Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

The real question, the one I have evaded all these months, is what do I want beyond maintaining the status quo. I confess to myself that I don’t know. Ambivalence is, and has been, my MO. And even if I do know, even if I am ready (and I am not) to press you to leave your husband, what’s his name, it will surely do me no good.

The substance of our talk over lunch is not what I spend a mostly sleepless night anticipating. What you want, what you say you want, is not to stop seeing me but to change the day of our assignations. Wednesdays are no longer possible for you. Monday evening, 5 to 7ish, is suddenly your only available time. The news brings a mixture of relief and unaccountable disappointment.

That’s fine, I’m ready to say, but then I remember that I have my tennis game Monday nights, which has entailed renting a court for the indoor season. Beyond the obligation to show up, it is a great pleasure for me to play. “Monday won’t work,” I say.

“I was afraid of that,” you say. “There’s no way — I shouldn’t even ask you this — you can shift things around?”

“Not really,” I say. “What about you?”

You offer an exasperated sigh. “You have no idea, my friend,” you say, “how difficult it’s been for me to see you as I have. What is it that you do on Monday nights that’s so important?”

The imperiousness in your tone annoys me and, though I want to make peace, want our routine to continue, I feel it a matter of pride to hold my ground. “It’s an obligation,” I say.

“Yes?” you say. “To whom?”

“I have this tennis game Monday nights,” I say. “There are three other people who rely on me to be there.”

“A tennis game? A tennis game! I don’t know what to say.”

As you rise stiffly from your chair, I put my hand on your arm to restrain you. “Please don’t leave,” I say. “We’ll find another time that suits us both.”

“I don’t know that I want to see you again,” you say, returning my hand to me. It is as if we are moving in different universes or perhaps a willed indifference keeps me from running after you. Whatever it is, you are out of the restaurant and into a cab before I can settle the bill (someone has to pay it) and pursue you to no avail.

We hardly ever fought even about inconsequential things before and suddenly we are locked in our first life-and-death fight. I’m willing to sacrifice tennis for you, but it seems virtually impossible now to yield to your demands since I have already drawn my line in the sand. Haven’t you been unreasonable too? You haven’t bothered to tell me what unbreakable commitments on your side prevent us meeting some other time.

I let a day pass to get some perspective on my feelings and then I call you at home at a time your husband is usually at work. I get your answering machine and mumble something unintelligible before hanging up in despair.

The next time I call — I let two days pass before I try again — you pick up, but you don’t stay on the line long enough to hear me out, though I’m aware, even while pleading for your forgiveness, that the things I’m willing to say are not what you want to hear. When I think about our standoff, which is all I do, it strikes me that I have more reason to be angry at you than you at me, but such wisdom seems idle comfort.

A further irony: I pull something in my back playing tennis and I have to take a month off from the game.

And then one day, six months or so after our misunderstanding, you call me at home on a Saturday afternoon.

You identify yourself, though of course I know immediately that it’s you. “How are you?” you ask.

“Much better now that I hear your voice,” I say.

Your laugh sounds as if it has been rehearsed. “I’m really calling to say goodbye,” you say. “My husband’s firm is moving him back to the London office and we leave at the end of the month. As a matter of fact, we leave in four days.”

“Four days,” I repeat, trying to remember if you ever told me what it is he does. “For how long?”

“You never know,” you say. “It could be forever for all anyone knows.”

“That’s a long time,” I say. “Well, I hope it’s what you want.”

“Thank you for that,” you say. “Look, I’m free, or can be, on Tuesday at about 5 and I wonder if we could meet at the Plaza.”

The unholy surprise of your offer astonishes me into a protracted silence.

“If you can’t make it,” you say, “I’ll pretend to be understanding.”

“I can make it,” I say.

My acceptance creates a momentary silence on your end. “Well, good,” you say. “I’ve reserved our old room.”

It is not our old room after all, but the one directly above, which has certain similarities and as such seems disconcertingly dreamlike.

You are uncharacteristically late and it strikes me — I tend to expect the worst — that you might still be angry and decide not to show up. These anxious feelings persist even after your arrival.

“Damn,” you say, putting on your glasses for confirmation, “everything’s changed.” We remain in our clothes for awhile, one of us sitting on the bed, the other in an overstuffed chair across the room.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” you say, “but I’m feeling shy. It’s not only that we haven’t seen each other in a while; it’s something else altogether. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

“You know we don’t have to make love,” I say. “We can just sit and talk.”

“What should we talk about,” you say. And I have the sense that if I say anything at this point, you’ll put on your coat and go home.

I shrug and offer what I hope is a comforting smile.

“What should we talk about?” you say again. “You know sometimes I don’t understand you at all. Is that what you want to come to the Plaza with me for the last time not to make love?”

You seem about to cry and I will myself to move toward you and end up kneeling awkwardly beside your chair, the forgotten ache in my back making an unexpected return.

“How much I hated you these past months,” you say. “You can’t possibly imagine. I even thought of running you over in a rented car when you were coming out of your damn tennis club.”

I put my head in your lap and you say, “Is this what you think I want,” abruptly tugging at my hair, and for that moment, I regret forgiving you, I regret giving in to your whims, I regret being here with you when we have no future. As I’m about to say, “I don’t need this from you,” you lean toward me and kiss my eyes. “I hate you,” you whisper. “I will hate you for as long as we both shall live.”

“Those sound like wedding vows,” I say.

“Are you making fun of me? Is that what it’s come to?”

I lift you to your feet and we dance — you in your heels, me in my stocking feet — to whatever music the silence provides.

When we finally get under the covers, I notice from the clock on the wall that we have less than an hour left us. I imagine the hour passing, imagine our fucking, which is more tender than usual, though not quite as intense as it has been at its best. I imagine you getting into your clothes, that refined and complicated ritual, while I consider pleading with you to stay five minutes longer. I imagine watching you from the hotel window as you get into a waiting cab and drive off to your husband, whom I envision as a shadow figure. Then I imagine the two of you, you and the shadow husband, boarding a flight for London. Then I imagine getting older and being alone and trying to remember this last time together, which has passed with so little moment.

It is only then when I have already imagined the end of whatever has gone on between us, that we begin to make love — we have been holding each other carefully, cautiously — and it seems like the first time, which I don’t actually remember, which I confuse with a number of other first times, but I allow myself to imagine that we are in my old Village apartment in my unmade bed and that it hurts me that you live with a man named Roger (though I know you don’t love him) and whatever is happening between us (sex no doubt, terrifying intimacy, the compelling illusion of love) will go on for as long as I can imagine it going on, for as long as consciousness and self-deception and the trick of memory survives.