frnd1: did you stop loving libby in 1976?
drbas: your mother?
frnd1: yes, my mother
drbas: i felt betrayed in 1976. later i did not feel betrayed
frnd1: but did you stop loving her?
drbas: why is my stopping loving her of interest to you?
frnd1: i’m trying to understand the decisions you made
drbas: which decisions?
frnd1: did you stop loving libby?
drbas: we’re still married
frnd1: you’re catholic. you wouldn’t get divorced
drbas: i’m referring to real marriage. i suspect that’s what you didn’t have with erin
frnd1: you wouldn’t do what libby wanted. you wouldn’t move away
drbas: we have a proud southern name. should i abandon it to go live close to a mall?
frnd1: yes! if that’s what she wanted
drbas: i had to build my practice for you
frnd1: were you angry at me for not returning home after college? for not becoming a doctor?
drbas: why are you using the past tense?
frnd1: I’m getting to that. were you angry?
drbas: you’re not returning home after college?
frnd1: no, i’m not. i finished college many years ago. i live in california
drbas: i’m visiting you
frnd1: i wish you could have visited me. i don’t know what we would have done. you would like all the seafood
drbas: seafood must be fresh and cooked to the appropriate temperature
frnd1: are you happy with the way i’ve turned out?
drbas: turned out?
frnd1: the way i’ve turned out = the man i’ve become
drbas: your grandfather is proud of you
frnd1: are *you* proud of me?
drbas: pride is a deadly sin
frnd1: you had moments when you were proud of me?
drbas: i ironed your red coat for your first communion. i dressed you. i tested you on the questions. i drove you to the church. i felt proud when you took the host in your mouth. but you took it into your mouth alone, and that’s what i wanted you to know. we are all strangers
frnd1: that’s a lesson i learned thoroughly
drbas: mission accomplished
frnd1: think of yourself in 1995
drbas: it’s the last year i have many words for
frnd1: what were your wishes for me? did you want me to come home?
drbas: did you want to come home?
frnd1: no. i didn’t come home
drbas: you live in california. where do i live?
frnd1: i disapproved of you. the traditionalism. the stuffiness. the coldness. i never could see your reasons
drbas: maybe there are no reasons. maybe that is just me
frnd1: you were depressed
drbas: why are you using the past tense?
frnd1: in 1995, you were depressed
drbas: it’s possible. i’m no longer depressed
frnd1: but do you think there’s something wrong with us?
drbas: who?
frnd1: you and me
drbas: there’s nothing wrong with us
It’s here that my heart gives out. His words are exactly what I want to hear, and that is the final tinny note. Despite the intimations and revelations and intuition and surprises, despite the eerie prescience and the Walter Scott quotes, despite the moments when the tumblers of the conversation have locked surely into place, they’re not his words. They’re mine.
Seeming is not, in this case, being.
Oh, Dr. Bassett. Never quite alive during life or dead during death.
• • •
ON MY WAY HOME, my workbag takes on an almost magical heaviness, tugging on my shoulder like a reluctant child. The afternoon is sunny, cool, and wistful. The world is quiet, muted—almost submerged, as if the oceans have finally risen to claim us and yet, in claiming us, changed nothing. Joggers bob slowly along Dolores Street. The occasional car horn wells languorously, a distant ship leaving home. The palm branches float up and down like sea grass. The people around me—my well-heeled and confident neighbors—sip cardboard buckets full of coffee, savor gelato. I take a swipe at the air in front me; I half expect my feet to lift from the ground.
At home, I remove my shoes, peel off my socks, and climb into bed, moving right to the middle, where I sleep best. I take my weighted eye-beanbag and lay it over my eyes. It smells of green tea and vanilla and is as relaxing as the package promised. I run my hands over the seersucker coverlet. I’m just a person suspended in a series of rented rooms, in a city barely seven miles by seven miles. Far from the place I was born. Far from my father’s plans for me. I’m a temporary person. But, of course, so was he.
25
THE DAY BEFORE THE contest, the door buzzer to my apartment rings. It’s such a rare sound I need a second to recognize it. I check my watch. It’s 7:45 in the morning. How did Rachel—it must be Rachel—get down to the city so early?
But it isn’t Rachel. It’s Rick, in a two-piece suit and tie.
“I’ve never seen you in your lawyer garb,” I say.
He grins and then suppresses it, seeming uncertain about his exact approach here.
“Is everything all right?” I ask.
“Can we talk inside?”
“Of course.” I usher him in. “Coffee?”
“Nice place.” He walks into the living room, pokes the newspaper on the coffee table. He surveys the windows and then—with studied nonchalance—sticks his head in the bedroom.
“I can give you a proper tour.”
“That’s quite a bed you’ve got in there.”
“Family heirloom.”
“That’s not like a special harness thingie?”
I sip my coffee. This is our last day of adjustments, and as much as I like Rick—would not even mind spitballing the S-and-M possibilities of my ancestral bed—I have to get to work.
“Is it Rachel?” I ask.
Rick runs a hand through his thinning hair. “We wanted to tell you in person. She’s moved out of the house and into the Pure Encounters . . . place. I think they call it a lodge? The Pure Encounters lodge?”
“She’s doing a retreat?”
“It looks kind of permanent. I mean, she told us she wasn’t planning on coming back.”
“What happened to Lexie?”
“Had to get back to college.”
“Did she give a reason?” I mean Rachel.
“No. And she’s not answering her phone. We were hoping you could help us out on that.”
I doubt there’s much I can do. “She wanted to go to Arkansas with me, but I couldn’t take her.”
“Couldn’t?” he asks.
“The tickets were really expensive.” It suddenly seems a bizarrely hollow excuse.
“Well, that could be it. She wants to think you guys have something real going on. I mean, I know it’s real. Stevie and I always say how sweet you two are together. But Rachel really wants to be involved, you know? Like a big part of your life.”
It’s not asking too much, I think. Just more than I can give.
I stop that thought. Who knows what capaciousness might be found in my heart? It’s true there doesn’t feel like much, has never felt like much. It’s been a lifelong hindrance. But just because there doesn’t seem to be much room doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Or maybe I’ve got that backwards: if there could seem to be more room maybe real room will follow close behind. I’ve probably had too little respect for that leap between who we are and what we want to be, our be and our seem. My father,
of course, cast notable discredit on such aspirations. His ideal—his seem—was so baffling. And even worse, when he successfully made the leap, he discovered that the life he always wanted wasn’t really what he wanted.
Or not. Maybe that’s not how it went at all. He wasn’t a failed argument. He was man. He was depressed.
If Jenn were down there would I go get her? No. Erin? I’d feel conflicted about it, but still, no. So why Rachel? Is it because she’s younger and I feel more responsible? Maybe. Is it my desire to maximize personal capital, my attraction to her ratio of hip to waist? Who knows? I’m no more free of being an animal, of being a social animal, than anyone else. And so what? The most beautiful fields grow within fences. The limits of our life—day and night, birth and death, this partner and not that—are our life.
I’m starting to sound like Neill Sr. Worse, I’m starting to sound like a reverted Catholic. But I don’t think Rachel is my anointed one, my only chance at love. There is, however, no escaping one truth: I am my only chance at love. And what has Rachel ever asked of me, but me?
• • •
THE PURE ENCOUNTERS COMPOUND is in a converted auto body shop in the SOMA. It’s enormous and well lit, the brick walls draped with yards and yards of sheer fluttering fabric. I don’t know if this is an artistic choice or just an effect of the central heat, but I get the skeevy feeling that I’ve entered the folds of some well-used communal organ.
I’m warmly welcomed by two women thin as hammered metal. I wonder if there’s a particular word I need to use—not a password, but just some word that makes me seem simpatico, plausible. All I can think of is their powered-up words for human anatomy: cock, clit, etc.
“I’m here to see Rachel,” I say, and they point me to the back where apparently I’m free to go and find her. They even suggest I stay for breakfast.
Rachel is in the kitchen, dressed in a dark brown pajama suit, making a frittata the size of a hubcap. Her sous-chef is Raj.
“Don’t turn around,” he says to her. “And don’t talk to him.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Rachel says. She does not turn around.
“I’m here to attend a VAMing class,” I say. Raj checks to see if I’m serious, which I am.
“There’s a schedule up front,” Rachel says.
“Will you be my intimate?”
She gestures for Raj to take over the frittata. Then she whirls around. I’m hoping for a smile—forgiveness—but I can tell by the speed she’s moving that I’m not welcome. And then there’s her face, red and clenched. Closed. She is absolutely not open to my idea. She does not want to be my intimate. In fact, it looks like she’s going to bounce me—she takes me by the arm as if I’m a shoplifter, pressing me toward the front door. I’m waiting for the kubotan blow to the kidneys. Actually, I’m hoping for it.
“Where do you get off coming here?” she says out on the sidewalk. It’s commute time, and Brannan Street booms with cars and delivery trucks. She has to raise her voice to be heard.
“I’m sorry I didn’t take you to Arkansas.”
“It wasn’t Arkansas.”
“Why are you using the past tense?” I ask. It’s the question Dr. Bassett asked me. It means I’m dead. We’re dead.
“I’m doing something right now for myself. I know you don’t understand it. You don’t want to understand it.”
“I’m here to understand it.”
“You’re here to rescue me.”
I open my hands, innocent.
“You’re actually here for a VAMing course.”
“I did want to take you somewhere. Just for the morning.”
“Some sort of intervention? Rick and Stevie are waiting to give me some hippie lecture?”
“It was going to be a surprise, but it’s a dairy farm. I got you a session with a butter churn.”
She blinks, quiet. A UPS van stops next to us. The smell of diesel clouds around us. The driver—happy and whistling—maneuvers a stack of boxes on a dolly into Pure Encounters. Hello, ladies.
“That was nice of you,” she says. “You remembered my Amish story.”
“Of course I remembered it. You told it to me on the roof of my building. On our first date.”
“It wasn’t our first date.”
“Our second date,” I say, though it might have been our third. “The dairy farm is organic.”
She sighs. “I’m not supposed to leave. Was it really expensive?”
“I’m sure I can just call her and cancel,” I say.
“Can we get back before three? That’s my shift at the front desk.”
• • •
KRAUSE DAIRY HAS NO SIGN, just a mailbox and a sagging house in front of a barn in need of paint. There’s the sweet smell of cow manure in the air, and some distant lowing. The farmer, Ms. Krause, is waiting for us as I pull the Subaru up into her gravel drive. “That’s the barn,” she says. “That’s the house. There’s the cows.” This isn’t a place that does tours.
“Churn’s in the barn,” she says.
Rachel looks worried. “Will they be in there?” She means the cows.
Ms. Krause shakes her head, seeming genuinely put out. I don’t know if she’s giving us rural brusqueness—though she’s probably a Smith grad—or if she disapproves of us as a couple. She knows I’m here on a romantic mission, but perhaps she didn’t imagine Rachel, who looks very young in her Zen pjs, as the love object.
The barn is picturesque on the outside, all business on the interior. Fluorescent lights and a concrete floor. But in the corner there sits a hard wooden chair and an old-fashioned heavy stoneware butter churn, grey with a blue stripe.
“The simple life,” Rachel says.
I expect Ms. Krause to groan, but she just pours a pail of yellowish, bubbly milk into the churn. “Take as long as you like,” she says, stomping her boots as she leaves. She probably has no opinion one way or the other about us. She’s just in a hurry.
Rachel sits in the chair. She tests her weight; it wobbles a bit. She wraps her fingers around the wooden dasher, which is darkened and smooth from use. No telling whose use. Rachel turns it as if spinning a top, then she presses down. The milk sloshes thinly.
“This is easy,” she says.
“I think it gets harder.”
She pumps the dasher a few times. “You just want to watch me hold this pole.”
It’s true—though not in the way she means. I couldn’t sex this moment if I wanted to. I think of what I could give her to keep her here for the day—hot-air balloons, massages, fancy dinners. It’s typical Neill thinking. This whole butter churn thing is typical Neill thinking. The grand romantic gestures were never my problem. It’s all the days in between. And that’s the flaw. I should have thought of something more original—something in San Francisco, some reminder not that I’m a beau for the ages (which I’m not), but that life holds promise not only in radical transformations. We could go to Dolores Park and soak up the noncommittal Pacific sun, drink a glass of delicious wine, and I could say, that’s made from grapes. Grapes! And the sun and the wine, though not long for the day, are the nectar of life, the quotidian nectar of our normal hours.
I get down on my knees. She releases the dasher; it settles slowly. She sees I’m about to make some announcement, and she’s nervous about it. I am, too. I don’t know what I’m going to say. I think, no grand gestures. No mesmerism. No promises that are really distractions.
I put both hands on her legs. It feels a little awkward, as if we don’t know each other well. “Are we going to go VAMing later?” I ask.
She reaches down to touch my arm, and the awkwardness dissipates. This is the difference between Rachel and Erin—at least the old Erin. Even if my ex-wife had wanted to get close she would have
blocked our way. Rachel wants to smooth the passage.
“I’m not doing the VAM Method right now,” she says. “I’m not really ready for it.”
I nod, trying to look understanding and not grin at how happy I am to hear that. It’s a happiness to be questioned, maybe a selfish happiness.
“Should I move into the compound?” I ask.
She smiles. “You mean the lodge?”
I squeeze her leg. Whatever they’re calling it.
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
“In a cosmic manner,” I say.
“More like a financial manner.”
I sit down on the cold floor of the barn. Take in the sour smell. Am I really going to move into the PE compound? What is that but a grand gesture?
“I could give it a try.”
“You wouldn’t like it there. It’s a cult.”
She’s not going to make this easy, but that’s okay. A challenge seems right.
“I don’t know if I can give you what you need,” I say. “But I’ll support you looking for it.”
It’s an interesting new idea for myself—not being the lost one, but being the stable support. Her spiritual wingman. Maybe it’s what I need, a little bourgeois responsibility, a little Dr. Bassett.
She sloshes the milk around in the churn. “This is actually kind of boring.”
“Let me help you with that.” I motion for her to get up and sit back down on my lap. The warmth of her body like this, close to me—never mind the sandalwood in the pjs. It’s just where I want her.
She turns and gives me a kiss. Not a passionate one or even a forgiving one—more of a test kiss. “You scared me down there on your knees,” she says. “I thought you were going to confess something.”
No. Nothing to confess. Just trying to resist offering any life that isn’t our real life. Then I think—make your real life worth offering. Be your seem. Seem your be.
I pull her tight. “How would you feel about moving to the city?” I ask. “In a normal fashion.”
“You have a normal place in mind?”
“How about my apartment,” I say. “I think it qualifies.”
26
A Working Theory of Love Page 30
