by Laura Zigman
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her tomorrow after work.”
The next night Ray didn’t call. Imagining the worst about what they were doing (talking, crying, consoling, reconciling, having sex for the first time in however long they hadn’t had it for), I paced, called Ray’s apartment, called Joan, called Ray’s apartment again, called Joan again, then swore to dump him before he had the chance to dump me.
But the next morning, when he walked into my office, he looked like he’d been hit by a bus.
“I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus,” he said.
“You told her?”
“I told her.”
“How bad was it?”
“It was bad.”
I paused. “How bad?”
“Let’s put it this way: We started talking at seven, and at four in the morning she was still crying.”
“Four in the morning?”
Ray nodded. “I’ve never seen her so upset. It was gut wrenching.”
Like I cared.
“I wish you’d come over afterward.”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly excuse myself. She wanted me to stay with her until she fell asleep, and I felt like it was the least I could do.”
“You stayed until she fell asleep?” I hated women who made their boyfriends stay until they had fallen asleep on the nights they’d been broken up with. Besides practically forcing Ray into breaking up with his fiancée, it was the most pathetic thing I could ever imagine doing.
“I think so. I kind of fell asleep first.”
“Really.”
Ray sat down and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes with his hands. “Look, I couldn’t leave after that. We’ve been together for six years.” He put his glasses back on. “Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I bit my thumbnail and stared at him. It didn’t look like anything had happened—not that I was certain I’d be able to tell if it had. And besides, nothing had happened for two and a half years, he’d always told me. I stared at him for another few seconds to make sure he didn’t take me for too easy a mark, and then I took my thumb out of my mouth.
Ray put his hands in his pockets and lifted his pants up above his ankles. “So. Want to go see a one bedroom on Mulberry Street during lunch?”
The twelve-hundred-dollar one bedroom on Mulberry Street had a pigeon nesting in the bedroom window.
The thirteen-hundred-and-fifty-dollar one bedroom on Spring Street had the requisite bathtub in the kitchen.
The fourteen-hundred-dollar one bedroom on Elizabeth Street reeked of kimchi and, though it didn’t have a bathtub in the kitchen or a bird nesting in the bedroom, seemed to be architecturally deformed in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But after standing in the kitchen for a full five minutes, I squinted suspiciously at the refrigerator and the sink and the stove until it came to me.
“This kitchen has no counters,” I whispered to Ray. He looked around and nodded. “It’s not that there aren’t enough counters. There aren’t any counters.” I stared in horror and fascination, as if I were looking at a face without a nose. “And it’s not just that they forgot to put them in. There’s no space for them.”
Later, after we’d returned to the office, depressed and annoyed that we’d wasted our two-hour lunch on such a pathetic selection of apartments, Ray called me from the control room.
“I hate this,” he said. “This city is a dump.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it shouldn’t be so hard to find an apartment for under two thousand dollars that isn’t a shithole.”
“I know.”
There was silence. I wondered if Ray’s next statement was going to be that maybe we should quit looking for now, that there was really no reason to rush into a place we hated, that we should wait until we found something great and move then, so I held my breath. David was right, I realized. Of course it was all too good to be true.
“You know, I just remembered something,” Ray said excitedly.
I just remembered that I don’t really love you.
“I had drinks last week with a guy I used to work with at MacNeil/Lehrer. His old girlfriend, Tracy, who works at CBS, is being transferred next month to their London bureau. He said that she owns a co-op and either didn’t have time to sell it or didn’t want to sell it.”
I exhaled as inaudibly as I could. “Where is it?”
“Chelsea.” He paused. “Which is why I didn’t really think about it then. I mean, it’s not Little Italy, but at this point who the fuck cares, right?”
“Right.”
“If I can arrange to see it, are you free during lunch tomorrow or right after work?”
I told him I was.
“Great. I’ll call you back.” And he hung up.
At the end of the day he called back. “Okay. Tomorrow after work. And it sounds amazing.”
“Tell me.”
“One bedroom. Brownstone building. Nineteenth Street just off Eighth Avenue.”
“That’s right near the Joyce Theater, isn’t it?”
“Right behind it. She renovated the apartment about two years ago, just after she bought it. New kitchen. New bathroom. Refinished hardwood floors. Working fireplace.”
“No way,” I said. My fireplace was the one and only regret I had about giving up my apartment on Charles Street.
“Wait. There’s more. Sunken living room.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m not kidding. I don’t think it’s like Park-Avenue-sunken-living-room sunken living room, but she said it’s two or three little steps down.”
“Sounds sunken to me.” I sat back in my chair and tried to picture what the apartment looked like, and what it would look like with us in it—the perfect Cow and Bull couple, the envy of all our friends. I was so excited that I was afraid I was getting too excited. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is the money. Sixteen hundred dollars a month. That’s her mortgage and maintenance. But it’s a two-year official sublet, so once we’re in, we’re in.”
“Fuck,” I exhaled.
“I know. I thought in addition to the bliss of moving in together, we’d get the added-value-bonus bliss of saving money. But we can swing it.” He paused. “So what do you think? You wanna see it?”
Of course I did.
From the moment we walked into that apartment the next evening we knew—or, at least, I knew—that we had found the perfect apartment. Standing there, in the little sunken living room, with the little bedroom and the little kitchen and the little bathroom all within view, I felt a thrill and a calmness I had never known before.
To borrow a phrase from Ray: My joy knew no bounds.
When Tracy left us alone for a while, Ray reached for my hand and walked us into the bedroom and over to the window. It was just after seven-thirty, but there was still light in the summer sky—a blue and orange and violet drape being pulled closed behind the rooftops of the city. He put his hand under my hair on the back of my neck and held my head against his chest, and I could hear his heart beating against the noise of the traffic from the street below.
“I love this place,” he whispered.
I tightened my arms around his back and closed my eyes.
“Not just this apartment, but this place we’re in right here, right now. This is how I always imagined it could be—dreamed it could be, this feeling of bliss, of complete certainty. But I never believed it would really happen to me.”
“Me either,” I said.
“We’re going to come home here every night—come home to each other every night, after shitty days at work, and we’re going to be happier than anyone else in the whole world.” I lifted my head, and he kissed me on the forehead, then on the neck, and then he put his mouth against my ear. “I love you, Jane,” he said, just like the first time.
And, as it turned out, for the last time.
POST-COPULATORY PHASE: STAGE VI
DIMINISHED BLISS, THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF DISCONTENT, AND THE MYSTERIOUS METAMORPHOSIS FROM NEW COW TO OLD COW
Despite the vigor of the male [animal’s] courtship, he is actually in a state of some trepidation. In fact, in the early stages, when fear still outweighs ardor, he seems so insecure that any movement toward him by the female sends him fleeing.
—Mark Jerome Walters, The Dance of Life
Of course I didn’t know that it would be the last time he’d say those words, that it would be the last time I’d be as completely happy as I was during those few final minutes we were alone together in Tracy’s apartment.
But it was.
Later I would come to view that scene as the final peak in a series of peaks—the benchmark peak, the peak that would soon become the crest of the wave over which I would float, then fall all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Had I known that standing by the window would be the last good moment, the last true moment of my time with Ray, I would have done something to mark it: I would have told him that the breath of relief I’d exhaled the night he told me he loved me came from a well of loneliness and sadness so deep and so hidden and so constant that no one else before him had ever reached it, taken the edge off its pain. That his empathy and tenderness had unearthed it—my nameless, silent grief—and that was why I had felt so inexplicably connected to him.
Had I known, I would have gone over every moment we’d spent together—the nights in my apartment, in his apartment, in the apartment he had house-sat; the weekend we drove out to Sagaponack; the two weeks’ vacation we took in August in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod; Labor Day weekend, when we stayed in the city and he bought me a pair of teeny-tiny gold hoop earrings and I bought him a long-sleeved striped T-shirt; all the conversations we’d had in the car, in the dark, on the phone, or right before we’d fall asleep. I would have tried, and undoubtedly failed, to express the inexpressible: that for the first time in my life I knew what it felt like not to feel alone; that he seemed to love me more than anyone else ever had; that I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone.
But since I didn’t know, I focused on everything we had to do in the coming two weeks.
Signing the new lease.
Breaking our current leases.
Figuring out what crucial items were missing from our combined dowries.
Packing, switching utilities on and off, arranging movers.
Not to mention the most odious task of all: Ray breaking the news to Mia that not only was their relationship, and thus engagement, really over but that he was moving in with someone else. That he was moving in with me.
And though I knew those two weeks would be bad—that Ray would feel guilty and miserable and that there wouldn’t be anything I could do except ride it out and be waiting on the other end with open arms, matching pots and pans, and a new set of sheets—I didn’t know they would be as bad as they were.
I didn’t know a man in love could make himself disappear.
How exactly did Ray disappear? Slowly and subtly.
First came I Can’t.
The I- can’t- go- to- Bloomingdale’s- because- I- can’t- possibly- think- about- buying- things- for- us- when- Mia- is- lying- in- a- puddle- of- her- own- drool- after- what- I’ve- done- to- her excuse.
Then came emotional exhaustion.
The maybe- it’s- better- if- we- don’t- see- each- other- tonight- because- I- don’t- think- I’d- be- much- good- anyway excuse.
Then came too much work.
The it’s- a- crucial- time- for- the- show- right- now- and- I’m- really- on- the- hotseat- to- make- it- take- off- and- take- off- big excuse.
Finally came withholding sex.
The yes- I- know- used- to- chase- you- around- the- bed- like- a- sex- maniac- as- recently- as- six- days- ago- but- I’ve- got- a- lot- on- my- mind- right- now- okay excuse.
Well, maybe it wasn’t so subtle.
Buried deep within the mysterious process of metamorphosis from New Cow to Old Cow lies a rhetorical question:
If you assume you’re still a New Cow, but you’re really an Old Cow and no one’s bothered to tell you, are you still a New Cow?
Or an Old Cow in denial?
Or are you just a fool?
I never did figure out the answer to that question. Rhetorical questions lead to more rhetorical questions—circular existential chicken-and-egg questions, like Which came first, the Old Cow or the New Cow?—or discussions about semantics: differing definitions of words like new and old and fool.
But mostly they lead to more basic questions, like When? and How? and Why?
I don’t know exactly when I became an Old Cow to Ray—at what exact moment he first pushed me through the looking glass and I stepped out the other side, transformed—though I suspect it was sometime right after we’d seen that apartment in Chelsea and right before we were supposed to sign the lease when Ray realized, suddenly, that he would be stuck with me.
Stuck with me. Those words can still make me cry sometimes, even now, and even though Ray never actually said them.
But I know that’s what he was thinking then, and during the weeks when he stopped calling. And I know there were probably other words he was thinking, too:
Saddled with.
Tied down to.
Trapped.
Those are words that come later, rushing in like antibodies, to fight off the old words:
In love with.
Live with.
Attached to.
Moo.
POST-COPULATORY PHASE: STAGE VII
UNCOUPLING
Freezing is a widespread response to predator alarm, but some prey species add a refinement to their freezing behavior. As soon as they sight a predator approaching, they swiftly dart around to the far side of a tree trunk before performing the rigid statue response.
If freezing fails to work, then the next step is to flee … [using] … an erratic zigzag course.… To be successful, the direction-shifts of the fleeing animal must be irregular so that the predator cannot anticipate either when or in which direction the next change of course will be.
Another technique is the dash-and-hide, dash-and-retreat method. This is employed by animals that cannot sustain a prolonged bout of fleeing. They make a sudden darting movement at the highest possible speed and then quickly freeze, staying quite still in the undergrowth.… They may keep this up time and time again, until, with luck, the predator finally gives up the chase.
—Desmond Morris, Animalwatching
If you are lucky, a man will dump you.
That is, he will take you somewhere, or call you on the phone, and tell you, straight out, in so many words, that it is over.
More often than not, though, he will not be so direct and you will not be so lucky.
More often than not, he will not bother to tell you.
He will, instead, freeze.
Or zigzag.
Or dash and hide.
Or he will simply disappear you.
Disappearing you means he will behave toward you as if he has told you that it is over, behave as if you have had the conversation in which he says, audibly, and to your face, that, for whatever reasons, he doesn’t want to see you anymore and that he would prefer it if things could go back to the way they were before you became involved: in other words, that he would like to be friends now.
The problem with being disappeared is that you have not had this conversation yet.
You have not been told yet that this is what he is thinking, that this is what he has decided.
To have had this conversation would mean that the man you would have had it with would only be guilty of being an asshole.
Not also guilty of being a cow
ard.
The countdown.
The drumbeat.
Three + x = escape.
At the three-month mark you can practically set your watch to it.
The only thing you won’t be able to predict is which method of escape they will choose.
Three months, two days:
Ray had been avoiding me for the past two weeks.
Like the plague.
Like an Old Cow.
“What is it?” David asked when I showed up at his apartment unannounced on a chilly Sunday afternoon in late September. “Is Ray starting to give you the runaround?”
He said “runaround” as if it were some kind of dreaded but expected gift, his sympathetic tone implying that he was much more intimately acquainted with the bestower than I might be. He wasn’t wrong. Ever since we’d moved to New York after college, he had indeed been with—and been left by—more men than I had.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s like he’s pulling away and there’s nothing I can do about it. One minute he’s consumed with self-loathing and misery at the thought of ‘abandoning’ Mia. The next minute he’s consumed with self-loathing and misery at the thought of being stuck with her for the rest of his life. Then it’s how busy and under pressure he suddenly is at work. Then it’s—”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Not sleeping with you?”
I stared at him. “How did you know that?”
He shrugged. “Because I know.”
I paced around the kitchen and leaned up against the refrigerator door. I was terrified and I felt sick to my stomach. “Something’s changed, but I don’t know what it is or when it happened.”
David walked toward me and sat on the counter next to the stove. “It’s the tomato-seed phase. That’s what men turn into when they get too involved—slippery, evasive, impossible to pin down—tomato seeds on a cutting board.”
I stared at David. “But he’s in love with me,” I said. “He said so. Not to mention the fact that he broke off his engagement and we’re about to sign a lease.”
David shook his head. “I know what he said. I’ve probably heard the same thing, or said it myself, a hundred times. But fear is not a rational emotion. It changes people, makes them behave like animals—caged animals.” He sounded weary, as tired of the collective fear of all the men who had left him in a panic of emotion as he was of his own. “It all comes down to the survival instinct: fight or flight. And in my experience most men, most of the time, pick flight.”