The Life Room (38 page)
Authors: Jill Bialosky
“That’s not what I’m saying. Maybe he fit the ideal of the person you’ve been longing for. Maybe you wanted to bring something back that you had lost.”
“But what have I gained? What was in it for
me?
”
“Don’t expect to have all the answers. Twenty years from now when all you have are memories you’ll be glad it happened.”
“But it was all in my imagination.”
“Was it, Eleanor?”
She rose to go to the bathroom. It was perfumed with incense and decorated in Indian cloth and beads. It was one of those tiny bathrooms divided into two stalls. Inside the stall was its own sink and mirror. She was a little woozy from the wine. The smell of the incense made her nauseous, and she felt claustrophobic. She turned on the tap to cool her face but only hot water came out, steaming up the mirror. Only her two eyes of different colors—opaque now—appeared in the mirror’s fog. She heard someone come into the bathroom and go into the other stall. She looked at herself in the mirror again, and she thought she heard a voice.
It was real. It wasn’t a dream
.
She sat down on the toilet.
What?
Was she hearing things?
Now you’re free
.
Maybe the woman in the other bathroom stall was talking on her cell phone and she’d overheard the conversation. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe she drank too much wine.
She went back to the table.
“Are you okay, Eleanor? You look pale.”
“I’m a little light-headed. I think it’s the heat. Or the food.” She sipped on a glass of water. “Jordan, do you believe in God?”
“The closest I’ve come to finding God is when I’m in bed with Luca.”
“Then God is love, or passion, is that what you’re saying? Or in your case, sex?”
“Life is different from a novel. In a novel you can freeze-frame reality. But real life is fluid. You don’t know what is going to happen next.”
“So what are you saying?”
“You can’t control everything that happens to you. Would you even want to?”
She was surprised at how much she was able to accomplish that year in spite of how distracted she had been. Her book called
The Persistence of Passion
had just come out. Reviews were mixed, but one reviewer called it “provocative” and cited one of her favorite passages: “Why hadn’t Tolstoy killed off Vronsky? Did Cathy in
Wuthering Heights
have to die? And Madame Bovary, married to the cold doctor? Couldn’t Flaubert have had mote of a heart for his characters?” At the end of the book she concluded that passion wasn’t worth dying for. But there must be an alternative, she thought.
From: [email protected]
John, have you ever felt as if you’d been through a war emotionally? And yet nothing about your life had really changed?
From: [email protected]
I don’t know, Eleanor. I think I’m just waking up. You know what Kierkegaard once said. “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”
From: [email protected]
What are you doing next week? Maybe we could meet to discuss the Victorians. You know, something light. Or perhaps we should skip the Victorians and move on to the twentieth century. I don’t want it to be over.
From: [email protected]
What don’t you want to be over?
From: [email protected]
The quest.
From: [email protected]
It’s never over, Eleanor. You can count on it.
Eleanor decided she had to write a novel in which the heroine didn’t have to die for her passions. She would be loyal both to her passions and to her responsibilities—a heroine whose past and present were not always at war.
She sipped her coffee, picked up her pen, and imagined what her heroine would look like. Perhaps she would have red hair and eyes that changed color. Perhaps not.
I would like to thank André Bernard, whose faith in the project sustained me through its course. His confidence proved invaluable. I owe a great debt to Sarah Chalfant and Jin Auh for wisdom and support, large and small. Likewise, to Diane Goodman for her early support and encouragement during the formative stage of the book. Thanks also to the excellent Rebecca Saletan, Tom Bouman, David Hough, and the terrific team at Harcourt. I am lucky to have Lelia Ruckenstein as a sensitive reader and friend. Her thoughtful and astute comments through many drafts proved invaluable. Special thanks to Sanda Bragman Lewis, Deidre O’Dwyer, Martha McPhee, Dani Shapiro, and Helen Schulman. Thanks to Rony Shimony and Alex Shaknovich for their medical expertise; to Benjamin Nachtwey for opening his studio and allowing me to be a muse for one day; and to the Corporation of Yaddo for its generous support and pleasant quietude in which to work. And always, to David Schwartz and Lucas Schwartz tor everything.
J
ILL
B
IALOSKY
was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied at Ohio University and received an MA in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is the author of the poetry collections
The End of Desire, Subterranean
(a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets), and, most recently,
Intruder
. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals such as the
Paris Review
, the
New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine
, the
Kenyon Review
, and the
Atlantic Monthly
. She is the author of the novel
House Under Snow
and, coedited with Helen Schulman, the anthology
Wanting a Child
. Bialosky is an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
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