THE BUSINESS MANAGER OF THE Crimson had pulled the bound volumes of old Crimsons for me. And there it was, in the January 8, 1969, edition of the paper—Vol. CXXXXVIII, no. 74, Weather: Sunny, high in the 30s—the top left article by Anne de Saint Phalle. It was exactly the same as the one published online. Later, a former classmate of Anne’s would put an end to the rumor of a Crimson cover-up for good. It was no wonder she couldn’t remember writing the article, he said. After college Anne “joined a major cult and blew her brains out on acid.”
I was too distracted by another article in the same issue to feel dismayed by the dead end. The author, Jesse Kornbluth (class of ’68), had written about the necessity to “admit a loneliness which is perhaps central to the phenomenon of having a good brain.” It felt like a hang-in-there pat on the shoulder. Jesse reassured, “But it may not be too late to find the ones with whom we will face the night.”
* * *
Jay, as he had been all trip, was elsewhere. At Dana Hall, Jane’s high school, he had stayed in the parking lot. When I left for the Crimson that morning, hoping he would spelunk in the archives with me, he said he had to meet an old friend. I missed the boy who wrapped my fingers around the knife, who kept me company at the Radcliffe event, who gifted me Palantir software access for my birthday.
I didn’t begrudge him not wanting to be so intimately involved with my obsession. It was just that outside of the spell of Jane’s story, I could see how frayed the threads that held us together had become. I’d had a nightmare that he told me he loved me because I knew I couldn’t say it back.
I thought about Jane and Jim’s relationship. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if I liked their relationship because it reminded me of ours, or if I was with Jay because its central premise—holding off the dark—was reminiscent of my understanding of theirs. I wondered if I should stay. If this would eventually be enough. But their story hadn’t lasted long enough to give me an answer.
Jay and I didn’t talk about what I had begun to feel in Boston for a few months. I didn’t want what I was feeling to be true. For all its flaws, this was by far the best relationship I’d been in. I trusted him. He supported me. In the intervening time, we’d even begun saying “I love you,” contorting it for my sake with the qualifier: “in whatever weird way we mean it.” But eventually, the conversation became unavoidable.
I can’t do this anymore, I told Jay.
I didn’t explain that I wanted an active love: loving someone for something rather than for the removal of a fear—of never being known, of never being able to get the timing right. I didn’t say that taking shelter in someone else’s loneliness was no longer enough. And I certainly didn’t admit—to myself, never mind to him—that Jane had taken his place in keeping me company.