right here, far away too
Why can’t we be close?
Now that it’s addressed to someone else, I see that it’s as cloyingly generic as a Shoebox card.
It dawns on me that it must seem to him like random chance that I, and not another one of these women, came up to see him. I thought it was serendipity; he must have seen it as a roll of the dice. I thought I had found my soul mate; he was just playing out one of many options.
My head feels light. I have to get away from this apartment. I throw on some clothes, towel-dry my hair, and head out the door. It’s still early, and the light is thin. The sun is bright, even dazzling, but the air is strangely cold. It is unsettling to see the sun and not feel it; it might as well be a picture in the sky. I pull my coat around me, frankly grateful for the brightness, the illusion of warmth.
Walking down Blueberry Cove Lane, I pass the other town houses on the left and the barren expanse of dirt on the right, in which the seeds of new condos are being planted. The few trees along the way are half plucked; leaves drift in the wind, are carried up and over, brown-yellow-gold as they twirl toward the ground. As I get farther from his house, the road slopes up and then down through fields covered with low, hardy bushes. Truth in advertising: blueberries. From the top of the rise I seea ribbon of ocean on the horizon line, dotted with little patches of land.
Gazing out at the water I take a deep breath, smell the pine and dirt. The sky is empty and pallid. In a sudden rush of feeling, like the flash onset of a fever, I am stricken with gloom—a piano scale of feeling in the key of, say, G minor, culminating in a jarring note of dread. The impulse to come here was not, as I have told myself, daring and romantic; it was foolhardy and ill-conceived. There is nothing here for me. I see that now. I am living in the town house of a guy I barely know. On a remote Maine island. With a stack of e-mails to other women, some identical to the ones he sent to me, on his kitchen table.
My thirty-three years are apportioned into boxes, a haphazard and senseless accumulation. My money won’t last long; I have nowhere else to stay. All I own is an old car without a gas gauge and some books and clothes and spatulas. I keep getting it wrong, only my mistakes get bigger. Ruining my career was bad enough. Ruining my life is more than I can contemplate.
“At the same time,” I say, trying to stay calm. “You were sending haikus to all these women at the same time. ”
We are standing in Rich’s kitchen. My bags are packed. He has just suggested that I may be making too big a deal about this. He shrugs, which in his body-language lexicon signifies something between annoyance at being caught and an inability to grasp why this matters so much to me. “I was keeping my options open,” he says.
“I wasn’t. I wasn’t corresponding with anyone else.”
“Look, we met online. I didn’t even know for sure that you were female.”
“ What? ”
“How was I supposed to know? You could’ve used somebody else’s picture—”
“Just stop. You were still e-mailing these women after I came up to Boston to meet you.”
“Look, look,” he says, stepping back. “We see this whole thing differently. I was flirting. It was harmless.” He turns away from me in the small kitchen, goes into the living room, picks up a ten-pound weight, and starts doing curls. “I thought you had a good time last night,” he says, panting a little, “but now, I have to say, you’re being a real”— huff —“downer.” Huff.
The aftertaste of coffee is metal in my mouth. “By the way,” I say, “Becky says to tell you it’s over.”
“What?” He stops doing curls.
“She called when you were out.”
He just looks at me. “What were you doing picking up my phone?”
“I thought it was you.”
“I don’t care if you think it’s Santa Claus. Don’t pick up the phone in my
Why can’t we be close?
Now that it’s addressed to someone else, I see that it’s as cloyingly generic as a Shoebox card.
It dawns on me that it must seem to him like random chance that I, and not another one of these women, came up to see him. I thought it was serendipity; he must have seen it as a roll of the dice. I thought I had found my soul mate; he was just playing out one of many options.
My head feels light. I have to get away from this apartment. I throw on some clothes, towel-dry my hair, and head out the door. It’s still early, and the light is thin. The sun is bright, even dazzling, but the air is strangely cold. It is unsettling to see the sun and not feel it; it might as well be a picture in the sky. I pull my coat around me, frankly grateful for the brightness, the illusion of warmth.
Walking down Blueberry Cove Lane, I pass the other town houses on the left and the barren expanse of dirt on the right, in which the seeds of new condos are being planted. The few trees along the way are half plucked; leaves drift in the wind, are carried up and over, brown-yellow-gold as they twirl toward the ground. As I get farther from his house, the road slopes up and then down through fields covered with low, hardy bushes. Truth in advertising: blueberries. From the top of the rise I seea ribbon of ocean on the horizon line, dotted with little patches of land.
Gazing out at the water I take a deep breath, smell the pine and dirt. The sky is empty and pallid. In a sudden rush of feeling, like the flash onset of a fever, I am stricken with gloom—a piano scale of feeling in the key of, say, G minor, culminating in a jarring note of dread. The impulse to come here was not, as I have told myself, daring and romantic; it was foolhardy and ill-conceived. There is nothing here for me. I see that now. I am living in the town house of a guy I barely know. On a remote Maine island. With a stack of e-mails to other women, some identical to the ones he sent to me, on his kitchen table.
My thirty-three years are apportioned into boxes, a haphazard and senseless accumulation. My money won’t last long; I have nowhere else to stay. All I own is an old car without a gas gauge and some books and clothes and spatulas. I keep getting it wrong, only my mistakes get bigger. Ruining my career was bad enough. Ruining my life is more than I can contemplate.
“At the same time,” I say, trying to stay calm. “You were sending haikus to all these women at the same time. ”
We are standing in Rich’s kitchen. My bags are packed. He has just suggested that I may be making too big a deal about this. He shrugs, which in his body-language lexicon signifies something between annoyance at being caught and an inability to grasp why this matters so much to me. “I was keeping my options open,” he says.
“I wasn’t. I wasn’t corresponding with anyone else.”
“Look, we met online. I didn’t even know for sure that you were female.”
“ What? ”
“How was I supposed to know? You could’ve used somebody else’s picture—”
“Just stop. You were still e-mailing these women after I came up to Boston to meet you.”
“Look, look,” he says, stepping back. “We see this whole thing differently. I was flirting. It was harmless.” He turns away from me in the small kitchen, goes into the living room, picks up a ten-pound weight, and starts doing curls. “I thought you had a good time last night,” he says, panting a little, “but now, I have to say, you’re being a real”— huff —“downer.” Huff.
The aftertaste of coffee is metal in my mouth. “By the way,” I say, “Becky says to tell you it’s over.”
“What?” He stops doing curls.
“She called when you were out.”
He just looks at me. “What were you doing picking up my phone?”
“I thought it was you.”
“I don’t care if you think it’s Santa Claus. Don’t pick up the phone in my
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