Buddhists

“It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.” –Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

I was telling my friend Janet about my summer job babysitting thirty Brooklyn College freshmen for two months while they studied in London. “Hey,” she said. “Call this guy. He’s a chef in a huge rock recording studio outside of Oxford. You two will love each other.” I took his number despite the fact that I was sure I would never call him.

After three weeks of living in a University of London dorm room, spending my days ushering the loudest, most touristy American kids I’d met in my life, I was desperate. London was undergoing its hottest summer in a century and if I had to listen to one more Brooklyn-accented teen inform me that she couldn’t believe warm beer, no ice, no American soap operas, and how people didn’t wear deodorant, I was going to abandon them to the hostile glares of the locals.

So I called him.

“Hello?” he said in this sexy, English voice.
“Hi,” I said. “Janet said I should call.”
“Janet? I love Janet,” he said, his voice like banoffee pudding, sweet and just too good to believe. “Are you the writer?”
“Yes.”
“When are you coming to Oxford?”

We talked for an hour about books and music, and when I told him about my students, he thought I’d said I was babysitting thirty hookers from Brooklyn. This caused much hilarity on the other end of the line, where I could hear many voices, presumably those of famous rock stars. It should have been annoying, but it wasn’t. I felt special.

The next day, I sent my thirty students to Brighton, where I assured them they would find the ocean and possibly ice. I dressed carefully, remembering my English friends’ snarky comments about how most Americans wore terrible outfits, loud sweaters, track shoes, and ill-fitting pants. When the train stopped in Oxford, I sat for a moment, praying to the patron saint of blind dates that this person would live up to his telephone personality. Standing just outside the station, I looked around and saw a perfectly dressed (white linen pants, linen shirt, vest) man, tall, slender, smiling, walking towards me.

“Thank God!” he said in a Monty Python-like accent, “I thought you were her!” And he pointed at a woman dressed in a hideous sweater and very tight sweatpants, ending at least six inches above her ankles, which were encased in track shoes.
“No,” I said, idiotically, “I am me.”
“Yes,” he said, “And you’re gorgeous.”

We started to talk again. As we drove through Oxford, he explained how he had met Janet when she did sound for a band that used the recording studio. The Jaguar he borrowed from the famous rock star turned through a gargantuan gate opening into a gravel road lined with trees. At the end of a road was a castle.

photo by Bales Studio

“Is this where you live?” I asked, my voice squeaking despite an effort to sound nonchalant.
“No,” he said. “This is Blenheim Palace. We’re having tea here.”

I told him about New York, my experience as a battered wife, my cat, and my novel, which he wanted to read immediately. He told me about his time in art school, how he became a chef, why he loved Americans, and why Wings of Desire was his favorite movie. The sun filtered through the trees, and I saw how his smile made his eyes turn darker blue and the way he turned to face me openly, nothing held back. I was so besotted that I told him I had seen it, and then I had to keep nodding and attempting to change the subject as he reviewed each scene, asking if I’d noticed some small detail. Finally, I’d had enough. “Look,” I said. “I haven’t seen that stupid movie. I just wanted to say I had.”

After tea, which involved prodigious amounts of clotted cream and strawberries, he commented that he thought I was too thin. He said I reminded him of a Renoir, all curves and rosy cheeks. He was kind, smart, funny, handsome, and liked chubby girls. We went to buy supplies for dinner. When I pointed out a nicer basket of potatoes he called me “a clever darling” and when I suggested we roast parsnips, he kissed me. It was a lovely, light, sweet kiss. Not terribly sensual but appropriate considering we had just met. An old woman rolled her eyes at us, but when I smiled, she smiled back.

The recording studio was attached to a massive mansion where the rock stars stayed during their sessions. We put the groceries away and started preparing for dinner. The radio played David Bowie, and I peeled vegetables in a state of bliss. We did that dancing-around-the-kitchen thing you see in movies that don’t accurately reflect real life. I could dance suddenly, and when he whirled me into a jitterbug, I melted into his lead. The rock stars were very nice and terribly well-behaved considering their fame and profession. They kept nudging me and asking if I liked their chef.  “Of course,” I said. “What’s not to like?”

They thought this was very “New York-y” and cool, and he made me tell them about my novel and my cat until it was time for them to return to their recording studio.
We cleaned up, and when he asked me to sleep over, I nodded.
“Just to sleep,” I said. “I’m not a slut.”

He thought this was so funny, he called the rock stars in the studio, and they made up a song on the spot about New York and how I wasn’t a slut. I called the thirty Brooklyn College students who were sunburned from their trip to Brighton and told them that a fictitious English aunt had had a heart attack.

“Squishy pillow?” he asked politely.
We lay together on his narrow bed, and while I knew it was just a friendly overnight, I could not help but feel a familiar heart thud. Out of habit, I read while he brushed his teeth.
“Read to me?” he asked like a child I once babysat.
It was Bleak House, a long chapter about lawsuits, and after ten minutes, we both fell deeply asleep.

I was served breakfast in bed by an English chef wearing a silk bathrobe.
As he was feeding me a strawberry, he gazed into my eyes. “Let’s go to Ireland together,” he whispered. “We can make love in Ireland.”

Well, we could have, but we didn’t. First, we were too tired. As soon as we arrived in Dublin, my old friends from college put on dinner parties and brunches, cocktail parties and picnics. We were surrounded by people, wined and dined until sunrise every night. Still, it was a little disappointing that he always came to bed in pajamas, announced he was exhausted, and instantly fell asleep. Finally, after five days, he started. I responded and for a moment it seemed like we might go forward without more chapters of Bleak House. But then everything stopped.  

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m pathetic.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy,” I said. It was the truth.
“I love you,” he said.
He fitted my head into the space beneath his shoulder, and I fell asleep, lulled by his heartbeat.

In the morning, I left our bed and sat in my friend’s kitchen drinking coffee. When she got up and saw my face, she sat down and took my hand.
“He loves me,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
“I don’t care,” I said. “It’s not that important.”
She shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “You can’t.”
“We’re going to the Cliffs of Moher,” I said. “And then I’m going back to America.”
“He’s lovely,” she said. “He has the nicest shirts.”

We drove to the Cliffs of Moher after we bought him a lovely Australian dark green raincoat that made him look very chic and rugged. The rented car had a terrific stereo, so we played 10,000 Maniacs and wept when Natalie Merchant sang about remembering things and how painful love could be. The landscape was beautiful, lush and green, rainy, then foggy, then sunny, with dazzling rainbows and places at the top of a hill where the green valleys actually took your breath away.  

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.
“I don’t care,” I responded, feeling like a person in a romance novel.
The Cliffs of Moher were slippery after a heavy rain. We walked along the path and I saw him stumble, his beautiful Bass Weejuns a poor choice for this hike.
“Don’t die,” I screamed, pulling him to safety. A lack of sex had made us melodramatic.

We spent the night in a B&B, and over breakfast, he told the landlady we were getting married.
“Well, now,” she said, “how lovely. And are you Protestants or Catholics?”
Without hesitation, he answered, “We’re Buddhists.”
She looked slightly shocked, but then she smiled. “Of course,” she said, “not to worry.”
“I have to go back to America,” I told him.
“We could get married,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.

I went back to America and returned to graduate school. I had a lovely roommate, a musician at Juilliard who attended mass religiously and marched for gay rights. One night, I came home from writing class in Brooklyn, drenched, with a pizza box in one hand, and found my chef standing in the middle of my apartment. He was wearing the Australian coat, his arms full of wrapped presents. I screamed and threw the pizza box at him. He kissed my eyelids like a lover. My roommate and his boyfriend stood in the doorway of my room, smiling, but I could see they were thinking something they weren’t saying.
I read aloud to him from my new novel that night, cuddled against one another on my fold-out bed. We didn’t try to make love so everything was perfect.

“Let’s go to Montauk,” he said the next morning. “We can make love in Montauk.”
We rented a car and drove to the tip of Long Island. It was rainy and foggy,  so there were no rainbows. The place we stayed was damp, and the bed was terrible. Something was different between us, and I didn’t feel like talking anymore. I couldn’t sleep so I got up and walked out on the porch to listen to the ocean and look at the moon. After a little while, he came out with a blanket and folded me into his arms. “I want to marry you,” he said.
“For a green card?” I asked, smiling to take the sting away.
“For love,” he said.

A few days after he left for England, my roommate came into my room and sat on the couch. His boyfriend hovered in the doorway. “Look,” he said, “I need to say something.”
“Okay,” I said.
“He’s gay,” my roommate said. “He loves you, but he’s totally gay.”
I nodded. I was wearing the perfume he had brought me from London, a sweater, a bracelet, earrings, and a ring.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” my roommate said. “Don’t marry him.”
That New Year’s Eve, I came home just after midnight. I was sleepy and tired of pretending to like people. The phone rang, and I heard the clicks that once signaled an overseas call.
“I miss you.” He said. “I need you.”
For the first time in years, I thought about my first husband. He used to hit me if he didn’t like something I did. Until the chef, I was afraid to be alone with men. Until the chef, I flinched whenever anyone tried to touch me. Until the chef, I still expected everything to hurt.
“You’re gay,” I said. “I love you, but you’re gay.”
“We could have a baby,” he said.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment. I could hear how lonely he was. There were so many things wrong with the men I had loved previously it made me dizzy. For a moment, I trembled on the edge of that cliff.

I hung up first.

–Molly Moynahan