The Law of Loving Others (20 page)

WE were out by the pool again the following morning. Saul was dutifully swimming his laps while my grandmother and I sat on plastic beach chairs, united by a striped yellow umbrella shielding us from the sun. My grandmother held the Arts section of the
Times
propped up in front of her. “I like to see what I'm missing out on up there,”
she said, smiling.

I took out my paperback of
Anna Karenina
. A romance was stirring between Kitty and Levin, and I was picking up speed just a little but still struggling in some way to connect with the narrative. I was never quite in it, always conscious of how many pages I'd read, how
productive
I was being.

“Can I take a look?”
my grandmother asked. She reached for the paperback, held the hefty weight of it in her hands. “I loved this book so much,” she said.

“Really? I'm having some trouble getting into it.”

“God, I read this about a hundred years ago, twice, actually. Once, when I was in my thirties, a few months after your grandfather died. The other time I was a child, really, twelve or thirteen, maybe. I read it to my grandmother.”

“You read her the entire book?”

“Yes, she'd gone blind so early. This probably wouldn't have happened today, but by the time she was fifty, she'd completely lost her vision. And she was such a good, devoted reader, she wanted to read all the time. So after school I'd come home and read to her. You can imagine how long
Anna Karenina
took,” she said, “but I wanted to. I loved my grandmother so much and she took such pleasure from it.” She leafed through the book, somewhat wistfully, it seemed, as though those hundreds of pages somehow contained her past too. And maybe, in a way, they did.

“This was almost sixty-five years ago,” she said. “Oh god, I feel so old even saying that!”

I imagined little Ruth in her dimly lit tenement on the Lower East Side. A one bedroom shared by the entire family, which then consisted of her mother and grandmother, and her baby sister, Harriet. I saw my great-great-grandmother's long white hair pulled severely into a bun, her broad pale face, thick black glasses. I imagined chicken soup and chopped liver and I wondered if this bore any resemblance at all to what my grandmother's childhood was actually like. I thought of how envious I'd been of Daniel's family, how much I'd romanticized their affection, but suddenly I felt firmly anchored by those women, my ancestors, so rooted to our history, which felt both invisible and enduring.

MY grandmother and Saul had a little barbeque on the patio and invited their friends over for dinner. My grandmother and I sliced up watermelon and pineapple while Saul worked on the grill. It was a cool night; the sky was a cloudless pale indigo. Their neighbors arrived with some wine coolers. They asked me about boarding school, told me about their book club—their current selection was
Madame Bovary
. They talked about a particularly raucous tennis match that had taken place earlier that day. Saul passed a plate of grilled portobello mushrooms to my grandmother and gingerly kissed the top of her head as he walked by. These were not the people of old age homes, I thought. They seemed so content, so at peace, their lives still full and textured.

I wanted to tell them how lucky they all were. That my mother, thirty years their junior, was sitting in a hospital, eating her meals in a dining hall surrounded by dozens of people who stared emptily at one another, making jewelry with uncooked pasta, painting their feelings with watercolors.

Saul made a little toast, to having me there with them. “To Ruth and her family,” he said, “which now includes all of us.” My grandmother started to cry. She was such a rare combination—a paragon of strength who cried at the slightest gesture of kindness. I put my arm around her, took a sip of her peach-flavored wine cooler.

IT was my last night in Florida and I couldn't sleep. I was in the guest room, stretched out on a sofa bed with soft floral sheets, staring at the small boxy television on top of the dresser. I watched reruns of
Friends
. They were back-to-back, two hours of episodes so far.

Beside the bed were a handful of framed photographs of my aunt and my mother from their childhood. In one, my mother, a teenager, wore a yellow dress, the skirt long and pleated. She and her date stood outside my grandmother's home in Queens, posing beside a long crimson Oldsmobile. In tiny condensed script someone had written,
Carol and Richie, Senior Prom.

My mother was smiling in a slightly embarrassed, knowing way, and I imagined her begging my grandmother to stop taking pictures, to let them leave already. Just a few years after that photograph was taken, everything in my mother's life would be radically different. I felt a kind of terror mixed with heartbreak, thinking about the dramatic irony—looking at those photographs, how innocent and naive she appeared, but knowing how cruelly her mind would betray her.

Years from now, would somebody see a picture of Daniel and me outside of our dorms, lying leisurely on the campus quad, and feel the same thing about me? How many years left of sanity could I count on?

I realized I hadn't had a panic attack once in the three days I'd been in Florida. I wanted to believe that meant something, was indicative of my mental health, but there was no way to be sure. When I was a kid, maybe nine or ten, I had a stomach virus and was up all night in the bathroom, my mother holding a cool washcloth to my forehead, rubbing my back as I retched, over and over into the toilet bowl. I'd asked her how much time would have to pass before she knew I was okay, before I wouldn't be sick anymore. She told me that if I'd gone an hour without throwing up, I was in the clear. It was arbitrary, probably, but years later I thought of that each time I got sick, watched the clock and hoped that once sixty minutes had gone by, I could feel soothed by the idea that it was over, had passed.

I wanted someone to tell me that if I hadn't had a panic attack for three days it meant I was okay, I could relax, that I could reassure myself that everything was going to be fine. As if it were that simple, so black and white. As if my mother's mental illness was or wasn't. Was either all-encompassing or nonexistent. And this was something I would always wonder about—how the lines were drawn to define mental illness. When did a little depression become pathological? When did anxiety turn into something bigger, something greater and more cautionary about your own stability?

I thought about that picture of my mother and her prom date often, as a little reminder to never stop worrying about the possibility of my own illness, to constantly analyze my own behavior, to continually fear an impending psychotic break, so as to never be caught by surprise. As if my own anxiety could somehow soften the blow.

Earlier in the day I'd gotten a text from Phil.
Hey, hope you're doing well out there. Just wanted to say hi. Saw my brother today, think he'll be coming home soon. And passed by your mom in the hall, she smiled at me.

What did that mean? I analyzed it from a hundred different angles. A smile seemed so loaded. Had my mother recognized him? Was she happy? Or was she lost, and smiling at a faraway thought in her head? Was it a simple, friendly gesture? But that in itself would've meant so much. I started to fall asleep picturing my mother's smile, the subtle nod of her head as she acknowledged Phil, the brightening of her eyes telegraphing some semblance of normalcy.

THE next afternoon, my grandmother drove me to the airport. We were stopped at a light and I pulled the visor down, trying to block the Florida sun, so bright and unrelenting. My grandmother's nails were painted the color of coral. Her hands were firmly stationed at ten and two; she didn't take her eyes off the road but said clearly, pointedly, “It will take so long for you to understand this, but you can't punish yourself for someone else's pain. You have to learn to separate, to draw boundaries. It's the hardest thing, loving your mother. It's the most profound and heartbreaking, the most important, love of my life. But I also couldn't let it define me. I had another daughter. I had grandchildren. I had my own sense of self. And now I have Saul too.”

Earlier that morning I'd been flipping through the pages of
Anna Karenina
, and I came across this sentence toward the end:
But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable
. There was such a comfort in those words. Yes, it was impossible to control whom I loved and why, and just as my family had no choice but to love my mother, I had not chosen whatever complicated feelings I felt for Daniel or Phil. There was nothing to be done about that. All I could do was try my best to navigate through the tangled mess of loss and longing.

I was two hours early for my flight and I sat at the counter of an express California Pizza Kitchen at the airport, eating a miniature BBQ chicken pizza sprinkled with purple slices of onion. I took out my phone and a moment later Daniel called.

“That's so, so weird,” I said. “I literally just took out my phone to text you.”

“Oh nice. I'm out walking Stella , just wanted to say hi. What time is your flight?”

“It's not until three but I'm already here, actually.”

“Do you want me to pick you up from the airport?”

“No, but thanks, that's sweet. I think my dad will get me.” That was a lie. My father had a PTA meeting after school that night, but I couldn't allow Daniel to do anything that nice for me. I'd been hoping that he wouldn't be thoughtful or considerate. I had been wanting him to fail me.

“Okay, well maybe we can just hang out after? I'll drive out to your place.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I should be home by seven or so.”

DANIEL and I were at an old-school Italian place decorated with red-and-white checkered vinyl tablecloths and tarnished statues of the Virgin Mary.

“Tell me what you did while I was gone,” I said. He looked so cute, in a navy plaid shirt and his rectangular-framed glasses, which he so rarely wore instead of his contacts. I felt a surge of tenderness and then I hated myself for it, for everything. For fucking things up, for wanting more than he could give me.

“Um, let me think,” Daniel said. “Kyle and I went to the movies last night, and the day before that I did nothing. The weather has been really shitty. Oh, over the weekend my mom and I went to see these new copper sculptures at MOMA.”

Daniel and I didn't care about the same things. This had always been somewhat of an issue for us, but its importance came and went. He loved visual art, had always felt connected to it in a way that I wished I could understand. It was a flaw of mine, I knew, but when he talked about it—complementary colors and the ways that blues and oranges perfected and harmonized each other—when he told me that I didn't look at paintings properly, said I was just looking
at
them, not
into
them, I didn't know what he meant and I tended to just zone out. And that was what happened to him when I talked about books. We tried but were always looking past each other. Once, we got into a big argument at an art museum in Philadelphia where we'd gone on a school trip. There was a slanted line of charcoal against an otherwise empty canvas—I just couldn't see the beauty in it and I accused him of lying when he said he did.

But on this night we were both present and I was trying to be a good girlfriend, to connect even if I wanted to check out while he was telling me about the way the sculptures inhabited the room, something about the images in negative space. I leaned over a wicker basket of bread and took his hand. And then I told him the story about my Grandma Ruth reading
Anna Karenina
to her own grandmother as a child. I told him how comforting it felt to be connected to my family. How I was planning to visit my mother tomorrow. How I felt this rush of optimism. I went on and on.

“I'm sorry I'm talking so much,” I said. “I just feel this weight lifted somehow. I needed my grandmother to tell me that things were going to work out, and even though I know she doesn't have any definitive answers, she made me feel better anyway.”

“That's great,” Daniel said. He scattered a handful of oregano over his slice of pizza. “I'm really glad you went.”

BACK at my house, Daniel and I lay on my bed, and I showed him some pictures on my phone from Florida. One of Saul and my grandmother that they didn't know I'd taken—they had both been asleep by the pool, lying on plastic beach chairs, their hands dangling toward each other, fingers intertwined.

My phone buzzed and a text from Phil appeared, plainly, on the screen.

I really want you to come home. Is that bad?

I pressed a button and it was gone, but already my stomach was churning. I slid my fingers across the screen, kept showing Daniel pictures, but I knew there was something hurried, frantic, in my gestures.

“Who was that?” he asked. “Who's Phil?”

“Hmm?”

“Emma, who
is
he?”

“No one, he's just this guy, a friend of mine.”

“A friend of yours?”

Daniel sat up, and I did the same, folding my legs beneath me.

“Yes . . .”

“That's not really an answer,” he said, the pitch of his voice rising. “How did you meet him? How come you haven't told me about him?”

“He's just a friend of Annie's brother. And his brother is in the same hospital as my mom.”

“And?”

“And
what
?” I asked.

He looked at me expectantly.

“That text was not nothing. ‘Is that bad?' Come on. What the fuck?”

“No Daniel, stop, it's not like that. Seriously.”

“Come on! Give me a break, you think I'm an idiot?”

“It's not a thing,” I said. “It really isn't.” I kept saying it, but I was lying and it was getting worse, my voice growing more desperate. I watched Daniel pick at a flap of skin at the side of his thumb, something he often did when he was agitated or angry.

“What the fuck! You're totally lying. You are totally, totally full of shit. You're sleeping with this guy?”

“I'm not, Daniel! Please, please, just listen to me.”

“Then what is it? It's just some platonic thing? You guys just saw each other at the hospital and you really connected and it's so romantic but you really care about me and you don't want to hurt me? Is that it? That is so big of you, thank you so much!”

“I mean, I don't know, Daniel. I guess it's not just totally platonic but it's also not a big deal, it's just . . .”

“Will you please stop saying my fucking name!”

“I'm so, so sorry.” I reached to touch his hand so that he would stop tearing at his thumb, which was raw and starting to bleed, but he flinched.

“This is bullshit,” he said. “I'm going home.” He put his sneakers on, tied the laces of his Pumas, in quick, severe motions.

“Please, please, please don't leave. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about him sooner, but it's not a thing, I just didn't want to make a big issue out of it.”

“Can you just stop talking!” He stood up and grabbed his sweatshirt, which had been draped over the chair at my desk.

“You're going? You're gonna drive home now?”

“Yup.”

“Daniel, come on.”

“No, fuck you! You have this holier-than-thou thing about your mom being sick and then you're picking guys up at the hospital?”

“It's so, so, so not like that!”

“Whatever. It doesn't matter,” he said, his voice suddenly weary with something like resignation.

“But it does matter!” I said.

He walked out the door, and then briskly through the living room, where my father was sitting in an arm chair, his legs crossed, reading a book. I was directly behind Daniel. My father looked up at me and we exchanged the briefest of glances, but I wasn't going to make a scene in front of him. I felt the heat of embarrassment and shame as I chased Daniel out the door.

“You're seriously just leaving?”

“Yes.” He was in the car, his navy Subaru, and his headlights flashed on and cast a bright glow against my neighbor's garage.

“Can you just roll down your windows for a second?”

“What?”

I hurried around the driveway and got into the car with him.

“Please, just let me sit for a minute.”

I sat there and I wept, and Daniel was motionless beside me, his hands firmly on the wheel. He stared ahead blankly, with this stony look on his face.

“Daniel, please. You have to forgive me.”

“For what?”

But I had nothing to say, could not say it. “I just . . . I just.”

“You're pathetic, Emma.”

“Please . . .”

“Say it, just say what you fucking did. Say your mother is sick and you used it as an excuse to pretend I'm not a real person, an excuse to go fuck some other guy and ruin everything.”

There was something in the way he said “ruin,” the indignation in his voice, and I thought of something being violently destroyed, imploding, a building collapsing into itself. Everything was falling apart and he was right, I had ruined it.

“I'll do anything. I'll do everything in the world for you to forgive me.”

“You understand that what we had was basically perfect and you ruined it, right?”

I tried to catch my breath, and wiped my face with the side of my sleeve.

“I'm gonna go back to school tomorrow,” Daniel said. “Let's just take a little time away from each other, okay?”

I stared at the tiny flecks of green in his eyes. He looked so different at this moment—so wounded, so much more vulnerable than I had allowed him to be these last few weeks.

“Please get out,” he said softly. “Please, please just get out of my car.”

And I did.

He backed out and was gone, leaving a trail of exhaust, thick and gray, in his wake.

I went back inside, past my father, and then went out the side door of the kitchen into the backyard. The air was icy and still, and I sat down on the grass, which was brittle and damp with frost. This space had once seemed so enormous to me; it was where my mother and I used to pick blueberries, where my old cat Miles was buried, where, briefly, my father had erected a swing set, though it wasn't sturdy enough and collapsed under the weight of a brief storm. But as I sat there now, the yard felt suffocatingly small.

I decided to smoke what was left of the small, stale joint I'd hid in my underwear drawer before I'd left for Florida. I had never smoked by myself before, but at this moment it didn't really seem to matter. I would've done anything to not have to sit with myself, alone with my thoughts. The joint was so tiny and close to my face that when I lit it, I accidentally singed the tips of my eyelashes. Two or three of them fell off and landed on my knee, thin and fractured like broken insect wings. I inhaled. I didn't know if Daniel was right about everything. Was everything good with us before I did this? Had I destroyed the last remaining stable thing in my life? But I took a deep breath and told myself I didn't care. Couldn't care. I wanted to only think about my mother. Fuck everything else.
Fuck it, fuck it, fuck everything
,
I thought.