Flight of Brothers

by Jonathan Baumbach

  I didn’t know what he was getting at. “To sex?” I asked.

  “Yes. And where else?”

  His questions were making me more uncomfortable than usual. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Is it the sex act you’re afraid of?” he asked.

  “I didn’t have a condom. I was unprepared.”

  “Forget the condom,” he said. “Were you afraid you’d disappoint her?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to be left to myself.”

  “You got your wish,” he said. “When she left, feeling rejected, were you happier?”

  I tried to remember my state of mind when Eva went back to her own place. “More a sense of relief,” I said.

  “You were glad to have your place again to yourself?” he asked.

  “In a way. Yes, I suppose I was.”

  The dream I never got to report to Klotzman was about a police lineup of four couches, one of them being the eyesore I had discarded. Someone like me was in the position of being the identifier, though it was not clear what I was being asked to identify.

  The fat policeman asked me, “Is it contestant number one, contestant number two, contestant number three, contestant number four or contestant…. Where is contestant number five?” No one seemed to know. “Well, get someone up there.” A small man, who had been sitting around, took the fifth position. “Well?”

  “What quality are we looking for?” I asked, unsure on what basis to choose.

  “If you don’t know”, another policeman said, “who does?”

  I didn’t want to make the wrong choice and get the wrong couch in trouble. “It could be any of them.”

  “As if your life depended on it, pick one.”

  This was a hard job. They all had certain qualities. “One or four,” I said. And then I woke.

  I took a walk by myself the next day. And the day after. I managed to avoid Eva or was it that she was avoiding me? Do I have to say it? I missed her on the walks and gave anxious thought to knocking on her door, though I held off under the excuse that she didn’t want to see me. Her perfume, unless I imagined it, left a strong presence on my couch.

  I consoled myself by thinking that I was my own person again, free of foreign ties. It was an ambivalent consolation. I wrote a few awkward sentences on the new novel I had started then reread the pages of the old one I had given up on. It wasn’t as bad as I remembered and I considered setting aside the new one and going back to the old. I tried to remember what I hadn’t liked about it and couldn’t. In any event, it had improved itself in my absence as if some mysterious better self had been rewriting in the dark.

  I was adding to the text of the old novel when interrupted by a knock on the door. I responded eagerly and with a sense of nervous relief.

  It wasn’t Eva. It was a man, who looked familiar and who I assumed was Ron. He had a grim look on his face and I wondered if he was going to hit me. “Do you know where Eva is?” he asked me.

  We were about the same height and weight. I didn’t invite him in, though I considered it. “Perhaps she’s at work,” I said.

  “No,” he said in a tight voice. “She’s almost always home by now.”

  I tried to think of a reason for her to have been held up but nothing came to mind. “Well, I haven’t seen her.”

  He didn’t go away. “Is she by any chance in your place?” he asked.

  “I can assure you she’s not,” I said, mildly outraged at the charge.

  “In that case do you mind if I take a look?” he said. I was standing in his way and I sensed he considered knocking me aside.

  I considered stepping aside. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word,” I said.

  “I don’t believe in violence,” he said out of the blue. I could imagine us punching each other. He reminded me of my brother, who I never thought about and hadn’t talked to in years.

  I wasn’t afraid of him. “Violence always has something to say for itself,” I said.

  He took a step back. “Look,” he said, “if she’s not there, it won’t hurt to let me have a quick look.”

  I didn’t like having my word questioned. If she was in my apartment, would I have told him? I imagined such a scenario.

  During this standoff, each of us apparently conjecturing our next move, Eva appeared at her apartment door. Noticing Ron, she called to him. He went over to her and after a few muttered words I couldn’t hear, they went into her place together.

  I was unacknowledged on all fronts and went back into my empty apartment feeling misused. Or if not misused, deprived. In any event, my word had been confirmed without my having to back down.

  The confrontation had worn me out and I went to sleep or at least lay down to go to sleep. I don’t know how long it was when a knocking at the door jounced me from bed. This time it was in fact Eva. “I’m sorry about Ron’s behavior,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Why didn’t he come and apologize himself.?”

  “I think he was embarrassed. Ron doesn’t like to find himself in the wrong. We hadn’t an appointment for today. He came without an invitation.”

  “And was angry not to find you home.”

  “Something like that,” she said. “I asked him what he would have done if he found me in your apartment.”

  We were standing in the doorway and though I wasn’t sure what I wanted, I stepped aside to let her by.

  She stood in the middle of my living room, undecided as to where to take herself.

  “I had been taking a nap when you knocked,” I said.

  She seemed to be thinking about her alternatives then said, “Later.” And let herself out.

  We seemed to be back on the old footing. Or the illusion of the old footing. I lay down again for my nap and had trouble sleeping, kept hearing noises at the door. Twice I went to the door and found no one there.

  So I knocked at Eva’s door and invited myself in, though I got no resistance only encouragement. This time I would be the aggressor.

  “Let’s go into the bedroom,” I said. I took her by the hand.

  “Give me a few minutes to straighten up,” she said.

  I didn’t hesitate. “Let’s just go in,” I said “You don’t need to straighten up for me. You can straighten up afterward.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me,” she said.

  So we had sex—I won’t call it making love—for the first time on her bed, on my terms.

  Or was it really on my terms or was that the illusion she was willing to grant me in order to get what she wanted. I was internalizing Klotzman’s position here. The sex itself was almost impersonal, a determined physical act with invisible traces of emotionality. It was hard to avoid feeling some kind of affection during the act, though I strove to stay level-headed. I had a cup of tea before leaving. She didn’t ask me to stay the night for which I was grateful.

  In my own bed again, I felt whatever I had sacrificed, I was still my own person.

  Where does it go from here? I wasn’t sure whether I wanted it to go anywhere. I had done what I had set out to do—sleep with Eva on my terms—and I saw no need to repeat the gesture. At least not right away, not as a going concern, which is what I told Klotzman.

  “That’s your business,” he said. “It’s not my part to tell you what to do.”

  “That didn’t always seem the case,” I said.

  “What I’ve tried to do is help you make decisions, clarify the air. I’ve never tried to impose what I thought you ought to do, certainly not from a moral standpoint.”

  “Sometimes it seemed that way,” I said.

  “You were misinterpreting me,” he said. “Maybe I wasn’t making myself understood.”

  I acknowledged the possibility. “I don’t know what to do next with respect to Eva.”

  “Why do you have to do anything? What do you want to see happen?”

  “I want everything to be as it was,” I said. “Is that unrealistic?�
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  “I would think there’s bound to be some change in your relationship,” he said. “Some change is unavoidable.”

  What he said made sense but I resisted believing it. If Ron was still in the picture, and I had reason to believe he was, I had no obligation to Eva. A rush of guilt and shame passed through me. I wanted no obligations yet everything I did or didn’t do created new ones.

  It was an unforgivable mistake to dispose of my old sofa. Inanimate or not, its betrayal haunted me. I wondered if there was some place I could find it again, ask its forgiveness, and restore it to its rightful place.

  On the way out, I stopped at the desk and chatted up Carol, who was doing her nails. I asked her if she would consider going to the movies with me sometime. Without lifting her eyes, she said she would consider it sometime. I waited for more but that’s all there was.

  When I got home I wondered what my next step vis-à-vis Eva would be. Then I thought maybe I didn’t have to make a decision right away. The sex, the first I had had with another in a long time, a very long time, didn’t ask to repeat itself.

  That night I had another lineup dream. This time I was the one positioned to make the choice and the candidates were women or mostly women. In the first slot was my former wife, looking as she did when she left me. In the second slot was Eva—all this was clear. In the third slot was a familiar-looking woman I couldn’t quite identify. In the fourth slot was Carol, clearly the youngest and prettiest. In the fifth slot was my old couch, looking the worse for its absence from my room. I was told I had five minutes to decide, which didn’t seem quite enough but I intended to use it all. It was not an easy decision but in the end I decided on the battered couch. Someone behind me said, “Wise choice,” and I woke.

  If I listened very carefully with my ear against the wall, I could generally tell if there was someone else in the apartment with Eva.

  As if nothing had changed, Eva came by the next morning and asked me if I was up for a walk. I wasn’t going to turn her down, though it was snowing lightly out.

  “Everything’s so pretty,” Eva said.

  It just looked like snow to me, though I didn’t argue.

  And then later: “Does it bother you, Mel, that I still see Ron sometimes?”

  It was one of those questions that however you answer you are in the wrong. “I never asked you to stop seeing Ron.”

  “If you want me to, I’ll think about it,” she said.

  I wasn’t happy with the turn of the conversation so didn’t say anything for awhile.

  “Well,” she said, “do you want me to stop seeing him?”

  “I think you should make your decisions apart from anything I might want or not want,” I said, hoping not to give offense.

  “In that case,” she said, “I’ll see him as I do now from time to time.”

  We finished the walk in a mutually sour mood. She had offered me a gift which I had not only declined, I refused to honor as a gift. It was a gift I would have been happier never to have been offered. When we parted, she muttered thank you or something like that and went into her apartment. Our relationship such as it was, was moving in reverse.

  While Ron was in her life, I had, to my way of seeing, no obligation to her.

  I didn’t see her for another week and my refusal of her offer to stop seeing Ron seemed to have offended her. Finally I knocked on her door and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk. “Not now,” she said. She had never turned down a walk opportunity before.

  In protecting myself from involvement, had I lost a friend? I was always lonely, but now I was lonelier than I had been.

  With women—it was so with my former wife too—it was always all or nothing.

  I have a brother I barely mentioned before, a half brother (different mothers) who I don’t know very well and I hadn’t seen in a long time. People used to say we resembled each other, but if I saw him on the street today I doubt that I would recognize him. It’s not likely I would pass him on the street because as far as I know he lives in another state or used to. We were never close, but the potentiality, or so I thought) was always there. The reason I bring him up is that in dreams, in which I live so much of my life, he dovetailed with Eva’s Ron and the dream imagined him as my long lost brother and rival. I’ve been told otherwise but my impression was that my father preferred him. The connection with Ron has stuck with me, though I’ve tried to shake it.

  I confess, without having a good reason, I instinctively dislike Ron.

  I brought the subject of my brother to Klotzman’s door, tired of talking about my peregrinations with Eva. For awhile, Klotzman just listened, punctuated by the occasional nod.

  “He is a kind of rival where Eva is concerned,” Klotzman offered. “Perhaps that triggered the association.”

  “I don’t consider him a rival,” I said. “His relationship to Eva relieves me of what might seem an obligation.”

  “That’s a position you are pleased to take,” Klotzman said.

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “I believe you believe it,” he said.

  His superior tone was annoying me. “What are you saying, if anything?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, Mel. If I did, I apologize. What I was saying if anything was that there are beliefs we hold as set pieces.”

  “Are you saying that deep in my unconscious, I have doubts that I’ve shut off. I don’t think so in this case. The cliché response would be to be jealous of Ron.”

  “Cliché responses are sometimes accurate. You admit being jealous of your brother.”

  “That may be a set piece I don’t fully believe in.”

  “But you still hold—am I right—That you’re grateful to this Ron person for being in your way?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but not quite in the way you put it. I’m pleased not to have any obligation to Eva and Ron’s presence assures that.”

  “And what would this obligation you’re pleased to avoid be otherwise?” he asked in his self-satisfied way, knowing I had no answer.

  “We’ve been through this,” I said. “You know the answer.”

  He crossed his arms. “Mel, do you know the answer? I think we’re talking about an irrational feeling.”

  “As you’ve told me,” I said, “a feeling counts for what it is, rational or not.”

  “Why do I feel we’re in a competition all the time?” he said. “I don’t mean to belittle your feeling whatever its source. I just think you ought to challenge your beliefs more. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  The session ended in a kind of armed truce and I left, which was rare, feeling better than when I came in.

  On the way out, Carol said to me, “When are we doing this movie you talked about?”

  I thought she had forgotten my offer. “How about tonight?” I said.

  “Oh, I can’t tonight,” she said. “I have a previous appointment.”

  I thought of naming another date, but that seemed folly. “Some other time,” I said.

  She glanced up at me with what seemed a wry smile. “Take care,” she said.

  I mumbled the same and left.

  When I got home Ron was leaving the building and we exchanged curt nods. It seemed to me in the extended period I hadn’t seen Eva, Ron was around somewhat more often, though I may have been imagining it.

  I waited about a half hour then knocked at Eva’s door. She seemed ruffled when she answered the door and before I could say anything said, “I’m not going for a walk with you.” Still she didn’t close the door in my face and I asked if this was a permanent situation.

  My question seemed to take her aback. “Look, Mel,” she said, “give me twenty minutes to get dressed and we’ll go.”

  “Will you knock at my door when you’re ready?” I asked.

  “In twenty minutes,” she said.

  It was more like forty minutes but she showed up and we went out together like old times. We chatted freely for awhile on this and that, the states of
our health, the weather, but nothing controversial. It had warmed up and she had on an attractive outfit. After awhile I commented that she was looking particularly good.

  She said thank you as if surprised at the compliment, compliments not being my style.

  Without warning it started to rain and we took shelter under a drug store awning, waiting for the rain, which was briefly torrential, to calm itself.

  “Not a good day for our walk,” I said.

  “I don’t mind getting a little wet,” she said. “It makes the walk into an adventure.”

  It didn’t seem like much of an adventure to me, but I didn’t say that. She seemed in an unusually good mood and I didn’t want to quash it or I did and I didn’t.

  The rain glistened on her face.

  We waited a long time for the rain to lighten and when it did, we headed back.

  I was uncomfortable being wet, but I bore it without complaint. I was caught in the throes of trying to figure out what I wanted.

  When we got to her door, she said she had a nice time and would I like to come in for a cup of tea. I said I had to get out of my wet clothes first.

  “Of course,” she said.

  When I got into my apartment, I took a hot shower. I was lying down on my new couch when I wondered whether Eva expected me to come back after I changed my clothes. The question was, did I want to go back. As usual, I didn’t and I did. As usual, I went back and forth, nagging myself about what to do.

  After an hour or so of going back and forth, I decided to go over to Eva’s place. I knocked and waited for her. I thought to say, “It took a while for me to dry off” She never answered—was it that Ron had come—and I knocked again before returning to my own place. Now that I had decided to visit, it was disappointing not to be allowed in.

  I worked myself up into a state of outrage. Outrage leads to irrational acts. I returned to Eva’s door and knocked heavily on it. This time she did answer. “I can’t talk now,” she said, “I have a guest.”

  “You invited me in for a cup of tea,” I sputtered.

  “That was awhile ago,” she said. “Besides you rejected my offer.”