when he was working on stuff that he inherently knew was subpar, he was always able to keep his head above water.
But these past few months, he has been flailing, and there is a part of him that feels that it has been clear that he has been flailing. His writing problems, and the desperation it has caused him to feel, should've been obvious in a healthy domestic relationship. But it wasn't obvious to Rachael. He tried to communicate this building sadness to her at every stage, and her only reaction thus far has been for him to see a therapist, for him to talk to someone other than her. How is it that she doesn't see the irony in that? He's reaching out to her for help and she's trying to pass him off to someone else.
Perhaps it was when she tried to pass him off to a therapist after Gary's funeral that he finally woke up to the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with their marriage.
He still loves Rachael. There's no question about it. She has been a cornerstone of stability in his life. But only when life is stable. When things have gone the slightest bit wobbly, she has proven herself to be useless at helping him to steady things.
"Jacob," a voice says, a loud whispering through the quiet grayness of twilight.
He turns around. It is Joelle, walking toward him.
"Joelle? What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry. Really. I'm... I just couldn't wait until tomorrow to see you."
"But we can't—"
"I'm sick, Jacob. I can't eat. Seriously. I'm not hungry, and when I try to make myself eat, I get nauseous. I'm just so... I just can't think about anything but you, and I'm sick because I can't be with you. And the cruelness of being able to look out my window and see you in your office, just a street away, is just too much to bear. It's turned everyday of these past few weeks upside-down, and I just don't know what else to do to make it better."
Jacob looks around. He turns and starts walking down an alley, waves for her to follow him. This is his neighborhood after all. He's lived here for over twenty years. The people here know him. They know Rachael. Discretion is essential.
They stop halfway down the alley—out of the spotlights of streetlamps.
"It's chilly tonight. Aren't you cold?" he asks, but, before she can answer, he takes his jacket off and wraps it around her, pulls the lapels to tighten it around her body.
And they are close. Too close.
She looks up at him. His hands—still on the jacket's lapels—are dangerously close to her breasts, and she is breathless with desire. The soft light of the evening's remaining sliver of sun sparkles in her young brown eyes, and, though he knows that he may soon regret it, he decides to kiss her. Or, maybe, he doesn't so much decide as he is compelled to kiss her.
But he never has the chance before her body is against his, and her mouth is melting into his mouth, and, though he is surprised by her ferocity, he is also overcome by desire, sinking and swimming in the taste of this new kiss. It is so startlingly spiritual that he feels as though his body were rising from the joy, from the wonderful thrill of a first kiss, from the smell of her hot breath—new breath—blowing against his face. And this marvelous buzz, this dizzying drunkenness, pours from her mouth into him in a great passionate rush, and his heart is racing as his hands find her hips, and she grinds her body into his. She is on tiptoes trying hard to be as close to him as possible. He, too, wants to get closer, but can't quite get close enough. So, they are caught dancing to the music sex makes in the mind.
Sam is tugging at the leash, pulling Jacob's hand from her hip. "Wait," Jacob says. "We can't do this now. Not here."
She breaks away, reluctantly, and pulls her hands from his body. She stretches his jacket tight around her shoulders. "Right. We should definitely stop."
"Listen, I don't mean to—"
"No, I know. You're right. We're in an alley. Sneaking around. It's not good."
"Plus, If I'm gone too long Rachael will wonder what—"
"Yeah, I should get back too. Brad's going to wonder where I've run off to," she says, standing there, looking overwhelmed in his jacket, her face still flush from his kiss.
"We're still on for tomorrow?"
"Yes. God, I hope so."
"So, we have that then," he says, still dizzy from the elevation.
"We do."
"So, tomorrow."
"Right. Tomorrow," she says, and turns to walk down the alley, but then turns back. "Jacob?"
"Yeah?"
"You're not sorry we—"
"No, I'm not sorry. I'm... I'm completely overwhelmed. In a good way. I feel... I'm not sure I have the words, but I feel too wonderful to be sorry."
"Good. I'm not sorry either."
"Good," he says, and turns away from her. But when he look back, she is almost skipping down the alley. "Joelle," he softly yells out as quietly as he can muster a shout.
She turns.
"My jacket."
She runs back to him with the jacket in her hands. As she gets closer, she presses the jacket against her face, and he knows he'll hold that picture too long, fade it with memory's fingertips. And she just stands there looking so absent of anything other than happiness, so beautifully allowing herself to be in love with him, that he aches for another taste of her sweetness. And it's been so long since he's ached this good, and a long time since someone else has so obviously ached for him.
"Were you skipping?"
"I think I was."
"You were."
"It's that kind of night, I guess," she says, not even trying to conceal her smile. Then she laughs as she hands him the jacket. He lets her laughter roll over him as she turns and jogs back down the alley.
"OK, Sam. Let's go," he whispers.
Sam stares at him like he knows Jacob's done something wrong.
"What are you looking at?" he asks, tugging the leash. "Let's go home."
In class the next day, Jacob finds it hard to concentrate on his T.S. Eliot introductory lecture. It is a lecture that he has given dozens of times, and under normal circumstances he could give the lecture cold—without notes—in his sleep. But, today, he is tired, having not slept worth a damn the previous night, tossing and turning from the guilt and exhilaration of all that is unfolding around him.
It has been difficult for him to pretend that everything will be fine with Rachael. Things are not fine, and he wonders how long he has been rationalizing, making excuses for the emotional deficit between them. It occurred to him last night, that, though he unquestionably loves her, he had never truly fallen in love with her, and perhaps she was simply his safe haven after the post-Melissa chaos. Maybe she was always a force for stability, someone who wouldn't shake things up too much. Maybe he believed that things would be steady with her.
But years and years of steadiness has starved him.
This was one of those shocking epiphanies that is so stark, and seems so obvious, that it feels like everything opens up because of it. Every part of his heart and mind that had been clenched this past year or so, suddenly unclenched, and all the brilliant lights of life he once remembered shook back into his thoughts like snowflakes.
He had lived with Rachael for twenty years, and suddenly it was twenty years that seemed to be held together exclusively by safety, out of stability, not passion. And now, feeling all these old emotional surges with Joelle, all these internal electricities that he hadn't felt since Melissa, currents that he thought could only be charged by his ever-obscured memories of Melissa, has made him aware of the fact that he's been sleepwalking all this time, stumbling through life with one eye closed.
No wonder he has lost his poetry. He had surrendered it two decades ago when he decided that stability was more important than passion. But a poet, or at least Jacob, doesn't work well in calm waters.
He needs the uncertainty of the waves.
But then, in the middle night, when all these thoughts were swirling, he turned and watched Rachael sleep. He reflected on their twenty years and, staring into that warm, familiar face that he has watch
ed for so long, he wondered if these new reservations about their past were fair, or if they were merely convenient.
Perhaps, he thought, this new rush he feels with Joelle is only because of its newness, and time will eventually calm that rush, as it has with Rachael. And if he and Joelle were to end up together, he might find himself, just like this, staring at her in the middle of the night, after a day of near silences, questioning his love for her, wondering if they had become little more than strangers in their own bed, strangers with only the past holding them together.
The reason Melissa has always been his ideal, is that she was gone before things ever settled into something more normal, before the rush of their beginning was ever calmed. They were still falling in love. And once you've already fallen in love with someone, it's easy to forget what it felt like in the beginning.
The heart doesn't remember the way the mind remembers.
Emotions aren't facts you carry like dates. Emotions can pull you from memories. It's hard to transfer a feeling for a person or a place from the past when they're still a part of your present. All the emotions, all those old feelings, get blended with all the new feelings, and all that's left is the murkiness of time's mirror.
In the morning, after he had gotten out of bed and looked down at the empty space left by Rachael after a night of sleep, he realized that, if that space were a more permanent space, he wouldn't be happy, or not as happy. Or, maybe, happiness is not the right word. Perhaps contentment fits better. He wouldn't be content if