new year’s eve, the new boyfriend, the past & the present

Who’s that on the mantel?

That’s Catherine.

* * *

Who’s that holding the baby?

That’s Eve.

* * *

In the painting next to the door, who’s that in the sunglasses?

That’s Mary.

* * *

The blank space among the family pictures?

Oh. That. I took that down before you came, but I’ll show it to you. It’s Elisabeth. (He goes to the closet in the downstairs bedroom, reaches on the closet shelf, and picks out from among many other pictures the one he had planned to keep hidden.) – These were taken a few years before she died. She was young.

* * *

Okay, well, even teenagers have old loves, crushes from third grade, fiancées from nursery school, beloved teachers, all sorts & kinds of heartthrobs.

* * *

But this is one way sexagenarian romance is really, really different: the weight of the past is stronger. Those late wives, ex-wives, and ex-girlfriends may be the mothers of the man’s children; their pasts may have endured 5 years, or 10 years, or 36; and the past may be very much the present, with alimony payments or custody arrangements or shared grandchildren or more.

More: the corner where her bookshelf stood, but she took it with her, so he bought that little cupboard to fill in the space; the new sofa that replaces the one she took away; the funny collage made by his friend so he could laugh at the divorce; the little tiny picture of even the most hated ex-wife, still present because of all the other people in the picture.

* * *

Whew!

You get the – um – picture.

* * *

So yes, I visited T’s house for the first time at New Year’s eve, spending two nights there. It was stunning, elegant, immaculate, seemingly ready for a magazine photo shoot at any moment. T is an excellent cook and made a divine dinner for us. We drank champagne with the meal, watched dvds, and totally ignored the Times Square ball. I hate the pressure to yell and kiss and wish someone Happy New Year when it falls, and T didn’t appear to care one way or the other, so we never saw it.

He toasted: To Us.

And we drank to that.

* * *

T is also the world’s tidiest housekeeper. He uses only wooden spoons on his cookware, so they have no scratches. In the morning, the first morning of 2009, I had two cups of coffee, each with foamy hot milk heated in a pot; and between the two cups, T scrubbed the milk pot so the residue wouldn’t stick.

His house is so beautiful, his cooking so good, his cookware so shiny, every tile and painting and wall-hanging so perfect in its place, you would think he was gay.

* * *

He ain’t.

* * *

And he doesn’t dress like a gay man. With the single exception of our first date, when he wore a very nice pale blue-green sweater, a long leather jacket, and jeans, he has worn the same outfit every time I’ve seen him: a t-shirt, jeans, a sweatshirt, a grungy jacket.

* * *

I had brought heels to wear New Year’s Eve, but it turned out they made T nervous, because he was afraid they might scratch his floors. They didn’t, but I wore rubber-soled shoes the rest of the time.

* * *

Like Plan C when I visited his house, T offered me a drawer for my stuff, but I didn’t use it. I preferred to live out of my suitcase, letting my stuff get messier and messier.

* * *

While I was there, in T’s house, I was in a kind of news-blackout. I didn’t check my email till the final morning, and even then I didn’t look at nytimes.com. If anything important had happened in the world (or in Manhattan…), I wouldn’t have known about it. I didn’t talk to anyone on the phone; my cell phone remained in my bag, forgotten, uncharged. I talked only to T. For two days, we hung out, ate, talked, watched dvds, and occasionally spent quiet time slightly apart, as he paid bills and I read.

Outside the woods around his house were snowy and beautiful.

* * *

Like the woods, like January, our relationship is in a kind of stasis right now. I have no idea where it’s going, but it’s still going.

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