Chapter 13

When she got home the day before Thanksgiving, Danielle was unsurprised to find David at her apartment. He often was. Nicole must have let him in; while they'd joked about giving him a key when they were friends, things were different now that they were dating. You didn't just give any old boyfriend the key to your apartment. Even if he was dating. " ... Wouldn't believe how excited they were," Nicole was saying. "I was scared I—oh, hello, Danielle—wouldn't be able to keep control of the class."

"I don't blame you," said David. "A bunch of grade schoolers, and the day before a vacation? I'd be nervous about controlling them too."

"I'm not sure how I did it," Nicole professed. It was good to see her coming out of her shell. Constant exposure to David was probably helping; but Nicole said that she no longer felt the same pressure now that he was dating somebody else. He would have moved on, and would no longer feel the same interest in Nicole that he once had. Or so she claimed. The way he engaged her in conversation seemed to defy that idea. "Some of them are naturally calm, of course, but others ... Sometimes I think it's a miracle just to make it through the day."

"I doubt it," said David, smiling. "I'm sure they respect you a lot more than you think."

"Maybe they do, but I don't think respect is quite what a six-year-old decides by," Nicole said. "Maybe if..."

"Nellie, where are you going?" said David as she stumped off to her room.

"Oh, don't let me interrupt your conversation," Danielle grumped. "Talk on, talk on!" She shut the door behind her and threw herself onto the bed.

Perhaps this she should have seen coming too. Hadn't it happened before? That was the whole point of David: he was polite, he was kind, he was the kind of guy you took home to meet your parents. He had been this way since time immemorial. Of course he would be kind to one's roommate, even if that roommate happened to be his ex-girlfriend. The simple fact was, David wasn't territorial. But Danielle was, and while it made her happy to see Nicole getting along with David again, sometimes a girl wanted to feel spoken for.

She wondered if flouncing in here had even had any effect. She knew she'd made her dramatic exit (and entrance, for that matter), and that any sane person would assume she wanted to be left alone and, well, leave her alone. But what she really wanted was for David to notice something was wrong, and pursue her in here, and ask her. David called this 'passive-aggressive behavior.' Danielle called passive-aggressive behavior 'a big fancy name for someone claiming to be my soul-mate but actually not knowing me all that well, the bastard.' " Would David cotton on? Would he see her and decide to let her stew in her own juices (the bastard)? Or would he actually take it at face value and decide she really did want to be left alone? With David, you never knew: he was so polite that way.

One thing she knew, though: she couldn't leave it hanging like this. David's family was flying east tomorrow morning to spend Thanksgiving with their relatives. At least, she would need to say good-bye. And if he didn't come in to talk to her before then...

It was a peevish and anxious half-hour. She checked her e-mail and Facebook profile and the other sites she frequented, but after that there was nothing to do but twiddle her thumbs and wish she could go outside and watch TV, or talk to Nicole, or even talk to David. She was on the verge of giving up when a knock came on her door. "Nellie?" came the muffled voice from the other side. "I have to leave in a bit, I wanted to talk to you at least a little. Is it okay if I come in?"

For a few minutes there were just pleasantries: how was work today; anything interesting happen; oh really?, was that the one you said was cheating on her husband?; maybe you'll get a promotion now. Normally Danielle was happy to hear about his day, but right now she was fidgety and on-edge; each banal question grated in her ears like a rusty hinge.

Finally David said, "So ... What was all that about earlier? With the rushing in here and barely saying anything?"

"Oh," said Danielle, "noticed, did you?" It came out a little more acerbically than she'd intended.

"Well ... Yes," said David, "but ... You looked like you really wanted to be left alone."

"And that didn't make you concerned?"

"It did, but I decided I wasn't going to legitimize your habit of manipulating people instead of saying right-out what you actually want," said David.

" ... Well, whatever," said Danielle, deciding not to start that argument. "You're here now; I suppose that's what matters."

David gave her an odd look; but evidently he decided not to pursue it, because he said, "So, now that I'm here: what did have you annoyed?"

" ... Aren't you supposed to know?" she said. "Without asking? You're the one who's always going on about how well we know each other?"

"Look, let's not start that one," David said. "Not now."

"What had me annoyed?" Danielle said. "What had me annoyed was how you ignored me. I come in, and what do you keep doing? You keep talking to my roommate. I thought I was your girlfriend. I thought I was your girlfriend."

David passed a hand over his face. "Ugh, Nellie, let's not start that one either."

"Why not?" she said, "because you'd have to admit you were wrong for once?" It was a nasty thing, and she felt guilty almost immediately ... Somewhat guilty.

"I was just being polite," David said. "The other day you said you liked that I'm polite to people. It's kind of hard for me to meet your approval when you keep changing your standards."

"Maybe so, but surely even politeness would allow you to interrupt for five seconds to acknowledge my presence."

"Look, Danielle, what do you want from me?" said David, impatient for the first time. "I have no idea anymore. So just tell me, straight out. What do you want from me?"

I want you to be perfect, was her first thought. Her second was, I want you to stop being perfect. "I ... I wanna feel like your girlfriend."

"Despite the fact that, at your insistence, we aren't having sex. Hell, we're barely making out."

"I wanna feel like your girlfriend in other stuff too. I want to feel like I'm important. I wanna feel like I mean something to you."

"You do."

"Oh, right! Yeah! I mean so much to you that when I walk in the room, you keep talking to Nicole!"

"Ever thought that I was showing you how much you meant to me with that? You're the one who said you wanted to see us being friends again."

"So if I didn't want you to be nice to her, you'd just ignore her."

"Of course not. Danielle, you know I'm not like that."

"That's my point! You're so tied up in being nice to other people that I get blown off!"

"You said you wanted to take it slow!"

"Taking it slow does not mean ignoring me!"

"Well, it doesn't mean dropping everything when you come in the room either!"

"So how about something in the middle, then! How about not ignoring me, and—"

"How about just accepting that this is who I am, Nellie? Every time it's always this. 'Why aren't you more this? Why aren't you more that?' I dunno, Nellie, why aren't you okay with the fact that I am what I am?"

"And how come it's always my job to change! If you're unhappy with me, I have to fix it, but if I'm unhappy, oh, it's because I'm an idiot and I can't appreciate you!"

They glared at each other across the silence.

David was the first to drop his gaze. The fierceness dribbled out of him all at once, leaving something ashamed and resentful on his face. "Look, I'll call you when I get back. I'll think while I'm gone. You should too. I don't like the way this is going."

She felt a dropping sensation under her. "You're not... ?"

"No, I'm not," he said, though there was still iron in his voice. "Jesus Christ, Nellie, why do you always jump to conclusions. I don't want out ... Well, maybe that's not true; I do want out. But so do you. I want out of the relationship where we're always fighting and we can never agree. I want back into the relationship where we get along and we can help each other. And I'm pretty sure you do too. And what I want us to think about, while we're gone from each other, is how to turn this relationship ... into that one. Okay?"

"Okay," she said, though the fear remained. "Okay, Davey. I ... I'll think hard."

"Good," he said. She could still see the anger in his body, but gruffly he stepped forward anyway and gave her a rough, brief hug. "I'll see you next week. I love you."

"I love you too," she said, glad he had said it first. Sometimes his perfectness was a burden, but every now and then...

So David left, and Danielle could go outside and spend some time with Nicole. Nicole, unfortunately, wasn't going anywhere. She had hoped that the advent of the holiday season would make her parents re-initiate contact, but so far there was nothing from them. Danielle was surprised at their coldness—they had seemed forgiving and big-hearted on the few occasions she met them—but mentioning this would only make Nicole feel worse, so she kept her mouth shut.

All in all it was a nice, relaxing night—more so than usual. Normally they would have to think about getting to bed at some reasonable hour, in order to wake up on time for work in the morning (or at least Danielle would; Nicole never seemed to have problems with being in bed by eleven). Plus, a lot of times David was over, and that could be stressful in its own way.

Dating David was, in some ways, exactly what she had needed and wanted for the past six years. He laughed at her jokes, and she at his; he understood why something upset her, sometimes before she did; and every time they kissed she remembered just how good at it he was. But these contretemps between them ... Sometimes it seemed like nothing was going right.

The problems she had had with him over the years had not miraculously disappeared. He was still lazy, for instance; the firm he was at offered him very little opportunity for career advancement, and in fact had made it clear that they would need to lay him off eventually. David was completely unconcerned about this, even when she asked him how he planned to keep paying off his student loans—not to mention his rent and food bills. He claimed he'd worry about it when the time came. Danielle wasn't sure if this made him irresponsible or just stupid.

"I hope it wasn't me," Nicole said suddenly.

"What?" said Danielle, jerking out of her reverie. Something inconsequential was on the television; she had zoned out years ago. "What wasn't you?"

"What ... What made you angry when you came in," said Nicole, not meeting her eyes. "I hope that I didn't—"

"Silly," said Danielle, smiling. "It wasn't you. He ... Well, you know how he is. He would've been like that if anyone was in the room."

Nicole gave a timid smile. "I always liked that about him. I could tell, when my parents met him, that they were impressed, and I know they weren't expecting to be. When I told them I had met a boy in college, I know they were expecting someone ... Scruffier." Danielle was glad her sister felt comfortable talking about her ex-boyfriend; in her experience, that was an important step towards closure. But at the same time, she wished her sister would talk about her ex-boyfriend to somebody else.

Of course, Nicole was coming to the Mayers' house for Thanksgiving; Danielle hadn't even thought twice about that. So she was a little concerned when she found herself preparing to leave at two that afternoon, and Nicole still padding around in her sweats. "Magpie, aren't you going to get ready?"

"Get ready for what," Nicole asked.

It was at this point that Danielle realized she might have forgotten to mention that Nicole was invited. After cursing herself for twelve kinds of idiot, she explained. Then it was another two or three minutes of hugging and sniffles and tearful smiles before Nicole could wipe her eyes and package herself off to the bathroom to take the world's quickest shower. Danielle, meanwhile, called Mom and asked her to guess what Danielle had done this time. Still, they were only out the door about an hour after they'd planned to.

The kitchen at Danielle's house was a scene of barely-controlled chaos. The family on her mother's side rotated what family they celebrated Thanksgiving with every year, and this year it was Bonnie Wells Mayer's turn to host. The end result was four families' worth of mothers and daughters bustling around and trying to get everything done, and only a few men—Dad, Uncle Anoop, and Uncle Walter and his son Roland—hanging around watching football. The Wells clan had always had more daughters than they knew what to do with. Mom and Sonya were in the thick of things, of course; and then Nicole found out that some sweet potatoes were available and insisted on breaking out an ancestral Smith family recipe. Of course, nobody knew who she was, but Danielle introduced her as her sister and no one said another word. (The funny thing was, nobody seemed to notice either: they only seemed to care that Nicole had a reason for being there, not what that reason was. Only Aunt Celia gave the appellation any thought: she gave Danielle a long look, and then Nicole, and then nodded to herself and got back to work.)

Despite the crowdedness of the facilities and the distinct lack of ovens (five or six would have been necessary for peak efficiency), all the food got on the table more-or-less on time and more-or-less properly cooked; Nicole was formerly introduced, with Danielle giving a longer description, and welcomed without prejudice into the clan; and everyone sat down to eat. Danielle found herself sandwiched between Nicole on one side and Sonya on the other, who alternated between dropping snide comments into Danielle's conversation on her left and Cousin Roland's conversation on the right. From what Danielle could hear, Roland was having relationship troubles of his own; he was talking with Aunt Celia's daughter Heather about the proceedings, while Sonya did what she always did, which was pretend to be helpful but actually just snark her way around. About half the time Danielle couldn't pay much attention, though, as she would constantly be called on to run interference for Nicole, whose sweet potato recipe had turned out to be quite a hit. Nicole, of course, was completely unused to the attention, and turned red more times than Danielle could count. The real miracle was that Nicole felt comfortable getting plunged into a throng of strangers like this at all. The ghostly girl Danielle had met as a freshman would have fled to a bathroom by now.

After dinner was over, Roland and Heather were still psychoanalyzing Roland's girlfriend, who sounded like a fair piece of work; Danielle joined them, a little curious and wondering what she herself could learn. She was glad she did: Roland's fiancée, Sharon, was having much the same problems with him that Danielle was with David. She was pressuring Roland—unduly, as he saw it—to be more assertive about his talents and his success; his company, she claimed, was treating him as though he had half his experience, and paying him about that much as well. They were renting an apartment together and Sharon's financial means were limited, so that the larger burden of financial support necessarily came from him; even more than that, they were getting married, and Sharon felt nervous about the life she'd be able to lead (and, for that matter, the babies she'd be able to raise!) under a husband who was so willing to devalue herself.

Inevitably, the conversation turned towards Danielle's problems. At first she demurred, not wanting to distract from Roland's issues (it seemed impolite); but after a little prodding, she realized just how much she needed to talk about this. Who could she talk about it to?—Nicole was biased (through no fault of her own), and her other friend was David himself. So to Roland and Heather, whom she saw at most once a year, she spilled her heart out: the early years, the catastrophic break-up, the period of catatonic depression; the years at college, with him dating her best friend; and now her fears and concerns today. It took a little while.

She didn't realize Sonya was listening in until the snort of derision came from behind her. "Oh, God, is she going on about this again?" She made her voice a mocking sing-song. "Oh, boo-hoo is me, I had the perfect man and I messed up and now I'm gonna lose him, waaah. Bitch, you gotta stop whining about it and just do something."

Danielle let her voice go frosty. "I don't recall inviting you into this conversation."

"Yeah, and that's why you got problems," Sonya retorted. "You don't ask the right people for help."

"Fine, bitch," Danielle said. "What would you do, in your infinite haven't-even-gone-to-college-yet wisdom."

"Are you sleeping with him?" said Sonya.

"Oh, is that your advice. Just flash my titties at him and he'll be as meek as a lamb."

"It isn't, so answer the question," Sonya snarled. "Are you sleeping with him?"

" ... No," said Danielle.

"Well, there's your problem," said Roland, without irony. "Danielle, I'm sure you're aware that guys are more docile when they're getting some."

"Why aren't you doing it with him?" Sonya said. "You were before, when you dated the first time."

Despite herself, Danielle was unnerved. "How did you know?" Had Sonya been spying on them? How had she even known to spy?—she and David had gone out together, to various places, all the time. What had tipped her off that today was the right particular day to follow them to the field?

"You were dating for years, you must have been," Sonya said. Danielle felt a wave of relief—followed immediately by a wave of alarm: Is that how Sonya thinks of men? "So, you did it with him before; no reason why you wouldn't be willing to do it again. Except that, you aren't. Why not?"

"With the way he's been acting, you think I should?" Danielle said. "He ignores me to talk to my roommate, he doesn't care that he's gonna be an unemployed bum, he barely kisses me, much less acts like he wants to go to bed with me—"

"That's just David being David," Sonya said with a dismissive toss of her head. "I bet you said you didn't wanna do it with him until later, right? Well, he's taking that seriously. He's waiting for you to give a sign that he's ready before he decides to do anything with you."

"Well, David being David is a prick!" Danielle said. "He does all that stuff, yeah, and I tell him to stop! But whenever I do that, he either complains that I'm not allowed to change my mind, or he tells me I need to just shut up and learn to live with it! Like he's already perfect! He's being a total jerkass, and you're saying I should reward him?"

"Do you love him?" Sonya asked.

Danielle was blindsided. "What?"

"You heard me," Sonya said. Her eyes were narrow slits, her face aggressive. "Do you love him?"

"Well ... Yes," said Danielle.

"Then no, you shouldn't reward him with sex," said Sonya. "You stupid bitch, you don't reward someone anything when you love them. You give it to them whether you like them or not. You show them that you love them even when they're being a total jerkass, and that you don't care and you're still there for them. And you know what? Then he's mellow, 'cuz you just fucked his brains out. And you know what?—then he's more willing to change for you, 'cuz you love him anyway! He knows you're not judging him, he knows you're not gonna dump him if he doesn't. He doesn't feel any pressure. And then he wants to change. To please you. Because you love him even though he's a bad person, and that's the only thing worth being a better person for."

There was a short silence after this, though muffled by the constant clatter of dishes being washed and cutlery being sorted and twenty people crammed into a space meant for ten.

"You have a smart sister," Roland said finally.

"So when he gets back, stop whining," Sonya said. "Just stop fucking whining and do something. Get his dick in your pussy, blow off some steam, and then talk. Tell him what you want. And don't expect him to deserve love. Love isn't what you buy. Love is what you buy with. And if you're not gonna spend love to buy him, then get the fuck out of the way so I can."

Roland laughed at that, as did Danielle. But Heather looked at Sonya and said, "You mean that, don't you. You wish you could be with him."

At that point Danielle did an auspicious thing: she performed the first double-take of her life. Because the fierce anger on Sonya's face was starting to dribble off, and in its place was a hopeless longing. And that was all she saw in the moment before Sonya wrenched herself free of the conversation and fled upstairs; but in that moment, Danielle realized that she didn't know her sister at all.

Sonya didn't come down for the rest of the evening; indeed, Danielle didn't see her again until Saturday afternoon, when she and some friends swung by to get drunk. Neither of them made any mention of what had passed between them on Thanksgiving night. But when Danielle opened the door for them, she greeted Sonya with a hug, which her younger sister returned; and when Danielle snapped at Sonya's friend Kim, who was continually tracking in dirt and mud, Sonya—for once—took Danielle's side.

It was a few weeks before Sonya would admit what had happened. "What I said about ... About David," she said. "I shouldn't've said that."

Danielle shook her head. "You should've said it long ago. Now we have something in common." She smiled.

"I just ... I mean, he's never looked at me twice," Sonya grumped. "And if ... If I said anything, I figured you'd think I was going to try and steal him away from you—"

"Oh, I'm keeping my eye on you," said Danielle, giving her a broad wink. "But I'm not gonna be, like ... What, 'Oh, no, my sister's here, a threat is happening.' I know that when you like someone, you can't necessarily do anything about it. It's beyond your control. It's only about whether you act on it."

"And I'm not gonna try and steal him," Sonya said. "I mean, you'd notice, and it wouldn't work. But ... Well, fuck. Even I'm not that big a bitch."

"It's okay to be a bitch as long as you have some redeeming features," said Danielle. "For instance, being brave enough to tell your sister the truth about her boyfriend." She hugged Sonya. "Or, for that matter, the truth about herself."

In the end, this left only the prickly question of what to do about David—or, perhaps, how to deal with him. Danielle had to mull it over for a while, but eventually she came up with a plan she thought would work. Sonya, she thought with a wry smile, might even approve of it.

Just after lunch on Sunday she got the phone call. "Hey. It's me."

"Hey," she said, surprised at the ache in her throat. Surprised she had missed him that much. "Umm. Do you still wanna talk?"

"Umm ... Yeah."

"What time do you get in?"

"Well, our flight lands at eight, but... "

"That should be fine. Why don't you come over once you're settled in."

"That could be, what, nine, ten o'clock."

"That's fine."

"Nellie, I'll be tired. I'll have just gotten back from flying, and we've both got work in the morning. Maybe this isn't the best time for... "

"Davey," she said quietly. "I wouldn't ask if it weren't important. Please. For me."

A pause. And then a sigh. "Okay."

Then it was waiting. The one thing she'd never been good at.

She was fairly sure this was all going to work; she couldn't see it going wrong. Men were pretty simple creatures at heart, after all. Her mistake had been in forgetting that. And in forgetting that she loved him, and shouldn't feel like she needed to withhold things in revenge. There was no revenge in love. It was time to get ahold of that ideal again.

Of course, part of the plan was that there was nothing she could do but wait. She paced in her room, checking her e-mail and her Facebook compulsively, certain that something was going to come through and reduce the whole thing to splinters. She even called Nicole to make sure her cellphone was working, leading to a few minutes' amused conversation. But time ticked on, and nothing arrived to suggest that David himself would not arrive at some point tonight.

Finally she heard the clacking of the door; she had left a post-it note telling him to come on in. She had asked Nicole to be in her room, so that the apartment would seem deserted ... Save for the handwritten arrow signs on the floor, telling him where to go. It was dark, but she knew he'd see them. Soon the door to her bedroom was opening.

"Hi," she said. She was lying under the covers, looking up at him. "Come on in." (She prayed he'd had the brains to lock the front door behind him. The sign had said to, but who ever knew anymore.)

"Hi," he said. He sat down on the side of the bed, looking tired.

"Long flight?"

"Not too long. But ... Aggravating. I think every single squalling six-month-old in America was on that airplane. I couldn't even listen to my iPod."

"Well, I'm glad you're back," she said, reaching out to take his hand.

"So what's this about, Nellie? It's past ten; what's so important that it couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

"Well ... I..." she said, suddenly self-conscious. She had sort of bludgeoned him into coming here, and if he was tired, that would sort of defeat the purpose of the plan. "I just ... I did some thinking over the weekend. And I realized that ... I realized that we'd been approaching everything all wrong."

He tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"Just, in the ... I mean, I'm here, wanting one thing but saying another, expecting you to figure it out. That's just lame, no matter how you look at it. And you're ... Well, to a certain extent you're doing the same thing. You're so patient, and I thank you for that, but, you really should feel like it's okay to say, 'I want the relationship to go a certain way, Danielle, and I think that's a reasonable want. Let's talk and figure out how to get there, or why we can't.' Because it is okay to say that. Don't ... Don't just keep it bottled in. That hurts you, and it hurts me."

He nodded. "Yeah. I guess ... I guess you're right. I do want things to go in a certain way, but ... You don't, and, I always figure..."

"That maybe I'll come around," she said. "And that's another thing. If we go at it like that, we're fighting each other."

He blinked. "I hadn't been aware that keeping silent was a form of conflict."

"But it is, baby," she said, stroking his face. "It's what we did wrong our first time, it's what you did wrong with Nicole, it's what's been going wrong now. Even if you don't admit you want something, you still want it. And you begin to feel resentful because you're not getting it. It's how human beings are. But the problem is that it changes the dynamic of the relationship. Instead of me being someone who helps you get what you want, I start being someone who stops you getting what you want. I become the enemy. Now you have to fight me in order to have the relationship your way."

"And vice versa."

"And vice versa. And that makes us both less willing to compromise. And that doesn't help things."

He nodded. "It's a good analysis. Did you talk to your parents or something?"

She gave a wry smile. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. But now that we've got this advice, let's use it. Let's not fight each other to get the relationship we want. Let's work together to get it."

He nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. I think ... You're right about ... About me feeling like I had to fight you. I didn't like it, but ... There it was. But I just felt so... Attacked."

"I know," she said. "And I'm sorry. It just ... It bugs me. When I see something going wrong, my impulse is to get in there and fix it."

He gave a wry smile. "And mine is to back off and figure out what's going wrong. And then do just the right thing to fix it. Again, Archimedes used to say, in the Doric speech of Syracuse: 'Give me a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the whole world.' "

"God, that can't be good," Danielle said. " ... Our approaches, I mean. No wonder I feel like you're waffling. It's not that you're avoiding the problem, it's that you're trying to back off and get some distance."

"Yeah," he said. "And I feel like you're chasing me."

" ... Which I kind of am."