Fiona Maazel - Woke Up Lonely

Esme wanted to name the baby Roxanne. I demurred but did not press. She wanted to name the baby Ida. Ida Dan? Don’t be absurd. Ida Haas.

I got a job filing cases for a law firm. They called me a paralegal, but all I did was file. It was a large practice. Corporate and, as far as I could tell, engaged to flout protections of the Hudson River. The office was a tic-tac-toe arrangement of cubicles and hallways. Most days, I came home feeling like mulch.

Still, I tried to retain this job because we had moved into a house that needed more renovation and repair than was apparent when we bought it. There were loans to pay down. A testy sump pump. Corroding pipes and backyard sludged with overflow from a septic tank twenty years old. The problems were menial, but of the sort I thought typified a young marriage.

In the meantime, Esme was spending more and more time with Yul, who had been unable to make contact with the Americans on the inside and who, frankly, did not want to. His desire to topple the system from which he had fled was nominal at best. He just wanted to deliver babies in the free world, maybe to have one of his own, and to move on. Esme was appalled and, for being appalled, spiked her blood pressure. The baby was due in two weeks.

Three days later, I was sitting at my desk, shooting rubber bands at the wall of my cubicle. I’d set up a bull’s-eye of pushpins. I was league champion. Coworker Janice poked her head over the panel divide. She wore silver hoop earrings that slapped her neck.

I was in low spirits. That morning, I’d found a skein of Esme’s hair atop the shower drain and been disgusted. The feeling passed in a flash, but there was no denying it. I’d been disgusted. By my own wife. The shock of it made me feel woozy, and I pressed my head to the wall tile. And then came a siege of misgiving. All the times I’d pressed my lips to her more delicate nature and not enjoyed it. The way she let her nail polish chip for weeks before reapplication. How, for no reason, she walked on tiptoe. And then, and then, her inability to wash cookware, so that, on mornings I wanted eggs, I’d find the skillet greased in fat. Her toes, which gripped each other during movie night on the couch — have I mentioned how much I didn’t like her toes? And then perhaps the frequency with which she’d begun to say she loved me — perhaps I did not like that, either.

I’d stayed in the shower so long, my skin had crimped and the water gone cold. But this was nuts, right? That the dream — of marriage, love, togetherness — never accords with practice is a timeless bromide. Even so, I began to query the content of this dream because I had thought it was about Esme. About Esme’s penetrating the horrible isolation that until her had struck me as simply the thing we are all born into. I am not certain what in her made me think love and family were an antidote, but I thought they were, at least until that moment in the shower, at which point I crouched on the mat, drew my knees to my chest, and promised with everything I had to suppress what I’d just come to doubt. I swore to be a good husband and a good father and petitioned God not to smite me for thinking ill of my pregnant wife. I didn’t mean it; I was just scared and stupid and didn’t know better.

Janice asked if I was going to Ed the custodian’s funeral. He had collided with a tree on Putt Corners Road, the canard being that he’d had a heart attack, though everyone knew he’d done it on purpose. Everyone but Janice. I remember her saying he always seemed so happy and me saying, “Jesus, Janice, misery can be looking you straight in the face, and you’d never know it.”

She said, “Work is just too boring today — let’s play a game. It’s a drinking game, but I guess we can adapt.” It was called State of the Union. “You have to itemize everything that’s good and bad in your life. You know, talking points. So, you want to play?”

This was the kind of thing we did at our Helix meetings. But I wasn’t in the mood. “I have to call my wife.”

“Call her after.”

I slumped in my chair. “Okay. The good? I’m married to the woman of my dreams, and we’re about to have a baby.”

“Wow! That’s amazing! But way to sound happy about it.”

“The bad? I’m married to the woman of my dreams, and we’re about to have a baby.”

She frowned. “Is that like Nietzsche or something? Everything good is bad? You know Dale in HR? His brother goes to those meetings of yours at the university, so I know the stuff you guys read.”

“It’s your game,” I said.

She returned to her side of the panel, so I stood and draped my chin over the ledge. “Okay, wait, maybe this will explain it. Don’t laugh, but all my life, I’ve had this theory about loneliness, that it’s congenital, fundamental, but that you could escape or defeat it. And I thought I had, only now I see I haven’t even come close. And I’m worried it’s not even possible. But forget that. I just have to work harder, redouble my efforts. I think that falls into the good category, right?”

She had been about to make a call, but now she replaced the phone in the cradle. “I just have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “But it doesn’t sound good at all.”

“No, no, it’s good. I’m recommitting. I started those meetings a couple years ago, but now I’m going to make them huge. Nationwide.”

I gave her my best smile. I’d wanted to try out my resolve, to see how it sounded aloud. To find in my speech a nostrum for anxieties fallen to me at that moment, among them my wife, the coming baby, and the fulcrum anxiety of knowing I might run out on them both.

But Janice was right: It sounded bad.

I went to the lounge and thought about Ed. If he was desolate inside, could the Helix have helped? Was suicide a more workable option than what I’d been trying to do?

Then I heard Janice yelling my name from across the floor and getting closer. And something in her voice — I knew what she’d come to say. I jumped behind the couch and got low. Dust bunnies clotted the air vent. I held my breath and waited for her to pass. Then I snuck back to my desk. Six messages on the machine, all from my frantic wife. She was in labor, hurry up.

That day, I was supposed to speak at an event on campus, and I felt the pull of this event so strongly that every turn I made toward the hospital had to be won from its clutch. The symposium was called “Iraq: Five Years Later.” I was scheduled to speak last on the bill. I would say something about self-interest and question whether we’d have invaded Iraq to protect a place like Singapore, which has almost no natural resources. I would go on this way for a few minutes and then swell the discourse to include matters touching and dire and germane to the malcontent I knew these people were feeling, the organizer in particular. Her name was Marshall. She was well loved by well-meaning people, which meant that, besides feeling isolated and unreachable, she also felt guilty, because, come on, how much love does a person need to feel a part of? What was she doing wrong? Driving to the hospital, I could not have empathized with her more.

Ida, sweetheart, you were a breech baby. You nearly died from several problems, among them a dislodging of your mother’s placenta and a noosed umbilical cord. There was a C-section. I’m told she stayed awake through the entire procedure, asking for me at intervals of one to two seconds. I’m told she cried and feared for my life, because only a terrible accident could have kept me from her. I was told this by a nurse while Esme slept. I did, after all, get to the hospital, at least to reception, where I counted black diamonds patterned across the floor and tried to will myself to her room.