The (Other) You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “We might as well order our lunches, too. What d’you think?”—(Matthew) Smith swallows a large mouthful of the neon-red drink.

  Not waiting for (Matt) Smith to join him as he drinks. Not suggesting a toast to their having, so oddly, met. (Matt) Smith feels just slightly rejected by the other, more blustery man in a rumpled shirt of no distinction while he, (Matt) Smith, makes it a point to wear a freshly laundered shirt each day, often a tattersall, on principle.

  Never would (Matt) Smith wear such old, ugly sandals as (Matthew) Smith is wearing! Never would he expose ugly misshapen toes, discolored toenails. His teenaged children would be utterly mortified by him. His wife would recoil in dismay, disgust. And (Matt) Smith thinks too well of himself: his masculine pride.

  Seeing again the scattering of minuscule acne scars on (Matthew) Smith’s forehead, (Matt) Smith feels a surge of satisfaction. He was spared such petty indignities in high school where appearances matter so much.

  “Yes. Let’s order. If Kizer turns up . . .”

  “. . . he’ll be surprised to see us.”

  (Matthew) Smith snaps his fingers another time, summons the waiter. Gives his order while (Matt) Smith studies the menu just slightly confused for there are new items listed, not every dish is labeled organic, local, gluten-free.

  (Matthew) Smith has ordered a hamburger, medium rare. With French fries. (Matt) Smith has not had a hamburger in years, tries to avoid red meat, is tempted to follow his companion but decides no, a cold salmon platter might be better.

  (Matthew) Smith remarks that he’d last seen Kizer two weeks ago for lunch, after playing squash. He hadn’t played as well as usual, sciatica kicking up again, so Kizer had won, but just barely.

  (Matt) Smith feels a pang of jealousy. Do (Matthew) Smith and Kizer see each other so frequently? At two-week intervals? Kizer only has time for (Matt) Smith every four, five weeks. And they have not played squash in months.

  Feeling an impulse to confide in (Matthew) Smith, he sometimes wonders if indeed Kizer is his close friend as he wishes to think. If indeed (Matt) Smith has any friends at all.

  Recalling how sometimes Kizer will tell him he can’t make lunch this week, has to postpone lunch next week, plans have changed and he will have to cancel . . . But possibly (Matthew) Smith is lying? Something devious about the hooded eyes behind the olive-tinted lenses, that insidious nasal voice.

  Then, (Matthew) Smith’s phone rings. (Matt) Smith feels a pang of anxiety, that the call will be from Kizer.

  For him. For the other. Not for me . . .

  But (Matthew) scowls, listening—the call seems to be of no significance, or a wrong number.

  (Matthew) Smith puts away his phone. (Matt) Smith has already put away his phone, in his shirt pocket.

  (Matthew) Smith remarks that Kizer never used to be late, until recently. (Matt) Smith denies this: Kizer is never late, at all.

  “Well, since that—misunderstanding—with my wife—or whatever it was—Kizer has begun to be less reliable.”

  “Misunderstanding? With—who? Who is your wife?” (Matt) Smith’s heart is beating rapidly.

  “My wife? Lisa.”

  “Lisa! You don’t mean—‘Lisa Finch.’”

  (Matthew) shrugs, grimacing. If this is a joke, it is a just-barely-amusing joke.

  “Well, yes—‘Lisa Finch.’”

  “But—that’s not possible? Is it?”

  A pause. Neither can quite look the other in the eye.

  “‘Lisa Finch’—from Petaluma.”

  “Petaluma? No. I don’t think so. Sacramento.”

  “Well, yes—born in Sacramento. But her parents moved to Petaluma when she was two.”

  “Five, I think. When she was five.”

  “Two. I’m sure.”

  Another pause. Breathless.

  At last (Matthew) Smith says, in an even voice: “We were talking about Kizer, actually. How—since a ‘misunderstanding’ with my wife—(at the time my wife, not ex-)—he hasn’t been so reliable. Though we are still friends—of course. Each of us the other’s oldest friend.”

  “Wait. What was this ‘misunderstanding’—”

  “Is it possible that you don’t know? Yet?”

  “Don’t know what, ‘yet’?”

  They stare at each other for a long moment before realizing—This person is me. Yet—not-me.

  Fortunately, breaking the tension, their lunches are brought to them by the dreadlocked waiter who has been glancing at them, from one to the other and back again, with an expression resolutely neutral.

  Also, their drinks are depleted, or nearly. (Matthew) Smith orders another Bloody Mary. (Matt) Smith hesitates, then orders another Bloody Mary.

  “Yes, it’s ‘early in the day.’ But one more won’t hurt.”

  “Most sensible thing you’ve said yet.”

  (Matthew) Smith laughs, baring big ungainly stained teeth.

  He had braces, took care of his teeth. (Matt) Smith thinks. His parents had loved him and provided dental, medical care for him.

  “I see that your hair has thinned,” (Matthew) Smith says with a sly spider-dimple of a smile, and (Matt) Smith says, not missing a beat, like the capable Ping-Pong player he’d been as a kid, “I see that you’ve had some skin trouble. Carcinomas?”—in a tone of sympathy.

  (Matthew) Smith winces. (Is it so visible?) Conceding that yes, he’d had several small, coin-sized skin cancers removed from his forehead and cheeks a few months ago, in a dermatologist’s office. Not major surgery.

  “Dermatologist? Who’s that?”

  “Dr. Friedland. A woman.”

  “Friedland! She isn’t a dermatologist, she’s our G.P.”

  “Your G.P., maybe. My dermatologist.”

  Wary with each other. Falling quiet as they eat their lunches. (Matt) Smith is feeling slightly light-headed—vodka so early in the day . . . He has noted how thirstily (Matthew) Smith drinks, disapprovingly. The man is an incipient alcoholic.

  “You’d said, your wife—ex-wife—is named ‘Lisa Finch’?”

  (Matthew) Smith shrugs, chewing. His mouth is bracketed by lines like fissures. Clearly doesn’t want to pursue the subject but (Matt) Smith can’t resist.

  Saying, with a curious sort of tenderness, “I’d thought you—we—l-loved her—Loved Lisa.”

  (Matthew) Smith laughs indulgently. “What’s ‘love’—a matter of perspective.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that we ‘love’ people to the degree to which we don’t know them. Beyond that point, ‘love’ falters, fails.”

  (Matt) Smith protests: “I—I am sure—I love my wife very much . . .”

  (Matthew) Smith coughs, laughs. Clears his throat.

  “It’s a matter, as I’ve said, of perspective. Of seeing the object with the naked eye, or through a microscope.”

  “But what went wrong? With you and your ‘Lisa’ . . .”

  “Matt, why would you want to know? If you’re ignorant of—well, your wife and Kizer—”

  “‘My wife and Kizer’? What do you mean?”

  (Matt) Smith falters. His bolder self meant to exclaim What the hell do you mean!

  With a curious sort of dignity, or obstinacy, (Matthew) Smith tells (Matt) Smith that he is better off not knowing.

  “But—I don’t want to remain ignorant. I want to know—whatever it is that I don’t seem to know . . .”

  “Look, we aren’t the same person. We aren’t ‘identical.’ What is true for me isn’t necessarily true for you. All I can tell you is what I know—suspected. For years I’d been suspicious of Lisa and Kizer. That softness in her face when she looked at him, spoke of him. The way she went blank sometimes when I touched her, as if she wanted to throw off my hand but didn’t dare. The way she would shrug away from me, shivering. Then again she would ask about the canoe accident, how close I’d actually come to drowning, and how my friend Nate Kizer ‘saved’ me.” (Matthew) Smith pauses, brooding. “Those
many times she seemed depressed, burst into tears . . .”

  “Nate Kizer saved you? But—that isn’t possible . . . I was the one to save him.”

  A long pause falls upon the men, like vapor. A chill vapor, causing (Matt) Smith to shudder.

  For vividly (Matt) Smith remembers: the rain-swollen river, pulling his paddle in water denser than water should be, a boy screaming, panic—then, in rushing water, so much colder than he’d expected . . .

  “I was the one to save him. I—I saved Nate Kizer’s life when we were eleven years old . . .”

  (Matthew) Smith shrugs. As if to say OK so what?

  “I—don’t remember Nate ever telling me, he’d saved anyone’s life. I mean—if he had, he’d have told me . . .” (Matt) Smith hears his voice faltering, failing. Clearly (Matthew) Smith remembers an episode very different from his. Though they are seated only a few inches from each other, at the wrought-iron terrace table, it’s as if there is a chasm between them.

  “And my wife—Lisa—she’s a very different person from your wife. Ex-wife. We are each other’s closest friend—or almost. We have no secrets from each other.” Though it is true, (Matt) Smith must concede, that from time to time Lisa succumbs to migraine headaches and doesn’t want him to touch her or even to speak to her.

  Ridiculous, to imply, as (Matthew) Smith seems to have implied, that Kizer has had some sort of long affair with Lisa. No.

  In (Matthew) Smith’s own marriage, that might be the case. Why the marriage ended.

  “My Lisa is—is not—in love with another man, I am sure.”

  (Matt) Smith laughs dismissively, as if that were proof.

  In a friendly toast, unless it’s a mocking toast, (Matthew) Smith lifts his Bloody Mary toward (Matt) Smith, taps (Matt) Smith’s glass with his own.

  “Here’s to us. Fuck them.”

  Boastfully (Matthew) Smith allows (Matt) Smith to know that he’d dropped out of college in his freshman year at UC-Irvine, only barely graduated from high school—“Too much weed. Jesus! I think my cerebral cortex turned to vapor.” But (Matthew) Smith laughs, indulgently. Better than hanging himself which was the alternative at fifteen, never got over being rejected by Coach Fenner trying out for j-v softball, the blunt way Fenner dismissed him in front of the others, mean son of a bitch not seeming to know how vulnerable a fifteen-year-old boy is, especially a fifteen-year-old with acne. Why he’d spent most of high school stoned. His only friend was Kizer who felt sorry for him, frankly. Wouldn’t have had the courage to actually hang himself just like, on the river, when he’d panicked and overturned the canoe he hadn’t had the courage to swim to shore and had almost drowned Kizer trying to help him, Jesus!—never live it down, his dying day he’d be remembering.

  Well—he’d gone back to college. San Jose State. Lost contact with Kizer until he moved back to San Rafael and started some kind of new life, or tried to.

  “Weird thing was they’d known each other in college. I mean, when they were in college. Though they didn’t go to the same college. Kizer and Lisa. They’d—you know . . .” (Matthew) Smith makes a crude, obscene gesture, of a kind (Matt) Smith has not seen in decades.

  “And you know this, how?”—(Matt) Smith is repelled.

  “She told me. When it was over between us. Rubbing salt in my wounds, like a bitch will do.”

  (Matt) Smith laughs. (Matthew) Smith is so crude!

  (Matthew) Smith stares at (Matt) Smith, considering. “You think that she—‘your’ Lisa—wasn’t fucking Kizer, off and on for years? Really? And you know this, how?”

  “I won’t dignify that by answering.”

  “Well, good for you! That’s what a man like me lacks, fatally—dignity.” (Matthew) Smith laughs.

  In truth, (Matt) Smith is fevered with curiosity. Almost, a sort of sexual hunger. But God damn, he will not be baited.

  The men decide, it seems simultaneously, to take another tack: children.

  “You have children, Matt? How many?”

  “Yes! Two girls, one boy.” (Matt) Smith smiles, proudly. A daddy whose children adore him. “And you?”

  “None.”

  “None? Not—even one?”

  “‘Not even one.’”

  “Well—that’s too bad . . .”

  Awkward words. (Matt) Smith is stricken with curiosity but hesitates to blunder further for perhaps (Matthew) Smith or his wife are infertile . . .

  “You could say ‘minus-one.’ A miscarriage.” (Matthew) Smith speaks in a voice flat as the tabletop.

  “Hey. I’m sorry . . .” (Matt) Smith is taken by surprise.

  “Why sorry? It happened a long time ago. Seems like it could’ve been other people, actually.”

  (Matt) Smith ponders. Is (Matthew) Smith speaking bravely, to disguise sorrow; or is (Matthew) Smith speaking with an infuriating air of complacency, just this side of a snigger?

  Recalling that Lisa had had a miscarriage too—hadn’t she? In an early year of their marriage . . .

  “At least, that’s what Lisa claimed. Frankly”—(Matthew) Smith snorts with laughter—“I had a suspicion at the time that she might’ve had an abortion. At the women’s clinic, in secret.”

  “When was this?”

  “When? What difference does it make? Might’ve been a year or two after we were married.”

  (Matt) Smith feels a sensation of cold. Horror. (Matthew) Smith’s laughter is inappropriate, bizarre. (Matt) Smith frowns gravely, he will not be drawn into the other’s mood. Thinking how if Lisa had lost their first baby, Constance would never have been born. . . . Their daughter, now a senior at USC.

  (Matt) Smith loves his daughter Constance. Wanting to gloat to (Matthew) Smith—You have no idea what it is, the love of a beautiful daughter. Poor bastard.

  “The second pregnancy, or whatever it was,” (Matthew) Smith continues, imperturbably, “we’d both agreed should be terminated. The world is a ‘terrible place’—‘already too many people on the planet’—plus I’d been transferred to San Jose preparatory to being ‘downsized.’ The saying in our business is—San Jose, doom on the way. And we weren’t getting along too well, even then. Then,” (Matthew) Smith says, with a smirk of a smile, “the bitch dared to claim later that she’d been coerced by me into having an abortion—in fact, more than one—and she’d actually wanted to have children.” (Matthew) Smith snorts with mirthless laughter.

  “Wait. I don’t understand . . .”

  “I do. It’s only required of the husband, to understand.”

  What this means, (Matt) Smith is not curious to know. Saying quickly, as one might grab a towel to cover one’s groin in Boy Scout camp:

  “My wife—my Lisa—wanted children from the start. Lisa always loved babies. She’d played with dolls—she said. Lisa and I love our kids. Lisa has been a wonderful mother. Can’t imagine what our lives would be like without our children . . .” (Matt) Smith hears these words trundle across the table like dull thumping dominoes, falling.

  “‘Can’t imagine’—? Really?” (Matthew) Smith is frankly sniggering now. “I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like with children dragging me down.”

  (Matt) Smith protests: “Children don’t drag you down, they buoy you up.”

  His words sound hollow, insincere. Doggedly he perseveres: “When your spirits are low, when you doubt the worth of living, you have only to look at your children, and understand that they are the reason you were born.”

  As these words issue from (Matt) Smith’s mouth he feels a numbing sensation suffuse his mouth, his throat and lungs as if he is breathing in ether.

  (Matthew) Smith nods gravely, ironically. As if he has never heard anything so profound.

  “‘When your spirits are low, when you doubt the worth of living, you have only to look at your children, and see the blessings you’ve been given . . .’ That sounds even more beautiful, Matt. Makes me rethink everything I’ve believed, or wanted to believe. Maybe I should’ve made my wife have child
ren.”

  Seeing that (Matt) Smith blinks at him in astonishment, (Matthew) Smith bursts into laughter.

  Loose-jowled, fatty chest, rippling flesh around his waist. How in hell has (Matthew) Smith let himself go, not yet fifty years old? Shame!

  “You are despicable,” (Matt) Smith says coldly. “You make a mockery of everything decent. You’ve let your entire life be ruined by—an act of cowardice when you were eleven years old.”

  “What do you know about me? You don’t know shit about me.”

  “You don’t know shit about me.”

  So distracted by their conversation, the men have stopped eating. Each is trembling, indignant.

  Oh, where is Kizer? Kizer would know what to make of this impasse like King Solomon rendering judgment. (Matt) Smith knows, just knows, that Kizer would rule for him.

  A precarious moment when each of the men is about to spring up from the table, back away from the other in dismay and disgust, and depart—except—the thought occurs to (Matt) Smith, random and whimsical as the small yellow butterfly drifting past his head, that he has the power to make (Matthew) Smith laugh, even against his will—“What do an atheist and a dyslexic have in common?”

  One of his father’s jokes. The old man believed in laughter, joking—Best cure for a broken heart is a broken funny bone.

  (Matthew) Smith furrows his brow. (Matthew) Smith twists his mouth. “‘What do an atheist and a dyslexic have in common?’—how the hell should I know?”

  5.

  In a voice that signals This is funny, prepare to laugh (Matt) Smith asks (Matthew) Smith: “What do an atheist and a dyslexic have in common?”

  (Matthew) Smith furrows his brow as if the question is profound, crucial.

  “Staying up all night wondering if there’s a God?”

  (Matt) Smith laughs, indulgently. “No. You’ve got it reversed. ‘Staying up all night wondering if there’s a dog.’” Waits for (Matthew) Smith to laugh but (Matthew) Smith does not laugh, continues to look puzzled, vexed. “See, the joke is dog when people expect you to say God.”

  “But why would anyone expect you to say God in any case? Why is this funny? I always thought Dad’s jokes were painfully unfunny.”