Cat sits at her table with cartoons spread in front of her. It’s a rainy Saturday morning and she is ready to organize her portfolio for Exit Ramp. There are so many choices it boggles her mind. She knows she should show her strongest work, which her gut says are the Legends: stand-alone cartoons as well as comic strips about alcoholism, ACOAism, anorexia, divorce, loneliness, romantic love, abortion — the dark underside of growing up in a dysfunctional American family. Her dark underside, anyway. Or she could show Man in Tights: The Adventures of a Bisexual in the Age of Aids, but it’s already feeling old to her. Then there are her Max & Min strips — they are much more fun than her other work — but Rocky would probably sue her. Ironically, the Legends comics are a safer bet, though they will expose every one of her vulnerabilities. And what if, what if Marshall Korn hates them? Would she ever overcome such a poignant rejection? While she contemplates the possibilities, she moves the sharpened tip of a pencil in a long slow arc over a sheet of white paper, an act of drawing-and-thinking that has always cleared her mind.
Then zap, the doorbell rings, concentration busted.
She gets up, considers her unkempt attire — old ripped jeans, worn slippers, stained white sweatshirt, no bra — then decides not to worry about it. It’s probably Con Ed, or some delivery, though she can’t imagine what. Possibly something that needs to be left for a neighbor.
But when she opens the door, there is Teddy, rainsoaked, smiling, carrying a flat wet paper bag.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, lamely trying to hide her pleasure at the surprise.
He steps inside and looks around the apartment. “Just about the same,” he says.
“I haven’t had much time to change things yet.”
He nods, looks her over. They both know that her statement was inaccurate, that it isn’t time you need to change things, but inclination.
“This is for you.” He hands her the wet bag.
She takes it to the kitchen and peels back the sopping brown paper to reveal Matt Groenig’s cartoon books, Love is Hell and Work is Hell. She laughs. “Thanks.”
“I saw them and thought of you and, well, of us.” He shuts the front door and steps into the kitchen. “Just kidding.”
“Come in, why don’t you?”
He takes off his dripping wet jacket and hangs it by the hood over the doorknob. He’s wearing the green-and-aqua striped shirt she always loved. Bending over, he snaps a pair of rubber galoshes off his wing-tipped leather shoes.
“They’re antiques,” he says. “Don’t want to ruin them.”
“You bought them in that old junk shop,” she says.
“Touché.”
“So, how’d you know you’d find me in?”
“It’s Saturday morning. Is there some place else you might be?”
“Sometimes,” she says.
“Oh? Where?”
“It’s none of your bee’s wax. If you want coffee, I’ll make some.”
“I want,” he says, and sees the makings of her portfolio scattered across the table. “You got in touch with Exit Ramp?”
“Isabel had the letter sitting on her desk the whole time.” She stops the vitriol from forming into words. Standing in the kitchen doorway, she looks at him hovering over the table, truly interested. She recalls, when they were together, how encouraging his concern for her artistry was. It was one of the many things she had loved about him. She could have gone on loving him forever, the way he came along and changed her life, changed solitude into loneliness, friendship into need. Loving Teddy changed her from a creative mind comfortable in isolation, into a female, body gushing fluids, wanting to please. Life became a banquet of desires, fulfillments, hungers. Loving Teddy changed her. He teased her out of her contentment. Then ran.
She goes into the kitchen and puts some water on to boil. She knows she should not be doing this, loving him secretly in her heart. He hurt her once; won’t he do it again?
She brings coffee in for both of them, puts the mugs on the trunk in front of the couch and sits on the blue canvas director’s chair. “Actually,” she says — because she has to, because this feeling she has for him is too dangerous — “I am seeing someone right now.” The lie seems insignificant in the broader context.
“Who?”
“You don’t know him.”
He looks around the apartment. “So, where is he?”
“He isn’t here.”
“Why not?”
“He just isn’t.”
“So it isn’t exactly serious.”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“You brought it up.”
“Tell me about Isabel. What happened?”
“No.”
“Fine, Teddy, good. So don’t ask me about....”
He grins. “You almost said his name.”
She clenches her lips, snorts laughter.
“Hey, Kitty Cat, he doesn’t exist, does he?”
“He brought me those flowers.” She points to the white roses John gave her.
“Oh, nice — they’re dead.”
“Well, they’re old.”
“Okay,” Teddy says. “Truce. I’m sorry.”
“What for, exactly? I’d like to know.”
“For bothering you. For disturbing you. It’s just that I was really glad to run into you on the street.” He stands up and moves in the direction of his jacket.
“Wait,” she says. “Sit. Drink the coffee I went to the trouble to make for you.”
He turns around to look at her, his eyes twinkling. “You sound like Grandma Rose.”
She takes that as a compliment, and smiles. Teddy had once told her that her grandmother was the loveliest bossy woman he’d ever met, and that he wished he’d had a grandmother like her. Grandma Rose, who had loved filling Teddy up on espresso and baked goods, received the news of their breakup with one of the most dreadful silences Cat had ever experienced.
“Really, Teddy, sit down. Since you’re here I want you to know what I’ve learned these last few months.” By learned, she also means endured and inflicted, but she knows better than to lay it on too thick in her introduction.
He drinks his coffee and she proceeds to describe her recent life to him, which mainly consists of stories about work. She holds him captive all morning, beyond noon and into the early afternoon, figuring she owes him some discomfort. She wants him to know the good and the bad, how she has acquired all kinds of new skills and is now an able typist, a good cook and a deceitful in-house spy. How her sorrow over the abortion and her despair at losing him and her loathing of Isabel have created a shell around her heart. How she entered Rocky Love’s life to help her, and to help herself, but instead became the final domino poised to make an icon tumble. How she assessed her choices and did not always make the nicest ones. The words anger and strength, satisfaction and regret pepper her story. She isn’t proud of herself, but she won’t lie.
Not a wisp of judgment clouds Teddy’s deeply listening expression. Eventually he pleads hunger and begs to take her out to a meal. She agrees. They can see through the windows that the rain has stopped; the black street is glossy and there is a bluish hue in the air. They go to the deli on the corner of Second Avenue and buy two beers to bring to the Indian restaurant which, like most, has no liquor license. Then they come back up the street to their old favorite place called Taj.
Inside, it’s dark and narrow and crowded with small square tables. The thick molding on the walls is carved with an elaborate design. The air is incense-sweet. A young man in a gray suit and white turban seats them against the wall. Another man brings menus, two glasses and a bottle opener.
Cat can’t get over how normal it feels to be with Teddy. But she wants to know, before she gets swept into love again — because she can feel it happening, the deep-down undertow — she wants to know what happened. The truth.
She leans forward, as Teddy sips his frothy beer, and says, “Please tell me about Izzy.”
He nods, puts down his glass. The room is dark and sweet. They are in the No Smoking section and so there is no cloudiness, no confusion. This is one of their clearest, cleanest, lightest moments together in months. The truth. The real truth: just what really happened.
The story begins amidst appetizers of meat and vegetable somosas and banana fritters, and continues and ends with lamb curry, chicken tandoori, rice pilaf, mango chutney and poori.
“I knew her before I knew you,” Teddy says. “Well, you know that. But we were lovers. She wasn’t exactly my girlfriend, and I guess she resented that, and then you came along.” He shrugs his shoulders with uncharacteristic timidity.
“Came along?”
“I went out for a slice of pizza,” he says, “and things changed.”
“Two slices. You had two slices that day.”
He smiles, nods. “Right. You had one. That was the last night I saw Izzy for a while.”
“You spent the night with her the day we met?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“The thing is, I never explained what happened. I just stopped going over, and she only called me once, and you answered the phone. Remember? You told me someone hung up.”
Cat remembers: it was the morning after their third night together, Teddy was in the shower and the phone rang. When she answered it there was a pause, then a click.
“That was her. I didn’t see her again until the night I took you over.”
“Don’t leave anything out, Teddy. What are you forgetting?”
He stares at her. Thinks. Nods. “Yes, there’s something. About three weeks before I met you, she had an abortion. It was her idea, but I completely agreed.”
“I know. She told me.”
“I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.”
“When did you start seeing her again, Teddy?”
He thinks a moment, nods, then begins. “She published you in Freak, and I was really grateful.”
“Grateful?”
“That she helped you, Cat. Not that you didn’t deserve it.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. She knew it, too. She wouldn’t have taken your cartoons as a favor, that’s not Isabel. She liked your work.”
“But not me.”
“I don’t know, probably not. But that isn’t even the point, is it? She resented you.”
“Obviously. Why did you bring me to her in the first place? That’s what I can’t understand.”
“In my mind, it really was to show your work.”
“Teddy, it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know there had to be more to it than that. Most people try to avoid having their girlfriend meet their ex.”
He grins. “You’re right, of course. In perfect hindsight I can see I was planting a bomb. And when it didn’t go off on its own, I went back to detonate it.”
“Meaning?”
“I went to her apartment one afternoon, to thank her for publishing you. I asked her for copies of Freak, and she gave them to me, and she asked me to stay for a drink, and I did. We talked.”
“And then?”
“Then — we went to bed.”
She reminds herself that she asked him for this. She hates hearing it yet it’s a relief to know the facts.
“Then?”
“Then we avoided each other, until one day we bumped into each other on the street. It was just before you had your abortion, and things were not good with us. Then it started up, and I got very confused, and when you asked me to move out I felt paralyzed.”
Details, she wants details. “What happened?”
“You were angry with me and I knew it. She was angry, too, but anger suits her better than you. Know what I mean?”
Cat stares. She does and she doesn’t. “Go on.”
“I have always been afraid of the commitments involved with having a family. I’d like to have one, believe it or not, some day. I don’t know if I can describe the feeling of panic.”
“Try.”
He pauses, thinks, continues. “It overwhelms me when I think of what it would mean to be responsible for another life, what it would mean to support a family, day in and day out. I can hardly breathe. It terrifies me. And then the feeling is I have to get out, whether I want to or not.”
“So you called Isabel?”
He smiles, nostrils flare. “From the frying pan into the fire.” But Cat isn’t in a laughing mood. She waits. And finally, he continues. “Actually, I didn’t call her, I just went over. In the end that was what really burned her up. She said she wasn’t there for my convenience, that I was using her.” He winces. “But I think she was right. I just wandered over one afternoon and there she was and I stayed for hours. I told you I was in the library. She told me I was making a mistake with you, that you were too dependent on me, that I was asking for trouble. She told me I was lucky you were going to have an abortion. She told me that a woman has a ‘profound right’ — that’s what she said — to have the baby if she’s pregnant, and the man who impregnated her has a ‘moral obligation’ to take care of the mother and the kid whether he wants to or not, and that I was lucky you let me off the hook, and I should get out while I still could.”
“Izzy said that to you?”
“Yes. And I was confused about what had happened between us, and I listened. But Cat, it was different with you. I was confused because I loved you and I was scared of reaching the next level, of being responsible for loving you. I never loved her. Never.”
“That’s why you left me for her?”
“No. I was scared and restless. She gave me reasons to run away. They were the wrong reasons, but I ran anyway.”
“She was in love with you, Teddy. Didn’t you know that?”
“No, not really. I mean no. Love and Isabel never came together in the same thought. But she is a force, Cat, you have to admit that. She moved me. It was mainly an intellectual thing, and sex.”
He is right, Isabel is a force, and she influenced Cat, too.
“I saw her for about a couple of months. It was ridiculous. In the end, she was acting more possessive and dependent than you ever did. That’s when I knew she had manipulated me with all this jazz about my rights as a man. Love isn’t about rights and even-steven and logic. I remember the moment I knew how much I missed you. Izzy was setting type for the issue of Freak with your wedding cartoon with the smashed cake and the halved woman. It all came flooding back — that I loved you. And I realized I had made a mistake. Then Izzy started saying I seemed distant and what was going on and she felt like she was being used and for example remember the beginning when I didn’t even call, I just came over. She grew up on Long Island, you know. That bohemian thing is just a charade to fool herself into thinking her unhappiness has a purpose. Some time in June, I told her it was over.”
“June?”
“I didn’t want to call you until I had my head screwed on straight.”
“But you didn’t call me. You saw me on the street by accident, and today you just showed up.”
“236-4079.”
“That’s my number.”
“You had it changed after I moved out, but I got it from Izzy’s Rolodex. I memorized it.”
Cat insists on paying for her half of the meal, so as to avoid confusion, at least for now.
He walks with her down the block, back to her apartment, formerly theirs. It’s dark out and a little chilly and now she knows the truth. She also knows that she is still in love with him. So when he says — standing together in front of the building, both aware that this is a pivotal moment: that she can invite him upstairs, or simply go in alone — when he says, “Believe it or not, I’m really and I mean really sorry about what happened, I mean everything,” she believes him. He isn’t perfect by a long shot, and never was. But she sees him better now, with his fault lines glaring, and figures that any man would end up looking like a cracked egg after a while.
As soon as that image enters Cat’s mind, she thinks of Rocky and her cynical commentary about the limited capacity of men. What about women? Separately, one is probably no better than the other. And isn’t it when you put them together that you get all the trouble and all the fun? She could make a stand now and self-righteously reject Teddy for being highly imperfect the first time around. But in her heart, she wants him back.
She thinks of Samuel Johnson’s famous assertion that “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
Hope over experience. Cat can’t argue with the sentiment as she slips her hand into Teddy’s, plunging back into a love that, however imperfect, feels too tempting and unfinished to refuse.