Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

“I think you should stick to reasoning,” she said.

What she had wanted him to say, of course, was, What do you do without breasts? I don’t know. I won’t mind. But they weren’t talking about the two of them at the moment. They were talking only about her, getting her to a place where she could admit these difficult circumstances to herself so she could make the right decisions. Somehow, by the end of Saturday night, they had gotten there, more or less. She looked past the bad humor. She thanked him many times. He went home. She wanted it that way. It had been an exhausting two days.

It wasn’t until Sunday — or three days before the scheduled operation — that they got around to talking about the two of them. He came over early and was standing in his spring overcoat and wouldn’t sit down. She came out from the kitchen and said, “Why are you still standing?” “I’ve been thinking about something,” he said, “and I think you should know what it is.” She knew not to like the sound of that. For all the things she had had to worry about since her diagnosis, she had not forgotten that a busy man, a workaholic, a sworn bachelor would probably not find it in his best interest to play nursemaid to a sometime girlfriend. He had acquitted himself the past two days like a gentleman — a king, really — but it was going to happen sooner or later, something like this: I wish you the very best of luck, Lynn, but I’m not equipped for it. I do hope you call me when all of this is through. “Will you at least take your coat off?” she asked. “Of course,” he said. When that was done, she handed him his cup of coffee. “Let’s take this over by the sofa,” she said.

And there he laid it all out for her: he was hers. Entirely. Whatever she needed from him, she had it. He would take days off work. He would be by her side at every appointment. He would see her through the entire thing. “From start to finish,” he said. “If you’d rather have Sherry or Diane or whoever, that’s fine. I’m just making myself available.” “Thank you, Martin,” she said. She was stunned again, speechless — what a surprise. “I’m touched,” she said. “I won’t know what I’m doing, ” he said, “but I’m willing to try — whatever it takes.” “I’m pleased,” she said. “Really, I’m very touched.” “But there’s one thing I have to make clear,” he said. “It’s a condition, I guess. And I know it’s terrible timing, but I can’t. . you see, I watched you, the past couple of days, Lynn. You surprised me — especially yesterday. Yesterday, it was like you came alive. You wanted to know everything. And you dealt with these hard. . these goddamn hard facts. I was so impressed. And that got me thinking last night, when I went home, got me thinking that you could handle anything. Anything.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is you have to tell me,” she said.

He set his coffee down on the table and took her hands. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. It predates all. . this, ” he said. “And it is bad timing, but it’s not the time to be dishonest. Not now. And so I’ll just say it — I’ve been thinking for a while now that you and I are not right for each other. In the long term, I mean. And I would hate to go through this with you and the whole time you’re thinking. . well, I don’t know what — that I’m doing it because I’m in for the long haul. I am in for the long haul to make you better, but not because —”

“Yeah, I get it, I know!” she cried, cutting him short. “You’re not the marrying type, I get it!”

“No, it’s not just that,” he said. “It’s that, you and I. . I’m just being honest here. I am totally committed to seeing you through this. But as a friend,” he said. “Only as a friend.”

Well, wasn’t that something? Martin Grant was honest. He was an honest man. Of course he had had to give her a swift kick in the ass before she could realize it. He had had to knock the wind out of her to show her just how honest he was. Tending to her, nursing her — he’d take that. Breast cancer, that part was fine. It was the sum of her parts that was not, in the end, what he wanted. She told him she couldn’t do it that way, impose on him that way if he. . and he tried to object by saying. . but she said I’m sorry, I just can’t. . and he said will you think it over. . and she said no. He left soon after. She spent a sad Sunday afternoon alone.

And now, maybe she should ease off the gas a little. Doing ninety down Lake Shore Drive — that’s a suicide mission, which can sometimes be a dream of rescue. They don’t fix the potholes this far south. There are longer spells between working streetlights, too, when the black sky descends through the open sunroof, blotting her out again — until, first hood, then dash, then her hand on the wheel, she is lit all too brightly once more. She’s avoiding her face in the mirror and all the lachrymose self-pity etched there. Fuck that. And for those of you who think Lynn Mason in addition to cancer suffers from the disease the talk shows diagnose as Needing the Man, if you think that’s why she was parked outside Martin’s office building, then you haven’t yet understood the special circumstances of this Tuesday night, the forces at play that make her desperate and wanting in a way that is wholly unlike her. She has never — or not often — suffered from Needing the Man. Self-sufficiency has always been her first and last commandment. And not because she was of a generation of girls taught to reject the dependency suffered by their mothers and grandmothers. It wasn’t a man she was afraid of losing herself to. It was a person, another person. It wasn’t political, this headstrong determination to answer to no one, to achieve, to be the boss, to earn and sock it away, to use foul language whenever she goddamn well pleased, to eat rich, to fuck who she wanted to fuck and to fire who needed to be fired even if they broke into tears. It was personal. She did not care to hitch her wagon to anyone else, because she knew truth, happiness, success, all of what was deep and holy, was already present in the car with her. She just didn’t have access to any of it tonight and wanted someone with her in the passenger seat.

Because fear of death, boy, that has a way of menacing your convictions and making you feel lonely. Death has a way of ruining your plans and sending you on a tailspin on what should be a work night. Really, Lynn, better slow down, she tells herself. If not for your life, at least for the price of a ticket. She looks at the clock in the dash: midnight. She loves the Saab. What will happen to the Saab if she does, in fact, die? Better question: just where is she headed in the Saab at midnight at ninety miles an hour down Lake Shore Drive? Well, it’s probably not the ideal place to be, this club she knows on the South Side — this club Martin introduced her to, where they spent some time together, called the Velvet Lounge. And the thing she plans on doing, catching the midnight set — is not something she’s doing out of a genuine love of jazz, she admits that. She’s going there for Martin, to remember Martin, to mourn Martin. She’s going for nostalgia’s sake. So isn’t it just perfectly appropriate that the Velvet Lounge should be closed on Tuesdays? She sits in her car outside the bar, listening to “St. Louis Blues” on a CD Martin had left behind. Got the St. Louis Blues! / Blue as I can be! / Man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea! Appropriately, it’s a very short song. These stupid enduring artifacts — a bar, a song — that stick around after the lover has cast his heart into the sea, they are solace and agony both. She is drawn toward them for the promise of renewal, but the main experience is a deepening of the woe.