You or Someone Like You (33 page)

At 12:30, Jennifer calls again. “He's here.”

Where was he?

There's a beat. “He said he was driving on the PCH, up to Malibu.”

Jennifer, I say, none of this is your fault. You're not responsible for him. What he's doing is thinking.

“All right,” she says, grateful and extremely uncertain.

May I speak with him?

He comes on. “I'm in the middle of something.”

Clearly, I say.

Silence.

I'm joking, I say very softly.

“I'll talk to you when I get home,” he says.

 

Sam arrives home at 5:30
P.M.,
walks into the kitchen, car keys jingling. He looks guarded. “Jennifer said Dad wasn't in the office this morning.”

No, I say, he wasn't.

He stands there. He sets down his pack. “Are you upset with me?”

I think about upset. No, I say, the right words escape me.

He grunts, exactly like Howard grunts. He says, to the wall, “First time you ever said
that
.” ( Just like his father.)

Neither of us knows what to do right now.

He picks up his books and slings them over a shoulder and walks out of the kitchen.

“Sam,” I say, but there is no answer from the long, clean, cool California hallway.

 

I open my eyes and look at the clock. It is 4:18
A.M.

I was thinking, I say to the figure moving about in the darkness of the bedroom, how prominent a role time plays in family crises.

He considers this, lying facedown in his clothes on the bed onto which he has just climbed, his shoes on the sheets spilling sand, smelling of sweat and car exhaust and Malibu sea air. “Counting minutes,” he says into the bottom sheet.

Not exactly. Noticing specific times. 1:50
A.M.,
2:47
A.M.,
3:22
A.M.
And now (I glance) 4:19
A.M.
I roll onto my side toward him. Where did you go?

“Back to Malibu, the beach.”

You're becoming a regular park ranger.

He mumbles something about park rangers.

How did you work the meetings out?

“Jonah'll come back,” he says. “They're such assholes at Gersch, this goddamn chip on their shoulders.” Something distracts him, he flickers over several distant mental islands, returns to dispose of the subject at hand. “Jennifer can extract me with delicacy from anything.” He pauses to cough, continues, “She just told them I was having a mental breakdown.”

Is that true? I ask. I sit up in bed. The window is wide open, and the moon vine is bright on our windowsill.

He gets up and starts shedding pieces of clothing. “What do you think?” he asks. Shoes, trousers, shirt, one sock.

So I clear my throat and say, Who has the life he wants? Wystan Auden did, you could argue.

Howard cuts in savagely, “We're not fucking talking about Auden, Anne.”

I am, I say with a calm I do not at all feel, talking about Auden.

After a moment, I realize Howard is crying, his shoulders shaking beneath his stained, unbuttoned dress shirt, his chin down almost to his hairy chest, bobbing up and down with every sob, his fists clenched. I am so stunned I cannot move for a moment, but then I jump out of bed, I take him in my arms, and I am pushed back and forth.

I know, of course, what the crying is: I am now, for him, a different kind of person, and so he has lost me, and he is mourning my death. He is in shock, his system is in overdrive, trying to accept this, and the pain is acute. Howard has realized that Sam, too, is a different kind. It was inadvertent—Sam never intended (Sam who is asleep down the hall) to lead Howard to the conclusions that have brought him to standing here in the dark, covered in cold sand and half-naked and sobbing—but inadvertent hardly matters now.

I have watched Howard suffering, and here in the dark I finally, truly, see it. Somewhere inside him, this ideology rooted itself at the earliest age. Howard, despite everything he has said to me, despite all his professed universalist beliefs (despite, for example, his marry
ing me), has carried this infection from the start, it has slept, latent, in him, and Sam has woken it from its slumber. It is in his bloodstream now, and he is reacting. Self versus nonself. Sam has begun to understand. But unlike myself, Sam feels no sympathy, only anger. The product Howard produces—I don't mean to assign too much importance to the movies, but they have taught Sam to assume that everything he wants or is or does is his natural right, that plot works out, that characters reconcile, that he is entitled to being right
and
to a happy ending. These things are, in his naiveté, identical to him. Sam is seventeen years old, and he has not yet experienced the destruction of his beliefs. He gives no thought to the radioactive poison that ancient, dying moral systems leave behind after they and their cherished certainties are exploded over pale emotional deserts, no thought to large men, naked except for a single sock, sobbing at obscure hours before dawn. But I am older, and I have this large, crying man on my hands, and I'm glad that my son is happy and certain, but there are other dimensions to this. There is Howard. And there is me.

Howard, I say. Howard.

He takes a swipe at his nose with a forearm. He turns away from me. Somewhere inside me the first tiny flecks of true panic spark to hot red life.

Oh, Howard, I say. I'm so confused. You've left me at sea.

“It's bad,” he finally says, his back mostly to me.

I retreat the tiniest bit. What do you mean, bad?

“No,” he says, “I mean it's really bad.”

I am holding him. He won't let me see his face. After a few minutes his back straightens. He takes in, then quickly releases, a huge breath. He turns toward me. I see that it is some other man, a man I don't know, and I pull my arms away from this man's waist.

“I've thought a lot about it,” says the man. He fills his lungs, and his eyebrows descend pensively over his eyes and he turns away
again and looks out over L.A. “I don't know,” he says. “I really don't know.” He pauses, frowns. “I can't help feeling like I did something wrong.”

You mean we, I say.

He doesn't say anything for a moment, and then he says, “No, actually I mean I.”

Too small for a commercial flight, the taillights of a tiny plane draw a dashed straight line across the sky.

I hear the “I.” I feel something very cold start to climb. The man in front of me says, “There was something wrong before, and I see it now.” He raises a hand like Caesar and says in a very loud voice, “Don't argue with me, Anne.” And then we both fall still, listening to hear if we have woken the baby, the tiny baby whose room is no longer the nursery next to our bedroom, the baby who is now seventeen years old, who is snoring with his mouth open, whose armpits are hairy now and smell when he doesn't shower and who has an erection in the morning and who has probably thrown his dirty shirt and underwear on the floor.

The baby who is a half-Jew. And I the wrong half.

Howard has understood this now. He has decided that he made an error. And having made his decision, he wrestles the old suitcase, the big one we never use anymore, down from the high shelf inside the walk-in closet and, agonizedly, opens it.

Slowly, each movement the force of pure will, he opens the drawer of his dresser. Socks. Underwear. T-shirts. He scoops them out. I watch his deliberate movements. Can you at least tell me why you're doing this?

“There's something missing, Anne.” (He's speaking so softly his voice is like falling ash.)

There was never anything missing before.

“There is now.” (From the closet, five button-downs. He quickly puts on clean clothes.)

I think about this. From the person who was quite happy before.

(Heavily.) “Yes.” (He fights back a shudder of a sob.) “Listen,” he manages to say.

I'm listening.

I'm still listening, Howard.

The navy suit. The gray suit. Three ties. His face is kept together through determined concentration.

Articulate it, I whisper to him, tell me what you're thinking.

Oh, Howard! I implore, I can't bear these silent bits!

“It's not necessarily rational,” he says in a very low voice. The words are halting, but pushed out with a huge force. “And to you that means it's suspect, Anne. I used to feel that way. Now I don't.”

He begins to speak about having left an island long ago and wandering in the wilderness but the little island never forgot him, about longing without realizing he was longing—and my saying, How can you long without realizing it? and his digging in his heels, putting his head down like a bull, his voice rising by several decibels as if sheer willpower could win the argument.

But, Howard. Where does that leave me?

He seems not to have considered this. The response is, somehow, at once automatic and confused. “You're my wife,” he says. “I'm your husband.”

And I say: No.

I explain: If you are now a Jew and I am now a Gentile, you have now placed me in a fundamentally different category of human being from yours. We are divided.

And his not answering this.

 

He has finished packing the suitcase that lies on the foot of our bed. Wrapped some black shoes in felt. Next to it is a suit bag, and he's put the suits in it.

Who will you be staying with? I ask.

“I'll be in touch,” he says.

He hefts the suit bag. Glances at the dresser to check if he's forgotten something. He prepares to walk out of our house.

Who will you be staying with? I ask.

 

I WAKE UP EARLY AND
lie alone in wait for an idea. It has been floating in my mind, but now I snatch it out of the air and slip it on.

He answers quickly, a bit wary given the hour. “Paul McMahon?”

I say merely, Paul, but he instantly recognizes the voice. “Oh!” he says. “Hi!”

Please come over, I say. I'm sorry to tell you that no, it isn't about your screenplay. Which, I hurriedly add, is excellent, by the way. We'll talk about that. But it isn't about that. His disappointment is alloyed with a wary, intense interest. He seems instantly a bit intoxicated, which reminds me what this looks like from his perspective, a summons from the queen. It is always odd when we are made to see ourselves. A cardboard queen. Paul is talking breathlessly, young and optimistic. On second thought, I say, I'll come to your house.

“Oh, well,” he says, panicking.

Don't worry. It won't be worse than my son's room.

“Right,” he says unevenly, thrown by the mention of Sam. He has obviously heard either about Sam's announcement or Howard's putative reaction to it. Justin had mentioned it was a topic on Internet gossip sites.

He's the reason I want to see you, I say.

By now Paul is so at sea that he simply assents. He gives me directions. I thank him and hang up.

I go to wake Sam to tell him about his father and stop dead on seeing him in the hall, barefoot and slightly dazed with sleep, waiting
for me. I realize, first, that I haven't a clue as to what to say to him and, second, Sam knows.

You felt it?

He nods briefly, uninterested in the phenomenon, as if this were entirely normal. (Well, I think, that's astonishing. But I suppose one can feel an absence.)

Sam's gaze is fixed on me. He is easy to read. I go to him, and he crosses to me and puts his arms around me, and I say in response, I'm OK, I really am. I can feel him nod against my shoulder. You?

“What time'd he leave?” he responds, ignoring my question, as I assumed he would.

This morning, around five thirty. He has his cell, of course. I hesitate, which destroys it completely but I can't stop myself from saying it. He'll call you soon, I'm sure.

Sam's face instantly goes dark. “Asshole,” he says. I brush some lint off his shoulder. Look, I say to him, Samuel. He needs time. I want you to remember, I say, that you did nothing at all wrong.

He gives me a bitterly sardonic look that says he knows exactly what's going on, it's the yeshiva incident, he's perfectly aware what's in Howard's head, I should not treat him like a child. He gently pushes away my little gesture with the lint, as Howard would. I realize that he has gotten my coloring, my looks, my hair, and Howard in everything else. Don't go anywhere, I say to him as he heads back to his room, I'm bringing someone by.

Sam becomes instantly wary.

I get in the car and start the engine and think, but only for an instant, Anne, what are you doing?

At 1403 North Laurel Avenue I park under a hyperthyroidal palm. I walk up the steps, 1960s slabs of cement that someone has optimistically painted coral pink and set on metal rails, and refer to the small white paper in my hand, then to the numbers. I turn left. No, the numbers are going down. I walk the other way and hear a voice from somewhere saying, “Anne?”

Yes, I say, and then, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. I laugh, leaning against the stucco wall. When I turn the corner I see him, watching me, in his socks, halfway out his open door, alarmed. I understand the alarm. Hullo! I say in my best chipper British. I am giddy. I feel dangerous.

“Come in,” he says.

I consider the amount of money represented in this living room and the sum sitting in ours.

“It's a mess.”

It's very nice.

A dog barks in the bedroom, once. “Oscar!” he says to the dog. Then, “You want some coffee? I just made it.”

Thank you. No milk, just sugar.

He busies himself with it.

Where is your partner? I ask. Does one call him a partner?

Despite himself he is amused. “You make him sound like a cowboy.”

I think about what I should say. I suppose I meant to make him sound like a husband.

“Then that's the word.”

I suppress my irritation. Fair enough, I say. Paul points, and I see a photo of the two of them. In fact, I say to him, looking at the photo, I suppose this is why I'm here.