Chris Adrian - The New World

Heart of my heart, I love you

Life would be naught without you

Jim had taken her hand. She held on to his as long as she could, perfectly in control of her clutching fingers even if it felt like the rest of her body, which was already straining to run away, belonged to someone else. She was full of questions for Jim— Why do I feel accused by this proposal? Where do their thick Indian accents go when these gentlemen sing? — but he was too busy, too caught up with his own question, for her to ask him any of her own.

Light of my life, my darling

I love you, I love you

If she had stayed at the table, those lyrics might have become Jim’s vows, since, sentimental as the words were, they said just what he felt. These waiters might have been his groomsmen in their matching black suits. Even now, their accompaniment was the only thing that kept Jim singing instead of lapsing into barking sobs.

I can forget you never

From you I ne’er can sever

Oh, say you’ll be mine forever

It was plain, after she had gone, that she had not disappeared in a fit of unbearable happiness. “Everything will be very good still,” the hostess kept telling Jim, though his barbershop companions all looked like they’d just seen a murder, and the other patrons had already turned away to try to look like they weren’t talking about him. Without him asking, the staff packed up their dinner to go, adding gifts of food, enough for a feast. He had ten pounds on each arm when he walked out. They’d even wrapped up the mukhwas he’d asked that he and his fiancée be showered with, like wedding rice, as they left. The boys had been supposed to sing them out.

Everything is going to be fine , he kept telling himself as he trudged along to Jane’s apartment. “Everything is going to be very good still.” He said it in the Indian hostess’s voice because he was afraid he’d be a fool to say it in his own, but after only a few repetitions he started to almost believe it. There was a version of this story, he knew, where he ran now too, and before they could marry, they divorced over his hurt feelings. And there was another version in which Jane simply never calmed down, in which she kept asking for one more week alone until it was twenty years later and they were both married to other people. But he knew that they wouldn’t choose either of those versions. Jane had only given them something to try hard at, a place to practice at the extraordinary work of being together. Running away wasn’t a No . It was just as close to Yes as she could get right now. Jim was smiling, shocked and pleased at what he had just made himself understand, when the cab ran him over.

Much later, he liked to tell himself he got a look at their future during the accident, that the absolute certainty of that cab is going to hit me became, while he was up in the air, surrounded by levitating pools of curry and dal, became Wow, you can see everything from up here! and then a glimpse of something else. Of course, the accident had wiped out anything he might have been actually thinking or knowing or seeing right then, but real or not real, that floating moment stayed with him for the rest of his life, a nostalgic presentiment. So later, at their second wedding, the one he was awake for, in the great actual now of the kiss Jim thought he could see his own dumb face, heartbroken and hopeful and amazed, staring slack-jawed at them from the past.

Hang in there , he told his gaping, tumbling face. Everything will be different, but nothing will change. That’s the part that you already have, get it? The thing that doesn’t change. He could feel the nonimaginary people watching as well. He felt their jealous disdain as his own good fortune. He didn’t mind it at all, or care that he and Jane might be holding the kiss too long. All together now, boys! he called out, and they replied in a chorus, every Jim he’d been and every Jim he’d ever be, Always together, never apart. Everything will be different, but nothing will change.

He knew it wouldn’t end, this affirming and reaffirming. Twice every year he’d do it, at the anniversary of each of his weddings, staring into a mirror and asking the nearest Jim to pass it back. Tell them all not to worry. Everything is indeed different, but indeed nothing has changed. Then some years he forgot. And some years he wasn’t even sure if it was true anymore, so those sad hopeful fuckers in the mirror got long speeches, accusations and rebuttals instead of recited vows. And then, eventually, at last, he would say: All’s well, more or less. I love her. I don’t still love her. I just love her. Same as always, my dudes.

“What are you doing in there?” Jane called out.

“Nothing!” he said. “Brushing my teeth!”

“Are you coming to bed?”

“Right now!” He gave his teeth a few swipes, and rinsed his mouth. He fixed his hair and smoothed his mustache. Peering closer at his face, he noticed how unevenly the hairs fell across his lip, so he clipped them with scissors. All this, though she had already made it dark in the bedroom.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes, coming!” But he did a few quick, quiet push-ups, to plump up his biceps, because she always noticed, even in the dark, when they were a little bigger than usual.

“There you are,” she said, when he came to bed. “I’m so sleepy.”

“What time is your flight?”

“Evening,” she said. “But I’m taking an afternoon case for Maureen, so I’ll have to leave right from the hospital. Are you working?”

“No,” he said. “But I’ll come up and say goodbye.”

“Oh, don’t,” she said. “Let’s do it now. Bye bye!” She kissed him and laid her head on his chest. He could hear her softly spitting out mustache fragments. He ought to have washed his face after trimming.

“Happy almost-anniversary,” he said.

“Oh, tomorrow is the eighteenth,” she said. “But that one doesn’t count. I was crazy. You were asleep.”

“Of course it counts,” he said. “What did you think I would have said, if I was awake?”

“You could have said anything.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have woken up at all, if you hadn’t done it.”

“Let’s not even talk about that. Let’s talk about the other wedding.” Jane ran the numbers in her head, afraid suddenly that she’d still be in Paris on the anniversary of the church service, which had followed that of the icu service by ten days and a year.

“Sure.”

“What should we do? Do you want me to make a dinner reservation?”

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“You’ll forget. You always do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never forget.”

She put her head back on his chest. “I’m sorry I married you while you were sleeping,” she said.

“I’m so glad you did.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“Glad and sorry?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, meaning that it was a nice, durable sort of glad, but she didn’t have to explain that to him. She kissed him again. “Should we?” She shouldn’t even have asked, she knew. She ought to have just taken off her nightshirt, as if it were making her uncomfortable all of a sudden, and then snuggled back up to him.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I’m so tired. What if we make out a little?”

“Instead?”

“No. Maybe. Let’s see what happens.”

“If you fall asleep while I’m kissing you, it will hurt my feelings.”

“Well, I won’t do that .”

“All right, then.”

“All right.”