Mark is having an affair with Yvonne. I read it in his journal. It’s funny, but I feel almost better knowing for certain. “Y again. Didn’t think it would bother me,” the journal said in black ink. “Thought I could keep it separate from feelings for T.” Then a little later in green ink, “T strange & distant. Moody.” A page later he wrote (black ink this time): “Y again.” Then “Sold two ptgs: Rothenberg. Fischel.”
There wasn’t much more. Notes on paintings, figures. No dates anywhere. Mark’s not big on journals.
So now I know. Maybe he wanted me to know. Maybe that’s why he left the journal in his desk drawer. I hadn’t meant to read it. Just that instead of cleaning the loft I decided to re-hang some of the drawings, make the place more mine, and the wires and hooks are in his desk drawer. I had his journal in my hand and I kept saying, Don’t open it. Don’t open it. Over and over. Then I opened it and saw Yvonne’s name. Well, her initial. Y. Y again. I felt really sick but I couldn’t stop. It’s funny, it doesn’t say anything about Yvonne. The way she looks, what kind of food she likes, how she moves. There are no specific details. Nothing. I think I know more about Yvonne than he does.
I’ve been sitting here, trying to figure out what to do. I thought of calling Raymond Stone but I can’t imagine telling him the whole story. Maybe Eric left notes or files on all of his patients so Raymond could check quickly. What would my file say?
Spera, Theresa (Terry). After two years tells her “real name,” 36. Married 5 years. Highly emotional. Has fantasies of being punished. Catholic. Believes husband having an affair. (Woman’s name, Yvonne.) Calls self Yvonne at 12-step mtg. False pregnancy. Passed myself and family at Rockefeller Center, blocked it out, said she didn’t see us. Afraid to be alone. Seems to be breaking into Yvonne’s apartment. Having affair with a young student.
What would Raymond Stone make of that? Would he be able to construct a person out of that? How could he help me figure out what to do? Anyway it’s Christmas Eve and he probably wouldn’t answer the phone.
I kept telling myself it doesn’t mean anything—Mark and Yvonne. That I just need to wait it out.
I called Yvonne’s.
“Hi. Is Mark there?” I asked.
“Who is this?” I could hear her trying to sound calm. I wonder if she found the copy of Crime and Punishment in her oven. Maybe she’s planning a big Christmas dinner and she’ll set the apartment on fire.
“I want to speak to Mark.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “you’ve reached the wrong number.”
“Really? Is this . . .” She hung up.
I called Glenda and David. Their machine was on. I didn’t leave a message.
My mother had called four times to see if we’re coming tomorrow. I erased her messages.
Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Nietzsche said. The funny thing is, I felt almost calm. I stopped at the post office to pick up the mail and got a note from the head of my department at NYU saying he’d like to talk to me about the student evaluations. I didn’t freak out or get upset. I was so calm, it’s almost spooky.
“Honey, are you okay?” Sarah was looking at me so seriously I almost laughed. Dean & DeLuca was darker than usual, I think because they were going to close early for Christmas. Hardly anyone was there. Some of the chairs were already stacked on the tables. We were hunched over our cappuccinos in the back under the skylight.
“Yeah,” I said, “I think I am. It’s funny, but I think I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay. You look kind of freaked out. You’re pale.” Sarah was staring at me intently, dipping her plastic spoon in and out of the milky foam. She had little bits of cinnamon stuck to her upper lip. “I think you should call Mark and talk to him,” she said.
I laughed. “Right,” I said. “I can say, ‘Oh, honey, by the way, I was reading your journal and I realized it’s true. You really are having an affair with Yvonne. Would you like to meet for coffee to talk about it?’”
I must have been talking loud because two people at the next table looked over at us. I glared at them.
“Let’s try that scene again,” I said to Sarah, to throw them off, but she hadn’t seen them. “Anyway, I was thinking about it. It didn’t actually say anything. It said ‘Y again.’ That’s all it said.”
It’s true. That’s all it said. Maybe he felt guilty just thinking about it. Just flirting.
Sarah leaned closer to me. “Terry, I’m worried about you, you know. About you going up to that apartment.”
I’d finally told her the whole thing. Everything.
I liked how she said “going up to” and not “breaking into,” the way Eric had.
“Well, I’m not doing it anymore,” I said, and it’s true. I haven’t been there in a few days. I’d promised Eric and I was going to keep that promise. It was hard. I’d gone up to the neighborhood twice, walked around the block, but I did not go in.
“Well, that’s good,” she said. “Stay away from there.” The way she was looking at me made me nervous.
“You think I’m losing it, don’t you?”
Someone at a table nearby knocked his coffee over and yelled “shit.” A busboy ambled over to mop it up.
“You just seem . . . upset . . . I mean, we’ve been through a lot together. I’ve seen you pull some crazy stuff. But honey, sometimes now I feel like you’re crossing a line.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I mean I love you, Terry, I really do. You know that. But I’m worried. You need to calm down.”
I leaned over and wiped the cinnamon from her lip. “I don’t have your Christmas present yet,” I said. “I’ve been ignoring Christmas.”
“Dean & DeLuca will be closing in twenty minutes,” the busboy announced. “Merry Christmas.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t have yours either. It’s been a bad year.” She licked the foam around the rim of her paper cup and put it down. “Some Christmas, huh?” she said.
We both just sat there looking glum. For someone who’s Jewish, Sarah really takes Christmas to heart. It’s something I’ve always loved about her.
“I have an idea,” she said. Some Like It Hot is open late tonight. Let’s go buy each other something wonderful. A little black silk will make us both feel better.” Sarah always buys lingerie when she’s feeling bad. I knew she was missing her old girlfriend, Karen, and things with Elly hadn’t turned into more than friendship. Elly is definitely straight. Jealous as I’d been I still feel bad for her.
I went downstairs to pee. The scrawled penis was still on the wall but someone had scratched out the words, so that only the God was left. There was an arrow drawn from the word God to the tip of the penis with what looked like come spurting out. God is coming, I guess they meant. Really sick. On Christmas Eve.
I washed my face. I didn’t think I looked so bad, just a little pale. I put on some blush, mascara. I added a touch of Scarlet Memory. I actually looked pretty good. “Merry Christmas,” I said into the mirror.
Sarah just looked at me when I came upstairs.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. She rubbed my cheek where maybe I’d put on a little too much blush. “Well, let’s go.”
We walked arm in arm over to the West Village.
“Too bad we can’t marry each other,” I said as we crossed Seventh Avenue. We always say this when things reach a certain point.
“We’re both too femme,” she said. “It’d never work.”
Inside the shop a few people were looking for last-minute gifts. Sarah started talking to this guy with a briefcase and Barney’s bag who was trying to buy a silk slip for his girlfriend. “This one’s nice,” she said. “See, the lace is soft and won’t scratch her.” Men always trust Sarah.
I watched two transvestites fondle the lace bras and panties, giggling. It depressed me. It was Christmas, for God’s sake. Something about seeing them, seeing that guy buying lingerie for his girlfriend, made me feel how far away from Christmas I was.
Sarah held a green silk chemise up against herself in the mirror. At the same time one of the transvestites placed a black fur brassiere over his “tits” and stood in a pin-up posture, looking at himself. When I saw the two of them framed in the same mirror, something, I don’t know, something snapped. I saw my mother standing at her bureau, a fox piece fixed around her neck. Those tiny teeth biting the tail. My father behind her in the mirror looking at her, just looking. My own head bobbed behind Sarah and the transvestite. It looked like a ball that had detached from my body, just hanging there in all that lace. I moved to see that my head connected to my neck, shoulders, and I got a flash of myself balancing on Yvonne’s chair, twisting and posing in front of her mirror, wearing only her panties. It seemed lewd. Something you’d see in a porno magazine.
I took out a tissue and wiped the lipstick off. This was no place to be on Christmas Eve. I belonged in church. I needed to go to Mass. I could take a cab to Grace Church and hear some music, and then, what the hell, I had no plans. I could sit there and wait for Midnight Mass.
“Honey, I need to get out of here,” I said to Sarah. “I’m going to Grace Chruch to hear some music. Want to come?”
But Sarah said she’d rather go home and watch the Yule log on TV.
The church was crowded. Hundreds of people dressed up for Mass, the way we used to dress when I was a kid. Everyone had children. Everyone was blond. All the women looked like Liv Ullmann. I had wiped the lipstick off, combed my hair, and tried to look as dignified as possible, but I think I was the only one there in jeans. I fluffed Yvonne’s scarf around my neck to dress up my leather jacket, pushed my hair up and under my beret. My hair is so dark I looked like an alien.
People kissed one another hello as the organ music played “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Many of them looked like they knew one another, like they came to Mass every Sunday, not just on Christmas.
I’d picked up a handful of tracts at the door: Introduction to the Devout Life, The Spirituality of Waiting, Selections from Kierkegaard. I opened one of the tracts and skimmed quickly from one phrase to another: One of the most pervasive emotions is fear. People are afraid—afraid of inner feelings, afraid of other people, afraid of the future.
A waiting person is a patient person, a person who believes this moment is the moment.
I wanted something more direct. Like Here’s what you should do about Yvonne.
A tiny baby with a wrinkled red face cried in the pew in front of me. The mother rocked it and smiled up at her husband, who had his arm around her waist. It could have been me and Mark. Our baby. Where was Mark now? Was he with Yvonne? Had she persuaded him to go to hear music at some Upper West Side church? Was he at that stage of love where he would have agreed? When you do anything, even watch four consecutive nights of baseball, to be near the one you love. Had Mark ever been like that? Or Brian? Or is it only me that gets that way? Can’t bear the time away. The time alone? And what about Yvonne? How lonely is she? Maybe she likes the nights she eats salad from a container in her living room reading one of those murder mysteries.
The priest walked up to the pulpit, dressed in red silk robes. It reminded me of the transvestites, but I put it out of my head. I wanted to pray, to think only pure thoughts.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
The congregation rose to sing the opening hymn. The priest made a motion to bless the crowd. He was an Episcopal priest, but it’s close enough to Catholic. Catholic without the blood and guts. I kept reading. A well-ordered love requires that we should love the soul more than the body. Did I love Mark’s soul more than his body? My own? How can you separate the soul from the body?
A kid behind me poked me with his hymnal and I realized I was still sitting. I stood up and joined the song. “All is calm. All is bright,” I sang. I took a deep breath and tried to get calm. I was desperate to be calm. I sang loud. It felt good to hear my voice blend in with the other people around me. It’s the sound of your soul rising out of your sinful body, Sister Dominica used to say when we sang our hymns. The sound of your souls rising together to Jesus. Together. I started wishing I were there with Mark or Sarah or Brian or somebody. I made myself take a deep breath and sing even louder. Surely, I told myself, I couldn’t be the only person there alone. The only sad person there. People lived through tragedy, through losses and deaths and terrible disappointments. Some people love to be alone.
The music stopped and we sat down. The priest welcomed us and said something about tonight everyone was a parishioner. There were no strangers and everyone was welcome. To bring all our joys and all our burdens into the arms of Jesus. I liked that. I was glad he’d said Jesus and not God. I’ve always found Jesus easier to picture than God. When I was sixteen on one of those Christian Awakening retreats I remember telling one of the counselors that I didn’t know how to pray. He was a really cute guy with long brown hair. Gentle-looking with beautiful hands and a denim workshirt. He played the guitar. Robert Giralomo, his name was. Robert said to make praying part of what you do. He said he prayed while he played guitar. He asked me what I liked to do. I said I liked to dance. Well, he said, pointing to a small wood-paneled room with a light blue carpet, just go inside there and dance with Jesus. And I did. It felt stupid at first, but I did it. I imagined myself dancing a slow and easy two-step with Jesus, who at that point bore a remarkable resemblance to Robert Giralomo. I hummed and swayed, eyes closed, leaning against the wall pretending it was Jesus. Every now and then I wondered what, if anything, this had to do with praying. But it felt good. Pretty soon I was completely turned on and went up to my room to masturbate. I ended up with a terrific crush on Robert and cried myself to sleep thinking about him.
We were singing again. A hymn I didn’t know and had to follow in the book. Something about resting in the gentle arms of Jesus. I still think of Jesus as looking something like Robert Giralomo.
I want to rest in someone’s arms. Anyone’s arms. I’m always so scared. I’ve always been so scared. And now Mark’s gone, and I can’t call Brian, and Eric’s away. He’s only been out of town a few days and already I feel like he doesn’t exist anymore. Think hard, Terry, he had said, about the fact that you are so afraid to be alone. And now here I was, alone on Christmas Eve. I could have stayed with Sarah. I could have gone to my parents’ house. I had no plans for Christmas. No plans. I’ve never not had plans for Christmas. I could pretend it was nothing special and just go to the movies. Stay home and read. “You’re never alone when you’re with God,” Sister Judy had said. I tried to think about that, about spending Christmas with Jesus, but it seemed like a pretty poor consolation.
Mass ended. The congregation was singing an exuberant “Joy to the World,” exiting the church. I sang it too. I sang it with such passion and conviction I almost convinced myself I was joyous. I’d planned to sit inside and wait for Midnight Mass, but it was only 8:15 and, besides, I was pulled along by the movement of the crowd. People were kissing one another and smiling and saying “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” I said, and squeezed the hand of a little old lady who had smiled at me. She’s alone, too, I thought. Pretty soon I was standing alone on Fifth Avenue without a clue as to what to do next.
I took a cab uptown.