A few days after I talk to my mother, I am supposed to see Matthew at a dinner with my friend Indigo and her rich husband. I call her and say, “Indigo, please, can we go somewhere not insanely expensive because this guy has no money. Like, let’s just go somewhere casual, do you know how to do casual anymore?” And then she reminds me that she grew up broke just like me, she is huffy about it, and it was in Trinidad part of the time, and Trinidad broke is way worse than Upper West Side broke, and she says she’ll call me later to let me know where she’s made the reservation, and then an hour later she texts me a picture of a McDonald’s with the message “See you at 7!” And I text her back, “You’re being fucked up,” and she texts me back, “I know, I’m sorry, things aren’t good over here right now,” and I text, “Do you want to talk about it?” And she texts, “No.” And then a few minutes later she texts, “I do, but not right now.” A few minutes after that, she texts, “I’m sorry.” Then she calls me and she’s crying and we talk for a while about her marriage and while I am sad that my friend is sad, it makes me happier than ever that I’ve never been married and never will be, because marriage sounds like a goddamn job, and why would I want another one of those?
We skip dinner with Indigo and her husband. Instead I collapse onto Matthew’s couch in his living room while he swivels around nervously on a chair. I tell him the whole story about Indigo’s marriage and then I say, “See? Money doesn’t make you happy.” And he says, “Easy for you to say.” “Now what?” I say. He pulls out his wallet, his hands weirdly shaking, and he removes a card: it says EBT on it. “Food stamps, it’s that bad,” he says.
Then I tell him a story about the first time my family went on food stamps. It was during winter break from school, and I saw the food stamps on the kitchen table and I didn’t know what they were exactly; I thought maybe they were some sort of play money, like from Monopoly, a toy for me. I was eight, and my mother was ignoring me that day, probably because she was too worried about keeping us fed, and my father was not much help in the matter. I set to making an artful winter collage, shredded paper for icicles, miniature snowflake cutouts, the full display taped to the bathroom mirror. I made my mother cry, and then I started crying, and then there were the two of us holding each other in the bathroom crying, and she said, so sadly—oh, I can hear the tone of her voice even now!—to me, “I just need a little help.” I tell Matthew this whole story a little proudly. Bad childhood stories are kind of my thing.
“I know that you are trying to make me feel better,” he says, “but it’s not working. Our tragedies are different. You are telling me the story of something that happened to you and I am telling you the story of something I did. I put myself here. In this hole.”
That night we do not have sex but we sleep together, side by side, not touching, until he gives in and touches me first, and we kiss good night, hold hands for a while, and then pull apart again to our separate sides of the bed.
The honeymoon is over, I think. But at least it lasted longer than usual.
The next time I see Matthew I tell him I’m going to take him out to dinner. I’m hungry. “I don’t want to hear it,” I say. “I just want to eat.” We order a nice meal, filet mignon, fried potatoes, creamed spinach, at a classic steakhouse in my neighborhood, with waiters in white button-down shirts and black pants and bow ties, chain-smoking, unsmiling foreigners who provide flawless service.
“This is very nice,” he says quietly. “Isn’t it?” I say. We salt our food furiously. He says not much else for the entire meal, except for this: “You have to know this is who I am.” And I say, “I got it.”
Later, in bed, I tell him, “Men are babies, but some of them have big, beautiful cocks.” I put my hand on him, get it the way I like it, hard, a little moist at the tip. We have sex that feels great but is not particularly fun. I am treating him like something different than usual. I am treating him like everyone else.
“Is it possible you’re scared?” says my therapist, her penciled-in eyebrows raised.
“It’s possible,” I say. “But maybe it’s more that I grew up in a household where I watched my mother be oppressed first by my junkie father and then secondly by every loser stoner who walked through the door even though she was supposedly this strong independent smart woman who should have survived on her own, but felt like she was supposed to ask for help. And maybe because I didn’t have any positive relationship models in my life I don’t feel inspired to make concessions to keep this one, because what’s the point, men will suck you dry anyway?”
“Now there you go, Andrea!” she says. “Nice work.” And she pretends I’ve had this big breakthrough, but I’ve been saying this for years, I said it the first day I showed up in her office, once I stopped weeping.
What do you do when you already know what your problem is? What if it’s not really a problem? It’s only a problem if I want a relationship. If I want to fit into a conventional mode of happiness. It’s only a problem if I care. And I can’t tell if I care.
“I can’t tell what you want,” says my therapist.
“Neither can I,” I say.