Giving Up (19 page)

this time it was different
. ‘Why the fuck would you believe some horseshit story about a fucking money order?' she asks, interrupting him before he's actually admitted to giving the stranger the money. ‘That's my point,' he says, ‘I didn't believe him. I knew the whole thing was a scam. He wouldn't even let me see the form. And just the way he was acting was a dead giveaway, he was all shifty and either he wouldn't look me in the eyes, or he stared at me so intensely I thought he was going to confess to a murder or something like that.' ‘So I don't understand then,' she says, ‘if it was so obvious that the guy was a
junkie
, why the fuck did you give him the money?' James looks a bit surprised, ‘How do you know I gave him the money?' he asks. ‘Because it's fucking obvious,' she screams. He signals frantically for her to keep her voice down. ‘Jesus,' he says, ‘you'll wake the fucking neighbours.' ‘I don't care about the fucking neighbours,' she continues to scream. ‘What is wrong with you? Seriously? It's distressing. I know you're not an idiot. You're actually pretty smart. So what is it then? Are you crazy? Is that it? Are you crazy and just really good at hiding it?' She is no longer sitting, and has been pacing the floor in front of the couch, waving her arms in the air like a cartoon depiction of a hysterical wife. James is cowering on the corner of the couch and when Mary pauses to catch her breath he speaks up, ‘You're not understanding me,' he explains, ‘I know that giving four hundred dollars to a stranger is completely insane. I'm not crazy. That's what I've been trying to explain to you, if you'd just let me finish.' James is more than a little hurt that Mary expects the worst from him, and that she assumed he gave the stranger four hundred dollars (even though this is
technically
what happened). He begins to despair. It isn't that he can't understand why Mary would be angry that he'd once again done something seemingly naive and detrimental to their finances, but he thought she still believed in him enough to listen to his reason for doing something so stupid and maybe even insane. He'd been certain, as he made his way home after the encounter with the con man, that if she would hear him out then he'd be able to make her understand why he gave away four hundred dollars in full knowledge that he was being scammed. But now that he is sitting on the couch as Mary paces the floor in front of him, screaming at him and waving her arms, he isn't even sure if his explanation makes any sense. What had been so reasonable, and even a little comical, now struck him as nonsense, so after begging for her to hear him out he found himself at a loss for what to say next. ‘What could you possibly say,' Mary seethes, ‘that would explain why you would give someone four hundred dollars except that you're a fucking idiot? Seriously,' she stops in front of him and glares, ‘what sort of twisted logic are you going to use to try to convince me that somehow this wasn't your fault? Unless you're going to tell me that I'm wrong and you didn't give this guy four hundred dollars, or that you're lying about the whole thing as some kind of sick fucking joke. Aside from that there's nothing you can say that will convince me that you're not fucking crazy.' James stands up to face her, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?' he screams. ‘Crazy? Are you serious? How can you even say that? You won't even listen to me and now you've decided that I'm crazy? This is fucking ridiculous,' he storms into the hallway as if he's going to leave, and then turns around and starts shouting at her as she stands at the other end. ‘Why is it that I must be crazy?' he roars, as if addressing a large outdoor crowd and not his wife, in the confines of their apartment. ‘Why is that the only possible reason for giving someone four hundred dollars?' ‘Because you do this sort of shit all the fucking time,' Mary shrieks. ‘That's the textbook definition of crazy. You do the same thing all the time and even though a fucking child could tell you what's going to happen you seem to think that things are going to turn out differently.' James is painfully aware that their neighbours can hear them through the thin walls of their apartment, so he softens his voice in an attempt to calm things down. He made a mistake by getting angry, but if he could get things back to a calmer state he is confident he can turn things around. This may have even worked if he'd said something to placate Mary to show that he was sorry for giving away their hard-earned money to a complete stranger, instead of what he actually said, which ends up making everything a whole lot worse. ‘Listen,' he says, ‘I get why you're upset and I can understand why you would think that giving four hundred dollars to someone that I was more or less certain was a con artist is something only a crazy person would do, and what I'm about to say may sound even crazier, but the reason I gave that guy four hundred dollars was because I wanted to believe that he was telling me the truth, even though I knew he wasn't. I
wanted
to be wrong. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense but I don't think what I did was crazy, I think it was sort of an act of faith, or something. Do you know what I mean?' This isn't what he'd planned on saying, at least not in these words, but now that he'd said it he finds it has the ring of truth, and he elaborates on it as if he's been contemplating the thought for a long time. James believes he's being completely honest, and that on account of his honesty, Mary couldn't help but understand why he did what he did, even though he didn't really understand it himself. ‘Why would I say something so ridiculous,' he says, ‘and that reflects so poorly on my sense of judgment, unless I was desperate for you to understand that I hadn't been conned, at least not in the way you think, but that I gave him the four hundred dollars because I wanted to?' These words, instead of building something up, turn out to have an annihilating effect. Mary sits on the couch absolutely destroyed by what James has just said, and for a brief moment she stares blankly ahead, until she's finally overcome and slumps into the cushions. Her change is so sudden that it takes James a second to realize that she isn't laughing but is in fact crying. It is a wild, despairing sort of crying. Just a couple of seconds before, she'd been consumed with anger and disgust for what James had done, but his words have annihilated these emotions so that all that is left is howling despair. She knows that she doesn't have real cause for despair, on the surface of her life things are relatively trouble-free, and she feels guilty for giving in to these feelings of helplessness. Somehow, though, despite all they had going for them, she is now convinced that she is trapped in the most hopeless and meaningless life that a person could ever have the misfortune of getting stuck with. She wails and sobs, the full extent of her despair seizing her with singular ferocity. James sits next to her and puts his arm around her shoulders and she doesn't even bother to shake him off. His touch doesn't soothe her. Far from comforting, it only serves to increase her loneliness. Here she is, plunged into the deepest despair, and the very same person who used to be able to reassure her is now the primary cause of her insecurity, and every attempt he makes to take on his former role reveals how irrevocable the situation really is. How did this happen? What had they done wrong? Why did even the most basic contact seem hopelessly out of reach? James pulls her closer and she doesn't pull away, but neither does she give in to him. She just sits there sobbing and wailing, letting him awkwardly wrap his arms around her because even though his attempt to console her only makes her feel worse, there's something liberating about letting this feeling take hold. It feels as though something has come undone, or that they have finally gone too far or waited too long and whatever they'd been waiting on had already passed by or would never come. She feels desperate to have it all out, to face up to everything they missed from not paying attention or from looking the other way, focussing on the minor scenes from life without realizing that it's all part of one long movie that's been playing on a loop. But even as she struggles to comprehend the entirety of their failure, she knows that it is impossible to keep the whole thing in her head. Life together is too complex. Maybe in some earlier era, when life was slower and things came one at a time, instead of all at once, it was possible to see the whole thing in a glance, to have it before your eyes while you were busy milking the cows or whatever. But now it is as though this lifelong movie isn't only about her own little world, but all the other worlds in existence, and those that existed long ago and only flicker across the screen for a second, as though the movie she is watching has been running since the beginning of time, as though the loop is getting bigger and bigger, and it was only possible to have a dim sense of how they might plausibly fit into the bigger picture. In short, it feels like they were born too late. That it was no longer possible to know what roles they were supposed to play because all the roles have been taken. Even if Mary had been born twenty years earlier she's pretty sure she would've been better off. Everybody she knows feels the same way. ‘We all feel like the party is over,' she thinks, ‘like we showed up just as everyone else was leaving.' All the good times have already been had and the most that they can hope for is to keep the memories of those days alive. That's how Mary and her friends deal with their crushing nostalgia, by staging tiny recreations of things they never really experienced. Her friend Anna spends her life avoiding mass-produced food, growing her own vegetables, and even going so far as slaughtering the animals that she eats. Then there's Damion, who refuses to watch movies made after 1951. But these are just extreme examples of what is a general and pervasive affliction. We're convinced that life used to be better, simpler. We go for a drive and all we can think about is how much better it must've been when the cars were slower and the roads were narrower and nobody was in a hurry, or at least not the white-knuckled frenzy that we drive in now. Time keeps adding up. We can't get on top of it. Mary's friends with children are overwhelmed by the enormity of what they have to face. Autism, juvenile depression, stone fruit allergies, social anxiety, sexting, the private school system versus the public school system, automatic weapons, gluten, global capitalism. It's impossible to anticipate every disaster that life has to offer and the inevitability of their failure as parents forces them into a defensive crouch, huddling over their children and swatting away everything that comes near them. If only they lived in a time when their children could go out alone without the threat of being abducted. A nauseous feeling comes over Mary. She lets up on crying for a moment because this nausea is overwhelming. The memory of the cat – the way it hung its head when she started walking towards it, that sucking sound getting louder because of its terror over what she was going to do – every movement, each sound, were clearly signs of an animal in severe pain and distress, but Mary immediately thought she was the one in danger, so she saw everything the cat did as a threat. ‘Maybe this is what I do with James?' she thinks. ‘And because I'm so afraid I end up ignoring what is staring me right in the face. Maybe the cat is a sign.' James senses that something is happening and throws his other arm around her and pulls her into a hug, as if he is trying to smother her train of thought, or trying to distract her with intimacy. But now she pushes him off and slides into the far corner of the couch. She is like a TV detective, not the new kind that wallows in blood and semen and stares into the abyss of human perversity with the hard gaze of the chosen few who have enough courage and genius to see the world for what it is, but more like the older ones, who sometimes seemed to know everything but at other times were just as confused as everyone else, and more often than not were only a few steps ahead of us so we could flatter ourselves by thinking we would've come to the same conclusion even if they hadn't been leading us on, and, just like these old-fashioned TV detectives, Mary feels she is on the verge of some revelation, and if she can keep her mind still for just a second then everything will fall into place. James tries to catch her eye to get an idea of what she could possibly be thinking, but she stares straight ahead with a blank expression. She's trying to exclude everything from her thoughts, when all at once, after James puts his hand on her arm, it's there before her, so clear and real that she feels like she could take a picture of it. ‘Neither of us believe in what we're doing,' she says, and finally she turns to look at James. ‘What?' he says. ‘What do you mean? What are you saying?' She smiles as if she wants to reassure him, the way a kindly civil servant might if they were dealing with someone desperate and foreign who couldn't speak the language but clearly needed help, which in all likelihood the civil servant wouldn't be able to provide. She doesn't want James to worry, even though she is now thinking that she might leave him. ‘We don't have any faith in what we're doing,' she says. ‘It's like we don't know what else to do, so we keep doing the same thing over and over again without believing that anything is ever going to happen.' ‘Are you talking about getting pregnant?' James asks. ‘I'm talking about everything,' she says. James stands up and for an instant it looks as if he might give in to a terrible rage, but then he slumps back into the couch, deciding that it isn't worth it, seeing in Mary's face that it didn't matter how loud he screamed or whether he started punching walls or throwing things around the room. She can see now what the truth had been all along. It's useless to try to get her to see it in some other way. He hangs his head between his legs and says nothing and waits as if he's been found out by the aforementioned TV detective. And without even noticing that he'd started, he's now sobbing just as uncontrollably as Mary had been only moments earlier. Seeing him fall apart in a matter of seconds takes Mary out of the stupor of her own revelation and she looks over at him as if she's only just realized who he is, where they are, and what is happening. The doorbell rings as she's sliding across the couch to comfort James. They both freeze. And then, without a word or signal of any kind, they both make for the basement steps at the same time. James eases the door open silently and they creep down the stairs as if they were