Chapter 15
15
After that, the default resets. You forget what it’s like to not be reminded of him in everything. A walk, the weather, putting on socks. Imagine him always. He is pulling you out of cold water, a dense couch, the snow. You are in nothing but socks or suds or old silk, and he lifts you. You are a quilt across his arms. He is thinking about you or he isn’t. He sleeps on his side or he doesn’t. You have no dream that is neither about him nor not.
You write down everything.
Your mother calls. After a while, she asks what’s making you so happy. She can tell from your voice. Just tell her: I’ve met someone. Feel adult for keeping this secret. Him. This.
Make a list of all the things you want to share with him. The swingers in your hometown; that you once saw your father holding hands with the pharmacist, a man; Jean Sibelius’s 13 Pieces , op. 76, no. 3; Carillon; the full-page doodles you do with lipstick and Q-tip and water; that you’ve never been to Europe but you have a box where you keep images of Italy, where you’d most like to go. There are citrus trees, cats in windows, and water electrified by blue.
When you’re getting dressed, imagine he’s watching you. Showering. Eating cucumbers. Falling asleep. At a bookstore, he’s watching as you run your finger across the paperbacks on a low shelf and your hair is wild and wavy from rain. It makes everything lift.
When you’re out to dinner with Margaux, imagine he’s at the table across the way and he can’t stop looking at you. You’re in a green velvet dress with a low neckline and blush and lipstick. You’re in good underwear and Chanel No. 5 and your bed is made. You have Borges and your journal on your nightstand and the heat is turned off. Just in case.
Instead, he is very busy. You haven’t really seen him since the Park. Some days, wonder if you made it all up. You try not to spiral, but what can you do with this imagination of yours. There is no end to the devastation you can conjure. Cities burned.
Buy new shoes that make your feet look delicate. Cut out ice cream and then eat pintfuls of mint chocolate chip in your bed. Spend hours in the poetry section of used bookstores, stealing lines that you could use. Everything coalesces around the idea of you and him, him and you. Sonnets, Coltrane, lines about forests and waves.
For weeks, linger at the library, at the café with baklava, at the bench with the A + R + C inscription. What else? The material flies but it’s more than that. You fly too. One night, you stay up till dawn. Pink rounds the corner. The sky unblanks. The pages too. You’ve filled a notebook, tried the story three ways. In most ways, it works, you think. You know the ending. It’s the middle that’s tripping you up.
Your mother is in town. You’re not entirely sure why. She wants to meet in the Park. Suggest Bergdorf’s instead. Some places are sacred. She wants to talk to you about someone new she’s dating. Realize only one person can be the giddiest, and dating someone new, in a way. And that, for now, that person is not you. She says you need new stockings, and blush. It’s dire, she says so loudly that everyone turns around to look.
Weeks later, be surprised when he asks you to meet him during the holiday break at Grand Central during the evening rush. He says he wants to give you something. Some things come out of nowhere except in story. In real life, anticipation in your throat like smoldering. You cannot really sleep. It’s as if you are skimming over dreams, over life, meals, walking, everything. You almost get hit by two different cabs.
Meet at the timetables. He’s in that coat you want to wrap around yourself but only because it’s his. You didn’t put on lipstick. You’re convinced it’s bad luck based on history with him.
Hi, he says.
Hi, you say.
I’m sorry I’ve been so unavailable.
Tell him it’s all right. You don’t know whether to touch him or not. He is carrying a tall paper bag. He puts it down on the ground, pulls out a stack of antique napkins, done up with a blue bow.
I wanted to give you this, he says. I never forget a good line.
He repeats yours. You die.
But don’t. Instead, thank him. Kiss him once on the cheek. You pull away but hold on to his sleeve. Look at him. You want to kiss him again. Don’t. You want to ask him what this means. Don’t. You want to ask him when he knew. You always did. He has to go in a moment anyway.
Pretend to look at the schedule up high. Wassaic. Poughkeepsie. New Canaan. New Haven. Danbury. Over the loudspeaker, a missing child has been found and is with Security. Graze his hand with yours. He is looking at the schedule too. But he closes his eyes, nods. It is almost imperceptible, but you know what to look for. There is a cast across his face like warm evening light. It is not just the atmosphere.
Some secrets are feelings; they are passed like gifts.
After that, carry this moment like a penny in your pocket. Over break, meet your mother for lunch. Tell her it’s serious but that’s all you’ll say. And not just because she’s been broken up with and can’t handle anything. But because.
At a party, some friends ask what’s gotten into you. Where have you even been for the last five months? Reveal it to just one—lots of I shouldn’t say! I shouldn’t say!—but avoid details. She tells everyone. You knew she would. They look at you differently. Anyone who’s read anything worth anything knows who he is. His book is in the window of the bookstore. His New Yorker story about Upstate New York, the teacher dying of a heart attack, everyone breaking down, is in last month’s issue with the picture of the scarlet flowers and hummingbirds on the front.
Don’t expect to hear from him. You don’t know what he’s going through exactly—it feels like exhaustion but also disappointment—but it is a lot. You’re sure now: it’s about his wife. And you respect his needs.
On the first day back, wear the charcoal dress that your mother says makes you look long. Wash your hair. Don’t pick. Have read all the Butler, Mahfouz, Pynchon, Amis, and King. Be prepared to tell him what you really think because whenever someone does that in class, he leans back in his chair, grins, and claps once before responding. Cheers on that thought, he says and upends it. Every time. Isn’t he something.
Instead, be surprised that he’s freshly shaven. It makes him look older and more tired. He is wearing a green parka and jeans with two swaths of light blue paint. You’ve never seen him like this. The first class is a one-hour free write. No instruction. He is writing too. He calls on three people to read aloud, not you. But the way he listens to them: it softens you. His eyes do that thing. Sometimes, it feels as if he’s grateful for everything. Not just you. Isn’t that enough?
After class, you have to wait your turn to see him, and when you get to his desk, he asks if you can pick this up another day. He apologizes as he rubs his eyes. You say, Can I just tell you one thing? And then, don’t. And he doesn’t ask. That was a stupid thing to do.
He’s not wearing a ring. You can’t remember if he ever did. This feels like the biggest mistake of your life. Observation, he said in the first class, is the writer’s most effective tool.
Your hands are empty at your sides.
A month goes by. In class, he calls on you but he drops his eyes or he doesn’t. Either way, it doesn’t feel particular. You search for clues again. There must be something. Anything can be something, but you’re not an idiot. Sometimes nothing isn’t something. He is maybe avoiding you in his office. You look for him everywhere: the lobby, the coffee shop, the bus. Your roommate asks you who’s died, if you left your sense of humor in Scarsdale. You spend hours in the library, hoping he’ll come in. He doesn’t. You wonder how he spends his days.
You sleep with a guy named Colton, who is getting his MA in comparative lit, and when it’s done, he says, Maybe you can look over one of my papers sometime? My professors say I’m not thinking creatively enough. You’re not even offended because you weren’t thinking about him when it was happening, not even for a second. What do you care?
You haven’t had a full meal in weeks. Just cornflakes, coffee, and kiwi. You’ve been listening to an album called Adagios for Rain .
On the first spring day, he’s walking toward you on Amsterdam with a big bouquet of lilacs. Despite all your scheming to cross his path outside of class, he just shows up. This is what life does.
See how he moves faster when he sees you, waves big waves. Something good has happened, clearly. Do not ask him what. It has to do with his wife, you think. He’s wondering, he says, if you’d like to walk with him. He has some time. It is then that you tell him about the books you read over break. He’s impressed, says as much. When you tell him about Chekhov, he says he agrees, actually, and that he hadn’t quite thought of that before. You laugh out loud. You realize how quickly you’re talking, the balloon feeling in your chest. You realize that your cheeks are on fire and you think, if this walk ever ends, you’ll die. You’re not being dramatic: it is what it feels like.
And yours? you ask. You make a silent wish for some kind of revelation. High highs, low lows, he says. But when the writing goes well…
So, not his wife. He trails off. He is smiling with his whole head.
It could be worse. It could be better.
When you end up in a not-so-good neighborhood on Amsterdam, you realize it’s not his size that makes you think he can protect you but something to do with the way he walks and talks. His voice is a straight shot. He takes long steps with a long back. His beard is full again. He’s wearing a gray wool hat above his ears.
After a while, you get a coffee, share a bagel with vegetable cream cheese. There’s a tiny bit on his lip, which he wipes away with your napkin. The flowers are beside him as you two sit on a stoop on Eighty-Ninth Street. They’re not for you. You imagine what your mother would say. Is this ridiculous? It is just that she doesn’t understand. You aren’t hurting anyone.
What do you feel? he says, pointing at a blimp in the sky. About when the writing coalesces?
Utter euphoria, you say with a little too much fervor, a little too much sex. But the truth is, you do.
I’m glad, he says. Like nothing else matters, right?
Don’t say: But you always would matter to me. Do not even think it.
When he talks about the difference between sentimental and emotional, you want to change everything you’ve ever written, every way you’ve ever behaved. With him and everyone.
There is this character that he’s written. She’s a young girl, brave, funny. When you read her, you remember feeling as heartened as you ever had. In a book, or otherwise. You wanted to be her, to be around her, to have a child like her one day. Lucy. She’s the catalyst for a lot of action in his second novel. Sometimes, you find yourself wanting to ask him: Am I brave like Lucy? Can I be? As if it would be the only way to know. As if his telling you would change things. You.
One day, in his office, you’re about to tell him there’s not much left for you to do with his books. It must be getting obvious, and you don’t want to seem ungrateful. Instead, he comes in from his seminar, and you can tell it’s been a hard one. His hands are in fists and he’s just standing at the door as if he’s afraid of stepping on a nest. You want to tell him that you’d like to fix anything he ever needed fixed but then you think of being sentimental. Can I bring you a coffee? you ask instead. He nods. Sometimes, you think you know what he needs better than he does.
Do not imagine his wife.
When you’re happy, imagine holding his hand and he kisses your neck just once, loud. You’re at a café and both drinking tea, facing out toward the street. He orders three pastries, none sweet. When you’re sad, imagine he wraps his arms around you from behind and sways you. There are half-drunk glasses of wine and pasta on a counter, you’re not sure whose. And you sway. Imagine that with him, sadness loosens like a marble that’s been stuck.
Imagine he’s a very good dancer, he’s an excellent cook. After dinner—a whole fish, tomatoes, onions, lemons—he reads out loud that thing you wrote about the mountains you went to once with your father when you were five. He is blown away and he tells you. Imagine he’s a capable driver; he laughs loudly with small children, his; he loves to swim.