How We Remember

by J. M. Monaco

  ‘Oh, Alexander Pope. I know him. And you know that big Wordsworth book store in Harvard Square. That’s probably named after William Wordsworth. Yup. Bet that’s named after him,’ I made the mistake of saying.

  I couldn’t quite understand why they were all so hung up on Tom Waits’ music and I only realised afterwards how naive I had been in admitting this openly.

  ‘But he’s pure classic stuff,’ Sam insisted. ‘Exactly how is it that you don’t get Tom Waits?’

  Sam’s treatment and Brendan’s diminishing interest made me feel like I was the outcast of all outcasts, a tedious person, an embarrassment. I went to record shops on my own and listened to Tom Waits and still didn’t warm to him. What was I missing? Over time I learned it was best to keep my mouth shut, always trying to find only the right occasion to speak, but after a while it felt as though I was taking my chances by just choosing to be present. By just breathing. At some point I turned into a speechless, non-existent nobody. Not much of a turn on.

  Brendan threw strong hints my way when the time came to say adios.

  ‘Not tonight. No, I’m busy tomorrow night too. Let’s just have some space, OK?’

  He later agreed to have a meal together at a cheap, local Mexican place, during which he said, through that tender smile of his, that we should call it a day. He meandered through all the nice-guy gentle ways of doing it. Oh, how sad, you’re such a nice person, you’re special, you’ll find someone else, blah blah, and then the sobs started (mine). One margarita followed another, then another. By the time we were both tearful, giddy, and not so steady on our feet, we headed to my place and made our way into the sack without hesitation.

  That night I had to confess to Brendan, finally, after some time, that I suspected he had never quite known where the spot was, the all-important female pleasure organ. He was baffled, and admitted to guessing. All the time we’d been sleeping together I hadn’t mentioned it, well, because of fear of embarrassing him. How could I hurt the poor guy’s feelings? He was just too nice. And didn’t we have something special? He’d come around, I thought. But his breaking up with me was the turning point. I had to say something. No, you didn’t know, did you, at your age and with all the girlfriends you say you’ve had. They were all faking it. So now who’s the idiot?

  Brendan was eager at once to get things right, to discover this new unknown territory, and he insisted I show him the way. He was amazed at this new enlightenment and the night carried on. It was the most passionate time we’d had together. I woke in the morning with a bad hangover, told myself it was the last time I would drink so much, maybe I would even stop, that would be something, wouldn’t it, but in spite of my pounding head, I looked forward to the day with a newfound hope. Surely Brendan would have second thoughts now.

  As he was getting ready to leave, after little sleep, a quick breakfast, and still wearing that grin of his, his last words to me were, ‘Let’s be friends, OK?’

  We had a long kiss and embrace, but what I really wanted to do was rip that stupid expression from his face. You’re welcome for the anatomy lesson, all future girlfriends will benefit from my sisterly kindness. Stop smiling. Please. Stop.

  Fifteen

  Through the window I watched Brendan unlock his bike, stretch his arms over his head, and gaze up cheerfully at the sky. It was the start of a clear but cold day. I waited till he rode off, feeling the last grains of energy leave my body before the tears started.

  Slumped over in a chair at the kitchen table wearing only a long T-shirt and underwear, I focused my eyes on the cockroach traps I had set out in the dusty corners. My bare feet felt cold, but I couldn’t muster the strength to move. My low-level sniffling built up and I tried to control my breathing. Soon I let go of a guttural grunt that I wasn’t expecting, a surprising sound resembling the cry of a wounded animal on its last leg, one that still clung on to a final hope that someone would come to the rescue.

  I allowed myself to scream as loud as I could. I carried on like that, rocking back and forth in that same chair, howling like a lunatic, like someone who needed to be dragged away and strapped in restraints. I cried out as hard as I could manage until my throat was rubbed raw and there was nothing left. In the silence and through foggy eyes I spotted a cockroach. Surprisingly, in the midst of the sunny kitchen, it scurried across the room, ignoring the traps, only to disappear again.

  For most of that morning I cried on and off, my eyes ending up bloodshot, swollen slits. By 4pm, after a sleep, I felt an unexpected lightness in my body. It was as though all the waterworks had flushed out a heavy lethal toxin and I was ready to start anew. I pulled my tired ass out of bed, made a sandwich, coffee, opened a book, took out my notes, and began my return to studying for my end of semester exams. By the time I sat down in the exam hall for the first one two days later I was ready to fly through it, a soaring eagle in charge of its destiny.

  The other exams came and went successfully. I discovered later my results were close to 100 per cent. Over the college break I increased my hours at the printing company, ate as much stodgy, holiday food as I could stomach, and looked forward to the next semester. In spite of spotting Brendan arm in arm with a new girlfriend early on, a pale, blue-eyed blonde one at that, he became a comical figure of the past. Although I did think that maybe, just maybe, I should have let him continue assuming he knew his way around women’s anatomy, then I’d be the one smiling, wouldn’t I?

  But I stopped laughing when I realised, around seven weeks since that last night we slept together, that my usual reliable period was still not forthcoming. My hunch that I was pregnant was confirmed soon enough with a test kit. I had been taking the pill for a few years by then, but fell into that unlucky minute percentage of women who still manage to conceive. Looking back I think maybe I could have missed a pill, that stupid seven-day break after the twenty-one day cycle could have thrown me off. Recurring thoughts of a cruel God entered my psyche and wouldn’t leave. That’ll show you. Don’t mess with me, girl. Whatever direction I decided to take at that point, I knew I would feel the consequences of my decision for a long time.

  When I phoned Beth and told her, without hesitation she said, ‘Just let me know when you want me. I’m there,’ and offered some of her savings to cover the abortion. I had never asked anyone for financial help before, but Beth’s charity didn’t worry me or send me into my usual guilt. I contemplated briefly telling Brendan, asking him for some cash, if for no other reason but to make him suffer some guilt, but concluded I didn’t want any of it. I wanted to rid myself of him, erase those unrealistic fantasies.

  Beth thought otherwise. ‘Why should these guys always be allowed to walk away? Why can’t they feel some pain for a change?’

  I’ve learned that when life speeds along in a frenzy it takes no mercy on the weak. There was no time to feel sorry for myself. Following the termination, to my great surprise I returned to my studies with an intensity I didn’t know I possessed. My emotional tragedies were nasty inducements for kicking me into action. It was like a sharp, fast rocket was shoved up my ass and the only way I would feel any relief from the discomfort was to continue moving at full force. Between obsessive reading, keeping up with my schedule of classes, museum and gallery visits on the weekend and working in the evenings, there was little time left for fun. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that interested me then was the reward of intellectual stimulation, those exquisite occasions of discovery after hours of study when a difficult text finally offered a special turn of phrase – the boom when everything made sense. And I could claim these epiphanies as my own – I earned them, after all, didn’t I? No one was going to take that away from me, damn it, not if I could help it.

  I lost interest in men completely but some months later, with encouragement from Constance, more of those young college guys started to jump in and out of my life, fast and furious like hot popcorn kernels. At some point when my finances shrunk to their lowest again, making it a strain to pay
for therapy sessions (by that time I only had basic student health insurance) I agreed with Constance that I was stronger, that things were well enough for me to have a therapy break. She urged me to phone her if I needed, and especially in case of any emergency. In my mind I pictured my student apartment in flames with me hanging outside my bedroom window, telephone in hand, screaming to Constance, ‘Help, I’m trapped!’ and her, minutes later, climbing a ladder. ‘I’m here, Jo. I’m here to save you. Don’t worry. It’s all going to be fine.’

  My academic performance continued to improve and my confidence grew. In contrast to the early days when the fear of embarrassment stunted most of my attempts to voice my opinions in lectures, I later built up the nerve to take chances, to engage in debates, but only after I’d done the reading, considered the potential arguments. At worst, I developed impressive bluffing strategies. In spite of some of my new bookish self-assurance, on the dating scene I attracted all sorts of losers.

  I met one guy through a mutual college friend. Rob Segal was a nice Jewish student from the Boston area who was in some of my art history classes. We became friendly after taking part in group work which involved weekend outings to city museums and galleries, and he’d sometimes offer to treat me to coffee or even lunch afterwards. Rob was a kind, quiet-spoken, intelligent soul. I was touched when he seemed to encourage my ideas and input over the others in our group. We shared notes, books, had serious discussions in the library about important things like Picasso’s Guernica and the power of politicised art. Rob enjoyed wearing tweed blazers over T-shirts, with jeans and sneakers. My brother would have described his look as understated, upper-middle-class. There was no mistaking that Rob was loaded, one of those single-child, trust fund babies. The way he spoke and dressed signalled that he was no townie. But the biggest giveaway about his background was the Beacon Hill, Boston apartment where he lived alone and had parties. Later he confessed in a whispery tone, ‘Mom and Dad bought it as a gift for me. Something to do with managing their taxes. They use it too, and extended family and friends from out of town stay here a lot when they come to visit.’

  In my efforts to be polite – my mother always said, ‘Whatever you do you should at least try to be polite, even if you don’t like someone’ – I tried to maintain my act of being in the know about such things.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Well, that makes sense. Very sensible idea. Such a convenient location. I mean you can’t go wrong with that. And what an amazing view. You can see for ever from here.’

  Even though ‘for ever’ felt like a far-off place indeed, I thought I sounded convincing. But inside me, way down in that hollow vessel where I fought with my loneliness, I couldn’t find a way to make sense of my reaction. The tears flowed later that afternoon on the train home when I realised I might never know the reasons why some things in life happened the way they did.

  Loaded or not, it turned out that sweet Rob was the one I really had my eye on, but I was learning, I guess, that such unlikely matches were just not meant to be. In spite of his encouraging smiles over our pleasant post-museum encounters, he showed no romantic interest in me, whatsoever. I first wondered if he was gay, but found out he preferred another Jewish student at the university. She was an English major from Manhattan who was stuck with the unfortunate name Mindy, although this didn’t appear to bother him. This detail was another sign that I was not the right one for him. He revealed his Mindy interest to me one afternoon over coffee when he told me he was invited as her date to her cousin’s Bar Mitzvah in New York City. It was meant to be the Manhattan party of the year, he said, with all sorts of important people attending, and he rattled off some names I didn’t recognise but should have. Then he filled me in on where he was with this Manhattan Mindy character.

  ‘She’s got a birthday coming up and I want to get her something really special, like a nice piece of jewellery. I need a woman’s careful eye on this, Jo, to make sure I get it right. Will you help me out here?’ he asked.

  I knew then I was out of my depth and declined his offer to go shopping on Newbury Street when I remembered that the most expensive gift I ever received from my ex-boyfriend, Mike, was a Timex digital watch.

  I had the feeling he sensed I was trying to close in on him after I made the mistake of leaving a few too many messages that week to confirm our meeting. That was the same afternoon he said he wanted to fix me up with his friend, Edward. (Yes, it was Edward, not Ted, Ed, or Eddie.) Edward came across as nice enough, I guess, but he was dull, suppressed of any possibility of light or colour, a bit like those overcast skies across Britain that threaten us every season. He was eager from the start to get me into bed, but I held off. Ultimately, I was uninterested in any college student under the age of twenty-five who wore office shirts and ties for a night out on the town and was destined for a career as a banker. A solid financial future was certainly attractive to me, but I wasn’t that desperate.

  Other prospects around that time stood me up, didn’t call after the first date, or were so over-the-top enthusiastic, little over-excited puppies wagging their tails and salivating at the first offer of any tiny morsel, that I ran away as fast as I could. For some reason I hung onto the hope that something promising awaited me.

  It was that absurd thinking that led me to one guy at the printing company who managed to hook me into a whirlwind romance before I called it quits on the boyfriend business. Like me, he also worked evening shifts. He was a trained paramedic and told me, and everyone else at work, that he was studying at Harvard as a pre-med student. Like my fancy pants Ivy League, he claimed they accepted older students on a special entry programme at Harvard and they offered flexibility for part-time studies. He recalled exciting stories of his paramedic days, told me all about his Harvard lectures and the professors, spoke in impressive medical terms, took me around the campus, gave me little tours of the libraries, treated me to some expensive meals in Harvard Square – he certainly knew how to choose those places – even took me one weekend to meet his family in Vermont in their nice but simple abode where they lit fires in the winter and joined each other for cross-country skiing outings. One time he presented me with a nice bouquet of flowers for no reason at all except to write on the card, You don’t really know how special you are, do you?

  It dawned on me that we may have been meant for each other when he admitted, like me, he had no interest in having children, not even one day.

  ‘Why should women be expected to bear the children? Some people just don’t want them, shouldn’t have them and there’s nothing wrong with admitting that. Like you, I have other plans. Bigger plans,’ he said that day, with those piercing blue eyes, when we shared our ambitions about the future.

  And what a future it was going to be. I could see the skies opening to clear a path for us to flap our eager wings anywhere we damn well wanted. We giggled, joy emanating a bright, promising, almost blinding light from our dreamy eyes. Like me, he was so busy he didn’t have much extra time for seeing friends, he could just about squeeze in our dates. Like me, he worked all sorts of hours to finance his studies, but, I thought, he’ll get there, he’ll be a big success one day. It’ll all be worth it. All our suffering, the delayed gratification, will pay off, I told myself. The realities of the world, however, are not at all as perfectly sweet and ripe as we’d like them to be when we bite into them. Rarely does anything that presents itself so tenderly turn out to be the authentic peach for which we are hoping.

  I should have known something was a bit strange when Doug always found an excuse not to take me to his apartment. It was being renovated after a plumbing leak from the apartment upstairs. Or an old friend was camping out there for a bit on a surprise visit and it wasn’t the right time to see it. Or the place was stinking and needed a good cleaning, and so on. A few months after we’d been seeing each other the truth about Doug was revealed when someone at work tipped me off.

  ‘OK, sorry, Jo, I’m going to be straight with you. Doug ain’t no pre-me
d student at Harvard,’ the evening print production supervisor revealed to me one night when Doug called in sick.

  This was Pete Soames talking, the guy who’d been trying to get into my pants for years, but Pete insisted his story was legit, then called for some back-up. Three women I always enjoyed sharing small talk and a laugh with from the negative stripping room came to see me during the coffee break with sincerity in their eyes. Joanie, the wise chain-smoker with yellowing teeth who left her abusive husband years before and never remarried, placed her hand sympathetically on mine.

  ‘Last night we saw him with the other girlfriend who caught him in his lies. So sorry, Jo. It’s best you find out now.’

  Pam and Patty, twin sisters who went on double dates with guys from packaging and deliveries, confirmed everything. ‘We can’t wait to give him a piece of our mind, Jo. He was pretty convincing. Son of a bitch.’

  Doug was a pathological liar, found out after one of his girlfriends, someone he’d been seeing while dating me, caught him in the middle of his many lies and made a surprise visit to the printing company to challenge him. He might have worked as a paramedic once in his day, but there was no pre-med, no studying in those nice science and medical libraries at Harvard, no studio apartment near Cambridge. No future. Yes, I did meet his real family in Vermont; a mother, a father, a younger brother even, whom I remember had a lazy eye, and we all had a real meal together eating a real, overcooked roasted chicken with all the trimmings at a solid-pine dining-room table in a small, slightly stuffy, but real, welcoming kitchen. I touched the day, breathed in the inviting scent – yes, it was a bit dry, but made with motherly love, and the gravy was pretty good too. Hell, it was home-made. I had taken it all in, remembered the quality of the sunlight as it shone through the lace curtains that created a floral pattern on the table. I had washed my hands in the bathroom with the rose-scented soap, felt the rough texture of the towel when I dried them. I kept telling myself, yes, it must have been real. I couldn’t have just imagined it all, could I? But maybe there was something odd about the way the brother had looked at him sternly with the one focused eye, the other going off in the opposite direction and then at his parents after Doug said, ‘Yup, this girl here is the real thing. Gonna get her to marry me, I am. Isn’t she something?’