I wasn’t being sacrificial. In fact, I was aflame with ardor and inspiration, and the only place that felt like real life was the seat at my desk, looking through the slats of the wooden blinds to the street outside, writing my story. I still refused to call it a book, because to call it a book might snuff its flame. It was like when I first met John. If I had met him a year or two earlier, it would have been impossible for me to believe that this tall and handsome lothario could seriously return my affections, and I would have somehow ruined it. If it had been a year or two earlier, our coupling would have been doomed. But as it happened, when we came together I was at the height of an upswing of good fortune. I was the most well-regarded student of my year, beloved by my teachers; I was passionate and interested in my subject matter. A beautiful future stretched out before me. My confidence calibration was such that the night after John and I first kissed, I acted with utmost restraint. Unlike every other romance I’d had, which I had either entered begrudgingly or ruined with anxiety and clinging, I could sense exactly the correct level of communication, the perfect blend of distance and attention needed to manage him. For the first and only time in my life, it was possible to act like those women who prided themselves on their success with men, the ones who preached ideas of manipulation, about letting a man think he was right while secretly getting what you wanted. Which is not to say I didn’t fall in love. I did. But somehow I intuitively understood exactly how to manage it—how to neither clamp down nor let go, but keep gently pulling the thread until I found myself unpacking boxes in his apartment.
It was like that now, whenever I sat down to write this story. The writing felt like what I imagined skiing the slalom felt like to an accomplished skier, just the right amount of exertion and planning and foresight, the rest of it easy grace. I instinctively knew to never speak of it, or even think on it too much when I was away from the desk, except for the walk here or there when I allowed my mind to rest on it. The act in front of my computer was an act of evocation, of conjuring. It gave me shivers of pleasure, like the vibrations I used to feel the third or fourth time a new, infectious pop song played on the radio. The familiar and the new. The sensation would surge as long as my fingers moved over the keys.
I took pains to distance the story from Vladimir. It was written in the third person, it took place in the 1960s, it concerned a certain subculture. I based one character physically on him, a minor figure. But I infused it with the energy of my desire. And even as I held off the idea of a finished work from my mind, I kept thinking about him and me on some panelists stage, at some book festival in some smaller city like Calgary or Austin or San Diego. Award winners, both of us, we would be put up at the same hotel and would meet for a martini in the dark of the bar. However ridiculous it was for an older woman like me to lust after him, the force of my talent, the brilliance of my work, would blur my lines and firm my skin. It would be one night, maybe two, and then over, but there would be a crystal of connection formed between us. We would be linked for the rest of our lives. This fantasy floated alongside my expatriate fantasy, fantasies of meetings in bathrooms, and the reoccurring image of him reflected in my window. They gave me a floating feeling as I moved through my circumscribed world, teaching my classes, answering my emails, exercising, driving my car, grading papers, meeting students, attending faculty meetings.
Like every year, the cold came more quickly than expected. The day after the pool guy came there was a sudden frost, and the dirt froze into a spongelike formation that crunched when stepped on. That morning I pulled out my white woolen cardigan sweater that I bought from the Salvation Army in my twenties and layered it over a long flannel nightgown with bulky fisherman’s socks and my indoor sandals. Even I could admit I was getting bonier, the cold seeping more easily into my marrow. Sid, in a neck gaiter and a hat, was out for a run when John approached me in the kitchen. He was wearing an old sweatshirt that clung to him in unfortunate places and shorts he knew I hated.
“Are you coming to the first day of my hearing?”
“Good morning to you.”
“You haven’t said anything to me in the last three days. I just want to know if you’re coming.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Got it. Fuck you.” He moved violently through the kitchen, banging doors and slamming the carafe of the coffee maker down with such force I was afraid it would shatter. I could tell that he wanted to stalk off but couldn’t bring himself to do it. I felt a pang of pity for him. Where was he going at night? He seemed so lonely, so alone.
“John.” I moved forward and put my hand on his forearm. He pulled his arm away and looked at me with thick red rings surrounding his nearly lashless eyes.
“Do you even love me anymore?” Something soft rose up in his voice.
And what was I to say? Most days, these days, I didn’t feel as though I loved him. Most days I thought of him as a problem I would have to solve eventually, when I felt like making the effort. Despite what Sid said about perception, I felt as though it would be more humiliating to divorce at the height of the scandal. It would make it seem like I hadn’t known about the affairs, that I was another victim, that I stepped into the light of knowledge on the day the petition was delivered to the dean. If we were to divorce, then I preferred to do it after everyone had forgotten. Five years from now, perhaps, when the freshman class was gone, and some old faculty had retired, and nobody remembered John on campus. But as he stood in front of me, vulnerable and wanting, I couldn’t tell him no, I didn’t love him. I felt wildly protective of that soft part of him that reached out for me like a child. John was usually pulled back and cynical. Dignified. In a departmental gathering or a faculty meeting I would sit back and admire how he could dominate all the whining, sputtering academics with his removed dignity.
A loud succession of thumps sounded from the back room that led to the porch. “It’s Sid,” I said, and ran to let her in, but when I got there I saw that the noise was coming from a cardinal charging the glass doors, intent on murdering its own reflection. Last year a developer had cleared the forest down the road to build condos, and since then I’d found two dead birds lying outside these doors. I kept meaning to research what I needed to do to stop them. I grimaced, feeling sick, and pleaded with the bird to stop. I put my hands on my knees, my stomach churning.
“Take the other end of this.” John picked up a throw blanket from an armchair. “We’ll hold it against the glass.”
We stood there, each raising a corner against either side of the door frame. Too late. The bird rammed harder and harder, shaking the panes, until there was a soft thump on the ground, and the corpse lay still on the concrete.
“The symbolism is a bit heavy-handed, don’t you think?” said John.
It was a joke we’d said to each other for thirty years. Whenever we passed a deer slain by the side of the road, or a violent storm crashed down on us. Disarmed, I addressed him with a note of affectionate anger in my voice.
“Why do you wear those shorts and then ask me for something you want? You know I can’t stand those shorts.”
But I hadn’t read the moment correctly. I had thought he’d melt and sweep me up jokingly, and I’d tell him that of course I loved him, that I’d consider coming to the hearing. Instead he looked at me sadly, shook his head as though I were responsible for all the tiredness in the world, and left.