So Near

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  I’d given myself over to it entirely, I realized. I’d given up the people I loved most in my life—Jenny and Kurt—for this. For what? I asked myself again. For justice? Revenge? The hard, bright moments of certainty were gone now. I was being pulled along in the powerful slipstream of need and desire. I’d made my mind up a long time ago, I realized. But it was only now that I was beginning to understand the pathway I had chosen. Ribbons of streetlights blinked on below me in the dusk.

  “Sure,” I told Lester, looking up and meeting his watchful, discerning gaze. “Why not? Go ahead and pile it on.”

  18

  Jenny

  I’ve always prided myself on the way I managed to build my own life—free of my father’s strictures and the long shadows cast by my mother’s departure. I thought I’d constructed this existence—as the New Testament advised—on rock. Primarily on the bedrock of my marriage to Cal. Though from time to time I’ve felt tremors—especially after Betsy was born—I considered them for the most part just the normal doubts many new mothers must feel. I tried hard not to let Betsy or Cal pick up on any of my misgivings. I did my best to ignore them myself: that queasy sense of uncertainty. The feeling that the earth was shifting under my feet. The truth that I’ve come to recognize only now: I’ve built on sand.

  Daniel and I were together twice more before he left for Manhattan. We met at his apartment in Northridge, where he was in the middle of packing. I hated seeing all those open boxes. I felt sick when he talked so enthusiastically about the sublet he’d found on the Upper West Side. He’d told me it had a spectacular view of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge.

  “But you’ll be coming back to visit, right?” I asked him again the final afternoon we were together in Northridge. We’d made love on the floor, as his furniture was already en route to the new place. At one point, he’d pulled me on top of him. My knees were scraped raw by the floorboards. “You promised.”

  “No,” he said, “I never promise. And, to be honest, I doubt I’ll be back. There’s no work for me up here now.”

  “Don’t say that!” I told him, then immediately regretted my tone. I didn’t want him to realize what a hold he had on me. How desperate I felt at the thought of him being a hundred miles away. But I tried to sound playful when I added: “I bet you’re going to miss me more than you think.”

  “Oh, I already know I’m going to miss you,” he said, propping his head on his elbow as he turned to look down at me. He ran his right index finger around my breasts, lazily sketching a figure eight. “Why don’t you consider coming down to the city for a while? The place I’m subletting has a king-sized bed. Think what we could find to do with each other on that.”

  Daniel promised to call me the day he moved. I carried my cell phone around with me the whole time, checking every half hour or so to make sure it was still charged. Just before dark, feeling restless and edgy, I went outside to the garden, hoping to find something of his presence—and the solace it brings me—there. In winters past, I’d always enjoyed spending time outside, taking my notebooks and catalogs, starting to plan for next summer. Which seeds to buy, how soon I can start pruning and planting. Like nature itself, it seems to me that a gardener does a lot of maintenance work in the winter months. But I was too anxious that afternoon to take any pleasure in the prospect of a new season, the next cycle of growth. And what was the point? Daniel’s garden was essentially a finished thing—each shrub and perennial placed just so. It would start the spring ready-made and in perfect shape. It would never really need me.

  By eleven that night, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called him. He apologized, saying he’d actually intended to phone much earlier but had fallen asleep, exhausted. His voice did sound muffled, as though he was lying down. But I’d worked myself up into such a state, I imagined him with another woman. I closed my eyes, light-headed with jealousy.

  “Are you alone?” I asked him.

  “I’m flattered you think I have that kind of stamina,” he said, laughing. Then, the laughter fading, he said, “I want to be inside you.” I pictured him on the bed. I imagined floor-to-ceiling windows and the way the bridge lights might look against the night sky. It was then that I realized I had already made up my mind.

  “I was thinking of taking you up on your offer,” I said. “Do you still want me to come down for a visit?”

  “Of course I do. Could you manage it?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “I’ll find a way.”

  It was Cal, ironically, who gave me the idea.

  “I think you should consider getting some help,” he’d told me earlier in the week. “Someone you can talk to about what you’re going through. You just can’t stay holed up in the house like this forever. I know your dad is pretty useless. And I guess at this point, as far as you’re concerned, I’m a big part of the problem.”

  He was standing just outside Betsy’s room, dressed for work. He knew enough to knock and wait for my okay before opening the door. He knew enough not to cross the threshold. This was the first time in quite a while that I’d seen him in the unforgiving light of morning. He needed a haircut. He’d lost weight. His expression was both sad and sheepish. Someone had put him up to this suggestion, I realized. Kurt? No, probably Tessa.

  “Okay, I’ll think about it,” I told him, my thoughts already leaping ahead to Daniel. I spent the next few days on the Internet, making phone calls, weighing the possibilities. I decided to call Cal at work rather than lie to his face. No one picked up, and I was surprised when I left a message that it was Cal’s voice on the answering machine. For years now, I’d been used to hearing Kurt’s: “You’ve reached Horigan Builders. We’re not here right now, but . . .” The new greeting was simply “Hi, it’s Cal. Leave a message.”

  He called me back about an hour later on his cell.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked. The cell phone service in our area is often patchy. I could hardly hear him; his voice was almost a whisper.

  “I think I found something that I want to try. It’s this meditation center in Westchester where you can go—and sort of retreat from the world. It’s for a month. But you need to stay cut off from your regular life the whole time you’re there—no phone calls or e-mail.”

  “This sounds good, Jenny. Let’s talk about it some more tonight.”

  I was prepared for his questions and concerns by the time he got home around nine, unusually early for him these days. I’d thought through my whole improvised scenario with care. It seemed perfect, though perhaps that’s because it gave me exactly what I wanted: Daniel, free and clear. I didn’t even consider telling Cal the truth. I don’t think I actually know what it is anymore. But now that the door has been opened, I can’t wait to escape—from my husband, Gannon, the last lingering scent of Betsy on the baby pillow that I’ve been sleeping with all these months.

  “But how will I get in touch with you if something happens?” Cal asked me. He was so amenable to all my fabrications. I hated how gullible he was. How willing. How could he be so blind to who I really was?

  “I’ll leave the number with Jude,” I told him.

  Telling Cal had been easy. I assumed Jude, who tends to zone out on discussions that don’t relate directly to her, would be the same. But something in my tone must have alerted her.

  “Where in Westchester? For a whole month? I don’t get it. This sounds so sort of woo-woo. Not like you at all.”

  I was sitting on the chair by the vanity, Jude sprawled across one of the twin beds, in the upstairs bedroom the two of us had shared growing up. Since moving back in with my dad, Jude has tried to liven things up with her brightly patterned hand-sewn quilts and throw pillows, but they’re no match for the residue of unhappy memories that seem embedded in the very walls. Out of long habit, we were whispering, though our father, half-deaf anyway, was downstairs in his study behind closed doors.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I actually haven’t been myself for quite a while no
w.”

  Jude’s eyes narrowed. She sat up on the bed, studying me.

  “What’s going on? And don’t give me this bullshit. You’re not going to any monastery or whatever.”

  “I don’t know why—”

  “Jenny! Hello? It’s me you’re talking to, okay? You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here. Remember?”

  It’s what I used to tell her when we were kids and things got really bad. It’s what I used to say to her after she left Covington, and she’d call me collect long-distance, drunk or stoned, begging for my forgiveness. Something gave way inside me.

  “I’m leaving Cal,” I told her.

  “Oh, fuck—no!” she said, swinging her legs around to the floor. “Don’t do it! So he didn’t listen to you about Gannon? So he has to play the martyred hero? There are a lot worse things than that, Jen. A lot worse people. Far, far worse. Believe me.”

  “It’s not the lawsuit,” I said, looking out the window, unable to meet her gaze. I doubt it’s an actual memory. More something pieced together from fragmented facts and overheard conversations. But I have this vision of my mother—red haired, long legged, her smile bright with lipstick—waving to me from the back of a motorcycle. She’s waving with one arm, while the other is wrapped around the waist of a man whose face I cannot see.

  For the first time in my life, I think I’m beginning to understand what must have driven her to abandon Jude and me. I always believed it was because she simply didn’t care enough about us. But now I know that you can love someone deeply—the way I do Cal—and need something else. If “need” is even the word. “Crave” is closer. Is this how an addict feels? Nothing much matters to me now except being with Daniel. His body pounding into mine. Rules, caution, guilt—my old life’s been swept away. I can no longer remember the person I tried to be for so long.

  “What, then? I know it’s been rough, Jen. I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through. But you guys have just got to hang in there for a while longer. Just get through this lawsuit. It’ll work out.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Jesus,” Jude said, shaking her head. “I hate this. You and Cal have, like, one of the few marriages in the whole world I actually have some real faith in.”

  “Is that why you tried to wreck it before it even began?” I said. Even now, more than six years later, my anger’s still raw. That’s one reason I’ve tried my best to put the damned memory in a lockbox and throw the key away. It was the cause of so much heartache and misunderstanding—none of which has ever really been resolved.

  It happened the Christmas that Cal and I had announced our engagement. Cal’s folks had invited me, Jude, and my father to the annual Horigan Christmas dinner at the farmhouse that, a year later, Cal and I would be given as a wedding present. The dinner was the same noisy, rambunctious affair that I’d soon become accustomed to. But if I’d known then how much drinking would be involved, I would never have encouraged my father to come. I watched him sit in judgment through the entire meal, his dour half smile doing little to conceal his disapproval. Jude, on the other hand, took full advantage of the Horigans’ liberal approach to teenage drinking. Out of sight of our father, I saw her chug down at least three beers over the course of the night—and who knows how many more when I wasn’t looking?

  After helping Cal’s mother and aunts with the dishes, I’d gone upstairs to use the bathroom, and, as I passed a closed bedroom door, I heard Jude talking to someone. I stopped to listen.

  “I don’t think you understand,” I heard her say.

  “That’s because you . . . ,” Cal replied. I leaned in closer but could still make out only snippets of their conversation.

  “Why is it that . . . I never . . . Well, I think you do . . . ,” Jude continued, her voice rising.

  I couldn’t hear Cal’s response, but then I heard Jude cry out:

  “No! I don’t want to—”

  Alarmed, I pulled the door open and saw Cal holding Jude by her wrists, my sister’s face damp with tears. Why did I jump to the conclusion I did? I think it’s because, though I was desperately in love with Cal, I still wasn’t able to believe in him—in us. Experience told me that it was just a matter of time before my happiness came crashing down. And here was the proof! I’d almost willed it to happen. That he would betray me was bad enough, but that he’d do so with my younger sister, whom I’d spent my life protecting, was unforgivable.

  But the truly unforgivable thing turned out to be Jude allowing me to believe for almost a full week that Cal had made the first move. Or that he’d shown the least amount of interest. When in fact he’d been horrified. When, in fact, Jude’s “No! I don’t want to—” had been brought on by Cal telling her she was being stupid and irresponsible and that “she should try to grow up.”

  “Aren’t you ever going to get over that?” Jude asked me now. “I’ve explained it to you about a thousand times: I was just jealous. I was desperate. I still am, honestly. But I’ll be the first person to tell you that you’re making a huge mistake.”

  “I can forgive what you did,” I told her. “But I’ll never get over you letting me believe it was Cal’s fault for so long. That nearly wrecked us, you know. Letting me think—”

  “But you know what?” she said. “I never lied to you about what happened. You told me you didn’t want to talk about it. That you never wanted to talk about it. You did one of your suffering-in-silence routines and just shut me out. Like you’re doing now! Like you do every time anything really painful happens. Well, I’m fed up with you playing the big martyrish sister role. I want to know what the fuck is going on with you. Now.”

  “Okay,” I told her. I think I wanted to see her shocked. I wanted to see her painful belief in my marriage shattered. “I’m not going to a retreat in Westchester. I’m moving down to the city to be with Daniel.”

  “Who?”

  “Daniel Brandt. The landscape architect who redid our garden. We’re—We’ve been—”

  “You? You and Brandt? When the hell did this start?”

  “It’s been—”

  “I don’t believe this. That guy? You’re leaving Cal for him? Are you crazy? He’s a player. I know the type. I knew as soon as I saw him. I mean, yeah, sure, he’s pretty hot. I understand the draw. But let me tell you, there’s only one thing he’s interested in. You can’t be doing this. It’s just totally unlike you.”

  “I’ve changed, then. Or I’ve finally faced who I really am. Because I can’t not be doing it. I don’t feel like I have a choice. I can’t go on the way I have been—without him.”

  “Oh no—don’t do it!” Jude said. “I’m telling you—you’re making a terrible, terrible mistake.”

  I stared at her. Who was she to tell me what to do? How to behave? As I got up from the chair, I said, “You know, I think this is the first time in my life—I mean the only damn time I can remember—that I’ve actually asked for your support and understanding. And this is how you respond? Thanks a lot!”

  I turned to leave the room, but she jumped off the bed and grabbed my arm.

  “No, listen. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. You’ve kept me alive, Jen, kept me sane for a long time. I owe you so much. So I just have to tell you again that what you and Cal have is special. I know. Do you know why I know? Because I watch other couples, trying to figure out if they’re happy, if they’re close—and, if they seem to be, what the big secret is. What the hell’s wrong with me—and the guys I choose—that I can’t seem to find that kind of happiness, too? I’ve been watching the two of you from the very beginning—watching and wanting what you had—”

  “Okay! Enough!” I wrenched my arm free. “This isn’t about you, okay? For once in your life, why don’t you try to think about me for a change! Think about what I might need—not what you want. For once in your life, think about someone besides your own pathetic little self!”

  She would call and apologize later that day, and I would give her Daniel’s num
ber for safekeeping. But when I left the bedroom we’d shared for so many years, I knew that my sister and I had never been further apart.

  My father must have heard Jude and me upstairs. The door to his study was open when I came back down, and he called out to me:

  “Is that you, Jennifer? Come say hello, at least.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” I said, walking down the hall toward him. He was sitting in his usual spot behind his cluttered desk, the late afternoon sun haloing the back of his head. I’d been hoping to avoid this. Not that I hadn’t lied to the Reverend Honegger about a hundred times before in my life.

  “I was planning to drop in to see you,” I told him for starters. “I have some news.”

  “Yes?” His magnified gaze took me in from behind his rimless glasses. I’ve often wondered how he saw me. I know I don’t look much like my mom. Did he imagine that I took after him? We do share the same delicate features and slender build. But, more than that, I think we’re both similarly strong willed and long-suffering. I went through such hell growing up. But I did not let it break me. I did not even bend. At least, that’s how I used to always think of myself. Unmovable. It’s only now that I’ve lost so much—and am throwing away so much more—that I realize that what I’ve really been all these years is not unmovable, but unmoved. Not strong, but hard.

  “I’m going away for a while,” I said, before reciting the same story I’d told Cal. A spiritual retreat. Cutting myself off from my old life for a time. Trying to recoup some sense of direction and well-being.