The Sun in Your Eyes

by Deborah Shapiro

I hardly knew Lee then, but I already wanted to protect her. I was at the beginning of something, something I didn’t want to disappear.

  THERE WAS A girl we knew in college named Kirsten. She and Lee could both be impetuous and headlong. Kirsten was ultimately more successful at it, I think because she was more shallow. She treated our women’s studies class to a graphic video of her girlfriend in bed and then got married not two years out of school to a guy she met while knitting in Prospect Park. We understood sexuality could be fluid. But we barely recognized her at the wedding without her dark eye makeup and bulky boots. What threw us was the realization that that had merely been a look in the same way that the letterpress place cards, the tea lights twinkling in the trees, the greenery in mason jars, her reworked vintage bridal gown, was all a look. Her ardor for performance seemed to exceed rather than express a passion for her groom. As though she were getting married largely for the pictures and a license to throw dinner parties. Lee and I scoffed. But it also made us insecure about who we were and what we should want.

  “I envy her tolerance for being embarrassed,” I said to Lee. We were sitting on a stone bench on the grounds of an old estate, drinking champagne, not too far from the guests on the patio but out of earshot. “No, but I do. She doesn’t care. She’s not cowed by self-consciousness.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is shameless,” said Lee.

  “Yeah, but we say that like it’s a bad thing. Where does shame ever get us?”

  “Kirsten’s a nutbag, okay? She throws a nice party though.”

  Late into that night, music continued to drift out of the open French doors of a ballroom to the sloping lawn where a group of revelers kept going. In the early but still dark hour when dew starts to settle over everything, Lee and Kirsten and I found ourselves alone down by a boathouse. In my mind’s eye we are sleepily draped across various surfaces, women in a pre-Raphaelite painting.

  “I’m knitting him a pair of socks,” said Kirsten, apropos of nothing but the digressive course of the conversation we’d been having. We nodded in an indication of listening.

  “No, like, I’m knitting my husband a fucking pair of fucking socks. I have the yarn and the needles and everything all packed up in my bag for our fucking honeymoon.”

  We murmured some indistinct acknowledgments.

  “God. You two. You guys are like a fucking planet together. You make me feel like a little ant or something. Do you know I almost didn’t invite either of you? But I wanted to be generous. I wanted you to share this with me. But you know what? You don’t really share anything with anyone but each other. So, like, fuck that!” She laughed and took another drag on the joint between her fingers. I looked to Lee, but she wouldn’t return my gaze. She just stared up at the rafters, as though what Kirsten said was, for once, well-reasoned and true, and it disturbed her.

  Within a year, Kirsten left her husband, moved across the country, and became an apprentice to a marketing guru. She was forecasting trends on daytime talk shows, wearing wrap dresses and stilettos, discussing happiness as it related to various colors. She and the guru renovated a San Francisco townhouse. They spoke of their love, for their home and for each other, in the pages of a shelter magazine. It wasn’t Kirsten’s fault that the guru soon began an affair with his new assistant, but hadn’t I turned on the TV one morning and heard her say, “You are your choices”? It was back to New York, where she lived with an advertising executive–turned–rooftop farmer, incorporated antlers into the design of several downtown hotels, and acquired a new wardrobe of structurally challenging clothes you may have at first suspected weren’t particularly flattering before concluding that your eye simply wasn’t avant-garde enough to appreciate them. Kirsten moved through life in a series of clean breaks. Perhaps, in some parallel reality, a landfill of her past messes grew more and more massive. But unless this world collided with that one, she’d never contend with the garbage heap of her existence. I could try to heave myself up onto a ledge of superiority, tell myself that Kirsten didn’t really know herself. But was knowing yourself worth more than all the life she had lived? How well did I know myself anyway?

  About a year ago, I happened to be downtown for a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the afternoon and I ran into her. She was leaving a showroom and looked like a celebrity dressed to avoid the paparazzi: sunglasses, flats, leather jacket, of-the-moment bag.

  “Viv fucking Feld!” She insisted we go get a coffee right then. Sometimes I felt I alone had maintained a life that left room for unscheduled coffees and it was like being the last house standing on an otherwise razed block. Where had everybody gone? But here was Kirsten, and though I knew her impromptu availability wasn’t the same as mine, I couldn’t say no. I hadn’t seen her since Andy and I got married.

  We covered the preliminaries: she told me about jetting to Peru recently for inspiration. I said there was good Peruvian food in Queens. She told me how funny I was.

  “Are you still with—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten his name—the guy you were with at our wedding?” I asked.

  “Russell. No. God, no! That seems so long ago. Men.” She sighed, as though that were the definitive word on the subject. But then she continued. “You and Andy are very lucky. Some of us just aren’t built for marriage. We always want something more.”

  “Right. I think there’s a song about that.”

  “Speaking of which, how’s Lee?”

  “I don’t really know. We’ve kind of lost touch. I think she’s in L.A.”

  “Oh, yeah? What is she doing?”

  “I’m not really sure. I think she was trying to figure that out.”

  “Well, I hope she does. You only get one life. I just hope she’s happy.”

  I wanted to ask Kirsten if she was happy, but happiness (and what it had to with various colors) was merely a topic to discuss in front of a studio audience. And I suspected she was only capable of caring about Lee’s well-being because she believed she had finally eclipsed her. I had never spent much time with Kirsten alone. I hadn’t realized how much Lee’s presence had kept her in check. Kirsten had acquired a triumphant yet breezy authority that, like a gas, filled the space where Lee would have been.

  What Kirsten had meant as a slight—how fortunate Andy and I were to be so easily satisfied with each other—resonated strongly. Listening to her talk, I did feel lucky to be with Andy. Still, I remained awed by Kirsten’s restless momentum. Lee’s too. But if Kirsten, out of nowhere, had asked me to drop everything and hit the road with her, I would have said no without even blinking.

  What would you say to those detractors or critics who’ve said your work can be repetitive? That perhaps—and I’m not saying I feel this way—that too many of your songs sound the same?

  Well, I guess I would say it’s all the same song. They’re right. In the wrong way.

  That’s quite a koan.

  Yeah, I should get it printed up, make some fortune cookies.

  That would be an interesting sideline for you.

  Put it on some T-shirts. A real merchandising opportunity.

  Does that bother you? That maybe it’s becoming more about the marketing than the music?

  It’s always been about the marketing. As long as there’s been a market. You’re setting me up for these, I swear. [Laughter from the audience]

  Okay. Different subject. Is it true you believe in flying saucers?

  Flying saucers?

  I’ve read that you’ve been to a flying saucer convention.

  Oh. Yes. My wife took me there.

  It’s your wife, then, who believes in aliens?

  Oh, I think the aliens believe in her. [More laughter from the audience]

  Do you get a lot of ideas from your wife?

  I get a lot of ideas from a lot of places. I’m easily influenced. I’m very, uh, I’m very permeable. [Laughter, cheers] But, yes, Linda. She’s right there. She can tell you. [Applause and shuffling, as a microphone is brought to Lin
da]

  Hi, Jesse.

  Hi, Linda.

  Well, I think I understand those aliens now! Linda West, everybody. [Applause from the audience]

  Aren’t you gonna ask me how we met?

  Sure. How did you two meet?

  At a party. In the kitchen. At her boyfriend’s house.

  Whoa there, this is national television. You’re scandalizing us, Jesse.

  You and the kitchen, man.

  This interview used to be hard to find, bonus material at the end of a Jesse Parrish import box set. Now you could download it in seconds. You could be anywhere. You could be driving up the Hutchinson River Parkway, through Westchester, in 2010, listening to Jesse in 1970. How transporting it was. I needed it in order to feel involved in this world and justified in leaving my own. And to not feel quite so guilty for being excited about it. And I was glad Lee put this on because it gave us a focus, a distraction from the fact that here we were in a car, back in each other’s lives.

  So now what?

  “I don’t know if I remember it or I just think I do,” said Lee. “But he had such a nice voice, the way he talked.”

  “He did.”

  I had heard snippets of interviews with him here and there, but I had never listened at length. I tended to think wit had to be surgical, swift, and a bit cruel, but Jesse’s was lingering, it had warmth.

  I have to say, you don’t seem particularly interested in playing a game with journalists, the way some of your, well, peers [chuckle] do. There are some notoriously prickly recording artists out there, and one or two of them have even deigned to come on this show. But you’re very open and I don’t feel like you’re putting me on.

  Why would I put you on? [Laughter again] It’s like this. If I said something in a song, I needed a song to say it. So I get how it’s a drag to be asked to explain yourself beyond the song. But that doesn’t mean I can’t sit here and have a perfectly fine conversation with you about extraterrestrials.

  Your fans certainly feel they understand your songs. They’re extremely devoted to you.

  Yes. Yeah.

  You seem to inspire a great deal of fantasy, of fantasizing.

  They’re very imaginative, the fans. Very creative. They do like to imprint me into their fantasies.

  I want to read an excerpt of this—it’s from a fan letter that was sent to our show. This woman—I say woman though I don’t know how old she is—this woman writes: “In the dream, Jesse is waiting in line behind me at the airport and the line isn’t moving so he leans over my shoulder and suggests we get out of there. He takes my hand and all of a sudden there’s a moving sidewalk that brings us all the way to this beautiful old palace with loads of rooms and I get lost. It’s also a little like the White House. I pass a lot of people wearing suits and ID badges. They are looking at me because I am running down this marble hallway and I can’t find Jesse anywhere. Then he pulls me through a secret door and he says he has disguises for us, the disguises that we’re going to need. He asks me to help him take off his clothes.” I’ll stop there. It gets considerably more detailed. Does it ever shock you?

  Uh, it doesn’t shock me. I think that’s what, uh, performance does. What it can do, when it’s good. It creates a space for the imagination. I love that I can do that for people. It can get a little heavy, though. Sometimes. Sure.

  Does it ever leave you feeling, well, I imagine it might leave you feeling rather blank?

  Uh, depleted, sometimes. I don’t know about blank. You know, that’s interesting about the disguises. I’d like to know what they were!

  Jesse Parrish, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank you again for coming on the show this evening. It’s been, well, what would you say it’s been?

  It’s been a pleasure.

  That one moment when Linda came on—Hi, Jesse. Hi, Linda. You could hear how coupled up they were at that time, inside a world of two, looking out. I said as much to Lee.

  “I know. I kind of resent it. Their twoness. It reminds me I’m essentially back where I was at twenty-five, only now I’m ten years older.”

  “I doubt that’s true.”

  “You’re right. At twenty-five I had higher hopes. Basically the only thing I remember about the last guy I went out with was that he told me he liked to fantasize about Patricia Arquette.”

  “Lost Highway Patricia Arquette ? Or Medium Patricia Arquette?”

  “Both, I think.”

  The more recent events of Lee’s love life, or the photographic record of what looked like events, hadn’t escaped me during the time that we’d been out of touch. Lee’s level of celebrity didn’t make her a target of tabloid gossip, but from time to time she would appear in the coverage of a party or a premiere, be snapped by a street photographer. I asked her if it was true that she’d been “linked” again to Jack Caprico, the actor who had managed to remain relevant and frequently cast twenty years after his breakout role as a Gen-Xer who read Beat poetry during his downtime on the McJob. She had been seeing him before, and brought him to my wedding, but I’d heard they’d broken up. Rather, I’d read they’d broken up.

  “Yes, we were linked,” she said. “Like breakfast sausage.”

  “Sounds hot.”

  “It was always pretty hot with him. That was never the problem.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We’re friends now. Friends who don’t talk much or see each other. But you know. I got kind of depressed when we were together this last time, and he said it reminded him of his mother and his sister and he couldn’t deal.”

  I expected her to change the subject, turn it to me, but she continued, as though a vein had been opened. Depression may not have been the clinical term for it, but she’d been low. She got herself to work, but the rest of the time she was too low to do little more than watch TV or lie in bed thinking about how much effort it would take to do anything but lie in bed. Low in a way that felt like a habit or an addiction; her lowness made her want more unstructured and unaccountable time in which to be low. Social engagements—any kind of engagement—encroached on that time and were therefore a source of resentment. The lowness was like an addiction, too, in that she was compelled to hide it. She would keep the remote in her hand, ready to turn off the TV as soon as she heard Jack’s key in the front door. She would quickly get out of bed. “What are you doing?” he would ask. “Oh, just tidying up.” Along the depression spectrum, there must be a point at which one is no longer able to be furtive, when you’re too depressed to care about appearances. She hadn’t reached that point. But how many times can you center a pile of books on a night table? Stand over your coffee table looking slightly lost? Was paranoia part of it too? Jack could, if it occurred to him, determine whether the TV was warm and just-watched. He could detect the recent impression of her body on the quilt and sheets, the indent in the pillow. Even the TV and the bed—her greatest comforts—were against her. She reached what she thought was a nadir at the supermarket when she found herself crying in the aisle to a soft-rock standard. She began to worry that she was disappearing, that she’d never really been there at all. (Me too! I half wanted to interject. Can we run off and read Emily Dickinson poems to each other for the rest of our days?) She woke once from a dream in which she could fly, and Jack said flying in dreams was good. Freedom, power. She said she was inside a big house, and she was flying from room to room. Well, more like floating. Floating speedily. So nobody would see her. Like a ghost, Jack said. How obvious. How sad. But what she didn’t tell him, what she couldn’t tell him, is that she had loved her ghostly advantages. Moving around undetected, the superiority of it, being slightly above everyone.

  “These kind of dreams, they were pretty much the only color in my life. Anyway, it was Linda who finally made me see a therapist.”

  “What does your therapist think of all this? What we’re doing.”

  “I haven’t talked to her about it. Which is something I should talk to her about. She’s great, really. It
’s, um, therapeutic to talk to her. But sometimes things will happen and I’ll think, Viv’s the person I want to talk to about that.”

  She was often still the one I wanted to talk to, not simply out of habit, but because if she were listening, if she knew about it, whatever it was would be more interesting, more significant. I wavered between believing she felt the same way—how could she not?—and sensing that I was deceiving myself. If she’d really wanted or needed to talk to me, she would have. But it couldn’t be that simple, I thought. Our relationship wasn’t that simple. No, she must have wanted to talk to me but couldn’t bring herself to do so precisely because it wasn’t that simple and she trusted me to understand that. Unless our relationship really was that simple for her? She had left me with a mystery I tried to solve with circuitous thinking. It was a way to keep her present. It pleased me no end to hear her confirm now that I hadn’t merely invented the complexity between us and that I wasn’t the only one still holding on to it.

  “I know.”

  “I know I’m the one who stopped returning your phone calls. It became hard for me to talk to you. But it was also hard not to talk to you.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You do?”

  Say it. Tell her.

  “Lee, I’m pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  “What—oh. Oh my god. That’s—that’s wonderful!” she said, her pause giving the lie to her words, as though I had been there a minute ago and was now lost to a world of architecturally significant strollers and bamboo-fiber baby carriers. Lee had once told me that she worried she was never as excited as she was supposed to be when friends told her this news. To mask insensitivity, she said, and perhaps that lonely, quiet panic that the world is leaving you and your aging reproductive system behind, you learn to ask certain questions. How far along are you?! How are you feeling?! Legitimate questions, sincere ones even, but what did it mean if she asked them of me, now? “It’s wonderful. I mean, it’s good, right?”