What Are You Going Through

by Sigrid Nunez

  Was it that he had changed so much, or that I had buried him so deep, six feet under my heart.

  “Unbearable.”

  Another time, another ex. Catching sight of him through the window of a pizzeria. Too busy with his phone to notice as I stood staring in, swept back to the years of passion and grief. The lost years, as I had come bitterly to lament them. Staring in, not caring that I’d attracted the curiosity of several diners, I want to know, why don’t I feel more. I want to know how, where once was everything, nothing could be.

  In the most romantic movie ever made, a girl yearns for her boyfriend, away at war, even as she finds herself forgetting his face. I would have died for him, she says. How is it that I am not dead?

  The saddest musical of all time, one critic called it. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

  “And you really think there’s no hope.”

  And years later, riding the train to visit a friend in Philadelphia, through the gap between the two seats in front of me I recognized his hand, his right hand (all I could see) holding a book. Should I speak to him? No. Nor did I move to another car. Just rode along behind him, wondering, Why don’t I feel more. Remembering very well, though, what I had felt. The love. The hate. The promise made: Never again. Never again will I allow my life to be spliced with another person’s life—

  “You’ve heard what I think,” he said. “Read the science and see what the world is doing about it. Could it be any simpler? Keep releasing carbon into the air and sooner or later—and more and more it’s looking like sooner—we’re fucked. And make no mistake, if there is in fact even a sliver of hope it depends on the survival of liberal democracy. Nothing is going to hasten the end of a livable planet faster than the rise of the far right. And behold, here they are, the two specters marching side by side.”

  “But you know,” I said, “this idea of yours about people not having children. Wouldn’t the next logical step be for people to start killing themselves? I mean because everything we do, really, is contributing to the problem. Every time we turn on a light, or get in a car, or do most anything at this point, we’re using up resources, we’re polluting the earth, we’re destroying other species and dooming our descendants. If enough of us made the sacrifice by taking ourselves out—wouldn’t that help?”

  “Not going to happen, obviously.”

  “Any more than people are going to stop having kids.”

  “Though it will come to that.”

  “What?”

  “People killing themselves to escape the heat and the scarcity of food and clean water. Many will do it before it comes to that.”

  “Would you ever do that?”

  “I don’t think I have it in me. I think most people don’t, even if they think they do. In any case, barring nuclear war, our generation—the very ones who might have prevented this catastrophe—will be spared the worst.”

  “I just read a review of a book about some lab worker who purposely unleashes a pandemic flu virus in the hopes of killing enough humans to save the environment.”

  “Oh yeah? And how did that work out for the environment?”

  “The reviewer didn’t say. You know, not wanting to be a spoiler.”

  “Some jerk made a joke about me being a spoiler. ‘Oh shoot,’ he tweeted, ‘now we know how life on earth ends.’ I think that was supposed to be witty.”

  “Just sarcastic, I think.”

  “I’m reporting the facts. Why should so much of the response be so hostile to me?”

  “It’s your attitude,” I said. “You come across as cranky and arrogant—bullying, even. And you can’t just get up there and tell people there’s no hope.”

  “You mean the truth? Because you can’t seriously believe people are going to get their shit together and turn things around in the dozen or so years we’ve got before we reach the point of no return.”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something about the way you present the awful truth, almost as if you took pleasure in it, as if it gave you some kind of grim satisfaction. In other words, your misanthropy shows through.”

  He laughed. “My defense mechanism, you mean. You can’t seriously believe I take any pleasure in imagining the suffering in store for my grandchildren. But it’s true, I do feel pretty hostile myself. All other issues aside, who could ever forgive those Americans—and I’m talking about all the privileged, well-educated ones—who elected a climate change denialist to the world’s most powerful office, or the oil CEOs who covered up their own research about the connection between fossil fuels and global warming way back when something might have been done about it. The enormity of that surpasses all the world’s episodes of genocide, in my view. I don’t know about you, but I’ve completely lost faith in people to do the right thing.”

  “But you must have some hope or you wouldn’t keep speaking out.”

  “It’s a contradiction, I know. I guess I want at least to be able to look my grandchildren in the eye when they’re old enough to ask me where were you, what did you do. And even if I know there’s no longer any hope of waking up idiot humanity in time, why shouldn’t they have to hear the truth? Why shouldn’t they at least have to think, if only for the time it takes to read an article or listen to a talk, about their own monstrous stupidity and the evil they might have stopped but didn’t. The truth is, every time I see a newborn now my heart sinks. I feel terribly angry but also terribly guilty all the time. I’m doing what I’m doing now because I didn’t do more before. I wasted my life on things that, no matter how important seeming at the time, turned out to have been trivial.”

  “And you say that you can’t—or won’t—forgive others, but you want forgiveness for yourself.”

  “Yes. From them. I want my grandchildren to forgive me.”

  At that moment a woman wearing a canvas twin carrier, one infant on her bosom, the other on her back, entered the restaurant—a sight that my ex, sitting with his back to the door, was thankfully spared.

  “All that said,” he said, “that was one delicious croissant.”

  One of your favorite things, I said without speaking.

  And you always went for the chocolate ones, he nevertheless said back.

  Only now did the conversation turn to my friend.

  “I know she never liked me,” he said. “Whenever we were in the same room, I could feel it. But I respected her. She was a good journalist. Sorry to be using the past tense.”

  “She wouldn’t mind,” I said, certain that this was so.

  “I’ve never had any doubt that she’s doing the right thing,” he said. “It’s what I’d hope to be strong enough to do in her place. And you’re doing the right thing too—and a really brave thing, in my opinion,” he added. “But I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

  And how could I ever describe it?

  I told him the story of how my friend had left the pills behind and we’d had to drive all the way back.

  “I shouldn’t laugh,” he said.

  “She wouldn’t mind,” I told him again.

  “There’ve been quite a few slapstick moments,” I said. “Her forgetting to bring the pills, and then this thing that happened a couple of days ago. As I told you, her plan is not to let me know exactly when she’ll be taking the pills. One day you’ll wake up and it will be done, she said. You’ll know because the door to my room will be closed. She always sleeps with the bedroom door ajar, a habit she got into when she had cats, and sleeping in a closed room tends to make her feel claustrophobic, she said. So, that morning I got up earlier than usual—it was still dark—and saw that her door was closed. What did I do? I panicked. I was afraid I was going to faint. I went to the kitchen and threw up in the sink. Then I poured a glass of water, but my mouth was working so violently I couldn’t drink it. I sat down at the kitchen table and broke down. I kept trying over and over to ge
t a hold of myself, but I couldn’t. I did finally manage to drink the water. I’m not sure how much time passed, it couldn’t have been very much, but it had started to get light out. And all of a sudden I hear a noise, and the next thing she’s strolling into the kitchen. It turns out she’d had the window open—a rare thing, because she’s always cold, especially at night, no matter how steamy it is out there—and sometime during the night the wind blew the fucking door shut.”

  “I know I shouldn’t laugh,” he said again, “but it does sound a little like a sitcom. Lucy and Ethel Do Euthanasia.”

  “Oh, believe me, we laughed about it too,” I said. “In fact, no one would believe the amount of laughter that’s gone on in that house since we got there. But that was only later. At the time, I didn’t think it was funny at all. At the time, I was literally shaking with rage. I wanted to break everything in the house, but I settled for throwing the water glass against a wall.”

  “And how did she respond to that?”

  “Totally cool. All she said was ‘Do you really think it’s fair for you to be mad at me for still being alive?’ And then of course you can imagine how I felt. But as I say, we did laugh about it later. It’s amazing how she’s managed to keep her sense of humor. She even managed to see a silver lining. Think of it as a run-through, she said. Now that you know what it’s going to be like, you’ll be prepared.”

  Even though I had thought it many times, Dying becomes her was not something I could bring myself to say out loud.

  “I’ve known her all these years and I can tell you no one would ever have called that woman easy,” I said. “I was so worried about what being with her would be like. As it turns out, we get along so well, it’s like we’ve always lived together. What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That look on your face—”

  “You just brought me back, that’s all. It was a long time ago, but if you don’t remember, you once said that to me.”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. Though I did.

  “Right after we started living together,” he said. “That first studio apartment. After a week or so, you said it was like we’d always been together. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to change the subject. Will it be much longer, do you think?”

  “No. Soon. Any day.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I can just tell.” Again, how to explain it? “I’ve become attuned to her in the most incredible way. I’ll be just about to ask her if she wants something to drink and she’ll say, Would you mind getting me some orange juice? I reach for the remote and at the very same instant she says, Can we change the channel?”

  It happened all the time. Every day the atmosphere in the house was a little different, a little more charged in some indefinable way, and I had learned to read it. Any day now. I couldn’t explain it, but I could tell.

  “I know we’ve already discussed this,” he said, “but you do need to remember to take some precautions. She has to leave a note.” (In fact, that note, already composed, lay in a drawer of her nightstand, lacking only the date. All part of her meticulous planning.) “And there shouldn’t be any evidence that could be construed as your having been part of the plan, or of having assisted in any way. No one knows, right, besides the three of us? Make sure it stays that way. She’s right, maybe it’s good that you had this little ‘run-through.’ You’ve got to keep it together. Don’t go spilling your guts when the police arrive. They’ll check out the house very carefully. They’ll ask you questions. You stick to the script. And you should call the police first, before you call me.”

  “I have to call her daughter too,” I said. “I should call her before I call you.”

  “All right. But be careful what you say.”

  “This is insane.” My eyes and throat were stinging. “I don’t understand why we have to go through all this, as if we were criminals, for God’s sake. Why shouldn’t dying people have the right to end their own lives?”

  “They will—once there are so many old and terminally ill people that they threaten to knock our teetering health care system out completely. Your doctor will write you a prescription, it will be cheap and easy to fill, and it will all be perfectly legal. No more having to go to the dark web.”

  “You really think that’s going to happen?”

  “It’s the only practical solution—and the only compassionate one, in my view.”

  Except that most people won’t choose it. Was our joint unspoken thought.

  * * *

  —

  We know that the belief that it is ethically wrong for human beings to procreate isn’t new. In fact, it is ancient. Life is suffering, birth feeds death, to bring a person who has no say in the matter into this world is morally unjustifiable, goes the anti-natalist philosophy. That life might also bring an individual a great amount of pleasure changes nothing, the anti-natalists say. Unborn, the person would not have missed life’s pleasures. Born, he or she has no choice but to endure its multitude of physical and emotional pains, such as the pain that comes from aging or disease or dying. The possibility of a happier future, in which suffering would be vastly diminished, cannot be a justification for the suffering that exists today. And in any case, according to a leading contemporary anti-natalist, a happier future is an illusion. The main problem was, is, and ever will be human nature, the anti-natalist says. Everything could have been different, true. But that would have required us to be a different species. Humans don’t learn. They make the same terrible mistakes over and over, he says. “We’re asked to accept the unacceptable. It’s unacceptable that people, and other beings, have to go through what they go through, and there’s almost nothing that they can do about it.”

  When he’s asked whether or not he has any children, the anti-natalist won’t say.

  IV

  Later, I found myself confessing the truth, that I’d gone not to the gym that morning but to meet my ex, and that in spite of the promise of silence I’d made her I had told him everything.

  A week ago, maybe, that would’ve bothered her, she said. She didn’t ask me why I’d changed my mind.

  Time. We were both keenly aware that it had become a different element from what it had been before we crossed the threshold of that house.

  So strange, she’d said earlier, on one of our walks. Sometimes it feels as if we’d been here for years.

  I knew what she meant. Within a week our relationship had grown to such a degree that it eclipsed the friendship of our youth. And it was this new intimacy that made secrets and lies intolerable.

  I never liked him, she said. But if he’s really as tormented as he sounds, I am sorry for him. How sad to be wishing your own grandchildren had never been born. Though to be honest, I’m glad I don’t have any grandchildren of my own to worry about.

  Perhaps another thing the dystopian future might bring: People suing their parents for having given them birth. Pointing as evidence to the abundance of scientific studies and warnings their parents had been given. What did you assholes think two minutes to midnight meant?

  Sometimes, without my asking, without my saying a word, my friend answered the very question that was on my mind. She would turn her gaze back from the window, through which she’d been watching birds at the feeding pole that we filled twice a day, or she’d look up from the book she’d been trying—usually unsuccessfully—to read, and she would speak.

  I miss childhood, she said. I was a happy kid, and I’m grateful for that, because so many people I’ve known had a hard time growing up. But I see myself walking home from the bus stop, swinging my little brown leather book bag, one of my favorite possessions ever, how I wish I had kept it—how I wish I could touch it now—and singing one of the songs we’d learned that week. I loved music hour! The teacher would put on a record and we’d listen and then she’d teach us the song and we’d sing it at the top of our l
ungs, the gifted and the tone-deaf all cheerfully together. It makes a particular kind of sound, if you’ve ever noticed, that mix of unequal voices, no doubt unpleasant to many ears, but all my life it’s given me goose bumps to hear the sound of children singing, especially when they do it badly. When they do it well, when it’s a serious performance, something they’ve rehearsed, they sound like angels, she said, but they don’t sound as free or as happy to me, they’re not having as much fun.

  That beloved schoolbag, she went on, and its precious contents: the black-and-white Mead composition book, the loose-leaf binder with the subject dividers with the candy-colored tabs, the pens and pencils, the pencil sharpener, the eraser, the ruler and the protractor and the pencil compass—all of which made me feel so important. School, in general, made me feel loved. I can remember the feeling very clearly, she said, even if I couldn’t have put it into words. That somebody wanted to teach me things, that they cared about my penmanship, my stick-figure drawings, the rhymes in my poems. That was love. That was most surely love, she said. Teaching is love. And in some ways that love meant more to me than the love of my parents, because my parents exaggerated every tiny good thing, neither my mother nor my father was ever critical, they praised everything equally, she said, every effort I made, and if I did poorly they blamed the test or assignment for being too hard. Unlike my teachers they made no distinction between effort and achievement, she said, but I wasn’t fooled, I knew I couldn’t trust what they said, so it was the teachers’ opinions that really mattered. In any case, mine weren’t the kind of parents who want to be all involved in their kid’s education. That was the school’s job, as they saw it. I know many kids learn how to read early, at home. But for me that momentous event—that most important rung of my life—didn’t happen till school.

  I can name every teacher I had in grade school, she said, starting with kindergarten: Miss Gillings, Mrs. Matthews, Miss Lopez, Miss Banks, Mr. Goldenthal, Mrs. Hershey, Mr. Cork. I loved them all. I loved all my teachers when I was a kid. Even the ones I’d come to understand later were not really so good as they’d seemed to me—were in fact pretty bad at their jobs. I still remember them fondly, she said.