The air was good for us both. But my bafflement, now that we were outside, was suddenly more extreme. It was not simply that I’d forgotten what to say but seemed to have nothing to say whatsoever, my inner life rendered so utterly void I wondered if I possessed one at all. In Elliott’s presence, I was like a Magic Eight Ball whose insides held only an inky darkness, and rather than dwell on these disturbing facts, I shifted my concern to more immediate matters, like whether we’d be stopping at the Second Avenue diner for an egg cream.
In response, Elliott filled the silence with a monologue. To these I made a great show of listening, which doesn’t mean I was deaf to his speechifying. He was a master of the aphorism, and for years I contemplated Elliott’s more brilliant and sometimes obscure epigrams, which he delivered as his anecdotes’ punch lines. As we cut through the gated park—Elliott had a key—rather than walk around it, he’d say, “In all journeys, take the hypotenuse.” Or at the diner, while I sipped my chocolate, “Strong swimmers often drown.”
Years later, I’d find myself echoing one of these or realize I had incorporated one into a tale of mine to a friend.One can resist anything except temptation,I might say, orIf life is cyclical, lengthen your diameter.But during this particular session, mere days after Naomi had kissed me for the first time, I idly asked, “Why do married people cheat on each other?”
He grabbed my arm at this and, suddenly more engaged than he’d ever been with me before, said, “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” I responded, and concerned I might give something away, added, “I saw it onThe Love Boat.”
Elliott resumed walking with one hand thrust in his pocket while he gestured with the other. “Some people never wanted to be married in the first place. They liked the general idea but had no idea the enterprise required they bind their lives to someone else’s, to the limits theyimpose. Still others marry their problems rather than another person. So for them, cheating on their spouse is like a vacation from a job they hate but are too afraid to quit.” Now he placed a hand on my shoulder and raised his finger to indicate I should pay close attention. “But mostly, infidelity is a case of what I like to call the practical use of other people.” He began walking again. “We start to feel invisible to the person with whom we’re most intimate. We desperately want to beseenby them. But rather than address it with our partner and, God forbid, risk them ignoring us, we instead seek to become the apple of someone else’s eye, which causes us to drift further from our beloved until they finally notice our absence. Or don’t. Which confirms our invisibility either way.” Elliott stopped again for emphasis. “Andthatabsolves us from the responsibility of owning our feelings.” Pleased that I was taking this all in, he shrugged. “Of course, some people cheat just to blow up their lives.”
“Why do that?” I asked.
“Because it’sexcitingto rebuild,” Elliott said. “There’s so much to do. Divorce is as big a commitment as marriage, and then being in love all over again leaves barely a moment for introspection. Plus, it’s a chance to start over. Get your hands dirty. Flex muscles you haven’t used in years. The possibilities seem limitless! I’ll get it right this time! It’s like that odd feeling of optimism you get when you see a town leveled by a tornado. But that’s an illusion. Our history is always with us. You following?”
I wasn’t, so I nodded.
“There’s not a person in the world who’s yet been able to entirely fulfill another’s needs,” Elliott continued. “For some people this is as disappointing as it is unacceptable.”
“So how do you stop it from happening?” I asked.
“Infidelity, or disappointment?” Elliott said. He chuckled. He had green eyes that slit handsomely when he smiled, and I could tell he was deeply pleased that after eight years of therapy we’d finally got on to a subject worth talking about. “Well, for one thing, you lower your expectations. Nobody’s perfect, most especially you. Best to perfect yourself before finding fault with your partner.”
I nodded, even more confused.
“But as a precautionary measure,” he said, and in preparation to stickthe landing he paused for emphasis, “never put yourself in a situation where biology can take over.” And then he winked.
As was common practice after my session, Dad briefly met with Elliott behind his office’s half-closed door. The pair spoke urgently, their voices pitched low. Oren, wearing a bitter, knowing expression, elbowed me and nodded toward the office.
“Hear that?” he whispered.
I tried but couldn’t decipher the mumbling.
“He’s telling Dad everything we said.”
—
What a relief it was, on those October afternoons, stepping off the bus at Columbus Avenue and crossing Broadway to spot Naomi’s car parked outside Juilliard, to catch a glimpse of Naomi’s face in the side mirror, to watch her read theTimeswhile I reveled in my invisibility. I’d call to her, telepathically, until she looked up, our eyes meeting, she smiling first, only to frown in a pantomime of my troubled expression.What’s wrong, sweetie?Now, thinking back on those entrances I made, it was as if I’d arrived wearing one of Elliott’s masks, my expressions were so big. Frustrated, when I tossed my book bag to the floor once I took the seat next to her. Forlorn, my elbow propped on the door and fist mashed to my cheek as I watched Amsterdam flash by. She’d shoot me quick looks during that two-block drive, twisting the steering wheel in her hands or honking at the car ahead of us, its driver slow to notice the light had changed. Our arrival at the Dead Street, the slow cruise for a parking space, and, once Naomi had paralleled, both of us briefly exiting the Mercedes to get in back, so that there was no console separating us. One afternoon, when I was very sad, I paused for a moment to listen to the highway; and then, before opening the door, I stared up at the fence that ran along the top of the long garage facing us and thought of the park above it, the green space on whose fields Oren and I had often played. From up there we’d try to spot the baseballs we’d fouled to this street, even though we considered them as good as gone, and then gaze at that great overgrown expanse, its grasses swaying in the breeze. WhydidI hesitate? Was it because my parents were so close by? Because things between Naomi and me were becoming dangerous? She smiledover the car’s roof, but then she waited for a moment after I got in. I couldn’t see her face, but she hesitated too, gripping the door handle, her other hand briefly pressed to the window so that her fingertips appeared dotted where they touched the glass. Was she looking up and down the block? Was she asking herself,What am I doing?before joining me in the back seat. But soon we were in each other’s arms.“Ohh,”she’d whisper, drawing out the syllable, the submerged silence that followed. Our bathyspheric breathing. Some part of me remained aware of time, as is appropriate underwater. There was no fumbling to unbutton, to unzip or unclasp, which, due to my ignorance and Naomi’s restraint, guaranteed that we’d return to that same calm I’ve described, that precipice on which we’d arrive and where she, with the tenderest touch—palm pressed to my shoulder—stopped us from walking off of. She gathered me to her afterward, hugging me hard. It was at these moments, waiting to commence conversation, that I was strangely disengaged. My chin pinned atop Naomi’s shoulder, I might part her hair from my eyes to watch raindrops dot the pane.
Later, faces flushed, the windows slightly steamed, Naomi shrank down in her seat so that we were at eye level. She took my hand, pressed her elbow to mine, and then swung the metronome our conjoined limbs formed between us.
When would it be my turn to speak?
Half Day
Earlier that morning, I’d been woken by Dad’s soft whistle, a several-note trill from my earliest childhood that could instantly rouse me from deepest sleep. My clock read 4:55. He waited by my top bunk while I rearranged my pillows and, once I sat up, handed me coffee, which he’d madeau lait,with three sugars, the way I liked it.
“Here you go, boychik,” he whispered, and, before returning to the kitchen, added, “I’ve got your breakfast going.”
On my comforter there lay everything I’d left unfinished:Romeo and Juliet,Act III partially read; my lab report on boiling points and surface tension, incomplete; my algebra textbook open, this afternoon’s quiz unstudied for. My mind cast forward, searching the next ten hours for time, discrete stretches when I might finish these tasks before each came due, one’s completion paradoxically pushing me further back from the next, as if the day were somehow expanding from the middle and might never end.
“All set?” Dad asked when I took my seat at the dining table. He was holding a pan of scrambled eggs. He nodded toward the math I’d brought to review, though I knew his question wasn’t referring to that.
“Ready,” I lied.
“How’re you getting there?”
“I thought I’d grab the bus.”