Self-awareness is a slippery thing, though, when you find yourself at odds with a “supposed to” in life. I understand that I am supposed to want to marry Andrew. That some women wait their whole lives to stand before a bended knee or fantasize about a sparkly stone that silently announces to the world, See, someone loves me. Someone picked me. That some women dream of that choreographed first dance with their new husband before the crowd erupts into a vigorous “YMCA.”
Or, better yet, that almost all of us want someone to be our very own partner in crime, to drive us home from the airport, to cheer when we succeed, and to hold our hair when we vomit. And if I am honest with you, I do want that, in one form or another.
But getting married? To Andrew? ’Til death do us part? I can’t do it. I would be nothing more than a fraud, a pretend grown-up, a con artist playing the role of bride. I don’t even want to spend the rest of my life with me. How can Andrew? And how do you explain to someone you love that you can’t give yourself to them, because if you did, you’re not sure who you’d be giving? That you aren’t even sure what your own words are worth? You can’t tell someone that, especially someone you love. And so I don’t.
Instead, I do the right thing. I lie.
“Well, I guess that’s it, then,” Andrew says to me now, his voice barely audible over the jukebox. His tone is hard and resigned, without even a hint of pleading. He handles this like a professional. Clinical acceptance.
“I’m sorry.”
Andrew just nods, as if he is suddenly sleepy and his head is too heavy a burden to carry.
“I want you to know I care about you a lot,” I say, like I am reading from a book on how to break up with someone. I even have the nerve to add “It’s not you. It’s me.”
Andrew lets a strangled laugh escape. I have finally provoked him. He has moved from confusion to sadness and now, finally, to what I am most comfortable with, anger.
“You’re fucking right. It is you, Em. Don’t you worry. I know that this is all about you.” He grabs his jacket and is about to leave. I want to stop him, to prolong this terrible moment before finality. But there is nothing left to say.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, as he throws some bills onto the table. “I really am.” This takes the air out of the moment, and the tightness in his shoulders softens at the sound of my words.
“I know,” he says, and his eyes bore into mine. Surprisingly, they are not filled with anger or sadness or love, but with something that looks a hell of a lot like pity. Andrew clears his throat, kisses me on the cheek, and walks calmly out of the restaurant.
Within seconds, he gets absorbed into the swell of Third Avenue. And it is me who is left sitting alone, watching the door and chewing on the bones of his leftover hot wings.
I walk the twenty blocks to my apartment, and it helps to clear my head. The air tingles in my nose, another hint that autumn will soon relieve summer. I take Madison Avenue and watch the crowds savoring the last few moments of the long weekend and the season, sitting with shiny cocktails on makeshift street-level patios. I envy them their last taste of freedom before the workweek. For a moment, I consider stopping for a cosmopolitan at a swanky bar; maybe I can pretend to be one of them, in camouflage, and postpone feeling anything for another hour or two.
Instead, I keep going. I focus on the street numbers as I walk; the counting slows my pulsing thoughts. Fourteenth, you did what you had to do. Thirteenth, we were never meant to be. Twelfth, this is my fault. Eleventh, I did this. I find comfort in the rhythm and that I’m solely responsible for how things turned out. I know I let the relationship go too far. I should have said my good-bye months ago, when it would have hurt both of us less, long before I was steered in front of a jewelry-store window. At least, I reason, at the very least, I took back control. Tenth, things are under control. Ninth, you will be fine. Eighth, he would have left anyway, sooner or later. He would have left you anyway.
When I get to my building, Robert, my doorman, ushers me inside. He is in his early seventies, with a comically white head of hair and matching beard. He looks like a benevolent God or Santa Claus and has the same tendency to meddle. Robert’s constant presence, even his rapid-fire questions, soothes the tenants of the building, which is filled with mostly studios; we know that someone will be there when we get home, that someone will ask how our day was, that someone will notice if we don’t come back at all.
“Where’s your other half tonight?” he asks.
“Staying at his place.” He smiles at me and steps out of the way so I can get into the empty elevator. “Have a good night.”
“Good night, Emily.”
From now on, my day will end right here. Right at the front door. Robert’s is the last voice I will hear most evenings. His is the last face I will see.
Two
The first time Andrew laughed in his sleep, I should have woken him and broken up with him right then and there. No one deserves to be that happy.
Instead, though, I curled my body around his, pushed my belly tight against his back, and absorbed the vibrations. I had hoped that whatever made him that free, that pure, was contagious. It wasn’t.
When I sleep through the night, I dream in black and white. I see images of men chasing me through circular mazes, of getting sucked into an envelope shaped gutter, of disappearing into a crowd at Times Square. Some days, my anxiety dreams are prosaic, the kind that have all been dreamt before: teeth falling out, showing up at work naked, screaming until my throat dries up. Even the steamy ones can turn on me, switching genres from romance to noir. In those dreams, I stand up after passionate sex with a stranger, let cigarette smoke billow out a darkened window, and contemplate the person I have forgotten and wronged.
I don’t always have nightmares. Sometimes the night brings only sweet relief. But I can tell you this: I may have laughed at my dreams, the next morning mocking their high-school-level special effects or grade B porn, but I have never laughed in my sleep. I am just not that happy.
Last night, I lay in the middle of my queen-size bed in an effort to reclaim the space, to eliminate any evidence that it was once split into sides. I erase the crease Andrew left behind just twelve hours earlier by making vigorous snow angels on the ivory sheets. Sleep never had a chance.
The alarm goes off at eight a.m., and I drag myself out of bed. A quick glance in the mirror confirms what I already know—I look like crap. I have shiny dark circles under my eyes, as if someone attacked me with a purple Crayola marker. My stomach feels raw and empty. You did this, I tell myself. You are not going to start feeling sorry for yourself now. Get over it.
I dress in my favorite black suit, which always feels like a costume, its thin pinstripes elongating my body, the cut managing to be both professional and sexy. When I put it on, I transform suddenly into the comic-book character that Andrew and I used to call, in unison falsetto, “SuuuperLawyer.” I wear it today for that extra boost.
My commute seems strangely solitary. The number 6 train, normally packed by the time I get on at Bleecker Street, holds only two other people: a homeless guy, with ink-stained fingers and a pile of newspapers on his lap, and a young woman in a skirt and sneakers, reading Harry Potter. Neither looks up when I take my seat.
The train lets me out at Grand Central, and I walk two more blocks to my building, a skyscraper that looks much like its neighbors and has thousands of small windows that do not open. They seal them to keep people from jumping.
I flash my security badge at Marge, the guard at the turnstile. She is about six foot one, both in height and width, her biceps and thighs indistinguishable. A human palindrome. Her face, too, has an eerie symmetry, with features that form parallel lines; her eyes, set too close to the nose, mirror her lips—thin, wide, and cinched in the middle. Every day, Marge wears a navy-blue polyester suit that pulls around her back, steel-toed boots, and hot-pink lipstick, the latter probably purchased to fight a rapidly approaching or recently arrived middle age. I wish I had Marge’s presenc
e. When she walks into a room, I imagine people notice. This is a woman, they think, who can kick my ass in ten seconds or less. This is a woman, they think, whose makeup wouldn’t even smear.
I have walked past Marge at least twice a day, five days a week, for the last five years, more than 2,600 times in all—I once did the math—and she has not once wished me a good morning. When I first started at Altman, Pryor and Tisch, it was dehumanizing, somehow, that our daily encounter would go unacknowledged, and it became my mission to get Marge to notice me. It was one way to make my work life more interesting, since the rest of my hours were spent locked in a conference room reviewing millions of accounting documents for a fraud case. Some of my male colleagues, I found out from my friend Mason, would numb their own pain by masturbating in the bathroom. I now, of course, avoid shaking hands in the office.
Marge seemed like a more appropriate project. I was trying to carve out my own, friendlier New York. My tactics were harmless. I tried smiling and using her name, complimenting her hair. I even tried poking her once. I admit that was a mistake.
Despite my valiant effort, though, Marge has never said a single word to me. Never even smiled at me. I like to believe this is because she was trained at Buckingham Palace and that, should she speak, she would have a posh British accent, and not the rough Brooklynese of the other guards.
I like to believe it is her civic duty to stare straight ahead.
After about a year, I finally gave up my crusade. I just ran out of energy. New York seems to do that to people; it finally wears you down until you do things its way. I now simply nod at Marge when I walk by and imagine that she feels something resembling maternal affection for me.
When I get to my office, Karen, my secretary, has already left twelve messages on my chair, with a Post-it note that says Good Luck!!!! Four exclamation points, one for each message from a notoriously difficult partner, Carl MacKinnon, demanding to know why I did not respond to his six e-mails over the weekend. I write him a quick passive-aggressive message that is far less deferential than usual.
I just don’t have it in me today to bend over.
To: Carl R. MacKinnon, APT
From: Emily M. Haxby, APT
Subject: HOLIDAY weekend
Accidentally left BlackBerry in office over the weekend, so I did not get all of your e-mails until this morning. In answer to your urgent questions, our hearing date on the Quinn matter is August 29, 2010, approximately two years from now. And, no, I have not yet started preparing.
From: Carl R. MacKinnon, APT
To: Emily M. Haxby, APT
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY weekend
Emily, you have been with the firm long enough to know that “accidentally” forgetting your BlackBerry is an unacceptable excuse. See me in my office at noon. We have issues to discuss.
A few years ago, Carl’s e-mail would have reduced me to tears; today, I laugh it off. If he wants to fire me at noon, it will be a blessing.
From: Emily M. Haxby, APT
To: Mason C. Shaw, APT
Subject: FW: Re: HOLIDAY weekend
Oops. Mason, can you please get Marge to go kick Carl’s ass? I bet she would let you watch.
To: Emily M. Haxby, APT
From: Mason C. Shaw, APT
Subject: Re: FW: Re: HOLIDAY weekend
Will do. But from what I hear about Carl, I think he might enjoy it. He’s the kind of guy who likes a good spanking.
Lunch Thursday?
Thank God for Mason. At four o’clock in the morning—when I am drowning in a pool of deposition transcripts and haven’t gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep over the course of the week—Mason is the one who trots out well-worn imitations of the senior partners to keep me laughing. He manages to make the absurdity of our daily existence at APT an endless source of entertainment, magically manipulating tedium into a form of sport. Mason’s the type of guy who exploited the small victories of high school—simultaneously captain of the football team, student-body president, and deflowerer of the entire cheerleading squad—but instead of peaking like so many homecoming kings of yesteryear, he continued to pillage all the way to graduating first in his class at Stanford Law School. He’s a serial monogamist with a short attention span, which means he always has a girlfriend but never for long enough that I need to remember her name. They are usually interchangeable, anyway: blond and silicone and placated by shiny objects. They demand little and get less. I am not sure Mason and I would have crossed paths and become friends outside the bizarre snow globe of law-firm life, but now that we have, he’s a keeper.
To: Mason C. Shaw, APT
From: Emily M. Haxby, APT
Subject: Re: Re: FW: Re: HOLIDAY weekend
If I still have my job on Thursday, we’re on. If not, you’re buying.
Before I have time to respond to my other work messages and dig out of the big hole I created for myself by not checking e-mail this weekend, Kate swings by my office and pokes her head in the door frame. Her hair is pulled back into a tight chignon with a thin headband, and her tailored shirt is tucked in and belted. Everything kept in its place. Her look is softened, though, by the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes; somehow, the lines manage to make her look younger, playful even.
“Em,” she whispers. “What have you done?”
At first I think she is talking about my lie to Carl, and I feel a shot of fear that I actually may be fired. How did she know so quickly? How will I pay rent? But then I remember last night and see the hurt look on her face, like I broke up with her and not Andrew.
“I guess good news travels fast.” My flat voice belies my smile.
“Andrew called Daniel last night.”
“Ah.”
Kate sits down across from me and kicks the door closed with her spike heel. “I’m worried about you, Em. I don’t get it.”
“I know. I’m not so sure I get it either.”
“But you guys were happy.”
“I guess. Sometimes. Us getting married though? Not a good idea.” Kate’s eyebrows crunch together, and she looks at me, really looks at me, like she is not sure who I am all of a sudden.
I’m still here. I’m still me, I want to say, but I don’t, because I am not surprised by her reaction. I knew she would be upset, mad at me even, for breaking up with Andrew, since she was the one who brought us together in the first place. Kate had arranged our blind date under the theory that it made sense to seal the friendship gap, that it was only logical that one of your best friends and one of your fiancé’s best friends would be a perfect fit. She wasn’t half wrong.
When Kate first came up with the idea to set us up, she described Andrew as a “great catch,” which instantly made me reluctant to meet him. Though everyone I knew seemed to be either settling down or looking to settle down, I was never on a deep-sea fishing expedition to find a boyfriend. And a “great catch,” well, that seemed to be begging for heartache.
Though Kate didn’t believe me, I liked being alone. As an only child of easily distracted parents, I have never had trouble entertaining myself. Preferred things that way. When I was kid, even before my mother died and I retreated into my bedroom and Sharpied the words GO AWAY onto the door, I spent much of my time tucked away in tight corners reading Nancy Drew mysteries, a place where kids seemed smarter and more capable than grown-ups. I barely noticed when my parents blew kisses on the way out the door to cocktail parties, unfazed by their desire to enter a world where I didn’t meet the height requirement. As an adult, I haven’t changed all that much.
But to be fair, Kate was absolutely right; Andrew was a catch. Irresistible, if I had been inclined to resist him, which I wasn’t. He checks off all of the boxes: He is smart, successful, and funny. He is good-looking, but not scarily so. His left eye dips just a tad lower than the right, and he has this endearing way of cocking his head to the side to even them out. He always takes out the garbage, changes the toilet-paper roll, cleans the hair from the shower drain. Su
re, he leaves his toenails behind on the coffee table, consistently runs twenty minutes late, and secretly enjoys Internet porn, but I have no doubt that he will make a wonderful husband to some lucky wife. The truth is, he would have been wasted on me.
“Andrew really liked you. He told Daniel. You did well,” Kate reported to me after our first date. As if the date was a performance and I had gotten good reviews. And later, when Andrew and I had officially become a couple, Kate would gloat about her matchmaking abilities. I now feel guilty for tarnishing her reputation. She had wanted to put a marriage on her résumé, and she would have been excited about being one of my bridesmaids. She actually likes that kind of stuff; her smile is eerily unaffected by the prospect of head-to-toe taffeta. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had already ordered me a T-shirt that says Mrs. Warner on the back.
“Em, please just tell me why,” she says, and suddenly, with all of the strength I have left in my body, I want to make my friend understand. I am just not sure how. I am not sure I even understand.
“I don’t know why. I just couldn’t see myself as Mrs. Warner. Or Mrs. Haxby-Warner. Or whatever I would be called. I can’t marry him, Kate. I can’t. I’m not sure I would still be me if I did.” I concentrate on doodling empty hearts on my legal pad. “Whoever the hell that is.”
“You don’t have to change your name.”
“I know that. It’s not about my name.” I start drawing large bouquets of flowers, making circling loops for the petals.
“But I don’t get it. He hasn’t even asked you yet. You guys don’t have to get married right now, if you’re not ready.” She glances at her ring and covers one of her hands with the other.
“I’m never going to be ready, though. Andrew is great. We both know that. But it’s just not enough. I can’t become his other half. You know what I mean?” I ask, though I know she does not. She has never had to question things between her and Daniel. She has always just known. Kate’s charm lies in her placid consistency.
The Opposite of Love Page 2