A Stitch of Time

by Lauren Marks

  I didn’t know how to talk to Jonah about this dichotomy, and didn’t do much to comfort him, except to offer him my shoulder.

  He was still so adaptable. Yes, he hadn’t satisfied his ambition, but this wasn’t such a dire situation either. Flash in the pan, flash in the pan—it had been such a weird phrase to use because Jonah was only twenty-five years old. This temporary dissatisfaction would probably be the motivating factor in the next steps he would make in his life, and I had every confidence he could undertake those changes.

  Jonah dug his head deeply into my collarbone. Maybe this is just a system of failure, he murmured under his breath. Maybe failure is the point.

  13

  On June 19, I would turn twenty-eight, and my friends insisted on throwing me a dinner party while I was still in New York.

  The chef for the night was another former roommate of mine, Stephen, a brilliant theater director. BJ, Laura, and Rachel arrived for dinner at Stephen’s house early, with Jonah following soon after. The group was small. Grace had already left for Princeton, and though I had hoped to see Krass in New York, he had already embarked on his yearly return to Paris.

  Stephen’s directorial career had been incredibly diverse, and he had actually directed everyone in the room, except for his boyfriend. He had directed Rachel and me in The Bacchae, so many years ago. But tonight, he was the chef. And he looked like a natural in the kitchen. Long ago, he had lived with BJ, Laura, and me in that dumpy old apartment we shared in Brooklyn, so his current place near the river was a glamorous upgrade. His journalist boyfriend was pouring cocktails, and Stephen was busy putting out some appetizers.

  A little amuse bouche for everybody, he said.

  Can you believe this metamorphosis, Lauren? Rachel asked me. She pointed over to Stephen, who was making leeks and mushrooms in a Romano sauce to be followed by seared duck in a hazelnut pilaf. This magnificent creation from the guy who used to be obsessed with the crappiest of all snack foods, she said. Do you remember how he used to hide those ninety-nine-cent cookies and chips in his sock drawer? And how BJ always ferreted them out . . .

  The memory for this came on cue. But it was a faraway image. In the foreground, I mainly saw the gourmet cook stuffing endives and truffles expertly.

  Though Rachel had seen me since the second surgery, BJ, Laura, and Stephen had not, and were eager to find out how it had differed from the first. Why hadn’t I spent more time in the hospital? Had the plates in my head set off the metal detectors at the airport?

  The fact that my aneurysm was being held together with cotton and superglue was a point of great fascination and discussion between Laura and BJ. I made a joke about skimping on surgical materials by plundering the arts and crafts corner of a kindergarten.

  Stephen put his knife down in exasperation. I can’t believe the way you guys are talking about this! he said. Especially you, Lauren. This thing that almost killed you. Could still kill you, God forbid. If this sort of thing happened to me, I promise I wouldn’t discuss it. He poured himself a cocktail, visibly shaken. This conversation topic would be off-limits. Forever, he concluded.

  Oh, come on. You can’t really be that surprised that Lauren likes talking about this stuff, Laura said. She was always drawn to the medical and macabre.

  Was I? I asked her.

  For sure. Laura laughed. If someone sustained a wound in our old house, you were the first in line to change their gauze. You’d give me these unsolicited manicures, and you’d push my cuticles so far down you’d make my fingers bleed.

  So true. Stephen nodded, smiling. When I got back from my trip to Ibiza with a whole-body sunburn, you picked at it more than I did.

  Everyone began to bombard me with details about my past self. Laura reminded me that I left red lipstick traces on every piece of paper in the house, because when it came to blotting my lipstick, I did so regardless of whether it was an important document or not. BJ said that I would sing Ani DiFranco or Italian opera in the shower in the morning while everyone else was trying to sleep. Stephen mentioned the way I would only speak in Spanish when we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant up the road, mainly to impress the waiters. It was agreed that I could be a good time when I was drinking, but occasionally a bad drunk. And much to my discomfort, everyone emphasized that my sexual escapades in that house were never quiet affairs.

  My guts twisted in chagrined contrition. I sound like such an asshole, I said.

  Hell, no! Laura retorted. You were a weird weirdo, but like all of us. We loved you for it.

  And Rachel used this as an opportunity to burst into song, serenading me. There’s no people like show people, like no people I know. . . .

  •  •  •

  Dessert was served in a quieter moment. When everyone retreated to the corners of the living room, nursing their coffee or port, BJ snuggled up next to me.

  So, he said. What is it like to be back?

  It’s strange, I admitted.

  Mmmhmm. Returning to New York after time away is really challenging because the place never slows down for anyone, he said. When I was in the Peace Corps, I was away for almost two full years, but as soon as I got back everyone acted like I had never left. They waited for me to resume everything as it was before. And they had this image of the kind of person I was, as if they had access to my inner character. People can be so damn sanctimonious. They didn’t leave any room for what might have changed in me. I know that I’m not exempt from doing it, but I remember how much it used to upset me.

  Exactly, I said.

  Yeah, there are pros and cons to having old friends like this. BJ sighed. It’s delightful when they remind you of these amazing things you were part of and managed to forget. But it’s hell when they remember things you don’t want to be associated with anymore. They can really kill you with embarrassment.

  It was an eloquent description of my inner tug-of-war. I thanked BJ by kissing his scruffy cheek.

  In this period away from New York, I had found a lot of companionship in books, as I had as a child. But there were limitations to that beyond my language disorder. There were certain things that Laura or BJ or Rachel could provide for me that Helen Keller or Casanova could not—like shared memories, for one. To recall a memory is very often a collaborative event, and you remember different things with different people. My community in New York was playing out a kind of script we had devised together in the years we had known each other. This sort of resurrection had annoyed me when Rachel had tried to engage like this back in LA, but now I was seeing a new value in it. My friends had been maintaining reliquaries of our experiences, and their recollections were actually making some of these traits resurface in me. It wasn’t all bad. Maybe my post-stroke changes weren’t as dramatic as I had initially imagined, but even if my stroke had reduced me to my basic elements, I was beginning to settle into a form again. And I was surrounded by this incredibly welcoming troupe, who all seemed to be giving me full license to be exactly what I had been and whatever it was that I was becoming now. Nothing could be more generous.

  We are conditional beings. No matter how much we want to believe that we are a “certain type of person,” we are hugely shaped by our context—what we do and with whom we do it. We are mimics of one another, and we imprint on one another in the deepest of ways. These people at the dinner party had been molding me, as I had been molding them, for years.

  If Krass had been in attendance that evening, he would have reminded me that learning was more subtle, more passionate, and more basic than anyone gave it credit for. It was an art. It boiled down to: What do you see? And how does it make you feel?

  In Paris, I had been tearing up my heels in this cute pair of white pumps I had bought for the trip. But Krass became squeamish when he saw me pull off some Band-Aids after a day of walking around with him. He admonished me for being so impractical. I fired back quickly, telling him I had seen Parisian women wear the same type of shoe, and there were similar models in shop w
indows there. He conceded that was true, but these were the type of women who only wore them down the elevator and into the car.

  Lauren, you are trying to live two lives inside one pair of shoes, Krass said to me. I respect that. I do. But it is time to come to terms.

  Krass wasn’t able to be in the room with us, but I felt his spirit then. And although in Paris a year ago he had been talking about an entirely different set of circumstances, his advice had never seemed so relevant. Two lives indeed. It was time to come to terms, whatever that might mean.

  14

  A few days later, I was getting ready for Jake and Nick’s wedding. They were mutual friends of Jonah and mine who had actually gotten married in Canada, but were hosting their reception in a Brooklyn backyard that afternoon. The issue was that I had received an invitation and Jonah had not.

  I was applying lipstick in front of Jonah’s bathroom mirror, while he sat on the bed, sulking.

  I’m sure you can come, I said.

  It’s not like Jake and Nick don’t know how to get ahold of me, he muttered. I’m just surprised. I always thought we got along pretty well.

  Just come as my date, then, I said.

  I’m not trying to be nitpicky here. I just don’t want to be a wedding crasher, either. He paused. There must be a reason they didn’t want me there.

  Something stopped me. A lurking memory began its synaptic crackling, and though the connection was initially unformed, it started to resurrect when I fused words with those thoughts.

  Weren’t you involved with a girl from their theater company for a while?

  Jonah’s eyes widened. That’s a really weird thing to bring up right now, he said. That can’t possibly be the reason, could it? She and I aren’t even in contact anymore.

  •  •  •

  It had happened in the year before the rupture. During a stretch of time in which I had thought Jonah and I were at our strongest, I would later discover he was not at all monogamous with me. It was BJ who told me first. The girl was in our social circle, and though BJ didn’t think relationships had to be exclusive (many of his weren’t), he believed in accountability. The fact that Jonah had not openly disclosed the information to me yet was completely unacceptable in his eyes. BJ said, with no small amount of snark, that if Jonah and I were sowing a certain type of garden together, I should also know where he had been planting his parsnip.

  After speaking to BJ, I stormed off and immediately confronted Jonah. He didn’t deny anything. As always, he was honest to a fault. But this relationship with this woman had become more important than any of his former trysts. He was conflicted.

  Is it possible to be in love with two women at the same time? he asked me.

  My fury surprised me, and this was one of the few incidents when I raised my voice at him. Had he no sense of tact? Or decency? If he was going to fuck around, I should be the first to know because information like this should never surprise me, and I should never become the recipient of other people’s pity. Even though there was an arch sense of sophistication in my verbal attacks on Jonah, it couldn’t actually disguise my throbbing sense of betrayal. My mind could allow concepts like confusion or flexibility. But a love shared? That was exactly my limit—something my heart couldn’t bear. I broke up with him that afternoon.

  But in the course of weeks, or months, this woman somehow disappeared, and I eventually reappeared. My relationship with Jonah did resume. Did he beg my forgiveness and abandon her? Did she leave him and did he return to me after? I still don’t remember. It had been one of the darkest periods of our relationship, and it was exactly these moments that Jonah never wanted to revisit with me.

  •  •  •

  Still, Jonah didn’t see how this old affair should have any bearing on the wedding party that afternoon.

  We are all adults, Jonah said. It’s all in the past and I don’t have any problems with the dynamic among the three of us. He was still fixated on the general principle of his exclusion, and he was complaining that social interactions certainly didn’t need to be managed in this way. But Jonah’s behavior changed when he shifted his attention to me. When I became his focus, I saw actual concern appearing in his eyes and his voice sanded down all of its rough edges. I guess this whole issue only matters if this matters to you, he said. Does this dynamic bother you?

  It was an interesting question. There were certain things about the wedding I felt apprehensive about. Would I be able to keep pace with everyone else in conversation? In what ways would my aneurysm or aphasia come up in interactions? And how long was I expected to socialize? The presence of Jonah’s former lover milling through this backyard party had not yet registered on my scale of anxiety at all.

  I don’t think it bothers me, I told Jonah. Does that change your mind about coming?

  You go and have fun, he said. I just think it’s best if I stay here.

  When I arrived solo at the party, my self-consciousness soon proved unwarranted. BJ, Laura, and Rachel were all at the reception, and being in the company of actors, I hardly had to do anything at all in conversation. I’d forgotten how easy it was for performers to amuse themselves with an inexhaustible talent to self-narrate. When I would ask a simple question at the party, a person would often give a long-winded response, which took the attention off of me entirely. They wanted to talk about their new show at Joe’s Pub or their company’s touring schedule for the next few months. Some people brought up my medical experiences discreetly, but a few had never even heard about it.

  Near the dessert table, I finally glimpsed Jonah’s ex-lover, whom the very thought of had once brought so much suffering to The Girl I Used to Be. The other woman was in a yellow dress, drinking rosé in a plastic cup, and tucking a curl of her bob behind her ear. Barefoot in the grass, she looked happy and relaxed. But when she met my gaze, her panicked eyes darted away, her face going through a series of micro-expressions, crunching into dozens of wrinkles and creases, and she was careful to not glance in my direction again.

  Surprisingly, seeing her didn’t bring up old feelings of jealousy, or flare new ones. If anything, I wished I hadn’t brought out that clear discomfort in her. I briefly noted this sighting in my journal, but only mentioned that I got a glass of water after it. Whatever concerns The Girl I Used to Be had about her or this part of my life were no longer my concerns. It was as simple as that.

  When I replay this memory to myself now, though, I experience something more fractal, inflected with much more Theory of Mind. It’s probably because I’m writing about it. Because now, I am not just thinking about this woman, or even what she might have been thinking about me. I’m doing even more mental division. I am also wondering what was she thinking that I was thinking about her.

  What a curious little moment that was. It was left unanalyzed when it happened, but is enriched and changed by examining it now. It is the same anytime we talk or write about a memory—it can launch a thousand ships of thought. It’s just a question of whether or not you want to board any of those vessels, and when is it a useful journey. You have to be selective about this sort of thing. I know too well that when a brain doesn’t have the right answer, it will fill in a blank anyway; it will simply offer a substitute, and sometimes the possibilities may be fantastic and rich and even insightful, but all too often, it will insert discomfort in places it never needs to be.

  15

  Jonah’s eyes flicked open as I picked up the extra pair of keys on his kitchen table. The midday sun was coming through his curtains, and I had been up for hours.

  You headed out? His voice was tender and soft as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. I didn’t think you’d be going out so often.

  Neither did I, I said. But I am finding ways to manage it, and there are still lots of things to deal with here before I return to California.

  I’m impressed by the way you’ve been attempting to do so many things on your own, Jonah said. And you’ve been succeeding so often, I’ve been
thinking maybe you don’t need to go back to LA at all. . . .

  Impressed was a wonderfully satisfying word to hear from Jonah, but the second half of his sentiment didn’t make any sense.

  What do you mean? I asked him. I have to go back—I have my angiogram next month.

  Oh yeah, he said. Okay, well, after that, then. You can just come back here. You obviously wouldn’t have to pay rent.

  It’s not just rent. I mean, what am I supposed to do here?

  You could do what you do at your parents’ house, he said. Keep recovering. Keep writing. You just do it in my house instead.

  My affection for Jonah had not waned on this trip; if anything it had increased. But expectations were much more tempered in California. In my parents’ home, I helped out with cooking and cleaning and did some assorted errands. Other than that, though, I was able to devote the rest of my time to language. I could read, write, and speak all on my own timetable. There was no urgency for anything because my parents didn’t need much from me. But it was clear that Jonah absolutely did.