“I think our relationship was like communism,” she says, which makes me wonder if this isn’t her first drink this evening.
“We were good in theory. Not so much in practice.” She snorts at her own joke and spills some of the drink on her sweatshirt.
“But what happened?” I ask again, but Kate doesn’t respond. Instead, she just stares at the empty television screen. “What caused the Berlin Wall to fall? Who took the first sledgehammer? Kate?”
“It was all a sham. That’s it. We were a sham,” she says, and crosses her arms. She leans back, as if amazed by a sudden breakthrough. “I mean, imagine if the Berlin Wall was made of Legos. No, what’s that game where you take a log from the bottom, and you put it on the top, and whoever makes the tower of logs fall loses?”
“Dominoes?” I ask. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“No.” Kate slams her drink down on my coffee table.
“Uh, Boggle? Clue?”
“No! Jenga!” she says, and throws her hands in the air. “Thank God, that was going to drive me crazy. Anyhow, the point is, we were like that. Built on nothing but a couple of moving logs.”
“But you were built on more than logs or bricks or whatever.”
“If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, then it must be a duck, right? But we weren’t a freaking duck.” Kate’s hysteria creeps up a notch as she pellets me with metaphors. “We looked like one, and we acted like one, but we weren’t one.”
“What were you, then? If not a duck.”
“Jenga. We were Jenga.” She says this calmly now, like it makes perfect sense and like I am an idiot for not following. “The game with the unstable logs.”
Instability I get. In fact, we are sitting at the very place I had my own mental breakdown. I briefly wonder if there is something about this couch that makes people go insane and whether a trip to Ikea is in order. Then I remember I am unemployed and can’t pay for a new one.
“Okay, so you and Daniel were like Jenga and not ducks. I kinda get it. But what really happened? What’s going on, Kate?” I ask her, because it is time to cut the bullshitting. We need to talk about this.
“I just realized I was marrying him for all of the wrong reasons. I thought if we looked and acted like the real thing, we’d become the real thing. But we didn’t. We weren’t like you and Andrew. We weren’t meant for each other.”
“But Andrew and I broke up.”
“I know, but that’s not because you weren’t meant for each other.” She blows her nose loudly into her tissue. It sounds like a bell.
“We’re not?” I am lost again, but this time it’s a grammatical problem. That damn double negative gets me every time. Is she saying Andrew and I are meant for each other? Or is she saying that we’re not? And the Berlin Wall was symbolic of the fall of communism, right?
“You and Andrew broke up because you’re screwed up and probably a little bit crazy, not because the two of you aren’t meant for each other,” she says matter-of-factly, and then pats my hand. As if I am the one who showed up at her apartment at two-thirty in the morning ranting about children’s toys. “And I mean that in the nicest way.”
“This is not about me.”
“I mean, on the surface we have so much in common, and Daniel has all the qualities I’ve always said I wanted. You know, he’s funny and smart and stuff. But really, I’m not sure that I even like him that much. The guy waxes his eyebrows. How can I marry a man who waxes his eyebrows?”
“Well, think of the alternative. You don’t want to marry a unibrow.”
“True,” she says, as if she is reconsidering the entire breakup. She shakes her head to release the thought.
“But it’s not about the hair, Emily. I guess I figured I should marry Daniel because he showed up at the right time. I’m thirty-four, and I’m supposed to want to get married, especially because if I want to have babies I need to get started soon. But I guess I just realized that doesn’t mean I should settle for the wrong man.”
“But you both like lofts,” I say, apropos of nothing. I realize I am grasping at something to hold on to here, but I had thought Kate loved Daniel. I never considered the possibility that their relationship was a carefully constructed facade.
“Listen to this. Tonight he didn’t get home until after midnight. Didn’t call or anything to say he was going to be late. It turned out he had drinks with some clients and didn’t have cell reception in the bar. Totally not a big deal, right? But here’s the point. While I was sitting at home waiting for him, I was convinced he was cheating on me, and you know what my first reaction was?”
I shake my head.
“Relief. Can you believe that? I felt relief because if he was cheating on me, as horrible as that would be, it would have made everything clear. I would have no choice but to leave him. I actually wanted to have no choice. And that’s why I finally ended it. I realized today that it’s exhausting to be a coward.”
“Kate, I want to tell you something. You are my fucking hero.”
“But you’re not listening to me. It’s all over. I’m going to grow old alone and have a zillion cats. I’m not a hero. I’m a loser.” Kate starts to cry now, deep sobs into the tissues.
“No, you’re my fucking hero. Because you’re brave. You actually have the courage to go after what you want. You’re not settling just because the rest of the world tells you to. You know how few people can actually say that they live by their own rules? The rest of us just walk around afraid all of the time and do things because we assume we have no other choice.” She looks at me, with a half smile on her face.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Let me ask you this. Do you love Daniel?” I want to make sure this is not just premarital jitters.
“Yes and no. I mean, I care about him a lot. He is a huge part of my life. But do I love him, love him? Death-do-us-part love him? I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Kate rests her head on the arm of the couch. “Maybe I am just crazy. Maybe I’ve gone bonkers.”
“Is this because he’s not perfect? Because no one is.”
“No. Other than his stupid eyebrows, there isn’t anything I actively dislike about him. He is sort of perfect,” she says, and shrugs.
“When you come home and he’s there, are you happy to see him?”
“Sometimes, but most of the time I kinda wish he would go away.”
“If he needed one of your kidneys would you give it to him?”
“Absolutely not.” She says this without a moment’s hesitation.
“If I needed one of your kidneys would you give it to me?” I ask, taking advantage of the fact that she is in no condition to lie.
“Absolutely,” she says, and then starts to cry all over again. “Does that mean you and I should get married? Am I a lesbian? I never considered the possibility. Maybe I am. Damn it. Is that what this is all about?” I try to keep a straight face.
“Kate, you’re not a lesbian, not that there’s anything wrong with it.”
“Do you think being a lesbian will help my chances or hurt my chances of making partner?” I can’t suppress the laughter, because for the first time tonight, I see some semblance of a Kate I recognize.
“You are not a lesbian, so I don’t think this will affect your partnership chances one way or the other. And thanks for the kidney, by the way. Seriously, that means a lot to me.” And it does. I realize that although I may be an only child, I have some sisters in this world. I’d give you a kidney too, Kate.
“You did the right thing. Calling off the engagement, I mean. You shouldn’t spend the rest of your life with someone you don’t really want to come home to every day.” I say this with authority, like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t think Kate should marry Daniel. Not anymore.
“He doesn’t pass the kidney test,” she says, as if the matter is settled. “Giving him my kidney doesn’t even sound good in theory. Our relationship is actually worse than communism.”
; “What did Daniel say when you told him?” I ask a couple of hours later. We are still on the couch, and I have replaced Kate’s Jack and Coke with a cup of tea. She is going to have enough to deal with tomorrow without a hangover.
“He got really concerned about all of our deposits. You know, like how much money we put down to rent the hall, and the band, and the flowers. He actually took out a pad and started adding it up.”
“How does that make you feel?” This is a line I picked up from Dr. Lerner, and I’m curious to see if it works outside the psychologist’s bat cave.
“Better, to be honest. It makes me feel like he was in it for the wrong reasons too. I mean, if his biggest concern when I told him we’re not getting married was how much money he was going to lose, then he couldn’t really want to spend the rest of his life with me, right?” I wish I had an answer for her. I don’t know. I don’t know how this works.
“I wish I could tell you, but I am not the best judge of character. I thought you guys were happy.”
“We weren’t unhappy. Just not happy happy, you know?”
“I know.” I close my eyes for a minute and think about how much of our lives are wasted pretending.
“I’m scared to death.”
“Yeah, but maybe sometimes you need to do what’s scariest in order to get to where you need to be.”
“I know you’re right.” I see that Kate is starting to get sleepy. She asks me to wake her in a couple of hours because she has to go home and change before going into the office. Her inexorable march to partnership will continue tomorrow, right on through the holiday weekend, and I hope that work will provide her with a welcome distraction. For just a little while at least.
“Hey, Emily,” Kate says, after I kiss her good night on her forehead.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for being here.”
“Anytime. It’s a small price to pay for a kidney.”
When I finally get back into bed, I no longer dream of Grandpa Jack and Andrew playing strip poker. Instead, I dream I am in a hospital bed, my arms black and blue from an IV drip. I look up and see a bunch of people crowded around me, a circle of heads around a hanging lamp. I can’t make out their faces because it is too bright, but I can hear voices talking about me.
“Her organs are no use to us after all,” the doctor says. “I have never seen a patient with so few parts. There aren’t even spares.”
“What do you mean?” Andrew asks. He is dressed in his scrubs and has a stethoscope around his neck. He looks like a doctor, not a boyfriend.
“I mean, she’s, uh…well, take a look for yourself.” The doctor pulls off my gown with a dramatic sweep of his hand, and I feel my skin exposed to the crowd. I want to ask what is going on, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. Only the desperate silence of nightmares.
“She’s hollow,” Andrew says excitedly, as if he doesn’t know me and I present an interesting medical mystery. “Look at those marks. I think she must have done it to herself.”
I hear the high-pitched screech that means that I am flatlining, the sound of death on every E.R. episode. Well, that’s it, then, I think. I am dead. Death by disembowelment.
But, of course, I’m not dead. And when I wake up and realize that the terrible noise is coming from my alarm clock, I am disappointed. I wanted to find out what happens next.
Twenty-five
The dream haunts me for the rest of the day, the week even, and makes my insides ache. I can’t handle the idea that I have become nothing to Andrew, just another slab of meat on a surgical table. I can’t handle that I’ve brought this all on myself, that I’ve lost him for good. Before, when I thought of us, I felt only an emptiness—a low electric hum—but now, suddenly, it’s like a buzz saw, an ocean in my veins, the splitting of stitches. I never wished he wasn’t there when I came home, never thought we could be reduced to mere artifice. We lacked durability, maybe, but not real intimacy.
It hurts to realize he must be moving on with his life. Though Kate claims she doesn’t know if he is dating again, I imagine he must be. Andrew is a guy who operates in absolutes. His good-bye was good-bye for real. And his proposal would have been for life.
I am not sure if writing to Andrew is a smart idea and consider waiting until next week’s appointment with Dr. Lerner to talk about it. Last time, we were so busy deconstructing Thanksgiving, we ran out of time before we could get to Andrew. But since I don’t want to be the type of person who can’t make a decision without her therapist, and mostly because I don’t want to give her the opportunity to tell me not to, I sit down at the computer and write Andrew an e-mail.
To: Andrew T. Warner, [email protected]
From: Emily M. Haxby, [email protected]
Subject: Hey There
Hey, A. Grandpa Jack said you visited him last week. If you did, I just wanted to say thank you. I know he appreciates the company, and the fact that he remembered at all says a lot. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.
Also, thought you should know that I think about you all the time and that I miss you.
Love always,
E
I don’t stop to consider whether I sound like a stalker or to read it over for typos. I just hit send and let my e-mail fly across Manhattan, and this time I picture it like a ball in a massive pinball game, dodging cabs and people to make it uptown, all that work just to score a point. Maybe Andrew will bounce it back, spurred on by its kinetic energy, and we will go back and forth like that for a while, the machine buzzing, the two of us finally communicating, connecting. But, instead, I hit the ball and it sinks right into the back left pocket, and I see that the game-over light is flashing. I already know that with Andrew, I am out of chances.
Five minutes later, I see I have new mail.
To: Emily M. Haxby, [email protected]
From: Andrew T. Warner, [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hey There
Went to visit Grandpa Jack for me. Not you. Thought I should say my own good-byes.
Emily, I don’t know how to say this nicely, I am not sure there is a nice way to say this, so I will just say it:
Please stop contacting me. Please just leave me alone.
—A
I deserve this. I realize that. I deserve tears, and pain, and loss, because I did it. I broke us. And so all I can do is write Andrew a one-sentence reply on my screen:
I would give you my kidney.
All I can do is not hit send.
Twenty-six
Today, Dr. Lerner wears a kimono. It is woven from pink silk, and the sleeves hang long and loose. Her office is dark again, but I have seen Dr. Lerner enough times now to say with certainty that her ethnicity has never once matched her costume. Her features, though, are still indistinct and shifty. Sometimes, when her hair is pulled back and covered, I am convinced she is old enough to be my grandmother. Right now, it hangs in brown waves around her face, and I wonder if she might be still shy of forty.
“I saw my mom today,” I say as soon as I sit down on her couch.
“And tell me about that.” Dr. Lerner doesn’t take the bait. Instead, she waits patiently for a response, as if I could have a perfectly good explanation for seeing my mother after she has been dead for fifteen years. Like I am perfectly sane.
“Okay, I didn’t actually see my mother. What I mean is, I thought I saw my mother, which happens fairly frequently, actually. I will be on a subway or in a store or wherever, and I’ll think I see my mom.”
I attempt to fold my legs in imitation of Dr. Lerner. I settle on a half lotus, because my left side won’t cooperate.
“Go on,” she says.
“Well, it’s usually something small that triggers it. Like some woman’s hair or an ear or the way pants fall, and for a moment, just one moment, I am convinced that that woman is my mother. And then I churn out an elaborate story about how my mother could still be alive. So that it makes sense that my mother is on the Six train with me or somet
hing. Fucked up, right?”
“Totally fucked up,” Dr. Lerner says, as if she doesn’t think it is fucked up at all. “Tell me what happened today.”
“I was standing on a corner at a stoplight—the northeast corner of Twenty-third and Third, to be exact—and I noticed this woman standing just in front of me. And for some reason there was something about her eyelashes or the shape of her eyes, and I thought, for just a second—it couldn’t have been more than a second—Could this be my mother? I mean, maybe after fifteen years she would look different, right? I came up with some stupid story to make myself believe it. And then I stopped, because I realized I was being ridiculous, and the moment passed and I went and bought myself some new underwear because I hate doing laundry.”
“Tell me about the stupid story you came up with and how it made you feel,” she says, putting air quotes around “stupid story,” and hands me a tissue box even though I’m not crying. I take it just in case she knows something I don’t.
“It’s really embarrassing. But this time I came up with the idea that maybe that day in the hospital when I saw her die was all an elaborate hoax. Maybe my mother got mixed up in some nasty Mafia business or something and is now in the witness-protection program.” I feel silly—worse, pathetic—as soon as I hear the words out loud. Somehow, for just a millisecond, they had seemed plausible in my head. “You know, because there are tons of English teachers in Connecticut who are secretly mixed up in the Mafia.”
“But how did it make you feel? That’s the interesting part, that’s the part we can learn from, and you seem to want to avoid it.”
I start tossing the tissue box in the air. Catch and release. “Okay, how did it make me feel?” I toss the box up and down a few more times, watching its vertical spin.
“Yes, Emily, how did it make you feel?” She catches the box mid-toss and sets it back down on the couch next to me.
The Opposite of Love Page 18