He used to joke that she gave great conversation, but it wasn’t a joke, not really. It was, from him, just about as good a compliment as there was. He freely admitted that he loved to talk, to tell stories real and fictional, and anyone who made him want to shut up and listen for a while was a member of a pretty exclusive club indeed. A good conversation was, in some ways, the most intimate thing he could think of. When they slowly stopped talking and telling each other stories, it made him think that they’d run out of things to say.
He thought it inevitable, their drawing apart, but when he was unpacking some boxes two months after he moved, he realized that there was a breaking point after all, a discrete moment where a choice was made. It wasn’t any of those memorable events they’d both told their friends about, though those were easier for him to think of. It settled on him like a shroud, the knowledge of how they’d taken this turn.
They’d been out at a bookstore, she browsing the Business section while he tried to justify to himself the new science fiction purchase he was contemplating. It was a good night, one of those times when they were comfortably apart, but not too far, both of them lost in the rhythm of printed words surrounding them. When he was finished wandering, he knew where to find her—either searching for treasure in the bargain bin or picking through the wall of journals. He stepped up behind her and took her hand, squeezing gently to let her know he was ready, but there was no rush. It was an increasingly rare occurrence that they would interpret these touches the way they were intended, but this was a good night, and she gave him a half-smile that said she’d lost track of time. He shook his head slightly, reminding her he was in no rush, and started flipping through the journals himself. He found one of those books for couples, the kind meant to be read together, questions to be answered in print, committed to their personal history. He was intrigued, and thought it might be fun to get. It reminded him of the hours they used to spend with the Book of Questions, talking about whatever came up—family, friends, old love, ethics, stories. So he put his novel back on the shelf and bought his new find for them.
It was a good example of its type, serious enough to be interesting and light-hearted enough to make sure you had fun too. And it was fun, to relive some of the moments they’d shared. They laughed a lot that night, because it was, after all, a good night. It was a few days later when they came across a series of tough questions in the book—“What is the most hurtful thing your partner has said to you?” “Are you more or less in love than you were a year ago?” “Do you more often see your relationship as a joy or an obligation?”
It wasn’t the questions that posed the problem. That was, in fact, one of his rules—never blame the question for an answer you don’t like. Questions are always good, or at least neutral, and he’d always maintained there was no such thing as something people weren’t meant to know. No, the problem wasn’t the questions. And it wasn’t the answers, either, because those questions weren’t ever answered. When he came to that page, he said, “Oh, let’s not talk about that depressing crap!” and flipped ahead to the section on values.
The questions had been out there for a while already, of course, certainly before they’d started looking at the book together. They hadn’t been asked out loud, but they both knew the answers. And knowing those answers served as a substitute for talking about them. It had somehow become a habit, to use knowledge in place of communication.
And for him, it had somehow become a habit to use illusion as a substitute for a harder reality. He knew he was doing it, but they were addictive, those illusions, those good nights, and somewhere along the way he’d misplaced his willingness to sacrifice them for something lasting. And so it was that he asked to skip the depressing crap. Neither of them brought up those questions after, and maybe the temptation to hold onto the good nights was there for both of them.
He was never so naïve as to be sure that things might have turned out differently if they’d faced those questions together. It was possible, even likely, that they wouldn’t have gotten past the reality of the answers and what they meant to them. His regret wasn’t that he’d somehow screwed their relationship up single-handedly—even his ego wasn’t big enough to allow that degree of self-absorption. What he regretted as he flipped through the half-completed book, reading their answers to the easy questions, was that he’d allowed himself to become something other than the person he wanted to be, the person who didn’t run from questions just because the answers might be scary. He’d given up that person, for a while, to have a few more good nights.
1/25/2002