There was the other part of it, too—the I want to believe there is a somebody out there just for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody. That was, I had to admit, less a concern to me. Because the rest of it seemed so much bigger. But I still had enough longing for that concept that I didn’t want to dispel it completely. Meaning: I didn’t want to tell Lily that I felt we’d all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soulmate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.
Too much. Too soon. Too fast. I put down the notebook, paced around the apartment. The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies—all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or writ en suspect. Perhaps this was what was so unnerving about Lily at this moment—the trust that was required in what we were doing.
It is much harder to lie to someone’s face.
But.
It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone’s face.
Words failed me, insofar as I wasn’t sure I could nd the words that wouldn’t fail her. So I put the journal down and pondered the address she’d given me (I had no idea where Dyker Heights was) and the ghastly Muppet that had accompanied it. Do bring Snarly Muppet, she’d writ en. I liked the ring of the do bring. Like this was a comedy of manners.
“Can you tell me what she’s like?” I asked Snarly.
He just snarled back. Not helpful.
My cell phone rang—Mom, asking me how Christmas Eve at Dad’s place was. I told her it was ne and asked her if she and Giovanni were having a traditional Christmas Eve dinner. She giggled and said no, there wasn’t a turkey in sight, and she was just ne with that. I liked the sound of her giggle—kids don’t really hear their parents giggle enough, if you ask me—and I let her get o the phone before she felt the urge to pass it over to Giovanni for some perfunctory salutations. I knew my dad wouldn’t call until actual Christmas Day—he only called when the obligation was so obvious even a gorilla would get it.
I imagined what it would be like if my lie to my mom was actually the truth—that is, if I was with Dad and Leeza right then, at some
“yoga retreat” in California. Personally, I felt yoga was something to retreat from, not toward, so the mental image involved me sit ing cross-legged with an open book in my lap while everyone else did the Spread-Eagle Ostrich. I’d vacationed with Dad and Leeza exactly once in the two or so years they’d been together, and that had involved a redundantly named “spa resort” and me walking in on them while they were kissing with mud masks on. That had been more than enough for this lifetime, and the three or four after.
Mom and I had decorated the tree before she and Giovanni had left. Even though I wasn’t into Christmas, I did get some satisfaction from the tree—every year, Mom and I got to take out our childhoods and scat er them across the branches. I hadn’t said anything, but Mom had known that Giovanni deserved no part in this—it was just her and me, taking out the palm-sized rocking chair that my great-grandmother had made for my mother’s doll house and dangling it from a bow, then taking the worn-out washcloth from when I was a baby, its lion face still peering through the cartoon woods, and balancing it on the pine. Every year we added something, and this year I’d made my mother laugh when I’d brought out one of my younger self’s most prized possessions—a mini Canadian Club bot le that she’d drained quickly on a flight to see my paternal grandparents, and that I’d then proceeded to hold (in amazement) for the rest of the vacation.
It was a funny story, and I wanted to tell it to Lily, the girl I barely knew.
But I left the notebook where it was. I knew I could have but oned my shirt, put my shoes back on, and headed to the mysterious Dyker Heights. But my gift to myself this Christmas Eve was a full retreat from the world. I didn’t turn on the TV. I didn’t call any friends. I didn’t check my email. I didn’t even look out the windows. Instead, I reveled in solitude. If Lily wanted to believe there was a somebody out there just for her, I wanted to believe that I could be somebody in here just for me. I made myself dinner. I ate slowly, trying to take the time to actually taste the food. I picked up Franny and Zooey and enjoyed their company again. Then I tangoed with my bookshelf, dipping in and out again, in and out again—a Marie Howe poem, then a John Cheever story. An old E. B. White essay, then a passage from Trumpet of the Swans. I went into my mother’s room and read some of the pages she’d dog-eared—she always did that when she read a sentence that she liked, and each time I opened the book, I had to try to gure out which sentence was the one that had impressed itself upon her. Was it the Logan Pearsal Smith quote “The indefatigable pursuit of an unat ainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star” from page 202 of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar or, a few lines down, the more simple “Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around”? From Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, was it “He had admired the ancient delicacy of the buildings and the way the street lamps made soft explosions of light green in the trees at night” or “The place had llled him with a sense of wisdom hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just around the corner, but he’d walked himself weak down its endless blue streets and all the people who knew how to live had kept their tantalizing secret to themselves”? On page 82 of Anne Enright’s The Gathering, was it “But it is not just the sex, or remembered sex, that makes me think I love Michael Weiss from Brooklyn, now, seventeen years too late. It is the way he refused to own me, no mat er how much I tried to be owned. It was the way he would not take me, he would only meet me, and that only ever halfway.” Or was it “I think I am ready for that now. I think I am ready to be met”?