Lydia Davis - The End of the Story

Since the letter I wrote to him about the stranger’s visit is dated, I can now figure out the date on which I saw the stranger and then telephoned with my pathetic question, and I see I was right: that was the conversation that lasted thirty-seven minutes. But what I also learn from the letter is that he had told me in an earlier conversation that he was now seeing this woman, and once I knew this I became more passionate, or more frantic.

I knew she was living there with him by then, spending nights with him. I knew she was more than just a friend from school. What worried me, what I wanted to know from him, and what he did not tell me honestly, was whether this thing that was going on between them was going to be permanent or was going to end when I returned home. I did not want him to see another woman, though I could see another man. I could see another man because that did not hurt me, and I avoided what would hurt me and went after what would give me pleasure.

But not wanting him to see another woman was more than jealousy. If he was with someone else, he was suddenly very far away from me. His attention was turned on her and not on me, as it had been before, even from such a distance. The light of his attention was off me.

It doesn’t matter to me that we talked for exactly thirty-seven minutes, but it did matter to the telephone company, and while I was brooding about the conversation in the privacy of my borrowed apartment, and later, far away from there, not knowing just how long it had lasted, this large company, the phone company, was recording on this document, the phone bill, exactly how long the conversation had lasted, along with the other long-distance conversations I had on that phone, and it then sent out that information, though it didn’t care what use was made of it as long as the bill was paid.

I don’t know why I need to reconstruct all this — whether it is important for a reason I haven’t discovered yet, or whether I simply like to answer a question once I see how to answer it.

* * *

The night I came home, he met me at the airport in his car, as he had promised he would, but he was not very friendly and told me on the way up the coast that he had some bad news.

I knew what the bad news was, but I didn’t want him to tell me until we were sitting in the bar and I had a glass of beer in my hand. Then he told me everything had changed. He said it was all over for him, it hadn’t been working out and he didn’t want to go on with it. We had both ordered large meals. After he told me this, I couldn’t eat anything, so he finished his meal and then ate most of mine. Because he had no money with him, I paid for the food. I didn’t get angry or cry. I tried to be friendly, because as long as I was sitting there with him, it didn’t seem to be over. After he was finished eating, a little more relaxed because of the beer, or touched by my protests, he kissed me and said he would have to come to see me again because he had nowhere to live.

He later denied saying this. It didn’t make sense even to me, because he had a place to live. He was still living in his apartment. He was living with a woman his own age — a small, dark, athletic woman, Madeleine told me. She had seen them together in the supermarket. She was angry. She said he had left me while I was away, after I had helped him out of so many difficulties.

Later that evening, when I was alone, I was sorry I had been pleasant. In the days and weeks after that, I occasionally cried or got angry on the phone talking to him. But whenever I was with him again, I felt there was still a chance, so I was pleasant again.

I had trouble sleeping that night. I fell asleep at two, and dreamed about him, then woke at six, toward dawn, and lay awake. I had a grim vision that seemed true just because it formed so quickly and so distinctly: I saw myself turning forty within a few years, leading what I called an “empty” life, doing dull work and doing it badly, and not loving any man, or at least no man who also loved me.

Only some of this happened the way I had predicted it would. When I turned forty, my life was not empty. Some of the work I did was dull, and I did some of it badly, which embarrassed me, but I did more of it well, and most of it was interesting. I did love two men who did not love me, or not at the same time that I loved them, but I also loved one man who loved me, too, and at the same time, which seemed to me a rare piece of good fortune.

Although I was with other men after him, some who mattered only a little to me and others who mattered more, my feelings for him did not change as quickly as I would have thought. Where did I keep them during those years? Did they sit intact in a group in my brain somewhere? Did I have only to open the door to that small area of my brain to experience them again?

* * *

The next day, the hours passed slowly, as though much more time were passing, as though whole days were passing. Yet I could not get used to the new situation. I felt I had just heard this news a moment before.

There were other, smaller changes. The dryer was broken. Madeleine had been wearing my clothes, and she had burnt one of my shirts drying it in the oven. She told me she had allowed a friend of hers, a policeman, to sleep in my room while I was away, and he had left such a smell she had had to air the place out. There was something wrong with my car. It wouldn’t start at first, and when it did start, it roared. He had had his car fixed but had not paid me back my money. Now his car was quiet and mine roared. Maybe he had been getting his car fixed with my money on the same day I had called that man I barely knew.

Because the dryer was broken, I hung my damp clothes from the rafter of the spare room, so that it was full of white garments swaying in the breeze that came in through the window.

I did what I had to do, though it was hard because I kept thinking about him. I was afraid of what would happen when the evening and the night came. A band of tightness around my throat now made it hard for me to swallow, and I kept pulling at the neck of my sweater. It was not my sweater choking me but something inside me.

I could hardly eat, though I wanted to get a little food into my body. I felt sick to my stomach at the smell of food and then at the first bite. I could only take a little fruit, dry bread, certain vegetables, water, and juice.

I seemed to float, as though anchored to nothing. Nothing was quite real, or it was hard to tell what was real and what was not. Real things in the room looked thin and transparent, part of a flat surface of colors and patterns lining the sides of the room.

When at last I went to bed that night, I couldn’t stop coughing and lay in the dark trying to keep very still. Although I wouldn’t be able to hear the sound of his car, now that it was fixed, I still listened for it because my ears were used to doing that, and I heard cars that had nearly the same sound his car had once had.

As I lay there, coughing, not sleeping, I became more and more angry. Though it was late, I got up and telephoned him. There was no answer. Now I was angrier, because if he was in another place, he was not alone, and if he was not alone, he was not even thinking of me. This was what disturbed me most, that he was almost surely not thinking of me. If he had forgotten me, where was I, and who was I? I could tell myself I was still there, and still myself, but I didn’t feel it.

I went back to bed, tried to read, couldn’t read, turned off the light, became angry at myself, too, and then at everyone I knew. I started to fall asleep, was woken by my own surprise at falling asleep, and began coughing again. Later I fell asleep again, and woke up coughing again. This happened over and over, until at last I put two pillows on top of a bolster and slept the rest of the night leaning up against them with a piece of wet kleenex on my forehead.