Dear Jordan,
Charles’s and my courtship began with a phone call. From my father.
Although my dad had given up liquor years earlier, his voice on my answering machine sounded strangely giddy. “Hey, Punkin,” he said, calling me by the childhood nickname I have always loathed. “Just wanted to let you know that Charles asked me for your phone number. I gave it to him. Hope you don’t mind.”
I cringed. My father was playing matchmaker.
The truth is, I had thought about Charles for a few days after I returned to New York from Kentucky, but not much in the three weeks since. Our encounter had been pleasant but fleeting. He was sweet, handsome, and obviously principled, but I wasn’t in a dating mood.
That spring I had broken up with my boyfriend of two and a half years, and I had not gone out with a man since. Greg was the managing editor of the Boston Globe and twelve years my senior. He was a tall, chocolate-colored charmer with the face and voice of a television news anchor—the only person I knew who loved newspapers more than I did. We discussed books and social issues and, of course, news. He introduced me to cigars and single malt scotch and gave me a copy of Katherine Graham’s autobiography. He took me on vacations to Martha’s Vineyard, where we ate lobster and played Scrabble on aprivate beach.
Our relationship was intense—and combustible. I was insecure about holding my own with a man of his stature and felt more like his pupil than his partner. Greg was preoccupied with our age difference and frustrated that our careers kept us in different cities. In time he became distant. When he bought a house without consulting me less than a year after I moved to New York, I knew we would never live in it together. I left him before he had a chance to leave me.
Even so, I took the breakup hard. (It was the only time I ever lost my appetite over a man.) I was not looking to replace Greg when Charles came along, and certainly not with someone so unlike him.
Yet a few days after my father’s message, there was another one.
“Hi Dana, this is Sergeant King,” Charles said. “I got your number from your dad. Give me a call when you have time.”
He sounded stiff and formal. I called him back the following day, just to be polite.
“Sergeant King,” he answered, and I was instantly conscious of how little interest I had in dating a soldier.
“Hi, this is Dana.”
“Hey, how are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
We were as warm as two people on a telemarketing cold call.
The conversation turned to the weather in New York, then to how hard we had both been working. I tried to wrap things up by saying it was nice of him to phone.
“I’ve thought about giving you a call ever since you left Kentucky,” he persisted. “I’ve just been busy at work and dealing with my personal situation.”
I knew he was referring to his divorce and wanted to ask why he was interested in me at such a tumultuous time in his life, but I did not want to make him feel like the subject of a news story. I was also not so sure about my own motives. Maybe I was simply looking for a candy man—a sweet treat to ease my loneliness.
Despite my misgivings, Charles and I kept talking after that initial call. At first I told him more about the New York subway system than about myself. He talked about military history, but stayed away from the subject of his broken marriage. They were easy, first-date discussions, but without the dates. He said he admired the French artist Erte. I said I loved anything by Längsten Hughes. We discovered that our birthdays were two days apart and that we both liked chocolate—one of us in moderation, the other in abundance.
As that smoldering July became an even hotter August, we began speaking every night. Our conversations turned introspective. We talked about his daughter and about my choice to have a career before a family. In time, I began to look forward to his calm, steady voice being the last thing I heard before I slept.
We became friends.
Charles revealed, with some prodding, that he considered the collapse of his marriage to be the biggest failure of his life. Before he and Cecilia wed, he said, they had shared big dreams—dreams of pursuing their art and eventually starting a family. They had dreamed of saving enough money to make a down payment on a house, maybe even enough to travel or buy a new car. Afterward, he came to feel that they did not share the same goals and values. Through much of their marriage he was the sole breadwinner, and there were times when he wished she contributed more financially. They never did manage to buy a home, and by the end of the marriage, too much trust had been broken.
I only knew his side of the story, but I could tell how wounded and ashamed he felt He said he had prayed hard that the marriage could be salvaged before he finally decided it was over. He was most concerned about the consequences for his daughter. I urged him to give her time to adjust to such a difficult change in her life. I reminded him that he had suffered a huge loss, too, and should give himself permission to grieve. Mostly, I listened.
As Charles opened up, I did, too. I told him about the pressure of being a black woman in a high-profile position at the New York Times. It was not just that I felt there would be no second chances if I messed up, it was that I sometimes felt like a standard bearer for all African American journalists who aspired to work at the Times. I also never got used to the awkward moments when a white banker or politician I had cultivated as a source on the phone met me and seemed shocked that I was black.
I told Charles about sometimes feeling alone in a city of seven million people. I told him how tough it was to grow up as the eldest daughter of an autocratic drill sergeant and a mother who was too fragile to stand up to him. I also confided something I had told very few people: For as long as I could remember, my dad had told his children the sort of obscene jokes that should have been reserved for his soldiers. I would lower my head in embarrassment and say they were not funny, which would make him laugh harder.
“I was a drill sergeant, too, and I would never talk to my daughter like that,” Charles said one evening. “No father should.”
With those words, I felt a brick loosen in the wall around me. Finally, here was a man who validated my feelings about one of the most uncomfortable and confusing experiences of my life. He was angry for me, which made me begin to think that, just maybe, I could trust him.
I told Charles that the entire town of Radcliff had known of my father’s mistress and that he had made little attempt to hide his affair. In fact, I was the only one of the children who refused to meet her. Most evenings, after dinner, my father would announce that he was going for milk while my mother sat solemnly, head lowered, never questioning him about where he was really headed. It was generally well after midnight when his car pulled back into the driveway; the sound of the engine often woke me. My dad even said that he had never loved my mother and had only married her because she was pregnant and so poor and mistreated that she slept on two chairs she had pushed together to make a bed. My dad said she had “trapped” him by having so many kids and had her own secrets besides. He never said what she was supposedly hiding but often alluded to her having other men and remarked that at least he owned up to his mistakes.
No matter how bad the marriage, I knew my mother would never leave. She had no money, was a high school dropout, and had five children. It seemed to me that she was the one who was trapped. I vowed never to allow myself to be in the same position.
“The way I grew up shaped my views about men,” I explained to Charles. “I’ve had my guard up for so long that I don’t know what it feels like to lower it.”
Charles seemed to understand. He was careful not to move too fast, and I was enjoying the crush I had developed on him from a safe distance. Then, during one of our nightly talks, he said he wanted to know more about New York City. Flirtatiously, I said, “Let me show you my city.”
“Okay, when can I come visit?” he asked, seizing his opening.
“Urn, I don’t know” was all I could manage.
“I have a four-day pass in two weeks. Want me to see if I can find a ticket?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
It was becoming clear to me that, in his own unassuming way, Charles pursued what he wanted, which apparently was me. He said he had always admired strong women and liked my independence and the sense of purpose I drew from my career. He also thought I was beautiful—hips and all.
Despite myself, I had become smitten, too. He was a homebody and a family man. The weekend we met, he had been sweet with my six-year-old niece: when she giggled and asked to see his muscles, Charles lifted the squealing girl off the ground on his arm instead of flexing his biceps. And he had sat beside my father on the front porch, patiently listening to his old army stories. This was a man who adored children and respected his elders.
If only he were a civilian. If only he were a news junkie. If only he did not live so far away.
My father did not say it at the time, but he had hoped from the start that my budding friendship with Charles would develop into something more. He believed Charles was worthy of his feisty daughter’s affections.
“He had an inner strength that I knew was stone-cold soldier and stone-cold man,” my dad said later. “And he had compassion and a soft side.”
Even though I had grown up as the daughter of a military man, I did not yet understand the strength of character it took to be a career soldier, and I had no interest in that side of Charles. As the time of his visit drew near, all I could think was: He won’t be in uniform, but he’s still a soldier. Why am I doing this?
Two nights before Charles’s visit, I went out for drinks with my friend Mia and we discussed my potential new man. Mia, a reporter on the Metro desk, was like a big sister. I needed her advice.
“So do you like this guy?” she asked, sipping her Cosmo.
“I guess I do,” I said. “But he’s not exactly my type. I mean, what if I have to introduce him to the executive editor at a Times event? He mispronounces words and doesn’t keep up with the news.”
Mia rolled her lovely brown eyes and set down her glass.
“Listen,” she said, “how many Times parties do you go to with the executive editor anyway? And who cares if Charles doesn’t speak perfect English? You said he was nice, right?”
I looked away, ashamed for putting on such airs. I was a girl from Kentucky who had not even owned a suit when I went on my first job interview. For years I memorized new words in the dictionary to expand my vocabulary, and I never was any good with fractions. I worked two jobs in college to afford books and food and never came close to making the Dean’s List. Who did I think I was? A big shot who was too good for this big-hearted man?
There was something else, though. I still loved Greg.
Mia reminded me that he was seeing someone else. “It’s time for you to move on, too,” she said. “Just see what happens with Charles.”
She was right. I should at least give Charles a chance.
On the phone, the night before he arrived, I gingerly brought up the issue of sleeping arrangements. I told him I had a sofa bed, and he said that, of course, that was where he would sleep. I was relieved.
“What did you think I expected?” he said, laughingly.
“I don’t know,” I lied, “I just don’t want to set up any unrealistic expectations.”
It sounded silly even as I said it. The man was getting on a plane to spend the weekend in my home. I knew that this was the beginning of more than a friendship.
I quickly switched subjects, giving him directions to my apartment from LaGuardia Airport. I made him read them back to me and then told him how much the cab ride should cost and how much to tip the driver.
“But only if he helps you with your bags,” I instructed.
“Yes, ma’am,” Charles said, seeming amused.
This man had fought in Desert Storm and I was worried about him taking a taxi into Manhattan! We hung up and I lay in bed staring at the ceiling a long time, thinking about how different Charles and I were and how it did not seem to bother him the way it did me. If anything, he was intrigued by our differences.
I was not a soldier the way your father was, but there were moments when I felt as if I were on the front lines, too. As a New York Times business reporter who covered the finances, management, and product development of some of the largest corporations in the world—Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, and Gillette among them—I had dined with the chief executives of Fortune 500 companies. I had written articles that moved their companies’ stocks on Wall Street
It was intense, rewarding work, but it was not the career I would have predicted for myself. As a young girl, I had written poems and short stories. I would lose myself in them for hours, forgetting the pain and confusion of arguments between my parents that ended with my mother trembling and in tears and my father heading out the door. In my high school scrapbook, I wrote that a decade after graduation I would be a writer in New York City, but I wasn’t thinking of reporting. I envisioned myself writing novels that would plumb hard truths about class and race and offer piercing insights into the dynamics between men and women—or fathers and daughters.
Being practical, though, I majored in journalism at the University of Kentucky, which put me on a path to a writing career with job security and health benefits. During the summers, I worked at newspapers, including the Plain Dealer in Cleveland in 1986 and the Wall Street Journal the following summer. Then I got a job after college as a police reporter at the Palm Beach Post in Florida.
That hot, miserable year made me much tougher: I drove into an approaching hurricane to write about an evacuation and went on drug raids with the police. But I was lonesome and missed the change of seasons. And I never got used to those god-awful little lizards everywhere.
Still, I liked nothing better than covering a juicy murder trial, so when the Plain Dealer approached me about a similar job in 1989,1 headed to the Midwest. I thrived. Cops would try to shake up the crime reporters, but they quickly saw that they couldn’t faze me. I once spent a day in prison interviewing a murderer, who casually explained how to produce “instant death, very little blood” by sticking a knife into a particular spot at the base of the skull. But I was best with grieving families. I cared, and they could tell.
I stayed at the Plain Dealer for eight years, until the mid 1990s, when I met some reporters and editors from the Times at a journalism convention and they invited me to New York for a round of interviews. The Times eventually made an offer, but three things weighed on my mind.
The first was that New York was expensive and loud and overwhelming. In Cleveland I had a fabulous apartment overlooking Lake Erie and a convertible sports car that helped me get dates. I had an active social life and, for the first time, a savings account.
Then there was the fact that the Times offer came with a huge caveat. It was an apprentice reporting position in which I would have three years to prove I was “Timesworthy” or be let go.
Finally, there was Greg, who wanted me to move to Boston, not to New York. I wanted to be with him, too, but I had fears of being stuck in Boston with no job and only a man’s money to rely on. I had a recurring nightmare in which my real life turned out to have been a dream and I woke up with no education and no job.
But what if I accepted the job at the Times, lost Greg, and failed the apprenticeship?
I was torn. So I consulted the only friend I trusted to advise me about the decision—Greg’s mother.
Geneva Moore was approaching seventy but still dyed her hair red and went dancing in black leather pants. She was a dame, and I adored her. We spent hours on the phone talking about her life as a young woman and my career. When I told her that I was close to taking a job at the Times and that the decision would likely lead to the end of my relationship with her son, I knew she would not hold back.
“The New York Times?” Geneva Moore said excitedly. “Dana, I love you and I love my son, but he could get hit by a bus. Honey, you better take that job.”
I accepted the position that week in the summer of 1996, along with the uncertainty that came with it.
There was an intoxicating energy to New York City, just as there was in the newsroom, and I adapted to it quickly. I made friends with some of the younger reporters, and we plotted our careers after hours at restaurants and bars near our Midtown office that served designer cocktails and tiny appetizers on giant plates.
Professionally, the risk paid off: just a year later, in the fall of 1997,1 was promoted out of the apprentice program.
Nowhere I was on a Friday morning, this tough career woman, putting on a gray skirt suit instead of the jeans and blazer I usually wore at the end of the week. I put a makeup kit and perfume in my briefcase. I slipped my feet into a pair of painful black pumps, deciding to suffer through the agony instead of wearing comfortable loafers. I had bought fresh flowers on the way home the day before and set them out in vases around my apartment. All for a man I was still not sure I wanted.
Late in the afternoon I was in the newsroom writing a story on deadline and had almost forgotten about his flight. Then Charles called. He had made it to my building and gotten the key I left with the doorman. I told him I would be a few hours.
“No problem. I brought my sketch pad,” he said.
By the time I had finished my piece and made it home on the subway, it was nearly eight. Charles was sitting in my living room, drawing. When he stood up, I felt the same flutter in my stomach I had when we first met. He was scrumptious.
He smiled shyly and we hugged. I lingered in his arms and looked into his face. We kissed lightly, a tentative peck that felt like a beginning. It was enough to make me forget about deadlines and traffic. I was home.
Shy is not a word that describes me, but I was oddly nervous. I had pretended to be the sort of woman who would casually invite a man to her home for a weekend, but I did not feel casual about things at all. Charles was there because I wanted him to be.
“Let me show you my city,” I said, trying to relax. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Charles chuckled and I met his gaze with a playful smile that seemed to put us both at ease. We took the subway to a romantic Italian restaurant, not overly fancy, where we sat by an open window.
I had learned more about Charles in the past month than I had about some men I had dated for the better part of a year, but it had been a phone relationship. Sitting face-to-face with an entire weekend stretched out before us was disconcerting. I was relieved when the waiter broke the silence by offering us bread and pouring oil into a dish.
“What’s that, butter?” Charles asked.
“No, olive oil,” I said. He seemed embarrassed.
Charles watched me dip a chunk of the warm crusty bread into the dish and take a bite. When he declined a slice, I was not sure whether the olive oil was too great a novelty for him or whether he was simply steering clear of carbohydrates. I ordered linguini with clam sauce—more carbs. Charles ordered a salad.
“Give us a minute,” I instructed the waiter.
“Charles, you can eat salad anywhere,” I said. “Why don’t you try the pasta?They make it from scratch here.” On the army base, I knew, he generally ate cafeteria food, and I suspected that if he had pasta at home, it was ravioli from a can. This was a chance to relax and be adventuresome, if only for a weekend. I wanted him to enjoy himself
“But I want a salad,” Charles insisted.
“Well at least have some grilled chicken on it or something.”
He shrugged his shoulders and agreed to add a skinless chicken breast. I didn’t know then how strictly he watched his diet; I saw it as a sign that he was rigid or afraid to try new things.
“So have you seen my parents lately?” I asked, wishing we could both loosen up. He said that he had, and we laughed about how shocked they would be to know that he was visiting me. We had decided not to tell our families about our courtship until we knew ourselves whether there was anything worth telling.
I wanted so badly for Charles to be comfortable that I reached across the table and rubbed his arm. “I really am glad you’re here,” I said softly. “We’re going to have a great time getting to know each other better.”
Charles leaned over the table and kissed me on the lips. I tasted a hint of Oregano, one of my favorite spices, and leaned in for more. Finally, we were relaxed enough to enjoy our first official date. The glow lasted until the check arrived.
I knew that I made more money than him and that he had a daughter to support. I suspected that he could not afford the hundred-dollar meal. So I told him that since he had just bought a round-trip ticket to New York, this was my treat. Still, he seemed uncomfortable when I discreetly slid the bill in my direction. He wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin and said nothing as I handed the waiter a credit card.
It occurred to me that perhaps he was the sort of man who still believed in the dating rituals of a bygone era. I was right. The entire weekend, Charles insisted on being on the curb side of the sidewalk to put distance between me and the traffic. It was a sweet, throwback gesture that in any other city I would have appreciated, but it drove me crazy as we tried to keep pace with the rushed pedestrians on New York’s one-way streets and congested avenues. He had to step in front of or behind me every few blocks to switch positions in order to come between me and the traffic.
“Charles, please stop that,” I said as patiently as I could when we approached yet another packed intersection. “I appreciate you looking out for me, but you can’t do that in New York. You’d have to switch sides practically every block.”
He smiled and shook his head in agreement but he never did stop dodging dogs and drivers and pedestrians to make that loving gesture. I eventually stopped fighting it, realizing how important it was to him and how blessed I was that a man cared enough about me to make it. The last time I ever walked with him, pushing a stroller on our way back from dinner at a Chinese restaurant, Charles gently tapped me on the hip every few blocks, a signal I knew well. I instinctively responded by stepping in front of him so he could switch positions: a dance born of his gentility that we had long ago perfected.
It took a while for me to learn to let Charles fuss over me, especially when we both knew I was capable of taking care of myself. In time I realized that accepting his overtures was not a threat to my independence but rather confirmation of how secure I was with it.
There was still a hint of daylight when we made our way out onto the street that evening, and I threw my hand up to hail a cab. As a taxi pulled over, Charles looked uncomfortable, and I realized that he had wanted to signal it himself. It was too late, so we slid into the backseat and I told the driver to take us to Times Square. I could not wait to show your father the sights—the gigantic neon billboards, the historic Broadway theaters, the New York Times building—but he seemed brooding and distracted. It probably didn’t help that, without thinking, I paid the fare. At least I thought to wait for Charles to help me out of the cab.
We strolled, holding hands as I pointed out various landmarks. I am not a petite woman, but my hand felt tiny in his. His grip was strong and I could feel the tightness of his muscles squeezing my fingers.
Living in New York requires a certain edge, which I acquired by osmosis. Guards are rarely let down, motives almost always questioned. I had grown accustomed to being vigilant to protect myself without depending on a man. Now here was this massive man making me feel as safe as I did on the front porch of my parents’ house in Kentucky.
Charles was polite enough as we walked, but by the end of the night he was very quiet. I hoped that in city-girl mode I did not seem too unlike the relaxed woman he had met in my parents’ living room. Perhaps he was simply as nervous as I was about what would come next.
I offered him a beer when we returned home and excused myself to take a shower. He still had more than half a bottle when I rejoined him in the living room wearing a T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. My reporter friend Rachel had given me advice on how to handle this potentially awkward part of the evening.
“Just don’t shave your legs. That way you won’t get into trouble.”
She was serious. I’m the girly-girl in my circle of friends and Rachel knew I would never sleep with a man, at least not the first time, without exfoliating, shaving, and moisturizing my skin.
I sat next to Charles on my black leather couch and tucked my legs under me to hide the stubble. He yawned a few times and took another few sips of beer. He probably would have sat there all night rather than suggest going to bed for fear that I would misinterpret his intentions.
I had had a long week and was tired, too. “If you don’t mind, I’m ready to turn in. You can either sleep on the couch or on one side of my bed/’ I finally said, impulsively putting aside the sleeping arrangements we had agreed upon. It sounded like something a teenager would propose, but I was not sure what else to say. I wanted him near me, but not too close.
I stood up and Charles followed me into my bedroom. He grabbed his toiletries out of his suitcase and went to the bathroom. I slid into bed and pulled the covers up to my neck. What had I been thinking, inviting him into my bed on what was, in essence, our first date?
Charles came back in the bedroom with a sheepish smile on his face and got into bed wearing a tank top and gym shorts. He looked out of place, this brawny soldier lying there in my wrought-iron canopy bed outfitted with pink sheets and draped with delicate lavender sheers. We met in the middle and he took me in his arms. When his lips met mine I remembered why he was there, even as I wondered how I could ever be with a man who only ate salad.
We kissed long and hard before I gently pushed him away.
“We should stop,” I said, breathing heavily.
He laid his head on my chest and then said he did not mean to get carried away. We slid to our respective sides of the bed, pretending to fall asleep. I remained awake for the longest time, and I suspected he did, too.
I awoke the next morning to a tapping sound on the floor and opened my eyes, squinting. I lifted my head. Charles was on the floor, doing push-ups on a set of metal handrails he had brought with him.
‘Tm sorry, I tried to be quiet,” he said.
‘Oh my God, who gets up this early on a Saturday?” I said, trying to sit up. “And who travels with portable gym equipment?”
“It’s not early,” he said laughing. “It’s almost nine o’clock.”
I grunted and slid back down in bed. Charles walked out of the room and returned a minute later with two glasses of orange juice. I was awake enough to notice that his neck and chest were glistening with perspiration.
“My God, you have an amazing body,” I said.
He smiled and leaned over to kiss me. “Thank you,” he said.
He told me he was going running. I rolled back over, told him where I had put my keys, and said I was going back to sleep. When I woke up more than an hour later, he had returned and was stretching vigorously on the floor beside me. No Martian could have looked more alien to me.
“Seriously, don’t you ever sleep in on weekends?”
“I get up at five during the week,” he said.
A military man, indeed.
Staying in bed until noon would have been rude, so I pulled myself together enough to play tour guide for a second day. Charles was struck by the usual touristy things—the way the height of the buildings obscured the sun for entire blocks, the smell of honey-roasted cashews sold hot from a street cart, the subway musician blowing a trumpet so sweetly in a humid underground tunnel. I tried to point out things the tourists did not always see. He blinked in disbelief when I showed him a grocery store that only sold low-fat and fat-free foods. He all but giggled when he bit into a pastry from a popular bakery in my neighborhood. I kissed powdered sugar off his lips.
“That tasted good,” he said. “I like the pastry, too.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and we kissed again as customers brushed past us with their coffee and muffins.
“What do you want to do next?” I asked him when we made our way back onto the street.
“Whatever you want,” he said. “I’m all yours.”
“Please,” I said. “I’m trying to be a good girl.”
He curled his lips into a mischievous smile.
“I know a lovely fountain, a wall of water cut right into the middle of a busy block. Want to see it?”
He nodded and took my hand.
“You know, I don’t think I can show you everything in one weekend,” I said, playfully glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.
In the months that followed, Charles visited two or three more times and gradually became a part of my life. Our feelings for each other went beyond friendship, and we had become more physical, but we still had not defined the relationship.
We shopped for clothes in New York to replace his oversize T-shirts and baggy jeans: pleated slacks and knit shirts, jeans that hugged him nicely, leather loafers and sandals to replace his sneakers. As long as he was out of uniform and away from the military base, it was almost possible for me to forget that he was a soldier.
I did not visit Fort Riley. It was not a place I was anxious to see, and my latest assignment left little time for leisure travel. If we remained in my world, he was simply Charles, the handsome man who had become my steady companion.
I took him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Broadway plays, and Central Park. We spread out on the city’s great lawn one weekend with a picnic basket and I teasingly said, after he had unpacked our food and books, that the spot he had chosen was all wrong. He wanted so badly to please me that he twice packed up our belongings and relocated until I was satisfied.
“You know,” he said, “you would be shocked to see me with my soldiers, and they would be shocked to see me with you.”
I did not think his men had ever seen him catering to the whims of a woman, but it would be years before I would know just how different Charles the military leader was from Charles the man I would come to adore.
By late fall I had introduced Charles to most of my friends. We hosted a small cocktail party on a Friday night when the chill in the air hinted at the changing season. Charles turned on some jazz and I hummed as I blanched carrots and sugar peas for crudites and asked him to put fruit and cheese on a platter.
“Dana, will you be my girlfriend?” he asked.
“Where did that come from?” I asked. I had not expected to have a “relationship” talk.
He looked wounded.
“Charles, you know I care about you,” I said. “Why do we have to define our relationship?”
He simply looked down and sliced more cheese.
I felt guilty and confused. So many women, especially black women, longed for the affections of an honorable man—a man so sweet that he was actually asking me to go steady!
I had to be honest with myself about why I was holding back. My ideal man, I thought, looked like Charles but wore a suit to work and carried the Wall Street Journal under his arm. He was as comfortable discussing the stock market on a golf course as he was trash-talking on a basketball court. We were just so different, Charles and me. We had started out at roughly the same place in life, his beginnings slightly more middle class than mine. But now I lived in a different world.
It was not that Charles could not adapt to my world; I liked introducing him to it, but there were tensions. One evening several weeks earlier, I had gone down to meet him in the lobby of the Times. I got off the elevator and looked around. Then I saw him lurking behind a giant bust of our former publisher, practically hiding—something not lost on the security guards, who were keeping close watch over him. Why was he not standing out in the open like everyone else? I tried to hurry us out the door, but Charles stopped me. He wanted to know why I had only invited him up to the newsroom once. I had truly never thought about it, since he usually came to my office at the end of the day to meet me for dinner or a show. I had given him a tour of the newsroom and introduced him to my favorite colleagues. Did he think I was ashamed of him? Perhaps that was why he was standing behind that bust.
The night of our party, as Charles waited in the kitchen for my answer, I thought back to the incident and what it said about us. Then I looked at him, the actual man in my life, and I realized that in the ways that truly mattered, he could be my ideal. He did not wear fancy clothes or have a lot of money, but what he had he happily shared with me. He was not the sort of man to make his views known during a dinner party, but his art spoke loudly about the way he viewed the world. Through his drawings it was obvious that he loved God and children and history and rainstorms and me.
“Charles,” I said softly, when I went back into the kitchen. “Yes, it would be my honor to be your girlfriend.”
He grinned and hugged me.
“Let’s not pretend this is always going to be easy,” I said. “Our lives are very different, and I don’t want to give up my career to follow you around military bases. Can you handle that?”
“Dana, I’d never ask you to give up your career,” he said. “We’ll work it out.”
We kissed, breathlessly, until the doorbell announced the arrival of our first guests.
That weekend was a turning point. The last of our guests lingered until after midnight, as Charles sat patiently on the couch stroking my hair. When we finally closed the door behind them, he pulled me into his arms and said that he loved me. He had been patient, but I knew he wanted to show me.
I was suddenly nervous and pulled away from him to change out of my low-cut blouse and black slacks. I returned wearing an oversize sweat suit and socks but was getting so worked up that I had begun to perspire. So I did an about-face and changed into a peach nightgown that fell below the knee but had spaghetti straps and a touch of lace at the décolletage. I walked back into the living room and asked Charles if he would like a beer. He did not have time to answer before I raced back into the bedroom and changed a third time, into my favorite nightshirt—a white oversize T-shirt with a picture of Mr. Potato Head that said: “The Perfect Boyfriend: He’s cute, he’s a good listener, and if he looks at another girl you can rearrange his face.” The shirt fell just above my knees but it was not, unlike the nightgown, a neon sign flashing “Sexy.”
Charles burst out laughing. “What are you trying to tell me?”
I was not sure whether he was talking about the message on my shirt or all the times I had changed, but I did not think it was the least bit funny. I paced the room, willing him not to notice my curves. I talked but do not remember what on earth about. Charles simply followed my movements with his eyes, clearly waiting for me to decide what would come next.
Then he stood up and walked slowly toward me. I was not used to seeing him so sure of himself, and it only increased my anxiety.
“What do you want?” he calmly asked, turning me to face him.
I was at once frightened and exhilarated. What if he hated my body? What if we made love and I lost control? Did this mean that I loved him?
No, he had not read his way through the New York Times bestseller list, but he could make me blush just by looking at me, and I could no longer fight my attraction. I had spent my life trying to control my emotions, but I had been hurt anyway. I was not nearly as tough as I pretended to be. I wanted somebody to hold, somebody who would stay. Perhaps I had found him in this gentle soul now gazing at me and waiting for my answer.
I put my hands on his chest and looked up at him.
“I want you,” I said, and he gave me all of himself.