Lately, I’ve been thinking that another marriage might be more special because I’ve made that leap. Because I’ve put in that time and effort. Or maybe it might be more special because next time, I might actually be inlove with my wife.
The third question was a change of pace, and Cohen exhaled deeply.
Your earliest memory?
Cohen put his pen down, reaching back through time, searching for the earliest fragment of an image he could recall.
Was it Esther’s smile?
His old dog Tam’s bark?
His father finally coming home, after four months of unexplained absence, apologies on his lips and another woman’s lipstick on his neck?
Cohen sighed.
I think I might have been two or three. My parents were screaming at each other. My mother was crying, and my father left, slamming a door. I always thought he left because of me. I always thought it was because I was a bad son. A bad child.
Years later, I asked my mother about that memory, and River, I’d never seen her go pale so fast.
Turns out she’d had a miscarriage, and they just didn’t know how to deal with it.
So, they dealt with it like they dealt with everything else: raised voices, angry shouts and slammed doors.
Cohen sat back, letting sorrow briefly wash over him. He didn’t like to think of these things, normally. He didn’t like to imagine his mother’s pain or his father’s guilt. He couldn’t bring himself to picture the brother or sister he’d never had.
Home Alone or It’s a Wonderful Life?
Sorry. Don’t hate me. Hate the questionnaire.
Now he laughed.
I first sawHome Aloneon a transatlantic flight with my mother. She spent the entire flight loudly laughing and nudging me in the shoulder, asking if I’d heard that.
Actually, the whole damn flight could hear her chuckling and the flight attendant came by – at the captain’s request – to ask if she would consider toning it down. Apparently, her laughs had drifted via the air system into the cockpit. She was given two ‘complimentary’ glasses of red wine and passed out just before Kevin broke the teeth of Joe Pesci.
I’ve only ever seenIt’s a Wonderful Lifeonce. I was with my first girlfriend. Her name was Kate and we met at a ‘Future Leaders of Enterprise’ summer camp in Massachusetts (it was my mother’s idea). I had my first kiss with her during a showing ofIt’s a Wonderful Life.
I still can’t hear bells ringing without thinking about Kate’s braces.
After that first kiss, she asked me if I wanted to sneak away and do more with her, but I was fifteen and awkward and you know something? I really did just want to watch the movie. What can I say? I just really admire James Stewart and Donna Reed.
But even so, James Stewart and Donna Reed can’t compete with the fact thatHome Alonemade my mother laugh.
So, for me at least, it’s going to beHome Alone, every time.
Cohen smiled. Even now, on Christmas Day, after he and his mother had conversed awkwardly over Chinese food, he’d slipHome Aloneonto the television. And every year, without fail, Esther would make some snide remark along the lines of, ‘Oh, is this goyim nonsense on again?’, all the while chuckling when she didn’t think anyone was watching.
Do you only want to sleep with me? Is that all this is? Because I’ve been wrong about this feeling before.
Cohen felt his heart thump hard within his chest. If this were any other woman, he would write some airy remark about only wanting to have sex when she felt ready, about her needs coming first, about how he was happy to wait. A nicer version of, ‘oh yes, of course I’ll call you tomorrow’.
But this was River.
And he needed to be honest.
River,he admitted.You’re so beautiful, so wonderful, and so sexy that I’ve wanted to touch you from the moment I met you. Ever since I met you I’ve fantasised about you, about the things I want to do to you and the things I want you to do with me.
I want to do so much more than sleep with you. I want to love you. I want to pleasure you. I want to feel all the hidden corners of your body. I want to feel your bare skin under my hands.
