Full of Grace (Continued)
What could I say? Even though I was an adult, I still loved the fact that my dad wanted to spoil me rotten. And that he missed me. The next day I called Eric Bomze, who owned the company I worked for, and who by coincidence had relocated to Charleston after opening another office in Atlanta. He said, Come to Charleston immediately. That was the end of the New York chapter of my life. I called a mover and began to pack.
To my surprise and delight, it turned out that Charleston had everything I thought I needed and more. Like New York, it had neighborhoods and corner stores. It was old but not decrepit. What it didn't have was snow, ice or, to date, terrorists.
It was little things that made me happy—frothy cappuccinos and the New York Times at my fingertips. I loved chamber music and theater. Salsa dancing, tennis and biking. Restaurants and shopping. Charleston had that and lots more, and best of all, I could walk to work. And once Michael became my "other," he could be at the Medical University in five minutes. We didn't pay a fortune to park or live on gridlock alert during the holiday season. So living downtown was the perfect decision for us.
We couldn't be bothered with a house and a yard. And I hated to admit it, but a suburban house would have destroyed our relationship in about two days. It wasn't about who was going to cut the grass or clean out the garage. No, it was fastidiously manicured neighborhoods with married couples having block parties, backyard barbecues with coordinated paper products, children, dogs and bicycles strewn helter-skelter like randomly placed garden sculpture. That whole scene had the malodorous quality of long-term commitment. The M word. Like cheap chocolate—it looked good, but ultimately it made your teeth hurt. Marriage was not for me. Or Michael.
We didn't want to live among a sliding-scale population of predictable failures. Like stick-figure couples in a PowerPoint presentation, diminishing with each screen until over half of them disappeared by the end. We were together because we wanted to be together, not because we were stuck under the heel of a legal agreement, the guilt of custody and every kind of social convention you can name: country-club memberships, religious affiliations, shared bank accounts—-the list of entanglements was endless. We shunned them all. I mean, it was great for some people but not for us. It wasn't who we were.
The only reason I bring this up at all is that I was en route to Hilton Head to visit my entire family for the Fourth of July holidays. I loved them like mad, but every visit to their new home was like the Spanish Inquisition—-Italian style. This trip would be no different from all the others. They just couldn't help themselves.
It was a relief to pass the last red traffic signal that would crop up in the next hour or so because even though it was four in the afternoon, the heat was still eating me alive. I could taste salt in the beads of perspiration that tickled my upper lip. Taking a long swig of water from the sweaty lukewarm bottle in my cup holder, I decided it probably hadn't been the best idea to make the trip with the top down. But I loved summer and the rushing warm wind on my face and arms. Being a little on the other side of thirty, I bought into sunscreen and its merits. But any way you sliced it, getting older was a drag.
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