by Lauren Marks
Jonah wanted me to feel like I belonged in his home, and I can’t express what a genuine gift that really was since I wasn’t sure of the person I was meant to be in New York. But whoever I was, whatever I was doing, I was not alone. When Jonah was being someone willing to provide this reassuring consistency, I felt a strong love for him. The love was largely disconnected from whatever we had before, though at least we were certainly still attracted to each other. However, if I was ever going to address the many points of my confusion with Jonah, it seemed I needed to know a lot more about the person he had fallen in love with.
I began by starting to re-familiarize myself with the apartment.
The place was small, but not by New York standards. And Jonah had cleaned for me. I noticed his bathtub and the black-and-white tile floor were both shining. The tiles underfoot were a little larger than pieces of a traditional mosaic, and when a few loose bits slipped as I stepped over them, I leaned over to replace them by hand. This gave me a powerful sense of tactile recognition. Not all memory retrieval is autobiographical. It can be procedural, too. Even people with profound amnesia, who cannot remember what happened a day earlier, or cannot encode new memories, either, remain able to learn new tasks. They can get better at puzzles, their proficiency improving day-by-day, regardless of whether they remembered seeing that puzzle before. Jonah’s floor was a bit like that for me—tile and groove. I realized I had done this action many times before, though I couldn’t remember how or when. This shape and this hand had most certainly met in this way many times over.
That bum landlord keeps saying he’ll do something about it, Jonah said. And I’m sure he will. He’ll just wait until I move out first.
The kitchen cupboards and fridge were almost bare. I had forgotten that Jonah ate out every day, a habit I couldn’t afford to take up while I was here. I still had two brain surgeries to pay off. If I was going to cook in this apartment, I had to factor in the bare essentials. To make a salad, I’d have to buy a big bowl. To bake cookies, I’d need a cookie sheet.
I continued to wander. In this kitchen, there was a window that faced a dark airshaft, and resting against it were two cheap mirrors covered in paint. When I stepped a little closer, I realized they were two distinct characters. If I aligned my face correctly, a painted patch would cover my eye, a goatee would land on my chin, a spotted bandana would appear on my head, and a parrot would perch on my shoulder. And if I situated myself in the second mirror, I’d acquire a beauty mark, a Marie Antoinette inspired wig, and a glimpse of décolletage.
Gazing into these mirrors, I had another flash of recognition. I had painted these mirrors myself, and had given these to Jonah for some occasion or another. I found them funny, but a little creepy, too, because what kind of person would make a gift like this?
As I looked into my split reflections, I silently asked: Who am I today? Pirate or queen?
Since I came to New York. I am a dropped feather landed on this rushing city’s river. Apt issues (moving out/, friends to catch up with/ and their shows to see, and staying at Jonahs house (instead of a room of my own).
I stayed in Brooklyn for five days before I even ventured out to visit my own apartment. When I finally got there, it was much worse than when I had seen it on my layover between Edinburgh and Los Angeles several months earlier. All I could do was survey the wreckage.
Grease spattered the walls of the kitchen. The doors were off the cupboards and the hinges were exposed. Pots and pans were littered across the floor.
There was no window in the bathroom, but the normally green-and-yellow tiles could have a sunny appearance, especially when the bathtub had been recently cleaned—which was clearly not today. The living room had been painted a sickly blue, an inconsistent coat that had been abandoned halfway through the job. The furniture had all been moved around. You couldn’t see the garden or the Empire State Building from the couch anymore. In both of the bedrooms, there were piles of trash and clothes and electronics. My own bed had been hoisted on risers, affording a few more inches of storage space. But one of the blocks had been knocked off kilter, and hadn’t been readjusted. My mattress looked like a sinking ship.
Before I went into the apartment, I had still been mulling over my tenancy options. Would I move back into this place at some point? Would I find another subletter in the meanwhile? This place had seemed a linchpin to my life on the East Coast.
But all my uncertainty vanished when I was physically in this space. My decision was neither conflicted nor sentimental. I wasn’t sure where “home” was, but it certainly wasn’t here.
11
My time with Grace was going to be much more limited than other friends—she had been offered a teaching position at Princeton that summer and was leaving town soon. She had suggested we have brunch near Morningside Park. This meant traveling all the way from Jonah’s apartment deep in Brooklyn to upper Manhattan. She had no idea how bad I’d be at taking public transport, though. It was like I had never even visited the city before. I took too long at the MetroCard machine and was clumsy at the turnstiles, never able to adjust to the correct swiping speed for entrance. I held up lines, was cursed at, and was nearly trampled twice. I considered canceling our date, but pressed on. Not only did I want to see Grace, but she had a new boyfriend, too, an architecture student at Columbia, and she really wanted to introduce me to him. She thought he might be “the one.”
The guy who now sat across from me at Max Caffé had a very calming energy. He was intelligent and engaging, but at some point in the conversation he stopped speaking to me entirely and appeared to be looking at the ceiling.
I assumed it was my fault. I was so out of practice with interactions, especially with strangers. I whispered to Grace and asked if I had done something wrong.
Grace laughed. She explained that her boyfriend was looking at the vents and ducts of the building, constructing its schematics in his mind. She said he often popped in and out that way, and I should definitely not take it personally. Before he resumed the conversation, she wanted to know what I was planning to do on this trip to New York. Had I visited my grad school yet? Seen any other friends?
I said I had to figure out my apartment issues first. I planned to see some friends’ plays soon. But, more than anything, I was trying to write as much as I could.
Oh yeah? Grace asked. Are you still writing about the aneurysm?
I hesitated, recalling our last discussion about my writing in her parents’ basement. Actually, I said, I think I am in the early stages of writing a memoir. Then I braced myself for a strident response.
That’s fantastic! she said.
Really? I was surprised. You think it’s a good idea? I sort of thought, because you didn’t like the essay . . .
That’s silly, Lauren. I knew it was important for you to write the essay, and I admired that you did. There was a lot I liked about it, too. I just had some concerns; some of them were legitimate, but a lot of them were motivated by my own worries. I was nervous about how this whole thing might be affecting our friendship. But a book about this experience is a great idea. It’s the sort of thing that I would read, even if I didn’t know you.
You would? I asked, instantly nourished by her enthusiasm.
Of course, she said. You should know my taste more than anyone.
It was a little embarrassing that I couldn’t actually remember Grace’s artistic likes and dislikes, but I knew that she and I had been talking about writing for more than a decade. Our years of friendship were suffused with language, from writing poetry side by side on Saturday mornings, to month-long discussions about our favorite books. Our freshman year of college, she had knitted me a scarf with a quotation from D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, a novel we had managed to both love and hate simultaneously. In black and blue yarn, she had stitched a line we had been obsessed with: Like a creature awaiting immolation.
This rich linguistic life that I shared with Grace had once been embedded in every inte
raction we had, braided into our familiar shorthand. But this mutuality had been all but erased in my stroke. How many friends had I abandoned this way—making them lone speakers of a now-extinct language? I thought about this when I met up with Grace, but even more later when I stumbled across two old instant message exchanges buried in my e-mail inbox.
The conversations were between the two of us, and though they were almost exactly the same length, the contents couldn’t be any more dissimilar. The first interaction took place the day before the aneurysm’s rupture. The second was eighteen days after it:
August 22, 2007, 2:03 pm
From:
GG
To:
LM
Date:
Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Subject:
Chat with Grace G
mailed-by:
gmail.com
me:
hello
Grace:
hi hi
2:03 PM
me:
i am in scots land
with kilts
and bagpipes
Grace:
wow
awesome
i’m in hell
with fire
me:
awesome!
say hi to hitler
and my fourth grade teacher
Grace:
already did
me:
nice. thanks.
2:04 PM
me:
why hell?
Grace:
not really
just really busy
me:
i mean, i’m sitting down trying to make a syllabus.
Grace:
when are you back
me:
ahem
27th
Grace:
oh soon
Great!
me:
and i teach on the
2:05 PM
me:
get this
28th
soonish
Grace:
what are you teaching
me:
did you have an ok bday?
Grace:
yeah
me:
“speech and communications”
Grace:
what’s that?
me:
“the art of public speaking”
Grace:
oh
hilarious
2:06 PM
me:
right
are you teaching this year?
Grace:
well it should be fun
no
i’m assistant director
right now i’m writing the handbook and annual report for the writing center
2:07 PM
Grace:
it’s actually a shitload of work
more than teaching
i totally got conned
me:
ha
cant talk further now
Grace:
me neither
lateer
i love you
me:
will talk soon.
Grace:
can’t wait to see you
me:
love to you too.
September 8, 2007, 9:40 am
From:
GG
To:
LM
Date:
Sat, Sep 8, 2007 at 9:40 AM
Subject:
Chat with Grace G
mailed-by:
gmail.com
9:31 AM
me:
me
Grace:
yay!
did you get the pictures i sent you?
9:32 AM
me:
dad
Grace:
you did?
9:33 AM
me:
yes
did was get
very
Grace:
good
i’m so glad
9:34 AM
me:
it is right
9:35 AM
me:
ugh
Grace:
i know it’s ok
9:36 AM
me:
cant i can dont yet
Grace:
i know
but that’s ok
i’m patient
me:
i am is good
9:37 AM
me:
thing is to much right know
i love you
Grace:
ok
me:
lot
Grace:
that’s ok
9:38 AM
Grace:
I love you so much
be patient with yourself
you are doing a great job
it’s hard
me:
this me right email
Grace:
i will write you
me:
thank
Grace:
Ok
i’ll think of a good story
9:39 AM
me:
NY
soon
Grace:
I KNOW!
are you excited?
———
me:
lots
Grace:
ok love, i’ll send you an email
i’m excited too
9:40 AM
Grace:
give your parents hugs
and tell them to give you hugs for me
you are my favorite
my favorite in the whole world
Bye!
9:41 AM
me:
love
12
In LA I was accustomed to not talking much, and Jonah seemed to be fine maintaining long periods of silence in New York. I appreciated that.
I would write on the bed while he sat at his desk, and for hours we’d keep a comfortable quiet, as if we were each hermetically sealed, even when inches apart. These stretches of communal silence would end with a subtle cue, usually from him. If we looked up at the same time, Jonah would wink or raise an eyebrow, our work would quickly be shuffled away, and the bed would be put to more active use. New York had been demanding for me, and there were many activities that I was incapable of doing. Sex was not one of those things, though. Once it started, the rhythm found itself.
It was an initially awkward conversation to bring up contraception again, since I had been on the pill the entire time I had known Jonah. I was unwilling to take on the increased stroke risk now, but I still wasn’t getting my period. My neurologist thought it might be an OB issue, and my OB thought it was a neurological issue. So, we had to be careful in new ways.
Outside the bedroom, Jonah made an effort to initiate social activities we had never done as a couple before. We went on the carousel in Prospect Park, saw a concert in the drained pool on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and scored tickets to a game in the Subway Series. Jonah was lighthearted. Sometimes, when he would pass by me in the apartment, he’d take lazy bites at my arms or ears like a grazing ram—chomp, chomp, chomp. We were creating a pattern of togetherness, and I was finding a lot of ease in that.
The Girl I Used to Be had complained that Jonah was too contrary and too iconoclastic for his own good. He could never make a simple gesture. Everything had to be categorized, explained—and often diluted—until it fit into his exact dimensions of an appropriate experience. I might have been exactly the same way before the rupture. Regardless, Jonah was becoming more unself-consciously appreciative of me, and more consistent in all of his gestures. I bathed in this devotion.
Of course, Jonah’s mood swings were not so easily resolved. They were, after all, part of his psychological makeup. The Girl I Used to Be couldn’t help but blame herself when Jonah’s disposition would sour, assuming she was somehow the cause. I now saw these shifts completely indepen
dent of my own behavior. Though he was being more affectionate with me, he was still unsparing to himself.
One night, he went out drinking with a friend, and when he came home, he started bemoaning the current state of his acting career. He and I had attended a show the night before, from a company he often worked with. A middle-aged reviewer from a downtown paper recognized him in the lobby. She said she hadn’t seen him onstage for a while—had he stopped acting? She was provoking him a little, but if I had to hazard a guess, I think she was actually flirting with him in a totally benign way. But this conversation was still gnawing at him.
She asked me if I was just a “flash in the pan,” Jonah said to me. And the worst part is: I didn’t want to be in that stupid play. If I am being honest, I don’t want to be in most plays. Even when work picks up, I probably won’t even like the roles I’ll be cast in. I’m too smart for this whole acting bullshit.
I hated to see Jonah like this and wished there was something I could do to help. But the more he spoke, the more I heard the eerie echoes of The Girl I Used to Be. She had been at a similar crossroads, I realized, when she senselessly fretted about why she wasn’t cast in more shows in New York, or how her theatrical life might be affected when she applied for grad school, or when she tried to calculate the ramifications of becoming a teacher over a glass of wine with Krass in Paris. Why did she feel she needed to be so definite about everything? Why wasn’t she more generous with herself? While she was worrying about her deficits, she seemed to have no awareness of her surplus. This was a woman who could skim a thousand pages a day if she needed to. In addition to being a PhD student, she was also a performer, dramaturg, script reader, theater reviewer, editor, director, and freelancer in the literary departments of Manhattan’s most prestigious festivals and companies. She could write dozens of e-mails in an hour. She could memorize a lengthy monologue in less than a day, and when she did, she’d retain it for years. She was the woman often put behind a front desk of a high-powered office, fielding phone calls, welcoming clients, and smiling like the deity of interpersonal communication, able to grow another limb when another duty required it. And she had been just as dismissive of these talents as Jonah was of his. None of this had satisfied her.