Steve Martin - Shopgirl

Their union is the kind of perfect mismatch that makes for long relationships. She is smarter than he is, but Jeremy is in love with his own bright ideas, and the enthusiasm he shows for them infects Mirabelle and pushes her forward into the world of drawing for money. She begins to enjoy tolerating his enthusiastic outbursts; this is her gift to him. Sometimes they lie in bed and Mirabelle relates the entire plot of a Victorian novel, and Jeremy is so captivated and engrossed that he believes the events in the story are happening right now, to him.

Mirabelle informs Ray that though she is cautious, perhaps she has met somebody. “I tell him about my medication and he doesn’t care,” she says. This is the moment Ray has always known is coming, when she succumbs to the unrestricted, unbounded, and free-flowing passion of someone who is her peer. In spite of its predictability, he still feels this moment as a loss, and a curious one: how is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?

Ray also wonders why it is she and not he who has met someone accidentally in a Laundromat, someone who stumbles into your life and forever alters it. But just three months later, it happens to Ray – it isn’t a Laundromat since he hasn’t seen one in thirty years, but rather a dinner party – a forty-five-year-old woman, divorced with two children, touches his heart and then breaks it flat. It is then Ray’s turn to experience Mirabelle’s despair, to see its walls and colors. Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.

Jeremy and Mirabelle, who are not living together but are close to it, have shorter and shorter separations as he commutes south and north. Mirabelle and Ray continue to talk weekly or more, and they begin to be able to discuss the details of each other’s romantic lives. On the phone, Mirabelle mentions that she wants to fly home to Vermont for a three-day weekend. She does not ask him for money – she never does – but Ray is always forthcoming when he senses her need. This time, however, he does not volunteer the dough and they chat on and hang up. He needs to sort something out.

As he stands on his balcony overlooking Los Angeles in the dusky orange sunset, Ray ponders his continuing concern for Mirabelle. If she is no longer seeing him, if she is now with someone new, wouldn’t it be the new man’s responsibility to pay for the odd necessity? Ray always had paid; he saw it as his gift to her, but now it is over. Yet he is still compelled to help her. Why?

He turns his powers of analysis away from the logic of symbols, and toward his churning subconscious. He strips his questions down to their barest form, and he finds the single unifying theme of his contradictory feelings. He suddenly knows why he feels the way he does about her, why she still touches him, and why, at irregular and unpredictable intervals, he wonders where she is and how she is doing: he has become her parent, and she his child. He sees, finally, that as much as he believed he was imposing his will on her, she was also imposing her need on him, and their two dispositions interlocked. And the consequence was a mutual education. He experienced a relationship in which he was the sole responsible party, and he notes its failures; she found someone to guide her through to the next level of her life. Mirabelle, standing on uneasy legs, now feeling the warmth of her first mature reciprocal love, has broken away from him. But he knows that like a parent, he will be there for her, ever.

Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some nights these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it. One night, he will think of her as he looks into the eyes of someone new, searching for the two qualities that Mirabelle defined for him: loyalty and acceptance. Mirabelle, far away and in Jeremy’s embrace, knows that what had been lost is now regained.

Months later, after the hard edges of their breakup had smoothed into forgetfulness, Mirabelle speaks with Ray Porter on the phone. She tells him about her new life, and he hears the fresh delight in her voice. She tells him, “I feel like I really belong here. For the first time, I feel like I really belong.” She underplays Jeremy’s place in her heart as she thinks it might hurt Ray. She mentions that she continues to draw and sell, with a positive review in Art News to her credit. They reminisce about their affair and she tells him how he helped her and he tells her how she helped him, then he apologizes for the way he handled everything. “Oh, no…don’t,” she corrects him: “it’s pain that changes our lives.” And there is a pause, and neither speaks. Then Mirabelle says, “I took the gloves to Vermont and stored them in my memory box – my mother asked me what they were but I kept it to myself – and here in my bedroom, in my private drawer, I keep a photo of you.”

If writing is so solitary, why are there so many people to thank? First, Leigh Haber, who delicately edited the book without bruising my ego; Esther Newberg and Sam Cohn, who first uttered encouraging words; my friends April, Sarah, Victoria, Nora, Eric and Eric, Ellen, Mary, and Susan, who were all convinced that it was their idea to read and provide helpful comments on this book during its early stages. How can I thank them except to offer a twenty-five percent discount on bulk purchases when accompanied by a valid driver’s license?