The first time I came to church, she said, I was dead inside.
42
Every morning of the first week, I woke blank as a baby. Then I remembered and my body curled in like a touched spider. I cried. I waited for her to call. She did not call. I thought of Pat, rocking herself to sleep, waking to the memory of her lost beloved. Was our love like their love? Amaia had drawn it that way. I want a forever love, she had often said to me. But I don’t know if you can be loyal to me.
I called Amit.
I can’t do this, I said. I cannot stand another day of this.
You can, she told me. You can.
It is as bad as I’ve always feared, I said.
This is not the thing you’ve feared, Amit said. She was right. My fear was of being unloved. Being left was only half of it. But what did it matter, if it felt as bad as I’d always feared?
Feelings are not facts, they used to say in my meetings, and it was true. But facts had never rescued me and feelings had done their work. People flung themselves off bridges and in front of trains. People ate bullets over feelings. I understood that the shore one wrecked upon was never a person. The train that barreled through me, its conductor and whistle, the flat land whose dust whirled under its wheels—they were all mine. Even that track had been laid across my body before I ever met her. Amaia was nothing but the moon whose light rode those rails, the match that lit my wick. But it didn’t matter. I still burned. I did not fling myself off any bridge. But, curled on the floor of my bedroom, I understood how a person could.
When was the last time you went to a meeting? Amit asked me.
In the early months of loving her, I imagined my despair as a squall—a watery force that tossed me breathless, flooded my senses, obscured the horizon. The stormy sea, we called it. My therapist once suggested that I imagine a way to contain it. I closed my eyes and cupped a hand. I thought of that wild squall tossing against my palm. In that quiet room, I could hold it. But most other times it was impossible. And now? Now I canceled classes halfway through, claimed that I was ill, crying before I reached my car in the parking lot.
I had so feared her leaving. I had feared that without her I might never write again. I might never feel pleasure again. Like a magician or an alchemist she had transformed me and awoken my perfect properties. And when she left, I would lose myself. I would not see Jon and Joan and Pat ever again, because why? The desire in me that she had awoken would disappear.
At first it was true. Everything became characterized by its association to her. I hid all the letters and gifts. I deleted her name from my e-mail and phone. It didn’t work. The letter A itself was a blade. I thought of her hands, her mouth, her voice, and doubled over. A friend sent me a Galway Kinnell poem—Wait, for now. / Distrust everything, if you have to. / But trust the hours.—written for a suicidal student of the poet’s, but applicable to any hopeless place.
In the third week something shifted. A tiny breath. I woke up and didn’t cry. I made coffee and went for a walk. I taught a class and didn’t think about anything else until it was over.
That night, I got an e-mail from her—a poem by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light / in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day / But then it is the light that makes you remember.
I will wait for you, I responded.
I am not asking you to wait for me, she said.
But she also did not want me to forget, or to think that she had forgotten. A pattern emerged. Three days would pass, during which I thought of her exhaustively. On the fourth day, I would wake and take a breath. Then, I would hear from her. Sometimes a single line: You are my Helen. She mailed me a box of cards with the constellations drawn on them. If you held the cards to the sky, there were pinprick holes through which you could map the stars. She called me once from a town in Washington where she had traveled for work and told me about a colleague, Cristina, whom she’d met at a dinner party. She keeps mentioning her “partner,” Amaia said. It made me think of you.
43
Joan’s breathing was so taxed that I had to drop her off at the church entrance before parking a few yards away. I carried her Bible inside and nodded at the ushers. The church had a carpeted floor and carpeted walls. Most of the congregants were older white folks. A few young families sat in the rearmost pews.
Early in the sermon, the pastor read from Jonah 4:1. The God of the book of Jonah first appears cruel, but is ultimately revealed to be merciful.
Jonah is the reluctant prophet. God calls him to proclaim judgment on Ninevah, and Jonah refuses. He still believes in his own will. He stows away on a ship bound for Tarshish to escape his destiny, but God calls up a mighty storm, and the ship’s crew throws Jonah overboard. God’s sea monster swallows him, and only in that belly does Jonah finally submit.
Jonah, whose name means dove, is not brave. He simply exhausts all his other choices. The only thing left to choose is God’s will. And even then, after proclaiming his prophecy, Jonah shakes his fist at the Lord. His destiny does not give him peace. It enrages him. It is not what he wants. He begs God to kill him.
But God doesn’t kill Jonah. God’s mercy doesn’t often come in the form of erasure. And the story of Jonah seems a parable of what I have often suspected—that life is a great Choose Your Own Adventure story wherein every choice leads the hero to the same princess, the same cliff. There are alternate routes, but there is only one ending, if you make it there.
I already knew that Amaia was God’s storm, that every love is a sea monster in whose belly we learn to pray. But I did not know my own destiny yet, if submission meant marrying the monster, the person I became in love with her.
How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? the pastor implored us. Maybe he meant: stop fighting. It’s supposed to hurt. Grace is not sweet, and mercy is not getting what you want.
On Joan’s first visit to the church, the preacher had looked into the congregation during his sermon and, she swore, He looked right into me. He asked if there was anyone present who didn’t like the way they were living. Joan froze. He asked those people to raise their hands. Joan did not raise her hand. He looked right into her and said, You can’t change your life, but Jesus can. He invited her to let Jesus into her heart.
And I did, she told me.
And he did. Jesus entered my aunt’s heart and eased what hurt there. Her depression lifted. She stopped taking pills. She started taking the children to church and reading the Bible. Everyone thought I was crazy, she said, but when she called the preacher to tell him what had happened, he told her, You’re not crazy. You’ve been saved.
That whole day I felt like a journalist, as if talking to Joan were a kind of research. I attended these visits like a job, as if I were present on behalf of some third party. But I had no outside obligation. No one even knew I was there. Even from behind it, I knew my detachment was a curtain, protecting me. I did not want to draw it back. I could not bear to step into that kitchen, that town, this church, not for real. I did not want to bring that other life, in which my heart was so broken, into this one. I needed it to remain that foggy liminal space—an emotional lobby where I’d simply taken a number and a seat. Where I was only making small talk with strangers until my number was called. I was waiting for the thing I sought to find me.
But as those two girls with the same face stood at the front of that church and sang “I’ll Fly Away” so sweetly, I could see that from a few steps away, where I stood looked like no kind of waiting room. I could see that to another set of eyes, I was no interloper here, not among strangers. My broken heart was in no other building, no other body. There was only one woman, with one heart that had led her here to these people whom she had tried to erase, who had tried for generations to erase themselves. This woman had come to them, and come back again, wanting answers. This woman could not stop crying and who could blame her? From a few pews back I could see she’d spent her whole life tr
ying to carve herself into being, to grind herself into dust, and that she sat today in this church wanting nothing more than to stop, than to be saved. But it wasn’t the God of that room who was going to save me.
44
After two months, I went on a date. That is what people do after breakups, I thought. I ate lunch at a café in the East Village with a woman named Alice. Alice was so easy. Alice was sober and sexy and I knew I could never be in love with her.
A few weeks later Alice and I went to a movie. After the movie, we went back to her apartment and she showed me her guitar, her books, her plants. It was a very clean apartment. When Alice kissed me, I kissed her back. Then I began to cry.
What a lesbian, I said, half laughing. I’m so embarrassed.
Alice laughed, too, and handed me a tissue.
I’m a wreck, I told her.
That’s okay, she said, and walked me to my car.
A few days later, I was driving to the Cape to see my mother. It was spring now, and sunlight filled the car. I rolled down the windows and turned up the radio.
My phone rang. I recognized Amaia’s number and answered.
What are you doing? she asked me.
I’m driving to the Cape, I said.
I want to come to the Cape, she said.
What are you talking about? I asked her.
My wife is moving out, she said. I want to come to New York. Can I see you?
Of course, I said.
Alice and I had planned to go to Fire Island that Saturday. In the morning, I went to her apartment as planned. We need to talk, I said. Things are not finished with my ex.
Okay, said Alice. I understand.
I’m not ready to be dating you, I said.
Okay, she said again. Do you still want to go to the beach for the day?
I thought for a minute. Sure, I said.
After an hour of driving, as we neared the ferry, my phone rang. It was Amaia. I didn’t answer. She called back. She called again and again. Then she texted me.
I am going to call one more time. Answer the phone.
My body went cold.
We have to pull over, I said to Alice.
Uh, okay, she said. I took the next exit and cruised into a neighborhood. On a residential street of ranch-style homes with tidy lawns, I pulled over. I got out of the car, told Alice to drive up the street, and watched her park a hundred yards away. I stood beside the curb in front of a blue house with white shutters. Birds rustled on the rim of a stone fountain in the yard and took turns in its shallow pool. I was the only person in sight. I squinted at my phone in the sunlight and paced. When Amaia called again, I answered.
What are you doing? she asked me. Who are you with?
No one, I said. A friend.
Don’t lie to me, she said. What the fuck are you doing?
I’m not doing anything, I said. It’s not what you think.
I want you to turn the car around and go home, she said. I’d never heard her sound like that—controlled, but barely. She was furious. But I could also hear the break in her. The fear that never rose to her surface.
Okay, I said. My legs shook.
Alice and I drove back in three hours’ worth of traffic, beach chairs clanging in the trunk. When I finally dropped her back at her apartment, before closing the door she gave me a long look and in it I saw disappointment, but also pity.
That night, I tried to explain. You broke up with me, I reminded Amaia. It did not help. She seemed in a trance of hurt and anger. She couldn’t hang up the phone and she couldn’t hear me.
How could you? she kept saying. I pulled apart my life for you.
I had confirmed all her suspicions of me. I was disloyal. I was dishonest. I was selfish. I did not love her. Love meant different things to us.
Panic coursed through me, but other things, too. I knew that to argue with her only made it worse, but I also knew that she was wrong.
It’s not true, I said. I know how to love. I am good to the people I love.
I know you are, she said. I’m just sorry I’m not one of them.
You told me not to wait, I said.
She had not asked me to wait, she said, because real love waited—you didn’t have to ask.
You broke my heart, Amaia, I said, desperate. What was I supposed to do?
Why are you so stubborn? she said. You don’t want to give up any control.
I could not show her what was in me. She would not accept my truth. My recovery had taught me how to look for my part in every conflict. I couldn’t change her, but I knew how to change myself. Hadn’t I sworn to love her forever? I knew she was scared. Her perspective could not accommodate mine. She couldn’t budge. But I could, so I did.
I’m sorry, Amaia, I said. I was wrong. I won’t ever do that again.
How do I know? she said. How will I ever trust you again?
I’ll show you, I said. Please say you’ll still come.
45
This time, when I pulled up to the house, Jon was standing in the road, waiting for me. He smiled at me and raised a hand. He opened the passenger door and climbed into my car, filled it with his clean sweat smell and wet stare, his nervous childish hands smoothing his buttoned shirt.
This way, he said, pointing.
As we passed the small grocery, the old mill, the pharmacy strip mall and empty sidewalks, I felt him see it all through my eyes.
This town is ugly, he said.
It’s not so bad.
The casino is that way, he pointed. If you ever want to go. Joan only plays pennies now, so she never wins. He laughed. I guess we’ve all got something.
I nodded.
My girlfriend? he went on. She has to take all kinds of medicine from her doctor or she goes crazy. His girlfriend lived in subsidized housing and Joan had told me that he stayed there when he wanted to drink hard. We’ve all got something, he said again.
What have you got? I asked, as if I didn’t know.
I only drink beer now, he said. What about you?
I haven’t had a drink in ten years.
He nodded. I went away a bunch of times.
To treatment?
Yeah. Didn’t take.
I imagined bringing him to a meeting. I knew it was silly, but I indulged the fantasy for a few miles—a reason for being there that I could understand. What if it took, this time? A destiny for both of us. A tidy resolution.
What about meetings? I asked him.
Nah, he said. Not for me.
As we neared the town where I was born, the trees opened. Tobacco fields stretched in long dark acres, no soul in sight but the birds along the telephone line.
It looks exactly the same, he said, and I knew he meant not only the land we drove through but the images in his mind, those pictures he’d been carrying all my life.
What do you remember? I asked him. He turned to me, as if he’d been waiting for me to ask.
I remember everything, he said. His gaze on my cheek and neck nearly burned. Your mother was different from anyone I’d ever met, he said, releasing me from his stare, scanning the decrepit trees of an abandoned orchard as we passed. All she ate was nuts and dried fruit. I heard his smile. She lived in a Quonset hut and the first time she brought me there she got mad because I ate the whole jar.
Had my mother thought of him when she found my own empty jars? When she’d found the liquor bottles hidden in my dresser drawer? I’d always thought the fear on her face was of the unknown in me, the dark she didn’t recognize. But maybe she had.
She didn’t even have a refrigerator, he went on. There was a life meant for poor Italian girls from New Jersey, and it was not the life she wanted. She was beautiful and smart and she could go anywhere.
She slept naked, he said, shaking his head, and in his smile I saw both wonder and some other knowing.
What a strange thing it was. To sit so close to a strange man. A man driven by impulse. His being was more body than anything else. I was his blood. But I
was also a stranger. A woman with a body inches away from him. When he looked at me I could feel the force of it. He wanted something from me, though neither of us could name what it was. It wasn’t sexual, but some kinds of want are so bare, so big, that they are not any one thing. They are anything. They are everything. When the mind craves something it cannot bear, the body takes on its burden. My own body had shown me this. I had fed on Amaia’s body with all my starving parts. What I wanted from her I could not name, so I gorged on what I could taste.
In my last days as a dominatrix, my clients’ stares had felt like Jon’s. Their need was so great. But there was nothing left for me to give them. I could hardly breathe in those rooms. Once, my mother told me, she had come home from work to find Jon in her closet. He was wearing one of her dresses. What are you doing? she had asked him.
Nothing, he had said.
46
In her desert, the heat is so hot, the light so bright that everything else is a kind of darkness, is a kind of cold. Bones lie along the roadsides, and most people are passing through—on their way to Vegas or Los Angeles or Mexico or simply to wherever is far enough to lose what chases them. The ones who are not passing through never leave.
Before I ever went there, Amaia had described it so brokenly, the way you describe a thing that is beautiful to you, but to no one else. I had sometimes described our love that way. It’s a hard place, she often said, early on. She hadn’t known me yet and even then I could tell the desert was a proxy for herself.
I loved that desert on sight. Because it was hers and because I had fought so hard to get there, but also because it felt like a different kind of ocean. Because of the light. There is too much light in the desert to hide how easily it can kill you. “Torment belongs to the desert,” Jung wrote in The Red Book.
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