xxi
When we got home, I slipped off my heels and collapsed on the couch. You sat down next to me and took my foot in your hands, massaging away the pain of eight hours in stilettos.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Gabe, this might be better than sex.”
You didn’t laugh, though, the way I was expecting you to.
“Luce,” you said, your fingers still kneading the arch of my left foot, “we have to talk.”
I sat up and pulled my feet from your hands, tucked them under me.
“What is it?” I asked. “Are you okay? Are we okay? I thought things were great, but if there’s anything—”
“Lucy,” you said, my whole name. “Stop.” Then you took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it straight out. I got offered a job with the Associated Press. They want me to go to Iraq, embed with troops there for a feature piece, to start. With the possibility of a salaried position after that. Pete made a few calls, pulled a few strings. He knew I wanted to go abroad.”
For a moment I couldn’t breathe.
“When?” I whispered. “For how long?”
“They want me to leave in three weeks. The job is for two months at least. Maybe a lot longer.”
“When do you have to give them an answer?” I asked. I was thinking: We could handle two months. Maybe even longer. We could make it work.
“I already gave it,” you said, looking down at your fingers. “I told them yes.”
“You what?” I asked. I felt like someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub drain, like our life together was rushing away in a twirling tornado. My mind flashed to Kate, to what she said about the probability of you leaving and breaking my heart.
You still weren’t looking at me.
“It’s been in the works for a while,” you said, “but today all the paperwork went through. I didn’t know if it would. It seemed so tenuous. I didn’t want to say anything unless it was definite. I didn’t want to hurt you if I didn’t have to.”
I felt every beat of my heart, every pulse of blood as it moved through my body. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what to say.
“A few months ago, when I saw that first article on Abu Ghraib that the AP put out, I just knew I had to go. Images can shift perspectives. They can change opinions and minds. I can’t stand back and trust that other people will do this work, not when I think it’s so important. I told you I was going to leave, Luce. You knew that was my plan eventually.”
And I did. But I don’t think I understood you meant forever. That it wasn’t negotiable. That we wouldn’t work to figure it out together. And even more than that, I wasn’t prepared. On that night especially. It was supposed to be a night of celebration, of happiness, of success. I was flying higher than I ever had in my life. The work I’d done had won an Emmy. And I’d let down my guard. I’d allowed myself to be completely happy.
How could you not have told me what Pete was trying to do? The phone calls you must’ve had? The plans you must have been making? How could you have made that decision without me? It still makes me angry, Gabe, that you didn’t include me. We were a binary star. We orbited around each other. When you decided not to tell me, you changed that, you weren’t orbiting around me anymore, you were circling someone else, something else. As soon as you started keeping secrets, we had no chance.
All at once, tears rushed to my eyes—tears of anger and sadness and confusion and hurt. “Gabe, Gabe,” I said over and over. “How could you?” I finally managed. “How could you not tell me? How could you tell me tonight?”
You reached out to me, and I fought you, pushing your arms away with more strength than I thought I had.
“It would’ve hurt less if I’d known,” I said, “if we’d talked about it. Don’t you understand? We were a team. You cut me out. How could you make plans without me? How could you make plans like that without me?”
You were crying too, snot dripping from your nose to your lip. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I was trying to do the right thing. I didn’t want to hurt you, I’m sorry.”
“But you did,” I choked out. “More than you would have. More than you needed to. It’s like I don’t matter to you at all.”
“That’s not true.” You wiped your nose and then reached for me again.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t touch me.”
“Please,” you said. “Lucy, please.” Now you were crying harder than I was. “I need you to understand. I wish I didn’t want this—I wish I didn’t feel like this is the thing I have to do, the only way I’ll feel whole. I never wanted to hurt you. This isn’t about you.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not about me. But it’s not only about you either. It’s about us. It’s about you destroying us.”
You looked as if I’d slapped you. And I wanted to.
“I’m not—” you said. “It’s not about us, Lucy. It’s really not. It is about me. I need to do this for me. There’s something inside me that’s broken, and this is the only thing that will fix it. I thought you’d understand. You always under—”
But I didn’t understand this time.
“Why can’t you stay?” I interrupted. “What about photographing New York City? There are so many stories here to tell. You were so happy when the New York Times printed your picture.”
You shook your head. “I can do more somewhere else. I can do better work. I can make more of a difference. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. You know what that means to me.”
“I do, but there has to be another way.”
“There isn’t,” you said.
“What about taking trips, but coming back home when they’re done?” I was begging. I knew it, and I didn’t care.
“That’s not how it works,” you said. “Pete said if I want to do this, I have to be all in.”
“Oh, Pete says.” I was furious now. “So you talked to Pete all about this, but not to me.”
“Lucy—” you started.
“You know what?” I said. “Fuck you.” Anger spread to the far reaches of my fingers and toes. I walked to our bed and threw your pillow and the extra blanket onto the couch. “You’re sleeping there tonight.”
“Lucy, we’re not done talking.” The blanket dangled from your fingertips.
“We are,” I said, unzipping my dress and turning out the light.
• • •
OF COURSE, neither one of us slept. I relived the conversation we’d just had over and over in my mind. As much as I hated you just then, I still wanted to walk across the studio and slide in next to you on the couch, to feel the solidity of your body next to mine. You were my comfort and my pain all at once.
At some point later you got up and stood beside the bed. “I have an idea,” you said.
I didn’t respond.
“I know you’re awake,” you said. “I can see your eyes.”
We hadn’t closed the blinds. You were backlit, illuminated by the city lights. It gave you a halo. Fallen angel, I thought.
“What?” I finally asked.
“Maybe . . . maybe you can come with me.” You reached out your hand tentatively in the semidarkness. “Maybe we could figure that out.”
I met your fingers with mine. For a brief moment it made sense. But then my mind focused on what you were asking. It focused on Baghdad. On visas. On apartments. On jobs. “But . . . how?” I asked.
You sat down on the bed, still holding my hand, and shrugged. “We could find a way.”
“But where would I live? What would I do? What about my career, Gabe?” I felt the anger flooding my body again. You were asking me to give up my dreams for you, when you would never do the same for me, wouldn’t even consider compromise, hadn’t even talked to me about it.
You shook your head. “I don’t know,” you sai
d. “But I’m sure people do this. Maybe you could have a different career. You could get a job writing articles and make a difference that way. We could create the words and the pictures together. I should’ve thought of this earlier. It’d be perfect.”
“I thought my dreams weren’t disposable, Gabe,” I said. I loved you. I did. I do. So much. But what you were asking wasn’t fair. And it hurt then—it still hurts now—that you’d made this decision to leave without my input and weren’t willing to think about any alternatives.
“That’s not what I meant,” you said.
I sighed. It was all too much. “Let’s talk about it in the morning,” I told you.
“But—” you started. Then you closed your mouth. “Okay,” you said. But you didn’t move. You stayed put, sitting on the bed. You kept your hand on mine.
“Gabe?” I asked.
You turned to face me. A police car sped by, its flashing lights reflected in your eyes. “I can’t sleep without you, Lucy.”
I felt my tears pool again. “That’s not fair,” I said. “You don’t get to say that. You have no right.”
“But it’s true,” you said. “That’s why you should come to Iraq.”
“Because you’re having trouble sleeping without me next to you in bed?” I pulled my hand out of yours.
“I didn’t mean it literally,” you said. “I meant I love you. I meant I’m sorry. I meant I want you to come with me.” You didn’t get it.
I sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. We both squinted in its harsh light. I saw the pain etched onto your face. You looked raw and vulnerable. Miserable. Lost. Like you did that night at Faces & Names, the night we reconnected. And there it was, my pomegranate seed, that part of you that still makes it so hard for me to turn away. When you show me that vulnerable piece of yourself, it makes me feel responsible. Because we only reveal our true selves to the people we care about most. I think that’s why our relationship jump-started so quickly. We had no barriers on September 11th—we revealed our secret selves to each other right away. And you can’t ever take that back. But that night it wasn’t enough. I needed more from you. I needed understanding and honesty and compromise. I needed commitment. It wasn’t even worth fighting anymore.
I reached for your hand. “I love you, too,” I said, “but I can’t come with you. You know that. Your dreams are there, but mine are here.”
“You were right before,” you said, your voice sounding strangled. “Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
I watched you pad across the apartment, fold your long body onto the couch. I turned out the light and thought of all the reasons it made no sense for me to go with you to Iraq—and the one reason it did: because I couldn’t imagine my life without you.
• • •
WHEN I WOKE UP BLEARY-EYED, with a pounding headache, you were sitting on the couch watching me.
“I know you can’t come,” you said quietly, the moment my eyes were open. “But I promise, we’ll stay in touch. I’ll see you when I come to visit the city. I’ll always love you.” Your voice caught in your throat. “But I need to do this. And the fact that I was ready to throw away your dream—I’m my father all over again, Lucy. I think . . . I think you’ll be better off without me.”
My head throbbed. My eyes burned. And I truly fell apart then; I couldn’t stop the sobs, the shaking, the sounds coming out of my mouth that seemed prehistoric. Expressions of pain coded into our DNA from our preverbal ancestors. You were really leaving. You were really leaving me. I had known this would happen, at some point, but I never let myself imagine what it would be like when it did. And it felt like a nightmare. Like my heart was made of blown glass and someone had thrown it to the floor, shattered it into a million pieces, and then ground their heels into the shards.
The fact that you invited me to go with you, it meant a lot. It always has. But it wasn’t a real offer, not a fully thought-out one. It was a middle-of-the-night apology, an attempt to fix your mistake in not telling me sooner, in keeping secrets, in leaving me out of the process. Though a part of me has always wondered what would’ve happened if I’d said yes. Would it have changed both of our lives completely, or would we still have ended up here, with me in this too-bright room, wishing I were anywhere else, and wishing at the same time that I never had to leave? I guess we’ll never know.
You packed up your stuff that week and left to spend time with your mom before you took off for good. And I sat in what used to be our apartment and cried.
xxii
We never talked about what it was like afterward. I never told you how broken I was. How I looked at the spaces your books left on the bookshelves and couldn’t bring myself to fill them. How I couldn’t eat waffles without crying. Or wear the wooden bracelet you bought me at the street fair on Columbus Avenue—the one we stumbled upon and then stayed at all afternoon, eating mozzarepas and crepes and pretending that we needed a new carpet for our imaginary ski house.
One night, two weeks after you left, I took a bottle of your favorite whiskey down from the shelf above the kitchen sink. You’d left it behind too. I poured myself glass after glass, first over ice, and then when the ice tray was empty, straight. It burned my lips when I drank it, but it tasted like kissing you. And it dulled the pain. For the first time since you left, I slept through the night. I felt like hell the next morning and called in sick to work. But I did it again the next week. And the week after. Making myself go to work, learning how to live with the pain.
There were stores I couldn’t pass and restaurants I couldn’t eat in. I spent a month sleeping on the floor, because all I felt was your absence when I tried sleeping in our bed—and the couch was worse. It reminded me of the night after the Emmys. I donated half my clothing to Goodwill and threw away the posters we had on the walls.
Six weeks after you left, I sat in the almost-empty apartment and called Kate. “I can’t stay here,” I said.
“You shouldn’t,” she answered. “Come stay with me.”
So I packed up the rest of the apartment and I did, for two weeks. Kate helped me sublet the studio and then I moved to Brooklyn. I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a new borough, a fresh start. And even there I had to avoid Bubby’s, where we went to Kevin and Sara’s wedding, and the Red Hook Lobster Pound, where we went to celebrate July Fourth. You were everywhere. We’d only been together for fourteen months, but it was fourteen months that changed my world.
I e-mailed you—do you remember? I didn’t tell you how I was feeling, how I was falling apart. I’m getting a share in the Hamptons with Alexis! Totally last-minute, but it should be fun. I wrote with false cheer. Just saw Ben Folds play on SummerStage—you’d have loved the show. How’s everything going? And then I waited and waited and waited for a response that never came. I kept thinking about how you said we’d keep in touch. How you said you’d always love me. Every time I checked my e-mail, I’d feel a combination of rage and sadness, disappointment deeper than anything I’d ever experienced before. I started letters to you. Diatribes, really. But I threw them all out before I sent them. I was afraid that if I yelled at you across continents, you’d write me off completely, and I’d never hear from you again. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle that.
Looking back now, I know you were hurting, too, trying to move on, find your own path. My note from New York must’ve felt like it had been beamed in from another planet. SummerStage? The Hamptons? I can’t even imagine what you thought when you read that. But then? Then I couldn’t understand how you could ignore me. How one minute you could spin me and kiss me and tell me I made you feel invincible, and then all of a sudden you could disappear.
Two months after you left I got an e-mail from you. The first one since you landed in Iraq. Glad you’re doing well! Things here are crazy. Sorry I didn’t write sooner. It was a hard adjustment, but I love the work. The feature’s done and they’re keeping me
on here for a while. Hope you’re enjoying New York!
I read that e-mail over a hundred times, maybe. It could have been two hundred. I analyzed every word. Every punctuation mark. I looked for the hidden meanings, any insight I could glean into how you were feeling or what you were thinking. Trying to figure out whether you missed me, whether you’d found someone new.
But here’s the thing: There was no subtext, no hidden messages, no secret codes. It was just a quick response sent in a hurry. I’d been waiting two months for nothing. I created a Gmail folder called Disaster and put all your e-mails in there, including that one. I didn’t write back. I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it if you ignored me again.
xxiii
Sometimes I’m told things that I don’t realize are important until much later. That’s how it always seems to be when I talk to my brother—whenever we have any kind of serious discussion, anything more than the everyday How are you and How’s work, it takes me years to understand what he was trying to tell me. A few weeks after you left, Jason called. He was twenty-eight at the time and had been dating Vanessa for about a year. They’d met at the lab—she was working in communications for the pharmaceutical company, and he was trying to develop some kind of targeted cancer therapy that I still only half understand.
“Hey, Lulu,” he said, when I picked up my cell. “I—uh—I wanted to see how you were doing. Mom said things have been pretty rough.”
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes already filling with tears at his concern. “I miss him so much, Jay. I love him and I hate him and it’s just . . . it’s awful.” My voice wobbled on the phone. I wasn’t questioning my decision not to go with you, I felt secure in that, but I’d been replaying the conversations we had over and over in my head, trying to figure out if there was anything I could’ve said that would’ve made you stay. And what it was about me that made you keep secrets. I wondered if you would have acted differently if you were dating someone else. Kate said you probably would have left sooner. I didn’t believe her then, but now I wonder if she was right.
The Light We Lost Page 6