Fading to black

Dec 20, 00 | 3:03 am

Robin has been talking about getting married. He's been talking about this since we hooked back up again a year ago. The holidays arrived with a bang this year.

I started writing this page in earnest when I fled New York for Palm Beach, away from Arthur, who didn't want to marry me. I spent six years of Arthur thinking about Robin, and yet I was far more prepared to marry Arthur than I am Robin.

For all of my writing about love, I am a practical creature. I loved Arthur, but I wasn't in love with Arthur. I don't think I ever was. And still I wanted to marry him.

Robin, on the other hand, Robin I have loved. I can't remember my life without him. I love Robin, I do. I imagine us together... ten twenty thirty years down the line. And I can see it clearly, the two of us and our children in his childhood home. The fireplace. The porch. The sunny bedroom at the top of the stairs where I caught him bed with Kaity Parker in 1987.

I look around the room at my friends, all married to each other, and I see the problems. I see how Sean and Olivia are expecting their third child and there are still some nights that Sean doesn’t come home. That Paige drinks in secret. That John looks like a beaten old man after nine years of taking the 5:08AM express into the city every morning for conference calls with the London office.

These are the devils I know. It feels safe.

And I see Elias. Elias was my best guy friend in high school. We used to smoke cigarettes between second and third period outside the west wing double doors. We looked alike, had matching mops of strawberry blonde hair, tie-dyed t-shirts and blucher mocs from LL Bean.

Elias had gone away to prep school for our junior year, and got booted just in time to carry me through our senior year. In AP English class, he took a test for me when he saw I was too drunk to write my own name. I had managed to type "Swan Astruc" before he saw I wasn't going to make it, and managed to type two different answers to the essay question so I wouldn't fail.

His presence at Luc's Christmas bash was a surprise. He had been living in LA with his wife and daughter. I didn't know he was back. He didn't know I was back. I walked into the party, heard "Swan!" and then he was swinging me around in a bear hug.

As the night progressed, and we got drunken and drunker, Elias cornered me in the powder room, away from Robin and Annika, embroiled in some sort of heated discussion about syndication packages. He had a fifth of scotch sticking out of his blazer pocket. We perched in the bathtub and toasted each other.

"I have a confession to make," he said, swirling the scotch around his glass. "Remember that last night in high school?"

"I do."

"Remember how my shorts were wet from swimming, so you loaned me those Madras patchwork ones?" I nodded. "Remember how I said I lost them, when you wrote asking for them back?"

"Yes?"

"I kept them. I wanted to have something to remember you by."

I blinked. "Really? You stole my shorts as a souvenir? Do you still have them?"

"Yup." He laughed. "They're threadbare. Annika keeps threatening to toss 'em."

I'm not sure what this story has to do with Robin. It just made me happy, is all.

Anyway. Robin. I haven't given him much of an answer. I keep making half-assed statements like "Of course I want to marry you!" and the but is unspoken but he hears it anyway and knows I am not saying yes.

If I say no, he's gone forever. Which is probably what's best for him. Especially with me dicking around like this. But he doesn't bail out, just keeps coming at me from different angles.

"Why don't you see," he says, and he knows I love him so he doesn't understand why.

And I don't, either.