Levels of understanding

Laurie
Levels of understanding
Cupping Room, New York, December 28, 2008

Richard and I are in a café on 8th Street, and I’m arrested by a woman nearby. With her high cheekbones and smudge of charcoal hair, she looks like someone in my family. As Richard and I climb the stairs to our borrowed apartment, I see her speaking to the doorman below. She’s Emily, I realize, come with her photographer friend to shoot a picture of me for her anthology. I embrace her, feeling we know each other, although we have only talked on the phone. She wears a cape over a sweater and floppy trousers, the effect soft and elegant. She’s not a flasher, rather a flatterer. I look good, she says, and happy.

“I am happy.”

“Yes, of course you are. Your life has turned around. How could you not be happy? Nevermind.”

The photographer snaps my picture for an hour, and we all eat fruitcake.

After they leave, Richard reads aloud a story by Lydia Davis in which the narrator remembers her ex-husband when they were still together, a night in Paris when they are eating fish and a small bone gets caught in the man’s throat. I see the couple becoming fretful as their attempts to dislodge the bone with bread and water fail. The man’s throat becomes raw, and they move onto the streets in search of aide. Helpful strangers direct them to a hospital where they meet a skillful young doctor who guides them to a lonely section of the building where he keeps delicate instruments, and with a tiny hook lifts out the bone. The woman remembers that the doctor is Jewish and that he and her ex-husband, also a Jew, speak of this in French. I enjoy the vivid details of the story and its sense of suspense: will he or won’t he be relieved of the bone? But I have no idea what it’s about. Richard says it’s connection. The bone links the ex-couple to each other, propels them into the world, and forges a happy memory of their life together. The story is about the risk the narrator takes by recalling happiness during a time of loss.

How does he know this? Well, he’s looking for connections when he goes into the world: What are the demands people make on each other, the subtle clues they communicate with, your responsibility to their needs? Ha, I think, how topsy-turvey his perspective is from mine.

Earlier, he’s altered another understanding. After Emily and the photographer leave, he says that Emily may really have liked me, but that I thwarted her desire to capture a serious image. “Her book is about loss and change, after all, and here you are looking like the cat with cream on its whiskers.”

“She said I looked good.”

“She said not to smile so much.”

“I wish I could be more like you.” Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, but when he’s around it’s like having a second head.

Later, there is more to sort out. My friend Adam visits and he’s uncomfortable with us even for the hour or so he spends, squirming in his chair and losing the thread of his conversation. Before arriving, he’s called to ask if he can carry on reading Heidegger for another half hour. Carry on reading Heidegger! You god damn read Heidegger every day! Richard and I are hardly ever in New York! While he’s with us, he doesn’t share his intellectual pursuits.

“He’s decided I’m not smart enough,” I say to Richard after he leaves.

“No. Talking about ideas with you is his version of intimacy, and he won’t do it unless you’re alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you’re right.”

“You and Adam have the weirdest, erotic, sexless relationship I have ever seen. It’s as obvious as Bozo’s nose”

“How come I can’t see these things?”

“Because you’re an idiot.”