Leonard Michaels - Sylvia

“I hate Degas.”

I went home feeling sad. The cost of our friendship exceeded its value.

JOURNAL, AUGUST 1963

In July 1963, shortly before I separated from Sylvia and went to Michigan, I scribbled a note in my journal: “Movie. Sylvia fled. I met Roger alone. No Rosalie.” What happened was that Roger phoned and we made a date to meet in front of the Carnegie delicatessen, then go to a movie. Roger said he was bringing Rosalie. We’d heard about Rosalie for months, but never met her. This would be an exciting occasion. Roger told us the clever things Rosalie said about movies. But does Rosalie go to school? Does Rosalie have a job? Roger smiled in his weirdly embarrassed manner, repeating the words “school” and “job,” and he looked arch, as if we’d said much more than we knew. It was his sort of game. He had a secret. We knew what he was being secret about, but, out of affection for Roger, we played along. Eventually, we stopped asking about Rosalie. We thought of her mainly as a mind who went to movies with Roger and made clever comments. She had no body. Roger, a bookish man, looked as if he’d never been introduced to his own body. He was skinny, with flat buttocks, broad Slavic face, thin lips, exceptionally pale complexion, gray eyes, and dark-blond hair combed straight back. His posture was stick-like, and he seemed to carry unusual pressure high up in his chest, like a drowning man, gasping for air before going under. His lips worked with thoughts, tasting words before he spoke them.

We took a bus downtown and got to the Carnegie delicatessen earlier than we expected, leaving us twenty minutes to wait, probably longer. Roger never arrived on time. Sylvia complained about the heat and was annoyed because I hadn’t worn a tie. On this particular afternoon, not wearing a tie showed disrespect for her. It was too hot for a tie, but I didn’t make that point. I was trying to be pleasant, not fight about anything. I was the one who was leaving town. Even with good reason to leave, the leaver is in the wrong. I’d have surely put on a tie, though it was unnecessary and uncomfortable, but Sylvia hadn’t mentioned it until we were out in the street. I felt set up, frustrated, given no chance to be good and avoid trouble. Roger would be wearing a tie and jacket. Sylvia had him in mind, comparing him to me, his tie showing respect for Rosalie. Roger always had a formal air, like a boy whose mother once told him, “You should always wear a jacket and tie.” His trousers rode too high on his hips. Grease spots appeared on his shirt fronts, like a family crest. He mixed materials, heavy tweed jacket with shiny gabardine slacks. The effect was formal and tasteless, almost sleazy.

Outside the Carnegie delicatessen, I took my money out of my pocket to see if I had enough for tickets and dinner. I needed about ten dollars. Sylvia said, “You’re not going to count your money in the street, I hope.” After that, I had no choice but to count my money, but I didn’t do it. I stuffed the bills back into my pocket. Irascible and silent, we waited for Roger and his Rosalie. The minutes in the afternoon heat stood like buildings along the avenue, utterly still. Sylvia asked me to feel her lower back. I put my hand there. Her blouse was damp with sweat. I said, “Mm. Yeah.” My tone was sympathetic. Then she asked for money to buy a can of talcum powder. She wanted to shake talcum powder into her shoes in front of the Carnegie delicatessen. I gave her all my change, about thirty-five cents. It must have seemed to her enough for only one can of talcum powder, which cost about twenty cents. I had not brought several million dollars with me for the tons of talcum powder she might need. She was visibly angry and spun away from me and hustled off to a drugstore. In a minute she returned without talcum powder, and said, “The drugstore is full of Scandinavian airline people.” She meant she couldn’t get service. “This ruins the evening. I can’t possibly enjoy anything after this.” She also meant tall blond gorgeous men and women.

I said, “Let’s get coffee,” and I started across the avenue toward a diner. Sylvia’s hatred pushed me ahead of her, but I made myself go slow. We walked together for half a minute in silence. Then she said, “I’m going to Fifth Avenue. I’ll take the bus home from there.”

Without a word, I walked into the diner, sat at the counter. Sylvia watched me through the plate glass window. When I looked at her, she frowned with dark hurt angry disbelief, then walked away. A surging weight, like a body within my body, lunged after her, running out of the diner and down the street to catch her, beg her not to take the bus home, but stay, meet Roger and Rosalie, go to the movie. I didn’t move. I’d begged too many times. Please come with me to visit my father in the hospital, please come with me to dinner at my parents’ apartment, please come with me to the party, please let’s go to the psychiatrist, please get out of bed. I ordered a hamburger. When it came, I bit into it once or twice, swallowed without chewing, and left the rest of it on the plate. I walked back to the Carnegie.

Roger was there in his jacket and tie, stick-like, pale as a vampire in the sunlight. He grinned, holding air in his rigid neck. I saw no Rosalie. I knew he wanted to ask, “Where’s Sylvia?” But he was unsure if he could. Unbearable revelations might follow. Better not to ask. Think. Suspect. Sniff about for clues. Analyze. I was irritated at him for being like himself. What I’d found endearing other times was suddenly contemptible. I didn’t explain Sylvia’s absence. Too ashamed. “Where’s Rosalie?” I asked. Roger muttered about a migraine headache. I didn’t believe Rosalie had a migraine headache. I knew damn well Rosalie was a man. Roger had decided once again that a Jewish boy from Brooklyn does not come out. We went to the movie, This Sporting Life , together. At one point the hero says, “I can love, can’t I?” Movies often asked that depressing question.

I told Sylvia I would see a psychiatrist when we separated. She said it wouldn’t do any good because I couldn’t remember facts. I’d give a distorted account of our marriage. Then we talked about her girlfriend Betty whose boyfriend, Matthew, is very loving. “He took her skin diving in Puerto Rico.”

“Do you want to go skin diving in Puerto Rico?”

“That’s not the point.”

Sylvia said Matthew doesn’t worry about Betty not being good-looking enough for him. I said, “I don’t worry either. You’re a fanatic on the subject of looks.” She rolled away. Then she turned and said, “You didn’t think I was a fanatic when I was your little jewel.” There were tears in her eyes. She rolled away again and asked me to shut off the light. I did, then went into the bathroom and picked at my face, making it bleed. When I crawled back into bed, she said, “Agatha’s parents have been divorced and married twice — to each other.” I said, “There are no happy marriages.” She said, “What about your parents?” I said, “They live in another world.”

JOURNAL, AUGUST 1963

The train from Grand Central to Ann Arbor, Michigan, was called the Wolverine. The trip took ten hours, from dark to dawn. In the long clattering night, hungry, unable to sleep, I opened the paper bag of sandwiches, cookies, and coffee Sylvia prepared for me. She had never done anything like that before. Now that we were separating, I’d been unable to stop her. When I unscrewed the aluminum cap of the thermos bottle, a small folded paper fell out. I opened it and read a penciled note from Sylvia: I love you.

She loves me, I thought, and nothing more, as night hurtled by the window, a black animal pierced by the tiny lights of houses in the distant countryside. I ate everything in the bag and drank the coffee. I smoked until I felt only the heat and tear of cigarette devastations.