The Lover's Dictionary (5 page)

flux
,
n.

The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.

Accept this. We must accept this.

fraught
,
adj.

Does every “I love you” deserve an “I love you too”? Does every kiss deserve a kiss back? Does every night deserve to be spent on a lover?

If the answer to any of these is “No,” what do we do?

G

gamut
,
n.

When I was eight, I was the lead in our third-grade musical, a truncated version of
The Sound of Music
featuring only the numbers in which the Von Trapp children appeared. I was Kurt, and my whole family — grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, even some family friends — showed up to see me bid
adieu, adieu
to
you and you and you
. My mother took hundreds of pictures, one of which found its way to our apartment — me in a green floral shirt, meant to approximate curtains. I am smiling, so proud of myself and my role.

You saw this and told me that when you were eight, you were a tree in the school play. You can’t remember the name of the play, or the story. Only the cardboard branches that you cut out yourself, because your mom was busy and your father didn’t think it was his job to help you. They promised they would come, but your mother ran late and your father said he forgot. That night, you tore up your costume into tiny little pieces, but nobody noticed. You scattered the cardboard in the forest on your way to school the next day. You can’t remember what the play was about, but you can remember the sight of the trail you left.

gingerly
,
adj.

Your grandmother dies a few weeks after we start seeing each other, and there is no question that you’ll go to the funeral without me. Your father calls to tell you while we’re having breakfast, and keeps the conversation short. I take you home, help you pack, help you book your ticket. You won’t cry, and that makes me want to. I take the subway with you to the airport, even though you tell me I don’t have to. Then I stay home and wait for you to call. I cancel my plans, keep the ringer on high. The minute you’re alone, you call me, and I talk to you for five long hours, tethering you to your life back here so you won’t be pulled back into theirs. I don’t comment on your lack of tears, but then you bring it up, say, “I guess I’m so used to a dying family that this doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.

gravity
,
n.

I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I’m just imagining it.

gregarious
,
adj.

Soon I was able to measure the alcohol and its effect.

One drink and you’d unwind a little, and always order another.

Two drinks and you were happily unsettled. You’d loosen or lose a layer of clothing. You’d talk effortlessly with our friends.

Three drinks and you started to get going. Encouraging everyone else to drink. Joking around with me, if you could tell I was in the mood to joke. Talking to strangers. Saying you loved life.

Four drinks and you stopped reading my cues. You joked regardless of my mood, sometimes mercilessly. Everyone was now your friend, except maybe me.

Five drinks and you were the funniest person you’d ever heard, and you were charismatic enough to make everyone else believe it, too. Sometimes, at this point, you’d tell everyone how much you loved me. Or you’d ignore me.

Six drinks and you were ready to fall.

Of course, it would all depend on the drink. But eventually I learned to take that into account, too.

I would always wait to take you home.

grimace
,
n.

Yes, I keep the water next to the bed in case I get thirsty at night. But it’s also for the morning, so you can take a sip before you kiss me.

guise
,
n.

It was a slow Sunday. You were reading the paper, and I was cleaning up after breakfast. The light between the slats of the blinds was making your hair glow in a pattern that shifted every time you moved. You sensed me watching, looked up.

“What?” you asked.

“I just wonder,” I said. “How do you picture yourself ?”

You looked down at the paper, then back at me.

“I don’t know,” you said. “I don’t ever really see myself. And when I do, I’m usually still an eighteen-year-old, wondering what the hell I’m doing. You?”

And I told you: I think of a photograph you took of me, up in Montreal. You told me to jump in the air, so in the picture, my feet are off the ground. Later, I asked you why you wanted me to do that, and you told me it was the only way to get me to forget about the expression on my face. You were right. I am completely unposed, completely genuine. In my mind’s eye, I picture myself like that, reacting to you.

H

halcyon
,
adj.

A snow day. The subway has shut down, your office has shut down, my office has shut down. We pile back into bed, under the covers — chilly air, warm bodies. Nestling and tracing the whole morning, then bundling up to walk through the empty snowdrift streets, experiencing a new kind of city quiet, then breaking it with a snowball fight. A group of teenagers joins in. We come home frozen and sweaty, botching the hot chocolate on first try, then jump back into bed for the rest of the day, emerging only to wheel over the TV and order Chinese food and check to see if the snow is still falling and falling and falling, which it is.

happenstance
,
n.

You said he wasn’t even supposed to be at the convention, but one of his co-workers had gotten sick, so he was filling in at the last minute. He wasn’t supposed to be at the bar when you went there with Toby, you told me. As if that in some way made it better, that fate hadn’t planned it weeks in advance.

harbinger
,
n.

When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you’d twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed.

Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at
K
. At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with
K
. Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a
K
. It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn’t even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first
K
.

I will admit: When I got home that night, I went to the refrigerator and took out another apple. But I stopped twisting at
J
and put the apple back.

You see, I didn’t trust myself. I knew that even if the apple wasn’t ready, I was going to pull that stem.

healthy
,
adj.

There are times when I’m alone that I think,
This is it. This
is actually the natural state.
All I need are my thoughts and my small acts of creation and my ability to go or do whatever I want to go or do. I am myself, and that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I’m better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own world, and then simply leave it when it’s time to go.

hiatus
,
n.

“It’s up to you,” you said, the graciousness of the cheater toward the cheatee.

I guess I don’t believe in a small break. I feel a break is a break, and if it starts small, it only gets wider.

So I said I wanted you to stay, even though nothing could stay the same.

hubris
,
n.

Every time I call you mine, I feel like I’m forcing it, as if saying it can make it so. As if I’m reminding you, and reminding the universe:
mine
. As if that one word from me could have that kind of power.

I

I
,
n.

Me without anyone else.

idea
,
n.

“I’m quitting,” you say. “I can’t believe how wasted I was. This time, I’m really going to do it.”

And I tell you I’ll help. It’s almost a script at this point.

imperceptible
,
adj.

We stopped counting our relationship in dates (first date, second date, fifth date, seventh) and started counting it in months. That might have been the first true commitment, this shift in terminology. We never talked about it, but we were at a party and someone asked how long we’d been together, and when you said, “A month and a half,” I knew we had gotten there.

impromptu
,
adj.

I have summer Fridays off; you don’t. So what better reason for me to take you to lunch and then keep you at lunch for the whole afternoon? Reserving these afternoons to do all the city things we never get around to doing — wandering through MoMA, stopping in at the Hayden Planetarium, hopping onto the Staten Island Ferry and riding back and forth, back and forth, watching all the people as they unknowingly parade for us. You notice clothes more than I do, so it’s a pleasure to hear your running commentary, to construct lives out of worn handbags or shirts opened one button too low. Had we tried to plan these excursions, they never would have worked. There has to be that feeling of escape.

inadvertent
,
adj.

You left your email open on my computer. I couldn’t help it — I didn’t open any of them, but I did look at who they were from, and was relieved.

incessant
,
adj.

The doubts. You had to save me from my constant doubts. That deep-seeded feeling that I wasn’t good enough for anything — I was a fake at my job, I wasn’t your equal, my friends would forget me if I moved away for a month. It wasn’t as easy as hearing voices — nobody was telling me this. It was just something I knew. Everyone else was playing along, but I was sure that one day they would all stop.

indelible
,
adj.

That first night, you took your finger and pointed to the top of my head, then traced a line between my eyes, down my nose, over my lips, my chin, my neck, to the center of my chest. It was so surprising, I knew I would never mimic it. That one gesture would be yours forever.

ineffable
,
adj.

These words will ultimately end up being the barest of reflections, devoid of the sensations words cannot convey. Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.

infidel
,
n.

We think of them as hiding in the hills — rebels, ransackers, rogue revolutionaries. But really, aren’t they just guilty of infidelity?

innate
,
adj.

“Why do you always make the bed?” I asked. “We’re only going to get back in it later tonight.”

You looked at me like I was the worst kind of slacker.

“It’s just what I’ve always done,” you said. “We always had to make our beds. Always.”

integral
,
adj.

I was so nervous to meet Kathryn. You’d made it clear she was the only friend whose opinion you really cared about, so I spent more time getting dressed for her than I ever had for you. We met at that sushi place on Seventh Avenue and I awkwardly shook her hand, then told her I’d heard so much about her, which came off like me trying to legitimize your friendship, when I was the one who needed to get the stamp of approval. I was on safer ground once we started talking about books, and she seemed impressed that I actually read them. She remarked on the steadiness of my job, the steadiness of my family. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be steady, but she saw my unease and assured me it was a good thing, not usually your type. We found out we’d gone to summer camp within ten minutes of each other, and that sealed it. You were lost in our tales of the Berkshires and the long, unappreciative stretches we’d spent on the Tanglewood lawn.

At the end of the dinner, I got a hug, not a handshake. She seemed so relieved. I should have been glad . . . but it only made me wonder about the other guys of yours that she’d met. I wondered why I was considered such a break from the norm.

J

jaded
,
adj.

We’ll have contests to see which one of us can be more skeptical.
America will never vote for a Jew for president
right on down to
The younger, cuter, puppydog guy will totally be the
next American Idol.
Like our own version of that old song — “Anything you can do, I can do bleaker.”

But.

In the end, we both want the right thing to happen, the right person to win, the right idea to prevail. We have no faith that it will, but still we want it. Neither of us has given up on anything.