“Whoa, cowgirl.”
I winced. “I know. Nothing ambitious.”
My lack of aspirations was one of many things we used to fight about. The more she’d pushed me to grow up, the more I’d resented her. She wanted grown-up things, like a car and a job with benefits, a wedding, a family. All the things that, to me, represented servitude. Why show up every day to a job that makes you miserable? My parents worked their way into debt, buying shit they didn’t need—windsurfing gear, a camping trailer, whatever—because they needed time away from the office so badly. Why show up at all, I thought. Just be broke. At least you’ll know you chose to be that way.
I got dirtbag tattooed really small on my arm as a joke, and Alison punched me right in the bandage. That tattoo never healed right. She wouldn’t even touch my arm anymore. She broke up with that part of me, and the rest followed.
No surprise, with my attitude, that she left me for someone like Stanley—a developer from San Francisco with his own condo in the new Pearl District. Probably drove a hybrid. Probably drank a lot of kale smoothies. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was part of the new wave of people coming to Portland, gentrifying it. He used words like genuine and aspirational. Before 2006, I’d never even heard of a lifestyle brand, and suddenly my whole city was being marketed back to me and packaged into some kind of authentic experience. I had so many reasons to hate him and people like him. They came in droves, refugees from the Bay Area, and complained about things like the price of avocados or why we didn’t have In & Out Burger.
My favorite bumper sticker says Go Back To California.
“How about you?” I asked. “You don’t have anything better to do on a sunny day like this? You and the hubs?”
“Don’t say that, hubs. It’s awful.” She rolled the cigarette between her fingers. “I don’t know why I smoke these.”
“Because they make you look sexy.”
That made it awkward. Alison dropped the cigarette, and we watched it roll into the crack of the sidewalk, where it smoldered against a bottlecap and a tuft of grass.
“I should go.”
“Al, It was a joke.”
“I know. It’s just—you know.” She put her phone in her purse and stood up.
“What?” I jumped out of my chair. I had this crazy feeling that I was going to tackle her and wrestle her to the pavement so she couldn’t get away. My ears were ringing.
“I can’t talk like that anymore. That’s not how we are.”
“How are we?”
She put her sandal over the cigarette and scraped her foot in a slow arc over the pavement. “You can walk me to my car.”
Her old Volvo station wagon with a dented bumper was around the corner. She still left the windows rolled down. The first time we had sex, it was in this car’s backseat, pulled off the side of the road in a state park on the Oregon coast. It’d been pitch-dark; her skin was slick as silk. Afterward, she’d cried and said she was afraid I would take her for granted. She asked if I was a bad person to trust, and it was a relief to tell her no, not this time, I was trying to be good. I kissed her again and again. Everything about us felt miraculous.
For a while, things went really well. And then they didn’t.
“I’ll see you again soon, okay? I mean it. Pull yourself together.” She got in without touching me, slammed her door, turned up the radio, and pulled into traffic. At least she stuck her hand out the window to wave goodbye. The wedding ring was big and obvious as a shining shield.
Feeling like a fool, I slouched the ten blocks home. I sprawled on top of the covers with my clothes still on. I wallowed in that hungover, disappointed feeling. My mouth was bitter—coffee, smoke.
I called her a few hours later and tried to convince her to come out for a beer.
“That’s a bit much, Jay.”
“I’m sorry, I’m stoned,” I lied, and she pretended to understand.
When Ada came home, she felt my forehead and kissed my nose.
“Feeling better yet?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said. And watched as she heated water for tea.
The First One
Of course I loved Ada. I felt guilty about not loving her more. She invited me to visit over and over, and I said no until she lost her patience and yelled at me and I finally said yes. I came to see her with a huge bouquet of mixed flowers, slightly crushed under my raincoat. After hunting for a vase (Ada didn’t have one), we used half a dozen water glasses clustered in the middle of the kitchen table instead.
I promised her to stay over sometime. To myself, I promised to stop lying about where I was and who I was with. I should probably quit kissing other women. Stop collecting phone numbers. Drink less.
I remembered Ada liked daisies best and the fragile daylilies. The flower-stand girl had surrounded them with a spray of fern fronds. I trimmed the stems short and balanced them in the glasses. I kissed Ada’s neck.
“Friends again?” I asked. She nodded. “You know I’ll come over anytime you want, right?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” I said. Of course I wanted to. I loved her, didn’t I? It was the only thing.
Love and Happiness
Summer. I borrowed Ted’s car and took Ada to one of my old favorite places.
We turned the radio up loud and sang along with the Pixies. It was a Wednesday in June, exactly nine months after we met. Singing was easier than talking. The road absorbed my attention. For a moment I forgot she was with me and let my mind wander. We will wade in the shine of the ever, in the tides of the summer.
“Cool.” Azure, the sky was, and not a cloud in sight. A crow hopped in the gravel by the ditch. I squeezed Ada’s knee. “Did you bring sunscreen? I don’t want you to get sunburned.”
In the Arboretum, I parked, then dashed around the front of the car to open her door for her. I meant to be better.
“You’re already turning pink,” I said, smiling.
“Don’t make fun. You know I can’t help it when I blush.”
My lips brushed the prickly flames in her cheeks.
The path we chose wound in and out of sunny spots around trees that wore brass markers. At first, she wanted to read each one—Himalayan White Pine, Grand Fir, Cedar of Lebanon—but she got tired of it and switched to looking for deer tracks.
“How many evergreens are there?” she asked.
“A lot. There’s an orchard up the hill too.”
Ada sped up so we could walk side by side. “Maybe we should have lunch there or at least sit in the orchard after we’re done picking. I’d rather talk to you than just walk single file.”
“Aren’t you sweet.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “We should take turns carrying the backpack.”
“There’s hardly anything in it.”
A mile in, we found blackberry vines growing in a sunlit ditch and giving off a strong smell of baking pies. The cedars were full of cursing jays.
“Jerks,” I said. “At least they’re not dive-bombing us.” I’d come here with Alison two years ago, and we’d found a broken baby bird in the path, its neck crushed. We buried it by the trail at a spot marked by a tall stalk of Queen Anne’s Lace. Forest Park was one of the few protected parts of Portland. The Arboretum was a place where only the trees changed. As soon as we were away from the car, off the road, a hush settled around us. The sun peeked through the high hedge of evergreens. We could have been the only two people in the city, the only ones left in the world.
I mean, that’s what love is, right? An entire country with exactly the right two people in it.
Ada took a plastic bag from her backpack and started picking, though the biggest berries were out of reach and the ones closer to the ground were already mealy with seeds, spiderwebs, ants. We picked until the sack was so heavy that the ripe berries were cru
shed to jam-colored pulp. A beetle strutted in the dirt.
In the orchard, we sat under an apple tree. There were others, too: pawpaw, quince, persimmon, and pear, planted in the 1930s. I picked a wrinkled fig out of the grass and chucked it down the hill. In a hundred years, maybe this would be the only part of Portland that would look the same. The fruit would still ripen; raccoons could come and eat it. Ada stuck out her fruit-blackened tongue. Her lips were purple. Her shoulders were dappled with fresh freckles. Overhead, the fat bumblebees spun, harvesting nectar. When she was happy, she looked like Alison.
“You’re pretty,” I said. I meant to be sincere. I knew, looking at Ada, how sadly grateful she was for the attention, and my honesty, however passing, was enough to blur the sharp edges between us.
Her fingers moved nervously against my cheek.
“What is it?” I asked.
She kissed me. She whispered I Love You against my lips, her breath as light as wings. She was always extra sweet when I was being my best self.
I blurted, “We should live together. Live with me.”
Ada’s mouth opened, showing blue-rimmed teeth. She wanted this so hard. I wanted those things too, just not with her, and I didn’t understand yet that desire of that kind is not transferable. And you can’t lie about it. I was a lot of things then, but not a good or honest person. All I knew was that I had to move forward, but the harder I tried the more tangled up I felt.
“Please,” I said.
Ada traced my thumbnail with her finger. “Are you sure?” she asked.
I closed my eyes. The moment slipped by like a silk thread, and I grasped at it. I meant to be true. Buy some extra time. A few more months with Ada and I’d be able to feel the way I wanted to. I’d fooled her so far. I kept performing the act we both wanted so badly to believe.
“I’m sure,” I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking.
“Then I’m yours.” She smiled, and I pulled her toward me, onto my lap.
Before then, I didn’t fully understand why people kiss with their eyes closed.
I meant to make her happy. Hold hands, make promises. Wasn’t that what she wanted? More than knowing me, certainly. More than the whole story.
Finally, July
Ada moved in with her crates of magazines and clothes, sorted by color. She brought her collection of mugs from Goodwill, all printed with the names of vacation destinations. Hawaii. Texas. Nashville. Soon, collages covered the walls, the fridge, almost every surface of the apartment. They made the space, somehow, much less ours than hers. Her stacks of magazines crowded the bedroom. In every corner and against the walls, knee-high stacks of glossies waited to be butchered.
Sweating in a camisole, she sat for hours and carved out letters, legs, skyscrapers—whatever caught her eye. She used a rubber mat and an X-Acto knife and would not be tempted away by anything, not even iced coffee.
I watched her work while I fingered the binding of an old Vogue. I had nowhere to sit; her magazines were on the chair, the sofa, even the back of the toilet. “People actually buy this stuff? Crazy.”
“They do,” Ada said. “That shrine I made, hanging by the bathroom? That’s worth at least two hundred bucks.”
“That thing? Really?”
She slapped the X-Acto flat against the kitchen table. Sweat glued a brown curl to her forehead, and her cheeks were full and flushed. “Believe it or not, my art is actually worth something to some people.”
Her cell phone buzzed. She answered it before I could shoot back a response. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings. Too late to apologize. Ada pushed back from the table, went into the other room, and lowered her voice.
I cracked the ice tray over the sink. The fragments immediately melted on my skin. I took a handful of cubes, dropped them into a glass, and waited for the water to run cold. It was supposed to be ninety-five today, but the apartment felt hotter. I heard Ada laugh, then mutter something, then laugh again. I went down the short hall and leaned against the doorway. The ice smelled like the inside of the freezer: stale vegetables, plastic.
“Who is it?” I asked, but she only shook her head.
“I have to go,” she said into the phone and clipped it shut. She was still smiling when she turned to me. “That was Arthur.”
“You haven’t talked to him for ages. What did he want?” The living room was even hotter than the kitchen. The windows were left open, letting in the noise from the street and neighbors. A car honked, and I wondered if it was a secret signal.
“He wanted to hire me for a job. He’s doing more house photography and needs an extra pair of hands.”
“I bet he does,” I sneered. “What does he want your hands for?”
She raised an eyebrow. “We are friends,” she said slowly. “We were talking.”
“Just talking?”
She went back into the kitchen, leaving her phone stuck under a throw pillow. I heard her voice over the running water. “I thought you’d be happy about it,” she said. “You’re always telling me to hang out with other people.”
I put my glass on the coffee table, where it left a watery ring on the laminate. “I think I’ll go out,” I called, reaching for my cigarettes and keys.
“Where?”
She was at the table again, hunched over the open pages. Her scraps of paper were everywhere. She didn’t look up.
“Out. To smoke.” But I knew I could be gone for hours if I wanted. I could come back after the bars closed, when it was quiet and things had cooled down.
As I slid out the door, I glanced at the shrine in its gold-leaf frame. A row of hooked black arms formed unholy rays around a rose-covered blond Madonna. Over her tilted face, a tiny man in a top hat emitted lightning bolts, doves, and typewriter keys. Two hundred dollars, Ada said. Then why was it still in my hallway?
In retrospect, you could say Ada was ahead of her time. She was definitely ahead of mine. The art she made, paper stuff, looked like garbage to me but was actually part of the crafting movement, which ended up being one of the things that put Portland on the cultural map. Her collage was at the intersection of all the things that made my city cool: creative girls, doing things themselves and for each other, by hand, with repurposed materials they’d found and traded. Ada’s art was at the cutting edge of that change, which brought adorable, twee shops to North Mississippi and Division streets, places with ampersands in their names and cute genderqueer clerks who knew all about yarn. Ada was the future. I just refused to see it.
Trying
While Ada sweated out July in our tiny kitchen, I oiled my bike chain and found new bars on the other side of town, usually alone. My journal traveled in my back pocket. I was collecting phone numbers again, meeting women, and also trying to write more poetry. None of my efforts worked out, but that didn’t stop me from trying. More often than not, I found myself lingering by the payphone, trying to work up the courage to call Alison. I knew the number by heart.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” I said. I was at Wimpy’s, which was slated for destruction. The real estate on 21st was too valuable to support a dive bar, so it was getting remodeled and turned into a bro bar, where beefy men in embroidered Ed Hardy shirts tried to buy cosmos for women with bleached highlights and sequins on their jeans. Straight people. They really do ruin everything. I had another week before Wimpy’s closed and I was going to make the most of it.
The bartender—a California blonde with a horsey face—swirled a bottle of blue liqueur in front of the light bulb. Clots of gnats floated in the syrup. “Are you free?”
She sighed. “Just a minute.” I heard a rustle, then a metallic click—a door closing, maybe.
“Still there?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. It thrilled me that she didn’t need me to identify myself. She knew my voice. The bartender mixed a tall cocktail: candied bugs
and tonic water topped with a parasol. She set it by the cash register, cracking jokes with the drinkers at the rack. I pressed the phone against my ear.
“You can’t keep calling me,” Alison said.
I stared down at that week’s pile of free newspapers. On the cover was a thin girl in a bikini and a bear mask jumping on a trampoline. The headline said, Is Portland’s Real Estate Bubble Ready to Burst?
“We haven’t crossed any lines, have we? Just talking about work, our lives. I’m not breaking any rules.” I tried to keep my voice steady. The newspaper headline wavered. “I thought you wanted to be friends.”
“Jay.”
“A friendly drink, that’s all. This bar is great.” The bartender dropped a lit match into the cocktail. The gnats turned to burning spitballs. The tonic water bubbled as though at a full boil. “You’d like it.”
“I’m married, Jay. I can’t just—you know, meet you in bars whenever you want. You have a girlfriend. Who you live with. Quit messing around.”
“I know what I want,” I said, but the receiver clicked, hummed. I stared at the earpiece, then slammed it—once, twice, too hard—into its cradle.
A decade-plus later, I guess I understand why I kept doing this to myself. There’s no unified theory of unhappiness, just alcoholism, and the nature of the illness is that I kept doing the same dumb shit over and over again. I couldn’t help it and I didn’t want to stop because maybe the next time would be different. I wish Alison had changed her number. I wish I’d gone to treatment. But this was all in the past. And at the end, it was my responsibility to quit killing myself.
But I still had a ways to fall. I was almost twenty-four. I knew enough to figure that I didn’t know anything, and that really scared the shit out of me.
Self-Care
I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my socks while Ada rummaged in the closet for more magazines. I was messing around, but Alison liked the attention. I was sure she still liked me. If only I could get her to admit it. Then I might be able to do more than give up on fixing things.
“Are you okay?” Ada asked. “You look sick.”
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