Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

Jay stood up, collected his coat but then seemed to change his mind from whatever to whatever. “You’re both right,” he said. “I’m a terrible person and I’m choked with regret.”

“That’s a bit easy,” Leo said. “Don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry about that too,” he said. “I tend to let myself off too easily and I’m sorry. OK?”

“He isn’t really sorry,” Lois said.

“You’re probably right about that,” he said, “but look I’m really sorry that I’m not really sorry. What about you, LL? Is there anything you’re sorry about?”

“That’s not a real question,” she said, “and you know it. Do you want me to say that I’m sorry I married you? All right, I’ll say that I’m sorry I married you.”

Leo looked around as if there were another person in the room with them, possibly dangerous, he hadn’t seen before. “Let’s stop here,” Leo said, “and we’ll continue next Wednesday at the same time.”

Jay, who had been standing, his coat folded over his arm, sat down. “We haven’t even decided who goes first,” he said.

While Jay wrote the therapist a check for the truncated session, Lois mumbled “Thank you, Leo,” and made her way out the door.

There was an antique shop a few doors down and she occupied herself studying the unusual face of an oversized wall clock in the window, figuring Jay would be out in a few minutes and they would travel back on the subway together. She didn’t see him come out, though sensed his approaching presence, feeling a sugar rush of affection for him. arming herself with a slightly ironic remark.

For his part, Jay noticed his disaffected wife waiting for him and decided to cross the street to avoid her, pretending to the unseen observer that he was in a huge hurry to get somewhere.

When on turning her head, she noticed him rushing from her, she wanted to call out that she was not as frightful as he imagined.

SECOND SESSION

“If anything’s going to get accomplished, we’re going to need to give these meetings some structure,” Leo said. “Lois, I’m going to ask you to speak for no more than five minutes. At which point, Jay can either respond to what you’ve said or use the allotted five minutes to present his own grievances. On the second go around, I’d like you each to address what the other has said. Are there any questions before we begin? … If not, let’s get to it. Lois.”

“It’s easier if I get up,” she said, though she remained seated. “I don’t think I’ll need five minutes to say what I have to say. Actually, I don’t know why I am here. For a while now, I kind of thought, that despite our persistent problems, that it was worth making whatever effort was necessary to continue, to get along. I no longer feel that way. That’s all. Well, one other thing, whatever feelings I once had for Jay are gone. It’s like one morning, they put on their coat and scarf and went out the door. I feel my own growth as a person has been inhibited by this marriage. That’s all. I don’t want it any more. I don’t want to be in this marriage. That’s all I have.”

Leo seemed to be waiting for Jay to continue, but after a few minutes he pointed his finger at her, who seemed to be looking the other way. “Jay?”

Jay stood up. He had something written on a card that he held up in front of him. “I was going to say that I would do whatever I could to keep us together, but that seems foolish now, doesn’t it?” He sat down, resisted putting his head in his hands.

Leo looked over at Lois, who made a point of avoiding eye contact, and waited for someone, perhaps even himself, to break the silence. “It might be useful,” he said to her, “if you were more specific about what you want and feel you’re not getting from your marriage.”

“What I want, OK, is that Jay accept the fact that the marriage is over,” she said.

“Why should Jay’s acceptance or not make a difference?” Leo asked her.

“It just does,” she said.

“She wants to hurt me,” Jay said, “but in a way that protects her from feeling bad about herself. She hates the sight …”

Leo was quick to intervene. “Let her speak for herself please,” he said. “The two of you seem to know more about the other’s feelings than your own … I understand that your feelings about Jay are intuitive, Lois, but it would be useful here if you gave some examples of what seems to be the problem.”

“He doesn’t want to hear them,” she said.

“Then tell them to me,” Leo said. “I want to hear them.”

She had a hundred grievances against Jay, she had a litany of grievances — they often came to mind unbidden like the hypnogenic lyric of some ancient detergent commercial — but at the moment she couldn’t come up with one that didn’t seem hopelessly trivial. “He’s only interested in me as an extension of himself,” she said.

“That’s not specific enough,” Leo said.

“He doesn’t clean up after himself,” she said. “He leaves crumbs all over the apartment, which I end up having to deal with.”

“What do you say to that?” Leo asked, turning his attention to Jay.

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Jay said. The role she was performing laughed. “You see what I mean,” she said.

Leo reiterated in paraphrase Lois’s complaint about his messiness.

“She’s probably right about that in general,” Jay said, “but I’ve been better about it recently. I think even Lois would acknowledge that I’ve been trying.”

“Too little, too late,” she said.

“Let’s put this into perspective,” Leo said. “If, say, overnight, Jay no longer left messes that he didn’t clear up, became a sudden exemplar of neatness and consideration, would that alter your feelings toward him?”

Lois wanted to say that it might, but since she didn’t believe it, felt the dishonesty of any such assertion, she said nothing or rather mumbled something that was susceptible to a near infinite variety of interpretations.

“What Leo’s saying,” Jay said, “is that the example you gave represents a petty annoyance and is hardly a significant factor in your disaffection toward me.”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s saying,” she said. “Is that what your’re saying, Leo?”

“Is there anything Jay can do or not do that would make you reconsider your decision to separate?” Leo asked.

“What about her?” Jay interrupted, suddenly outraged. “Why is this whole discussion about my changing?”

“There’s nothing he can do,” she said, “nothing that would make the slightest bit of difference.”

“I hear you,” Leo said. “Jay, what changes would you like to see Lois make?”

Jay started then stopped himself. “Well, for openers,” he said, “she can stop fucking Roger or whoever it is she’s been seeing on the sly.”

Leo seemed unfazed by the revelation. “And if she stopped,” he said, “would that make a difference?”

“I’m sorry I said that,” Jay said.

“What are you sorry about?” Leo asked. “It was something you felt, wasn’t it? You meant it, didn’t you?”

He looked over at Lois, who seemed to have shut down. “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” he said.

“I thought you thought I was shameless,” she said and seemed, until she took a deep breath, on the verge of giving into feelings she was hours away from acknowledging.

THIRD SESSION

They arrived at the therapist’s office together and Jay suggested that she go in by herself and that he would loiter in the lobby of the building, kill a few minutes, before making his appearance.

“You’re joking, right?”

“Well, I don’t see any reason to throw Leo off his game.”