Gabriel Roth - The Unknowns

“It’s just like normal whiskey only without the part where it burns your throat.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a connoisseur!”

“That was actually a quote from my forthcoming review in Whiskey magazine.”

And then she does this amazing thing: she scoots around the booth to me and leans into my side, tipping her head onto my shoulder. We sit like that for a minute as the whiskey reaches my fingertips and everything is perfect.

“So we’re getting serious about this, huh?” she says.

“Yeah, we totally are,” I say. “I mean, I am. I’m serious.”

“OK then,” she says, sitting up and looking me square in the eye. “I’m serious too.”

At some point maybe this will feel like simple contentment rather than giddy euphoria, but that’s hard to imagine.

“It’s weird, right?” I say, as though we’re just two people having a conversation about some normal thing. “You meet someone, you fall for them, you do stuff together and it’s great and everything, and they’re still basically a stranger.” She’s nodding and grinning. She’s with me on this. “And at some point you have to decide, OK, I’m not just on the outside of this trying to figure it out, I’m on the inside now .”

“I was wondering when you were going to decide that.”

“Really? You saw me being on the outside?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not a mind reader, but it seemed like at first you wanted to put me under an X-ray machine, and then that got really intense and hard to deal with, and then it kind of peaked and you got it out of your system.”

“You know you are in fact kind of a mind reader, right?”

She laughs. “Nah, you’re just not that great at hiding what’s going on with you.” Unbelievable. “So what was it? Just normal fear-of-commitment stuff?”

“Yeah, basically,” I say. I get a weird metallic taste in my mouth at my impulse to dissemble at this of all moments. It’s a bad taste and I’m sick of it. “No, actually, not just that. It was to do with the stuff from your past, with your father, the abuse.”

She looks sympathetic. “What were you feeling about that?” she asks.

“Well, I didn’t know if it was true or not,” I say. “I mean, really, that’s the thing about it, is that there’s no way to know. So I got all wrapped up in this idea that I had to figure it out, I had to find the truth. I went and talked to your dad about it, is how worked up I was about it!”

That was probably a mistake. “What the fuck,” she says.

“That’s what I’m saying!” I say helplessly. “I was so wrapped up in this stupid way of thinking, having to figure out the, you know, the facts instead of concentrating on what’s important, which is how you feel about it. And so I did this dumb thing and I…”

“You called my dad?”

“No, I, uh, I went to see him. In LA.”

She just sits there looking at me. A certain amount of astonished bafflement appears on her face alongside the anger. I don’t know how long it lasts, us sitting there with her visibly adjusting her feelings about me in light of this new information. Maybe a long time. Minutes.

“So what happened?” she says, working to minimize the emotion in her voice.

I’m not sure if the specifics make me come out looking better or worse. Probably a wash. Not that it matters. “I made an appointment to see his gallery, and I flew down there. I—”

“When was this?”

“Last week. Friday.” She nods. “I just asked him what happened, and he told me his version.”

“Which is what?”

“He talked for a long time. He really wanted to persuade me that you were wrong, that you’d been brainwashed or confused or something.”

“And what did you think when he said that?”

“I thought I didn’t know, and there was no way to know, and I was looking for some kind of certainty that didn’t exist and I should forget about it and concentrate on, you know, you and me, and being in love, and the stuff that’s important!”

The hostess is hovering just behind my right shoulder, which means our table is ready. Maya is ignoring her. Obviously we’re not about to head into the dining room, look over the menus, order the pork shoulder, which is only available for two people and which seems to stand for everything I have just lost.

“How long did you sit there and listen to him?” she says.

“I’m not sure.”

“More than an hour?”

“Probably.”

Those are actual tears coming to her eyes. I’ve never seen her do that before: welling up . She doesn’t want to break down and sob, but the tears won’t stop coming. Also the look of hatred and betrayal. Never seen that either.

The hostess leans in and says, “We’re ready for you in the dining room.” She’s smiling — she’s been standing there long enough to read our mood and has chosen to ignore it. Probably I should tell her that we won’t be needing our table after all, but what if Maya’s about to start laughing, shake her head at my stupidity, and then tell me it’s all part of why she loves me, and are we getting the pork shoulder?

I look over at Maya. “Do you want to…” She looks back witheringly.

I stand and tell the hostess, “I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to have dinner.” She walks off in silence. Maya hasn’t moved, so I have to sit down and let this go on.

“So he told you about the false memory bullshit. You got the whole line.”

“Yeah.”

“That must have been right up your alley.”

I don’t know what to say to this.

“I told you about him, Eric. I told you about the interrogations, and the constant discussion of my sex life, and all the bullshit of living with him.” Her hands are on the table, and she keeps squeezing them into fists. “So now you’ve decided that what happened isn’t the point ? You’re just going to shake your head at the ineffable mystery of my childhood? Believe me, I know how little I know. I have a hole in my memory and I have to live with that every day, but at least I can own what I’ve got. Do I know for sure that my father raped me in my bed when I was eleven? No, I don’t know that for sure, because I wasn’t taking notes at the time. I think he did and that’s enough to stop me talking to him. But I know he hurt me, and I know he hurt me sexually, and I can guess how old I was when it happened, because I know what I was like before and I know what I was like afterward.”

The bar waiter chooses this moment to set down the bill in a thickly padded leather booklet. The room has filled up since we sat down.

She takes a breath. “I have to get out of here,” she says. “It’s important that you don’t call me.” She’s speaking with exaggerated calm, trying to say what she needs to say before she breaks down.

“Look, I understand you’re upset,” I say. “Can we just talk about this?”

“I’m going to have to be alone right now,” she says.

“That’s fine,” I say. “But can we just say we’re going to talk? It could be tomorrow, or whenever, but let’s just make a plan to talk when we’re not both worked up.” Everything rides on whether I can convince her of this.

“Play out that conversation right now,” she says. “You think it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. But it matters to me. Am I going to decide it doesn’t matter to me? Or are you going to start believing me by force of will? This is your thing, Eric, figuring this stuff out. Is there a solution to this?” She’s no longer at risk of crying; the effort she put into summing up the logic of her position has steadied her. She gives me a few seconds to exhaust the possibilities, and then she gets up and leaves.