Benjamin Markovits - You Don't Have to Live Like This

I gave him a hug and he said to me, “You got a nice setup here. I’m going to leave you alone. It wouldn’t kill you to call your mother once in a while. Dad, too.”

“One of these summer storms is coming in,” I said. “If you get tired just pull over. There’s no point in doing it all at once.”

When he left I felt sick, just sick. The mess I was making of my life. I couldn’t even pay for his dinner. But what really threw me was this business about SETI. My brother is a smart, educated guy. He went to Oxford on a Rhodes and made the law review at Chicago. But he also has practical instincts; he likes to be reasonable. And it seemed to him obvious that there were other worlds and forms of life. He paid his mortgage, he went to the country club, maybe he even slept with his secretary, I don’t know. But he could take it in stride, the idea that there might be something else out there. It didn’t bother him at all.

The weather broke around six o’clock, and by the time Gloria came by after work, it was raining so hard she had to run from the driveway to the porch, and still came in the house soaking wet and laughing. Her hair when it got wet showed all the beads of water. I gave her a towel and we watched the rain flatten itself across the bay window.

“It’s over,” she said. “It’s over. Another fucking year.” She almost never swore.

“What do you want to do, you want to go out to eat? There’s not much in the house but I can make pasta.”

“Let’s stay in and watch TV and go to bed.”

We made out on the couch after supper. With my eyes closed I could sense her by taste and touch, and my skin had a hot-cold feeling; a cold drop of sweat ran along my ribs. The rain kept coming down. At one point Gloria went to the bathroom and I got up to turn off the lights. The room went dark and the outside world reappeared. Even at nine o’clock it was still bright out. The windows streamed and shimmered and let in a lot of green. I turned off the TV, too.

“I hope my brother’s all right,” I said, when she came back. “He should be checked in to the hotel by now.”

“I got you something.” Gloria held up a condom packet. “I want to apologize. I just get so stressed out, I don’t even know what’s stressing me out. But it’s always the kids, it’s the school. And I never realize what’s going on until the year’s over.”

We went upstairs to bed, feeling kind of formal. She really seemed like an innocent kid, it was like a wedding night. We fooled around for a while and eventually Gloria said, “I can’t tell if you’re into this or not.”

“I’m into it. I’m just surprised.”

“I meant it to be like good surprise.”

“I feel like there’s something I need to tell you.”

“So tell me.” But already the mood had changed. I tried to kiss her again but she pushed me away.

“I love you,” I said, for the first time.

“No, you don’t. You just like me a lot.”

I had too much time to think about what to say. “What are you talking about?” I said eventually.

“Everybody likes me.”

“This is ridiculous. You’ve been sexually rejecting me for six months. And then you come on like this and I’m supposed to jump through hoops.”

“I just feel hurt. I thought this is what you wanted.”

“It is what I want.” After a minute, I said, “Can we try again?”

But the wedding-night feeling had gone. I began to stroke her hair and then her face and her shoulder and her side; at least she let me. “I don’t know what you see in me,” I said. “You’re a beautiful woman.”

“I know what I am and it’s not beautiful.”

“Then you don’t know.”

But she turned on her elbow to look at me. “I’m like a type,” she said. “There’s a type of man who thinks I’m his type. Guys who like girls who look like boys. This is a bad-news kind of guy — I had a lot of bad experiences. So I take it slow. But Marny, baby, I liked you first time I met you. You were honest with me, you didn’t spin me a line. You want to talk everything out. I get that. But you need to learn to shut up, too.”

We kissed again and started up again. I kept thinking, you can tell her about Astrid later, when it won’t matter so much. For a while it was like a refrain in my thoughts, you can tell her later, but then I forgot about Astrid and forgot about Gloria, too, to be honest. Afterwards, she said, “I didn’t think it would make a difference, but it does.”

The rain had stopped; we could hear the roof dripping. It was only about ten o’clock at night. We hadn’t shut the curtains and the cloudy sky still held a little daylight.

“Are you tired? I’m not that tired. Do you want to read maybe?”

But she shook her head. “Let’s just lay here.”

“What difference does it make?” I said.

“I don’t know. Don’t make me say it.”

“Is it because I’m white? Is that why you weren’t sure?”

“Don’t make me angry, I don’t want to be angry again. Why do you say things like that?”

“Did you sleep with Nolan?”

“Marny, you don’t even know how ridiculous you’re being.”

“I don’t know, I think about you too much. I was really obsessed with you.”

“Shush shush shush shush shush,” she said.

BUT ON MONDAY MORNING SHE had to drive to Harsens Island. The Detroit Institute of Arts puts on a summer camp there for city kids. There used to be an old school on the island, which closed down. Then somebody turned it into a resort and restaurant, and when that failed, the DIA stepped in and converted the buildings into a campsite and retreat for artists in traditional media — painting and sculpture, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of wildlife on Lake St. Clair, turtles and snakes and birds, and you can sail from Harsens to a dozen other islands.

It’s about an hour’s drive from Detroit. You have to take the car ferry. I said to her, “You just got done teaching for the year, what are you doing to yourself.”

“I didn’t know about you when I signed up. This place is amazing. Most of these kids have never been in a boat. They think nature is trees and grass. They don’t know about all the colors.”

“But Monday morning.”

“You have to get them right after the school year ends, otherwise they don’t show up. They lose momentum, they start stacking shelves. The difference between rich kids and poor kids is what they learn on summer vacation. I get on my students all year long to sign up for this thing. I like saying to them, see you next week. It’s fun, I want to go.”

On Sunday night, after supper, she said, “I have to pack.”

“Let me at least stay over with you,” I said.

“I want to clear my head and work out what I need. Baby, it’s only a week. Not even that, five days.”

“I’m not thinking straight right now. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” she said. “I’ll see you next weekend.”

So she kissed me and drove off. That night I called Astrid, but she didn’t answer her phone. I wanted to explain to her what the deal was, that I couldn’t see her again.

I called my brother, just to catch up.

“Did you see that bit on NewsHour about Detroit?” he asked.

“About the Meacher case? When did it run?”

“Friday. I thought that’s what you were calling about. Apparently a few people have started to sell up, and one of them is challenging the terms of his contract. He says the house is worth a lot more than he bought it for. He put in the work, he wants to see the profit. If he wins his case the whole landscape’s going to change.”

“How can he win? He made a deal, we all did.”