The Narrow Door (18 page)

I wake up in the middle of the night. I think I hear water running upstairs, and I breathe in and out through my nose. Not dead yet, I say to myself.

I’m up at six the next morning, maybe even a little earlier. It is already light outside. I’m too bewildered to turn on my laptop, so I grab for my phone to see several texts showing up in its window. Four from Braunwyn, one from M.

From Braunwyn:
Porpoises.

Dozens of them, playing, breaching.

Honey, come down to the beach and see.

From M? A chipper hello, and a note to let me know that he and S are headed out to the Springs. And when do I plan to get in? To the city, he means. Which must mean they want to be out of there before I arrive.

The public bathrooms are out by the beach. I’m standing beside the building waiting for Braunwyn to walk up. And then she’s walking toward me, her face transformed. She is not just the one self in front of me, but all of her selves, simultaneously. Her face shines, her green eyes suffused with light. Everything that’s unique about her is shining in those eyes: humor, wryness, intelligence, vulnerability.

Those eyes say we will be all right, all of us.

“You look like you’re in a state of shock,” she says. Her voice suggests that she’s in a state of shock, too, but maybe this morning shock is not such a bad place to be.

I look back with a shrug. “Can we still see the porpoises?” I look past her toward the dune grass, the beach, the water. The sky overhead is already matted with hot-weather clouds.

“We missed them,” Braunwyn says. “They’re already headed up toward Wildwood.”

I nod. That’s okay, honestly. It’s enough to know that she saw them, enough to be swept by the story. I hold on to the image of them breaching and playing as they look back to shore.

2007 | 
Denise and I look out at the twenty grad students assembled in front of us. We’re at the head of the classroom, seated behind a table. Though we’re supposed to be co-teaching the class, it feels more like we’re co-hosting a television program, and the students look back at us, probably less interested in what we have to say about their stories than in watching two old friends building on each other’s sentences, mirroring each other’s gestures. I don’t know if I’m using my hands as much as Denise is, but I’m aware of using them more than I usually do, chopping the air, emphasizing words, points.

We’re at the university in New Jersey where Denise teaches English and creative writing. I don’t know how she manages her schedule. Two days a week she arrives on campus at nine in the morning only to finish her teaching at nine that night. One of her many responsibilities is to run the Visiting Writers’ series, and that’s why I’m here. For three separate sessions during the spring term I come down to her South Jersey campus, where I teach a workshop, lead a craft class, give a reading, meet students and faculty. The series is funded by an Atlantic City casino that needs as many community service credits as it can get, and I very much enjoy referring to myself as the Major-Atlantic-City-Casino Visiting Writer that year.

The amazing thing is that we have fun. None of what we do feels like work, though we’re working hard together, listening, reading, paying attention, bouncing ideas off each other. None of that old competitiveness is in the air; neither of us is cutting off the other’s words or trying to outglow the other. Our work is not about us, our personalities. We’re speaking of words, the shapes and sounds they make. It is good to travel to that deep place together, to be enclosed and held by it.

At some point during one of my visits I have a hard time finishing one of my sentences. I start the sentence again and I still can’t complete it to my satisfaction. The students’ faces blur a bit, and—God, it’s hot in the room. I’m aware of sitting forward in my chair, the back of my shirt sticking to the wood. I’m not exactly ill, but I’m not exactly in my skin either. Or I’m so much in my skin that I can’t help but be all about my body, trying to listen to what it wants, but I don’t know what that might be.

“I think I might be getting sick,” I say casually to the class.

“You’re not getting sick, honey,” Denise says, with her characteristic grin. “I know exactly when you’re getting sick.”

“I felt fine a minute ago, and right now? Like—why couldn’t I find that word a minute ago? The simplest word. What do you think, guys?” I look out at the students, who are too respectful of Mr. Visiting Writer to kid with him.

We talk about story number 2. I think I am making sense; I think I am saying useful things about structure, but the minute hand of the clock is moving so slowly, and the heat from the register is relentlessly rising, drying, dehydrating. The last time I was on campus my workload felt mysteriously light; this time I am carrying cinder blocks on my back. I see the woman by the window shifting in her seat—sure, she feels hot, too—until I realize that the person who’s really hot is Denise, whose forehead is now shining with moisture.

“You can’t be sick,” I say to her flatly.

“Why can’t I be sick? I have every right to be sick. What, you think you’re the only one who can be sick?”

“This is codependent!” I cry.

“It is!” And we are both laughing like total idiots, lost in our own zone, fenced off from the students, who look at us, perplexed. They can’t tell whether they should distrust us or be amused, or reach into their pockets to give us some cold medicine. Frankly, I don’t know what I’d think of us if
I
were in their seats.

I take the train back to Manhattan in the morning. Indeed, we both have the flu; the sudden onset of symptoms explains that. But my flu sends me to the couch for a week and a half. Denise is out of commission for four.

2010 | 
Part telenovela, part Almodóvar, part French farce, part
Real Housewives of New Jersey.
I’m thinking of all the inevitable comparisons as I look out the windows of the Long Island Railroad car, past Patchogue, past Mastic-Shirley, past the scrubby Pine Barrens that remind me of the landscape where I grew up. I’m on the 7:40 Sunday morning train to Amagansett. At some point late last night I decided to come out to the Springs house, not exactly unannounced, but with—an hour’s or so warning. I am too worn out and confused to make anything like a scene. I know I will not make a scene, the way I made a scene at a club in Provincetown, so many years back, when I saw Eric, my ex, with another man out on the dance floor. I simply want to know who’s spending time with my beloved, in my bed, at my seat at the table—all that. I’ve configured him as some kind of ogre in my head, and I need to see that he isn’t that. And maybe I will see past myself—the self that thinks of himself as harmed—and see that maybe S isn’t such a bad guy.

Somewhere past Hampton Bays I text M to say that I’ll be coming in on the 10:40 train to pick up my checkbook and some clothes. Could I be picked up? I also mention that I’m looking forward to meeting S.

I do need my checkbook and some clothes, but I’m unsettled by letting out this fuck-what-may self, the side of me I’ve pushed down deep for way too long. What energy is about to be released into the world? I want it to be destructive. I don’t want it to be destructive, even though I imagine the pines out the moving train window burning to a crisp with the sparks of me.

M texts back to say that he will be at the station to pick me up. He says what he says without a tinge of anger.

The train stops. The doors slide apart. And there he is in the parking lot, standing behind the car, standing a little behind S. I walk in their direction, trying to keep a neutral expression on my face just as they’re probably trying to look neutral. S isn’t the ogre I’d expected him to be but a compact man with shaved head and a weight lifter’s chest and shoulders. He looks like the kind of guy who would be right at home at the Black Party or the Pines Party. He has an electricity about him, a jitteriness, an intensity in the gaze.

M tries to hug me, and though I don’t exactly push him away, I don’t open my arms to him either—how could I? I picture myself leaning into him slightly, but I don’t know exactly what I do. We are strangers all of a sudden, and it’s worse because there’s someone there to see it. S refuses to look at me after I shake his hand. I can’t imagine him engaging in my pleasantries. He looks off toward the other side of the railroad tracks, chin raised, hard, aloof.

S decides that it would be best for him to wait at the train station as M takes me back to the house. The plan? M will let me off at the house to gather my things, while he drives S to Bay Shore, an hour and a half west.

My unexpected arrival has stirred up stale air. Do I really want to share a car with M and S? Probably not. I think I saw all I needed to see. No one is hiding anymore. S is real to me, I am real to S, and maybe that’s all I can hope for right now.

M makes the turn over the railroad tracks, past the fairways of the golf course. Soon we’re heading through the tunnel of trees. The woods are so cool and dark this time of year, you’d never know a sun was burning overhead. M is angry with me, but all that seems to dissipate when I say that it was good to meet S. There was a person there. I think I am telling the truth, at least for that moment, and I think I can say that purely without trying to get something from it, to prompt an outcome from it. I am just trying to make it through the minutes.

We talk a little before M leaves. I spend an hour gathering what I think I’ll need: this shirt, that shirt, this book, my phone charger, a bottle of sunscreen I bought in St. Petersburg a few months back. Once I do that, I start cleaning up the place. Not that it’s exactly untidy, but washing the dishes, vacuuming, wiping down the bathroom sink—all of it’s a way of saying that this is my house, too.

After an hour, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the cabinet in the room, with its stripped finish, just enough of the old white paint left behind to tell you it was there. I could leave this all behind, I say to myself. I close my eyes, then look at the cabinet again.
I could leave this all behind
, I say again, aloud this time. The cabinet looks even more intricate, the whorls in the finish more compelling now that the sun is shining on the floor. The clock ticks in the next room. Then—because instincts now tell me S might not be such a good guy—I take my tax records, Social Security card, and birth certificate, push them inside a padded envelope, and hide them deep in my half of the closet.

Why am I not fighting for my beloved, my life?

Maybe after my mother’s death and Denise’s death, I think I deserve more loss. Loss can corrupt your thinking. Loss can trick you into believing bad things happen because you must be a bad person. Loss—too much of it at once—is sinister that way.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I ought to be punching holes in the walls, tearing out tufts of insulation, kicking chairs over.

Elizabeth Bishop: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”

My friend James: “Gay men don’t get angry. They just get sad.”

As for what I cannot give up?

Talking about each other’s writing.

The excitement of a new poem. The pride of being called “first reader.” Giving advice on an image, a line, a line break, an ending. Telling him: you should write a poem about that.

Going out to our favorite pizza restaurant where we order pizzas with artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives.

Going to literary events, where if I happen to look over my shoulder I catch someone looking at us, with sweetness.

Reading together, in those moments before we fall asleep:
Jane Eyre.
He takes a chapter, I take a chapter.

Taking long trips in the car with him. Trying to wake him up when he falls asleep in the passenger’s seat, if only because I don’t want him to miss anything.

His hand reaching for mine when I’m not expecting it.

His face when he walks through the door, after a few nights away. His happiness to see me. My happiness to see him.

Missing him when he’s away.

Getting up earlier than he gets up in the morning. That hour to myself. Then his walk into the living room. The “good morning.”

The dishes he makes: squash, omelets, polenta with tomato sauce.

Years of shared references. Who else would put up with my imitations, my funny voices?

The way he rubs my foot when we’re sitting side by side on the sofa, watching a movie.

Walking down a forest trail, or on the beach. Realizing our pace is in sync.

Being mistaken for brothers, even though I pretend I don’t like it. Same height, same size thirteen shoe.

Unexpectedly bumping into each other in the city when we’re out doing our separate errands. Having a spontaneous lunch at Westville or the Dish. The New Venus, which we always call the New Penis.

The long, involved conversations about the people we have in common.

Trying to make him laugh and feeling so good when he does break out in a laugh.

His love for animals, gardening.

Waking up to his body next to mine, even if he’s snoring and it’s too sweaty and hot under the covers to hold him.

Who will I be if I have to leave him behind? I have nothing: no house, no furniture, no permanent job, just a couple thousand dollars in the bank.

I might as well be twenty-three years old again.

All those fans and readers—will they leave me behind, too?

2010 | 
I can’t tell whether the wall hanging in my therapist’s waiting room is awful or beautiful or some combination of both. Whatever you think of it, you can’t ignore it. The piece demands a reaction every time you’re sitting in front of it, as there’s nothing else in that white waiting room, just a couch, a magazine rack, two noise machines, one white, one beige, whirring at top speed, and that wall hanging, which bears a figurative relationship to the bark of a tree. But there are holes in this bark, and are those holes wounds or openings to what lies beyond—or both?

Our first session practically creates itself. So much story to tell that it’s time to stop just as I’m getting going. I am relieved that J is someone I can get along with. I can laugh at myself, I can hold his gaze without looking away, I can talk about God and sex, the hardest things, without fear, and he has the look of someone who’s always present, always interested. He makes me feel smarter than I am. He makes me think he won’t be easy on me, which is just what I want. I want to push, probe. I want to be tripped awake by a connection I’ve never made. He takes but one note during this session. He records the fact that my best friend died a little less than a year ago. I think about asking him why he wrote that down, but I will bring that up another time when we are a little less involved with getting the facts down.