The damages, p.19
The Damages, page 19
Benji walks ahead again, but I see his shoulders move up and down, dismissing me. I follow quietly until he slows his pace around the parking area. Before we cross into the shade, I notice our shadows. “Look, sweetie,” I say. “You’re almost as tall as me without even trying.” When Benji was little, he would arrange our bodies on the sidewalk to make our shadows the same height. I would blob my shadow over his, pretending to gobble it up to make him laugh. I know he remembers this, but he turns to me and knits his eyebrows in pretend confusion so that I’ll think he has forgotten our game. This stings, but the dismay I feel is directed more at Lukas than Benji. How dare he bring me down with his ship, telling our son I’m the liar. Our kid needs at least one steady grown-up. Wasn’t Lukas mature enough to know at least that?
I had planned to convey two critical points to Benji in this discussion, both strongly emphasized in my online reading. First, that his dad loves him no matter what. Second, that his dad is not a bad person, even if it does turn out that he did something wrong. But when we reach the car, I say, “Benj? One last thing. No matter what, your dad loves you. Okay?”
Reflected in the car window, I see Benji roll his eyes.
As I unlock the door, Elaine Ng reenters my mind, and I think, Maybe I will speak to you. Lukas doesn’t get to tell my part in this story.
8
The cheating started early. Before that, there was incompatibility. The first sign of it came only a few months after Lukas and I agreed to be exclusive, which was about six months after we first fooled around.
I remember being at a diner with Lukas and his friend when a familiar R&B song came on about the singer’s all-consuming desire to “make love” and “feel so close.” Lukas said, “I hear these songs, and I’m pretty sure they’re describing a kind of sex I’ve never had.” His friend and I laughed, but I was unsettled. I couldn’t get the remark out of my head. Never? It was true, and increasingly notable to me, that all we ever did in bed was fuck. Not necessarily rough or impersonal fucking, just a bit one note. Sitting in that restaurant, I realized that I had been waiting for that to evolve; I’d been hoping we’d settle into a gentler, more tender plain in time. I assumed he was capable of it, I assumed everyone was. What I began to worry about was that if I couldn’t unlock that side of him, maybe I wasn’t the one he should really be with. But I didn’t want him to have the same thought. It was easier to scoff at the corny song than to say anything that might cause him to rethink what either of us should want.
I wasn’t worried about our sexual compatibility for my own sake. I didn’t love the sex we were having, but I thought that if our sex life had indeed reached its limits of romantic expression, I could probably live with that. Now that we were in a committed relationship, I felt invested and fortunate, and I didn’t want a small sexual problem to undo everything. I wanted him to think I was unfussy, unflappable, easygoing. These were the things I figured he liked best about me. Plus, maybe sex wasn’t that important to me; there were lots of other things that made us compatible. We both liked Jonathan Franzen, NPR, The Wire. We both appreciated a good pun. We respected each other’s talents; he loved my baking, and I really did think he was a good writer. There were mornings we spent in bed together discussing Billi Bean, and sometimes he would jot down my ideas on Post-it notes and stick them to his laptop, which thrilled me. We also bonded over our shared dislikes. If someone at a party said something stupid, I loved to catch Lukas’s eye across a room, to be the recipient of his secret smile.
Instead of getting better, our incompatibility in bed got worse as the months wore on. Once, Lukas asked me if I had any interest in couples. I told him, quite honestly, that I didn’t think so. The idea of hooking up with another couple was terrifying to me; sex made me self-conscious enough with just one person, and I didn’t like the idea of performing for, or being watched by, two or more additional people who could later sit around and discuss, in detail, how my body looked or how my moves lacked originality. “No problem,” Lukas said. “Just had to ask.”
Despite my lack of enthusiasm, Lukas began forwarding me ads from Craigslist: “Couples looking for other couples.” He’d write subject lines like:“Sound interesting?” I demurred at first, but not strongly. Sometimes I said nothing. One Sunday afternoon, after spending most of the day building up the nerve, I replied to one of the forwarded posts with: If this is something you really want to try, and if I am holding you back, we should talk about it? Then I waited for two anxious days.
When Lukas responded, he also did it by email. It wasn’t a matter of “trying,” he confessed. He and most of his exes had been involved with couples. He said it was probably time he told me that he thought of himself as “an individual out of alignment with typical heteronormative practices” and that he’d experimented widely. Groups of all kinds, for example. I didn’t know what kinds of groups there were, and I didn’t ask. He also said—and this was the part I clung to—that he didn’t need random, anonymous sex if that wasn’t what I wanted. He just needed to know that I wasn’t judging him. He explained that he’d gone through long periods in the past of thinking his behaviour was wrong—he’d delete his dating profiles and chat histories—but eventually, he would seek out new, anonymous experiences because it was fun for him, a way to relax and let off steam. He wrote:
I just want to be honest about who I am. But I also want you to know that I can and will curtail all of this in deference to you. Being with you is more important to me than being part of any sexual subculture.
My immediate instinct was to make him feel better. I didn’t want him feeling shame or regret. I reassured him, again by email, that I wasn’t judging, that I didn’t want him to feel he had to hide any part of himself. I said that there were certain aspects of our discussion that tested me, but tests were good. Who wanted life to be completely predictable? Then, because I didn’t want him to leave me, I said something I shouldn’t have, because it wasn’t very honest. I said, “Who knows? I may not be closed to these ideas forever.”
At that point, I was mainly optimistic about us. Now that his secret was out, I thought we might grow closer. But months went by, and nothing more was said about what either of us wanted. We moved in together. I tried to forget what I knew. But one Sunday morning, when he was in the shower, I found his computer open to the Craigslist personals. I tried to keep my voice firmly in the register of curiosity, not accusation, when I asked him about what I’d seen. He was honest immediately. He said he just read the ads, from time to time, because women’s brazen pleas for anonymous sex turned him on. He even admitted to chatting with them online sometimes, just for the sexy banter. Casually, he said, “Honestly, Ros, it’s just masturbation fodder. All guys need to masturbate.” He seemed to care more about whether I would judge him than whether or not the behaviour was okay with me. I did my best to be very open-minded, very 2007. “Fine,” I said. “As long as it never goes further.” He said, “It won’t.”
I believed Lukas. Then, one spring evening, we drove to Big Bear campground to meet Lukas’s friends, and we got lost on the way. I picked up his cellphone from the drink holder between us to call for directions. I noticed a text message from the name “Redhead” and was moved to open it. The message said: Meet next week? I can’t resist your offer of a cock(tail).
“You have a message,” I said to him as calmly as I could. I didn’t tell him I had read it.
He snatched the phone from me and put it in his pocket. “Use your phone,” he said. “My reception sucks out here.”
If you saw this scene in a movie, you’d know what was going on right away. You’d wait for the girl to say something. If she didn’t say something in the car, you’d expect it to come out later: a tense, drunk confrontation around a blazing firepit, the other couples backing away into their tents. But we met up with his friends, and I didn’t say a thing. I told myself that “Redhead” was nothing, just a character in his dirty banter. I watched Lukas closely the next week, and he never slipped away for cocktails. So I breathed a little easier.
I was taking lunch at the college where we both worked, eating fries and idly checking Facebook, when I finally got the message. A direct message from a woman called Trista Ames. Her profile was private, and her picture was just a photo of Betty Boop, so I couldn’t find out much except that she was from Buena Park. The message said: We don’t know each other, but I feel you should know something. Maybe you and your bf have an arrangement. If you do, that’s cool. But if you don’t, you should know what’s happening with my friend…
I felt so incredibly stupid. Not stupid for being blindsided, stupid because I didn’t have any real excuse for calling it a blindsiding—I’d had every reason to investigate after finding that strange text, and I never did. And there were other signs. Lukas was possessive of his phone, he liked to go for long Sunday drives “just to think,” and there were nights he left abruptly because of “a Billi Bean idea” that he needed to work out at the late-night Starbucks. What was wrong with me? How had I let things reach the point where I was hearing about them from Trista in Buena Park?
Lukas seemed relieved to be caught. He admitted to feeling lately like his life was a house of cards. Now that the collapse was happening, he saw no sense in holding back. He said, if he had to estimate, there had been about fifty other women since we’d been together. Maybe more. But just sex, he said repeatedly. One-offs, for the most part, that had nothing to do with me. These were desperate, clichéd reassurances, but they worked on me. What I heard was that I was special. I was trustworthy. Also, that he wanted to stop. He didn’t want to live a double life, he said, it made him sick. There was something he needed from these women, but whatever it was, it was not right, and he would fix it. Could I help him fix it? He didn’t want to lose me, but he’d understand if I left him.
I was so calm through his confession. I listened as a therapist would. When I did get upset, I immediately dialed it back. I didn’t want to be insensitive. I needed to help him. He was ashamed and suffering, and I wanted him to feel safe and attended to.
Lukas found a therapist right away. That therapist, Harriet, said that he could learn to manage some of his sexual compulsions. He set about managing them, blocking the women he cheated with on his phone and Facebook, shutting down his online dating profiles, staying home every night of the week. He tried group therapy. He quit the first group because it was too cultish. He quit the second because he said it just felt like a bunch of nerdy IT guys he couldn’t relate to. He quit the third because it had rules against masturbation, and come on. Then, after a couple months, he quit Harriet. He admitted to me that he had started to sexualize her when she seemed too interested in the details of his encounters. I doubted she was showing any more interest than was necessary for the job, but I told him I appreciated his honesty. I suggested a male therapist, and he said he’d look into it, but I don’t think he ever did. He promised me that he had learned a lot and was already, basically, a different person. For the moment, he didn’t need more therapy, he said. He just needed love and acceptance. He needed me.
Still, I applied to Cordon Bleu in Paris. I was short money-wise, but Mom agreed to loan me what I needed, which was far more than half, when the admission offer came in.
The decision to go was mostly for myself, but I also wanted to show Lukas that I could do unpredictable things. I asked him to come with me, but he said, “You know what, Rosie? Maybe a break isn’t the worst thing.” Nineties TV had taught me that the term break meant doomed. I panicked; I didn’t want to end things. I begged him not to think that way. He said, “Let’s see how things go, see what we learn about ourselves.” If he’d asked me to stay, I would have, but instead, I went to Paris.
Lukas gave me a digital camera as a parting gift. I have about three photographs and a bunch of grainy memories of that time. When I see movies set in Paris, I have to remind myself I once lived there.
I thought I was too old for a roommate, so I lived alone; I see now that was probably a mistake. I rented a cheap studio apartment at the edge of the city, and it took me an hour to commute to the school. My apartment had a view of the Marne through windows that opened wide enough to make my heart race. I spent one Saturday afternoon watching a car being pulled from the clay-coloured water; I never found out what happened to the driver or if there were others inside. In another direction, I could see into the kitchen of a neighbouring apartment. In the evenings, I watched the couple who lived there. Once, the man did an odd little dance, twirling a wooden spoon for his girlfriend. They seemed to be in a faraway country that no amount of travel could ever get me to.
I lived close to the veterinary school, which had the depressing effect of making me think of Megan more often than I had in years. What was she doing now? Had she ever become a vet? Had she actually lost her mind that winter? How much was I to blame if she had? I thought of her when I saw happy groups of vet students, or what I assumed were vet students, sitting with tulip-shaped glasses of beer at the brasserie terrace near the metro station. On warmer evenings in spring, I would walk by slowly, sometimes twice, hoping someone might recognize me from around, call out to me, invite me to have a drink. But that’s not how things work, and I was too self-conscious to go in and order a drink by myself. One evening, a pretty, fortysomething mother and her son, a boy of about eight or nine, sat at a table in the shade. She had a glass of white wine; he had a large coupe glacée. She was telling him a story, her elegant hands tracing a picture in the air in front of her. I heard the music of their combined laughter, and a feeling passed over me, similar to the one I’d experienced my first time on Heritage Street. Maybe this was what I was looking for. Maybe it was the company of a child that I wanted; maybe she was who I wanted to be. And just as soon as I thought it, I worried it wouldn’t happen for me.
For the most part, I liked baking school. I learned how to make custard, flan, sweet and savoury soufflés. I liked the impermanence of what I made. Every day, sometimes every hour, I could start again. But I felt very alone. Closing in on thirty, I was one of the oldest students in my group, and while the age gap wasn’t that significant, it felt like a gulf to me. I thought that I had to be more serious than my younger peers, but I figured they saw me as a joke: I should be settling down at my age, not starting over. Gilbert, my assigned mentor, a dick in his late fifties, told me there was talent in my fingers, but I worked too much with my head. Relax, he said. Where do you need to go, Rosaline? He’d chuckle then, as if he knew there wasn’t a good answer.
I spent most evenings watching Friday Night Lights on my laptop, eating tufts of bread, cheese and packaged ham. I never baked in the apartment; I didn’t have an oven. Sometimes I’d rollerblade home after school to kill time, two hours along the Seine, through the Champ de Mars and past Notre Dame, though I often forgot to look up and take notice. Most of my mental energy was reserved for composing emails to Lukas, but I rarely sent them. Once or twice a week, we Skyped. He laughed at my imitations of Gilbert. He told me what was happening with his writing. Talking to him, I felt the grey fog of my life in Paris lift away.
I returned to L.A. nine months after I left, one week after getting my baking diploma. I had considered travelling around Europe a bit, but I was too exhausted, lonely and broke. Lukas picked me up at LAX. He didn’t rush to me, he stood back, smiling a sad little smile, waiting for me to come to him. He touched both my arms, just above the elbows, once I was close enough. My huge duffle still hung across my shoulders; he did not take it from me. “I am so glad you’re back,” he said.
“It’s good to see you, too.”
“You look great.”
Did I? I’d lost more weight in Paris, all the walking, but I didn’t think of myself as looking “great.” In Paris, I’d felt invisible. Lukas looked very fit in his thin white T-shirt, jeans and aviators. Very Los Angeles. I almost cried with homesickness for the place I’d just returned to.
His expression shifted suddenly, his eyes sparkling like the terrazzo floor below us. “Billi Bean’s going to be published,” he said. “You’re the first to know. I really wanted to tell you before anyone else.”
“That’s great!” I said.
I looked at him closely, trying to figure out what he wanted me to do.
“Put down your bag a sec.” I obeyed. He took my right hand loosely in his. “I think things could be really good with us from now on,” he said. “Everything is coming into place.”
When I hugged him, he felt so solid. “I’m so happy for you,” I said.
It might seem sad to some that I took him back, but I wasn’t sad. I remember driving home with him from the airport, the sun bouncing off the cars on the 405, and the feeling that I was precisely where I needed to be, that I had learned something from the break, after all.
Maybe that’s the sad part. That I couldn’t imagine anything better.
* * *
—
A few months after returning from France, I was pregnant with Benji. Lukas and I called it an accident, but I think we were purposely careless. A baby was an excuse to stay the course, to stay in the present, think about the future, and not look too hard at our foundation. Still, there were a couple of months in the first trimester when I thought about doing motherhood on my own, because I knew—really, I knew in my gut—that it would end up this way. I thought about the mother on the terrace in Paris, chatting happily alone with her son. I thought about her, and I almost considered doing it on my own. That was as hard as I tried to take control of what anyone could see—if I’d let them—was a desperate situation.
As it happened, Lukas and I both got caught up in a wave of fresh start-ism that anesthetized my anxiety. With Lukas’s publisher’s advance and more money from Mom, we could afford a down payment on a house with a yard, and we found one in a commuter city near the college. With a baby coming, it wasn’t the right time to embark on a new career as a pastry chef, so I got another contract at the college, and I baked at home when I was in the mood. I’d never lived in the suburbs, but the dullness and predictability of life in Orange County appealed to me—Lukas could surf every morning to take the edge off, be home by six thirty every night. For a while, he had a little garage band, and that seemed to make him happy. Lukas said that he wanted this life, this stability. I just wanted whatever conditions would make him less likely to cheat.
