Instead of even getting a little chuckle out of that, Aimee’s like, “I guess you don’t have a very high opinion of marriage, huh?”
“It’s not so much the idea of marriage,” I tell her, “as the idea of forever. That’s a concept I just can’t get my mind around.”
“Oh, I can.”
“Really? I mean, your parents weren’t married forever, right?”
She sets her drink down and looks off toward the lonesome salesman. “My dad died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s okay. It was a pretty long time ago.”
“What happened?” Sometimes my tact takes a vacation. Tonight it must’ve gone to Kuwait or somewhere.
“My father was really a good guy. He was a big animal person, practically an activist. And smart. Just for fun, he read books on physics and Aristotle and everything. He loved van Gogh. He used to read out loud to me, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. But he had this problem.”
She pauses, and I’m like, “You can tell me. I’m a very nonjudgmental dude.”
She starts nervously winding a strand of her hair around her forefinger, but she goes on. “Well, the thing is, he was addicted to inhaling gasoline fumes. He kept big containers full of gas in the shed behind our old house.”
I’m thinking, My God, the dude blew himself up! I can just see him taking in a snootful of fumes, then lighting a cigarette, and kablooie! But that’s not it.
What actually happens is that the gas eats away at the blood vessels in his brain until one day, Aimee’s big sister, Ambith, comes home and finds him lying in the doorway to the shed, stiff as a rake. Aneurysm.
I’m like, “Jesus. That’s a tough way to go. I’ve seen it on TV. Not the gasoline thing, the aneurysm.”
“Yeah.” She takes a hefty pull on her drink and this time doesn’t even flinch at its stoutness. “But it’s going to be different when I get married. I’ve thought it all out. That’s what you have to do. You can’t just go into something like that blind.”
Now, I know better than to get the subject of marriage cranked up around a girl, but I’m ready to put as much distance as possible between us and the gasoline-huffing, dead-dad story, so I ask her to tell me all about this vision of marriage she has.
“Well, when I get married, we’ll live on a horse ranch.”
“Right. And you’ll work for NASA.”
“Right.” She smiles at how I remember that.
“Will the guy have to work for NASA too, like maybe as an astronaut or an accountant?”
“Oh God, no. We won’t have to have all the same interests. I don’t believe in that—the husband and wife having to be just alike. I think it’s better if they kind of offset each other. Like if they have these different dimensions they can bring to each other.”
“I like that idea. That’s cool.”
This potential husband dude—I don’t know—he seems about like a cross between Peter Parker from Spider-Man and Han Solo from Star Wars, with a little bit of one of those old, dead romantic poets thrown in for good measure.
The ranch is just as implausible, like some fantastic foreign-planet wonderland. Purple sunsets, bluebells, jonquils, Queen Anne’s lace, a crystal-clear stream winding through the valley, a big red silo the size of a rocket ship. And horses. Herds of them, red, black, silver, appaloosas, and paints, galloping everywhere—like horses never get tired.
It all sounds like something a nine-year-old would dream up, but what am I going to do, tell her it’s not feasible? Maybe say, “Look, there’s no such thing as flying saucers or Martians, or Santa Claus, and there’s no chance you’ll ever land a ranch or a husband like that”? I’m no dream crusher. The real world already does enough of that without me getting into the business.
Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s real. It never does with dreams. They aren’t anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don’t drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone’s hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat. Me, I’m just dogpaddling on my own, but Aimee’s lifesaver’s a beauty. I love it. Anyone would if they could see the way her face beams as she clutches that thing with all her strength.
Chapter 40
Before we know it, Marvin’s is closing down. We score a couple of 7UPs for the road, and when we get to the car, she lets me doctor hers with whisky again. Neither one of us is really ready to head home, but there’s nowhere else to go on a weeknight. Plus, there’s a curfew for teenagers, if you’re the type that pays attention to that kind of thing.
So we end up parked in front of her house, talking and drinking. The lights inside are all off now. I tell the story of my parents’ divorce and the advent of Geech and how my sister got a boob job and snared Kevin-pronounced-Keevin. I’ve never seen anyone listen so hard. It’s like I’m pouring out some rare, expensive wine and she doesn’t want a drop to miss her cup.
Cassidy was never like that. She always listened with a wispy smile on her face and one eyebrow slightly raised as if she thought a punch line was somewhere right around the corner.
Finally, there’s a lull, which can always be dangerous when you’re talking to a girl.
“So,” Aimee says, a look on her face like she’s getting ready to jump off the high dive for the first time in her life. “Did you mean what you said when we were driving home from the party last week?”