Vladimir agreed that they would come on Saturday and then texted to ask me what they could bring. I felt ashamed. Clearly John had mentioned for Cynthia to text me about food, and Vladimir had responded because he and his wife didn’t occupy the same outdated gender roles that John and I did. I asked if they had dietary restrictions. He said none, which was a relief, I had gone through a nervous set of hours when I wondered if he would say something like vegetarian, and I would have to find the time to test out recipes. I told him they could bring something sweet if they liked—that we would have everything else—that we would grill if that was all right with him, and would it be okay if we had lemonade on hand for his daughter, and did she need floaties, we could borrow them, and what did Cynthia like to drink? He said yes to the lemonade, no to the floaties, and said that Cynthia didn’t drink but didn’t mind everyone else drinking. Then he sent a follow-up text:
Cynthia wants to know if we should bring our own towels?
I thought about the domestic politics that must have gone into that text exchange. I could see them sitting, wherever they were, their daughter banging a spoon on the table. I could hear Vladimir saying, “I don’t think we need to,” and Cynthia, sober Cynthia, taking the spoon out of their daughter’s hand and saying, “Just ask her, please,” and him saying something like, “Why don’t you text her,” and her responding, “Because you’re the one texting now,” and him saying something like, “You were the one who was supposed to text,” and her picking up their daughter and raising her eyebrows at him and saying, “Just ask her, please. For me,” and his threat—“All right, but I’m going to say you’re the one who asked.”
Or maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe they were in complete synchronization. Maybe she had said, “Do you think we need to bring towels?” and he had said, “I’ll ask her,” and in deference to the fact that she had been the one to come up with the question in the first place he had given her the credit.
I’d responded, Nope, we’ve got plenty! Looking forward to seeing you. I spent a few seconds rearranging the punctuation, moving the exclamation point from the you to the plenty and back again.
By Friday I had finished Vladimir’s book and read every review (including the painful and abusive ones from Amazon and Goodreads) that I could locate online. Like most books that are full with tone, the last third was not as compelling as the beginning, but the final chapter, and final paragraph especially, was masterful, and shifted me, so that I sat in the library, tears in my eyes, wishing I could put my head down on the table and sob. There was a part of our campus that connected to a network of hiking trails and I stumbled toward them and walked, looking intently at the changing root structures below my feet, letting the spell of the book gradually wear off, like the buzz of an afternoon drink fades into the responsibilities of early evening.
The whole day prior to their arrival I was pulsing with anticipation. I found, but didn’t read, pieces of Cynthia Tong’s memoir, published in Prairie Schooner and The Kenyon Review. After my last class on Friday, possessed, but feeling all the while like a fool, I went to a local spa and visited a masseuse for an anti-cellulite massage and a leg spray tan. It was a long, stupid, awkward process, and I despised myself the whole time. The woman who massaged my legs wanted to impress very firmly that nothing could be done about my cellulite. I waited for thirty minutes in a dark room before I emerged and checked in with the receptionist and found I was in the wrong place for the application of the spray tan. I waited another thirty minutes, because the technician had moved on to another client before I saw her, and then was scolded for shaving rather than waxing.
I didn’t understand why I booked those appointments. I couldn’t really afford them (when the bill came to 217 dollars without tip I felt nauseated), and it was not as though I was in the habit of getting them. It wasn’t as though I thought I could become more alluring; it was more that I wanted to erect a fortress around my body—a fortress of care and grooming. A fortress of corporeal dignity. I utterly failed, however. The tan came out dark and orange, there was no discernable difference in my cellulite, and, deeply regretting the idiotic amount of money I’d spent, I resolved to wear pants and refrain from going in the water.
After my appointment I took nearly two hours shopping at several different markets in town before I had gathered all the ingredients and drinks I needed for the following day. I was in the kitchen concocting a pickling brine for the stalks of daikon and carrot when John arrived home.
“What’s all this?” He picked up the lemongrass and smelled it.
“It’s for tomorrow. I’m making bun bo xao,” I said, taking the lemongrass away from him. “It’s a kind of Vietnamese noodle salad.”
“I thought we were grilling.”
“We are—you have to grill the steak for the recipe.”
“That’s not grilling—grilling is burgers and dogs or brats.”
“It’s September, we’re all tired of that food by now. This is going to be nice and refreshing, the flavors are beautiful, you can make it kid friendly for the little one, and she can have the noodles—WILL YOU PUT DOWN MY JALEPEÑO, PLEASE?”
“Jesus,” he said, and tossed the pepper so it hit me in the chest. “It’s fussy, that’s all.”
“It seems fussy now when I’ve got everything out—it won’t be fussy.”
“Are you trying to intimidate them? Or impress them?”
“I’m not trying anything—THAT’S FOR THE BABY,” I yelled as he pulled out the lemonade and started pouring. “Can you get out of here? Thank you.”
“I got rid of the compost.”
“Thank you.”
“They’re just coming over to swim, we’re not hosting their wedding.”
“I’m enjoying myself. I’m enjoying cooking. Please.”
“Can I have this beer?” He held up the beers I had bought that were from a local brewery, which had been recommended to me by an affable bearded store clerk with rainbow nail polish and a twinkling smile.
“Of course,” I said. He moved in to peck my cheek and I flinched. “Sorry,” he said. “Felt like old times.”
He lingered in the kitchen for a moment, looking at me. I could tell he was feeling theatrical and I wasn’t in a mood to countenance it. He ran his finger around a frame with a picture of him and Sidney and me on top of a snowy mountain.
“Did I tell you that I talked to our daughter today?” he asked.
“You didn’t.”
“She seemed upset.”
“She’s upset with us.”
“No, not about us. It’s something else.”
“Oh,” I said, and fixed my eyes on the glass hummingbird she had “made” with a kit by melting glass beads inside a metal frame. She had given it to me for Mother’s Day when she was ten and there was still a glob of melted and hardened glass in the back corner of the oven that no oven cleaner could remove.
Sidney had chosen me as the beneficiary of her outrage about the allegations against John. She hadn’t known about the affairs when they were happening, certainly, one of our rules was that Sidney would never know. We thought it would be confusing, though now I wonder if knowing about our arrangement would have lessened some romantic attachment she held on to in her ideas of who we were. She might have felt more flexible, more pliable, more clear-eyed, more sympathetic. As it was, the last time we spoke she called me an enabler, an accessory, and compared me to Germans who said nothing during the rise and reign of the Nazis.
I couldn’t think about Sidney at that moment, however, I didn’t want to. I stayed up late, prepping plates of chopped vegetables and cleaning the house (though I doubted they would do much more than walk from the pool to the bathroom). I drank glass after glass of water, as though the liquid would do something to adjust my molecular structure, would melt the frown marks from around my mouth, the puffiness underneath my eyes—all of which I tried not to look at as I passed the mirror. I tried on several outfits in our guest room, away from the prying eyes of John. Eventually I chose a turtleneck rash guard and flowy Tibetan wrap pants. I wouldn’t swim, but would wear something that made it look like I might swim at any moment or had been swimming previously. Then, enraged at my vapidity, I forced myself to sit down and read several articles in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books before I fixed my nighttime drink. I slept fitfully, furious with myself when I thought about what I would look like the next day with no sleep, my self-directed anger making it all the more difficult to drift off.
Vladimir and his daughter arrived forty minutes later than our agreed-upon time, without Cynthia. With tired eyes, he told me that she had a migraine and was so sorry to miss us. After we said our hellos I left him and Phee to settle at the pool while I pulled out the plates and snack platters and cutlery, using the opportunity to readjust to the change in the dynamic.
Clearly, Vladimir and Cynthia had argued and she had refused to come. Although I was somewhat thrilled by the thought of them fighting, and glad because I hadn’t yet read the excerpts of her memoir, I was disappointed she was absent. For one, I had wanted to see him and her together in a social setting so I could satisfy my curiosity about the nature of their relationship—to see if it was affectionate and playful, serious and loving, bickering and distant, collegial, respectful, sexual or sexless, full of admiration or rife with disdain. Secondly, there was the problem of the child and the fact that now he would be spending the entire time caring for her, rather than talking to us. Lastly, and most important, I had truly wanted to love her—to love her so much and so fully that all the reoccurring flashes of Vladimir and his face reflected in the black of my windowpane would dissolve, and I would see in front of me a real-life woman, not an idea, but a full person who I could admire. A neighbor, whose husband I should not and would not covet. For lest you think that I was enjoying my cringing and crushing obsession with Vladimir (which I came to see was lust but at the time didn’t fully understand), I want to assure you I was not. I felt tingling and pained and embarrassed. Some fundamental peace within me, already disrupted since spring and the allegations and the petition and Kacee and Dump His Ass, had been entirely capsized. I was swimming in an ocean of electrical impulses. I was a body made of walking nerves. And truly, I had prayed and hoped that seeing his wife and being with his family would give me release.
Phee was very pretty, with chubby cheeks and bright eyes and brownish-reddish curling messy hair. Three is a wonderful age for communication, if you have a verbal child. I remember it, mostly, from some home videos in which I interviewed Sidney. Philomena, like Sidney had at her age, answered every question with a straightforward eagerness. I am going to preschool and my teachers will be Miss Maureen and Miss Nadia. I am three and one quarter years old. Animals who stay up in the night are called nocturnal and animals who stay up in the day are called diurnal. I could see Vladimir’s lips curling with pride as he coached her through her sentences. Our precocious children. Even though Sidney was by all accounts an unqualified success, I still wish I had paid less attention to her smartness, had cherished her verbosity and alacrity with school much less. She suffered under the weight of her own exceptionalism, I know she did. Over and over she had to show up to the promise of her own potential.
I encouraged the two to get swimming before the heat of the day was gone—by September in this area there is about a three-hour window in which you could even call it warm. Vladimir put Philomena in a little floaty chest guard that looked like modern armor and plopped her inside an inflated donut in the shallow end, where we dipped our feet. He then took off his shirt with an athletic lack of self-consciousness, leaped onto the diving board, and cannonballed into the water, splashing us all, including Phee, who began to cry. He rushed to her and soothed her and spun her around and around in the pool until her tears gave way to laughter.
Vladimir’s body was far more toned than I had imagined. His arms were muscular, his chest was firm and hirsute, his stomach was flat and muscled. He was such a specimen that even John commented, in his funny way, “You’re so sexy, Vladimir,” to which Vladimir, displaying an unexpected sense of humor, said, “I know,” and winked. He said that his only hobby other than writing was working out. We spoke about writers who did things, like Hemingway or Mailer, who pursued hobbies to fuel their writing. Vladimir said he wished he could be more like them, but he didn’t possess the instinct to take up fishing or motorcycling—he wasn’t a gearhead, he was a Russian nerd who started weight lifting in high school PE and never stopped. John mentioned Cheever, Fitzgerald, Updike, Roth, a whole list of writers who pursued nothing other than writing.
“Well, sex,” I said, “they all pursued or were in some way obsessed with sex.”
John shrugged. “It takes up time,” he said, and Vlad rolled his eyes with an indulgent generosity, so casual it surprised me.
“Vlad and I went out last Tuesday,” John said, as if to answer my unasked question.
“Oh.” Tuesday was the weekly gathering at the music hall. I always came back late. John and I didn’t always check in on what we did, but I was surprised he hadn’t told me—he usually kept me apprised of his goings-on and whereabouts whether I wanted to know about them or not.
“We talked,” John said.
He lay in a lounge chair, his belly visibly resisting the elastic of his swim trunks and pulling at the buttons of his guayabera shirt. He stared into the sun, but I could tell from a certain tension around his mouth that he was pleased with himself. My husband is an incredible talker when he wishes to be. Clearly he had taken his new colleague out for drinks and had charmed and convinced him, if not onto his side, then away from personal condemnation. I could see John sitting at his favorite bar in town, buying beers and shots and disarming Vlad with jokes, anecdotes, self-flagellation, and occasional flashes of unexpected insight.
“I see,” I said. John smirked, and Vlad dove down to the bottom of the pool and did a handstand, putting his feet in his daughter’s face, who laughed and grabbed at them.
As the afternoon went on, I noticed that Vladimir liked to spread his arms wide in gestures that displayed his form to great advantage. When he came out of the water for lunch, he rubbed his stomach slowly and flagrantly, a completely unnecessary use of the towel, meant to draw our eyes to his abdominals. Either he was flirting with us or he flirted with everyone. He hung his towel around his neck and kept his shirt off to eat. He was obviously vain, he ran his hands over his hair many times in order to hide the thin spot on top. When I served the bun bo xao (which really is a simple dish—rice noodles, lettuce, cucumbers, crushed peanuts, quick-pickled daikon radish and carrot, lots of fresh chopped mint and cilantro, tossed with light dressing and topped with marinated steak), I watched as he piled mostly rice noodles on the plate for Phee (who proceeded, in trying to eat them, to fling them so far from her plate that I was finding hardened curls of vermicelli on my porch and yard for weeks) and took an extremely small serving for himself.
I made coffee after lunch, and we sat around the pool, shifting our chairs every now and then to remain in the warmth of the sun. As long as Phee was in the water, circling around in her donut, impervious to her own shivers, she was happy, so we were able to speak more than I thought. “She has the inner resources of a second child,” he said. “She’s happy by herself, she doesn’t seem like a firstborn.” I remembered I felt the greatest compliment people would give my parenting was to say that Sidney didn’t act like an only child, even though it is in fact proven that only children do better in life and are usually more generous and community-oriented in their adulthood.
“Firstborn,” I said. “Does that mean you’ll be having more?”
“I’d like to. I was one of four, the youngest. Cynthia is an only child, she doesn’t know if she wants another.”
I watched Phee trailing her fingers in the water, singing to them as if they were little fairies skipping on the surface.
“Why do you think she’s that way?”
“Cynthia?”
“No, Phee.”
“Oh, I know exactly why,” he said. “It’s because my wife left when she was one. Cynthia was hospitalized after her suicide attempt. For six months it was a nanny during the day, and me on nights and weekends.”
He brought this up aggressively—the fact like a battering ram he carried around with him, ready to smash in any door of politeness that was other than the truth.
We all knew Cynthia Tong had tried to kill herself. He had told the hiring committee in his interview. It was one of the reasons Vladimir Vladinski got the job.
He stayed until the sun went down. I was glad to have cleaned the house, because after it was too cold to swim we went inside and John played the piano for us and we sang some folk and pop songs for Phee, who danced around the living room, clutching and kissing a ragged piece of red fabric Vlad said that was the only thing she played with. Then he put her in front of the television and we had gin and tonics on the porch, watching the last of the light in the sky. He kept asking if it was all right that they were staying, and we kept insisting how much we were enjoying their presence. He didn’t want to leave. It felt like young love, I thought—responsibilities looming, the mounting anxiety of your life building while you clung, lolling pointlessly in bed, to a new someone who gave you a sad and fearful pleasure.
I did worry that something about the afternoon had made us appear parental to him. John wasn’t exactly slapping me on the ass, or throwing his arm around me and kissing me, but we were pretending, and enjoying to pretend, a communication and solidarity we hadn’t felt in a long while. Had Vlad’s wife been there, we would have been two couples, peers, fellow academics and coworkers. But because she was gone, we seemed to take on the role of an august mentor couple. And why shouldn’t we, I kept telling myself. John was sixty-three, I was fifty-eight, and although I wasn’t really old enough to be his mother, I was old enough to be his mother. He continued to flirt with both of us throughout the evening, laughing loudly and repeatedly touching me on the arm and shoulder, so much so that he even commented on and apologized for it and I shrugged it off, pretending I hadn’t noticed.
I drove the conversation toward intellectual concerns and politics, forcing discussion like I would do with my students. We talked about the rise of autofiction, and how most of the creative-writing students at the college did not even want to write fiction, but creative nonfiction instead, and primarily autofiction and memoir. I said it was because they were so obsessed with themselves they couldn’t imagine existing outside of their viewpoint. John said it came from an anxiety about representing identities and experiences other than their own. Vlad posited it was because they had grown up online, representing themselves via avatars, building brands and presences and constructions of selves before they even knew that’s what they were doing. We talked about the rise of populist ideology, both on the left and the right. Cautiously sidestepping any Title IX discussion, we talked about how different the college used to be—rigorous but freewheeling (drugs, drinking, sex)—and how neutered the kids were now, calling their moms every day, prizing friendship over romance. Philomena drank so much lemonade that she threw up on Vlad’s shirt. John lent him a linen button-down—the kind of shirt for touring amphitheaters during Grecian summers, and, with it hanging off his tanned body, Vlad looked like Jay Gatsby, or the owner of a yacht. When, finally, Philomena fell asleep on the couch, Vlad picked her up in his arms to leave. Truthfully, he said, he was just so relieved that he didn’t have to do bedtime. He had been hoping she would fall asleep in the car ride on the way home, but this was even better.
We watched him go from the front doorway. As his car pulled out of the driveway John leaned down and whispered, “Are you in love?” and I walked away from him so quickly it was as if I jumped. He followed me into the kitchen and began to help me clean in silence, but after a few minutes in which his bustling presence became more and more unbearable, I snapped at him to leave me alone.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I had drunk more alcohol than usual that afternoon, and though I knew I was angry with him, I also knew I wouldn’t be able to find the correct phrasing to tell him why. He pressed and pressed, becoming more and more aggressive, until finally I told him to fuck off, and that as far as I was concerned he was a sadist. It wasn’t the right word, but I couldn’t express how he had taken a beautiful, almost spiritual afternoon, the kind of afternoon one remembers long after it has passed, and ruined it, for no reason, with his cruel and leering comment. In response, he, drunker than me, volatile and irascible, emptied the full recycling bag he was holding on to the floor, so that beer bottles and plastic clamshells tumbled out onto the tile. He told me I was a miserable woman and accused me of taking a shit on every nice thing, all because of what other people thought, not even what I thought. I told him what people thought had nothing to do with anything, and besides, he was the one who took a shit on things, he was the one, he did that, and then I lowered my voice and told him I couldn’t go on like this anymore. He told me fine then, please, file for divorce, please, miming begging gestures and histrionically picking up the scattered recycling he had spilled and throwing it back into the bag. I watched his display with what I knew was a look of ugly disdain, then laughed and told him not to worry, that I was seriously considering it. He paused, then threw the empty tin can he was holding at the wall to my right and let loose on me a torrent of blame and expletives so foul and hideous that I can’t repeat them other than to say that by the end I felt like there was a sandbag in my stomach, and my head hurt from crying, and my limbs felt limp, and I couldn’t finish cleaning, I could barely even walk to my bed before succumbing to a sleep that felt like the heaviness of death.
The next morning we resumed our distant cohabitation, contrite but bruised from our inebriated altercation. I wrote to Vladimir about his book. I told him that I deeply admired it and that I would like to take him out to lunch once the semester “got rolling” to discuss it. I hadn’t brought it up the day before because John hadn’t read it, and I didn’t want to hurt Vladimir or embarrass John. As the day wore on and I didn’t hear back from him, I began to feel more and more sick about what had transpired at our home the day before. I went over it in my mind—was I too eager, somehow tense or hovering? Was he mad about the lemonade, or did I talk too much in the conversation? Did I interrupt him—I was known to interrupt, I hated this about myself. Did he think I was merely unworthy of his time and respect? But no, no, I didn’t want to work myself up like that, it was Sunday, he wasn’t on his email, nobody writes back right away on a Sunday.
At around two in the afternoon I took a drive (with my phone on Do Not Disturb and locked in the glove box) to my cabin near the lake, an hour north and west of where we were, where the reception was nonexistent unless you hooked up to the Wi-Fi. The last renter of the season had gone the week before and I needed to bring in the outdoor furniture and lock up the boats before it was too cold. I had received an inheritance when one of my childless uncles on my father’s side died, a moderate sum of money with which I bought a modest amount of property with a little entryway to a medium-sized lake that didn’t allow motors. After clearing and replanting the trees and leveling the ground I bought a prefabricated, non-winterized log cabin and had it installed along with a dock. I had purchased it as a retreat for myself, a summer writing cabin, though since it was built I had rented it out, first to help pay for Sidney’s college, then law school, and now to help her with her student loan debt.
When I pulled into the gravel drive I was surprised to see that the cleaning service I used had clearly not come. There was a tipped-over garbage can from which trash was traveling across the driveway (the service usually took the garbage to the local dump). I chased crumpled fast food wrappers and drink containers, balled-up napkins, and rotten fruit skins across the lawn. The cabin, when I entered, was picked up, but there was the tacky film of use over all the surfaces, the mildewy smell of damp towels and used sheets piled up by the washing machine, toothpaste marks, and a ring of foundation left on the bathroom counter. The last tenants had been a couple with a young child and a grandmother—like how we used to travel with John’s mother before Sidney turned eight (old enough to go to the Frick) and became good enough company that we did not require a babysitter. The small bedroom, where I imagined the grandmother had stayed, smelled of powder; the big one, where the couple and their daughter must have slept, smelled of sweat.
I was sure that there were many years before my daughter would have a child, if ever. When she was very little and I would ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would say, “a mom.” And if I asked her what else, she would say, “a babysitter.” Now she was a lawyer for a not-for-profit similar to the ACLU and would perform the sign of the hex if children were mentioned. Still, I considered the small bedroom and my eventual relegation to it. If I stayed with John we would get the big bedroom, out of deference to our matriarchy and patriarchy. But if we split up, it would be cots and sofa beds and small bedrooms for me. My worth would be equal to how helpful, useful, and uncomplaining I could be. I would be tolerated as long as it was clear I appreciated the cots, the sofa beds, the small bedrooms. I would have to demonstrate gratitude for the scraps and crumbs of time, attention, money, and luxury that came my way. I would work for it, with early mornings watching the baby, or nights doing dishes after everyone fell asleep. I couldn’t be particular. Particular old women are not invited on vacations. Unless they are very rich, which I was not.
The cabin was wooden inside and out, the logs of the exterior making up the walls of the interior. The main part was one large room, the kitchen taking up one corner, a dining table in another, and the remainder a sitting room framed by two large glass doors that opened out to a small deck and a view of the lake. There was a hallway that led to the two bedrooms, two hall closets, a washer/dryer nook, and a small bathroom. I unlocked the closet where the cleaning supplies were kept. Despite feeling slightly disturbed when I saw the garbage swirling all over the lawn, and irritated that I was going to have to track down the cleaning service to ask what happened, I was looking forward to scrubbing the house. Something to get my back into. I began by drawing the microfiber feather duster over all the high surfaces to knock down the dust, then cleaning the windows, then the mid-level surfaces, and then the floors. High to low, like my mother taught me, so that the last thing to go was all the dirt you knocked down. In the bathroom I wiped down the counters and sink, scrubbed the shower, then the toilet, then got on my hands and knees to wipe the bathroom floor.
The side caddies of the refrigerator were filled with the hot sauce and dressing whims of all the combined summer renters, which I packed into a large cooler to take home. I wiped some stuck maple syrup out of a drawer and brushed some green flakes that looked like spilled frozen spinach out of the freezer. There was a lone ice cream sandwich, “S’more Flavour” printed on its label, in the back corner. I took a bite and spit it out—it was chewy with freezer burn. When the blankets, sheets, and towels were out of the dryer I folded them, wrapped them in clear plastic bags, and packed them in a large Rubbermaid garbage can that kept them safe from mold and mice and moths.
I was about to go pull the kayaks into the storage shed when I was struck with an urge I hadn’t felt, not truly, in years. The urge, the want, felt almost orgasmic, like being inches away from someone’s mouth, knowing you are about to kiss them for the first time. It was the real and true urge to write—not the “sit down and make yourself write” feeling, in which you perform a number of tricks to start the words flowing, if they ever do, but the desperate desire to actually grip a pen and watch as ink travels over the page. The actual urge to say something.
Of course, there was barely anything to write on in the cabin. Unwilling to destroy any of the books by writing in their back pages or margins, I rummaged through the house until I remembered a pack of Post-its I’d left in the drawer with the long lighter for the grill. I scratched the lone pen against the paper for several seconds before the ink began to flow.
I wrote until the sun went down. Post-it after Post-it, all the while my body vibrating with that near-sexual energy. It was the beginning of a story. A story about improbability, about coincidence meeting circumstance. It was a fairy tale—or the start of one—about what one hopes to happen, against all odds, happening. The voice I wrote with felt new to me—unrestrained. For years I had been trying to cool down the temperature of my writing, to pull it back, pull it back, pull it back—neutralize it, contain it, make it crisp, clear, and sharp, every word carved out of crystal. This writing was nothing like that—it was drippy, messy, breezy. I was working through a mind frame, not a conceit. I was creating a world, not words on a page.
I found the writing so intoxicating that I even considered stopping to masturbate—engorged with the creative juice, to use a hackneyed phrase, that was rushing through my veins. But the sheer ease with which I wrote was too precious. I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to preserve this tingling energetic tension that pulsed within me.
Oh, it was him, it was all because of him, I knew. Him and his book and his body, and the way he spread his legs and looked at me in the black glass of the window. It was him and his tragic wife and his sad yet triumphant story. I was writing to him. He who wasn’t the least bit interested in me—I was writing to explain myself to him. If I couldn’t have him—perhaps I didn’t even want him—I at least wanted him to know me. Who I was and how I felt.
I wrote till the sun waned and the Post-its were all used up, then wrenched myself away. I had to prep for tomorrow’s classes and review the language of the department goals before a Monday-morning meeting. I didn’t listen to anything on the drive back. I thought through the next five plot points in the story. When I arrived home John was sitting outside. I sat down with him. I put my hand on his knee. He shifted toward me and I put my head on his shoulder. That night we fucked for the first time in a year, with a clawing, otherworldly intensity. I woke up in the Big Bed, as we used to call it, in the early morning, and moved to the guest room. I felt exhausted and disturbed, as though a multitude of ghosts had passed through my body the night before.