by Mad Dash
“I do, believe me, I do, but in a few years, or a lot of years, in—say, twenty years, you’re going to feel differently. Or you might, you might feel—”
“I’m not you.” Her back is to the door; she swings her fist down behind her and thunks the door with it hard. “I want to do this. I love Joel and he loves me. This is not me—sacrificing myself. I wish I could be like you. Or your friend Mo—no, not her—but you, I don’t know anybody I’d rather be like than you, but I’m not.” Her voice quivers. Tears squeeze out of her pale eyes and dribble down her cheeks. “I’m not you.”
“Oh, honey, don’t cry. Never mind about me. I understand what you’re saying, but you’re twenty-five—”
“Just because that’s how old you were—”
“No, listen. We don’t always take time to think things through. Forget age—anybody. And you have so much talent. You have a real eye, Greta, and that’s rare, you have no idea how rare it is.”
“I’m not, I’m not rare. I’m not creative! You are—I’m not!”
“Nonsense—you have your whole life, you can be anything. If you settle now because he wants you to—and because you’re in love and it feels good and you want to be with him—”
“What’s wrong with that? I don’t understand you! You have the best job in the world. You’re not stuck—I don’t get why you’re warning me.”
She jerks the door open, clatters down the stairs. Outside, it’s a shock to see blue sky, sunshine—this morning it was gray and misty. At the bottom of the outdoor steps, she whips around. “I’m not bolting on you, I’m not quitting tomorrow.”
“That’s completely beside the point.”
“I’ll work till the end of May, that’s what I was trying to tell you. But after that, I’m sorry it disappoints you so much”—more tears—“I’m marrying Joel.” She gives a jerky wave. “So I’ll come in for two days next week, like we said. That is, if you still care to employ me.”
I call after her. Pedestrians on the sidewalk gawk at me. Now, of course, I’m crying, too. This is crazy. Greta keeps going, moving as fast as she can in her wobbly strut, hampered by her ridiculous platform boots. I sink against the warm brick wall and watch her go.
If you’re going to laugh about something later, start now. That’s a good saying, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t apply here. No, this is a bitter, bitter pill. I don’t even know why I’m taking Greta’s horrible decision so personally. I feel terrible about what just happened. I’ve been unkind, tactless, and a bully.
But I’m right. I see it so clearly. Why can’t she?
Mo calls. “I’m so disappointed in Eleanor Roosevelt,” she opens.
“Oh?”
“Guess what her one regret was. In her whole, amazing life, the one thing she wished at the end she could change.”
“I give up.”
“She wished she’d been prettier. Not world peace, ‘I wish I’d been prettier.’ Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“Huh. Listen, I just had—”
“I always respected her, but it just shows you what a death grip, Dash, the material world has on even thoughtful people. ‘I wish I’d been prettier’—as if there really is an ‘I,’ for one thing. No wonder she was so unhappy! She was too attached, she lived in the past or the future instead of the present, otherwise she wouldn’t have died anxious.”
“How’s Liam?” I ask to divert her. It’s all about mindfulness and the five hindrances and the four noble truths with Mo these days.
“Liam? History.”
“Oh, no! Why?” I liked him, the art-gallery guy. He sounded so normal.
“He was too grounded in so-called reality. We had nothing in common. I’m done with men.”
“Oh, sure.”
“I am, actually. They’re just a Band-Aid, we stick them over an uncomfortable truth we don’t want to look at.”
I’m afraid to ask. “Which is?”
“That we’re all ultimately alone. Everything else is illusion. We live in solitary confinement inside our own bodies, which aren’t real to begin with. No man can complete me, Dash. I’m on this journey alone.”
“Nobody can complete me, either, but what I’d like is a man who’s more like a dog.”
“A dog?”
“Freud wanted to know what women want? Well, I know: doglike devotion. Uncritical love and devotion from a nondog. Canine love from a human, i.e., a spouse.”
That shuts Mo up for a while. I tell her about Greta, our fight, her decision to marry Joel. “I don’t even know how it happened. One minute we’re having a nice lunch, the next she’s running out of the room and we’re both crying. I can’t stand it that she’s just—throwing her life away! All that potential. I’m heartsick.”
“Breathe.”
“What?”
“Long, slow belly breaths while you label your thoughts. Then you can see them for what they are. See your own ego. The first step toward understanding the nonself.”
“Oh, Mo,” I wail. “I’m just not on that journey, you know? I have a self, and right now it’s very upset.”
Thoughtfully, she changes the subject. “How’s Andrew?”
“I have no idea. We hardly speak.”
“Are you going to split up?”
“Who knows?” Just talking about it makes me feel crazy. “I have fantasies all the time about living without him.”
“Good fantasies?”
“Sometimes. Yes, sometimes,” I admit, although that feels treasonous. “It’s like I’ve crossed the line between the unthinkable and the thinkable.”
“Divorce, you mean?”
I shudder. “It’s this horrible temptation, it’s like the devil or some drug supplier whispering in my ear. Now that I’ve thought about it, I’ve made it real. The possibility.”
“Let me lend you a book.”
“On what?”
“Self-abnegation.”
“Oh. Well—”
“It’ll change your life. That would be good, right? You’d like to change your life, wouldn’t you?”
“Damn right,” I say, but the fact is, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
My eyes sting. My neck hurts. I’ve been staring so long at the computer screen, clicking through pictures of Valerie and the magnificent Sophie, I’ve fallen into a trance. When the downstairs buzzer goes off, I jump so violently, I kick a notebook off the desk with my stocking foot. It’s six o’clock—who in the world wants in at this hour? I press the button and ask.
“Me. May I come up?”
Andrew? He couldn’t know about Greta, or I’d think he’s come to gloat. I’m dazed, at a disadvantage; I’ve been drinking stale coffee for hours, I have bad breath. “Come on up,” I say, and hit the buzzer.
Why would he come instead of calling? We haven’t seen each other since the night in Fogelman’s office, and we only speak when we have to, terse business conversations about Chloe’s tuition or who’s got the safety-deposit box key. So why is he here? I’m embarrassed when my stupid recurring fantasy revives—I thought I’d killed it: that he tells me he’s sorry for what he said and none of it was true. What an idiot I am sometimes. I don’t even want to make up. And still, I can’t help listening for a tone in his footsteps on the stairs, the sound of eagerness or hope. Or, best of all, contrition. “In here,” I call, and after a moment he appears in the doorway.
“Good God. You’ve cut your hair.”
So much for reconciliation. “Oh, thanks very much. It’s lovely to see you, too.”
“No, I mean to say, it’s, em…”
“Forget it. Is everything all right with Chloe?”
“Yes, yes. No, it’s attractive, in a way, it’s quite modern, I’m sure. Quite…”
“Never mind, Andrew.” Why can’t he just lie, like normal people? “Did you drop by because you were in the neighborhood?” I say, moving away, putting the desk between us. He doesn’t look so great himself, if we’re in a contest. Unlike me, he could use
a haircut. His skin color is off and his eyes are watery. He could actually be ill, but he’d never tell me now. Never again. Thanks, Dr. Fogelman.
He tosses a couple of envelopes on the desk and sits down in Greta’s chair, crosses his stork legs. “Have you forgotten what day it is?”
I try to think. It’s nobody’s birthday, not our anniversary. We met in the fall, not the spring. “I give up,” I say, intrigued.
“April fifteenth.”
“April fifteenth.” It sounds familiar. We first had sex on February 2; I write it on every new calendar (in code) with all the other annual reminders. “I don’t know, I give up. Tell me.”
He sighs. “Income taxes? Federal, D.C.?”
“Oh! Right.” Deflated, I watch him fish the forms out of the envelopes. He finished the taxes ages ago, but he likes to mail them at the very last second to save on interest if we owe anything. I feel stupid again. As if he’s given me a heart-shaped box, and inside on a bed of velvet is a pencil sharpener.
“Do you want to go over them?”
“No, but they…” No, I won’t fall into that. Every year he asks if I want to read the returns, every year I say no but they better be right, I better not end up in jail, ha-ha, and he uses this smooth, oily voice to say don’t you trust me? Ha-ha—a humor ritual. But we’re not having those moments anymore, or if we do by accident, they feel false, and then we become horribly self-conscious.
How will this work next year? Maybe by then we’ll be filing separate returns. I’ll have to go to H&R Block.
I hate these thoughts, but they come more and more often. The devil whispering in my ear. How will we split up the dining-room furniture, I wondered the other day. Andrew can have everything but the sideboard, which was my mother’s. Which one of us gets to go to Parents’ Weekend in the fall? Which one gets the house, or will we sell it and split the proceeds? Andrew must have the same thoughts. But we can’t talk about them yet. We’re in the lull, the silent, frightened phase, when it’s still too painful to speak.
I sign the tax forms in the right places and he folds the pages, puts them in the proper envelopes, seals them up. “So what have you been up to?” I ask, trying for a casual, friendly tone. Normal.
“Nothing. Work. I spend a lot of time at school. I’m rarely home.”
“Oh?” I say encouragingly, but that’s all he’s going to tell me about what he’s been up to. It feels strange, being together in a room again. I can smell him. I know what’s in his wallet. I know what the texture of his tweed jacket feels like, I know what hole his belt buckle is in. How cold, to know someone so intimately and yet be so estranged. This is the kind of thing that happens to other people.
Business over, Andrew glances around the office vaguely, pleasantly, as if looking for additions or improvements. His eyes light up when they fall on my big leather duffel in the corner. “Ah,” he says—and later I’ll try to deconstruct his precise tone when he said it. “You’re staying over tonight, then leaving tomorrow? For your week of solitude.”
“Right. I do, once in a while.”
“Do what?”
“Stay over. When things get hectic or I have an early shoot. The couch isn’t bad, I’ve got a pillow—”
“What do you mean? You stay here?”
“Yes.” We stare at each other. It dawns on me—I am so slow today—he thought I was coming home. “Yes, I do, I stay here every great once in a while. Not often. Well, what did you expect?”
“Nothing, that’s great. That’s just great.” He shoves the envelopes in his coat pocket, uses both hands to shoot himself out of the chair. “That’s perfect.” His anger freezes me; I can only look at him. “Who takes care of your dog?”
“Cottie sometimes, or—Owen. Owen’s got her tonight.”
“Owen.” He says it not just with distaste, but with venom.
“What’s wrong with that?” I stand up, too.
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“Tell you what? What does that mean?”
“Not a damn thing.”
I trot after him through the dim studio. It’s like a bad dream—I just did this, except it was Greta who was furious with me. “Hold on a damn minute, Andrew.” He halts in the door to the stairs. “You’re the one who’s better off without me—that’s what you said. What happened? Did you finally get bored enough?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m not worried!”
“Good.”
“Good!”
He starts down the steps.
“Hey!” I yell. “I’m not mad at you. Are we fighting? I don’t even know how you are. How are you?”
“Have a good week, Dash. Find yourself. I’ll be at work if you need me.”
“Oh no, you will not make me feel guilty for—” The outside door slams behind him.
“—for my free week. My free week!” I shout, because the first time my voice echoed so pathetically in the empty stairs. “I can’t wait. You won’t be there, and I will never once be bored. I have resources!”
sixteen
Friday p.m.—It begins!
Chilly rain started on way home, scotching plan for long walk with Sock to launch vacation. Forced to sit by fire and drink wine after dinner. Too sleepy to write now, but mean to keep journal over entire week, tracking spiritual/mental/physical progress. Forward or back.
Saturday
Indecisive April still can’t make up its mind. Am I winter? Am I summer? Snow flurries in a.m., sunny & warm by afternoon. Ate scrambled duck eggs for breakfast—Owen gave them to me—he has duck flock on his farm. Delicious. How clever, growing your own food. He has cows, too, and huge vegetable garden he’s already begun planting.
Took Sock for walk in afternoon. Saw, acc. to nature book: wild violets, fiddlehead ferns, crested dwarf iris, wild strawberry, mountain laurel. Also something like gorse or vetch, v. sweet-smelling. Everything is waking up. Budding trees look like clouds of green mist. Saw: a hawk, two sparrows, swallows (?), a goldfinch. A butterfly! Also deer, but they are so commonplace to me now, they’re not remarkable.
Fell asleep during meditation again. Mo taught me new way, hand mudra, you hold your left fist in your right palm above your navel and think about nothing. Does wonders for insomnia.
Sunday
Am thinking of going to church. Would be first time in long time. Pretty day, but windy, clouds zooming across crystal-blue sky. “Pneumonia weather,” Andrew calls it.
Took my time and made beautiful salad for lunch, work of art, felt guilty eating it. Fell asleep afterward trying to read Ayurveda book Mo lent me. Slept TWO HOURS.
Didn’t go to church. Played with Sock—puppy therapy—then held private service by pond, v. reverent place. Saw no wildlife. Was hoping for something, fish, an otter, a fox. Nothing. Except birds, and I couldn’t recognize them. Must study more.
Oh, blah-blah-blah. Had thought to start a sort of naturalist’s daybook, complete with sketches and simple but profound nature observations. Forgot I can’t draw and am not profound. Would so much rather look at and/or photograph nature than write about it. Am consigning this diary to wastebasket. A. is right, I don’t stick to my projects. Damn A.
“Hi, Ma.”
Talking to my mother is a lot more therapeutic than keeping a journal, anyway. I lean my elbows back on the porch step and fix on the brightest star in tonight’s busy sky. “Hi, Mama.” She doesn’t talk back; I’m aware these are monologues I have with my mother every evening, usually during Sock’s last outing before bedtime.
“Andrew hates my hair.” I pull my sweater up around my ears—not used to having a bare neck. “Not that I give a rat’s patootie.” That was one of my mother’s sayings. “But you should’ve seen his face, like I’d gotten snake extensions or something. God.”
Down the mountain, an owl hoo-hoo-ahs. A barred owl; I looked it up. I know some of the stars now, too. “That star, Mama, is Alioth, and it’s eighty-one light-years
away. Four hundred and twenty trillion miles.”
Chloe knows the stars. She taught them to herself, just because she was interested. She was a little girl about ten minutes ago. She could read when she was five. “May I have some sugar?” I’d say, the same thing Mama used to say to me, and she’d run over and kiss me. Her hand in mine was always so tight and trusting. A boy named Dickie Hoyle broke her heart in second grade by abandoning her on a playdate, and when I called her apologetic mother to complain, I burst into tears. (Chloe was stoic, dry-eyed.) My favorite photograph is of her sitting on the Easter Bunny’s lap—some mall foolishness—in her silver snow jacket and red galoshes, pressing her fingertips together and frowning up at the bunny with an expression that remains classic Chloe: polite, secretly baffled, endlessly tolerant.
“I knew those were precious times, Mama. I knew they were going by too fast, everybody knows that. Where I went wrong is, I thought that would protect me, the fact that I knew. Knew and appreciated, felt grateful and blessed every day. But it didn’t slow anything down, not for a minute, and now…I don’t know, something’s going on with time, it’s not passing the way it used to, and I hate it. Because you know all it comes down to is good-bye.”
Mama’s star flickers and keeps mum.
“I have to grow up. I have to stop minding the way things are. Accept, go with the flow. Maureen’s talking about becoming a Buddhist.”
Maybe middle age is when you make a choice. You can continue to be a child and just get older, or you can take the plunge into adulthood and just get older. Neither one saves you from pain, oh no, not by a long shot. But at least with the latter there’s less whining.
“I’m going in, my butt’s cold. I love you, Mama. Wish you were here. Sock, come on, girl!”
She flattens her butt in the moss to pee one more time, then she comes. She’s so good. Maybe I should get lots of dogs, the next best thing to lots of children. No, that would be childish. Or would it? I hope it’s not that whatever feels good is infantile, whatever hurts is mature. Oh, surely not, but I’ll put it on my list of things to think about this week. I must never tell Andrew I have a list.