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“You know,” MJ said when I’d stopped crying, “I’ve never wanted what you and Jackson had, as perfect as it was.”
I knew she didn’t. MJ is fiercely independent and essentially a loner. As she moved into her thirties and people would encourage her to find a husband, she would snap, “The only men I need permanently in my life are Oren and my father, possibly in that order.”
“But,” she continued, “you two breaking up has cut me to the bone.”
“I know,” Perils said, opening the box of chocolates. “It’s as if the world started spinning in the opposite direction. It just doesn’t seem possible.”
“So, Jackson is straight now?” MJ asked.
“I don’t think so,” I answered slowly. “That’s not how it works. Orientation isn’t a sex act or lust. It’s a pattern of attraction. And as far as I know, Jackson has never been attracted to women—any more than I.”
“Then what happened? Whatisthis?”
“I don’t know. Jackson doesn’t seem to know either—or at least, he can’t explain it to me when I ask him to. He’s never been goodat communicating. It’s the one thing that I found frustrating about him.”
“I don’t think Jackson is a bad communicator,” MJ said tentatively. “You and I are excellent communicators, but then it’s what we do for a living, isn’t it? Also, you are far more articulate than Jackson. Back in school, whenever someone confused the two of you, DAX would say, ‘Jackson is the pretty one. Oren is the articulate one.’”
Full of chocolate and having drunk the two bottles of Brachetto d’Acqui I’d found in the cold pantry, we set about the business of packing in earnest. We started in the kitchen, packing the cookbooks and French copper pots and the Foley mill and the citrus knife and the poultry shears and the lemon zesters and the steak knives.
Moving to the living room, as I handed them CDs, I thumbed through our collection, the soundtrack of our lives, the thrumming of our contentment: Michael Jackson; Prince; The Village People; Donna Summer; Grace Jones; Sugar Hill Gang; Aretha…
I’d already packed up the hundreds of books in the library. So next, we tackled the last of the dinner services: vintage Rosenthal China we’d bought at auction; maximalist Emma Shipley porcelain; sterling flatware we’d discovered at an estate sale. So many dishes, we’d converted the breezeway between the garage and the kitchen into a butler’s pantry to house it all.
I emptied the art deco sideboards, reverently packing the napkin rings, tortoiseshell and alabaster and Bakelite, wondering at the life that had required such things. We’d hosted so many dinner parties, starting in college. I remember at the beginning, in our first apartment, MJ and Sue P and I cooking all day. And Perils would bring dessert and wine. Others would bring six-packs ofbeer. Once, someone brought an enormous watermelon cut in half and filled with sangria.
To participate, you only had to bring a cup, a plate, and a point of view—the entire party revolved around conversation. Word spread, and more and more people showed up each month: a friend would bring a friend, and that friend would bring a friend the next month. The party grew, spilling into the hallway of our building and eventually into the courtyard outside our apartment; food and drink and conversation were passed through the open windows.
“Earth to Oren. Calling Oren.”
“Huh,” I said, coming back myself.
“You were so far away. Where were you?” MJ asked with concern.
Lost in yesterday, and disgruntled to find myself in today, I wanted to answer but did not, shrugging instead and reaching for another packing crate.
Saturday, May 14, 2016, Janus—The first day of the estate sale was today. I was there against the advice of the estate agent running the sale. I assured her I’d be fine, wouldn’t disclose who I was or change my mind about anything that was for sale. She relented. It was strange to see our house full of strangers—strangers sitting in our chairs to try them out, strangers touching our stuff, judging it, discounting its worth. One woman fondling a Basalt Ware bowl we’d found on an anniversary trip to Newport, askedwho would give this up?
“Isn’t it beautiful? And it’s in perfect condition,” one of the sales agents said brightly.
The woman looked at her, eyes wide. “Did the ownersdie?”
The estate agent looked around and, lowering her voice, confided, “Worse. They’re gettingdivorced.”
I left then. Sitting in the car at the end of our driveway, I wished Jackson had had the decency to die. My heart would have still been broken, but at least I wouldn’t have been humiliated.
As a widower, I would be entitled to sympathy and casseroles. As it stood,as the one cheated on, I was greeted with pity and a certain suspicion:Surely, you must have known. Surely, you hadsomeidea.Idea of what? That my neighbor and presumptive friend was pouring kerosene over my life and that my husband would strike the match that burned the life we’d built together to the ground?
“Forty isn’t fatal,” Linda Evans had famously said, and as it turned out, she was right; however, I wasn’t sure being nearly sixty and suddenly single wasn’t going to kill me.
Maybe I should have fought harder for Jackson. Maybe I should have triedfuckinghim, forcing him to remember he liked men. Except I’ve never been good at that. Only my tongue and my occasional finger had ever successfully ventured in his ass.
At least I can stop eating parsley and start taking vitamins, now that I no longer have to worry about the taste of my semen. I won’t have to shave my underarms anymore. I’d first shaved on a lark back in college. Jackson had declared it dead sexy, so I’d kept it up. I wonder if the new Jackson finds Kitt’s underarm hair sexy.
If Jackson had died, I wouldn’t dream of him returning.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016, Janus—I walked through our house waiting for the movers to arrive, counting the boxes and crates, making sure they were all properly labeled. Again, I marveled at how far we’d come. When Jackson and I left Locust Hollow, we’d done so with just the clothes on our backs. And each other.
Next, I moved on to checking the closets and drawers to make sure nothing was left behind. At the back of a pantry drawer, I disentombed one of Jackson’s old forgotten comic books. As I went to toss it in the trash, a letter fell out. It was from Jackson’s mother. This one had been opened, so I pulled it out of the envelope and began to read it. She implied that my parents’ descent into dipsomania was the result of willfulness, a weakness of character, self-indulgence, and warned Jackson apples don’t fall far from their trees, pleading with him to abandon me before I dragged him into drunkenness and hell with me. She wrote as if my parents’ drinking was the equivalent of giving head to the devil himself, unscrewing and drinking from the firehose of his depravity.
