by Meg Rosoff
‘Oh my God, that’s fantastic!’ Julie said, hugging him. ‘You did it! Keep going!’ She held up an apple from the fruit bowl.
Jonathan stared at it; apple, he thought, apple. App-pull. ‘A . . . a . . . a . . . a-louette!’
Julie sighed, put the apple back in the bowl and patted his arm. ‘Never mind. You said bastard, and I think you meant it too. You’ve done very well for today.’
Jonathan practised quietly on his own, thinking of a word and then attempting to whisper it to himself, but was no more successful than during his lessons with Julie.
I do, he repeated silently, again and again. I do, I do, I do, I do.
‘Anus,’ he said.
25
While Julie was at work the following day, Greeley arrived downstairs unannounced. Jonathan hurtled out of bed, pulled on a clean shirt and threw cold water on his face. Greeley the Wise! Greeley the Zen! Perhaps Greeley would offer much-needed insight into what was wrong with him and how to take his life forward.
The dogs ran to their guest first, taking possession before Jonathan could head them off. Greeley greeted them with affection, scrumpling their ears and speaking to them in what Jonathan assumed was a fairly fluent version of Dog. When at last they’d all had enough, Greeley stood up and looked carefully at Jonathan.
‘You’re very pale. How are you feeling?’
Jonathan didn’t want to speak for fear of setting off the word-salad guessing-game that so exhausted and discouraged his visitors. Instead, he disappeared into the kitchen, pulled out a box of spiced chai teabags and offered them.
Greeley smiled. ‘Thank you.’
Jonathan balanced two cups of chai and a box of lemon snaps on a cutting board and carried it into the living room. The two sat in silence. Greeley looked around the room, taking in details.
‘Evolution freak,’ Jonathan said at last.
‘It’s OK. Don’t worry about talking. I just wanted to see for myself that you’re alive and well.’
He nodded.
‘We miss you at Comrade.’
Jonathan raised an eyebrow and wondered who, besides Max and Greeley, could possibly miss him at work.
‘Everything’s going fine and nobody’s heard a word about Broadway Depot. As you might expect.’
Jonathan experienced a ripple of shock. He’d forgotten all about Broadway Depot.
‘I expect they’re confounded by the quality of the work. Which is no bad thing. Who knows? They might even see the light.’ Greeley looked doubtful.
They sat sipping tea.
‘I don’t suppose the doctors have any idea when your word issues might resolve?’
Jonathan appreciated Greeley saying ‘when’. He shook his head.
‘No need to worry about your job. You get disability at sixty percent for thirteen weeks, and we can look at other options if it takes longer. Everyone’s anxious to see you back.’
Everyone?
Greeley turned away. ‘Except me.’
Jonathan froze.
‘I was hoping this incident would serve as . . .’ Greeley hesitated. ‘As a catalyst.’
Jonathan marvelled that a person who looked so young could speak from such a position of spiritual authority.
‘A wake-up call, perhaps.’ Greeley’s eyes swung back to Jonathan’s.
How can I consider my future, Jonathan wanted to say, when I can’t even shout ‘come on up’ down my own intercom?
He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again.
Greeley’s gaze softened. ‘I know it’s not easy for you. But have you thought about what will happen when your voice comes back? What you’ll say? Think about it, Jonathan. It’s important.’
The power of Greeley’s eyes seemed to hold Jonathan up, to lift and carry him forward. Jonathan reached over and took hold of Greeley’s hand and they sat, silent, for a long moment.
‘Word dream,’ he said at last.
Greeley nodded.
Then Julie arrived home and exchanged pleasantries about office life with Greeley, who finished the tea and thanked her for the lemon thins. No one mentioned the wedding.
When it came time for Greeley to leave, Jonathan felt an overwhelming urge to block the door. He waved goodbye instead.
Julie emerged from the kitchen and asked if Greeley was a boy or a girl. ‘It’s almost impossible to tell,’ she said.
Jonathan could only shake his head and shrug.
‘A boy, I think,’ Julie said.
I don’t think it matters, Jonathan thought.
Julie snapped leashes on to the dogs and took them out. Jonathan liked how devoted they were to her now that she was cast in a caring role. They’d stopped playing the ironic hello game every night and made a huge effort to be charming. Jonathan appreciated this greatly; it reduced the stress of them all living together.
Julie was on her way to the dog run when Dante pulled her sharply off course.
‘Dante, no!’ she said, in her firmest voice.
He ignored her, half-leading, half-dragging her down the block, stopping when he came to a good-looking female German shorthaired pointer.
‘Dante!’ Julie attempted to pull him away. ‘I’m sorry about my dog,’ she said to the pointer’s owner. ‘We were headed for the dog run.’
‘So were we,’ he said. ‘I’m Mark, by the way.’
They walked the two blocks together, chatting easily. At the dog run, they talked about how it was getting warmer and look at the face on that one! And then Mark asked her what she did, and she told him and he told her he was a lawyer and she said that’s such an amazing coincidence, I might need a lawyer someday, and they both laughed even though it wasn’t particularly funny and then talked about their neighbourhood and how expensive it was becoming and had he tried the new breakfast place and then he said he had to run because he was having dinner with his girlfriend and didn’t want to be late and Julie experienced a tiny stab of disappointment that wasn’t at all logical.
The following evening, Dante found his friend at the dog run immediately and Julie didn’t even have time to unclip the leash before she was dragged over. Mark was standing nearby.
‘Hello, again,’ he said, while Sissy trained her love-eyes on him. It proved an irresistible double assault.
Thereafter, every night at nine-fifteen, the dogs wagged their tails and trotted Julie briskly out of the building, hunting down the pointer and Mark, who, except for evenings he was out with clients, kept the sort of precise hours you might expect from a lawyer. Between nine-fifteen and ten, the two humans and three dogs chatted about this and that, returning in time to make pleasant conversation with their respective partners, or, in Julie’s case, to wrongly interpret her partner’s poignant outbursts of broken gibberish.
Julie, being a girl of almost pathological practicality, at first tried to avoid liking Mark, who, though attractive, was not single. She, of course, was not single either. But after a few days she began to enjoy the company of her new dog-walking companion so much that she ceased to care.
‘They’re not my dogs,’ she explained to Mark. ‘They belong to my boyfriend’s brother.’
Mark nodded. ‘Mine belongs to my girlfriend. But we co-parent.’
Julie couldn’t think of anything enthusiastic to say about that.
‘Is your boyfriend nice?’ Mark was genuinely curious.
Julie hesitated for a moment, then told him everything she could think to tell about Jonathan. The garbled speech and odd flights of fancy, the long diversionary thought processes that she described as trance-like. His inappropriate use of the word ‘funeral’.
‘Well,’ Mark said. He turned away, glancing back at her sideways. ‘He sounds very . . . original.’
Julie sighed. ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
Mark paused as if weighing up whether to continue. ‘Maybe he’s having some kind of breakdown? Has he been under a lot of stress lately?’
Julie frowned. ‘Do you know anyone in New
York who isn’t under a lot of stress? I don’t think he likes his job much.’ She felt reluctant to mention their wedding. They looked away from each other, concentrating on the dogs. Dante and Mark’s dog played together with raucous joy while Sissy and another little spaniel argued over a ball.
The following evening, Julie was silent for some time. ‘So . . . what’s your girlfriend like?’
‘She’s a great girl. Beautiful. Really smart.’
Julie wilted.
‘But kind of, I dunno, intense. She says we never see each other,’ Mark continued. ‘She works long hours. And so do I. I don’t know what she expects me to do about that. Her schedule and mine hardly ever overlap. We haven’t had sex in months.’
Julie perked up. ‘Really? That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Poor you. What an awful way to live. Imagine years like that. Years with no sex. Years and years. And years.’
There was another silence.
Julie stared at the ground. ‘We haven’t had sex in ages either,’ she confessed. ‘The dogs sit by the side of the bed and stare. Jonathan says to ignore them, but I can’t. And when we shut them out, they scratch on the door and whine or stare at us through the glass.’
Mark looked sad for her.
‘And of course now, with him unable to talk. It’s just . . . odd.’
Neither said much after that and they parted thoughtfully.
The next night they met again. ‘How are things at home?’ Mark asked.
‘About the same,’ she said.
For a while they said nothing.
‘You know . . . Jonathan and I are supposed to be getting married.’
‘Oh,’ Mark said. ‘Supposed to be?’
‘Yes,’ said Julie.
‘But?’
Julie was silent for a moment. ‘But now, I don’t know. I don’t know if he wants to. Or if I want to either.’
They watched the dogs.
‘It sounds like quite a conundrum,’ Mark said.
‘It is,’ said Julie. ‘I mean, we’ve been together so long, and the wedding was offered by my employer, and you know, really, I always thought I’d get married young. I’m the marrying type.’ She smiled. ‘I know it’s unfashionable, but I’m not the sort of person who likes having a lot of relationships. I like to know where I am.’
Mark nodded. ‘I can understand that. My parents met at college and I always thought I’d get married young.’
‘But your girlfriend?’ Julie was sympathetic and encouraging.
He frowned. ‘I just don’t know.’
The dogs chased and dodged. Mark and Julie felt acutely aware of each other.
Mark coughed a little. ‘Would you like to go out for a drink sometime?’ And then he looked at her, a little wildly. ‘I mean, just as friends, obviously. You’re getting married.’ He added the last part as if she might have forgotten.
‘Yes,’ Julie said. ‘Yes, that would be nice. As friends. Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘We could toast your wedding.’
‘Great,’ she said.
‘Great,’ he said.
They stood close together, quivering with tension.
‘A drink then,’ Mark said, attempting lightness of tone. ‘Sometime convenient for us both?’
She nodded, unable to trust her voice.
Having determined that they would go out for a drink, as friends, sometime convenient for them both, they barely spoke on the walk home.
‘Well.’ At their usual parting spot, Mark touched her arm. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘OK,’ she said, and didn’t pull away, as if practising being friends.
Perhaps Julie was merely experiencing one of those last-minute prenuptial wobbles you hear so much about. Perhaps she really did love Jonathan and would realize with a start, any minute now, that she too was going off the rails.
Only that didn’t seem to be happening. Over the next few days, the image of Mark grew sharper in her head and her need to see him grew more urgent. They met each evening, talked in whole sentences and slowly came to the conclusion that they cherished a mutual vision of the future, including a nice apartment in Brooklyn, children in private schools and secure financial investments. The confused, annoyed, slightly sad feeling that Julie had grown used to having around Jonathan disappeared when she was with Mark.
At night she thought of nothing but him and he thought of nothing but her. Which was fine; after all, it was only thinking. When Jonathan slid up next to Julie in bed, she turned him into Mark; not that he particularly noticed, having already turned her into Dr Clare.
That’s interesting, Jonathan said to his subconscious mind.
Why?
Well, I am getting married soon.
Really?
Really.
Not sure I’d have guessed, said his subconscious.
Dr Clare and Mark slept peacefully together that night, while Julie and Jonathan slept fitfully, embracing ghosts. When they awoke, Jonathan was surprised to discover that Julie was still Dr Clare.
Really? he said to his subconscious. If you’re calling the shots, how about fantasizing about someone single for a change?
Julie’s single, replied his subconscious.
You know what I mean, Jonathan said.
Do I? asked his subconscious.
I think you do.
Fine, said Jonathan’s subconscious, with what sounded like a shrug.
Fine, said Jonathan, with a roll of the eyes.
And for a while, he and his subconscious were estranged.
26
On Friday, Julie came home from work, called hello to Jonathan and slipped into the bathroom to smooth down her hair, reapply lipstick and compose her face. The dogs observed all this quietly from their beds.
‘How are you this evening?’ Julie kissed Jonathan on the forehead.
He looked up from one of his drawings. In this one, Dante (Intrepid Border Collie and Natural Poet) guided him through the first circle of hell (limbo) where tourists walked four abreast on the sidewalk, bearded architects from Brooklyn hoicked up their jeans to reveal bare ankles, taxis managed to hit every red light and parents named their children Horton and Calliope.
He took Julie’s hand and searched her face. He was feeling low, worried about his brain and his future.
It’s not that he loved her more (or less) than he ever had. But she had become his lifeline – brisk, sensible, affectionate, not over-concerned with the sources of his condition and willing to walk the dogs until it passed. He found this attitude so helpful, it nearly convinced him that their basic incompatibility wouldn’t stand in the way of a successful relationship.
What was a wife for? he wondered. He knew what a wife like Clémence was for. She was a wife with whom a person might eat croissants in bed, take the dogs on vacation, laugh and not be misunderstood. But she was married to that bastard, Luc. And what about a wife like Dr Clare? He couldn’t exactly imagine her as a wife. But he had gradually begun imagining her in other scenarios, and in all of these scenarios the person acting the part of him looked happy.
Of course she had a boyfriend too.
Stop! he said sternly to himself, remembering Greeley’s warning about fantasies with no future. He was marrying Julie and that was that. Julie, who was a perfect version of herself and understood his attempts to express himself with occasional accuracy, even in the weeks before he began generating random sentences. This was more than he imagined most women would do for him and he felt grateful. After each long day of confinement he began looking forward to her return as a deliverance from his unspeakably flawed self. He was almost looking forward to marrying her and living together forever.
‘Jonathan,’ said Julie gravely, ‘we have to make a decision about our wedding.’
He nodded. Yes, he thought. Julie’s been so good to me and I’d be lost without her. We’ll get married and everything will be all right. If there are problems, we’ll resolve them later. The important thing is to
do something about this stupid limbo.
‘Rescue farm,’ he said.
‘Does that mean yes? Are you sure? Are you absolutely one hundred percent sure you feel well enough?’ Julie peered at Jonathan, who nodded. ‘And that you want to?’
He nodded again.
‘Because the whole Bridal-360 thing is really kind of arbitrary. I mean, Lorenza wouldn’t be happy if we called it off,’ that was the understatement of the century, ‘but we shouldn’t do it unless we’re really sure.’
Jonathan looked her straight in the eye. He took both of her hands. And then he smiled, and he nodded, and he said, ‘Umbrella loop.’
She took a deep breath. ‘OK, then. I’ll tell Lorenza. She’ll be very happy.’ Julie smiled, wanly. Along with a sensation of nausea there was relief. Not because she was without serious misgivings about their future, but because that particular conversation with Lorenza was one she dreaded more than a lifetime with the wrong man.
‘By the way, you don’t have to worry about “I do”,’ Julie added. ‘The ceremony director has been in touch and you only have to nod.’
Jonathan blinked. The ceremony director?
I do, he thought. I really do.
Julie counted the hours until her nightly rendezvous with Mark with a mixture of longing and dread. When the time came, she could barely stop Dante from dragging her down the block. They were five minutes early, and when Mark wasn’t there, her heart crashed and burned in her chest and she knew as well as she’d known anything in her entire life that he’d realized his beautiful smart girlfriend was right for him after all, much more right than a senior sales manager on Bridal-360 ever could be.
Of course none of this mattered. She was going to have to stop seeing him, not that she was seeing him, to marry Jonathan. It was just infatuation, she barely knew him. She was flattered that he seemed attracted to her. But it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
Jonathan was real. Forever was real.
She turned around and saw Mark running down the sidewalk towards her. ‘You got here early,’ he said, panting. ‘I should have too. I meant to get here early, but at the last minute I thought you might think I was desperate. Which I was. Am. Desperate to see you, that is.’