writing

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.

Pros and Cons

She laid down, her back against the ragged cream diamonds of the rug, and thought: the things she suggested were not at all like horseback rides or writing courses.

When she suggested things, she thought, they often tended to imply a deficiency of some sort. Like when she suggested he get rid of his jeans in favor of other jeans that fit — at least to her mind — much better. Or, when she bought him a new pair of brown leather shoes to match his wardrobe. Which they did, of course, much better than his old grey ones. Or, when she suggested one Saturday morning three years ago standing over her peanut-butter toast in the kitchen, that he might benefit from seeing a shrink.

It was all with the best of intentions, or so she thought at the time. The jeans, the shoes. She had learned so much from having a shrink of her own.

But of course in retrospect, she realized she had not told Mark she loved him, old shoes, ill-fitting jeans and all, had she?

What was it like having someone suggest you are in need of new pants and shoes and a shrink? She wouldn’t even know, since he never gave her these kinds of suggestions.

It was easier to see what was wrong with things. That was the problem. The clutter. The disturbances. The things that didn’t fit. The squeaks and grease. 

Sometimes she considered writing a list of pros and cons, the good and bad, so as to remind herself, or so as to finally see on the page, what it was that was good, what it was that was going well. The rest she could conjure without much effort at all. 

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.

A mistake, A challenge.

Is this a challenge?

Is this a mistake?

She wondered about that.

It was difficult to tell which was which, too many things terrified her. She was too often impelled by fear, which obfuscated the meaning of things, she knew. If only desire drove her, she would know what was a challenge, what was a mistake.

Wouldn’t she?

It was a decision. That’s why she was terrified. She had a hard time with decisions.

Which made sense, given the pros and cons were all the same, whether it were a or b.  Either way: It was terrifying. It was a challenge. It was a possibly a mistake. These were the pros. These were the cons.

She could think herself into spiraling circles until she was paralyzed and dizzy. Which she often did.

In the end, she made choices based on nothing at all, really. Nothing but impulse.

An Introduction

This is Jayne – the woman who dated Thomas While-We-Were-Living-Under-the-Same-Roof.

That’s how Karen introduced her.

…

The corner outside Thomas’s apartment in Old Town. It’s spring, mid-afternoon, sunny. The trees along the street just budding. Shadows: dappled. Karen: waiting.

Jayne’d forgotten Karen would be there to pick up Corrine. It was Karen’s weekend.

Moments before: The three of them scrambling to cross the street. Thomas carrying Corrine’s backpack, stuffed and half-zipped, Corrine with soppy chocolate ice cream cone in one hand, her hand in the other. They are late. It happens in two seconds, rushing to beat the light: Corrine drops her cone, ice-cream-first, onto the pavement. Jayne dips down, scoops and places the ice cream cone back into Corrine’s expectant hand. One movement.

They make it across before the light changes. Nearly home. No honking cars or families flattened. The ice cream cone remarkably in one piece. No tears. Child content with slightly grubby treat. You learn to keep things moving when you have a 2-year old.

3-second rule? Jayne says to Corrine’s father as they land on the sidewalk, the first moment she actually realizes what she’s done. He shrugs. Too many other things to worry about.

The sidewalk: safe, then not so safe. The Ex there, on the corner. Of course, Jayne thinks, it’s what we’re late for. How could it have slipped her mind? Karen half-waves at Thomas, then waves-excitedly at Corrine. Karen’s father, Corrine’s grandfather, stands beside her, smiling.

Jayne had just given Karen’s daughter an ice cream cone she’d scooped off the street.

She anticipates a comment, but nothing’s said about the chocolate-flavored cone adorned with asphalt sprinkles. Instead, Karen introduces Jayne: Dad, this is Jayne — The Woman Who Dated Thomas While We Were Living Under the Same Roof.

It’s shocking-and-not-shocking. Surprising-and-unsurprising. Jayne’s amazed, again, how these feelings can strike at once. Karen has become remarkable to her in this way. Part of her forever waiting for it; the other part never believing it when it finally arrived. Jayne’s belief-and-disbelief.

Thomas interjects. Jed, this is Jayne. Jayne this is Jed Moretti, Corrine’s grandfather. Thomas is used to it. The un/surprise, the dis/belief.

Karen is technically correct, perfectly so. It’s the litigator in her. It is true they were Living Under The Same Roof. Thomas had moved back in when Corrine was born, took the guest room in their old Victorian in the Valley.

Things were in-between and the two lawyers hired other lawyers to fill out papers and divvy things up. The lawyers’ lawyers talked often. They had arguments and made offers and counter offers and not-so-veiled-threats. In the meantime, he would live in the guest room, marvel at his newborn daughter, and help with feedings and diapers as much as he could.

Before all that, in the beginning, there had been no wedding for his friends to attend and none of them were surprised – Of course, they all said, his friends shrugging together. Thomas, always capricious. Thomas had written to tell Jayne about Karen and the solo wedding. It was longhand on a funny letterhead he made from scratch, a picture of himself in the upper right-hand corner pointing to the intersection of Mullet & B Streets. He loved Karen’s fiery hair, he wrote, Karen’s blue eyes, her sophisticated upper-class Jersey-Italian background. Karen was whip-smart.

Jayne was impressed to learn that Karen had named her cat Guido.

Jayne had looked forward to knowing Karen someday, the wife of her friend, Thomas. But by the time they’d finally meet, she’d never really get to meet her. The next thing Jayne heard, Thomas was having a baby and getting a divorce all-at-once. His description changed slightly. Still whip-smart, now also bat-shit-crazy; spoiled rather than sophisticated. They would co-parent, he said. Though bat-shit-crazy, Karen would be a good mom.

Now, Corrine, on her hip working on her ice cream. Nice to meet you, Mr. Moretti, Jayne says, hoisting Corrine over.

Nice to meet you, he says.

She is grateful for the hand he extends.

Fuck you, Karen, Jayne sdid not say.

Were they in court, she’d take issue with the term “dating.” Objection your honor. “Date: noun. An engagement to go out socially with another person, often out of romantic interest.” And how would this be possible with an entire country, 3,000 miles of land, between them? Is it not true that my client Thomas, lived in San Francisco at the time in question? And my client Erin lived in New York City, did she not? How could they possibly be ‘dating,’ Mrs. — excuse me – Ms. Moretti?”

That, also, was technically correct.

But, Jayne’d often thought, she would be upset too, were she in Karen’s place. Things hadn’t gone to plan. They hadn’t worked out. Karen was alone, for now at least. Why wasn’t he? A woman Karen didn’t know would take care of her only child; he had decided it without her. Thomas would decide many things without her now; there was nothing she could do. Now, this woman would help choose what food to buy, which snacks to prepare, the clothes their daughter would wear.

It was unfair. All of it. Surely. Just standing there, Jayne’s presence confirmed the injustice, a silent reminder of Karen’s place, just as Karen made sure to remind her of hers.

If it had been said to Karen’s girlfriend, pointing Jayne out across a room, she’d have understood. But to Karen’s own father, while they all stood there?

Jayne watches Jed hold Corrine, wipe the dried chocolate ice cream from her cheeks. She imagines him embarrassed, disappointed by his daughter’s sense of entitlement, her recklessness. Or is he just sad and upset for Karen? How did she get here? A stressful job, a new town, a daughter to raise, no husband. How could Thomas do this to her? Did she do this to herself? It wasn’t what he envisioned. It wasn’t what the future was supposed to become.

She imagined her own father. He’d look nothing like Jed, who wears khaki pleated pants, his button down tucked-in, brown belt, and matching shoes. His hair neat. Her father would surely be in sneakers, the different colored neon laces on each shoe left untied purposefully, a conversation piece. Loose sweat-shirt and cargo shorts, some goofy hat. Hair wavy and wild.

They’d look nothing alike but she imagined her father equally as kind. Ignoring the undercurrents and the voltage. He too would look her in the eye, whoever she was. Say her name, shake her hand. Focus on the little one with ice cream. Maybe try and sneak a bite when Corrine wasn’t looking. Always trying to steal away the moment.

She imagined him worrying about the child he held in his arms.

She remembers that Karen left her book in the stroller last week, Jayne had put it in her bag, meaning to give it back. Thomas and Karen are talking, likely sorting out when and where to pickup Corrine Monday.

It is possible there is nowhere to go from here. It is possible there is nothing Jayne can do.

She fishes the book out of her bag and hands it to Mr. Moretti.

Karen’s, she says.

She was right.

This sucks, he writes.
He writes, I love you.
Please don’t feel like you can’t change your mind.
He writes, Think about staying, e.
Think about staying.
He writes: Fuck You.
Give me my fucking key back and..Get…The Fuck…Out.

She’s moving back to Brooklyn. It didn’t work out. What a mess, she thinks. She needs to find a place to live. Can’t believe she gave up her rent-controlled apartment. So glad she kept her job. Fuck. She needs to find a place. She needs to find a mover. She needs to tell her boss. She should tell him after she has things sorted. Christ, she thinks: so embarrassed. Didn’t she just make a heart-felt plea to work from Connecticut? She asked everyone to get behind her like she knew what she wanted. She just asked.

And Steve won’t let her say goodbye to Corrine.

A baby, just 6-months old, she held Corrine in her arms. Baked her first birthday cupcake, watched as she dove in with both hands, purple frosting becoming the first blush and lipstick Corrine would wear. She picked out Corrine’s second Halloween costume, painted on her whiskers, and watched Corrine become a black cat, circling her brand new tail, mesmerized by her own transformation. I have a tail, Er-in. I have a tail! She taught Corrine to say Peace Out, Er-in!, snapping fingers in a wild Z; taught her to say Obama and held her hand as they walked the neighborhood; listened as Corrine ‘counted’ the yard signs: One O-ba-ma, ‘nuther O-ba-ma….there’s a ‘nuther ‘bama, Er-in! She dressed that two-and-a-half-year-old-miniature-self in leopard skin stretch pants and hot-pink patent-leather Chucks, and caught Corrine when she jumped, without notice, from couches and stairways and beds, yelling SUUUU-PER-Cor-ry! Corrine, not at all understanding that she couldn’t actually fly.

She’d never be the one to break the news.

She’s moving to a new house. That’s what Steve’s told Corrine. And he won’t let her say goodbye. My daughter, he says. Who you’re abandoning, he says.

He’s keeping Taco-The-Cat-That-Fetches. Taco, who would trot back, string in mouth, and patiently wait, tail twitching, for her to throw the string down the wooden stairs one more time. She loves that cat. She fucking loves that cat. That cat would climb into her mouth just to get a little closer to her.

The thing was, she had already told her best friend, Jake, walking down 14th Street. It was exactly three years ago. Right on the corner of First Avenue, as they waited for the walk symbol, which was weird because when did they ever wait for the walk symbol? Never.

She told him: He’s Trouble.

Trouble, she said.

When I come back to you in two years, crying, she said, don’t feel sorry for me.

She actually said that, for Christ’s sake. She should listen to herself. And: Sooner. Right away. Jake shouldn’t listen to her, though, because now she needs him to feel sorry for her a little.

But she was right. Even in the timing. So: she’s got that.

She was right.

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.