Chapter 39

Jeff showed up at my door at 6:30. He wasn't smiling.

"Come in."

He didn't say anything. He just followed me to my room.

"Jeff, why did you come last night when I asked you not to?"

I kept any trace of attitude from my voice. It was just a question and I wanted an answer.

He took a deep breath. He took several more not quite so deep.

I looked him in the eye.

He nodded.

"I knew there was a good possibility you would be very angry," he said.

He fidgeted. He raised his eyebrows. He shrugged. He gestured with his hands.

I had to fight to keep a smile from my face. He didn't want to answer. This was how he looked when he thought the answer to a question would make him look too good.

I had no idea what he was going to say, but I knew I was going to like it. If he ever said it.

"So why did you do it?"

"I had nothing to lose. If you changed your mind it was the right thing to do."

He fidgeted some more.

"And?"

"Well, even if it turned out to be what broke us up," he dragged it out like he still had the hope he would never have to finish the thought, "at least I'd be sure you were safe. I might not have you, but you'd be safe."

I'd been thinking about this all day; what I wanted to hear; what I wanted to say. I gave him a brief smile.

"I'm sorry, Jeff. I was completely wrong. Please forgive me."

As I spoke that last phrase I moved forward, put my arms around him and buried my head in his chest. It was a sincere act of contrition and of love.

I knew it was also manipulative. There was a greater chance that if I tossed a coin in the air it would never come down than that Jeff would not forgive me when I asked him this way.

He held me. He caressed my shoulders, my neck, my hair.

It made me feel wonderful.

It made me feel terrible.

It made me feel like I had to do more.

"Let's go to dinner, Dr. Goldberg. There's more I want to say."

I didn't order a drink. I just asked for a glass of water.

This hadn't been about drinking but I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it.

"You haven't called me 'fifths' for a while. Is there any special reason for that?"

"It's not a special reason. The name was what you did, who you were. You've been back around two and a half weeks and we've had two big blow ups already. I think I've made an effort, but it feels like you're backing away from me."

"I guess I have been," I said.

"Well, you're entitled to. It's not like we've made a commitment to spend the rest of our lives together. And even if we did, people aren't held to that anymore."

He was trying to sound understanding and accepting but I could hear the weight on his heart. He thought this was the beginning of the end.

He would do what he could to prevent a breakup, but he would let me go gracefully if he had to. He proved that by preventing us from driving home after drinking.

I was afraid it was the beginning of the end as well. But I was handling it very differently than Jeff.

"Were you planning to come back to our place when school starts?" I asked.

"That's not actually a rhetorical question, is it? How could you not be certain of my answer?" There is no anger in his voice, just incredulity.

"Because I'm so unsure of myself and I'm so worried about our whole situation.

"I don't know if I'm who you think I am. I haven't acted like it lately. Look what you were willing to risk. Look what you were willing to give up. I don't think I could do that. I don't know if I'd even think of that."

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Okay, this isn't rhetorical either; it's more Socratic. But you haven't been wrong yet so I'm just going to go with the program. I'm twenty-one, Jeff."

"How long have you known me?"

"About nine months."

"So you've known me only nine months out of twenty-one years. That's twenty-seven times longer you haven't known me than you have."

"I'll take your word for the math," I said.

"So for almost your whole life, you learned how things are in the world and how you fit into that framework?"

"Yes."

"And at the very end of all that time, a stranger comes along and tells you you're mistaken. He tells you you're really someone else with qualities you didn't know you had."

"Right," I agreed.

"So as I understand your big problem we've outlined here: you're having trouble accepting, on faith, the word of a stranger that your belief system built over twenty years is flawed in that it doesn't give you credit for being a better person than you thought you were.

"And, since you have failed to completely integrate his view, on faith, into your belief system, there is no hope for your future."

I chuckled. "When you say it that way, it sounds stupid."

"Which one had the Caesar Salad?" asked the waitress.

Jeff raised his right hand and said, "That would be me."

I waited until she walked off.

"Still ... Let me put it this way: how much do you love me?"

He gestured with his hands that he didn't know how to describe it.

Then he described it.

"I want you happy. But not this-is-what-you-want-so-I'll-say-it's-okay happy. I'm talking long-term, to the bone happy. So if you do something that's just a short-term fix, I won't necessarily go along with it."

"Like let me drive home drunk?"

"Exactly," he said.

"I can help you put a name to that feeling. It's not mine. I've got to give credit to the eloquence of your sister. The feelings you're describing, according to Sandy, is that you're absolutely stupid for me."

He had a good laugh.

I put my hands on his and leaned in.

"Jeff, I love you so much, but I don't know if I can ever get to being stupid for you. I don't know if that's enough."

"You're mixing all kinds of incompatible concepts together. You look at an infinitesimally short time frame and use it to make conclusions about 'ever.'

"And you're looking at a balancing of love like it's a measurement on a laboratory scale. It seems to me that love is more ecological.

"Deer eat the vegetation until there isn't enough to support the population. They die off from starvation. The vegetation grows back with a vengeance because there aren't enough deer to eat it.

"The deer multiply because there's plenty to eat until there are so many they deplete it. Then the deer die off from starvation. And so on. There's a balance, a range. It's not a mathematical equality."

"You win," I said.

I wasn't giving up. I'd just gained a better understanding.

"I've been worried I won't be able to match the depth of your love and you express some of your passion by explaining the ecological balance of love. What the hell was I worried about?"

Jeff looked confused.

"We don't even speak the same language. I speak English. You speak nerd."

I lifted his hand and kissed it.

"But you're my nerd."

I relaxed and just went with the flow for the rest of the meal. This felt like make-up romance. I developed the proper attitude and everything fell into place.

It was a lovely respite. I knew we would have to talk about our biggest obstacle very soon.

I brought it up after dessert.

"Can we go someplace to talk? I have a pretty good idea what's been making me crazy and I need to talk about it."

Again his smile went missing.

He drove toward center city. His car was surprisingly quiet.

With all that was going on and what was coming up, how is it that I managed to focus on a detail about his car? The lack of noise wasn't intrusive. If it had been raining I would have noticed the wipers.

He parked behind the Art Museum. It was still light out and small groups congregate there most summer nights.

Still, it was quiet enough for us to talk.

"We've been together around - we've known each other around nine months.

"It's gotten pretty intense. I know it's still relatively early in the relationship and when women start to talk about this it's often the beginning of the end, but I was wondering..."