He took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows as if he had to outline the position even though it wasn’t his. He repeated the proposition, he seemed to say, but he didn’t want to own it.
“Well, if you follow the line of reasoning, it goes like this: The inhabitants of Manhattan live in this tiny area, jammed one next to the other, and to make it all worthwhile, they share the illusion that they are doing something important. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere … all that horse crap. So they have art and first-run movies, and that’s actually part of the prison pay. You have to provide that kind of thing; otherwise, people would revolt. But if you walk around the streets and really look, drop the scales from your eyes, so to speak, you see the dirt and the garbage and the homelessness. Part of that is true of any city, I grant you, but in New York there is a self-congratulatory element that says we are the best in the world. Meanwhile, most of the effort goes into keeping the everyday regimen in place. New York is all about status quo. It feels new sometimes, like when the circus comes to town, or some new movie premier arrives, but nothing really changes. The museums change exhibits and everyone talks about that, and then there are charity balls and everyone talks about the gowns and the new outfits and the fashions … I don’t know, Heather. I’m probably not making any sense. As I said, it was just a thing I read.”
But he had made sense. He had made more sense than he knew, but not in the way he intended. I didn’t respond for a moment. I didn’t know where it had come from, but a perverse part of me wanted to hear more, wanted to hear the full dimensions of his judgment. I wanted to hear why he had to blow up my world in order to make his better. Men did this sometimes. It wasn’t the first time I had seen something like this.
“Can’t you say that more or less of any city in the world?” I asked softly. “That it’s simply an outcome of people living close to each other?”
He sipped his beer. He looked sensational sipping his beer. The muscles of his forearm twisted and popped in interesting ways.
“Maybe. Maybe you can. But that seems to be what people aspire to in New York. Everyone is climbing, and I’m not sure where people are climbing to be or to get to. Even the richest people in New York have less land than my grandfather had in Vermont, and he was a poor man by financial standards. They live in apartments suspended above the ground, and they have doormen and nannies and life coaches and accountants. And you have to worry where Johnny and Jill go to school—it has to be the right school—and you go to the Hamptons in the summer, or up to Nantucket, and it all seems like a big conveyor belt. It doesn’t feel real, at least not to me, so when you talk about going to New York, I don’t know what that means. Not really.”
“I see,” I said, taking it in. “Not a very inspiring picture you paint. And I notice you’ve switched from the general to the specific. It’s no longer a theory, is it? It seems to be more about me now.”
“I knew I’d hurt your feelings, and I didn’t mean to. It’s the last thing I wanted to do. I should have kept my trap shut.”
Yes, I thought, you should have kept your trap shut.
“I need a little while to absorb this,” I said, sitting back slowly and trying to even out my breathing. “Kind of out of the blue.”
“You’re angry,” he said. “I’ve hurt you. Come on, I’m sorry.”
“What I don’t get is why you wanted to hurt me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Sure you did, Jack. I’m planning to go to New York in a few weeks to make a new start, and you let it drop that I am entering a prison of my own making. Why that random topic in the conversational spinning wheel? Is that supposed to make me feel good somehow?”
“I’m sorry, Heather. I am. Sometimes I think ideas are just things to play with. Little thought experiments. Sorry. I’m stupid about it.”
“You’re not stupid, Jack. If you were, I wouldn’t take it so personally. But you picked this topic on what was otherwise a truly wonderful day. I don’t get it. It’s passive-aggressive to the hilt. Even when we slept on the haystack, you made a comment about how we can fix that. Fix me. That’s condescending.”
“I didn’t mean it to be.”
“That’s the definition of passive-aggressive, isn’t it? I’m trying to imagine another reason you might have had for bringing it up, and I can’t think of anything. You’ve wanted to say something about my job choice for a while. Now you have. But you came at it sideways, didn’t you? Not my opinion, oh, heaven forbid, this is simply a theory I read about.”
“Why would I want to hurt you?”
“Because my life is different from yours. Because I have a job and a career that will provide me with a good living. Maybe you’re jealous.”
“Now who’s trying to hurt who?”
“You picked the fight. I was happy to sit in the sun and drink my beer. Besides, your theory is so much nonsense I can hardly stand it. People have to live somewhere, Jack. Some live in Vermont, some in New York City. We all make trade-offs. I’m surprised someone your age wouldn’t know that already. You’re telling me everyone in Vermont in the middle of January is simply gleeful? Did you ever hear of cabin fever, maybe? People go nuts up there with all the snow and ice and darkness. Who’s in a prison then?”
“You have a point, but if New York is such a great place, then a little social theorizing shouldn’t rattle you. All this time we’ve been playing a guessing game about our backgrounds—who we were, what it meant—but I know who you are. That’s why you’re reacting. You’re reacting because you’re afraid you’re going to live a cliché, an investment banker, for Pete’s sake, and that I’m calling you on it, that your Smythson calendar knows your future and it’s already written down in curlicue letters.”
“I’m not rattled, you arrogant prick. Sorry, but you are an arrogant prick. You’re just being a jerk. I should have seen this earlier, right? I’m not a little tootsie you’re going to impress with your social justice theories. New York City is no more of a prison than anyplace else in the world. It’s an island with a bunch of stuff on it. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good. But it’s all life.”
“It was just something I read, Heather. Something I thought was interesting to pass along. You’re the one who is giving it greater meaning.”
“I don’t give a damn what you read, Jack. Honestly, I don’t. What I care about is your need to tell me and your attempting to torpedo my world just to … what was it you said? Just to play with ideas? That’s so charming, Jack. It’s not even fair on a basic level of politeness.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Heather, you’re overreacting!”
“Again my fault, right? Not the great Jack Vermont’s fault. All my fault.”
“Jeez, this is a new side to the Heather coin.”
“Is it? Well, then put it in your little ledger of marks against me. You are such a jerk you don’t even know it. Seriously. You think you’re all freewheeling and happening. Why do you get to judge? You’re just over here drifting around.”