Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

Still, when I gave the dinner in which the two of them met for the first time, I was clear about what I was doing, or clear enough. I stood up during the dessert course, which was an apple crisp (from a new, untried recipe) I had made for the occasion, and announced myself. “I have an explanation to make to you, Jay,” I said. “The person I described in the ad you answered was not really me; it was my sister Lorrie. I’m sorry about the deception, but I knew Lorrie would never take an ad out on her own. So. Also, the bio I gave you about myself was Lorrie’s bio and not my information — Lorrie is the actress who day-jobs as a dental hygienist.”

At this point Lorrie interrupted. “This is unbelievable,” she said in a mild voice. “What right did you have to do that?” Jay, I noticed, seemed unruffled, continued to negotiate his crisp, though at a more meditative pace. His indifference, if that’s what it was, was more troubling to me than the anger I anticipated.

“I had hoped you would understand,” I said to him. “The person you were interested in you only thought was me when essentially it was my sister, Lorrie. I have a good feeling about you two, I do. Anyway, I’m already in a long-standing relationship and I’d be bending the truth if I said I didn’t love my partner.”

By that time we were both staring at Jay waiting for him to show his colors.

He had to swallow and then wipe the corner of his mouth with his napkin before he could speak. We waited and waited to no avail.

“I have had it up to here with both of you,” Lorrie said. “I’m going home now if there’s no objection. If I stay, I’m likely to say something you’ll both find unforgivable.”

“I’ll see you home,” he said, getting up from the table, making a point of not looking in my direction.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.

“I’m not going anywhere with him,” Lorrie said. “I got here by myself and I can see myself home or any place else for that matter.”

After Lorrie left, promising to call when she felt better about things, Jay and I got naked together for the first time. It started with a friendly kiss. Afterward, he said, “Was that you as yourself in bed with me or you as your sister?”

I wondered myself, but I saw no point in acknowledging the question as worthy of response.

“Will I see you again?” I said to him as he was getting ready to leave. It was the kind of question that just asks for grief, but I uttered it despite myself, oblivious to better judgment, and so was stuck with the consequences.

“Whenever you want,” he said, which might have been the most generous thing he ever said to me.

Nevertheless (it seemed only fair, didn’t it?), I was prepared to hand him over to Delores if that’s what they both wanted.

By the time Lorrie called, two days had intervened and I was in another place in regard to Jay, an emotional backwater hitherto uncharted. It was the tone of Lorrie’s call that made me aware that I was now unwilling to accept the terms of the arrangement I had authored. When she announced with muted enthusiasm that all things considered she might be willing to get together with Jay for a drink some time, I said, “No, no, forget it, please. I made a mistake and I apologize for it.”

Three months after JB and Lorrie started dating, Roger and I agreed to a trial separation., which from my perspective was merely a halfway house for ending our seven-year marriage. It was a few days after we double-dated with Jay and Lorrie that I found myself displeased with almost everything Roger did. I thought it can’t be all my fault, can it, though it probably was and it had something to do with Jay. Whatever that something was I had been aware of it for a while without acknowledging it to myself. That was about the time that Lorrie was on the blower with me virtually every day, thanking me to obnoxious excess for bringing the two of them together.

On the other hand, Jay never called to thank me for delivering Lorrie to him. Was there a message there? Maybe he still hated me for having lured him into a relationship with someone else.

I was riding in the elevator up to work and I noticed the notorious novelist whose latest self-importance I had just completed and admired (while disliking) and I felt I owed him something, a smallish smile at least, for having bad-mouthed his book to an office associate. Anyway, we exchanged smiles as we were getting off at the same floor and I said to myself let’s see where this will lead. I was up for a flirtation with this notorious chauvinist, something to make me like myself more, whatever it took to improve the weather of my self-esteem.

Lorrie announced over lunch at Zero’s that she couldn’t decide whether to move in with JB or not and then if she did (decide), whose place should it be, his bigger, hers better located and better put together. I entered the discussion with willed good faith as if we were not talking about a man I wanted (perhaps) for myself. “You know,” she said, “when we were younger, I would hardly have trusted you concerning Jay.” Funny that she thought that. My recollection was that she was the one — in high school in particular — who made a practice of going after boys who had shown interest in me first.

He asked me to stop by his place after work for a drink and I took down the information on the back of the Publisher’s Weekly I was carrying, knowing (and not allowing myself to know) what it would likely come to. He had a carelessly nurtured reputation to uphold. The rest of the day I regretted having accepted his invitation, though I confess I was curious to see how he lived. The chance to eavesdrop on the secret life of his apartment was irresistible.

“Was this his idea or yours?” I asked Lorrie, who mused over my question before changing the subject. Her evasiveness indicated to me that the suggestion to live together had not come from Jay. Later she said, “He’s been hinting in that direction but hasn’t exactly gotten around to asking.” “You barely know each other,” I said, “but of course that doesn’t mean anything.” “You see that, don’t you,” she said, “that it doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve always trusted your perceptions, Lois.”

During the prolonged displaced courtship I had with Jay, I asked him a lot of questions about himself, which he seemed more than willing to answer. He seemed less curious about who I might be, but that may only have been because it was not the real me I had on the table. Of course he didn’t know that then.

During lunch break, unable to cope with the wilted salad in front of me, I called Jay to ask his advice about Bill Worth’s invitation. “I’m in the middle of a sentence,” he said, “can I call you back?” “It’ll have to be in the evening,” I said, “when I get back from visiting Bill Worth’s place. I don’t take personal calls at work.”

“I don’t like the idea of you going to Bill Worth’s place,” he said. He had called me back at the office despite what I said to him about personal calls. “I can’t talk now,” I said, “but I appreciate your brotherly advice.”

Bill’s place was even more ostentatiously tasteful than I allowed myself to anticipate. It was also impeccably neat and, outside of the one room with book-lined walls, without much personal stamp. Even the paintings on the wall, mostly abstractions, some by painters whose names I didn’t have to go to art school to recognize, seemed relatively anonymous. In all, it was a set designer’s vision of a successful writer’s apartment. He offered me a glass of wine from what he said was a very good bottle and, after giving me ample time to drain my glass, asked if I’d like to go to bed with him. I said, “No,” and that was it. The subject was never mentioned again, though it was not an especially long visit. Forty minutes later when he saw me to the door, the feeling in the room was that he had been the one to turn me down.