‘Life is always brimming with surprises.’
‘You do sound happy.’
‘And you
do
sound genuinely unsettled by this news,’ I said.
‘It’s just taken me unawares.’
That reaction was pure Sara. She ‘loved’ her eccentric friends, but had this rather Victorian view of love: you can sleep with a mad artist when you’re of a certain age . . . but you must settle down with the sort of sober, reasonable man who is going to keep up his end of the conjugal bargain and provide you with an upscale life. So the idea that I was now Theo Morgan’s lover . . .
‘I really do like Theo,’ she said. ‘And, of course, he has every opportunity of becoming a rather important writer on film. But – and this is not a heavily emphasized “but” – he really is not the sturdy foundation upon which . . .’
‘I get your point,’ I said.
‘I didn’t mean to cause any offense.’
‘None taken,’ I said.
Christy met Theo a few weeks later when she was back in Boston to give a reading at Eliot House, and thoroughly approved of him. We went out to dinner after the reading which, in that great tradition of most poetry readings, was only attended by around thirty interested people. It didn’t matter that Christy had been another Pulitzer finalist the previous year for her second collection of poems. Poetry in our culture didn’t have much in the way of commercial legs.
But Theo – much to my amazement – knew his stuff when it came to modern American poetry. Over dinner, he was exchanging critical comments with Christy on everyone from Hart Crane to Howard Nemerov to Auden. When he disappeared off to use the toilet, Christy flashed me a knowing smile and said: ‘Well, I’d jump him if I was living here. But I like obsessive compulsives.’
‘He’s not that obsessive,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, he is. But there’s nothing wrong with being a brilliant case of arrested development. Like me, you teach writers. In some way or another, all writers are damaged – and believe me, I can spot damage in a nanosecond. But there’s “bad damaged”, psycho-boy stuff. Then there’s “good damaged”, out there but interesting. Your fella falls into the second category.’
‘So you approve . . . with reservations.’
‘I think he’s super-smart and super-complicated. If you can handle that, marry the guy. But just know one thing: if you are thinking in any way of changing him, forget about it. He’s got his own way of doing things, and he’s not going to ever shift away from that.’
Christy was certainly right about Theo’s rigidity. He refused to ever get up before midday. He started the day with a pot of extra-strong espresso. He would only use one specific brand of espresso coffee – Lavazza – and would only make it in one of those small old-fashioned stove-top espresso makers. While the coffee was brewing, he’d eat a bowl of a particularly sweet and unhealthy cereal called Captain Crunch – but he refused to do so with milk, as he completely abhorred it. Then he’d install himself at his desk and begin the two hours he passed every day working on his magnum opus, a comprehensive history of American cinema – ‘about the most opinionated and idiosyncratic book ever written on the movies in this country’ and one which (he was sure) would instantly make him the most renowned critic in the country . . . if he ever got around to finishing the damn thing. It wasn’t that Theo lacked discipline or diligence. Rather the problem was that it was so insanely long: 2,130 pages of manuscript and he hadn’t yet reached the 1960s. I’d read the section on Orson Welles – he did allow me that privilege, after I’d promised I wouldn’t be overly critical – and I was amazed at how lucid and well-written and intelligent it was. Just as I was also dazzled by the scope of his ambition.
But when I asked to read more, he demurred, saying that he really shouldn’t have shown me anything in the first place, that I might be opening myself up for disappointment with the rest of the book, and that he could have possibly ‘tainted’ the writing process by letting me have a glimpse. He got so agitated and downright stressed out as he told me this that I had to mask my shock at the way he talked himself into an obsessive-compulsive corner.
‘I can never,
never
let you even touch the manuscript again,’ he said, pacing up and down his studio room at a manic pace.
‘Theo, there’s really no need to get so upset about—’
‘No need to get upset! No need to get upset! What do you know about upset? For four years, no one –
no one
– has touched this manuscript.’
‘But you
gave
it to me, Theo. You asked me to read it. So I don’t understand—’
‘That’s right, you
don’t
understand what it means to—’
But before finishing the sentence he had grabbed his leather jacket and was out the door. I thought about following him, but decided it was best simply to let him be – especially as I was so damn thrown by this out-of-body scene that had just been perpetrated. I decided there and then that, if he didn’t come back with some sort of explanation for this deeply disturbing act, I’d leave that night.
When he didn’t show up after an hour I scribbled him a note:
I waited for you. I hope you are in a better place.
And I went home.
At this point in time we’d been going out together for around six weeks and though we had spent a few evenings at my apartment in Somerville we’d generally stayed at his place in Cambridge, as it was far more convenient for all the cinemas we attended around Harvard Square. Though we were seeing each other two to three nights a week we had an unspoken rule to never show up uninvited at the other person’s residence. Until that night . . . when, around midnight, the doorbell rang. I hesitated before answering it, thinking:
Say this evening was the moment when the veneer of normality and romantic bliss finally cracked and from this moment on, I’ll be seeing all the spooky, strange stuff he’s so far kept from view?
But another voice said:
And if you push him away now because of one small outburst, you’ll be alone. And you don’t want to be alone again
.
So I opened the door. He stood there, looking spent, his eyes brimming with fear and shame.
‘That was . . . awful,’ he said in a low whisper. ‘And I’ll understand if you slam the door on me. But . . .’
‘Is this a little secret habit you’ve been holding back on me – insane rages over nothing?’
‘I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. Can I come inside, please?’
I hesitated. He said: ‘Please, Jane . . .’
I nodded for him to follow me upstairs. Once in my living room he put his arms around me and told me that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, that the last time he got one of these ‘rages’ was around two years ago. If it ever happened again he’d understand if I dropped him on the spot, and he’d do anything to make it up to me, and . . .
Though I did appreciate his contriteness, neediness is always a bit unnerving – even though I simultaneously found it reassuring. Perhaps because, at this point in time, I also needed him, and the way he made me feel wanted and central to his life. It’s that old endless tug-of-war between wanting to feel essential to someone else and concurrently fearing this dependence because of the responsibility it imposes on you.
So I put my arms around him and told him there was nothing more to say about it, except: Let’s go to bed.
Which we did. When I woke up the next morning at eight Theo had broken his ‘never up before noon’ rule and had cooked a huge breakfast for us. When he started singing his contriteness aria I silenced it with a kiss.
‘There will never be a repeat performance,’ he promised me.
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ I said.
I went off to work, determined to try and put the entire incident behind me.
And Theo kept his word. There was no repeat performance in the months after this one-off incident. It wasn’t as if he became ultra-cautious around me, always on his best behavior and never showing me his complexities. On the contrary he reverted to his vampire hours shortly thereafter – continuing to watch movies all night and never rising before noon, and steadfastly refusing my attempts to change his junk-food habits. But I wasn’t complaining. If I’d had a particularly bad day at the university – or suddenly got hit with one of those black moods that occasionally overtook me – he instinctually understood how to manage the situation: attentive, but never oppressive. Knowing when not to crowd someone is never the simplest of learned lessons, but we both seemed adept at it. Whenever he was not around I genuinely missed him, just as I also liked the fact that we were never with each other day in, day out.
Eight months passed. One afternoon I arrived home to find a delivery van from Sony outside my door. The driver approached me as I climbed the steps to my front door, asked if I was Jane Howard, and said that he was delivering a 42-inch plasma television to me. When I said: ‘There must be some mistake,’ he showed me the dispatch order – and there, in fine print, was Theo’s name.
‘I really don’t want such a big television,’ I told him.
‘Well then, you should have discussed this with the guy who ordered it for you.’
I asked the man to wait for five minutes while I ran upstairs and called Theo at the Harvard Film Archive.
‘Are you insane?’ I asked him.
‘I think you know the answer to that question,’ he said.
‘Why would I want such a big damn television?’
‘I thought we needed one.’
We
. It was the first time he had used the first person plural to describe
us.
‘Trying to watch movies on that tiny little set of yours is kind of a sacrilege. So . . .’
‘You should have talked this over with me first.’
‘But that would have killed the surprise necessary in all surprises.’
‘Don’t those sets cost a fortune?’
‘Isn’t that still my problem, not ours?’
Again the use of the plural. Was this his way of telling me he was moving in?
‘I don’t know what to say . . .’
‘Say nothing until I show up tonight with a new DVD transfer of Pressburger and Powell’s
A Matter of Life and Death
. You will not believe the hallucinogenic use of early Technicolor . . .’
Theo was right: the television did fit into the corner space near the fireplace – and Pressburger and Powell’s expressionistic film on war and the hereafter did seem visually lush when viewed on such an absurdly wide screen.
‘I knew you’d love it,’ Theo said.
‘Just don’t make a point of overwhelming me with such grand gestures again.’
‘But I like overwhelming you. Anyway, we both know you’re far too rational and practical for your own good.’
Ouch – but he was speaking the truth. I did weigh every small financial decision I made, and only indulged myself with something when I was sure that it was not profligate or whimsical. Theo would watch me try on clothes in shops and then reject them because they were ‘too expensive’ (even if it was just the Gap) or ‘more of the same’ (my way of saying I didn’t need it).
‘But you don’t have a decent leather jacket,’ he said when I saw one I liked in a shop on Newbury Street.
‘I can live without one.’
‘But you look cool in this one.’
‘It’s nearly four hundred dollars.’
‘Indulge yourself.’
‘I’m not comfortable indulging myself.’
‘No kidding. But you should learn to do so a little more. Life is too damn short otherwise. And you don’t have to continue to prove to the world that you’re not your con-artist dad.’
‘Remind me not to tell you my secrets again.’
‘It’s hardly a secret if the FBI knows it. Anyway, I’m just asking you to lighten up on yourself.’
‘I don’t do “guilt free”,’ I said. ‘I wish I could, but my brain simply can’t liberate itself from the idea that there is a price to everything.’
‘You should be the one writing about Puritanism, not Grande Dame Sara.’
‘But I do, I do. The Naturalists were as obsessed with our Puritan guilt as Hawthorne. Only they saw it from the perspective of our hyper-capitalist obsessions. Money and God and Guilt: the great all-American Trifecta. And none of us can totally shake loose from it.’
But I still bought the leather jacket, and I didn’t make any further noises about the extravagant television that now dominated a corner of my living room. Nor did I balk when he suggested we spend a week at a ‘groovy little retro hotel’ in South Beach ‘on my tab’.
‘You have a “tab” in Miami?’ I asked him.
‘It’s a turn of phrase.’
‘Can you really afford to plump for a week?’
‘Will you stop being so damn cautious. If I say I can plump for a week I can plump for a week.’
‘Because I’d certainly be happy to plump for half of everything.’
‘Thank you for draining my romantic offer of all its inherent romanticism.’
‘That wasn’t my intention. I was just being – OK, guilty as charged – cautious.’
But on our second night in Miami I did something incautious. After drinking far too many margaritas in some Mexican dive off Lincoln Road, we returned to our Art Deco room in our Art Deco hotel and proceeded to make very drunken love. When night woke up and I staggered into the bathroom and caught sight of the tequila aftershock in my eyes, a desperate thought hit me: I had failed to insert my diaphragm before we had collapsed onto the bed.
Counting backwards on my fingers I calculated (with mounting fear) that I was just three days off the middle of my cycle. I knew that if I articulated such worry to Theo it would cast a large uneasy shadow over the rest of our time in the Floridian sun. Surely the mathematics would work in my favor.
But as the week dragged on – and the thirty-six-hour deadline passed for the use of the morning-after pill – I tried to keep my anxiety out of Theo’s sight. Bar one or two awkward moments when he sensed that I was troubled by something, I did keep my fear under wraps.