The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky

by Jana Casale

  “Did she win? She should have!” someone commented.

  “No, she couldn’t enter ’cause she’s Canadian. Too bad you have to be American to enter!” someone else responded.

  The girl had made an entry video to a contest she couldn’t even enter. Somewhere along the line of millions of views and a video about her hair, she’d lost perspective. Leda had tried to explain the poignancy of it to John. She showed him a few of the girl’s videos, including the audition.

  “Yeah, I mean, it’s weird,” he said. “But I don’t really get what you mean.”

  “I guess I can’t explain it,” she said. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  He looked back at the video for a second.

  “Not really,” he said before turning away.

  Seven o’clock rolled around and she still didn’t hear anything from him. The jewelry store was closed by now. She tried calling, but he didn’t pick up. She texted him again. “Where are you? I made dinner. It’s getting cold.” She figured he must be in traffic or that maybe things had taken longer than he expected at the store. I’ll give it another half hour, she thought. She watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Seven thirty came and went. By eight o’clock she was worried. She called her mom.

  “John hasn’t come home yet and isn’t answering the phone.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” her mom said.

  “I don’t know. This isn’t like him. Maybe I should call the police.”

  “I think it’s probably a little early for that. Why don’t you wait a bit longer before really worrying.”

  She changed out of her dress and put on PJs. The spaghetti was completely cold, but she didn’t bother to heat it up. She took frantic bites in between checking her phone to see if John had texted. Once it was near ten she called her mom again.

  “Mom, I’m freaking out. What if something happened to him? What if he got in a car accident?”

  “I honestly don’t think that’s the case. Maybe you should text him that you’re going to call the police if he doesn’t answer.”

  An hour after she texted him that she’d call the police, John finally texted. She was still on the phone with her mom when she heard the text.

  “I’m fine. Don’t call the police. I’m sorry,” it said.

  Leda read it to her mom. Her mom sighed. “I think you should go to bed. I don’t know what bullshit game he’s playing with you right now, but you don’t need to be freaking out all night about this. He’s being an asshole.”

  “I just can’t believe he’d do this to me.” She was texting him back as she was still on the phone to her mom.

  “What are you doing?” she texted.

  “Do you know how horrified I am?” she texted.

  “How do I deserve to be going through this right now?” she texted.

  “Leda, just go to bed. Do not stay up and wait for him.”

  “I might have moved out here for nothing. I might have given up grad school for absolutely nothing. I’m an idiot.”

  “You’re not an idiot. Loving someone and wanting to build a life with them is what everyone wants. You’re just trying to be happy.”

  “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

  “That’s why you need to go to bed.”

  She tried to follow her mom’s advice. She brushed her teeth and washed her face. She shut off all the lights in the apartment so that he would see from the outside she’d gone to bed. Her hands were shaking so hard that when she tried to plug her phone in to charge it for the night she could hardly manage it. She lay in bed and closed her eyes. What she wanted more than anything was to just instantly fall asleep, to tell her mind to do something, to do what was best for her, and for her mind to just listen. She could hear their neighbor walking around. He was an extremely nerdy guy in his mid-forties who lived alone and masturbated loudly. Generally, John and she were repulsed by him and would complain to each other about how loud he was late at night, but tonight it was oddly comforting to hear him clanging around in his usual oblivious fashion. It was nice to know someone was there even if it really meant nothing at all.

  At 2:36 a.m. she could hear John at the door. She told herself she would wait in bed. That no matter what he did or said she wouldn’t respond to him, other than “I think you should sleep on the couch tonight,” but as soon as she heard him coming up the steps, she shot up and ran over, her heart leaping at the thought of him actually being in front of her. Will everything be different now that he’s done this to me?

  When the door opened it was immediately apparent where John had been all night. He was drunk. He wavered back and forth in place. His eyes were completely bloodshot.

  “What the hell, John?” she asked him.

  “You don’t know anything.” His speech was slurred in an almost cliché drunken way. She’d never seen him this drunk before. He hardly ever drank and all of a sudden here was this caricature of drunkenness in front of her. It was disorienting.

  “Where the fuck have you been all night?” she said. At this point she knew that there would be no getting through to him, but she still felt she should say something.

  “I want to die.”

  “You want to die because you don’t want to marry me?”

  “I want to die.” He walked past her into the living room and lay down on the floor. She wasn’t sure what to do about it. She grabbed a burrito from the freezer and heated it in the microwave.

  “Here,” she said, and tried to hand it to him. “Eat this.”

  “No, I want to die. Fuck you.”

  She pushed it closer to him. “Eat this and sober up.”

  He took the burrito and took a big bite and spat the bite into the air. “No, fuck you.”

  “Whatever, I’m going to bed. You’re a fucking asshole.” She threw the burrito into the trash and went upstairs to the bedroom. Now she was angry, and it wasn’t so hard to fall asleep.

  The next morning she woke up and tiptoed downstairs. John was asleep on the floor in the same place she’d left him the night before. The bite of burrito was next to his head; other than that the place was spotless, a sad reminder of her misguided hope from the day before. She looked at the clock over the doorway. It was nearly nine. For a second she worried John would be late for work, but then it dawned on her what day it was. The office would be closed for the next two days for fumigation. In happier times she and John had discussed spending the two days off at Lake Tahoe as a sort of mini vacation. How utterly far away that conversation seemed, so remote from reality. To think that I actually thought that there was room for Jet Skiing in my life. She went back upstairs and got dressed as quickly as possible. She put on her clunky arch support sneakers and headed for the door.

  “Leda?” she heard John call.

  She didn’t answer and unlocked the door.

  “Where are you going?” she could hear him say as it shut hard behind her. It was satisfactory to hear the alarm in his voice. Nowhere, you asshole, she thought.

  She walked down around the corner to the bakery and ordered herself a hot chocolate and a muffin. The place was mostly empty. She sat by the window and checked her phone. John had texted seven texts and called four times. It was such a wonderful feeling to see her phone ablaze with his desperation. Most of the texts said things like “I’m sorry” and “I’m such a fuckup” and “Please, you have to forgive me.” He also left a heartbreaking voice mail that even in her anger was difficult to listen to. It went:

  “Please, Leda [sobs]. I love you so much [more sobs]. You are everything to me. Without you I’m nothing. I don’t want to miss you for the rest of my life [more sobs].”

  It was tempting to respond to John, but she promised herself she wouldn’t. She needed a break from everything. She needed for him to know that what he was doing was wrong. She drank half her hot chocolate, finis
hed the muffin, and headed back out on her walk. She didn’t know where she was going exactly, but Noe Valley lent itself to not having anywhere to go, with all its gift stores and little boutiques. Maybe I ended up living here just so that when this horrible, horrible time came I’d have something to do. Maybe it was all leading up to this single moment, she thought. She went into one of the trendy little shops and looked through the knickknacks. A woman with a baby was asking about watches.

  “But with the batteries, do I have to change them often? I just want something easy. Something that I don’t have to worry about,” she said.

  Leda left and went to a clothing store.

  “Can I help you?” the salesgirl asked. She was slender but pear shaped. Her hair was pinned up and she was wearing a dowdy-looking hipster dress, as was the style of the store.

  “Um, no, I think I’m just looking for now, thanks,” Leda said.

  “Okay, well, if I can help, you let me know.”

  I wish to god you could help me, she thought.

  She tried on a blouse and a very skimpy tank top. Neither was flattering. I’m like a sad cow, she thought, and left the store.

  John called her eighteen more times. She tried to refrain from checking her phone as much as possible, but she would have never thought to silence it. She did want to be alone, but there was a difference between being alone and feeling alone and right now the thin separation of the two was the shoestring of her life.

  She stopped in the little Eastern shop that sold mainly jewelry and decorative art. She’d bought a necklace for her mom there at Christmastime, and the woman who owned the shop recognized her.

  “Oh, hello,” she said with a thick accent. “I remember you.” She was an older woman who had the propensity for wearing scarves as elegantly as Leda had ever seen anyone wear a scarf.

  “Hi!” It was so nice to see someone she knew besides John, even just superficially.

  “What can I do for you today? I always remember you. You have such good taste.”

  Leda hadn’t planned on buying anything, but the kind lady and the warm smell of incense, combined with her extreme misery, were not conducive to passing on jewelry. She found an amber bracelet in a case by the window.

  “Could I take a look at this one?” she asked the lady.

  “Yes, of course.” The lady walked over and unlocked the case.

  “This is a very beautiful piece. It’s dark amber. Everyone likes the light, but I like the dark.” She put it on Leda’s wrist and clasped it. “It’s perfect for you with your delicate wrist.”

  Leda looked at the bracelet. How easy it was to assign importance to it. To say to herself, You’ll buy this bracelet and you’ll be someone who is independent and strong and who wears scarves. You’ll be someone who can leave him.

  “I love it. How much is it?”

  “It’s one twenty-five.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  It was nearing noon and she was getting hungry. The thought of sitting alone and eating lunch was depressing, even with her new bracelet. She went into the little used/new bookstore to buy a book to help pass the time during lunch. She was hoping to buy Stag’s Leap; reading a bunch of sad poems about a divorce seemed like exactly what she needed.

  “Do you have Sharon Olds’s new book?” she asked the hipster at the register. She’d seen him there before and never cared for him. He was always making pretentious remarks and touching his beard an unreasonable amount.

  “Umm, you know, actually we don’t.” He was visibly embarrassed that they didn’t. “I’ll make a note of it, though, ’cause we should.”

  “Okay, well, thanks anyway.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” he said, touching his beard. He looked as if he wanted to say something else but didn’t.

  In the end she decided to buy Goodbye, Columbus. One of her professors had once told her that her writing reminded him of Philip Roth’s. She’d been meaning to read his work for a while, and now seemed like the most opportune time to indulge in the idea that her writing was like his.

  She paid for the book and headed across the street to La Boulange. She didn’t much care for the food there, but everywhere else was a place she and John went together, and she didn’t want to deal with it.

  There was an empty seat by the window. She sat down with her grilled cheese and Philip Roth. It felt for a second like she had things together in a weird way. Her whole little world barricaded down at the counter. The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses, she read. This doesn’t sound like my writing at all, she thought.

  The girl to her right was eating a smelly soup and the old man to her left was reading a newspaper. Her sandwich was too rich. It had Brie on it, which up until this moment she hadn’t realized was a completely unacceptable cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich. She glanced out the window and without meaning to look at anything at all, she saw him. There was no way to miss him; it was like a screaming red bolt in the hazy gray mix of strangers. He was crossing the street. His hair was a mess and he looked like he’d been crying. She watched him enter the little shop she’d only just left. Seconds later he was back out again. Then into the shop next door. He was looking for her.

  Her first inclination was to get up and call out to him like she would on any day.

  I’m over here. Let’s have a smelly soup together, she’d say.

  But it wasn’t any day. He walked up the street in and out of a few more shops before disappearing. She leaned forward in her seat to see if she could still see him, but he was gone.

  She spent another twenty minutes or so picking at her sandwich and trying to read before getting up and heading back out. Her intention had been to spend the whole day away from him, but it was only early afternoon and there was already so little left to do.

  In the end, though, it wasn’t boredom that sent her home. It was her ankles. They started aching from all the walking she’d been doing. She sat down on a bench for a little while, but it was no use. She was too close to home to call a cab or take a bus. She’d have to ask John to pick her up.

  When he came and got her, she knew he wouldn’t be saying anything about not wanting to get married. She knew he’d apologize for last night and probably cry. And he did all those things. He hugged her tight and cried and cried and made all kinds of promises to her about never hurting her again. He said, “I love you so much” and “I can’t lose you, ever.” The rest of the night she iced her ankles and watched Big. Of course she’d seen it many times, but it was great to watch it with John that night. To shut off their minds and laugh at something as familiar and remote as Tom Hanks in 1988 eating baby corn like it was corn on the cob.

  The next two weeks John was the sweetest he’d ever been. He told her how much he loved her all the time and brought her cute little thoughtful gifts each day. It was nice at first. They had been fighting for so long that it was great to have a respite from all the worry and sadness, but at a certain point she realized something that she’d never thought was possible: she had started to hate him. He’d come home from work and be funny and sweet and himself the way she always knew him, and she realized she just didn’t care about it anymore. I hate you, she’d think as he’d spread peanut butter on a slice of bread. The things he’d said about not wanting to get married had damaged them. His getting drunk and coming home and falling over and spitting burrito into the air had damaged them. Here she’d been trying so desperately to hold on to what they had, and to make things work, and to keep everything together, but without realizing it, she’d already started to move on. There would be no way to stay even if she wanted to. And that’s when she knew what had to be done.

  As far as she was concerned, it was inevitable that John would go back to saying he didn’t want to get married. She knew that nothing had really changed. She knew that all she had to do was wait and before long he’d say something abou
t Colorado or not getting to do the things he wanted or some other miserable bullshit thing that would rip into her and make her feel like death. It was only a matter of time.

  And of course she was right. Monday morning she woke up to a text that said, “I’m still really not ready to get married even though I do really love you.” It was simple and to the point. Another girl might have thought it was thoughtful and fair. Another girl might have said to herself that she should give it more time and not push him, but Leda knew she wasn’t that girl. She got up from bed and took a quick shower. She threw on a tank top and a fresh pair of underwear and with easy, fast motions she started packing up a suitcase. At first she was shaking a bit, but after a while it felt cathartic. She moved faster and faster. Folding shirts. Rolling up pants. She knew she couldn’t easily take everything back to Boston with her, but she figured filling two big suitcases would be enough for now. She looked at her bookshelf and pulled off a Miranda July book she’d just started and an Amy Tan book she’d been meaning to read. She didn’t take the Noam Chomsky. After a while her ankles started hurting so she put on her big, clunky support sneakers, and there she was in underwear and support sneakers filling her fragile little life into bags. How easily it all just fits in, she thought. After packing up she had a late lunch and watched TV. She didn’t bother to get dressed. John got home fairly early, but even so she was ready for him. When she heard the sound of the car pulling up, she went to the bedroom and sat on the bed beside her suitcases. John walked in and called out for her. She hadn’t texted him back all day so she knew he’d be worried.

  “I’m in here,” she said.

  He came into the bedroom and looked at the suitcases. “Leda, what’s going on?” he said. “I’m so sor—”

  “Look, John, let me explain something to you. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to marry me. Every time you say the stuff you do, it makes me hate you. I want to stay with you. I love you, and I wish I could stay, but I just can’t stay with someone who says stuff like that to me. If you say one more thing about not wanting to marry me, or not being ready, whatever it is that doesn’t equal you and me getting engaged, I will get on the next plane home and you will never hear from me again. I can’t do this. Even if I want to, I can’t, and I won’t.”