Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (39 page)

I've nearly forgotten the evening's obligation when I spy it on my calendar:
Why the Flower Loves the Rod—closing night.

I glance back at my computer screen, scanning my e-mail to Jeff. I've tapped in my worries about Elizabeth's condition, along with a transparently plaintive paragraph about my approaching tenure review date. I make no reference to Victoria's comments about my project, or to the unutterable void where George used to be, or to a thousand other signs proving Jeff right.

I hit Send, grab my bag, and rush to the subway, cursing at my watch as though it were to blame for my lateness. I promised Yolanda . . . but I can think of little I'd enjoy less than spending ninety minutes watching Hilda Doolittle unravel under Freud's analytic eye.

The lights are just going down as I drop into my seat in the packed house—a small theater, only slightly less shabby than its predecessor. My dash from the subway has left me breathless. It's a moment before I can hear H.D. over the racing of my heart.

“I'd been through every sort of war.” Yolanda's taut, regal presence quiets me. “The war of marriage. The war of divorce. The war of childbirth. And the war of wars. The Great War. I let life fling me. Almost break me. But I would not be broken.” She pauses to scan the audience. She sees me in the front row and directs a slow nod my way. “So
he
would be the one. Yes.
He
would understand.”

The words, denatured when I irst heard them, now accuse. Do H.D.'s grandiose hopes—her faith that she can, after all, reveal
herself, rest her weight on another—echo mine? I shift in my seat, commanding myself to quit thinking about George and focus on the play.

“He would save me,” Yolanda continues. “And I would save him.”

The trust in H.D.'s voice—in Yolanda's—is an indictment. How could I have been so deluded? How could I have placed such a colossal bet on love, believing—despite all I'd seen before I'd met George, and all I saw once we began to unravel—that George and I would last? How is it that I'm still, even now, unwilling to disabuse myself of the fantasy?

The danger in the theater is suffocating. Love is an ecstatic compulsion to madness. I don't think I can bear sitting in this seat, watching H.D. give up control. I remind myself:
This is a terrible play.

It doesn't help. As H.D.'s monologue ends, tears run down both my cheeks.

I'm counting on Bill's disinterest and incongruous youth to break the spell. But when Freud/Bill speaks, nothing is as it should be. The dialogue is the same, but Bill has changed. He's no longer indifferent.

“Not many are able to understand the true depth of my philosophy,” he says. But this Freud doesn't look certain he understands that philosophy himself. He looks at H.D. as though he thinks she might. When he says, “She came to me because she was incapable of understanding her life,” he sounds skeptical. When he says, “Hysteria lurked in her shadows,” he looks apologetic. The exchange between H.D. and Freud proceeds in all its grinding, over-politicized detail. But Bill, onstage, finally looks at Yolanda as if working with her has gotten to him, too. As if he does long for her, but is powerless to do anything about it. When, halfway through the Helen of Troy scene, H.D.'s robe catches on a piece of scenery, Freud releases it with a gesture so tender that Yolanda actually stops to stare.

Hell with ideology. These two people
see
each other. There is a tragic chemistry between Yolanda and Bill that unmakes the heavy politics of the script.

I can no longer recall why this play is terrible. It doesn't even feel like a bastardization of history . . . or maybe it's just that, if
you ignore the words and watch, underneath this H.D. and Freud's declarations is real respect, and an honest passion—not the incoherent one that the playwright penned into the script, but a deeper, gentler, more heartbreaking one. It's electric. There are two plays going on simultaneously in front of my eyes: the literal script, which tells a predictable feminist story of betrayal . . . and another story, far more complex and tragic.

The lights drop. Intermission.

It's not just me. The audience looks dumbstruck. Fully half the crowd stays in its seats. The woman seated next to me stares at the empty stage.

I, too, sit still, to take this in: Yolanda wasn't crazy. Bill
did,
in some loopy impossible way and despite all his outer indifference, love her. And she knew he did. Which is what was driving her nuts all that time.

When Yolanda re-emerges onstage, the clarity in her face is stunning. Gone is the last of the heavy rage that's fueled her performance. In its place is an airy sorrow. Something, some long-delayed exchange or conversation, happened backstage.

She turns to Freud. “We'll never be together,” she says. A line that is not in the script. “But,” she adds, “I wasn't wrong.”

Freud/Bill is trembling visibly, a palsy of exposure and revelation.

“There's a difference,” she says, head high, “between what you know in your heart, and what you think is acceptable to know.”

Bill looks at her as though if he had an ounce more to give, he'd give it. Then, with a line the real Freud actually spoke, he brings them back to the script. “The trouble is,” he says, “I am an old man—you do not think it worth your while to love me.” And Bill, for the first time, looks credibly old. Stricken by failure.

Across the stage, Yolanda replies, confesses, and begs in the playwright's vocabulary, but with a face lit by forgiveness. Her eyes are clear. Her words, this time, are not accusatory, but elegiac. And I see how readily, all these years, I've underestimated her.

I exit the theater in tears. Thinking: Love is real. It was up there on stage, palpable, just out of reach. And it is impossible in this world.

Entering my apartment, Yolanda sets her coat and scarf on the arm of the sofa but does not sit. She's kinetic: pacing the length of my narrow living room, bending to ply her calves, high-kicking into another stretch, hugging knee to forehead. Restless as a caged acrobat. Two days after the closing of her show, and Yolanda has energy to burn.

“A walk would be good for you,” she insists. “The sun is out.”

“I've had it with what's good for me.” Dumb retort. But Yolanda backs off. “
That
”—I continue in a high, childish tone, indicating the package lying askew on my windowsill where I let it fall last night—“
that
is not good for me.”

In the window's clear light she picks up the Priority Mail wrapper, pulls out the copy of
Gravity's Rainbow,
and studies it. “From George?” she says.

Gone is Yolanda's habitual mask of makeup. Belatedly I realize that it's been absent for weeks, rendering my oldest friend visible, laugh lines and all: this fellow traveler whom—I'm grateful for this single thought rising above the morning's litany of self-pity—I love.

Slowly I nod. “It's a book I lent him. There wasn't even a note. As if this was an ordinary breakup, instead of . . . it's not like . . .” Words fail. “He's just turned his back.”

Yolanda sounds weary. “I think,” she says, “that if it was an ordinary breakup he would call to say goodbye. I think he's doing it this way because he's devastated by what you did.”

It feels pointless to explain myself once more. But I do. “It was
his
choice, Yolanda. I know you think it's illegal to return an engagement ring, but I swear I never broke up with him. I just said he couldn't press-gang me into marriage—we needed to sort out each step together. I was telling him the whole time that I wanted to be with him. But he was suffocating us.” As I speak I'm visited by a stern image of George's father.

“I hear you, Tracy. I've been listening these last two weeks. Honestly, I have.” She checks some minute detail of her manicure by the light of the window. “I just think . . . you know what I think.”

I shake my head blindly. I'm as tired of this conversation as all my friends are. I've trodden this ground with either Yolanda or Hannah on a daily basis; at least twice this week, Adam lowered the volume on his television to provide gruff support. “It would
have been marrying under false pretenses,” I repeat. ”I couldn't live with that.”

She sets the book on the sill. “You won't have to.”

It takes a second for the gentleness of her voice to register. Then I know with a thump in my gut that Yolanda sees me as a tragic figure.

I watch her lace her fingers, turn her palms out, and crack her back in a graceful yogic twist. “What's up?”

“Nothing much.” She huffs and bends double, pressing palms to my floor.

“You're a crappy liar.”

She straightens, rubbing the dust off her palms. It takes a moment for her to look at me. “Remember the delivery guy?”

“The pizza guy? From last week?”

“No, the one who got knocked over on Eighth Avenue. Whose food got stolen by that skateboarder.”

It takes me a minute. “The
not English
guy?”

“Did you think he was cute?”

“I don't remember. All I remember was you were spectacular. And he was in awe.”

She can't hold back her smile. “Well, he found me.”

“What do you mean
found
you?” I didn't intend the indignant tone. I rise and step to the window.

She speaks carefully. “He was hanging around by my health-food shop. I think he's been doing it for a while, and a couple weeks ago he found me.”

“A couple
weeks
ago?” I turn to face her.

“I didn't want to tell you then, Tracy. You were—”

I wave this off. “And?”

“He's sweet.” Yolanda looks unaccountably embarrassed. I don't quite understand; I don't believe I've ever seen Yolanda embarrassed.

“You two have been dating?” I probe.

“Sort of. Not exactly. I mean, we've gone out a few times. But he's a gentleman. He hasn't made too many moves yet. I kissed him first, last night, because I was getting sick of waiting.”

“What's his name?”

Again the embarrassed look. “I call him Chad.”

“But that's not his name?”

“I can't pronounce his name. Chad is where he's from.”

“When did he come to the U.S.?”

“Last summer, I think.”

“Did he come alone?”

“I think.”

“You think?”

“I think.” Yolanda twists her torso into a deep left-leaning stretch and holds the pose: shot-putting champion of Twenty-third Street.

“How old is Chad?”

“Maybe thirty,” she says to the ceiling.

“What do you mean, maybe?” My voice, despite my efforts, is sharp. “Didn't you ask?”

“Well”—she grunts as she releases her stretch—“his English isn't very good.”

“How not good?”

She sets her hands on her hips and looks at me square. “I'm teaching him words. We've gone to two movies together and talked about them, but I speak English and he speaks mostly . . . Chad. What language do they speak there?”

“French. I think.”

“Okay. And you remember how I was in Spanish class.”

“Or he might speak Arabic. Or something else.”

“Well, whatever it is, I don't understand it. We can't talk on the phone. I have his phone number, but that's only when we want to say hello and then just kind of listen to each other breathe, you know? We have to arrange our meetings before we part. I write the time and place on a piece of paper.”

“So this is about sex?”

She shrugs, extending her palms in wonderment. “That's the funny thing. I haven't even gotten him in
bed
yet, he's so courtly. And he's had the chance, I mean he's been in my apartment. He's just . . . sweet. And he has this great smile.”

On the street below my window, cars and cabs jostle—a Manhattan shell game. I tell myself: under one of these shells is George.

“Yolanda . . .” I begin.

She composes a serious face, but the corners of her mouth look ticklish.

“You know,” I say, “I love you like a sister.”

She waits.

“And I've seen you get your heart broken before, Yolanda.”

Her face sours, and I'm sorry. I check myself. Happiness has been too fleeting for Yolanda, and I want to be a good friend.

“It's just. Yol, I'm sure he's a sweet guy. All I'm saying is, maybe try not to put too much weight on this Chad until you know him better. He doesn't speak English, so he can't say all he thinks. And for all we know, what he thinks—about sex, about life, about yoga—might horrify you.”

She undoes her ponytail and wraps her hair into a knot, which she fastens with one defiant jab of a clip. “Don't you believe you can know a person without words?”

I want to answer yes. I want to believe it's possible—with or without language—to truly know another human being. To lie on his chest, rise and fall warm on a skiff that will bear you safely, steadily, who cares where.

“Just try to make sure,” I say as gently as I can, “that you're not loading too many hopes and meanings onto him. You—”

Her jaw juts.

I shut my eyes momentarily, then open them to beg Yolanda's understanding. “Please forgive me if I'm being clumsy about it, Yolanda, I don't mean to lecture you.” Only to save you. From him? From yourself? From love?

Yolanda lifts her coat from the sofa, her mouth curling once more into that unconscious half smile. “He likes the seeded parts of cucumbers,” she says. She buttons her coat, her hands proceeding from her knees to her throat as though each match of button and loop were a promise fulfilled.

I'm riding the D line uptown, returning from a visit with Hannah, when the fair hair and doughy features of a man across the car resolve into a face I've met before: Joel, George's boss, to whom George introduced me two months and a hundred years ago.