Sweet (13 page)

Though I seem to be roaming without a destination in this essay, I can see that I’ve accidentally stumbled, as I often do, upon a theme: the sweet-bitter (as the Greeks actually called it), light and darkness, bread and cake, daily life and pleasure… I’m stringing myself delicately within the dialectic. Delicately, yes: It must be done this way so that I do not tear myself in two, so that I do not rend my heart, that fragile beast, that quiet place from which I try to speak to you,
ab imo pectore
, my little voice echoing up from the depths of my chest, too small for the words it wants, too small and too weak and too careful, too tiny, I think often,
cum grano salis
, to be heard through the noise of the world. What can pastry do, after all?

Nothing and everything, is my answer. I can only offer up to you the tools of pleasure, culled
ab imo
pectore, cum grano salis
, the work of my aching and joyous heart; but you must take it, must accept from me the pleasure as easily as you do the bitterness, and love and celebrate in yourself the cry of delight as deeply as you’ve come to love the cry of pain.

I’ve poured myself a glass of wine tonight and I’m raising it to you:
Ad fundum
, I say. It means both “bottoms up” and “back to basics,” a toast to the utmost pleasure and a demand to return to the elemental. I’m calling to you from both sides now, standing as I call, in a fragile and impossible place.
Ab imo
pectore.

***

On Saturday evening, Teddy left the wedding—a weepy cousin, a frothy meringue confection of a dress, a limp buffet dinner, a sweaty groom and all his frat brothers drinking and toasting loudly and doing the chicken dance—early and curled into the privacy and quiet of his hotel room. Something about being away from home sent him deep inside himself, to the ghost-place he’d never quite left, from which he watched the outside world and listened and thought his own thoughts and judged (and terribly, he knew, but the judgments seemed well-deserved, at least in the case of the sugar-blown dress and the red-faced, uniformly blond groomsmen swilling and dancing around). He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his waistcoat, kicked off his shoes and flopped back onto the mildewed floral bed with a sigh.

For lunch earlier in the day,
he had gone to another of the places on Jules’s list and, dining alone, had decided to simply watch the crowds of business lunchers in the restaurant, the bustling of the wait staff and the sky darkening with the threat of spring rain, rather than read or work on a crossword or engage in some other self-soothing activity that might help him shut the world out and shut himself down. He had ordered a bit of everything from the mezze menu, far too much to eat alone, though the plates were small, and the waitress had raised her penciled eyebrows in his direction, but he took it all in tiny bites and persisted in his delight: softly crumbling rolls of falafel paired with a plate of warm pita, puffing and gentled with heat; Brussels sprouts, crispy, salted and scented with coriander; dolmades soaked in olive oil and brine and a hint of puréed prunes or raisins; fat, melting fava beans, stewed with tomato and kale until it all wept tenderly apart in a broth of dill and garlic; cauliflower roasted with capers and sultanas and dark, toasted pine nuts; and, finally, what almost broke his heart
in its perfect simplicity, fresh watermelon in chunks, yellow and deep pink and cold and dotted with curls of fresh mint (he’d eaten most of this dish, knowing its beauty was momentary, with the juice running sugar-iced down the silver fork and over the back of his hand, where he unashamedly
licked
it from his own skin before it reached his sleeve cuff). The meal had been glorious and reckless excess. He was still vibrating with the bliss of it; even the paucity of the wedding dinner had failed to dull the memory.

Blissfully vibrating, he attempted three times to write a brief description of the travesty of his cousin’s wedding, and then about his lunchtime meal. H
e failed, settling on listing the foods he’d tried, hoping the list alone might tell all of his joy, and sent it to Jules.
Your blog today,
he added a minute later,
was really beautiful, too.
And then, because his phone stayed silent and he felt as if he were speaking out into the darkness, alone, he wrote,
Is Andy okay?

Your lunch sounds incredibly sexy,
Jules replied after a moment.
The wedding sounds anything but that. But weddings usually are. Anything but that. Sexy, I mean.

And then:
You read the blog? I can’t believe you read that. Though sometimes, as I write, I imagine I’m writing to you. And sometimes I forget that you might read it, or anyone might, and it feels secret and private and quiet and mine. I don’t know which I prefer.

Finally, seconds later:
Andy is great. He’s snoozing on my lap as I write. Why do you ask? What has he been telling you? I should never have let him have his own email account.

You wrote that you lost your grandmother and Andy. I knew about your grandma, but I got worried something happened to Andy.

Teddy endured, then, a very long stretch of silence, during which he held his phone to his chest, waiting. Nothing, and then more nothing, and the seconds stretched out into minutes until he’d begun to worry that he’d said something wrong, that perhaps it had been a mistake to mention Jules’s grandmother like that, in the same breath as a
dog,
and perhaps Jules was angry, or sad, or, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, disappointed in him. And then, just as he’d bent to breaking, just as he was about to call Jules, his phone rang.

Eleven

Think of the things you
have lost: the lone sock, the cheap wristwatch, the album you loved as a child, the one working pair of scissors in the house. Your shopping list, your best idea, your voice and the freedom of leaving your house with nothing, absolutely nothing at all, in your pockets. What is it you have lost now that you believed, once upon a time, you could never lose?

“I was married,” Jules said into the phone, “To a man. Named Andy. He died.”

On the other end of the phone, Jules could hear Teddy breathing—quietly, shakily, but not holding his breath. And so he talked on, told him about Andy—tall, long-limbed, bright and dear, with skin like polished walnut wood and a smile that was immediate and full of bliss. Andy was smart and quick with words, like Jules, and argued passionately for what he loved; he could just as easily be sharp and cruel as funny or kind; he made people nervous and he made people adore him and he barged into the world entirely without fear or reservation. Jules had loved him fiercely and completely and had mourned him that way, too.

They’d met in a bar. No. In truth, they’d
first met at a friend’s party but had only shaken hands and engaged in pleasant conversation about Jules’s work before they’d each turned their attention to other people. It was not love at first sight. But on second sight, in the stuffed and sweaty bar, Andy had come up, held out his hand and simply said, “Janet.” Jules knew this meant that Andy remembered meeting him at Janet’s party and was being friendly, so Jules offered to buy Andy a drink, and they’d finished the night kissing in the alcove of a pharmacy on Hudson as drunk kids hobbled past them on the blinkered street and Andy pressed Jules up against the shop window, while behind him rose an impressively high tower of toilet paper on display, mundane and crass and so perfect Jules was never quite sure he hadn’t invented it.

Much as he knew it was probably wrong to burden Teddy, Jules could not stop talking, because he was wrapped up and drowning and lost and losing all at once, filled with an ache that was missing Andy and missing Teddy and wanting, somehow, for them to know and like each other and approve. So he spoke on and on about Andy. Andy, who was tone deaf but happily sang at the top of his tuneless lungs every time he knew the song on the radio, even in a friend’s kitchen, even in public, who put himself at war with the music, barreling in and taking no prisoners, making Jules cringe and beam in equal measure. Andy, who tunelessly serenaded him with “Happy Birthday” first thing in the morning on every birthday they
had together, but sped up the song ridiculously because, he said, it always sounded like a funeral dirge the way most people sang it (and, Jules would add, the way Andy sang it, it sounded like a speedy monk’s chant or the peppy hoot-yowling of some wild, hilarious animal). Andy, who fell asleep every night in the same position, on his side, one arm slung around Jules’s waist, breathing mint and sleep into his ear. Andy, who spent his mornings in the park trying to coax his old, tired little dachshund into a game of fetch (which the man approached far more enthusiastically than the dog, demonstrating, on hands and knees and to no avail, exactly what could be done with a floppy Frisbee and a mouth and a good attitude), who spent his afternoons bent over his laptop, writing, and his evenings pouring drinks for rich kids from NYU with fake IDs. Who had a gray kitten named Ball that died of ringworm in his lungs three weeks after Andy adopted him and for whom Andy had cried deep, hiccupp
ing cries, like a child, furious and lost and keening, even though he’d known the kitten would die when he took him and had simply wanted to give him a warm and loving place until the end. Andy, who screamed and threw cheese curls at the television when the presidential debates were on; who was against marriage on principle but married Jules because Jules had asked him to, and because he knew it would break both their hearts to say no; who dressed, every Halloween, as a pun he knew he’d have to explain to even their smartest friends; who always came home from the market having forgotten exactly two things from the shopping list (which mystified Jules and made him crazy), but made up for it by doing the laundry; who loved the world grandly and without reserve, and always chose Jules over everything, everything, everything else.

This was the last thing Jules could say, and after this, there was a long silence into which both men breathed shallowly, carefully.

“Wow,” Teddy said at last, in a voice that sounded defeated and frightened and sad. “Andy sounds like he was an incredible man. You loved him.”

“He was amazing. And a jerk, too, sometimes, I don’t mean to leave that part out, a real fucking jerk,” Jules said, holding his voice carefully and close so that it did not shake. His throat ached with the effort. “But I loved him.”

“Jules,” Teddy said, as if the name w
ere its own sentence that held everything. Jules heard him sigh, heard the rustle of him shifting against the hotel bed. “I can’t compete with that.”

“I know,” Jules whispered, because it was true. What Jules wanted to say was
It’s not a competition,
but that would just sound empty and pat and, after all, he knew it was—and would always be—a competition.

“I’m sorry,” Teddy said. “That’s so much.”

“I know,” Jules said again.
He sounded very small to his own ears. “I’m sorry, too.”

“We’re a couple of very sorry individuals,” Teddy said. Jules heard the warm smile struggling through the heaviness in Teddy’s voice, but he couldn’t do more than give a small, bitter laugh in return. “Distance sucks,” Teddy said. “I wish I could hug you or something right now.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Jules said. “And that sucks, too.” He was quaking apart. He was slipping down and pulling open. “I want that, and I don’t want to,” he whispered. He knew it was completely unclear, but Teddy didn’t ask him to explain; Teddy didn’t ask for anything at all.

“Do you,” Teddy started, and then paused for a long moment before starting again. “Do you—and I’m not backing out, I still really want to, if you do—do you still want to have dinner when I get back to New York? Because I would understand
—I would be really sad, but I would understand—if you—”

“I do,” Jules said, “please.”

There was nothing more either man could say, and so that word hung in the distance between them, an ache and a balm and a question and a pardon for the endless minutes they sat in silence and simply breathed together.

*

The train would take him back.

It rocked him rhythmically, its gears and pulleys slam-clacking under his feet until he vibrated with the train and became a piece of it, until he was without thought, until he was a pure mechanical body hurtling powerfully toward a city that seemed like his. Around him was the dull hum of chatter and kids whining and the rustle of newspaper and the whistling of air against the windows and other noise of the world, but he pressed himself against the molded plastic wall, felt the thud of movement pulsing through him and heard nothing but the train rumble and smack as they went. He sat still and was thrown forward; he made no effort, but he sped along.

Beneath him, the train mumbled in perfect meter,
iamb iamb iamb
.
I am not,
he argued back.

He had a secret: Often, he felt nothing. He did not cling, or wish, or want; there was nothing in him that longed for any other thing in the world. When he left a place, when he closed a door, when he turned his back, he could forget in an instant; it was always easy. He used to think, though he’d never told anyone this secret, that he had a hollow in his heart, a small place nothing outside him could ever touch, a part of him always kept apart.

In his first year of college, Teddy had felt afraid and alone just because he was the only kid in his dorm
who was
not
afraid and alone, not sick with longing for home or family or familiarity. He made anywhere, instantly, his lukewarm home. Strangeness was a comfort; at night, he’d wander the untamed streets of the West Village to get himself lost so he could, slowly and by instinct, fumble his way back again. He didn’t keep mementos or photographs; he forgot people and places and feelings too easily; nothing stuck. He was affable and pleasant and always smiling; he made every person feel like their own best self, and it made him feel, when he saw himself do this properly, so glossy and good. But Teddy could not imagine what it meant to lose someone and to long for that person hard enough to break his heart.

Stand up straight and look a man in the eye,
said his father.
Be reasonable. Know the ground from the sky. Be cautious so you will always be right.

You are my hope in this world,
said his mother, leaning hard against his shoulder.
You are my one beautiful thing. Without you I have nothing left.

You are the nicest guy,
everybody said,
and generous. You never take anything away from anybody else.

He listed in his head all the people who approved of him. It was a long list. He was not on it.

When he looked at the city melting in sunset, or children playing and screaming wildly with joy, or the lonely old men with their broods of pigeons, or lovers swooning in the park, he felt nothing and he knew, in his heart, this was wrong. When he took a lover, for a day or a week or two, and looked into his face, he could feel nothing in his clench-fisted heart—no stir, no clutch, no leap or ache.

But he’d listened, the night before, to Jules crying softly into the telephoned distance, and his body had pulled him hard from its hollow, as it had when they’d kissed, as it had every time he was near Jules or thought of him or felt, to his surprise, warm and good and right in his place in the little bakery. Everything had flipped; Teddy took and he took
, and for once he felt full on what someone else would give him. It was terrifying to want and to receive, to give nothing back in return. (It was dangerous, a building wave, a pinprick in the dam: The more he received, the more desperately hungry he felt, needy and wild, and he couldn’t be gentle, couldn’t control, couldn’t be careful or kind; he would rip and tear and devour everything he wanted and ever dared to love. It was, yes, terrifying to want anything at all.)

Everything around him clacked and rocked and he went along with it; he was part of the hulking machine that held him. His body, the plastic, his heart, the window and every place the train pushed past were a fleeting blur on which his eyes couldn’t focus; his feet never touched the ground.

*

Andy opened his hands like a plea, translucent palms tipped up in the moonlight; he was starlit and shimmering and had coin-silver eyes, but Jules wasn’t afraid.
Don’t go, don’t go,
Andy said,
don’t go away from me.
He had a boat, and they were balanced in it, and the boat pitched and the water under them roiled like a bad dream.
You’re pretty and pale as the moon,
he said,
you’re slowly waning, you’re moving away, I’m trying to warn you, it’s going to rain.

When the rain came, it was in fat, unmerciful drops that fell on Jules’s chest like punches. They were tears, and Jules said,
this is so cliché, tears and raindrops, I apologize for this, it’s like a high school poem, isn’t it?
But Andy just laughed and said
I didn’t know you in high school
and Jules said
in high school they threw the baby out with the bathwater because you can take the boy out of the locker but you can’t take the locker out of the boy.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but Andy seemed to understand perfectly; he just shook his head sadly and said
there will be a test on this, so you must memorize the tables of attraction, which begin like this: One take away one is one take away one is one take away one…
and he repeated the phrase like a skipping record until Jules shook his head and said
that’s not attraction, that’s
sub
traction, I’ve memorized subtraction.
Andy smiled sadly and told him
it’s the very same thing,
and then he blinked black and out like a television suddenly unplugged, like a star folding in, completely done and gone.

*

“I miss you,” Jules said.

In the background, he could hear the clatter of metal on concrete, and shouting and laughter; he heard his father mutter under his breath, something about “Nathan and those younger
guys,” and “jeez,”
then heard the bang of a door and sudden quiet. In his head, he saw his father sag onto the concrete front step of the house he was probably painting
and rub the sweat from his forehead with two fingers, tipping back the ratty baseball cap and closing his eyes as he did.

“You, too, kid,” Ray said. “What’s wrong?”

“I just miss you.”

“Jules, you’re full of horse shit,” Ray said. “You never call during baking hours unless something is wrong.”

“I’m taking a ten-minute break between batches,” he tried, until he heard his father’s long and heavy inhalation and jumped ahead of the lecture he knew was coming. “Okay. But it’s kind of a bad question.”

“Jules,” his dad started. “I’m old, and I’m getting older here by the minute. I gave you the sex talk years ago, and then
you
gave
me
the sex talk when you decided I didn’t know what I was talking about, even though I probably didn’t need to know the details. I haven’t recently won the lottery or cured cancer, and if you’re going to ask about cholesterol, Dr. Baptiste says I’m doing fine. So whatever else it is, just ask me.”