The Bookshelf

June 2020

He told me to read more Hemingway. 

This was his last piece of advice on his way out: to read something simple, direct. Maybe if I took it seriously, I’d get better at defending myself. 

I’ll concede that I lost my grip on the narrative.  I tell stories like impossible scavenger hunts, and lose all of the characters without meaning to. Occasionally, I’ll overdo it with flattery. Sometimes, I’ll leave out the coffee I had with that senior associate, the third one this week. 

Our arguments were always too digressive, especially near the end. He’d get tired of the incomplete circles I was drawing in the kitchen and slam the door on his way out. “I need a drive,” he’d mutter through the cigarette that would magically appear in his teeth. I’d jump on him for smoking again, and he’d ask me if I was sleeping with somebody else. 

And when love and the couch were gone, I sat on the floor, surrounded by the empty space that should have been filled with paintings. Holes marked the crooked walls as proof of a past life.  We were always so careless about hanging things, him and I. 

For hours I stared at the one piece of furniture we built together, the one he left. It was one of those industrial projects, with the black iron piping and the sanded pine boards.  The bookshelf stood bolted to its own wall at the north end of the apartment; it had once housed a massive assortment of stories we always tried to imitate, and books we hadn’t yet gotten around to reading because there would always be more time; now, the space is overwhelming. Fuck you, William Faulkner.  

I remember walking the aisles of the suburban home improvement store, running my hand lightly on the boards that I liked.  Each board was carefully selected for how pretty I thought it could be, once we were done with it. There was work to be done, to turn it into something that could compliment the furniture, our furniture. 

We rushed home with the lumber that we somehow stacked inside of his Subaru Outback, a broken windshield just waiting to happen. We were never patient with our wilder ideas, and we didn’t own a truck. 

I’m thinking about all of these things, a reel of missteps playing in my head as I let him up to the apartment. My apartment. The bookshelf that I was always so particular about— he has come to take it apart. I’m disturbed by the irony. Maybe this means that it isn’t ironic, after all. 

When he comes in, I’m feeling around for any remnant of sex. There’s nothing. It’s not even dormant, threatening to enter the room as soon as we let our guard down; it has fled, untraceable and not to be hunted. We were other people, then, inhabiting similar bodies. Little by little, we had each changed the other.

He’s disassembled his work a dozen times before, so I’m left to shout poorly timed jokes and to step in where I’m not needed. I distract myself with the turntable, and put on records that could make us remember more, but that are irrefutably perfect, anyway. Now so long, Marianne.

And just as soon as he arrives, the project is left in piles on the floor. I have a tendency to overthink things, and nervously open a six-pack. It’s something I picked out down the street, something that I know he’ll like. His approval always mattered to me, and apparently it still does. God, I am a sight when I am uncomfortable. 

We drink the funny beer on the couch that I bought after sitting on the floor became too depressing, and admire the state of the walls. This apartment has seen so many versions of this bookshelf, and the only thing left to do is to tap our sweaty pilsners together in surrender. I always loved him so much for how responsive he was to my eccentricities, how willing he was to rearrange rooms.  

The addiction we always fought about on sidewalks is making me laugh as we conspire on the back porch. He was never good for smoking alone, and I always kind of loved that he’d ask me to join, even in our Februaries. I’d like to think it was his first sign of affection for me. Smoking is a layman’s meditation— it’s not a thing you do with people you dislike. I might go as far as to say that it’s not a thing you do with people you don’t want to fuck—exes notwithstanding. Now, as I watch him inhale, I wonder how I became such a nagging wife. 

When asked, I think we’ll just tell people that we were incompatible, that I was impossible.  In truth, there is never one thing that makes you leave a person. It’s a series of tiny injustices, an entire reference list of how we’ll never be happy. Like the fact that he’d never clean the bathroom, or how I was always closing my eyes during sex. 

Apparently, there is some sort of secret formula you can use to determine how much is enough. I was never confident in the arithmetic; hence, the repeated attempts at building a life together. 

Still, I don’t think we give love enough credit. She is a wily bitch, an indelible force of nature. As I watch him soothe his frayed nerves under a blanket of smoke, love raises her head and slides quietly in between the two of us. I love him, I do. It’s just that it’s quiet and careful now, like the reverence you might see between wartime comrades. 

You see, I love the way he sees the world, even Los Angeles. I love how he dreams: fervently and without pause. I love how he always knew how to handle my brand of selfishness, and how he will never second-guess his own selflessness. He is kind, yet devastatingly spiteful to those who deserve it. He is loved by dogs, and children, and mothers, and is delighted by 500-year-old trees. I love how he talks— it’s old-fashioned, and always very, very smart. During an election season, he’ll watch every presidential debate, but is never condescending about it. I love that he has read more books than me, and that he cares for them with lighter, more respectful hands. 

He was the first grown man I loved who would ask me about more than the weather, and who genuinely wasn’t afraid of my answer. And, bless him— he was always so patient with my ever-changing interests and ambitions, never like I was with him. He’d fold my laundry, let me play as much Bob Dylan as I wanted, and he always made me laugh until my sides hurt. I know I made him laugh once, too. 

We share our respective problems over coffee, finish the television finales we always watched together. I tell him about the current state of my love life, and he shares freewheeling tales of his own. We ask each other for help; I read him early drafts of my writing. It’s so domestic, and quiet, and it occurs to me that this is what it would have looked like if we had stayed together another fifty years. 

We’re leaving a high-rise when I finally feel the weight of it all. We’ve been catching up and sharing our thoughts on the book I just read, the one he always insisted I read. I walk him to the elevator, wondering if there was ever a version of our story that could have had a happy ending. After a moment’s reflection, I decide it still deserves to be remembered as a damn fine love story. 

“I like this,” I say, not brave enough to make eye contact. “Having you as a friend.” 

He pauses, and waits until the elevator has reached the ground floor. His throat clearing has always been a defense mechanism; his heart works so much faster than his ability to articulate.  

“I like it, too,” he admits, as the memory of us stands quietly to the left. The doors open, and we all gather ourselves enough to leave.

Illustration by Justine Ussia