Page 61 of Twice
I became, briefly, famous.
It happened in the 1990s. By this point, Gianna and I had been married for twelve years. We were in our thirties, and as I’ve mentioned in the previous pages, our relationship had shifted toward practical matters. Coordinating work schedules. Saving money to buy a house. And discussing having children, something Gianna yearned for.
Sadly, I did not. My music career had never taken off, but the press release job revealed a talent for writing that I didn’t know I had. I spent all my time on that now, mostly freelance stories for magazines and newspapers. Music had been so subjective; I could never tell why someone didn’t like a song. But with writing, my gift for jumping time proved invaluable. I could turn something in, find out what the editors didn’t like, then go back a few days, redo it, and give them exactly what they wanted. It got me a reputation as someone who could get big stories done well quickly. Which got me paid more.
It also meant I could get assignments at any time and haveto suddenly go away for a stretch, then bury myself in trying to meet a deadline. I didn’t see how raising a baby would fit with that. And if I’m being truly honest, I bristled at sharing Gianna’s attention. I liked the fuss she made over me. Little notes she’d leave around the apartment. Having my favorite albums playing when I got home. I knew she would embrace motherhood and worried her focus on me would diminish. That’s a selfish view, one I am ashamed to share. But selfishness is always clearer when you’re looking back on it.
There was also this concern: how would my power work with a child? If I traveled back to before the baby was born, would that baby be the same? And having lost people I loved, my mother, Wesley, Yaya, did I want to become so deeply attached to another soul whose final fate, despite my gift, I could not alter? I convinced myself it was better not to take such risks.
This, as you might imagine, created friction with Gianna. “Come on, sweetie,” she would whisper in bed, “don’t you want to make a mini me-and-you?” Other times, when I voiced hesitations, she’d snap, “Alfie, you have no idea what it’s like to feel your fertility withering!”
I was tempted to undo those disagreements, go back, erase them from Gianna’s memory. But if I did, I would still remember them. Which would make us uneven. And uneven in love is unhealthy.
So I left those arguments alone. I took the smooth and the rough with Gianna, because it was us. Part of the tapestry, as she had once said.
Still, our marriagewasshifting, as most do over time. We’d moved to a bigger apartment. We’d traded coziness for workspace. The romantic meals we had cooked together were now more often Chinese takeout. We went to bed at different hours, wearing sweats and T-shirts.
Gianna took these changes in stride, and I tried to do the same. But I did miss the spontaneity. The passion. Sometimes, when she was sleeping, I would stare at Gianna’s face and remember the aroused way she made me feel when we were younger, arriving at her door and imagining us in bed before the night was done. What is it about time and love that turns us from red with desire to pale with familiarity?
?
The famous part of my life also coincided with my becoming, momentarily, rich. Yes, Boss. I once had a lot of money. You might find that strange, seeing as I’ve been living in small apartments or your guest house all these years, and rarely wearing anything fancier than khakis. But remember, this is a story of my lives before this life, and of so many things that were different.
I want to say that money was never an issue with Gianna. She was decidedly nonmaterialistic, often warning how finances change relationships. And my mother, as I’ve said, had warned me never to use my second tries for wealth.
But, I admit, I did try once, in our first year of marriage. Gianna’s birthday was coming up and she was still wearingthat toy ring from our wedding. I wanted to get her a real one. Something impressive.
I had read about a computer stock that had soared in price over its first three days on the New York exchange. Figuring even my mother would be on board with a ring for my wife, Itwicedmyself back a week and found a broker to invest five hundred dollars the day the computer stock debuted. It quadrupled to two thousand before I sold it. I went to a jewelry store on Forty-Seventh Street and spent all the money on a small, round-cut diamond in a bezel setting.
On her birthday, I took Gianna to an Italian restaurant, and after the food came, I said I had something special to give her. She opened the box and her eyes bugged out. “Oh my God, Alfie, it’s so beautiful.” She put it on and kissed me. She flipped her hand left and right. I was happy.
“But, Alfie, how can we afford this?”
I didn’t really have a plausible lie, so I made the mistake of telling her about my stock success.
“You don’t follow the stock market,” she said.
“I had a hunch.”
“About a computer company?”
“Someone at the magazine suggested it,” I said, lying.
She stared at me, then poked her pasta with a fork.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s luck money,” she said.
“What’s ‘luck money’?”
“The kind you don’t earn. It doesn’t feel right.”
I exhaled. “Can’t you just enjoy it?”
Her expression changed. She took my hand. “I’m sorry, Alfie. This is really sweet. You strike it rich—and you think of me. I do love you for that.”
We kissed, but I felt so bad that I time jumped back an hour and kept the ring in my pocket. We had a great night anyhow. And I learned another Truth About True Love: it doesn’t have to cost you anything.
