Heidi Julavits - The Folded Clock - A Diary

Soon, not too far into the Blue Ridge Mountains, we started to talk about his love life. I asked Tom if he had a girlfriend. He didn’t, not really, but he did have an ex-wife about whom he spoke rancorously. She was beautiful, and selfish, and a cheat. In the divorce she “stole” his house, the one he’d bought with his hard-won savings as a stunt diver before he married her. Now he lived in a small apartment and was broke.

Given the depth of his bitterness and his anger toward this woman, I suspected that she was not the first to disappoint him. Maybe I so intuitively arrived at this suspicion because he qualified his ex-wife’s every evil move by “that’s just what women do” and “she’s a bitch like the rest of them.” I encouraged him, diver that he was, to do some deep dives into his romantic past. I appointed myself his co — scuba therapist. I quickly identified his problem. He was dating the wrong kind of girl. By his estimation (and using his glossary terms), he exclusively dated “skeezers” and “cheats” and “bitches.” No wonder he thought poorly of women.

Tom, however (or this is what I told him, on hour three of our twenty-hour drive), wanted to love someone who wasn’t a skeezer; he just didn’t know how to identify these women. Furthermore, I told him, I was uniquely qualified to give him advice on these matters, because I’d been him once, dating and marrying the wrong men. My current husband, when I’d met him, admittedly “wasn’t my type,” nor was I his. I’d shown him photos of the even younger me and he’d said, “I never would have dated you.”

I made it my project to teach Tom how to reset his erotic compass, as my husband and I had reset ours. I was so confident I’d succeed in turning Tom that I projected into the future. I’d rid the world of misogynists one glum, angry dude at a time. I’d do it surreptitiously, since misogynists wouldn’t know that they needed my services. I’d have to trick them into a cure. I’d prowl airports during poor weather and prey on the quietly furious. I’d lock them into lengthy car rides, and then I’d preach my gospel.

And so I made it my project, on this car ride, to teach Tom the glories of certain women. I would act out the prototype. Funny! Self-deprecating! Curious and witty! Not remotely a skeezer yet still worth fucking! What might have been an interminable and hellish trip acquired a purpose. We were having a high time, and I was making lots of gender correction headway.

Until I wasn’t. We pulled into a McDonald’s after eight hours in the mountains, at which point I discovered my wallet missing. I’d paid for the last round of gas, four hours back. I’d left my wallet at the station. I freaked out. Not because I’d lost my wallet (this was nothing new). I freaked because I now had to rely on this man, this angry man, to get me home. I had to rely on him to feed me.

We worked out the terms. He’d keep a running tab of what he spent on me, and I’d send him a check when we got back to the city. But already his attitude had started to sour. I was just another mooching woman. Did I think he was an idiot? Did I think he was so easy to fool again ?

He went inside the McDonald’s and reappeared with hardly any food. I swear he ate virtually no dinner so that he had an excuse to spend no money on mine. In the parking lot, we each consumed a one-patty hamburger and a small container of fries. He paid for another tank of gas. We got back on the highway, neither of us very chatty.

We were still in Tennessee.

We were still in Tennessee when we became too tired to drive. No hotels emerged from the extended darkness until finally one did. Unfortunately this hotel had only one room. I pushed the clerk — was he certain he didn’t have another? My experience is that hotels always have more rooms than they’re willing to admit.

“Well,” the clerk said, “we do have another room, but I wouldn’t recommend staying in it.” The last resident had stayed there for two weeks with his cat, and the cat had peed everywhere. “We haven’t had a chance to replace the carpets yet.”

Tom said we’d take the room. Oh gallant Tom! My heart warmed toward him again. Sometimes , I thought, macho guys are a bonus to have around; they can be counted on to behave chivalrously, and to sleep in the cat piss room . For all of my gender trailblazing that day, I was conveniently happy to be a female who needed saving.

The desk person showed us to the cat room. It stank from the hallway. It stank so badly that I am smelling that room right now. Fermented animal urine is as sharp as industrial ammonia. The smell made my eyes water. The room was so uninhabitable, I figured that Tom would chicken out, thus forcing us to sleep in the same room.

But Tom stayed strong.

“You can sleep here,” he said.

I was so tired I almost started crying in the hallway. I didn’t. He was no stereotypical man, and I was no stereotypical woman. I waited until I was lying in the disgusting bed to cry, even though by then I was so pissed I no longer felt like crying. But I forced myself to cry and to keep crying because I figured crying would exhaust me and help me pass out despite the fact that I was basically shut inside a bottle of smelling salts. I lay in that stinking room and hated Tom. What a stingy fucking asshole he was! I understood the story of his marriage quite differently now. No wonder his wife stayed out late with her girlfriends and slept with other men. Tom was not only bitter and angry, he had a charcoal heart. His ex-wife probably took his house in the divorce as compensation for the deprivation she’d endured during their marriage. He’d lorded over her his every act of “generosity.” He’d probably loved her parsimoniously, too. He’d given her the barest minimum and then blamed her for taking everything.

I raged myself to sleep. I awoke in a milder mood. I drank bad lobby coffee, I still hated the fuck out of Tom, but as we drove within a hundred miles of New York, and the future of our relationship could be measured in minutes, I found it in my heart to pity him again. In the southern wilds of New Jersey, I made one final attempt to rectify his misapprehensions about women. By the time we arrived at his house at Staten Island, we were buddies once more. As we were saying good-bye, he said, “I’ve never met anyone like you,” probably meaning, “I’ve never met a woman who, after I made her sleep in a room soaked in cat piss, was so nice to me the next morning.” What a miracle I was. He gave me his address so I could mail him the money I owed. I gave him my phone number so we could meet for a drink in the city and revel in our comedy of errors. Among the many ironies of our trip, New York, when we arrived, was snowless.

And then what happened? I sent Tom a check right away. I was no mooch. He left a message to thank me, and asked me to call him back so that we could schedule that drink. I didn’t return his call immediately. Would I have ever returned it? I’m not sure. Regardless, he called again. Again I didn’t call him back. He called a third time, and a fourth, his messages growing increasingly angry. I understood why. He felt hurt and betrayed. I’d been so nice to him, so responsive and so giving and so concerned about his life. He’d told me, a stranger, his secrets, and now I was blowing him off.

It was true. I was blowing him off. I couldn’t deal with Tom, or the problem of Tom. He’d ceased to interest me as a project. He was doomed to a life of romantic dissatisfaction. He was a waste of my time. I blew him off knowing that, in doing so, I was confirming his worst beliefs about my gender. I took an inexplicable pleasure in knowing that I’d probably intensified his darkest suspicions. I’d given him hope. Find a woman who’s smart and funny, rather than one who is obsessed by money and looks, I’d told him, and you’ll be so much happier. And then I’d behaved as deceitfully as the skeeziest of skeezers, who, to their credit, were at least up front about their low designs. I’d pitched myself, and my kind, as dependable and caring and forthright. I’d probably proved to be the most deceitful woman of all.