by Rachel Ember
“I am sorry,” Jay managed a little hoarsely, daring to look back at Emile as he stepped through the door, his eyes stinging.
Emile’s head was hanging, and he didn’t lift it. “I know you are,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll text you later, okay?”
Jay nodded silently, but since Emile wasn’t looking at him, he cleared the lump in his throat and added out loud, “Okay.” And then he went out into the unilluminated dark, and didn’t look behind him for a last glimpse of Emile—worried that he’d catch him looking after Jay with a glare, or worse, not looking after him at all.
Sixteen
Emile
November
At eleven p.m., Emile was just a few hours into a late-night drive to Chicago, which he’d been forced to take after missing his flight. He wouldn’t have time to check into the hotel before he had to get to the conference in the morning, but he had clothing to change into when he arrived. And he’d gotten a four-pack of an energy drink—a habit he’d dropped after grad school—and slung it into the back seat of his car just in case.
He’d left Godot with Oliver, with a murmured promise to explain it all to Oliver later and also a quick apology to Godot, who’d been eyeing Cujo warily while she snarled at him from beneath a sofa like a tiny bridge troll.
Sydney’s expression was fixed in his imagination, in the moment when it had gone from bewildered amusement—‘My darling, are you on a date?’—to horror when Emile had confessed in a rush who exactly he’d had in his living room.
Why he’d told her, he couldn’t say, except that the idea of willfully misleading Sydney seemed impossible. Like lying to himself, but worse. He wasn’t sure how exactly to label her ultimate reaction. After the shock had passed, she’d just said, ‘I see. Well, then.’ And then they’d stood with him bent over next to her rolled-down driver’s side window, and her with her hands on the wheel and her stare fixed out the windshield, until she’d flushed and whipped her head in his direction. ‘What are you thinking? Is this some kind of sick game of pay-it-forward? Are you trying to make Ben jealous? Get back at him?’
He’d been just as horrified as her. ‘No! Of course not. This has nothing to do with—with him!’
She’d looked briefly pitying, before her jaw had clenched and she’d simply seemed furious. ‘You’re too smart to believe that, Emile,’ had been her parting words, and then she’d put the car into drive and he’d hastily stepped back—not really thinking that she’d hit the gas while his toes were still in range of her tires, but also not quite sure. He’d never seen her so angry.
He’d stood there for a while after she’d driven away before traipsing back into the house, and the memory of how he’d treated Jay was even more painful than the memory of Sydney’s derision.
Though Emile had said he’d text Jay, he hadn’t managed to do that, either, and Jay hadn’t made any effort to get in touch with him.
Emile tried to remember being Jay’s age. He had a feeling that this was how some of his break-ups had happened in his early twenties. An awkward conversation; neither willing to call; and before he’d known it, months had gone by, and when they ran into one another, all they did was awkwardly avoid eye contact.
Of course, he and Jay couldn’t end things quite so passively, as Jay would be sitting in his classroom come Tuesday.
The thought of it being over between them made Emile’s stomach feel clawed and nauseous. He hadn’t felt this way about any of those break-ups in his twenties. Or since. He hadn’t even felt this way when he’d found Ben with Seth.
Emile was a poet; he appreciated irony. Still, he drew no pleasure from the realization that the first time in his life he’d ever really been in love, it was happening not only with a student, but with a man who was barely out of boyhood.
He let out a long breath through his nose and kept driving.
Somewhere around St. Louis, he realized that he might be too old to safely drive all night. He’d done it plenty in his younger years, trying to save money on trips home, but his body wasn’t tolerating it as well now, a decade later. If he didn’t stretch his legs soon, he thought his feet might go numb. He stopped at a gas station as brightly lit as a satellite, refueled, and used the bathroom. He looked some combination of bereaved and hung over when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the bathroom mirrors.
Emile drank the lukewarm energy drinks one by one over the next two hours, which left him feeling slightly outside of his body. Thoughts of Sydney and Jay and his job and his life and the way it felt when he was at Jay’s feet were all swirling formlessly in his head… like the opposite of a poem, all feeling and no words—just a terrible, inexpressible abyss. At least it was an easy drive; just a smooth stretch of highway and light traffic; mostly the leviathan semi-trucks strung with their trailers, surging past him occasionally, their eighteen tires flying over the pavement with a hushed roar.
The sun had risen outside his passenger window when he finally reached the outskirts of Chicago. He actually made it to the venue in time to sleep for an hour, slouched right there in the front seat, feeling more exhausted than he could remember having ever been in his life.
After a quick change of clothes in the bathroom attached to the lobby, moving in and out as surreptitiously as possible, Emile made his way to the ballroom that was marked with a plaque with the conference name, and he went to the folding table outside the doors that was arrayed with lanyards and stapled packets of itinerary. His feet felt heavy as he made his way there. He could hardly believe he’d ever been excited for this presentation.
But when a familiar face from his program at Columbia looked up with a smile, he finally slipped into the character he’d learned to play when he had to teach even when he really, really didn’t feel like it, and he knew he appeared to be relaxed as he smiled and shook the man’s hand.
“Emile,” said the familiar face, whose nametag was unfortunately obscured by the fall of his sport coat, “I’m so glad you’re here. Should I show you to your seat?”
“Yes, thank you. But first—is there any coffee?”
The presentation was going fine. Emile was prepared, and he had his notes; if he wasn’t quite as enigmatic as he might have been if he’d napped on a plane on the way over and caught at least a half night’s sleep in the hotel, or even just had a good shower, then no one seemed to notice. Everyone looked approximately as bored or engaged as he’d observed them to be during the presentation before his.
Then, a hand rose in the audience, and instead of asking the woman to hold her question until he finished, Emile found himself saying, instead, “Yes?”
“You said that the distinction between poetry and prose used to be concerned with meter and rhyme, and that the distinction has been eroded since then by free-form poetry and so-called ‘prose poems.’ But does that mean that there’s no difference between poetry and prose, or does it mean that some of the things we’ve been calling poetry were prose all along?”
Emile blinked at her. He had a response, but he couldn’t grasp it fully. It was an idea in the ether, but without words. The people who had been inattentive seemed suddenly more interested now that Emile appeared to be stumped.
“Or, if people choose to experiment,” the woman continued, “perhaps it should be left to them to assign a category to their own work. Are we accomplishing anything useful by abolishing categories?”
“Yes,” Emile said, causing the woman asking the questions to cock her head with a curious expression, like she hadn’t expected him to have a straightforward answer. “I don’t pretend that my argument is going to dismantle the structure of English academia in one fell swoop,” he went on wryly, and was pleased to hear a ripple of laughter. “But if it did, we would gain something. Often my most successful classes—and work—happen when the materials are intersectional, but not dedicated to a single discipline. When we read poems and essays and novels and satire… when we are challenged to identify how particular purposes are better achieved by pa
rticular forms… when I read a poem,” Emile continued, though the idea that was tumbling out of him now was not one that had crystallized form him until this moment, “I’m not concerned with whether it’s earned its classification as poetry. I’m concerned with whether it creates feeling in me.”
The woman nodded thoughtfully, and didn’t fire back.
“You know,” Emile went on with an uncertain laugh, now fully off-script, “when we were discussing this recently in my 101 class of freshmen, one of my students suggested that maybe the standard for poetry is as amorphous as ‘you know it when you see it.’ Like, she pointed out, pornography.”
Laughter again, this time tinged with incredulity, and, yes, a few distinctly disapproving frowns, but Emile persevered.
“But what’s pornographic? What’s erotic? What’s romantic? I’ve seen… certain… films… that were hard to categorize.” He smiled and shrugged. “We academics, and I include myself here, are titillated by tradition, but as in so many areas of life, all perceived truths deserve cross-examination. I think I’ll end there. Thank you for your time.”
As Emile left the dais, he was confident that the applause was more enthusiastic than it had been for the presenter before him, and he allowed himself to be smug about it.
The man who’d shown him to his seat when he arrived was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs that led down from the platform, and to his relief, Emile was finally able to get a good look at his nametag. Jonathan Bender, of course. He’d been a professor at Columbia while Emile had been there for his master’s, and they’d left around the same time; Emile to Walland, and Jonathan to Emory, where he was tenure-track.
Jonathan was grinning, and he leaned toward Emile to be heard over the noise of the audience getting up from their seats to shift into the adjoining room where lunch was to be served.
“Can I convince you to sit with my colleagues and me? I’d really like to introduce you.”
Surprised, Emile nodded. Jonathan’s grin widened as he began to lead the way, staying close to Emile so that he could speak as they walked. “Great. Now, it isn’t official yet, but just so you know, one of the senior professors—a poet—is about to announce his retirement.” Jonathan winked. “How happy are you at Walland?”
The rush of completing the presentation, and the startled bafflement at being vaguely propositioned for a job at a university that was a tier above the one where he taught now, carried Emile into the late afternoon. But midway through the final speaker, he was wilting from exhaustion and the remembered weight on his shoulders from the mess he’d made back home.
Hoping he wasn’t being unbearably rude, he excused himself from the hosted dinner with the organizers and went straight from the ballroom to his hotel room at the end of the day. When he collapsed into the king-sized bed, he should have fallen asleep within three to five seconds. But instead his exhausted mind just fed him a terrible memory reel of the past thirty-six hours.
He picked up his phone and found that he had two text messages, both of them from Oliver. No missed calls. No sign of Jay at all.
Emile opened his contacts. Jay’s name was suggested near the top, just beneath Sydney and his mother. His thumb hovered over Jay’s name, weighing the wisdom of calling him—hearing his voice and hoping it eased the ache in his chest—versus waiting to speak to him in person.
He sighed and tossed his phone onto the bed, throwing his arm over his eyes. What he had to say to Jay didn’t feel like it should be said over the phone. And, in truth, he might need the next couple of days apart to get the words straight. It was like when he was finding a poem. He only had the stepping-stone words—I’m sorry, I hurt without you. He hadn’t found the right words yet… or, maybe he had, but he was still working up the nerve to say them.
On Sunday evenings, Sydney’s wife Allison always cooked an elaborate, starch-intensive meal. A pot roast, or perhaps ham and green beans, and side dishes composed of mayonnaise, potatoes, or pasta in varying combinations.
Emile loved Sundays at their house. And, for years, he’d had an open invitation to join them. But as he arrived at their door on this particular evening, he knew he wouldn’t get a warm welcome. Not from Sydney, who’d made her opinion of Emile clear, and not from Allison, to whom Sydney told everything and who would never side against her wife.
He hadn’t even been to get Godot yet, much less been home. As soon as he’d gotten into town, he’d come here, knowing somehow that if he didn’t do so immediately, he’d never muster up the courage.
Sydney was outside, sparing him the pain of knocking and having to wonder if she’d even open the door for him. She stood barefoot on the side patio in a large, shapeless T-shirt spattered with water, presumably from the enormous watering can in her right hand.
She squinted at him as he got out of his car and walked toward her.
“Hi, Sydney,” he said quietly, coming to a halt a few yards away.
She sighed and set down her watering can. “How was the conference?”
“It was fine.” He didn’t mention Jonathan or lunch with the Emory faculty. Even if things had been normal between them right now, he needed time to think since he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet.
She nodded. “That’s good. I wanted to say—I’m sorry I left without Godot the other night. I honestly just forgot why I was there in the first place.”
“I understand. It’s fine.”
“I hope I didn’t condemn him to some terrible boarding kennel.”
Emile smiled. “No. Oliver has him.”
“Oliver is watching your dog?” She was briefly surprised into a smirk, but it faded fast. “I can’t imagine him with a dog. Especially in that house of his.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t tell you,” Emile said with a tentative smile, “but Godot isn’t even the first dog to set foot in that house. Oliver adopted a dog recently. A very testy little Chihuahua he’s named Cujo.”
A laugh seemed to escape Sydney without her permission, but she didn’t fight the crack in her facade quite as hard this time. Emile wished he knew what else to say to keep the mood superficially light.
“You know,” she said, before he found more words, “when I met Allison, she was with someone else. This girl named Sam.”
Emile’s gaze jerked up to meet hers, but he didn’t say anything. He knew Sydney and Allison had begun dating as seniors in high school, but they didn’t often talk about their early years together. He only knew they were ridiculously in love, and had been since they were seventeen. But he’d suspected that some of the stories of their young adulthood were also wrapped up with a painful transition for Allison, and he’d hardly been willing to press them about it.
“We were friends at first, but it was no time at all before we both knew we wanted more. Sam had been away at college, and Allie wanted to wait for her to come home to end things between them. They’d been together for two years. Allison didn’t want to break up with a phone call, you know?”
Emile nodded. “Sure, I understand.”
“I never wanted Allison to feel like she’d been unfaithful. But it was still months before Sam would be back, and we were so smitten with each other.” She sighed, pulled off her gardening gloves and tossing them onto the bench behind her. “One night, I kissed her. And after that… everything we’d tried to hold back, we couldn’t anymore. I know Allie felt guilty as hell, doing that to Sam. And I felt guilty for being the one to kiss her first.” Sydney swallowed. “What I’m saying is that I do understand how, sometimes, feelings can be inconvenient. Sometimes, from the outside, the timing of those feelings can also be hard to understand, and easy to judge.”
Emile rubbed his eyes, and Sydney groaned.
“Oh, don’t cry, darling. I really can’t handle it when men cry. You know this.”
He shook his head mutely. He wasn’t crying, yet, but if she made him speak in this moment, he certainly would be. She muttered something else and came closer so that she could pu
t her arms around him. She smelled like clean dirt and grass clippings, but as they stood there holding each other, he smelled something else, too.
“Roast beef night, huh?”
She snorted and pulled away. “I should have known you were only here for the food. Come on in, then.”
Emile was tempted to follow, but he shook his head with a smile. “I can’t. I have to go get Godot.”
“Of course. Well, I can wrap up some leftovers and bring them by your office tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” He caught her hand quickly and squeezed it. “For that, and… for what you said.”
She nodded. “You’re welcome. But, Emile.” She paused. “Now that I know, it’s… you need to tell someone in the department. I don’t want to be lying by omission about this. I really hope that you won’t put me in that position.”
Sydney always knew what the handbook would tell them to do, Emile though wryly. “I will,” he promised her.
“You can always talk to Irina, if you don’t think Ben can be objective.” Her words echoed what she’d told him when he’d gotten the invitation to the conference at the start of the semester.
He nodded. “I know.” He glanced toward his car.
“Yes, go on and rescue Godot from that cold, lifeless place.” She picked up her gloves from the bench and waved him away with them. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Before he went to Oliver’s for Godot, Emile wanted to get something else over with. Walking up the front stairs at Ben’s felt strange; they’d always used the side entrance, the one that was close to the garage. He’d texted ahead, too, just to avoid any awkward interruptions; he no longer cared at all whether Ben saw other people, but he didn’t want to bear witness if he could avoid it, either.
Ben opened the door before he could knock, frowning in concern. “Emile. Come in. Is everything all right?”
Emile nodded as he stepped inside, his shoulders hunching reflexively at the sight of the familiar surroundings. He’d never liked this house, and any acclimation he’d once had to its heavy furniture, excess of patterned wallpaper, and curtain-shrouded windows had apparently faded entirely. He followed Ben into the sitting room, remembering how he’d had to talk him out of putting protective plastic on the formal furniture. The memory made him smile despite himself. How had he not realized sooner what a terrible idea Ben had been, to borrow Oliver’s phrase?
