The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

  But he had made sense. He had made more sense than he knew, but not in the way he intended. I didn’t respond for a moment. I didn’t know where it had come from, but a perverse part of me wanted to hear more, wanted to hear the full dimensions of his judgment. I wanted to hear why he had to blow up my world in order to make his better. Men did this sometimes. It wasn’t the first time I had seen something like this.

  “Can’t you say that more or less of any city in the world?” I asked softly. “That it’s simply an outcome of people living close to each other?”

  He sipped his beer. He looked sensational sipping his beer. The muscles of his forearm twisted and popped in interesting ways.

  “Maybe. Maybe you can. But that seems to be what people aspire to in New York. Everyone is climbing, and I’m not sure where people are climbing to be or to get to. Even the richest people in New York have less land than my grandfather had in Vermont, and he was a poor man by financial standards. They live in apartments suspended above the ground, and they have doormen and nannies and life coaches and accountants. And you have to worry where Johnny and Jill go to school—it has to be the right school—and you go to the Hamptons in the summer, or up to Nantucket, and it all seems like a big conveyor belt. It doesn’t feel real, at least not to me, so when you talk about going to New York, I don’t know what that means. Not really.”

  “I see,” I said, taking it in. “Not a very inspiring picture you paint. And I notice you’ve switched from the general to the specific. It’s no longer a theory, is it? It seems to be more about me now.”

  “I knew I’d hurt your feelings, and I didn’t mean to. It’s the last thing I wanted to do. I should have kept my trap shut.”

  Yes, I thought, you should have kept your trap shut.

  “I need a little while to absorb this,” I said, sitting back slowly and trying to even out my breathing. “Kind of out of the blue.”

  “You’re angry,” he said. “I’ve hurt you. Come on, I’m sorry.”

  “What I don’t get is why you wanted to hurt me.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Sure you did, Jack. I’m planning to go to New York in a few weeks to make a new start, and you let it drop that I am entering a prison of my own making. Why that random topic in the conversational spinning wheel? Is that supposed to make me feel good somehow?”

  “I’m sorry, Heather. I am. Sometimes I think ideas are just things to play with. Little thought experiments. Sorry. I’m stupid about it.”

  “You’re not stupid, Jack. If you were, I wouldn’t take it so personally. But you picked this topic on what was otherwise a truly wonderful day. I don’t get it. It’s passive-aggressive to the hilt. Even when we slept on the haystack, you made a comment about how we can fix that. Fix me. That’s condescending.”

  “I didn’t mean it to be.”

  “That’s the definition of passive-aggressive, isn’t it? I’m trying to imagine another reason you might have had for bringing it up, and I can’t think of anything. You’ve wanted to say something about my job choice for a while. Now you have. But you came at it sideways, didn’t you? Not my opinion, oh, heaven forbid, this is simply a theory I read about.”

  “Why would I want to hurt you?”

  “Because my life is different from yours. Because I have a job and a career that will provide me with a good living. Maybe you’re jealous.”

  “Now who’s trying to hurt who?”

  “You picked the fight. I was happy to sit in the sun and drink my beer. Besides, your theory is so much nonsense I can hardly stand it. People have to live somewhere, Jack. Some live in Vermont, some in New York City. We all make trade-offs. I’m surprised someone your age wouldn’t know that already. You’re telling me everyone in Vermont in the middle of January is simply gleeful? Did you ever hear of cabin fever, maybe? People go nuts up there with all the snow and ice and darkness. Who’s in a prison then?”

  “You have a point, but if New York is such a great place, then a little social theorizing shouldn’t rattle you. All this time we’ve been playing a guessing game about our backgrounds—who we were, what it meant—but I know who you are. That’s why you’re reacting. You’re reacting because you’re afraid you’re going to live a cliché, an investment banker, for Pete’s sake, and that I’m calling you on it, that your Smythson calendar knows your future and it’s already written down in curlicue letters.”

  “I’m not rattled, you arrogant prick. Sorry, but you are an arrogant prick. You’re just being a jerk. I should have seen this earlier, right? I’m not a little tootsie you’re going to impress with your social justice theories. New York City is no more of a prison than anyplace else in the world. It’s an island with a bunch of stuff on it. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good. But it’s all life.”

  “It was just something I read, Heather. Something I thought was interesting to pass along. You’re the one who is giving it greater meaning.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you read, Jack. Honestly, I don’t. What I care about is your need to tell me and your attempting to torpedo my world just to … what was it you said? Just to play with ideas? That’s so charming, Jack. It’s not even fair on a basic level of politeness.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Heather, you’re overreacting!”

  “Again my fault, right? Not the great Jack Vermont’s fault. All my fault.”

  “Jeez, this is a new side to the Heather coin.”

  “Is it? Well, then put it in your little ledger of marks against me. You are such a jerk you don’t even know it. Seriously. You think you’re all freewheeling and happening. Why do you get to judge? You’re just over here drifting around.”

  “Now you’re getting pretty personal.”

  “And you weren’t personal when you told me I was about to incarcerate myself in a prison? That you can fix that? Fix me? What was I supposed to say? ‘Gee, Jack, great and interesting point? I’ll think about that as I slowly entomb myself in that horrible city.’”

  “I can see where you would see it as insensitive.”

  “So it’s my perception that’s off-kilter? Is that it?”

  That’s when I realized I didn’t have to do this.

  I didn’t have to win. I didn’t have to argue. I didn’t have to persuade anyone of anything. I didn’t have to spend a minute longer with him. Jack was cute as the devil, was a beautiful man and he had his charms, but, really, why did I need to do this right now? I had a job to start. I had a career to get under way. It was pointless to argue. If we had been dating for months, okay, yes, I would try to get to the bottom of everything, but that wasn’t the situation. It felt great to realize that I could simply stand up and smile and be graceful and say good-bye.

  So that’s what I did.

  “You know what, Jack? I’m sorry. I truly am. I don’t want to fight. I’m sure you’re a great guy, but maybe, I don’t know, maybe we’re not matched up after all. Maybe we don’t want the same things out of life. Who knows? I don’t need your blessing to go to New York and start a career, and you don’t need my permission to spend some time wandering around Europe. So I’m going to count this as a wonderful flirtation, a great what-might-have-been, and let it go at that. If you’re ever back in New York City, visit me in prison.”

  “Are you serious? You’re leaving? I thought we had a great morning.”

  “We had a magical morning, Jack. Thank you for that. But when someone tells you twice that they have a better plan for your life than you do yourself, well, those are warning bells. You need to pay attention to that. So no hard feelings, okay? I’m just going to go lock myself away on that miserable New York island and count the days until I can expire peacefully.”

  “Oh, come on, Heather.”

  “No, I swear, honestly, no biggie. Besides, that was a joke about expiring. I swear it’s probably better this way. I have to be back in NYC in a few weeks, and I’m going to be flat-out busy. I go west and you go east, Jack.
No harm, no foul either way.”

  “Heather, I apologize. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Standing in front of him, a thought occurred to me.

  I had read it a long time ago. It said something like: It is imperative to complete a gesture once started. You head out the door, don’t stop. You start to drive away, keep going. Don’t pull out the dresser drawers unless you intend to empty them.

  So I had a divided mind. Part of me said, Atta girl, get the hell away from this jerk.

  And another part of me thought, He’s right, I’m overreacting, why am I standing, why am I moving away from someone I care about, who might be important to me in my life, who seems to get me, who is as handsome as a damn movie lumberjack?

  But if you start a gesture, you must complete it.

  I left the bill with Jack. He didn’t chase me back to the bikes—did I want him to?—but I couldn’t turn around to see what he was doing. As soon as I reached the bikes, I realized a couple of things to go along with my need to complete the gesture.

  To hop on my bike, I had to move his. Fate played a part. When I lifted his bike away from my own, I realized that, without much effort, I could roll it toward the canal. The canal was slightly downhill from where we had left the bikes, and it happened that the fence bordering the canal gave way to a small landing spot. My mind again did a quick calculation, and I realized I could roll the bike toward the canal, although the chances of the bike staying upright, moving in a straight line toward the empty spot in the railing, was a long, long shot.

  So I shoved it.

  I wanted to shove Jack. He had burrowed under my skin that much.

  His bike tottered forward, lazily moving toward the canal, and as I swung my leg over my bike and pushed down on the pedal, I saw his bike rap once against the railing and fall toward the canal. Part of me wanted to whoop, and part of me wanted to grab the bike and stop it and hand it back to Jack, but my blood burned too hot inside my neck and arms and legs.

  I pedaled off just as his bike came to rest with the front wheel spinning languidly in the canal water. It would be nothing to retrieve it, which I supposed was a good thing, and by the time I was up to speed, weird boy-tears took hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

  Berlin

  20

  Have fun, bitches.

  Love you, Amy.

  Love you both. Don’t worry. All good. Heading home tonight.

  Travel safe.

  I will.

  Wish you were here!

  Did you really just type that? Send lots of photos.

  We will. Here’s one of Constance.

  Miss you already.

  “I need a man in my life like I need a hole in the head. Like a fish needs a bicycle,” I said to Constance, even though she kept her eyes on the painting in front of us. “He was throwing me off schedule, gumming up the works. Seriously, now that we have a little distance, I can see it more clearly. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking, that’s the point, I guess. I was thinking with my Barbie brain.”

  “Your Barbie brain?”

  “Oh, you know, Ken and Barbie in their Malibu house. Ken and Barbie going to the dance. Barbie brain. All that romantic foe-de-doe.”

  She nodded.

  The sun had already dropped behind the line of buildings somewhere in the city and turned the shadows long. It was the Museum Island in Berlin at four o’clock in the afternoon. Rain expected, clouds already covering most of the sky. Constance and I stood in the Altes Museum. We had also stood in the Neues Museum, the Bode Museum, the Pergamon Museum, and the Alte Nationalgalerie. To say that the pictures and statues and pieces of textile and flaked arrowheads and spear points and pottery shards and razor wire had run together was an understatement. I loved museums and loved viewing art and cultural exhibits, but I was a complete slacker compared with Constance. She had turned my legs to rubber; she had beaten me down into a whimpering mass of jelly. We had spent three and a half days in Berlin being the best tourists two human beings could be. We had seen everything. We had done everything. You could not find an important site in Berlin where we did not pose for a shot, eat the appropriate food, shop for the kitschy doodad that signified and commemorated our visit. If Michelin or Lonely Planet gave out awards for “the thorough examination of a major European city,” Constance and I would have won hands down.

  Five stars.

  And now it was threatening rain, and I was tired and grumpy.

  “Then you don’t need to see him again,” Constance answered finally, her steps slowly moving her sideways to the next painting. “That settles it. Ignore the Barbie brain.”

  “Right. Simple as that.”

  “Raef may show up, anyway. Jack is off doing something with his grandfather’s journal.”

  “I have to start a job in a month.”

  “Did you get your paperwork in?”

  She didn’t look at me; she kept her eyes on the paintings. Constance was never mean, but neither did she miss anything. She knew I had been stalling about the paperwork due to Bank of America.

  “Most of it,” I said. “Not every scrap.”

  “You, the girl with the Smythson calendar, not getting everything in? The girl who consults her Smythson more than people consult the Bible? Shocking.”

  “It will all get done. God, you’re as bad as my father.”

  “Are you sure Jack hasn’t made you rethink your choices? It’s not like you to miss deadlines. He’s made you question some things, maybe. That’s healthy.”

  “Oh, he’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. Jack is a ship passing in the night. I see that now.”

  “Really?” she asked and raised her eyebrows. “Okay, if you say so.”

  “You think he isn’t?”

  “I suppose what I think doesn’t matter.”

  “He is a ship. A big, ugly tourist ship that’s about a mile high and unseaworthy and serves too much food and has bad steel-drum music playing all day long. He’s charming, I’ll admit that, but come on. I really don’t have time for him right now.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “If I were in a different place, you know, psychologically, I don’t know, maybe. Maybe then it would be worth exploring. But he was awfully mean.”

  “So you check your messages a thousand times a day to make sure he hasn’t texted you? Is that your tactic? That’s a good plan to fend him off that way. That’s not Barbie brain at all.”

  “Are you trying to kill me, Constance? First you make me look at every piece of art in Berlin, then you tease me about Jack.”

  “I thought you hated Jack.”

  “I don’t hate Jack. We just don’t fit in the same way I thought we did.”

  “Methinks thou dost protest too much.”

  “I need a drink. Maybe I’m a little confused.”

  “We’ll get a drink shortly, I promise.”

  “Maybe a lot of drinks. You don’t think New York is a prison we build for ourselves, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think so, sweetie.”

  “It’s such an obnoxious thing to say to someone who is headed to New York in a few weeks. At the very least, it’s impolite.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “I don’t care about the idea behind it, but why be so mean?”

  “An imponderable of the universe.”

  “Men are idiots when you get down to it.”

  “They sure are. Always will be.”

  “Then why do we bother with them?”

  Constance shrugged and slipped her arm through mine. It was pretty in the museum, and the breeze hitting against the side of the building finally brought rain. I squared my shoulders and realized I had to stop perseverating—good SAT word—about Jack. It was childish, but I couldn’t quite get rid of the sense that maybe I had overreacted. Maybe I had let something pretty good go. Maybe I should have ridden it out a little while longer. It was like looking at clothes in a thrift shop for a long time, then, when yo
u finally found something cute or just right, you decide not to buy it. It’s not that you can’t live without it, but it does get under your skin that you walked away. You wonder if it’s still there, if it was as flattering as you remember, and you realize if you had simply bought the darn thing you could have let your mind rest. Jack was the worst kind of question mark, a handsome, dashing guy who had made the mistake of saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

  What was the mental trick? If I tell you not to think of a pink elephant in a tutu, that’s all you can think of. Jack looked good in a tutu.

  After the museum, we went to Checkpoint Charlie. It was one of the rare instances with Constance when we didn’t really know our destination but arrived at a must-see spot almost by magic. We walked and talked and wandered and window-shopped, and suddenly Constance told me we had arrived at the outdoor Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf. I made her swear that she hadn’t deliberately led us to yet another sightseeing destination, and she crossed her heart and held up two fingers in some sort of Scout vow.

  “I swear I didn’t,” she said. “I’m as tired as you are, I think. The last thing I wanted was another museum.”

  “You never get tired.”

  “I am tonight.”

  We stood for a while watching the foot traffic move around the open spaces. I knew the name Checkpoint Charlie, but I didn’t know much more about it. Constance read from the Lonely Planet guide that it was the most famous “gate” in the Berlin Wall, known as Charlie for the letter C. I’m not sure why, but the sight of the Berlin Wall, the sense that people had been killed here trying to escape to freedom, got me choked up. Here was a real prison, I thought, not a make-believe one. I hooked my arm in Constance’s, and we followed the cobblestone path that wove past various signs outlining the history of the checkpoint. We stopped for a long time to read about Peter Fechter, an East German teenager who was shot in the pelvis on August 17, 1962, while trying to escape from East Berlin. According to the brief history, his body lay tangled in a barbed wire fence, and he bled to death in full view of the world’s media. American soldiers could not rescue him because he was a few meters inside the Soviet section. The East German soldiers could not help the boy for fear of provoking Western guards. Something about the idiocy of the situation, the pointlessness of borders and political divisions, made me feel restless inside.