Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

“She knows I didn’t want her here,” Madeleine says. “It’s no trouble, you know, for me to make something for you. I’m one of those women who enjoys to challenge the kitchen. And so what are your plans for today? What would you like to do with your day?”

I have no plans, which is to say I had planned to return home as soon as it seemed appropriate to leave. At the same time, I have a kind of anxious unobjectified foreboding. I want desperately to get out of the kitchen, but I am unable to come up with an acceptable excuse to take off.

“Before you go,” Madeleine says, “there’s something I feel I should say. If you knew me better you would know this is not my style to criticize, but somebody, some friend should tell you this for your own good. I say this very reluctantly because I believe there is some good in her too. I suppose there is good in everybody, but who knows.”

Then she goes on to tell me this extraordinary story about you, insisting on her reluctance to give out this information while of course giving it out in profusion. According to Madeleine, there is an unsolved mystery in your past, a former husband who died suddenly under, as she puts it, a dark cloud. Though nothing was ever proved, there were those who thought that you had arranged his murder, or possibly even committed the murder yourself.

“I for one don’t believe she’s capable of murder,” Madeleine said, “no more than any of us, though for an American she’s extremely subtle. In any event, I like you too much not to let you know what you might be facing. I know with my own eyes that you are sweet on her so don’t deny it.”

Later in the day, when you drive me to the airport, you ask in a casual voice if I had sex with Madeleine when I spent the night in her room.

I don’t see that it is any of your business, which is what I don’t say or at least don’t say aloud. Instead I ask if it’s true that you had been married and widowed since the last time we ran into one another.

“Well, did you or didn’t you?” you say.

“Why do you care?” I ask.

“That means you did, doesn’t it? What a helpless innocent you are. Frankly, I’m embarrassed on your behalf.”

My suspicion is that the woman in the dream was Madeleine and that what happened between us extended beyond the dream. Nothing is certain, however. “You were married before or you weren’t, which is it?” I ask.

We drive another twenty minutes in silence when I realize the road we are on is not going to Orly and ask, as anyone might in my position, for an explanation.

“I was wondering when you’d notice,” you say. “There’s a totally charming cabin in Provence, isolated from virtually everything, that I’ve been invited to use. I was in no mood to go alone so I thought I’d kidnap you if you have no objections.”

I look at my watch. My flight to JFK leaves Orly in an hour and fifteen minutes. “How far are we from the airport?” I ask.

“Too far to walk,” you say. “Look, I promise you it will be different this time. If you prefer to go to the US by yourself to going to Provence with me, I’ll drive you to Orly. Deal? Either way, you have to tell me you didn’t sleep with my sister’s mother.”

“I didn’t sleep with my sister’s mother, I mean your sister’s mother,” I say.

“I don’t know whether to believe you,” you say. “Can I believe you? How can I? Do I even want to believe you? Do you even care whether I believe you or not?”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d take me to the airport,” I say, a gesture at reclaiming some pretense of dignity.

You pull over onto the apron and stop the car with a jolting screech. I expect you to ask me to get out of the car, which I plan to refuse, but instead you stare (or look blindly) ahead as if your image were paused, and say nothing for more time than I know what to do with.

When I look at my watch you unfreeze long enough to glance in my direction. “It’s disgusting to always want to know the time,” you say. “If you live in the moment, you have no need of a watch.”

It may be true that I almost never live in the moment, though I have always aspired to make the necessary adjustment. On the other hand, living in the moment does you no particular good when you have a flight to make.

A police car pulls off the highway and stops about fifty feet behind us. A few minutes pass — it seems like no time at all — but no one emerges from the vehicle.

“There’s some dope in the glove compartment,” you say. “When they stop you in France, they tend to search the car. I don’t know what will catch his attention more, rushing off or staying put.”

“We’re probably better off returning to the highway,” I say.

“You think?”

“We’re less conspicuous as part of the general traffic, don’t you think?”

“You make the decision.”

“Let’s go,” I say and we pull back onto the highway, sliding in front of a paper goods truck that honks its horn at us.

“Even when I was with others,” you say, “it’s always been you.”

After a moment, I turn around to see if there’s anything to concern us coming up from behind.

Years later, when we meet at a party given by people neither of us have met before, we go off together into the coatroom, which is also the master bedroom, and endeavor to catch up. At some point the discussion turns to the confusing events of our brief time together in San Remy.

“It was kind of you to come with me,” you say. “I’m sorry I behaved like such a bitch. Look, I never wanted it to happen the way it did, but — I have to say it — you got on my nerves.”

“Did I?”

“It was all my fault I’m sure,” you say. “It was a difficult time for me as you know. A man I was crazy about, a man totally undeserving, dumped me.” We are sitting on the coats a foot or so apart and you offer me your hand.

“I thought I was the one that owed you an apology,” I say.

“You were always so nice to me,” you say. “Really, you were too nice — that was your problem. I’ve always had trouble getting on with men who were nice to me.”

I have trouble reconciling the image of niceness with the sense of myself I carry away from that strange period in my life. “I behaved unconscionably in San Remy,” I insist.

“Not at all,” you say. “I understand perfectly why you felt the need to get away.”

“I should at least have left a note, some kind of explanation,” I say.

“The fact of your absence was explanation enough. You realized I was putting minute doses of poison in your food. I understood that. Why wouldn’t you run away? I just wonder you had enough strength to walk by yourself to the next town.”

“I left you the car because I was sort of hoping you’d come after me,” I say.

You retrieve your hand and use it along with the other to cover your face. “I can’t believe you wanted me to come after you. Why would you? Why would you possibly?”

For a moment I let the conversation die, feeling with some desperation the need to get away, the need to escape further explanation. When I fled the cabin in San Remy, as I recall, I had been feeling a little weak in the legs, a light sweat on my forehead, my stomach in minor turmoil. All pretense. The illness was just a ruse on my part to throw you off — I didn’t want to have to explain my need to be on my own. I had so thoroughly internalized my sense of being desperately ill, my body accepted the implications as though they were real. I even collapsed a few times while running.

“I just wanted to see how far I could take it,” you say, your hands still over your face. “You may not want to believe this, but I never intended to go all the way. I want you to believe that. I really do.”