CHAPTER 27

The Beginning of the Descent

The first change Leda became conscious of was that when she’d drop something she wouldn’t bother to pick it up. She’d been doing it for a while and hadn’t really noticed until she dropped grapes out of the fridge as she went to make herself lunch. They fell on the floor hard. The sound was sort of permeating, as if it made a ring or a boom or echoed in the apartment, but really it didn’t make much of a noise at all. She looked at them on the kitchen floor. It was remarkably unremarkable the way they looked then. Green grapes in a plastic bag on linoleum. Like some kind of modern art piece extracted from its context and no longer art. What she didn’t want more than anything was to pick them up, but that feeling was not an act of defiance or an act of anything more than just her inability to feel a sense of motivation to lean over and take them in her hand and put them back on the shelf in the refrigerator. I don’t even want to lean, she thought.

The weekdays started to feel like an obstacle she had to navigate. On the weekends things were fine. She and John would take day trips all over the coast. They’d go see the redwoods or drive to Point Reyes. It was monumentally different from the feeling of looking at the grapes. It was youthful and sexy. They’d take pictures together, and she’d post them on Facebook, and all her friends would be jealous of her.

“I want your life,” Anne once texted.

These were the best of times. It was as if the city and its landscapes were laid out only for the two of them. Their own little world wielded through snacks in the car and dinners in Carmel.

But on the weekdays everything once laid out was folded back up. The view of the city, alienating in its outstretch. The hills no longer a vantage point but a steep climb. She’d try to get out of the apartment, but having nowhere to go was depressing. She’d make small tasks for herself—grocery shopping, mailing a package, buying Pepto-Bismol—but she had to walk everywhere because John had the car. The bus was an option, but to get downtown she had to wait at stops in the worst parts of town. It wasn’t like Boston, where there was the train that went everywhere and went quickly and you could stay underground. But really the deterrent was in knowing that every walk, every errand, every attempt to get out of the apartment was only in order to make existence bearable, tolerable, sustainably less depressing.

Her last attempt at preserving her sanity through forced excursions was on a Tuesday. John had left for work early and already texted that he was going to be home late. She hadn’t written anything in four days. Really, she hadn’t even tried. It was sunny and bright out, and so she thought, Maybe I could write in the park. She took her laptop and walked down to the little park near her house. It was half a dog park and half a children’s playground; the play structures and sandboxes were quarantined away with a fence. Along the side of the dog part of the park were a few benches that were generally empty. Leda sat down on the one closest to the playground. In reality she didn’t belong to either side of the park, but she thought maybe someone would mistake her for a nanny. That’s my hope now. That strangers will think I have a reason to be in a park, she thought. She pulled out her computer and reread what she had been working on. The paragraph she’d written the week before wasn’t as good as she remembered. It was already discouraging, and she hadn’t even started writing yet. She looked out on the playground. A lone child sat on the seesaw. He weighed it down but seemed content despite it. The other few children played around him, climbing on structures or running around screaming, but he just sat there looking up, as if he were anticipating rain but wasn’t bothered by the prospect of it.

The people in the dog section of the park would pass by her and shoot her sorry, accusatory looks. She couldn’t really blame them, as she imagined that she did look odd sitting there with her laptop in a dog park/playground, even for a nanny. A black Lab walked over and sniffed the bench she was sitting on.

“Hi there, buddy,” she said. He sniffed her hand, but as she reached to pat him he turned unapologetically and went on his way.

Twenty minutes passed. She tried to start a short story about a boy on a seesaw and his black Lab, but it just came out sounding silly. Just then an older lady holding a terrier walked over to her.

“You know there’s a café with Wi-Fi just over there.” She pointed across the street.

“Oh, I know. I’m not using the Internet. I’m just working on something,” Leda said. The lady was dressed in a rich-lady bohemian style. Her gray hair was perfectly done up in a short, strict manner.

“Wouldn’t you rather work in the café?” she said.

“Oh no, I’m writing and I can’t usually write in public places.”

“Isn’t this a public place?”

“I mean noisy public places.”

“Well, I just thought I’d let you know so you wouldn’t be sitting here for no reason.”

“Thanks.”

The lady nodded, put her dog down on the grass, and walked away. Leda relived the conversation a couple of times in her head and then left the park.

The weeks that followed were long and empty. She hardly wrote. Cleaning the bathroom became a respite from the monotony of everything else. She tried painting once, but it went awry. She read a book about a man who rode his bicycle into oblivion. She hated it but finished it anyway. Mostly, though, she’d watch TV or go on Facebook.

“Oreos make everything better,” Katrina posted, and she liked it.

On a Wednesday she thought, All I do is sit around and think about my arms being fat, and then she picked up a small Styrofoam ball she found inexplicably lying on the bookshelf and threw it against the wall, but it was too light and too soft to make any impact. It hardly hit the wall at all, really.

John tried to be considerate. At night he’d offer to take her to dinner or to go to the mall. He’d get home late from work usually, though, so most everything was closed. Sometimes they’d just drive around.

“Have you heard of Youth Lagoon?” John asked her on one of their nightly drives to keep her from going crazy. He’d always discover new bands and tell her about them. Early in their relationship it had been something they’d bonded over, but since moving to California things had changed. Most of the time when she would listen to new music it was in the car or walking somewhere, but now that she spent so much time in the house there were seldom any opportunities for her to discover anything. She lost touch with the latest and greatest, and what was worse was that even the bands she loved from before she no longer really kept track of. At first she didn’t think much of it. John still knew everything and would share stuff with her when they’d drive at night or go on their little day trips on weekends, but slowly it started to get to her. Sometimes he’d play an album for her for the first time and would start singing along. He already knew all the words, and she didn’t even know the band’s name. He was living a life at work and in the car and with music that she could no longer share. His own life was lyrical and new, and she was just waiting around for him to share it.

“No, where would I have heard of Youth Lagoon? I don’t leave the house. I don’t talk to anyone.”

“I don’t know. I just thought maybe you’d read something about them,” he said.

Leda opened the window. It was a typically cool night, but she didn’t care. She wanted to feel like there was fresh air in the car.

“I think you’d really like them,” John said. “There’s this one track, I think it’s, like, number ten or something.”

“I don’t want to listen to music,” she said.

“Well, okay, but just listen to this one track.”

“I don’t want to. I’m sick of all your new bands.”

“Let’s just listen to this one track, and then we can listen to something old.”

Leda rolled the window back up. It was too cold. “I don’t want to listen to old music, John. I don’t want to listen to any music. I’m sick of the music always being your music.”

“How is it my music?”

“You’re the one who knows everything new. I don’t ever know any of these bands. I used to know everything. I didn’t even know Jack White had a solo album. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“Look, I just…I can’t…” She tried to think of a way to phrase it to him. “I used to listen to music all the time, and when I did it was this thing that was my own, and now whenever we listen to music it’s together, and it’s bands that you’ve found and know, and I don’t know anything anymore.”

“I’m not stopping you from listening to music. Why don’t you listen to it in the house?”

“Because I don’t like to listen to music in the house. I like to listen to music in the car or when I’m walking somewhere. Most of the time I’d listen on the train on my way to school.”

“Okay, I get that, but why not just listen in the house now?” His face became illuminated under a stop light.

“Because that’s not me. That’s not real. That’s me making a fake life so I can live out here for you and your life, John. I already am doing everything for your life.”

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

“It’s not fair, maybe, but it’s true.”

“You have to find a life out here, Leda. I can’t do that for you.”

“Find a life out here? I’d like to see you move somewhere with no job and no school and not knowing anyone and just ‘find a life.’ You had a life already built here waiting for you, and I had nothing. I’ve been trying to keep from killing myself. That’s my life out here. That’s what I’ve found.”

“If you really feel that way, then you should see a therapist.”

“See a therapist?! I’m going to get professional help to live in San Francisco and support your career? What bullshit is that?”

“What do you want me to say, Leda? It’s temporary. We’ll move back to Boston, and things will be fine.”

“Fine, but don’t play me your stupid bands anymore. I don’t want to hear them.”

“Jesus, Leda.”

“Jesus nothing!” she screamed. “All I want is my life back. I moved out here and did all this and I just want my life back! I look like a loser. I’m a loser.” She started crying and covered her face. The sound in her hands of her own tears and her own crying was a sound that was real and loud and she could hear it.

After that John said nice things. He hugged her, and told her that he’d start looking for a job soon and that they’d move back to Boston and that everything would be great like it was. They drove to the ocean and parked by the barrier. It was dark, but they could still see the whites of the waves, the cyclical motion of the earth and the moon’s pull silent in the car. On the way home they listened to Youth Lagoon.