The Rug

He was much better than the man before.

Over the years Mark had become friends with all of her friends. Unlike the-man-before, everyone liked him. Recently he even began to play the bass in her best friend, Jake’s, band. Jake liked him. And because Jake held a certain deference for authority of all kinds, most especially academic things, Jake asked Mark many questions about Literature and Shakespeare and teaching. Aida, her best girlfriend, thought Mark was lovely and very kind — if perhaps a bit repressed. Aida believed all people were repressed, of course, the classic psychoanalyst.

A good person, all her friends said, which she knew.

Her family loved him, too. Her father, who must have seen a lot of himself in Mark—the two of them professors, both thoughtful and generally content, if anxious and sometimes awkward and misunderstood—  and loved him a great deal, always hunting Mark down to ask very specific questions regarding 17th and 18th Century Literature and to talk in general about how Mark’s courses were going at the college. More than once her father and stepmother brought home United Kingdom-themed gifts: t-shirts with slogans about Cake or Shakespeare, or spatulas decorated with British flags. Not that Mark baked or cooked. They just enjoyed thinking of him and picking up thematic items at various stores throughout whatever journey they had embarked upon.

Her sister and mother enjoyed Mark’s tendency to pose dramatically for photographs and insisted he had the cutest dimples, an attribute she stubbornly refused to acknowledge, calling them wrinkles instead, inspiring the playful and patient rolling of Mark’s eyes and a barrage of counter-arguments from her female family members.

Her mother asked Mark how to brew the perfect cup of tea, the order in which milk and tea and sugar should be combined. Her stepfather never missed an opportunity to take Mark out for a hike, not that Mark was a physical man or particularly liked hiking, at least not the uphill sort, but Mark always went along, knowing her stepfather enjoyed the time, and her stepfather always took her aside afterwards to tell her what a decent person Mark seemed to be.

The family loved his accent, and when visiting, they wandered around the apartment repeating unfamiliar sounding words and phrases amongst each other: bAHsil and toMAHto; Would-do and Jolly-good.

He was not like the-man-before. Not at all. Unlike the-man-before, who was dapper, in fitted suit and tie, Mark sometimes wore cheap H&M ugly-colored sweaters that did not go well with his shoes. Bald at 33 and professorially soft, Mark had very different qualities. For instance, she loved that you would never know how much Mark knew about a topic, how long he might have studied it. He never needed to make a point of things like that.

Discerning and opinionated about the music he bought, the movies and plays he watched, Mark did not particularly need to impose his views on others. He wasn’t one to focus on the discord. No matter how misinformed, herself included, no matter how much Mark knew better and otherwise, he never made a person feel small. It wasn’t his constitution. He was generous. Inherently curious. She wished she was naturally that way, too.

The-man-before flaunted measurable indicators of success and prowess, all easily identifiable, serving to distract her from less visible, but more significant, characteristics. A bright young litigator, partner-track at a respected firm, Thomas was crafty with his tongue. He was handsome, athletic, and rented a lovely apartment in Old City before buying a gorgeous Twin Victorian on a nice block near the university. There, he lived with his young daughter and two cats, one named Pants and one named Guido, names she would have chosen herself, had she been creative enough to have thought of them. Thomas, the-man-before, was full of surprise and energy. He was clever and often made her laugh. She liked watching him work on his motorcycle and loved that he could build things with his hands.

She realized only later that she had failed to see what was important. It was her own vanity that blinded her to it. She felt too good taking him to the office holiday party or to a friend’s birthday engagement. She felt too much pride sharing photos of household improvements. She enjoyed too much creating holiday cards displaying photo collages of their handsome lives.

What was important, she realized much too late, was what surfaced only when they were alone. Always percolating, it seemed, but concealed behind these handsome, observable things — at least to her. Or by her. She’s never been quite sure.

What was important was that in the end there was nothing she could do to satisfy him. Nothing she could do to make him stop. What was important was that each day, as she worked too hard to understand it all, to do and change what she could, becoming all the more entangled until she forgot herself.

As it happened, walls and doors shut so slowly she didn’t notice until she was breathless, until she became too tired and too small in that Twin Victorian that had become her home.

Heartpartment.

Mark gave her cards. 

All the time for every occasion from every conceivable source. 

For instance, once after getting over a cold, Mark gave her a card signed by his “Throat, Nose and Chest,” thanking her for taking care of them the weekend before. 

On another occasion, because she had bought him a vintage 1940’s messenger bag— one much nicer than his, six years old and falling to pieces—she received a thank you card signed “Regards, the 1940s.” 

Once Mark left a card on her pillow: “On behalf of all trees everywhere, can you stop doing such wonderful things?” 

On the week of her 34th birthday, “Entertainment TM” sent her a series of seven cards, one each day, all outlining parts of “The 7 Wonders of Erin’s Birthday,” (Tagline: The pyramids ain’t got shit on this TM). 

Each card was typographically decorated by him, because at some point she happened to take a typography course. She learned things, but Mark always picked up on things so easily. And from mere end-of-day, how-was-your-day conversations.  It did frustrate her slightly. She often sat at her desk paralyzed, unable to put what she learned into action, yet here were Mark’s cards. They were pretty remarkable. Especially for a Literature Professor.

The first Christmas they shared at his family’s home in London, Mark assembled a dossier outlining the Characters, Scenes, and Acts she should expect upon arrival.  He drafted ten pages of detailed information regarding familial structure, potential inter-familial intrigue and drama, and probable events. All this because she was so nervous to meet everyone-at-once, while staying in such close, unknown quarters. The document was sent to her from “The M.H. Festive Consortium in partnership with EAD Foundation for the Entertainment of EAD.”  MH and EAD of course being their initials. 

Much earlier, before they lived together, he once slipped her a card with keys to his “heartpartment.” 

He was very creative, very funny.

Sometimes when she received these notes and novels, she thought he must love her very, very much.

It wasn’t until much later, sitting on the sofa, reading through stacks of cards and notes, that she realized how little she had actually appreciated them back then. She hadn’t appreciated them enough, not as much as she should have, at all. 

All manners of new things.

What happened was:

After they got engaged, she felt increasingly anxious about the things she usually felt anxious about and began to worry about all manners of new things she’d never worried about before.

She began thinking she should do things. And, since she really had no idea what things she should do, she thought the first thing she ought to do was research what things exactly needed to be done. 

It turned out there were practical things like rings and ceremonies and parties and invitations and dresses and hairstyles, and surrounding these practical things there were other things like debates she was supposed to have with various people about what and which and when, and who – including who should do x or y but not a or b – and discussions about whether the whole thing should be about this or that and/or not-about-that or not-about-this. And of course, there was the cost of things. 

She should look up places that had various wedding-related items and advice, she thought. And so she could make the proper decisions, she should probably look up the meaning of things. For instance the different parts of the ceremony, and whether a particular part should be included or excluded based on its meaning and whether it made sense for her, for them. She should talk to the minister. Not that they had agreed on who he was yet, but John-the-minister was also Aida’s husband and a friend, and it’d be nice to have him officiate, which is what she thought they called it. Officiating? She was not Episcopalian necessarily, but she’d been to his services now and again. And mostly, he was down-to-earth, born and raised in Queens, hilarious and smart. He once, just on his way out to conduct a funeral, walked around the living room that she and Aida sat drinking tea, and dressed in his formal minister attire, swung a set of cow-bells, predicting that no one would really know if it was appropriate or even really care if he just started wandering around the funeral with the cow bells, swinging them as though they were incense at a Greek Orthodox or Catholic Mass. “They wouldn’t even think it was crazy if I did this,” he said, swinging them around, the cowbells clanking loudly and hurting all of their ears. This is why she loved John.

She should ask if he would speak about Carl Jung at the wedding because John-the-minister loved Carl Jung and she did too, and that would be quite fun, she thought and better than the regular religious messaging. Maybe he could reference Star Wars, too. Or at least Joseph Campbell.

There was so much to learn and decide and none of them were particularly appealing to spend her time researching, she thought. Except maybe talking with John, who was always fun to talk to anyway.

Perhaps she ought to see if the neighborhood bar would allow them to take over the place and have a dance party. Although she had never really envisioned doing anything other than going to a courthouse someday, if she ever really even envisioned that, she did have fantasies of hosting a killer dance party. She liked to dance very much.

The house. Part I. [Spring 2006]

Unlike the rent controlled apartment she would leave behind, the house was large.

She would learn very soon not to forget her water glass. And on the odd occasion she would forget, she would learn it was far easier to pour another, rather than spend time looking. There were too many floors, too many rooms, to search.

She marveled at the prospect of having a bedroom separate from a living room, separate from a kitchen, separate from the dining room and the office. There were rooms enough to have guest rooms and rooms enough that some remained empty. Empty rooms. It was unbelievable, really.

Out front there was enough of a porch to fit rocking chairs or a swing, something she’d fantasized about more than once: herself on some rocking chair or porch swing, reading on warm afternoons. And it seemed to her that the back deck off the kitchen was made for the gas grill that she would most certainly buy to make teriyaki chicken and shrimp kabobs.

There was dirt. In both the front and back yards, and she imagined what she would plant in it. Ivy. Definitely ivy, she thought. Of course, she hadn’t forgotten she’d managed to kill most every plant in her rent controlled apartment, and everywhere else she’d lived over the years. Maybe this dirt would be different, she hoped.

The two cats, Guido and Pants, would easily become comfortable in this large space, she thought. Finding their little cubbies and hiding places, their window seats. They would make good use of stairs and slippery hardwood, chasing one another, losing and regaining their footing, sliding around until weary enough to sprawl across patches of sunlit floor.

She didn’t know it yet, but later, she would have her own cat, too. She’d name him Taco, and he, too, would easily adjust to the mighty quarters, make himself at home. She would love that cat like crazy.

She worried as much as she marveled. It was her nature.

But she had hope. Had she known to, she’d have hoped there would be enough water to fill all the water glasses she would lose. For now she hoped the dirt would be different and kinder. She hoped for sunny afternoons passed on the new porch swing, for lots of kabobs of all sorts and pleasant neighbors. She hoped that, like the cats, she would find her cubbies and hiding nooks when she needed them, her sunlit patches to sprawl and soak in the warmth. She hoped she would find her place there.

In order to understand the story.

In order to understand the story, her friends said, we need to know why they stopped feeling desire in the first place.

But if she could lay it all out for them, she thought, why would the story need to be told? She would love to be able to lay it all out.

Instead, there were gaps and points of confusion and missed moments and opportunities and she couldn’t identify them all. What was important? What didn’t matter at all? What had she confused as being the former when it was truly the latter? She didn’t really know.

They wanted to know Why.  

Was it always like this, they asked? Or was it like this because of the mess?

If only she knew. She was not certain which things fell into which category; what was cause, what was effect, what just happened. Some things happened, she thought, other things didn’t.

What was the cause of it all. She wished she knew. It wasn’t so clear.

But: Why? They asked.

She wondered if there was any Why at all. Was there always a Why?

And if there wasn’t a Why, she worried: how would she ever know what to do?

The Pillows.

The counselor sat facing them in her large black leather chair, which looked quite comfortable, unlike that old brown sofa where they sat. Nicer than the one in the waiting room, but only just, and always holding too many pillows. Too many, at least, if anyone wanted to actually sit. She never knew what to do with the pillows.

Mark sat on the far side and told the counselor he was upset she couldn’t let the small things go. It seemed she had to comment on everything, he said. Or that was the gist of it. He used a lot of words while she sat silently and tried to keep her mind open. She too felt very upset.

What upset her wasn’t so much the facts underlying his frustration, he was often in the right, she often was inconsiderate and much too critical—it was (again) the fact that he hadn’t said anything to her about it until now. It was as if he had kept the evidence tucked away, hidden until he had someone to hide behind, avoiding her, which was the problem in the first place.

When she found out these things so late it seemed as if she were, unbeknownst to herself, living in imaginary spaces that didn’t actually exist. It was jolting to find you were living in fantasies. For instance thinking the whole week that he was content with her, when he was not at all content. Admittedly, a week was a much better than, for instance, the time between the present moment and a Saturday three years ago.

The three pillows were large and square and red with small orange flecks. She never knew what to do with them. Each time she entered the office, she was forced to prepare to sit, a process of gathering up pillows and moving them elsewhere. She wondered if the placement of pillows was some sort of test, a makeshift Rorschach. For instance, if she placed the pillows on the floor or on the back of the couch or between herself and Mark, or behind her head or to her right, did it mean something? The same way the crossing of arms or legs, or leaning forward or backward supposedly did? She wondered if the counselor made notations. Wednesday, June 03, 2013. Pillow placement: Hoarding/Regressive. Avoidant/Distancing. Resistant.

She did not want to exhibit anything by the movement of a pillow from here to there, but it often seemed as though everything was a mark of something else. Wasn’t there something about a cigar just being a cigar, she thought. But was that ever true? Of course, she was often the one busy thinking about what every cigar really meant, always searching, looking for more, never content with anything simple and plain. She knew. Projection. She knew what that was too.

She spoke to the counselor directly, addressing Mark in third person. First, she said, she was listening, she understood he was frustrated and why—but also: this didn’t seem fair. Why hadn’t he brought this up before? With her? Why now? She felt like she had been brought to the principal’s office.

Why couldn’t he address her directly? Look her in the eye?

It enraged her when he tucked things away. She’d have preferred he just confront her.

It would make her feel she could exist without destroying him, without him leaving her.

The things that made her happy.

The things that made her happy over the years were often because of him. She knew this.

For instance: Mark suggested she go on the trip she always talked about but never went on. For an early birthday gift and a Christmas gift also, he would pay for some of it. The offer surprised her, since he often behaved as if he were still a graduate student, rather than a tenure-track professor, so completely frugal, she thought. The trip was expensive. She was not surprised at all, however, that Mark had already looked up the trip details and found the perfect dates. He knew her schedule well, better than she did sometimes. A living calendar. He suggested a particular week in June. It had a lower rate, he said, and fit between two of her work events.

She had always wanted to ride horses and camp in the mountains, ever since she was a child. Back then, she rode every day, but never in the mountains, never camping. She had certainly never driven wild horses through Idaho mountains and plains.

It worried her—the idea of going at all and the idea of going on her own. She hadn’t ridden in ages and worried she would be the worst person in the world. She worried that she would not make any friends, and also that she might be forced to eat mayonnaise. But she had always wanted to go and he had given her a present. So she decided to go anyway.

She purchased airfare and then became increasingly anxious and debated whether or not going on the trip was truly the right thing to do. It was a rolling internal debate that she knew was pointless since the tickets were bought, so as she debated, she also prepared. She interviewed former trip takers. She exercised. She read books and watched videos. She bought appropriate equipment: boots and gloves and breeches and biodegradable soap.

Since it had been years since she had any practice, she took riding lessons at Prospect Park with a grouchy trainer who was not at all skillful at communicating with people, only with horses.

She should have quit her lessons the very first day when the grouchy trainer yelled across the arena: No! That’s not how you do it! while providing no explanation of how she was supposed to do it. But the trip was for “Advanced Riders Only” and she worried very much that she was no longer anything near advanced, if she ever would have called herself that to begin with. So she kept paying the grouchy trainer with poor communication skills. The trainer who loved horses so much, she thought, because they were nonverbal.

She worried the whole way to Idaho that no one would be there to pick her up, but of course they were. When she arrived, a Mormon cowboy and two young girls from France waved at her from a mud-splattered SUV. They drove to the ranch to join the others.

Each day while she was there, she worried until she forgot to worry. The mornings were always somewhat uncomfortable and the evenings were somewhat calmer; each day it got a little easier. She rode over mountains and through meadows and forests and rivers. She washed her hair in ice-cold creeks, watched her breath in the morning, and at night saw stars like she’d never seen. She was warmed by campfires and s’mores and people who sang country songs she knew from when she was very young. And although she was with two Englishmen who called her Brooklyn, an Englishwoman who snored loudly, three hot French youth and five devout Mormons, all people whom she had just met, she very much felt at ease there. It was the first time in a long while.

It turned out she was not the worst person in the world. In fact no one really was. She made friends who laughed and made her laugh. She realized at some point that she hadn’t laughed so hard in some time and also that she could be quite funny herself, sometimes. It surprised her that she had forgotten.

Even though the cook tried to make her eat mayonnaise, spreading it on both sides of lunchtime sandwiches, she paced back and forth outside the cook’s tent all morning until she garnered enough courage to ask the cook to stop. And the cook did, making her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from then on.

Things that made her happy often happened because of him.

She wondered if these things would have happened without him. Perhaps she would not have learned that she was not the worst person in the world, that no one was really, or that she could gather enough courage to avoid mayonnaise and to speak every now and again. She would not have made such interesting new friends or learned such interesting things. She would not have forgotten to worry each day for a little while or been momentarily content without purpose. She would not have laughed so much, or seen those stars. She would not have felt at peace, content for a moment.

Did the things that made him happy have something—anything—to do with her? she wondered.

Look who’s the boss of everything.

Something was to arrive at the apartment between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m., but he wouldn’t tell her what it was. He’d just tell her when it was arriving.

Already look who was the boss of everything.

His stuff was in her (their) apartment.
Crazynutso. Right then, he was in her—their—room unpacking his things, while she was busying herself thinking about what not to think about.

She was nervous but fine, and still—she had to panic, at least a little. Foremost about his stuff being in their apartment. All those books and papers. The globes. That decrepit old office chair. The maps in cheap frames. And also that huge barn table she’d been coveting, its beautiful, dark, sturdy wood and its eclectic wooden chairs. There was certainly an assortment of things.

She needed to panic. Then she needed to worry about this delivery, what it was, and how he was apparently bossing everything already; it’d been only two hours since he’d begun moving in. What would happen to her space? To her?

She ought to spend more time worrying about how often and how much she needed to control everything, rather than what she worried about. She knew how generally pointless this worry was.

She worried too much about who was the boss of what. But she was concerned she’d wake up one day to find herself some kind of puppet. Left to wonder who she’d become, exactly, now that she finally saw all the strings.

How did it happen? she’d wonder then. How was it possible she hadn’t noticed before? And now … how would she untangle herself? So unpracticed. Her sense of herself atrophied from disuse. She wasn’t at all in love with herself, but she was afraid of losing her footing just the same.

…

Now, in Brooklyn with Mark, she worried too much about who was the boss of what. It would be better not to think this way, she knew.

So, instead, at that moment, she was trying very consciously to stop ruminating about all this; to focus on Mark moving in —  on not ruining it all by obsessing about a million things that weren’t actually happening— things that were certainly not the important things.

Important things like how fortunate it was that she finally found him, and he, her. She should focus on being a little grateful that they found one another. That they would now come home to the same apartment. This would be their first summer in Brooklyn, living together, in their home.

When 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. finally arrived, he was busily unpacking, and she was wandering around exhausted from her own worry, from worrying about worrying. The buzzer rang. She ran down the two flights of stairs, swung open the door, and signed. In a box addressed directly to her, from the local flower shop: a colorful bouquet of flowers.

A note addressing her said:

Here’s the end of The Hostel at 224.

all my love.

-M

Housemates. [The Rug, pt. 7]

There would be housemates if she left, she thought, staring at the white ceiling, her body spread out across the jagged diamonds. It wasn’t that she didn’t like housemates categorically, although over the years some did cause her a great deal of trouble. What bothered her was the fact that she was young then, but she wasn’t now. Youth and housemates seemed appropriate to one another. But she was nearly thirty-seven, her birthday just months away, and at this new age it did not seem right to live with adults you were not sleeping with. Sleeping in the same bed, she meant, of course, because although Mark and she shared the same bed, of course they hadn’t slept together in ages. That was the problem. Or the symptom. Was it the problem or they symptom? She didn’t know.

In this regard she supposed she already had a housemate. The central difference being that an actual housemate would have their own bed, preferably in their own room. It was true that other than a shared bed, the odd kiss hello or goodbye, a hand every so often placed upon her knee, Mark and a housemate could easily be confused. Which made her think, alternatively: perhaps having a housemate at age 37 would not be so bad after all.

He was not the kind who caused a great deal of trouble; he was a lovely housemate. He was pleasant and tidy. It was true he sometimes left the clean dishes in the dish tray for too long and that his disheveled office resembled a college dorm room, even the odor. Which admittedly was as endearing as annoying. And she knew it was only fair she put away the dishes, since he so often washed them, and that he should have a space of his own that he kept however he pleased. She rarely entered his office, anyway.

Mark was so pleasant and tidy, so discreet and quiet, that she sometimes felt alone in the apartment. But she knew he was there, and she knew he always thought of her. There were clues. For instance: from his less-than-tidy office he often forwarded her links to interesting online articles and reviews of music and TV shows. A spread featuring LCD Soundsystem or a review of the new Wild Beasts album, a YouTube video parodying The Wire, or a feature on Bruce Springsteen.

Each week he set aside the New York Times Sunday Review and the New Yorker for her on the dining room table, dog-earing the pages so she would know which stories she ought to read. In these tasks he was incredibly discriminating, always finding the articles he knew she would enjoy, the precise information she would find interesting, weeding out all the rest. He knew her so well, how she became overwhelmed by the pages, the abundance; the choice. It was too much to decide to read this over that. Without him, she it was very likely she would not read the New Yorker or Sunday Review at all.

She knew he was there. There were always traces. The rugs and floors clean, the clothes folded, or the refrigerator full. Dog eared pages.

Somehow, still, she felt alone in the apartment. Perhaps it was because he so often changed course just to suit her. And literally, so that she moved throughout their home without any obstruction whatsoever. It seemed nothing was ever in her way. He accommodated her in every way. Which was quite liberating, of course. Yet she often found herself wishing that something, someone—he—might block her way every now and again, that something in the world would stop her, so she might know where she ended and everything else began.

With nothing to bump into, the world felt amorphous, immersive; a permeable thing.

Small Spaces.

She’d have to leave the rug behind if she left, or sell it. She could not afford keeping it, or more correctly, a space large enough to hold it, at least not along with a couch and new bed, all three. Perhaps she could forgo a new bed, she thought, sleep on her couch. That would take up less room.

Sitting in the calm of the living room, taking in the whole of it, she pictured her future bedless life: Her, on the couch in some small lightless room. She imagined how her body would curl up to fit. The large rug lying beneath her, beneath the couch; like her own body, folded unnaturally to fit the small space.

A hypoallergenic cat would not take up much room, or cause her to sneeze. Perhaps she would have one there for company.

It was the thought of herself folded up to fit small spaces that upset her. That thought inspired her to get up from the couch and travel into the kitchen for a glass of Merlot. But she stopped short in the hall. Surely it wasn’t right to drink wine to erase things. Even things like futures, which did not actually exist.

On the other hand, she thought, it was quite possible that imagined futures were more disturbing than anything actual; more deserving of erasure.