rationalize not facing the truth of the situation. Besides, they probably know something's not right. They'd have to. You couldn't live in our house and not know that it's void of warmth. It's probably better for everyone if we just ended it."
"Where would you go?"
"I don't know. I suppose I'd get an apartment somewhere on campus."
"Would you move in with— ?"
"No. God, no. That's the thing. And this is where my uncertainty comes from, really. I adore this girl. Honestly, I do. I love being around her. Her youth. Her energy. It's contagious. But she is still only twenty-two years old."
"So?"
"So, even though she's a smart girl, she's still miles away from what I've grown accustomed to. If I feel like talking—just general, casual conversation—about politics, or anything vaguely important about the world, it quickly becomes apparent that her window of experience is frustratingly small. It's like talking to a blank slate. I spend half my time explaining what I'm trying to say. And the expansive back and forth I used to have with Clare is completely absent. I used to be able to refine my opinions when talking to Clare. There's none of that with Keri. It's less like a conversation and more like a lecture. She's my student. I'm her professor. And, to be honest, I think she kind of gets off on that. And I can deal with that for the moment. But what happens when she gets older? What happens when she doesn't want to see herself as the student anymore? What happens when the disparity of our years becomes clearer to her? It's bound to happen. What then?"
"I don't know."
"That's not all, though. She's young, but, as I said, I can deal with that. The problem is, all her friends are young too. And when she's around them, it's downright intolerable. Their conversations are hollow, giggly, and purely superficial. It's like they're trying to mimic the stereotype of what young girls sound like when they converse. It's mind-numbingly irritating, and, frankly, I can't be around them. But then she gets upset with me for not accepting her friends, accuses me of being anti-social."
"So, what are you going to do?"
"God knows. I still enjoy her company, and, as I said, I adore her. I really do. I just don't know if it can last."
"Isn't that the risk everyone takes when they start a new relationship?"
"But the risk of failure seems more dangerous now. If I end things with Clare, and take a gamble on Keri, then, if things go badly, I'll be pushing forty all alone. I haven't been by myself since I was an undergrad. I don't think I can handle being alone anymore."
Jacob looks down at the table. He can't even look at David. The sheer, stark honesty of his fears are too close, too intense for Jacob to acknowledge. Plus, this just isn't the way they normally talk. There's too much vulnerability on exhibition, and showing this kind of vulnerability feels against some kind of unspoken code between them.
"You know," David says, "I'm sure you think I'm in this singular position, that I'm in a predicament exclusive to myself, but you're not too far from where I'm sitting right now."
"That's not true. I haven't done anything yet."
"You haven't fallen in love with this girl?"
"I haven't cheated."
"I find it peculiar how you've drawn this arbitrary line at sex. You seem to believe that your wife, if she were to find out about Joelle, would find it easier to forgive you simply because you didn't have sex with her."
"Well, isn't that, by and large, how we've come to define an affair?"
"That's probably what most people think of when they think of an affair. But let me ask you, if Rachael found out that you had fallen in love with another woman, do you honestly think it would matter to her that you never consummated the relationship?"
"Who says I've fallen in love?"
"So, you're not in love with this girl?"
"Listen, I don't—"
"That sounds like an answer by omission to me."
"No, but you can't control who you fall in love with. You can, however, control who you sleep with."
"You're a smart man, Jacob, but, honestly, this whole thing you've got going is completely warped."
"How so?"
"Do you think Rachael's going to care whether or not you were able to control your falling in love with another woman? Do you honestly believe telling her it wasn't intentional is going to make the blow any less severe?"
"I don't know, David," Jacob says, starting to sound defensive. "I'm certainly prepared to acknowledge that I really don't know what I'm doing."
"Welcome to the club."
"I just wanted to be able to write again. I thought, after I first saw Joelle, that she would simply be my muse. And by that I mean that she could inspire me from a distance, and it was easy to imagine how that would happen. She lived right across the street. She reminded me of Melissa. Her voice. Her hair. Her smell. Everything about her kept bringing me back to Melissa. So, my hope was that maybe she could bring me back to Imeros. That's what I hoped, but now I just can't shake the feeling that she's offering me a second chance."
"A second chance at what?"
"..."
"This is all about Melissa, isn't it?"
Jacob looks up at David, and, for the first time, he realizes that it's always been about Melissa.
"What about your feelings for Joelle?" David asks. "Is this all some kind of transference for you?"
"Does it matter? Wasn't it you who said, 'the heart wants what the heart wants.' The feelings are still there. Does it matter from where they derive?"
"I guess not."
There is a silence between them.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think you may be even worse off than me," David says.
"Thanks," Jacob says, sarcastically.
"Well, at least you're getting some poetry out of it."
"No, that's the thing. I'm not. The feelings are there. There is a richness, a fullness there that I want to express. I can feel it emerging. I feel the language is there, but I just can't articulate it."
"Hmm."
"I can't figure it out. I've not been able to write anything significant since I met her."
"Well, if you think about it, Imeros wasn't a book of love poems by a man who was in love. It was a collection of poems written by a man who had lost love."
"What?"
"Maybe you've found your muse, but she's too real. She's too close for you to see the poems. Maybe you have to lose her before you can find the poems."
"Maybe my inspiration is about the longing for love, and not the being in love."
"Exactly."
Jacob looks at David, and a lightbulb might as well have turned on over his head, and suddenly he has a clearer understanding of the whole situation. It's like he always knew this simple truth, but needed someone else to shine a light on it. He was always too close, too attached, to see this truth for himself. "It's not about the having. It's all about the needing. I think that's right. I think you've got it exactly right."
"I have?" David asks.
"I think so."
"So, what are you going to do? Are you going to end it?"
"I'm not sure I can. But I think I have to."
It's been several days since Jacob's conversation with David, and although what David said about Imeros being more about loss than love rang true, Jacob doesn't want it to be true.
If it were true then it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that he could have that inspiration back again if he were to give up Joelle. But, of course, he doesn't want to give up Joelle.
He's been spending the last several days talking himself out of going to his old notebooks out of fear that his work—while with Melissa—was as incomprehensible as he suspects it might be.
But as he sits by his desk, staring into a box of old writing, he sees all the notebooks from that period, and he knows he needs to face the material. He grabs a notebook and starts to flip through the pages, looking at dates, skimming through words, wading into the weight of the past.
Reading old work, particularly w
ork from much younger days, almost always feels unbearable. Outside of the nostalgic acknowledgment of your past self's relative naivety, the work is almost universally terrible. And this rule is no different in this notebook. One terrible poem leads to another equally terrible poem. All of them so shamelessly self-aware, written sloppily with the pretension and coldness of an academic shadow that stands over the shoulder of a student who hasn't yet found his voice.
The only way to read old work without that shiver of shame is to imagine that it was written by someone else, and this work was written so long ago that the notion of his younger self being an entirely different entity is not hard to imagine. But it's the emotions that still seem fresh. It's the heartbreak he still feels when he reads the words that hold a mirror up to who he is, shows him who he's always been.
As he reads further into the notebook, something gets stripped away after he's met Melissa. Something mechanical about the poems disappears, and it is clear that these attempts at poetry are more heartfelt, more from him than from what he thinks is expected of a 'poet.' It is clear that Melissa acts as the demarcation point between his reaching for a voice and his finally finding his voice.
But, still, the voice is unrefined. The poems are as sloppy and unfocussed as his more recent attempts. They're too earnest, and you can clearly see the frustration on the page for not having the words to properly express the enormity of what he was feeling. It so perfectly reflects what he's been experiencing recently that he feels embarrassed by his lack of growth. Here he is, over twenty years later, and he still hasn't found the words.
Then there is an abrupt