Tonight I fainted in a church, you would have found it pretty funny. I’m sorry my story hurt your feelings. I think the reason it hurt is because it showed I could be honest with someone else even when I wasn’t honest with you. I hope that’s the reason. I called Melissa on the phone tonight asking her why she sent the story to you. It took me some time to realise that what I was really asking was: why did I write the story? It was a very embarrassing and garbled phone call. Maybe I think of her as my mother. The truth is that I love you and I always have. Do I mean that Platonically? I don’t object when you kiss me. The idea of us sleeping together again has always been exciting. When you broke up with me I felt you beat me at a game we were playing together, and I wanted to come back and beat you. Now I think I just want to sleep with you, without metaphors. That doesn’t mean I don’t have other desires. Right now for example, I’m eating chocolate cake out of the box with a teaspoon. To love someone under capitalism you have to love everyone. Is that theory or just theology? When I read the Bible I picture you as Jesus, so maybe fainting in a church was a metaphor after all. But I’m not trying to be intelligent now. I can’t say sorry for writing that story or for taking the money. I can say sorry that it shocked you, when I should have told you before. You’re not just an idea to me. If I’ve ever treated you like that I’m sorry. The night when you talked about monogamy I loved your intellect. I didn’t understand what you were trying to tell me. Maybe I’m a lot more stupid than either of us thought. When there were four of us I always thought in terms of couples anyway, which threatened me, since all the possible couples that didn’t involve me seemed so much more interesting than the ones that did. You and Nick, you and Melissa, even Nick and Melissa in their own way. But now I see that nothing consists of two people, or even three. My relationship with you is also produced by your relationship with Melissa, and with Nick, and with your childhood self, etc., etc. I wanted things for myself because I thought I existed. You’re going to write back and explain what Lacan really meant. Or you might not write back at all. I did faint, if you object to my prose style. That wasn’t a lie and I’m still shivering. Is it possible we could develop an alternative model of loving each other? I’m not drunk. Please write back. I love you.
Frances.
At some point the chocolate cake was gone. I looked into the box and saw crumbs and icing smeared around the paper rim which I had neglected to remove. I got up from the table, put the kettle on, and emptied two spoonfuls of coffee into the French press. I took some painkillers, I drank the coffee, I watched a murder mystery on Netflix. A certain peace had come to me and I wondered if it was God’s doing after all. Not that God existed in any material way but as a shared cultural practice so widespread that it came to seem materially real, like language or gender.
At ten past eleven that night I heard her keys in the door. I went to the hall and she was unzipping her raincoat, the one she had brought to France that summer, and streams of water were trickling down her sleeves and dripping with a light percussive sound onto the floorboards. Our eyes met.
That was a weird email, Bobbi said. But I love you too.
30
We talked about our break-up for the first time that night. It felt like opening a door that’s been inside your own house all along, a door that you walk past every day and try never to think about. Bobbi told me I had made her miserable. We were sitting on my bed, Bobbi against the headboard with the pillows propped behind her, me at the foot of the mattress sitting with crossed legs. She said that I’d laughed at her during arguments, like she was a moron. I told her what Melissa said, that I wasn’t a very nice person. Bobbi laughed herself then. Melissa would know, she said. When has she ever been nice to anyone?
Maybe niceness is the wrong metric, I said.
Of course it’s really about power, Bobbi agreed. But it’s harder to work out who has the power, so instead we rely on ‘niceness’ as a kind of stand-in. I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel ‘nicer’ than Palestine. You know what I’m saying.
I do.
Jerry is certainly ‘nicer’ than Eleanor.
Yes, I said.
I had made Bobbi a cup of tea, and she was holding it on her lap, between her thighs. She warmed her hands on either side of it while we were talking.
I don’t resent you writing about me for profit, by the way, said Bobbi. I find it funny as long as I’m actually in on the joke.
I know. I could have told you and I didn’t. But at some level I still see you as the person who broke my heart and left me unfit for normal relationships.
You underestimate your own power so you don’t have to blame yourself for treating other people badly. You tell yourself stories about it. Oh well, Bobbi’s rich, Nick’s a man, I can’t hurt these people. If anything they’re out to hurt me and I’m defending myself.
I shrugged. I could think of nothing to say. She lifted the tea and sipped it, then settled the cup back between her thighs.
You could go to counselling, she said.
Do you think I should?
You’re not above it. It might be good for you. It’s not necessarily normal to go around collapsing in churches.
I didn’t try to explain that the fainting wasn’t psychological. Anyway, what did I know? If you think so, I said.
I think it would kill you, said Bobbi. To admit that you needed help from some touchy-feely psychology graduate. Probably a Labour voter. But maybe it would kill you in a good way.
Truly I say to you, unless one is born again.
Yeah. I came not to send peace, but a sword.
After that night, Bobbi started to walk with me from college to the sandwich shop in the evenings. She learned Linda’s name and made small talk with her while I put my apron on. Linda’s son was in the Irish army, Bobbi learned that. When I came home in the evening we ate dinner together. She moved some of her clothing into my room, some T-shirts and clean underwear. In bed we folded around each other like origami. It’s possible to feel so grateful that you can’t get to sleep at night.