CHAPTER 10

Loneliness

She could hear it in the sound of a coin dropping and in leaning down to grab it, the rush of blood as she stood back up. In the touch of a gum wrapper in her pocket and in the redness of her coat, the space between each button. On the nape of her neck and in the sound of cereal pouring. She was lonely.

At night she would wrap her arms around herself and run her hand over her back with her fingertips. My back no one is touching, she would think. The daytime was mostly taken up, but the quiet moments that were not taken up were wrought with emptiness. On her lunch break at school she was surrounded by couples walking through their springtimes together. She’d sit in a corner with a sad sandwich pretending to read on her phone as she listened to them sputter inanity at each other. Won’t I get to talk about light fixtures? Doesn’t someone care what type of light fixtures I like? she thought.

There were many things she could not do alone. Many places that would emphasize her pain and all the beautiful things she violently hoped for. She once heard a girl at a party talk about the Saturday night she went to a nice restaurant by herself.

“You wouldn’t believe it, but I went to Il Capitano alone last Saturday,” the girl said.

“You could have called me, I would have gone with you,” another girl said, touching her shoulder in condolence.

“No, I decided just because I’m single does not mean that I can’t go to a nice restaurant on a Saturday night. I mean, really, do I have to have a boyfriend to have dinner? It’s insane.”

The wide-eyed stares of all the other girls listening to the story of the lonely meal circled the girl. Leda looked at her and thought, You are lonely and kind of fat like me. You are fatter, though, and probably more lonely.

The girl took a nervous bite of a crostini and then said, “And it’s a great way to meet guys.”

Leda would get together with her friends for girls’ nights and they would go out to eat or to a bar to have wine and appetizers. She’d dress up and wear extra eye makeup. It was nice to feel like she had somewhere to be. Her friends would laugh and talk about men. They would say things like, “I so needed this girls’ night,” or “I wish he would text me.” The night was always an array of happiness and absence, but really, at least it was a way to not feel like you were as glaringly single, alone, without. There were so many times when to just stand without a man seemed like the most painful way to stand, and girls’ nights provided a parenthetical escape from this burden. Most weekends, though, she just stayed home.

One Sunday afternoon Leda braved a Klimt exhibit at the MFA alone. Her friend Sonja canceled last-minute because the guy she was seeing wanted to get lunch.

“He was really hungry, and we stopped at this great taco place,” she said.

Leda envisioned them eating tacos as they laughed and talked about all the great sex they were having and what light fixtures they liked.

She walked alongside the Klimt paintings, focusing on what she must look like to all the other museumgoers. She stood up as straight as possible and came up close to each painting and then moved far away, as if she had some deep understanding of perspective. She took out a small pocket notepad from time to time. In the notepad she wrote: “dreamlike” and “colorful.” That was the last time she ever used the notepad. Years later she would find it in a box marked “mismatch” and would wonder what “dreamlike” and “colorful” meant.

Upon noticing a girl laughing an embarrassed laugh at her boyfriend’s whispers in front of Adam and Eve, Leda decided it was time to go. I wish I was The Kiss, she thought, and neglected to visit the gift shop.

On the train ride home she smiled at a boy, but he looked away.

That night she microwaved soup and watched four hours of a game show she didn’t know the name of. She dreamt about the boy on the train whispering to her about melted candy neatly spun and then rehardened.

The loneliness was manageable enough with girls’ nights and busying oneself, but the ever-present need for sex was not. It was like a phantom limb that she’d reach for. Every day she was reminded that there was no arm. Sexless by a trauma that didn’t exist. People aren’t meant to live like this, she’d think when she’d smell sweat or eat a lemon ice. Sometimes she’d be alone in an elevator with a man and be reminded of just how much she burned for touch. She would get dizzy just from sensing his body beside her. It took all her willpower not to jump on him and try to have sex between floor stops. She never acted on the impulse, of course, although there were several occasions when she almost attempted conversation. Once a man in a suit who smelled like rhubarb asked her what time it was. She answered, “Yes,” and before she had time to explain that she was so lonely, and that she did love rhubarb, he was gone, out of her life forever on floor seven. The rest of the day she walked around thinking up everything she should have said instead of “Yes” that could have led to their subsequent love affair. “It’s four thirty” seemed most plausible.

Leda had never actively been conditioned to believe that she needed to be with a man to be happy. Her mother certainly was not the type to instill values of happily-ever-after or any fairy tales of the sort. Since she was three years old her mom had been saying, “Dreams first, boys second.” Leda had a vague memory of herself in a sandbox allowing a little boy to steal a shovel away from her and her mother taking it back, saying, “Dreams first, boys second.” From then on she wanted to believe shovels were a part of her dreams, and that no boy would steal a shovel away from her again.

By middle school there were no more sandboxes, just glitter eye shadow and flavored lip gloss. It became clear that the girls who were worshipped, the girls who mattered, were the girls who were “going out” with boys. There was Sandy Lourrie, who was dating Kyle Fielding, and wasn’t she pretty, and it’s no wonder Kyle would want to date her. Isn’t Kyle so hot? She’s so lucky, but really it’s no wonder ’cause she’s so pretty. Maybe Sandy will invite us to her birthday party, and we’ll get to hear all the great things about Kyle.

When she was sixteen her cousin dated a doctor. At the family Christmas party all the women gathered around, saying, “A doctor, did you hear? A doctor. She’s dating a doctor. Did you hear that she is really dating a doctor?” The rest of the night her cousin floated around on her doctor and ate potato salad with swift overachieving mouthfuls.

Leda wasn’t in any way conscious of why or how being with a man made you superior, but it was an inescapable fact that was muddy and absolute. Once a girl had a boyfriend she had solidified her desirability through the commitment of a man. She was linear enough to be loved. She had won.

Leda remembered a woman at her mother’s work who had been promoted to vice president of the company. There was a party for her that Leda attended with her mom. The cake said “Congratulations Susan!” Everyone talked about Susan and how she really deserved this, and did you know she went to Yale? Isn’t that amazing? After they gave a toast, Susan made a speech. She thanked everyone who had helped her, and talked about gardening because she was alone and all she had was her azaleas. Everyone smiled politely as Susan went on and on about her garden. Leda thought, This woman is talking about her garden to show us she is happy, but she is talking so much we can see that she is sad.

Leda did not want to be Susan. Somewhere beyond her shovel dreams it was clear that for her life to really mean anything she would need to be with a man. It was plain and yearning, powerful and stifling. And above all else, she wouldn’t be lonely.