What She Saw...

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  Is it any wonder she began to resent the very domestic arrangement that, only months before, had filled her with a kind of silly pride?

  Where once keeping house had felt like playing house, now Phoebe grew exhausted and listless at the very idea of a supermarket expedition—began to dread the completion of mindless chores like mopping as if she were awaiting surgery on her own heart. And where once she’d dreamed of having a boyfriend who cooked for her, she now recalled eating Lucky Charms for dinner with misty eyes. It wasn’t long before she began to blame Neil for having made her fat—as a ploy, she was readily convinced, to keep her away from other men who might otherwise have been attracted to her were it not for this tumescent tummy, these turgid thighs. She was mad at Neil for letting himself go, too. For the first six months of their relationship he’d donned crisp shirts and smart suits. Now whole weekends went by during which he wore the same sagging sweatpants and holey Brandeis T-shirt.

  Even more offensive, soon after they moved in together, he stopped holding in his farts. At first he’d say, “I’m sorry.” Then he stopped saying anything at all. Then he did it willfully. To think that his gaseous emissions had once been a source of amusement, and even hilarity!

  Phoebe had stopped laughing.

  Seemingly overnight, the smallest things of Neil Schmertz began to vex her beyond reason. There was the way he dispensed with old coffee grinds (directly into the sink) and felt the need to justify his existence (“I’m the kind of guy who works behind the scenes”) and walked with his ass sticking out (why couldn’t he slouch like everyone else?) and always left the toilet seat up (and sometimes forgot to flush). And he cleared his throat before he made an important phone call. Which is to say, before he made almost any phone call. And he used the word perspire instead of sweat (Phoebe found it pretentious). And he left her dirty clothes in a pile by the door, as if they needed to be taken out to the trash. And he was always so cleanly shaved—why couldn’t he let his beard grow out for even one day?

  And he was always nicking himself shaving and glueing little bits of toilet paper to his face to stop the bleeding. And he took even more time in the bathroom than she did (sometimes, just to be annoying, she’d pretend to have a menstrual emergency two minutes after he’d gone in there). And he repeated stories, and hoarded aspirin. And he let his savings fester in the bank when he could have been investing them in high-yield mutual funds. He couldn’t get his finances in order, either. In March he’d filed for an extension on his tax return. In June he still hadn’t done anything about it. The mole on his back with the three brittle whiskers growing out of it was another matter. Why oh why wouldn’t he let her pluck them?

  They were minor aggravations—sure.

  They began to seem representative of larger deficiencies in Neil Schmertz’s character.

  A real man, Phoebe thought to herself, wouldn’t buy such expensive shampoo and conditioner; he’d wash his hair with whatever he found in the shower. And he’d lose his temper once in a while (just hearing about how Neil let this guy at work, Ernie, “dick” him over filled Phoebe with frustration). And he wouldn’t feel the need to talk to his mother every day on the phone (whatever Neil’s mother wanted, she got; if she wanted to see Neil tomorrow, he’d get on a plane that night). And he’d wear blue jeans once in a while (Neil only wore suit pants or sweats). And the suit pants he did wear were unfashionably pleated. To think that Phoebe had once considered him a natty dresser!

  Increasingly, she was embarrassed to be seen in his company.

  And he “made love” to her so carefully, so tactfully, so goddamn generously—always waited until she’d had her orgasm before he had his. Considered himself the reigning King of Cunnilingus. Displayed unrivaled responsibility when it came to birth control. Just as he was only too convinced that Phoebe had been exploited in the past, and only too intent on being the one who really loved her, the one who wasn’t just using her. It never occurred to him that she might have had an opportunistic streak herself. He treated her as if she were this tragic slut, this defenseless child. As if she needed protecting. And maybe, in some ways, she did.

  She also needed conquering.

  She fantasized about being chained to a fence. She wanted to lose herself in someone else’s power trip. In the best of moods, she liked to imagine that she needed nothing—nothing but a funny joke and a sweet cocktail and a slow hand sliding up the back of her swan neck, if you know what I mean. But in the worst of moods, which was most of the time—that was the problem—she needed a lot more than that. She needed to be worshipped. She needed to be pampered.

  She needed to know that someone would be there if she fell apart.

  But it began to seem as if Neil might even have preferred it if she did fall apart. Indeed, on those one or two or three occasions when Phoebe had taken steps in that direction—found herself lying on the bathroom floor digging holes in her chest with the sharp ends of her fingernails for no discernible reason, her breath shortening, her pulse quickening, her mind reeling with the possibilities—he’d seemed to love her even more. Or maybe it was just that in those lamentable moments he was the most convinced she’d never leave him. He’d say, “Looboo, I’m here. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m never going anywhere.” He’d say those things as if he were trying to convince himself of their veracity. Then he’d hold her even tighter than he usually held her. He’d hold her so tight she could hardly breathe.

  There came a time when she couldn’t—when the safe haven she and Neil had established began to feel as constraining as the Brooklyn House of Detention.

  Because as needy as Phoebe was, Neil was even needier. He wore that on his face—on his prematurely striated forehead and on his perpetually downturned mouth. And thanks to his own shattered family, he was one of those people for whom the prospect of staying together was the most romantic prospect of all. For Phoebe, the same vision of the future had less to do with romanticism than it did with resignation. Because in the back of her mind, she was still waiting to have her “big adventure”; still thinking she owed it to herself; still thinking she “hadn’t really lived”; still hating herself for liking the idea of adventure better than she liked actual adventure—and for plotting her escape before she’d ever been captured.

  It was the image of Emily standing on the back porch, her pale face lit up the color of Wedgwood china, a frenzy of moths circling overhead, that continued to haunt her. And then the tick-tick-tick of the gas lighting beneath a pot of stewed chicken; the krik-krik-krik of suitcase wheels on wood. “I could really use something to eat . . . Delayed for three hours in London . . . Wow, everything looks the same . . . How are you, Feebs?” Emily’s eyes curled with empathy. Or was it pity? And “Maybe at Christmastime,” and “Akim and I this,” and “Akim and I that.” Emily hadn’t been home in twelve months. Emily had spent her junior year abroad in Beirut. Emily had done everything first, and better. Phoebe couldn’t get over that feeling—that in some fundamental way she’d failed to realize her youth, the lacunae of which seemed ever more notable than the narratives it did contain.

  Nor could she fault Neil for the fact that somewhere in the course of life, ambition had trumped Eros. Which is to say that one got to a certain age when one’s professional life became the measure of one’s self-worth. Which is to say that love was no longer the solution. Now you had to have a title, a tag line, and three phone lines ringing at the same time. And your business card had to reflect that. And you had to know the right people and appear at the right parties. At least, this was the message Phoebe had internalized. Such that her career frustrations— how would she ever make a name for herself playing turn-of-the-century show tunes? How could she ever forgive herself for having a boring desk job at a nonprofit research foundation catering to Ugandan fertilizer experts?—became inseparable from her frustrations with Neil Schmertz himself, as if they were two sides of a coin whose value had plummeted during a time of runaway inflation.

 
; To make things worse, Neil had been hired away by an up-and-coming cable station specializing in pop-culture nostalgia, as a vice president for New Media Development, whatever that meant—Phoebe wasn’t entirely sure. But that he had a title at all made her jealous. It made her think Neil got all the breaks. But at whose expense? Phoebe punished him for his success by refusing to partake in it—by moping around their apartment in her terrycloth bathrobe looking miserable and refusing to talk about it. Though if her depression began as a performance, it soon grew into an actuality. Or maybe it never stopped being a performance. Maybe Phoebe’s particular brand of depression, like Phoebe’s particular brand of sexual fulfillment, required an audience of at least one. (And what closed-door crying jag has ever not benefited from the solicitous knock of a willing listener?)

  It was the sounds that got to her the most. The sounds of “domestic bliss.” How the toilet went “prrrushhooooo.” And the coffee grinder went “ZZZZiinnggg.” And the freezer door went “kuplunk.” And the television went “kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh” as Neil rolled it across the parquet floor of their mix-’n’-match living room so he could watch the evening news while he stir-fried vegetables in an enormous discolored wok. “Neily’s making Wooboo her favewit dinner!” he’d call out over the frizzle of snow peas, the twaddle of talking heads.

  “Oh, yay,” Phoebe would mumble disconsolately.

  Not that she didn’t like stir-fry. But it wasn’t enough—to be cooked for. To be cared for. To be Neil Schmertz’s favorite Wooboo. She’d be sitting on their pilled futon couch drinking a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio, thinking about exactly that. And about the men she used to know, the other men she had yet to meet. It wasn’t like that in the beginning. In the beginning it was Phoebe and Neil against the world. In the beginning Neil referred to himself in the first person. It was only later that he began to refer to himself as Neily. It was around the same time that he began to speak primarily in baby talk. He’d say, “Neily doesn’t think his favewit bunny wabby wanth to be hith bestest fwend anymore.”

  To which Phoebe would reply, “Neily’s favorite bunny wabby needs a little time to think.”

  Because she thought time would shed light on why those sounds (“kuplunk,” “prrrushhooooo,” “ZZZZiinnggg”) depressed her as much as they did.

  But time only made her sadder—then madder. Though picking fights with Neil Schmertz was never an easy trick, since he never actually fought back. He’d just sit there looking like a circus clown—Phoebe kept expecting a red circle to appear spontaneously on the tip of his nose—and uttering guilt-inducing inanities like “I’ve tried to make you a really nice home.”

  “But you’re already trying to control me!” she’d bark back.

  “How has Neily tried to control you?”

  “You always want to go to bed early!”

  “Has Neily ever told you that you had to go to bed at the same time as him?”

  “What am I supposed to do—go out by myself?”

  “You could go meet friends. Neily never told you not to see your friends.”

  “What friends? I don’t have any friends! I lost them all when I moved in with Neily!”

  So the conversations would go. They’d go on for hours, and they’d end with dire predictions on Phoebe’s part: “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be”; “Maybe we’re just hanging on for the sake of hanging on”; “Maybe we’re only together because we’re too scared to be apart.”

  “But I love you!”

  That Neil could come up with a line like that in the face of such abuse—to Phoebe, it seemed so terribly weak. She would have had more respect for him if he’d told her to go fuck herself.

  “I have to go to sleep,” she’d scathe.

  Then she’d roll over, and so would Neil. They’d be lying there like two strangers who just happened to be sharing the same bed. It was in those moments that Phoebe would begin to plot her escape. But in the morning she always felt different. The energy to enact change would have dissipated with the previous night’s dreams, while her desire for the physical and material comfort Neil was so adept at providing would be all the more overwhelming. It wouldn’t help matters that he’d be standing over her with a steaming breakfast tray. The way the butter rode the hills and dales of her English muffin—in those moments, it would be enough.

  Except by nightfall, she’d become enraged all over again. The way he never wanted to go out! The way he always tried to control her! By nightfall, she’d pick the same fights all over again. Sex would have been the only thing to put a stop to their miseries. But they no longer had sex. Neil had stopped trying. Phoebe had stopped caring. It wasn’t that she lacked an audience. It was that the applause now fell on deaf ears.

  Oh, but it wasn’t merely that Neil failed to arouse her; it was that Phoebe, being the Overweight, Embittered, Glorified Secretary she imagined herself to be, failed to arouse herself. (For Phoebe, sex had always, primarily been an auto-erotic act.)

  Though it was also true that “true love,” in so many ways, bored her—the way it always led down the same path, to the same ritualized lassitude, prompted by the same infantilizing gestures, the same debilitating vows, the same saccharine sentiments, the same pop-song platitudes, the same prosaic piffle. The same “I’d be lost without you.” And “I’d be devastated if you left me.” And “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” And “You’re my best friend.” And “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” And “I want to be the father of your children.” And “I’ve never been closer to anyone.” And “You’re the only girl for me.” And “I can’t imagine life without you.” And “I’ll always protect you.” And “I’ll always take care of you.” And “I can’t breathe without you.” And “I want to die in my sleep holding you in my arms when we’re both ninety-nine.”

  And “I thought about what I’d do if you were paralyzed from the neck down . . .” And “I’d be there for you—I really would.” And “I’ll never ever go.” And “Don’t ever let me go.” And “Let’s be good to each other.” And “I’m the luckiest man in New York.” And “You’re my forever girl.” And “I’ll love you forever.” And “I know we just met . . .” And “If you don’t want me in your life, I’ll walk out that door right now and you’ll never see me again—is that what you want?” And “Well, what are you saying?” And “Whatever.” And “Someday maybe you’ll appreciate someone’s efforts to be genuinely close to you. Until then, this is good-bye.” (She only wished Neil would say so much, but he never did, he never could.)

  In the meantime, another year went by. Phoebe couldn’t precisely say how. Her few remaining friends had stopped asking. At a certain point Phoebe stopped asking herself. It was easier that way—easier staying put than seeking an apartment she could afford in the current, runaway real estate market. Just as the thought of divvying up her and Neil’s record collection was almost too much to bear. (Who would get the James Brown box set they’d purchased in tandem?) And what if he really couldn’t live without her? What if he went into a decline and ended up on the street—or worse, floating facedown in the East River? How would she ever forgive herself for that?

  And to leave someone for no one—for Phoebe, that was the worst part. All the protecting had made her feel vulnerable. All the babying had made her feel babyish. All the special breakfast trays and “dinner-poos” had made her doubt that she was capable of feeding herself.

  Besides, Phoebe sometimes thought to herself, it wasn’t a bad life that she led.

  It got even better after she put together a band.

  From a pecuniary standpoint, it seemed like the sensible thing to do, what with the craze for cruiseship-style fiddling having peaked with the Titanic. And given Phoebe’s lifelong love of power ballads, the artistic compromise seemed less than egregious. Never mind the psychic compromise. Here, potentially, was a way for Phoebe both to honor Roberta and Leonard’s thinly veiled wish for a daughter who fiddled and to fly in the face of the high culture
–low culture dichotomy by which they defined themselves. It was Phoebe on the violin, Holly Flake on the drums, Kevin McFeeley on the guitar, and a girl named Julie (someone’s second cousin) on the keyboard. They took turns on vocals. They got along surprisingly well, the origins of their respective grievances having grown fuzzy over time. They called themselves Schmaltz. They practiced two nights a week in a studio on West Twenty-sixth. Their sound was fusion—one part turn-of-the-century show tunes, two parts pop rock. Their songs concerned the naïveté of romanticism and the futility of angst. They dreamt of recording contracts and guest appearances on late-night talk shows. In the meantime, they had jobs.

  Holly worked in the marketing division of a cosmetics conglomerate; Kevin shelved books at the Strand; Julie waited tables at a snooty French restaurant in Tribeca. And as of that June, Phoebe found herself gainfully employed as a part-time receptionist at an animal hospital catering to the pets of the superrich. It wasn’t much of a job. It paid even less than the Third World Knowledge Initiative did. And it was all the way uptown. But it had a social-service bent that allowed her to imagine that she was contributing to society, not merely consuming its resources. And it was part-time. And Neil paid most of the rent. And thanks to his fancy new job, he was always on the road, traveling to and from L.A.

  Except he always came back—that was the problem. Phoebe would walk in on her perfectly nice-looking boyfriend pissing in the bathroom, and the sight of him standing over the pot doing what was, after all, only natural, would disgust her beyond reason. Such that she took to fantasizing that he’d die a painless death, if not in his sleep, then perhaps at sea. She would have felt terrible and all. She could even see herself breaking down mid-eulogy, having just transported the grieving crowd to life-embracing laughter as she recalled Neil’s near-religious faith in the value of clean countertops. (In retrospect, his various idiosyncrasies would come to seem charming.) At present, however, his untimely death would have solved a multitude of problems. How important she’d feel to be at the center of such a senseless death! How little choice she’d have but to forge a new life for herself without him!