa chooses a beautiful blue backless dress and matching earrings. Her heart is racing as she enters the bar alone. It is only ten pm but it’s New Year’s Eve so people are dancing already. She moves onto the dance-floor, manoeuvring herself into Gerard’s line of vision. He looks good up there on stage, she thinks. That’s where he belongs, rather than fishing among dirty glasses at his kitchen sink.

  He sees her, raises his eyebrows, frowns, then smiles, and misses a note. Alyssa knows she has taken a risk and left herself open to rejection. Next minute, mid-song, Gerard leaves the stage and comes straight towards her through the crowd. Her heart is beating madly. Gerard grabs each side of her head, kisses her for the longest time, then heads back to the stage and resumes playing, much to the relief of the other band members. Alyssa, standing still among the writhing mass of dancers, knows she has made the right decision.

  She says to Gerard on the phone the next day, ‘That was the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had. All your friends were really nice to me. The girls said my dress was beautiful.’

  Gerard says, ‘Well you are beautiful. But they were all off their nuts, babe. They would have loved you even if you wore a paper bag.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Pulling out of the fellowship pales for Alyssa beside the acceleration of her relationship with Gerard. Each day he sends her long philosophical emails. Every night he sends her into orbit. Alyssa soon finds that they are calling each other so often that she needs to give him a name starting with ‘A’ so that his name would be the first one to come up on her mobile. She settles for ‘Amazing Lover’.

  His views on life are refreshing after the conservatism of her parents. They don’t read their stars in a magazine and don’t care for art galleries or foreign films. In one of his emails Gerard says, ‘I do not believe in owning another person, so if you want to have a fling, that’s fine. I’ll understand.’ Alyssa remembers though
how he had sulked each time she had ever mentioned that her previous boyfriend could fix her car or once built some shelves in her lounge room. Alyssa knows there is sometimes a big gap between ideology and practice, and anyway, she isn’t interested in anyone else but Gerard.

  Days turn into weeks and Gerard and Alyssa develop routines. Mondays they eat at her place and watch their favourite comedy curled up in each other’s arms. Tuesdays Gerard goes to band rehearsal until eleven then crawls into her bed, smelling of cigarettes and beer. Wednesdays she cooks at his place, experimenting with different stir-fry vegetarian dishes, buying exotic ingredients in order to seduce him. Gerard chooses the music from his vast collection and Alyssa lights scented candles. Everything is new and beautiful and their conversations are witty and wide-ranging.

  Thursdays become the night to catch up with Gerard’s friends. Long working hours and her old friends all being coupled up, have ensured that Alyssa—as one of a couple herself—could certainly go out with them, but she’d rather be where Gerard is. Alyssa has always been fairly independent. Gerard certainly respects that she is an independent woman, and once she has bought herself a drink and settled into a seat he leaves her for up to an hour to chat to the other females while he continues his debates and hatches plans to save the world, over in the glass-walled smoking area of the pub. He looks over occasionally and waves. Alyssa hates Thursdays.

  Fridays and Saturdays Gerard plays in the band. It is awkward for Alyssa to try to support him. He goes into the city a couple of hours early to do the sound check, so if, a few hours later, she wants to see him play she has to take her own car in, park, then walk among the restaurant diners on the pavement to get to the pub. And then she has no-one to sit with while he is on stage, unless Will is around, but he quite often isn’t. For the first couple of months she perseveres with sitting by herself sipping red wine because he said he liked having an attractive woman waiting for him when he came off stage, but eventually Alyssa’s attendance drops off. She visits her aging parents over in Narrabundah, hires videos or stays home to read. Gerard has his own key now and creeps into her bedroom at two or three in the morning followed by a cloud of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes.

  Alyssa wakes and asks, ‘How did it go?’

  Gerard drops his clothes on the floor and says, ‘The crowd loved us.’ Then he slides under the doona and inside her.

  The sex continues to get better. Gerard still loses his erection right at the crucial time but Alyssa learns to bring it back again using her mouth. While Gerard provides the main ingredient, Alyssa provides the necessary spice: one night she dresses in a lace body-stocking; another night she brings out some toys; another night the silk scarves; some nights they explore the lounge room, other nights the kitchen tables and benches. Because Gerard is open to new ideas in all areas of his life, it allows Alyssa to give free reign to her imagination. Sometimes she emails him her plans in advance so he knows exactly what role he is to play. After three months of this intense activity, Alyssa is in love and Gerard is cured of any erectile problems.

  Alyssa ignores the feeling building up inside her, welling up, threatening to escape. She doesn’t want to be the first to acknowledge it. But one night as she leans down to kiss Gerard—just at the moment of his climax—the words just fall out.

  ‘I. Love. You.’

  She sees her words drifting lonely in the air between them for a full ten seconds. Then she closes her eyes and holds her breath, pretending that she isn’t waiting for a response.

  ‘I love you too,’ Gerard finally says, allowing her to breathe again.

  ‘I don’t want to be with anyone else, and I think I’d die if you were with anyone else,’ she says. ‘It’s not about sex. It’s about love … If they got your love …’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he says and gently brushes her black hair off his face. ‘You don’t have to worry. I adore you.’

  Alyssa is full of love and energy and happiness. The world is a beautiful place and she wants to see it all and experience it all. They go shopping and buy Gerard new shirts and trousers. Alyssa explains how certain colours bring out the intensity of his blue eyes. And other colours should really never be worn together.

  For Valentine’s Day she buys him a CD that he has been wanting for a long time but never seems to have the money to buy. She also plans a romantic long weekend in the country but at the last minute the replacement keyboard player cannot fill in and Gerard can’t come. She is faced with going alone or not going at all. She stays home. After all, she is quite used to spending weekends on her own wandering around art galleries or reading and sunbaking in the garden. Sometimes she thinks about getting out her paints and brushes but knows she will only get an hour of work done before she has to think about cooking for Gerard, and it’s not worth starting if she can’t totally immerse herself in it. Gerard is always tired after playing late into the night and quite often goes home to his place to sleep all Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and Alyssa goes back in to work or seeks out her friends so that she doesn’t miss him.

  Gerard sits on Alyssa’s front porch smoking a cigarette and enjoying the respite from the hot weather.

  ‘Don’t you wish the autumn nights could always be like this?’ Alyssa says.

  ‘It’s great, isn’t it? Lyss, I’ve been thinking about what you’ve been saying for the last few weeks, about you not seeing me as much as you want …’

  ‘Good,’ says Alyssa as she waters the roses.

  ‘And I’ve come up with a solution,’ he continues.

  Alyssa smiles and waits.

  ‘We should move in together,’ pronounces Gerard.

  ‘You mean you should move in here?’ says Alyssa. ‘Because my stuff wouldn’t fit in your house.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it, Gerry,’ Alyssa turns back to her plants and thinks about her religious parents who just wouldn’t understand. Who are still disappointed with her for pulling out of the fellowship. She doesn’t know if she could disappoint them again so soon.

  The next night at the Courthouse Alyssa weaves her way through the crowd to find her lover. He is in the middle of a discussion about government invasions of privacy with a young girl she has never seen before. Alyssa gets herself a drink and sits beside him for twenty minutes waiting fruitlessly for him to either introduce her or at least to acknowledge her.

  ‘Hi, you came down then,’ he says finally, his jaw clenching strangely.

  ‘Yes. I wanted to talk about us living together.’

  ‘What’s there to talk about?’ he says. ‘Either we do or we don’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m willing to try.’

  ‘That’s settled then. Want to get me a water?’

  ‘I wasn’t finished …’ she says hesitantly, suspecting that this environment is not the best for discussing major life decisions, but deciding to press on. ‘There are some conditions.’ She doesn’t like to discuss these things by email and she never sees him at home much anymore.

  ‘What conditions?’

  ‘Nothing terrible, just arrangements about cooking and cleaning and shopping. You know, the usual stuff,’ she smiles.

  He is silent for ten seconds, staring at her. ‘I’m talking about love and eternity and you’re talking about housework!’

  Alyssa is taken aback. ‘I’m actually going out on a limb here,’ she says. ‘My parents are really strict and they won’t approve, but after knowing you for only three months I’m willing to live with you.’ She reaches for his hand to placate him but he snatches it away.

  ‘I hate people who are really bogged down with domestic shit. I can’t live in that world. I need beauty and love and music and—’

  ‘So do I! But I also need to eat and one of us has to take the garbage out,’ she counters.

  Gerard pushes his face close to hers and says, ‘Forget it. Forget everything!’

  He drains his last mouthful of beer and goes to the bar where he begins a con
versation with the man next to him. After staring at his back for five minutes, Alyssa can feel tears coming so she leaves.

  She replays the conversation in her head, over and over. Thinks of things to say to fix everything when he comes home in a few hours. He never comes.

  At work she is distracted and checks her emails every two minutes waiting for his apology. She imagines her own generous acceptance of that apology and the two of them hugging and kissing and making up. At ten minutes to four she gives in and writes to him. He replies curtly: You have got some thinking to do about our relationship. Get back to me when you know what you want.

  Alyssa emails one of her sisters: He wanted to move in with me and when I said yes he broke up with me!

  Her sister replies: I never liked the sound of him. He doesn’t deserve you.

  Saturday night, despite the start of a cold, she bravely goes out to dinner with Will and Briana. Before she has even settled into the seat, she is dismayed to see Gerard approaching along the pavement to eat with them as well—but relaxes when he takes a seat next to her and is pleasant.

  ‘I didn’t think we were seeing you tonight,’ Briana says to Gerard. ‘Didn’t you have a hot date lined up?’ she continues, with no thought for Alyssa’s feelings.

  ‘It fell through,’ Gerard mumbles into his menu. Alyssa squeezes her serviette and feels physically sick. Without saying anything she gathers up her bag and jacket and leaves.

  For two weeks she gives in to despair. Goes to movies alone to distract herself for a few hours but cries all the way through them and can’t breathe. She goes to stay a few days with her mother who doses her up with herbal potions. She writes in her diary. Struggles in to work for half a day then has to come home. Her bedroom is soon filled with tissues. Her hair loses its shine. She gives in and emails him and begs him to come back. Sometimes he agrees to meet her for coffee and they sit in awkward silence. Other times he doesn’t respond at all. By the end of the third week she changes his name in her mobile phone so that it reads: Amazing Loser.