by Zack Love
Michael finally released a laugh and spoke. “Hi, Maria... Was your sister this much of a troublemaker back when you were living together in Homs?”
Maria sounded totally shocked and amused. “Oh hi, Michael... Wow, what a surprise! No, she was much better behaved back then. Clearly she’s making up for lost time now!”
We all shared a laugh.
* * *
The next evening, I had dinner with my former professor and, by the end of the night, it was as if we had never stopped dating. I told him about how I had set up Michael with my sister, and that seemed to bring Julien and me even closer to one another. We had each removed all rival suitors from the playing field, we were no longer worried about a professor-student scandal, and he had committed to revealing his childhood traumas within three months. With all of those issues behind us, every time I’ve seen him since that dinner has been absolutely magical.
Last Thursday, after two more dinner dates, we also had sex again, and I actually enjoyed it more than any of the previous times. I decided to stay and try to sleep in his bed that night, despite the possibility that one of us might wake up the other because of a nightmare. To try to avoid my own nightmares, I went through my usual ritual of whispering to my parents not to enter the car, and didn’t even mind that Julien might overhear me. In the end, it was he who woke us up with his nightmare. I just tried to hold and soothe him, until he fell back asleep in my arms.
Today, he took me on our most extravagant date yet, treating me to a private helicopter tour of Manhattan, starting in Battery Park, where we took off to admire the marvels of Manhattan for about an hour before the aircraft transported us to Julien’s summer estate in Southampton. Throughout the tour, we were mesmerized by spectacular views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, the South Street Seaport, and the Wall Street area. Then we flew by the Empire State Building and hovered near Central Park to soak in that stunningly verdant sight, before making a grand sweep of Yankee Stadium and the George Washington Bridge.
Throughout the tour, I kept admiring this man next to me who appeared to have the world at his fingertips. Indeed, even the meaning of his name seemed to reinforce that idea of him: of or relating to the famous Roman emperor, Julius Caesar. Even the official calendar belonged to him, I joked quietly to myself.
Putting aside how much the tour’s grandness seemed to conform to Julien’s larger-than-life persona, the most moving moment was when our helicopter approached Ellis Island, and stopped to behold the Statue of Liberty from the skies. The breathtaking aerial view of that powerful symbol totally transfixed me. As I looked at the green patina covering Lady Liberty’s copper skin, her torch raised so high and proud, it felt as if she were calling out to me – even congratulating me – as if to say, “You made it here too, Anissa. Welcome.”
Chapter 27: Julien
Sunday, 6/22/14 at 21:45.
I’ve been seeing my shrink for about four and a half months, and today felt like a small breakthrough of sorts, which is all the more fitting, considering how our time together ended. Lily began our session where the last one had ended, trying to convince me to break off my relationship with Anissa.
“You yourself know that it’s likely to fail,” she nonchalantly pointed out at one point.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, a bit troubled but intrigued by the confidence behind her statement.
“Because you still can’t free Icarus, even though you’ve already nursed him back to health,” she explained. “You still fear, deep down, that you’ll lose Anissa as soon as you open up to her about your past. So you keep Icarus caged for his constant companionship – to ensure that he’ll still be there when she leaves you.”
My eyebrow rose a bit. “Maybe.”
“Well, there’s clearly no persuading you to end your relationship with Anissa before you both get hurt, but perhaps you’ll finally let me help you with the issue that will probably end things with her.”
“You know our deal when it comes to discussing those details,” I replied, confident that this would avoid the topic, as usual.
“And I finally kept my side of the bargain,” she said with a smile that made her seem both impressed and surprised by her own decision to do so.
“Really?” I couldn’t believe that she had finally called my bluff and actually visited a slaughterhouse.
She picked up her cell phone off of the desk nearby. “Yes. Here, take a look,” she added, as she showed me some photos on her phone of how she had toured the gruesome meat business. I couldn’t bring myself to look closely at the photos but I saw enough of them to confirm that she had indeed met my challenge.
“Wow,” was all I could say, as I tried to stall long enough to figure out my next move and how I would talk about my past.
“Yes. It wasn’t pretty there. And I don’t think I would have done that for any other client,” she confessed, as she put her phone back on the desk. “But it was worth it, if my trip produces some kind of progress with you on this issue.” She picked up her pen and paper and then looked at me expectantly. “So, now it’s your turn... ”
“OK... Well, before I tell you anything about my childhood and how it relates to what you saw, I need to know how you felt when you were there, to see how much you’ll be able to relate to what I share with you.”
Lily seemed reluctant to answer, since it effectively turned her into the client and me into the therapist, but I think she was too curious to know where our discussion was going to resist. “Well, the sight of the blood and the animals being slaughtered was disgusting – especially the way they’re just manipulated like objects before being killed...And the smell was so revolting that I nearly puked.”
She wasn’t being personal enough with her answer, so I persisted. “And how did seeing that make you feel?”
“I guess I...I felt very small...And weak.”
“Why?”
“Because I was surrounded by suffering and was powerless to stop it.”
“OK, good. So you have some idea of how I felt thirty years ago, as a nine-year-old, in my father’s butchery.”
Lily eagerly positioned her pen on her yellow pad, as she waited for more details relating to a disclosure that I had been avoiding almost since our first session. “What happened to you at his butchery?”
“He made me...” I shut my eyes and looked away. I had to get through it somehow. Lily and I had a deal and she had performed her end of the bargain. And I would need to face it again with Anissa in a few months anyway. “He made me...” I couldn’t get the rest out.
“He made you what?”
“He made me participate in the actual slaughter.”
“Was it a machine slaughter in Mexico, where you grew up?”
“No. He had a small shop. It was manual. You hold down the animal and you slit at the neck with a blade.” I could feel my hands shaking and some sweat building across my forehead.
“And you felt small and weak there?”
“Yes. Totally impotent as my own father forced my hand towards evil.”
“And how did you know, at the age of nine, that it was evil?”
“No child should be made to draw blood like that.” I buried my head in my hands and paused for a moment, trying to find the strength to explain the rest. “To feel the coarse movement of a blade cutting through flesh, killing a conscious being as the floor is showered with blood to the horrific last sounds of a life snuffed out for no good reason.” My face was still down, covered by my hands. I could hear the gentle tapping and scratching sound of Lily’s pen taking notes on her pad.
She finally spoke. “Why do you think your father forced you to participate in that?”
“Because he thought it would make me into a man... He beat me a few times in the years before that, but he wasn’t always so cruel. He had changed, for the worse.”
“What do you mean? How did he change for the worse?”
I shook my head in refusal. “Sorry, Lily. That’s beyond our
deal. I promised to tell you more about my childhood and what happened in it to make me become a vegetarian. And I just did that, despite all of my reservations and visceral discomfort with sharing any part of that experience with anyone. You’re the first to hear even that much.”
“Well, I’m glad that I got you to open up at least a little.”
“Yes, but I didn’t promise to answer any related questions you may have about my father.”
She glowered at me. “Julien, what kind of game do you think we’re playing here? You of all people should know that therapy is of extremely limited value without trust. And the depth of a therapist’s insight is significantly blocked when the client provides so little information. You’re the one with the nightmares. How do you expect to solve them with me, or anyone else, if you keep all of the potential causes to yourself?”
“Maybe the nightmares will go away on their own. I’ve definitely been having them less often with Anissa in my life.”
“That’s a cop-out – especially because you’ll lose her in the end, if you won’t trust anyone with the details of your childhood.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I replied curtly. “Anissa and I are growing closer by the day. And it’s ultimately she who needs the truth, not you. Maybe she’ll be satisfied with what I told you. And if she insists on knowing more, then maybe by that time our level of comfort and intimacy will empower me to reveal more. But you and I don’t have that closeness.”
Lily’s scowl suggested bruised pride – like that of a spurned woman. “So maybe this is it for us,” she replied, with a hint of bitterness in her voice, daring me to terminate her services.
“I think so. I’m happy now,” I responded nonchalantly, without flinching. “And I’ll be spending weekends in the Hamptons for the rest of the summer, so it wouldn’t be possible to see you on Sundays anyway.”
She rolled her eyes. “There are solutions to those kinds of logistical issues.”
“True. We could try to do therapy via Skype video. Or I could fly you in. The mansion is big enough for plenty of privacy, even when Anissa is staying there with me. But that’s not really the point.”
She put away her pad of paper and pen, and started to gather her things, as if to indicate that our session was over, even though our time wasn’t up. “So what is the point?”
“The point is that the benefits of seeing you no longer outweigh the costs.”
She stopped collecting her stuff and looked up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m feeling much better about my life than when I first contacted you, so I’m not sure how much more you can really help at this point – especially since I just revealed as much as I’m prepared to share with you about my past. Thus, at this point, continuing therapy with you involves mostly downside risk.”
Lily furrowed her brow. “What downside risk do you mean?”
“The risk of revealing too much. Details that are so sensitive I can’t risk telling anyone else. Except maybe Anissa, if we get that far.”
“So you don’t trust me to keep our therapy confidential.”
“We’ve been over that, Lily. Even the most discreet human is still human. So the safest approach is just not to tell any human. And there’s another risk that’s almost as important.”
“What’s that?”
“As you should know by now, you’ve been the biggest temptation in my life for a while now – the person who would be most likely to make me cheat on Anissa, and therefore the person I should probably most avoid,” I noted, standing up to indicate that I considered our session over.
Lily’s expression lightened a little and she stood up, leading me to the door of her office. “I guess I should be flattered now, right?” Her proud posture projected a dignified confidence, but when she looked straight into my eyes, I sensed her vulnerability, as she held the door open for me – maybe for the last time. A part of me would definitely miss her.
“Yes, you should be. Which is why this is probably our final farewell. But if something urgent comes up during the summer, or after that, I’ll call you.”
She looked away, shaking her head. “Funny how I’m now the one who feels used in this transactional relationship.”
“Indeed. But maybe that’s a sign that we both evolved a bit throughout our therapy sessions?”
“Maybe.” She looked back at me with a flirty, self-deprecating smile. “I guess I’m a bit late with that kind of inappropriate sentimentality.”
“You did have your window of opportunity,” I replied wryly.
“And you had yours,” she added with a wink.
I smiled. “Indeed. But it’s probably better for both of us that we never acted on that temptation.”
Chapter 28: Anissa
Thursday, July 10, 2014
To My Dearest,
I’m sorry I haven’t written to you in so long, but I’ve been so absorbed in the joys of life that it never even occurred to me that I should pause them for the sake of recording such treasures. You’re still as important to me as ever, but when a simple and far-reaching happiness colors every other thought, savoring such rare exuberance seems like the best way to honor it.
Indeed, this has been the first time in my life that I’ve actually taken a real vacation. I spent the last week with Julien, and this must be what it’s like to be on a honeymoon. Our time together began on the fourth of July, when we watched the fireworks from his penthouse balcony, which offered a marvelous sixty-third-floor view of the patriotic city spectacle. The next morning, we took a helicopter flight to the Hamptons, where we’ve been ever since.
It’s felt wonderful just to disconnect completely from all of life’s pressures and the problems of the world. I’ve felt so renewed by this oasis of time in which I’ve been aware of nothing outside of our little universe full of starry nights, ice cream by the pool, and couple’s bliss.
I felt guilty not working for the MCA for the last week, but Michael was very understanding about it and gave me the time off. I’ll try to make it up to him by putting in some extra hours when he needs the time for his dissertation or just to see Maria outside of the MCA. They seem to be quite happy together, which warms my heart even more and seems to validate my decision to be with Julien in the end. The fact that Maria is now not only safe, but apparently falling in love, contributes even more to my general contentment. When I described to Julien how wonderful the last week has felt, he thought that being away from the stress of the city, and indulging a delightfully slower pace – surrounded by green, pastoral beauty, near the gentle waves of the beach – might have contributed to my state, which he compared to what Italians call “Essere in stato di grazia.” I looked up the term online and it literally means to be in a state of grace – to feel a deep connection with the divine and/or nature that produces inspiration or love that heals and protects. That sounds about right.
As a kind of mental or psychological exercise, I tried to amplify my newfound happiness by avoiding all negative thoughts about my past, the people no longer with me, and the world at large. I tried just to be. I lived simply to savor the moment, with my love, Julien.
Our increasing closeness became apparent in so many small ways – from completing each other’s thoughts, to finding humor or beauty in the same moments, to expanding each other’s cultural horizons in ways that symbolically bridged our different worlds. I introduced Julien to one of the greatest Arab-American poets, Khalil Gibran, and Julien truly cherished his writing. While reading his masterpiece The Prophet, Julien highlighted this section from Gibran’s poem on love that we read aloud together:
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, I am in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love ha
s no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
At the same time, Julien introduced me to Octavio Paz, one of Mexico’s greatest poets of the twentieth century and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. I especially enjoyed the delightfully imaginative story My Life with the Wave, a surrealist prose poem (from his 1951 collection Eagle or Sun?) about a man who falls in love with a wave and tries to have a relationship with it. Julien and I read this part out loud together:
Love was a game, a perpetual creation. All was beach, sand, a bed of sheets that were always fresh. If I embraced her, she swelled with pride, incredibly tall, like the liquid stalk of a poplar; and soon that thinness flowered into a fountain of white feathers, into a plume of smiles that fell over my head and back and covered me with whiteness. Or she stretched out in front of me, infinite as the horizon, until I too became horizon and silence. Full and sinuous, it enveloped me like music or some giant lips. Her present was a going and coming of caresses, of murmurs, of kisses. Entered in her waters, I was drenched to the socks and in a wink of an eye I found myself up above, at the height of vertigo, mysteriously suspended, to fall like a stone and feel myself gently deposited on the dryness, like a feather. Nothing is comparable to sleeping in those waters, to wake pounded by a thousand happy light lashes, by a thousand assaults that withdrew laughing.
