Animal Husbandry (10 page)

“Right behind it. She renovated the apartment about two years ago, just after she bought it. New kitchen. New bathroom. Refinished hardwood floors. Working fireplace.”

“No way,” I said. My fireplace was the one and only regret I had about giving up my apartment on Charles Street.

“Wait. There’s more. Sunken living room.”

“Shut
up
.”

“I’m not kidding. I don’t think it’s like Park-Avenue-sunken-living-room sunken living room, but she said it’s two or three little steps down.”

“Sounds sunken to me.” I sat back in my chair and tried to picture what the apartment looked like, and what it would look like with us in it—
the perfect Cow and Bull couple, the envy of all our friends
. I was so excited that I was afraid I was getting too excited. “What’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is the money. Sixteen hundred dollars a month. That’s her mortgage and maintenance. But it’s a two-year official sublet, so once we’re in, we’re in.”

“Fuck,” I exhaled.

“I know. I thought in addition to the bliss of moving in together, we’d get the added-value-bonus bliss of saving money. But we can swing it.” He paused. “So what do you think? You wanna see it?”

Of course I did.

From the moment we walked into that apartment the next evening we knew—or, at least, I knew—that we had found the perfect apartment. Standing there, in the little sunken living room, with the little bedroom and the little kitchen and the little bathroom all within view, I felt a thrill and a calmness I had never known before.

To borrow a phrase from Ray: My joy knew no bounds.

When Tracy left us alone for a while, Ray reached for my hand and walked us into the bedroom and over to the window. It was just after seven-thirty, but there was still light in the summer sky—a blue and orange and violet drape being pulled closed behind the rooftops of the city. He put his hand under my hair on the back of my neck and held my head against his chest, and I could hear his heart beating against the noise of the traffic from the street below.

“I love this place,” he whispered.

I tightened my arms around his back and closed my eyes.

“Not just this apartment, but this place we’re in right here, right now. This is how I always imagined it could be—dreamed it could be, this feeling of bliss, of complete certainty. But I never believed it would really happen to me.”

“Me either,” I said.

“We’re going to come home here every night—come home to each other every night, after shitty days at work, and we’re going to be happier than anyone else in the whole world.” I lifted my head, and he kissed me on the forehead, then on the neck, and then he put his mouth against my ear. “I love you, Jane,” he said, just like the first time.

And, as it turned out, for the last time.

Of course I didn’t know that it would be the last time he’d say those words, that it would be the last time I’d be as completely happy as I was during those few final minutes we were alone together in Tracy’s apartment.

But it was.

Later I would come to view that scene as the final peak in a series of peaks—the benchmark peak, the peak that would soon become the crest of the wave over which I would float, then fall all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Had I known that standing by the window would be the last good moment, the last true moment of my time with Ray, I would have done something to mark it: I would have told him that the breath of relief I’d exhaled the night he told me he loved me came from a well of loneliness and sadness so deep and so hidden and so constant that no one else before him had ever reached it, taken the edge off its pain. That his empathy and tenderness had unearthed it—my nameless, silent grief—and that was why I had felt so inexplicably connected to him.

Had I known, I would have gone over every moment we’d spent together—the nights in my apartment, in his apartment, in the apartment he had house-sat; the weekend we drove out to Sagaponack; the two weeks’ vacation we took in August in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod; Labor Day weekend, when we stayed in the city and he bought me a pair of teeny-tiny gold hoop earrings and I bought him a long-sleeved striped T-shirt; all the conversations we’d had in the car, in the dark, on the phone, or right before we’d fall asleep. I would have tried, and undoubtedly failed, to express the inexpressible: that for the
first time in my life I knew what it felt like not to feel alone; that he seemed to love me more than anyone else ever had; that I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone.

But since I didn’t know, I focused on everything we had to do in the coming two weeks.

Signing the new lease.

Breaking our current leases.

Figuring out what crucial items were missing from our combined dowries.

Packing, switching utilities on and off, arranging movers.

Not to mention the most odious task of all: Ray breaking the news to Mia that not only was their relationship, and thus engagement, really over but that he was moving in with someone else. That he was moving in with me.

And though I knew those two weeks would be bad—that Ray would feel guilty and miserable and that there wouldn’t be anything I could do except ride it out and be waiting on the other end with open arms, matching pots and pans, and a new set of sheets—I didn’t know they would be as bad as they were.

I didn’t know a man in love could make himself disappear.

How exactly did Ray disappear? Slowly and subtly.

First came
I Can’t
.

The
I-​ can’t-​ go-​ to-​ Bloomingdale’s-​ because-​ I-​ can’t-​ possibly-​ think-​ about-​ buying-​ things-​ for-​ us-​ when-​ Mia-​ is-​ lying-​ in-​ a-​ puddle-​ of-​ her-​ own-​ drool-​ after-​ what-​ I’ve-​ done-​ to-​ her
excuse.

Then came
emotional exhaustion
.

The
maybe-​ it’s-​ better-​ if-​ we-​ don’t-​ see-​ each-​ other-​ tonight-​ because-​ I-​ don’t-​ think-​ I’d-​ be-​ much-​ good-​ anyway
excuse.

Then came too much
work
.

The
it’s-​ a-​ crucial-​ time-​ for-​ the-​ show-​ right-​ now-​ and-​ I’m-​ really-​ on-​ the-​ hotseat-​ to-​ make-​ it-​ take-​ off-​ and-​ take-​ off-​ big
excuse.

Finally came
withholding sex
.

The
yes-​ I-​ know-​ used-​ to-​ chase-​ you-​ around-​ the-​ bed-​ like-​ a-​ sex-​ maniac-​ as-​ recently-​ as-​ six-​ days-​ ago-​ but-​ I’ve-​ got-​ a-​ lot-​ on-​ my-​ mind-​ right-​ now-​ okay
excuse.

Well, maybe it wasn’t so subtle.

Buried deep within the mysterious process of metamorphosis from New Cow to Old Cow lies a rhetorical question:

If you assume you’re still a New Cow, but you’re really an Old Cow and no one’s bothered to tell you, are you still a New Cow?

Or an Old Cow in denial?

Or are you just a fool?

I never did figure out the answer to that question. Rhetorical questions lead to more rhetorical questions—circular existential chicken-and-egg questions, like Which came first, the Old Cow or the New Cow?—or discussions about semantics: differing definitions of words like
new
and
old
and
fool
.

But mostly they lead to more basic questions, like When? and How? and Why?

I don’t know exactly when I became an Old Cow to Ray—at what exact moment he first pushed me through the looking glass and I stepped out the other side, transformed—though I suspect it was sometime right after we’d seen that apartment in Chelsea and right before we were supposed to sign the lease when Ray realized, suddenly, that he would be stuck with me.

Stuck with me
. Those words can still make me cry sometimes, even now, and even though Ray never actually said them.

But I know that’s what he was thinking then, and during
the weeks when he stopped calling. And I know there were probably other words he was thinking, too:

Saddled with
.

Tied down to
.

Trapped
.

Those are words that come later, rushing in like antibodies, to fight off the old words:

In love with
.

Live with
.

Attached to
.

Moo
.

If you are lucky, a man will dump you.

That is, he will take you somewhere, or call you on the phone, and tell you, straight out, in so many words, that it is over.

More often than not, though, he will not be so direct and you will not be so lucky.

More often than not, he will not bother to tell you.

He will, instead, freeze.

Or zigzag.

Or dash and hide.

Or he will simply disappear you.

Disappearing you
means he will behave toward you as
if
he has told you that it is over, behave
as if
you have had the conversation in which he says, audibly, and to your face, that, for whatever reasons, he doesn’t want to see you anymore and that he would prefer it if things could go back to the way they were before you became involved: in other words, that he would like to be friends now.

The problem with being disappeared is that you have
not had
this conversation yet.

You have
not been told yet
that this is what he is thinking, that this is what he has
decided
.

To have had this conversation would mean that the man you would have had it with would only be guilty of being an asshole.

Not also guilty of being a coward.

The countdown.

The drumbeat.

Three +
x
=
escape
.

At the three-month mark you can practically set your watch to it.