How Should a Person Be? (3 page)

Does anyone ­else feel really weird about having gone to Harvard, given the life they're living now? I live in a two-­bedroom apartment above a bikini store in Toronto with my girlfriend, Margaux.

“Good night,” I said.

“Good night.”

Several years ago, when I was engaged to be married but afraid to go through with it—­afraid that I would end up divorced like my parents, and not wanting to make a big mistake—­I had gone to Misha with my concerns. We ­were
drinking at a party and left to take a walk through the night,
our feet brushing gently through the lightly fallen
snow.

As we walked, I told Misha my fears. Then, after listening for a long while, he finally said, “The only thing I ever understood is that everyone should make the big mistakes.”

So I took what he said to heart and got married. Three
years
later I was divorced.

•
chapter
2
•

AT THE POINT WHERE CONVICTION MEETS THE ROUGH TEXTURE OF LIFE

I
n the years leading up to my marriage, my first thought every morning was about wanting to marry.

One night, in a bar on a boat that was permanently docked at the harbor, I sat beside an old sailor. He had been watching me steadily as I drank. Then we started discussing children; he'd never had any, and I said I thought I would not, as I was certain my kid would be a bad kid. He said, bewildered, “How could anything not good come from
you
?”

I felt so moved then—­shivering at the thought of a divine
love that accepts us all, in our entirety. The bar around us became rich and saturated with color, as if all the molecules in the air ­were bursting their seams—­each one insisting on its perfection too.

Then the moment was gone. I saw him as just an old man staring at a girl—­seeing her but seeing nothing. He didn't know my insides. There was something wrong inside
me, something ugly, which I didn't want anyone to see,
which would contaminate everything I would ever do. I
knew the only way to repair this badness was devotion in 
love—­the promise of my love to a man. Commitment looked so beautiful to me, like everything I wanted to be: consistent, wise, loving, and true. I wanted to be an ideal, and believed marrying would make me into the upright,
good-­inside person I hoped to show the world. Maybe it
would correct my flightiness, confusion, and selfishness, which I despised, and which ever revealed my lack of unity inside.

So I thought about marriage day and night. And I went straight for it, like a cripple goes for a cane.

Several months before our wedding, my fiancé and I ­were strolling together in an elegant park when off in the distance we noticed a bride and a groom standing before a congregation, tall and upright like two figures on a cake. The audience was sitting on folding chairs in the afternoon
sun, and we went over giddily to eavesdrop, crouching behind
some false rocks, trying to be serious but giggling anyway. I could not see the groom's face—­he was turned away—­but the bride was facing me. The vows ­were being exchanged, and the minister was speaking quietly. Then I saw and heard the lovely bride grow choked up with emotion as she repeated the words
for richer or for poorer
. A tear ran down her
cheek, and she had to stop and collect herself before she
finished what she was saying.

As my fiancé and I walked away, I said that I thought it was a pretty vain, stupid, materialistic part to get choked up on—­but we admitted that we did not know her financial history.

On the day of our wedding, my fiancé and I stood in a bay window before an audience of a dozen people—­family and close friends—­repeating our marriage vows as the secular minister spoke them.

Then something happened. As I said the words
for richer or for poorer
, that bride came up in me. Tears welled in my eyes, just as they had welled up in hers. My voice cracked with the same emotion that had cracked her voice, but I felt none of it. It was a copy, a possession, canned. That bride inhabited me at the exact moment I should have been most present. It was like I was not there at all—­it was not me.

In the months and years of our marriage that followed, I recoiled, disgusted, whenever I recalled this scene—­which was supposed to be among the most beautiful of my life. Some people look back on their wedding day as a reminder of their love, but I felt ever uncertain, thinking back upon it, about whether my marriage could truly be called
mine
.

I had lived with one man before my husband: my high school boyfriend—­the first man I truly loved. We thought we would be together forever, or if we separated, that we would return to one another in the end.

Before we moved in together, we lived down the hall from
each other on the second floor of a crummy rooming ­house in tiny, separate rooms. He sat at his desk and wrote
plays, while I sat at my desk and wrote plays too. One
evening, spying outside my door, he heard me talking on the phone
with a friend about how I had a crush on a photographer in New York and thought it would be exciting to be with him. The photographer had invited me to live with him there as his girlfriend and assistant. He had taken some flattering pictures of me before leaving his home in Toronto, and I still thought about him a bit, sometimes.

My boyfriend, feeling hurt and jealous and betrayed, that night stole my computer from my room as I was sleeping and wrote on it till dawn, then returned it to my desk before I woke.

When I got up the next morning, I found, there on the screen, an outline for a play about my life—­how it would unfold, de­cade by de­cade. Reading it compulsively as the sun came up in the window behind me, I grew incredibly scared. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I absorbed the terrible picture he had painted of my life: vivid and vile and filled with everything his heart and mind knew would hurt me best.

In the story, my desire to be with the photographer in
New York started me on a path of chasing one fruitless prospect
after the next, always dissatisfied, heading farther and farther away from the good, picking up men and dropping them. While my boyfriend ­rose in prestige and power, a loving family growing around him, I marched on toward my shriveled, horrible, perversion of an end, my everlasting
seeking leaving me ever more loveless and alone. In the final
scene I kneeled in a dumpster—­a used-­up whore, toothless, with a pussy as sour as sour milk—­weakly giving a Nazi a
blow job, the final bit of love I could squeeze from the world.
I asked the Nazi, the last bubble of hope in my heart floating up,
Are you mine?
to which he replied,
Sure, baby
, then
turned around and, using his hand, cruelly stuck my nose
in his hairy ass and shat. The end.

I tried to forget his play, but I could not, and the more I pressed it away, the more it seared itself into my heart. It lodged inside me like a seed that I was already watching take root and grow into my life. The conviction in its every line haunted me. I was sure he could see my insides, as he was the first man who had loved me. I was determined to act in such a way as to erase the fate of the play, to bury far from my heart the rotting seed he had discovered—­or planted—­there.

What power a girl can have over a boy, to make him write
such things! And what power a boy can have over a girl, to make her believe he has seen her fate. We don't know the effects we have on each other, but we have them.

Every other Wednesday during my marriage, our apartment was filled with smoke from the cigarettes of all our
friends. They drank in our rooms and made out on the fire escape. In the beginning, it felt like something truly important was happening. People came, and there was a bounty: cheese
and grapes and bread and wine and all the alcohol you could
drink.

But two years into our parties, I surveyed the scene from the corner and wondered,
Why are we having these parties?
What ­were we making, coming together like that? We ­were trying to prove that we had everything because we
had parties, but I began to feel like we had nothing but
parties. If anyone from the future could look back on what we ­were building, I was sure they would say,
That could only have been built by slaves.

Friends passed through our doors. We laid out food and
drinks. I started going to bed at one in the morning, then at midnight, then eleven, then ten. When finally every
one left at two or three or four, I would rise from bed and go
downstairs, clean up the food, and cap the drinks. I would straighten the pillows, fix the chairs, sweep away the remnants of bread and cheese, dump out the cigarette butts and plastic cups. This was now my favorite part of the party.

When I was little, I was truly afraid that one day I would grow up and get divorced. As I got older, this fear grew with me, and upon getting engaged, the fear raised an anchor and threw it down in my very center. A fear can feel like a premonition, and so it was with me; before marrying, and once
married, I never imagined the happy years that he and I
might share. What I felt instead was dread—­helpless before our marriage's inevitable end.

I felt like I was the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow in one: I could not feel my heart, I had no courage, I could not use my brain.

One night at one of our parties, I went into the bathroom with my stomach rumbling. I sat on the toilet and waited for the massive shit that I knew was coming, while friends and strangers sat around the living room, or stood outside the door, talking and drinking. Sitting there, I recalled a dream from the night before, in which I was
taking pills that made me shit a lot. In my dream, I decided
I would only write what I thought about as I shit—­since I was now spending all my time shitting. But I could not shit, sitting there at the party. I hated the thought that when I opened the door, I would reveal to everyone the shittiness that was mine. I stood up and buttoned my jeans, looked down into the empty bowl, and went to get a drink.

After pouring myself a gin and tonic, I noticed that my husband was talking close to someone I had never
seen
before, who was a sitting on the window ledge, talking
loudly
over him. She had bleached blond hair and dark, obvious roots. Her voice was deep. She had the pitless eyes of a cartoon
character and a genuine nonchalance in her being, and
she was dressed in a strange outfit: heavy boots, tall white socks over black leggings, and a pink corduroy jacket with white fluffy clouds. She looked at the same time like a little girl, a sexy woman, and a man.

My husband and I never observed much decorum about who we could talk or flirt with—­half the ­whole point of the parties was to talk and flirt around a bit—­but something about this scene was threatening. I didn't like his eagerness, how drunk he was getting, how alive and happy he seemed. It ­wasn't like watching him talk to other girls. I felt a jealousy spoil my blood, noticing the loose and confident way she had, her unmistakable freedom.
What does she have that I don't?
came into my head, like a thunderclap; a
question that left me so ashamed that I turned away and
made for the fire escape to smoke alone.

I was sitting on the iron steps in the coolish breeze, half
finished with my cigarette, when the girl climbed out of
the window and looked at me.

“Can I bum one?” she asked. “I lost my cigarettes in the street.”

I handed over the pack, ner­vous inside. She told me her name was Margaux, and I told her my name was Sheila and lit her cigarette, then sat back, trembling inside. Had she come out ­here for
me
? An excitement ­rose in my being just to think it. But I didn't say a word. Instead, we smoked together quietly, and as she exhaled, the trees touched each other's branches in the wind.

Later, remembering that night, all I recalled was the physical distance between us. We began seeing each other all over the city. We would say hello, not much more. Then we started exchanging emails, making plans and breaking
them. Somehow it felt okay. If I canceled, she was relieved; it
gave her more time to paint. And whenever she canceled, I
felt relieved, as I was eager to finish writing my play.
Finally we made plans that neither of us got around to canceling in time. We would visit an art gallery a little north of the city.

We met up at the northernmost subway station and waited
for the bus. When we got on, we learned from the driver that
it would be a forty-­minute drive—­something neither of us had anticipated.

And the ­whole way up, and the ­whole way back, we sat there silently, too intimidated by the other to say a thing.

•
chapter
3
•

SHEILA AND MARGAUX

O
ne month later, I received an invitation to Margaux's birthday party. I considered going, but in the end, I did not. I had more pressing things to do—­like work on my play and make it perfect. I also figured her party would be filled with all sorts of interesting and impressive people who ­were closer to her than I was; that she would just glance at me from the corner and wave.

My husband left our ­house for hers, and I was fast asleep when he came home.

One week later, Sheila receives an email from Margaux
.
.
.

1. i have always admired a lack of social obligation. in fact, i aspire to it. the number of birthday parties i attend is too many. apart from that, i assumed you ­weren't coming to my party and you did not.

2. at my party, your husband, probably being nothing but sweet and drunk and feeling generous, and probably having nothing to do with your sentiments, said, “hell, you and sheila should spend more time together.”

3. and i laughed and thought nothing of it.

4. but then when i saw you on the street yesterday, i was very annoyed and probably annoying. my annoyance was unfair and a little silly.

5.
i could never find fault in someone for choosing not to
be my friend. but i was disappointed not to have a girl,
after searching high and low.

6.
but the boys i know might be girly enough for me. and
girly boys are much easier to boss around than a girl, of
course.

7. to sum up, i'm not very smooth with married women, am i? but i will relax a little.

8. no response required, my pet, especially if i have hurt or troubled you.

I was thrown off by this email—­I had not figured that my presence at her party would mean a single thing! I went to
take a walk to sort out how I felt and how I ought to reply.
As
I wandered through the neighborhood, I zipped and unzipped
my jacket as my body went from hot to cold.

Strolling beneath the sun, I realized I'd never had a
woman either. I supposed I didn't trust them. What was a woman for? Two women was an alchemy I did not understand. I hadn't been close to a girl since Angela broke my heart when I was ten years old and told all of my secrets to everyone. It would have been so easy to count the ways I had been betrayed by girls, all the ways I had been hurt by them. And if I wanted, I could have as easily made a list of
all the girls to whom I had caused pain. First there was
Lorraine.

But it was not that way with men. Ever since I was a teenager, I had been drawn to men exclusively, and they drew themselves to me—­as lovers, as friends.
They
pursued
me
. It was simple. It was men I enjoyed talking to at parties, and whose opinions I was interested in hearing. It was men I wanted to grow close to and be influenced by. It was easy. There was a way in which I felt they would always come home. The good ones had a natural regard for me, and there was always an attempt to treat me nicely. Even if they could be neglectful or forgetful, they ­were rarely cruel, and though they ­weren't necessarily so reliable, they ­were trustworthy in the deeper sense: I never worried that a man's heart would turn against me—­at least not before mine turned against him—­and certainly not for no reason at all. There would always be a veil over their eyes when they looked at me, which was a kind of protection.

With a woman, who was too much the same, it never felt that way. So much had to be earned—­but no earnings built up! Trust had to be won from zero at every encounter. That's the reason you always see women being so effusive with each other—­crying out shrilly upon recognizing each other in the street. Women always have to confirm with each other, even after so many years:
We are still all right.
But in the exaggeration of their effusiveness, you know that things are
not
all right between them, and that they never
will be. A woman ­can't find rest or take up home in the heart
of another woman—­not permanently. It's just not a safe
place to land. I knew the heart of a woman could be a landing
ground for a man, but for a woman to try to land in
another woman's heart? That would be like landing on something wobbly, without form, like trying to stand tall in Jell-­O.
Why would I want to stand tall in Jell-­O?

Yet there ­were things in Margaux's email I could not resist. I admired her courage, her heart, and her brain. I envied the freedom I suspected in her, and wanted to know it better, and become that same way too.

Back at home, I emailed her to say that I regretted miss
ing her party, explaining that I'd thought I would finish my play that night. I said I would drop by her studio with
champagne soon to make it up.

Then I went to bed. My husband was out drinking
somewhere.

My first day of typing school, I sat there resolute. The instructor stood before us like a piece on a chessboard. She was stiff and without divinity. I knew I would learn nothing from such a wooden shoe.

I sat up straight and smiled at everyone in their seats. I
wanted all those liars on my side. I wanted them to stand up
and cheer my name later in the semester—to
be a hero to
all those liars! It didn't even matter that they ­were liars.
I was willing to be a hero even to liars. Even to thieves! I hoped my smiling would convince them
all of my good-­naturedness. At the very root of me, I hoped they would see, was a friendly idiot who didn't
know her own interests. With this in their minds, they'd relate to me as a peer, I hoped, and would one day let me lead them.

I prayed I ­wouldn't create any enemies, as I had done in football school. There, all of my plans backfired. The jocks seemed to have more integrity of spirit than I did. They ­weren't going to let some withered wanderer with half a plan lead them. By the end of the first afternoon, they ­were laughing at me. The next morning, I went in wearing a different sweater, but they still knew it was me and stuffed me in a locker. I saw I ­wasn't going to outwit them. Those people didn't deal in wit. Even if I
did
outwit them, that ­wouldn't shake them. Their assurance was rooted in something deeper, more solid, from which it flowed.

I should have stuck around to discover the nature of that soil for myself—­but I belong with the liars and weaklings. I cannot lead my betters. If I want to be a hero, it will not be to the jocks, whose interiors have an integrity that springs up from the very center of the earth itself. It will be to the utter liars I find myself sitting with ­here, in the white-­walled room that is the typing school's second-­floor studio.

Photocopied and handed out to us at the beginning of class was a second-rate artist's rendering of the placement of the keys as you would find them on a real typewriter.

“Hold on to it,” we were told. “This will be your
typewriter for the next two weeks.”

One morning, Sheila finds an email from Margaux
.
.
.

1. i'm free:

2. this afternoon, night

3. tomorrow afternoon, night

4. the next afternoon, night and day

5. just hiding inside painting

6. wearing a matching tracksuit and listening to the bbc.

They continue to write back and forth. Margaux emails Sheila
.
.
.

1. there was a robbery and they're blaming it on me.

2. i ­can't leave the neighborhood! i ­haven't felt this at home in de­cades!

3. legally i don't think they can make me leave but they live above me and work below me and my tolerance is gone.

4. i was pretty upset, but now i'm glad. i have decided to find a much better studio with an absentee landlord.

5. i'm scouring the neighborhood with my cell phone.

1. selena's gallery is having a private viewing of an artist whose one previous show i saw. it's a fancy exclusive affair with lots of directors, curators, and free martinis or something.

2. you and i have very personally not been invited.

3. i heard gossip that selena felt pretty stupid about telling me she didn't like female writers. i nodded.

1. i've been throwing out old art for the last couple of days, trying hard not to, trying hard to, but i just now figured that it's only fair to explain to you who i am, so i am emailing you my very first painting (17 yrs of age—­i wish i could say 14 but the date is written on it along with my very fancy signature) even though i want to throw it out.

2. and i found my cigarettes in the street!

3. my paintings look pretty good when i'm wearing your special glasses. thank you.

1. misha and i ­were taking a walk this afternoon. we passed a
please come in for our open ­house
sign. we went through a small little door in a fence into a small little garden into a small little ­house. it was leaning about 5 degrees to the left. the windows open like doors and the bedroom is the size of a car.

2. i thought maybe you could buy it. “it's 240 thousand, no money down,” the meek woman said, “and 100 years old.”

3. i wish i could buy a ­house for a friend like i can buy a cake.

4.
if you're curious about what i think you look like as a
­house, you should see it.

1. i am surprised at how much i miss you, like a real teenage girl.

1. hello. i was wondering, if you have red bike lights, could i borrow them tomorrow night?

1. i'm going to paint your portrait a hundred times and never mention it to anyone—­articulately.

1. yes, i would like to see you. i have all the time in the world.

When I was little, I would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling in the darkened room at night, and quietly sing the song we had been taught in Hebrew school on the first day of the year, which we sang every morning.

Love is something if you give it away,

Give it away, give it away,

Love is something if you give it away,

You end up having more.

Love is like a magic penny!

Hold on tight and you won't have any!

Lend it, spend it, you'll have so many,

They'll roll all over the floor, oh!

This seemed impossible to me, just crazy! If you give it away you'll end up having
more
? It was the only poem I knew and
my favorite one, for it baffled me. I recited it over and over
to myself, as if there was something I could learn from it. In my head, in rooms in homes, zillions of pennies rolled all over the floors, thick and encompassing like waves.

While I was lying there, overcome with wonder like
that, Margaux was down in Texas, fighting with the pop­u­lar girls beneath the harsh Texas sun. The afternoon of her grade-­six graduation
ceremony, she knew she would have to climb the stairs
of the gym and stand on stage before every
one to receive
an award for being the smartest kid in the
school. That
morning, as she was getting dressed, she went into her
father's closet and pulled out a brown suit and her father's
brown shoes and stuffed them in a duffel bag and took them
with her as she left the ­house. Right before the
announcement, she put them on and walked across the stage,
the arms of his jacket hanging low beneath her hands, the cuffs of his pants bunched and dragging, to the laughter of the audience, her dignity intact.

For so long I had been looking hard into every person I met, hoping I might discover in them all the thoughts and feelings I hoped life would give me, but hadn't. There are some people who say you have to find such things in yourself, that you cannot count on anyone to supply even the smallest crumb that your life lacks.

Although I knew this might be true, it didn't prevent
me from looking anyway. Who cares what people say? What
people say has no effect on your heart.