Chapter 20 #2
“Figs are incubators for wasp babies. A female wasp enters the fig, loses her wings, gets trapped, lays her eggs, and dies. The male larvae hatch first.”
Gen swallowed. “Can we not say larvae ?”
“The males search throughout the fig for females and fertilize them even before they hatch. Then the males dig tunnels for the females and die inside the fig while the females hatch, escape, and find other figs to incubate their eggs. Supposedly fig seeds are actual seeds, not dead wasp particles, which dissolve inside the fruit, but figs are still gross.”
“Figs are nightmares,” Gen agreed. “Though not for gay wasps.”
“Are there gay wasps?”
“There are gay dolphins. There are gay bonobos.”
“But insects?”
“Yes: doodlebugs. They will do anything. They are also called cockchafers .”
“No.”
“Yes. You should tell Florencia.”
“I don’t talk with my college friends anymore.”
“Why not?”
“The first time I left Jack, they were really there for me.”
“The first time,” Gen repeated.
“After I went back, I was too ashamed, I guess, to face them.”
“Figs are a metaphor for straightness,” Gen said. “It’s a trap.”
“Some straight marriages are happy, just not mine.”
Gen raised her brows.
“The fig wasn’t about me,” Emily said. “The fig was a fig. I’m not interested in symbols. They hide what you really mean—or show what you mean while pretending that you’re not showing it.”
“People like symbols. Not just because of what symbols do, in comparing or representing. Metaphors work because we want to believe that common ground can be found even in difference, and that everything has meaning.”
Emily set down her fork. “I find you disingenuous.”
“Me?”
“Do you remember what you said to me, outside Emerson Hall, when you visited me at college?”
“I remember everything, Emily.”
“We discussed the quote on the building, and you said— accused —that I wanted you to talk like me, and so you did, and that it was fun for a while but not really who you were. But that is who you are. When you were talking like me, you were actually talking like you, then pretending that I was the only intellectual asshole present, and that there was something wrong with me or anyone loving ideas and history and books. You act very down-to-earth, but you also use that identity to hide other parts of you. You are a symbol. You are a symbol for yourself. You are one thing and also a hidden thing that you make other people guess. You are a faker, Gen Hall.”
Gen slapped a hand over her eyes. “Ohhhhh,” she groaned. “Oh shit. Emily? I kind of feel like you need a concealed carry permit for your brain. It’s a deadly weapon. But also—and I’m not trying to dodge your accusation—”
“You are! I can feel you dodging!”
“I realized why the waitress hates me. I slept with her. And never called or texted. And, I guess, forgot her face and name.”
“Gen, are you a dog ?”
“Maybe? But this situation is your fault.”
“Mine!”
“I would have remembered her if you hadn’t been distracting me.”
“With what?”
“Figs. Your life. Your you. Look, I might sleep around but I do have a code. I am not all bad.”
“If I scratch the womanizing surface, I will find an honorable person?”
“Yes! Rule number one: I never cheat.”
“Why would you need to, if you can line ladies up, one right after the other?”
“Two: I give them what they want.”
Emily’s cheeks were hot. Her skin felt translucent, every sexual memory of Gen visible on her face. “The waitress hardly seems satisfied.”
“Which brings me to rule three: I am clear. I explain that I am not in it to last. She knew that.”
“You’re saying that you’re honest.”
“I try to be.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
Emily thought of Jack and the lies she had told over the years to maintain his volatile happiness. “I think people who pride themselves on honesty don’t know what it’s like to be in a position where they must lie.”
Gen pushed away her plate. “I want to be honest about that day at Harvard. I was mad at you.”
“I know you were.”
“I mean before the dinner. When we were in the Yard, looking at that stupid quote on that stupid building. You’re right: I was obnoxious and trying to hide it so that you would seem obnoxious. I was angry because you had brought me to that art museum.”
“The Sackler Museum?”
“The Sacklers own a pharmaceutical company that made opioids like the kind that a doctor prescribed to my mother, except worse, even more addictive.”
“Gen, I didn’t know.”
“Most people didn’t. I researched Purdue Pharma for an assignment, early freshman year.
I almost wished I hadn’t. I had told myself that my mother’s addiction wasn’t her fault, but deep down I believed that it was and that she had chosen it over me.
When I learned how easy it is for a company to push a painkiller they know is addictive, I felt guilty for blaming her.
Mad at myself. I tried not to be mad at you, too, that day.
It was just a museum. But all you saw were the beautiful things. ”
“If you had told me—”
Gen shook her head. “I wanted you to be able to enjoy the beautiful things. I wanted to get over it and have a nice time.”
“Is the museum”—Emily studied her waffle until it became an unfamiliar object—“why you ended things with me?”
“What?”
“It came out of the blue.”
“Emily, you broke my fucking heart.” Gen’s expression, when Emily glanced up, was stunned. “You sent me to the bus station. I slept there until I caught the five a.m. to Ohio.”
Emily felt an urgent disbelief. “But you said—”
“Said what ? What could I have possibly said to make you do that?”
“You told me that you weren’t sure how much to put into our relationship.”
“A normal worry. We were eighteen and going to college far away from each other.”
“Don’t pretend like you were being reasonable. You implied I wasn’t gay enough. You criticized me for blowing up at my friends when they insulted you. I wanted to do the right thing and you made that impossible. Nothing I did was right.”
Gen shut her eyes. “I was upset. But I wasn’t breaking up with you.”
“Oh.” A long silence unrolled between them. “I misunderstood.”
Gen stared.
“You made me really sad,” said Emily.
“I need to step away for a minute,” said Gen. “I’ll be back. I’m going to apologize to the waitress. Annette. I’m feeling pretty intensely the importance of not letting stuff go unsaid.” She left Emily alone with the debris of their meal.
Emily watched Gen walk up to the counter and catch the attention of the waitress, who ignored Gen but then relented, listening.
Emily, shaky from the conversation and desperate not to see the waitress smile, needed privacy.
She left the table and went to the back of the restaurant, where she slipped into the photo booth and drew the curtain.
The glass plate dimly reflected her face.
She wanted to see herself better. She wanted to know what her expression showed.
Would she look as shocked as she felt? As full of regret?
What was the word for a prophecy not of the future but the past—a vision, clear as fact, of what could have been?
Emily positioned her face within the circumference on the screen, looked straight ahead, and pressed the button.
When the strip of black-and-white photos emerged, wet and shining, they showed Emily in nearly identical positions.
She had barely shifted between each photo.
If the photos were cut and stapled at the edge, they could become a tiny flip-book that animated her for a brief second.
Her green eyes were gray, her blond hair nearly white.
This was the face of someone who had seen a ghost. The ghost was a misunderstanding that Emily had built her entire adult life around.
She felt dizzy. Like nothing was solid, nothing was real.
Like the person she had believed she was didn’t exist. She turned over the strip.
With a pen taken from her bag, she wrote her age on the back like her mother used to do for school pictures: 33.
Then she added, I made a mistake for fifteen years.
Emily pulled aside the curtain. Gen was gone. Their table, cleared. Emily’s hand lifted in surprise, then dropped to her side. It wasn’t like Gen to leave without saying goodbye, but she had probably changed. Emily’s disappointment was heavy.
Then she saw Gen through the diner’s glass door, standing on the sidewalk.
Gen looked left, down the street. She looked right.
Emily went to join her. The bell above the door jingled.
Gen turned, saw her, and was so clearly relieved that Emily wished that she could have a photograph of that relief.
Trying to be casual, Emily said, “I thought you’d gone. ”
“Me too.”
The day was sunny yet breezy, with the hint of a chill.
The autumn trees were kaleidoscopic. A man walked his dachshund past Emily and Gen, the dog old and slow, the owner patient.
His patience made Emily’s throat constrict.
Avoiding Gen’s gaze, Emily watched the man and dog reach the end of the block and turn out of sight.
The wind kicked up, blowing trash off the top of an overfull bin. A crosstown bus lumbered by.
“Do you think we could be friends?” Gen shoved her short hair out of her face, eyes narrowed against the sun.
“It would depend on whether we could get past what happened.”
The letter that she had sent to Gen was written soon after Jack’s proposal. Emily described Jack and the qualities that made her love him: his devotion, how hard he tried at everything. I could make a life with him, Emily wrote, except for you. Could she and Gen meet? Or a phone call?
Jack sounds great, Gen wrote back. I’m training for the USATF trials, so I’m too busy to talk, but I’m glad you’re happy.
“I already got over everything.” Gen leaned against the pale brick wall outside the diner. “I’m in New York until June. I’ll have free time on my hands. We could meet up, do some friend stuff. What do you say?”
On the subway, Emily wrote Drinks with Gen in her calendar for the Friday after next. She looked at it for a long time. Then she texted Jocelyn to ask if her two-bedroom apartment was still available.