Alone With You

by Marisa Silver

  Marie thought how language was the real victim of mental illness. There were no phrases left that were not brokered. It was a fine idea because they should grab this reprieve of her good health before it passed them by. It was a fine idea because they were all in the business of smiling and cheering her on, of pretending that if she cooked a meal and got a manicure, she was well.

  * * *

  Edward had read about the camel trek in a magazine. Marie did not ask which magazine, because this piece of information, like so many of the small, seemingly ineffectual bombs he lobbed onto the field of their marriage reinforced the fact that despite the measurable satisfactions of their life together, she was very much on her own. Each morning, when the front door shut behind her husband and he left for his office downtown, it was as if he disappeared. She could imagine him driving down the streets of their neighborhood, even heading onto the freeway, but the farther away he got, the more generic he became, until she could not hold on to the idea of him. Early on in their dating life, she had woken one morning before Edward and began making breakfast in his bachelor apartment’s small kitchen. When she went to throw out the broken eggshells, she was confronted with a copy of Double D magazine lying on the top of the trash. On the cover, a model wore nothing but leather shorts, her hands barely covering the boulders of her breasts, the toffee-colored ponds of her areolas peeking out between her splayed fingers. Marie grew warm and experienced a falling sensation as if she had plunged into the dark void of her own absence. She had imagined she knew this man who was so circumscribed in all things—his language and manner, his emotional range. She had foolishly thought she grasped him like an uncomplicated math problem. Gingerly, she glanced at other pages filled with bullet-sized nipples and fully shaven vulvas, before replacing the trash can lid. She wrestled for days with how to confront Edward. When she finally did, in the small voice of a wronged child, he was not chagrined, and it was she who felt disgraced. She convinced herself that the magazine didn’t matter. She had fantasies, didn’t she? When she and Edward were together in bed, didn’t she sometimes think of that attractive British actor with the high cheekbones she’d seen on PBS? She came to realize, though, that in not confronting her new husband she had tacitly agreed to the foundational bargain of their marriage: a privacy would always exist between them, a no-man’s-land separating two countries. At first, she suffered in the marriage, unable to speak of so many things she had imagined they would share. But that had been a fantasy, too, hadn’t it? As ridiculous as a young girl naming the qualities of her future husband as she plucked daisy petals, believing this collection of superlatives could exist in any single man. She had been that girl. A wisher upon eyelashes, a chanter of aspirational rhymes. A my name is Alice and my husband’s name is …

  “I think I’d like to ride a camel,” Marie said, pushing her chicken to one side of her plate.

  “That’ll be a memory for sure,” Edward said.

  And there it was again: that quicksand of language. Edward colored even as he spoke. For, of course, he was referring to a memory he and his son would hold on to years from now, carefully scraping away the dirt of history, looking for a clue to who they had once been.

  “I feel like Lawrence of Arabia!” Edward called from atop his camel. Marie had finally caught up to the group, which included the four travelers; Selim, the guide they had hired in Erfoud for what Edward, after some negotiation, decided was a good price; and Achmed, a boy of fourteen, who walked alongside the caravan, occasionally whispering gentle encouragements into the camels’ distended bellies. Elise, from on top of her animal, turned and snapped Edward’s picture with her palm-size camera. Hours earlier, when the morning’s coolness was suddenly replaced by a stinging heat, Elise had peeled off her outer layers so that she was left wearing only a pink tank top beneath which one could see the penumbra of her black bra. She wore a black-and-white scarf wrapped around her head, and a wild crop of dark curls poked out around the material. Marie wondered if it was wise for Elise to affect this native turban as if it were merely a fashion statement, but the girl was not deferential in any way, not to the alien culture in which she found herself or to the strangers she was traveling with. When Elise met Marie and Edward at the airport in Marrakech, she threw her arms around each of them and offered up her cheek for a kiss. Marie had been unsettled by the rash intimacy. But there was something artless about Elise, her boldness ultimately awkward so that she seemed like an overeager foal finding its legs, and Marie had softened.

  Teddy’s camel drew up alongside Elise’s and he leaned over, kissed her, and said something Marie couldn’t make out, but which made Elise swat him coyly. Teddy’s body had finally filled out, his neck thick, his back broad. He had become contemplative in a way Marie would never have associated with her mischievous little boy. Marie didn’t know if this was a result of her illness or if he had finally turned into the man he was destined to become, a man not unlike his father—circumspect, his emotions meted out carefully, as if there were a shortage. Teddy was both embarrassed and intrigued by Elise’s exuberance. Sometimes he seemed to want to shush her, as if she were talking too loudly in a movie theater. Other times, he seemed to revel in being trapped in her squall, his heart tossed this way and that.

  “How are you holding up, Mimi?” Edward called to Marie. His smile was wide, his pleasure evident, his desire for only one answer to his question obvious. He had taken to the problem of the camels with the earnest attention he gave to Marie’s debilitating anxiety, mastering all the information he could, as if this would provide a bulwark against the unexpected. He peppered Selim with many questions about the proper way to sit, how to make the animal move faster or slower, what camels ate, how much they drank. When he finally mounted the kneeling beast for the first time, it lurched forward and then backward as it heaved to a standing position. Edward was so caught by surprise that he let out a boyish whoop that released a loose-jointed giddiness. “Are you having a good time down there?” he said now, from his perch.

  “I’m wonderful,” she said. And in fact, it was now true. Walking was an incantatory process. She felt every molecule of her body abuzz with life. She’d only ever felt this way before in the moments of panic that had felled her, when her eyes went blurry and her mind was overwhelmed by the sensation that her existence was a fragile construct held up simply by her faltering ability to believe in it. When the psychiatrist asked her to describe what she experienced, all she could say was that she had lost her idea of who she was. Her sudden disappearance might happen anywhere. She could be sitting in her car stuck in traffic. She might be in her living room reading a newspaper article. She could be in the middle of an innocuous conversation with a neighbor about delphiniums. The last time, it had happened at the grocery store, while she stood at the head of an aisle. There was just so much packed into all those shelves. And the muchness became noise, and she could no longer feel herself in the space of the supermarket. She realized that she had lost confidence in the idea of herself in any sort of place, that her sense of presence had deserted her. She knew she should leave the store, but she couldn’t move because she suddenly did not have faith in the simple agency of her body to propel her. And then the thought occurred to her that if she did manage to leave the store, it wouldn’t matter because she would bring her disassembled self into the parking lot, where she would face row upon row of cars, their rooftops stunned by the sun, and still, she would not be there. This was the single most terrifying moment of her life. In the hospital, they told her that she’d screamed for fifteen minutes until the paramedics were able to calm her down. She had come to understand that identity was a porous thing, an easily felled house of cards. And what Edward could not understand was that despite therapy and medications that brought her back to some reasonable simulacrum of herself, she would never not know this.

  Camel riding, it turned out, was not very comfortable. Selim had said something about “sitting into” the animal, which Marie had not real
ly understood and was too embarrassed to ask him to repeat, because she didn’t want him to think she was making fun of his thick accent. The guide was pleasant and shook everyone’s hand when they met him, but after that, he became remote. Edward was put off by the man’s diffidence, grumbling about not getting enough for his money, but Marie was relieved to be with someone so frankly uninterested in her. Two hours into their trek, she asked Selim to help her down from her camel. Edward had teased her gently. “People have crossed the entire Sahara on camelback, Mimi,” he said, with the prideful voice of a newly minted expert. “You just have to get used to it.”

  “I’m happy walking,” she’d said.

  Edward’s expression turned wary. She waved her hand, her usual gesture, which was meant to release him from concern.

  “This kind of hurts my tits,” Elise announced loudly.

  “It doesn’t do much for the nether regions either,” Edward said. He was not normally coarse, but the presence of a girl, as lush and available as a dessert tray, had made him forgetful. Elise possessed the magnetic property of the self-involved, and it was impossible not to crave her attention.

  They stopped for lunch by the minimal shade of a dune. Selim and Achmed set up a low table and chairs underneath a small canvas awning held up by poles. After a few minutes, Selim brought Marie a glass of tea.

  “Thank you,” she said. He was a tall man, and wore a long, hooded robe over his shirt and slacks. “Aren’t you hot?”

  “It’s the opposite. This keeps the cold next to the body,” he said, fingering the rough cloth of his outfit. “Your hot tea will cool you down.” His eyes wrinkled and his uneven teeth showed as he smiled at the illogic. He was a handsome man; she’d noticed that back in Erfoud. He walked with a sense of bearing, the hooded robe only enhancing the historic effect. “Drink,” he said, encouraging her with a sideways movement of his head.

  She felt attended to in a way that was different from the obsessive care she’d received during the last year and a half from her husband and her doctors. Their attentions were too forceful, as if they were making up for strategies they knew would ultimately fail. Selim’s advice had a take-it-or-leave-it quality, as if he understood what it required to believe something into being true.

  She put the glass to her lips. “Much better,” she said, although she was still hot. She didn’t know why she lied. They were all careful around this man. It was as though they felt they must make excuses for the baldness of the commerce—their money, his display. Her mind lurched from one attitude to the next; she could be fully convinced of the impressions she was having, and then a second later doubt their artifice, see clearly the warped politics of travel, understand her complicity in an agreed-upon set of rules. They had come halfway around the world to have “an experience.” And yet, there were moments when she felt more ephemeral than ever, when the gaudiness of this experience-hoarding made her all the more unsure of what it meant to be living. Edward would not want to know about her reckless thoughts, about how unwilling she was to give in to the narrowness of view that her recovery seemed to require. He wanted her well. He wanted her back.

  Elise and Teddy began to walk up the nearby dune, hand in hand. Edward watched them, squinting into the sun. Marie could see him struggle as he made the decision not to follow the young people.

  “Give them some time to themselves,” he muttered, disgruntled by his wisdom. He sat down at the table with Marie, turning his chair so that his view was the open expanse of desert. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, groaning with the stretch.

  “It’s really something, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Puts you in the mind of things.”

  “What things?”

  He did not respond.

  “What does it make you think about?” she said.

  “Oh,” Edward said with a painful sigh. “Just, well, it’s a lot of land, isn’t it? A lot of … emptiness.”

  “But it’s not empty at all. It’s full of sand and little hills and valleys. It’s a universe, really.”

  Edward glanced at her warily. She was not allowed flights of fancy. She had shown that she was fully capable of lifting off and floating away. “Nothing lives here, Mimi,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s right. There are trees. Look over there,” and she pointed to a clump of wiry bushes. She wanted to make him understand at the same time that she was certain he never would. He was terrified of the kind of flexibility it took to turn a deeply held truth inside out and he became intransigent as a result. But before she could protest further, Elise and Teddy bounded down the dune, their bodies pitched forward so that it looked as though they might fall at any moment. Elise’s scarf flew off her head and released the Medusa-like fullness of her hair. Their screams carried to the lunch table.

  “Where are you going?” Marie asked, as Edward rose from his chair, stumbling slightly.

  “She’s lost her thingy, her whatever-you-call-it,” he said, pointing vaguely to his head.

  “Teddy will get it.”

  But Edward was already off, passing Teddy and Elise, his long legs seeking purchase in the loose sand. Elise trotted over to him, and then suddenly, she and Edward took off in a race up the dune. Selim and Achmed were carrying platters of food to the table and stopped to watch. Achmed smiled at the flurry of activity, a boy caught up in the promise of movement. Selim looked on impassively and Marie wondered if he disapproved. Elise easily reached the scarf first, snatching it up and waving it in the air in triumph. She ran back down the slope past Edward, who stood, his arms on his hips, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.

  “He was a runner in college. The hurdles,” Marie said to Selim, feeling suddenly protective of Edward. “I don’t know if you have that here.”

  “We have El Guerrouj,” Selim said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Our most famous runner. Two gold medals in Athens.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea,” Marie said.

  “Why would you know our history?” Selim said.

  “I’m in your country,” Marie said. “I’m interested. I’m sure you know some of our athletes. Michael Jordan. Or … or …”

  “Kobe Bryant!” Achmed piped up.

  “Of course we know American athletes,” Selim said. “They are famous all over the world.”

  She wanted to tell him that she was not a regular tourist like all the others, waiting to snap a picture of one or another sight so that she could paste it in a book and show it off to her friends. That was not why she had come to Morocco at all. But how could he know her intentions?

  “Those dunes are not as easy as they look,” Teddy said, sitting down at the table.

  “It could be an Olympic sport,” she said, distractedly. The guide and Achmed had moved beyond a stand of bushes, where they began performing their midday prayers, their wandering hum threading through the air.

  “What could be an Olympic sport?” Teddy asked.

  “Oh, nothing. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “I’m fine. I’m great really. What a wonderful day.”

  “It’s like you’re back to your old self.”

  She smiled in order to hide her disappointment. Edward would say “There you are!” on the days she was feeling good, as if she’d been playing a game of hide-and-seek. She felt the weight of Teddy’s eagerness for her to be the mother he could be sure of. Her husband and son shared the stubborn notion that if they jostled her just so, she would rejigger and work right. Elise stood a few feet away, tying her scarf on her head. Her pink shirt rose above her navel, revealing her soft, tanned belly. Marie glanced at the men kneeling on their prayer mats and felt a sudden impatience with the girl. Had she no idea about the manners and customs of the country she was in? And there was Teddy, watching his girlfriend with a dumb, mesmerized expression on his face. How feckless he was. The boy had never prayed
a day in his life. She had given him everything she was capable of and yet he knew nothing!

  Elise ran to the table and sat down heavily on Teddy’s lap. She leaned back against him, closing her eyes and smiling with coital suggestiveness.

  Teddy pushed her away from him. “Sorry,” he said to his mother, embarrassed.

  “I’m not insulted by affection,” Marie said. “Or by sex, for that matter.”

  “Mom!” Teddy said.

  “You’re not a child, Teddy,” Marie said urgently, hoping she was right.

  After lunch, Elise was sick. She blamed the food.

  “You might have picked up a bug,” Marie said. She had agreed to stay behind at the lunch site with Elise while the rest of the party rode ahead to the evening camp. There was some argument about this, with both Teddy and Edward demanding to stay behind as Elise’s protectors. But Marie was adamant. She reminded them that she did not intend to ride her camel, and that they would make much faster time without her. By some prearrangement, the camp was being set up in advance of the group’s arrival by associates of Selim who had a jeep. Selim would drive back and retrieve the women. Knowledge of the jeep and the fact that they were obviously close to a road or a town made the whole project of the trek exactly what it was—the stuff of tourist fantasy. Marie was tired of the camels, tired of the ersatz colonial charade of teatime in the middle of the desert.

  “Have you been drinking the water?” She and Elise sat at the little table underneath the canopy Selim had left standing.

  “No,” Elise said. “But I remember one bite of chicken that tasted funny. Oh, God.”

  Without bothering to move from her chair, she leaned over and vomited. Marie reached for the girl’s hair to hold it away from the mess.

  “Fuck,” Elise gasped, as she sat up. She used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth and looked at Marie. “Sorry,” she said. “Oh, shit.”

  Marie dropped the girl’s hair. “Would you like some water?”