Cleaving (16 page)

" 'Eek!' "

"Shut up."

"W
HAT A PRETTY
little whore you are."

"Shut up." I stand in this unattractive stranger's foyer with my hands against the wall, skirt hitched, and legs spread, staring
at a grimy layer of paint. "Just do it. Now. Whatever you want."

I've finally gone over the deep end,
I think as I hear a condom wrapper being ripped open behind me. After some months of dickering, I've made good on a sad fantasy
I've been distracting myself with since D stopped speaking to me. It's not about pleasure or comfort or desire. It's about
contempt, for myself, and for any man stupid enough to want me. Contempt feels like relief.

The man rips my panties down and goes about his nasty, brutish, and short business. He mutters filthy, stupid nothings into
my ear with hot breath. I squeeze my eyes shut, concentrate on D. With what different, breathtaking force he once would throw
me against a wall, pull up my skirt. When all my need became too much for him, when he needed to just shut me up. How better
everything was between us afterward.

It's over in three minutes. In five I'm back out on the street, my guts aching and my BlackBerry in a trembling hand.

I don't know what to do. Just had the worst sex in the world with a total stranger to try to get you out of my head. It didn't
work. I know you want nothing to do with me, but I need help. Please. XxxxoHH-j

That night, I'm back home with Eric, chopping pancetta for a pasta dinner. The knife doesn't shake in my hand, I am capable
of smiles and conversation that, if not closely observed, seem natural. But the tremor is not gone, it's just gone underground,
making my eyeballs jiggle in their sockets. When my BlackBerry trills on the kitchen table, my breath goes and I nearly knock
the cutting board off the counter when I reach for the phone. But it's only Gwen calling. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." Gwen's voice is queer, with both a twist of tension and an unusual drip of concern. "I just wanted to call
to see how you're doing."

"Um... I'm fine." I didn't tell Gwen about my experience this afternoon; didn't tell anyone but D. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no particular reason. I just... just thought maybe I should check in. See if you're holding up. We haven't talked in a
while."

I glance up at Eric. He's across the room on the couch watching Jim Lehrer, sipping from his wineglass. I take a gulp from
my own and reply as casually as possible, "Oh thanks, I'm doing good. Eric and I are just putting together some dinner. You
want to come over? Just spaghetti."

"Ah. No, thanks. But soon, for sure. You'll be on IM tomorrow?"

"Sure." I'm pretty sure now what she knows and how she knows it. I just don't know what that means.

"Okay. We'll talk then. And--I love you, Julie."

"Um, I love you too."

"Have a good night. Be good to yourself."

"Okay. 'Night."

When I lower my phone to press the End Call button, I notice that my hand is quivering again. Of course, with the butchery,
my hand is often tired these days. Eric looks up from the TV. "That Gwen? What did she want?"

"Just checking in. We'll have her over to dinner in a few days, probably. You want some more wine?" I ask as I pour some for
myself. I walk toward him and empty the last of the bottle into his waiting glass.

I
HAVE
gotten quite good at tying roasts, which pleases me immensely. Is there a single action that more quintessentially evokes
butchering? It is both delicate and, sometimes, painful. The twine can bite into fingers, cut off circulation, but the swirling
motions as I quickly make the knot and pull it tight are graceful and feminine.

As the holidays approach I'm getting more and more practice with tying, as people begin ordering fancy roasts for their celebratory
dinners. Thanksgiving is supposed to be the single craziest time of the year, a line out the door, many of the customers cranky
and worried, waiting to pick up their heritage turkeys or some pate for their cocktail hours or bacon for their brussels sprouts.
Every year, apparently, the Fleisher's crew makes something of a celebration of the ordeal. Everyone dresses up as some goofy
thing or another. Jessica hands out plastic glasses of beer. This year Hailey, the heartbreakingly young new hire they have
at the counter, lovely and tiny and endlessly sweet--dubbed Schmailey by Josh--will be the one who rings up orders and calms
the restless beasts lying in the hearts of anxious cooks on overdrive. I wish I could be there for that.

Instead, Eric and I wind up spending the holiday in Dijon, France, of all places, with his father and stepmother. Eric is
running the Beaujolais marathon. He was never a runner before, but since our marriage has fallen into such spectacular shambles
he has suddenly taken up the sport. He's already run the New York City Marathon and is determined to get more under his belt.
On the day of the race we meet him at the finish, at the top of a rather punishing hill in the center of the town of Beaujolais,
along a medieval cobblestone street.

"How'd it go?" I ask, giving him a kiss on his sweaty cheek.

"Good! Sort of silly." He plops down on a chair at the sidewalk cafe table his stepmother and I have staked out near the finish
line. "The Beaujolais marathon is not the place to work on breaking any records. We were literally running down stairs into
wine cellars."

"You're kidding!" Jo Ann's tone is, as usual, effusive. Delicious delight with the magical oddity of the universe is her favorite
emotion.

"I didn't drink the wine, which I sort of regret."

"They were passing out wine at a marathon?"

"Oh yes."

Eric always looks remarkably not-at-death's-door after these races, though for the rest of the day his brain function is not
what it usually is. He seems to be built for endurance. I honestly think the running is helping him keep his sanity--whatever
sanity either of us has managed to maintain.

"So, I got this, though." He holds up the shiny silver cup hanging by a sash around his neck. "What is it, anyway?"

"I think it's a
tastevin
. Like, a pretentious sommelier's cup."

"There are unpretentious sommelier's cups?"

"Good point."

We stay at a beautiful country inn, an ancient old house with light-filled rooms and a classically snooty Gallic proprietress.
Eric and I love it. Yet I'm with him and his parents at every moment. I feel very alone and very crowded in at the same time.
I think Eric feels the same way; catching a look at his face when he doesn't know I'm watching, I see eyes somehow both dull
and wet. It seems sometimes that we aren't so angry with each other anymore, that we shouldn't be, with D and Eric's lover
both out of the picture. But I wonder if he still longs for the woman he broke it off with. Whoever she was, I certainly know
how the comforts of simple romance tempt.

When I find a cafe with Internet access, I send another in an endless wash of e-mails. It's as involuntary an action as sneezing.

I keep thinking how much fun you and I would have here, lounging about all indolent and shit.... This is me pretending that
one day soon you're going to start talking to me, and we'll get together and this whole thing will be this funny story we
tell.... xohxohxoh

I try not to expect and indeed receive no response.

Thanksgiving dinner is a multicourse lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant in a small village. I'm distracted. I don't remember
afterward what we ate. At least I'm spared the afternoon of football, the part of Thanksgiving I dread. The origins of my
deep-seated phobia surrounding all spectator sports are obscure, but the result is that I can barely be in the same room with
a TV blasting statistics and plays. It's one of Eric's and my few absolute incompatibilities. This year he scurries out to
find Internet service every few hours to check on the scores, an arrangement I am content with.

In the evenings Eric and I wander the cold and damp streets of Dijon, a somber town, but with a sort of understated melancholy
that feeds all too well into our mood. I've taken up smoking again after having (mostly) quit for some time. France seems
the place for it.

"I have to say, it suits you. Very sexy."

Though Eric essentially disapproves of my habit, he's also something of an enabler. I think he likes the look of a woman smoking,
just as he likes the look of a woman with a martini glass in her hand. It fits his noir sensibility. In any case, he might
say I'm sexy, but I just smirk skeptically, and he follows up with a sad, affectionate smile. We're acting out parts, and
we know it.

"Oh, wow. Look at those."

In a shop window two mannequins are draped with two men's scarves, dramatically and abstractly floral, one pattern orange
and crimson and gray, another sky blue and sea green and gray.

"The blue would look gorgeous on you." And the red would suit D to a tee. "Would you wear that?"

"It's kind of out there. I like it, though. But, um, I'm not buying a three-hundred-dollar scarf."

"That's pretty crazy, it's true."

Later, I return alone. I finger the exquisitely soft weave of the two scarves longingly. Can I buy two three-hundred-dollar
scarves? How insane is that? Finally I whisper "Screw it," pick one, and carry it to the counter.

"The red is an excellent choice," the handsome young man behind the counter says, in English, as he begins to wrap the scarf
in tissue paper.

"Thanks," I reply, not saying what I think, which is,
Actually, it's the worst of choices.

The Monday after we return from France, I pull my first actual, for-real stalking. I easily convince myself it's only fair,
after I've tried for so long to reach him in all the more usual, less invasive ways. I warn him ahead of time, via text, that
I'll be there, with a gift. I wait for an hour and a half outside the door of the building where he works. When he finally
comes out, my face melts into a soppy smile that I can't prevent at the sight of him. But he merely grimaces as if in pain
and keeps walking, allowing by a single impatient jerk of his head that I may follow. We walk together in silence a moment,
downtown. He's wearing a leather jacket I've never seen before, as well as the familiar crimson knit cap I was thinking of
when I bought the scarf.

"What do you want?" Still walking. Not looking at me. His anger is coming off him like the basal grumble of an idling semi
truck; I feel its vibrations in my chest. I've never seen him truly angry before. It terrifies me, makes me stammer and blush.

"I just--I don't know. I just--all of a sudden this silence. You seem to hate me, and I don't understand why. I just thought,
if maybe I could understand what happened, I'd be able to feel better."

"Well, what do
you
think happened?"

This is how D argues. Teasing out answers, giving none of his own. I think of it as his Socratic method. It makes me feel
like a schoolgirl with scabs on her knees, but I've never been able to alter the line of an argument with him so that it turns
out any other way.

"I don't know. It couldn't be the horrible anonymous sex. The silence was the
reason
for the horrible anonymous sex."

"You had horrible anonymous sex, and then you
told
me about it. Why would you do that?"

"I just--"

"Why would I want to be in a relationship like that?"

"I--" I am shocked into speechlessness. I could never have guessed at such a reaction, from D--unhurtable, impenetrable D. For
a vertiginous moment I'm almost thrilled.

We come to a standstill at the south end of Union Square, across 14th Street from the Whole Foods, at the crosswalk. The holiday
craft fair that takes over the square from Thanksgiving until Christmas is being erected; to get out of the way of pedestrians
we back up against a wall of brightly painted plywood. "Look, I'm not really mad." He's talking so quietly I have to lean
in to hear him. I want to touch the smooth leather of his lapel so badly, it's like fighting gravity.

"Yes, you are." I stand a moment, hideously unable to speak. Strings cinch tight around my throbbing heart.

"Did Gwen call you?"

I nod quickly, looking hopefully into his eyes, beautiful eyes even when angry, for forgiveness or concern. "Yes... she didn't
say anything about... she was just checking on me."

"Good." He won't meet my eyes, stares at his feet. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I... I'm... thank you."

"I just can't--" I can't catch all his words. I hear him say something about being "unable to reciprocate," a phrase I immediately
latch onto as possibly horrible, but also maybe hopeful. I can work with
unable to reciprocate
. I can make it easier for him to reciprocate, I can do without reciprocation! But I don't dare say anything, and then he
says, "I have to get some lunch and go back to work."

I nod vigorously, obediently. "Yes. Go. Eat."