Imaginary

I found the letters tucked into an old journal. They fell out along with a sheet of old Photomaton pictures I’d used for my French ID. My eyes are wide, lips unsmiling and painted red, bangs cut crookedly because I used to do it myself with kitchen scissors. Of course I hadn’t forgotten your letters, but I hadn’t read them in a long time. They’re folded tightly, one of them on the slick paper that you ripped out of our college graduation program; the page is indented under your words because you had to bear down so hard with the pen while writing to me through the commencement speech. The other is on notebook paper, written in pencil, faded from time. We were twenty-one and you wrote “I think you’re perfect and I’d do or change anything about myself in hopes of consistently making you smile.” Your handwriting is cramped and scratchy.

I had a boyfriend then. I’d been with him all through college, and being in the deep South, it was expected that we’d get married soon because that’s what people do. I didn’t love him, but I’d never told you that. Whenever he tried to kiss me, I felt suffocated. I’d push him away and say it must be something in the air, allergies, the medication I’d taken that morning, maybe I was just tired.

I never told you that though. Instead I sat down on the floor in my nearly empty dorm room and cried. Then I called you and said I’d love it if we could remain friends.

***

Your attentions went to my head. I loved my reflection in your eyes. I felt like a deity at whose feet you worshipped, even though I laughed away your admiration in conversations with my friends. Still, I liked you from afar. Once, you were in town and you dropped by the bookstore where I worked as a surprise, but I hid from you in my car out back. I don’t know if I was afraid of you or myself. I told my friends that you were stalking me, but actually I was flattered.

I read all of the books you recommended. I read The Garden of Eden by Hemingway, even though I hate Hemingway. I loved it, but I’m still not sure if that’s because I actually enjoyed it or because it reminded me of you.

Once when I was house-sitting, I thought about calling and asking you to come stay with me. I still had a boyfriend, but I wanted you, or I wanted the me that I was with you. I did call, but I didn’t ask you to come over. Instead we talked late into the night. You were sitting outside by your sister’s pool, smoking cigarettes—I could hear you inhale and exhale. I knew you rolled them yourself. I’d watch you do it whenever we’d wait outside of the liberal arts building in college. I was curled up in a strange bed, my stomach aflutter from a mix of guilt and elation.

***

The year I worked in a bookstore, I sometimes flirted with the writers who came to do book signings. One attractive male author once strongly recommended that I read A Sport and a Pastime, a flirtation that I didn’t understand until I actually read it a year later. I always bragged to you about these encounters. You were a writer too, and I wanted to make you jealous.

“I aspire to have someone write about me. I’d love to be a muse,” I texted you.

“Really? That’s pretty self-absorbed,” you replied.

It stung—because you were right and I was fishing for you to say that I already was yours.

***

We didn’t see each other for years. You dated other people. I stayed with the same guy. I’d see the photos of other women with you on Facebook, and I hated them. I loved it when you broke up with them and talked about how annoying they were, though you did feel bad about the girl in Yellowstone whose virginity you took. The petty part of me was pleased that I still won out in the battle for your affections, a virgin sacrifice to the altar of me. 

***

In 2012 I came back from France, after years of near constant communication, after finally saying “I love you” over the phone, I changed my flight to come home to you. I was nervous to see you in person, even though I’d been talking to you over Skype for the past year.

We were on opposite schedules then, life and time zone. I woke up early in the morning for class at the Sorbonne and would call you on Skype as you’d be returning from your late night restaurant shift in New Orleans. Throughout the call I’d look at the small image of myself in the corner of the screen, applying my makeup, fascinated to see what my own features looked like as I did mundane things. You also looked at me. “You’re so beautiful,” you’d say, eyes half closing from exhaustion.

I had a layover in Dallas, where I changed clothes and put on makeup, hoping to look nice instead of exhausted after packing up my entire life and lugging it back to the States via eight-hour flight. When I landed in New Orleans, I played it cool, like always, afraid to show that anything or anyone mattered to me, especially you, who mattered so much. Your hands were shaking, and you were sweating nervously. When I hugged you, I felt the warm dampness of the back of your t-shirt.

***

On the page of my journal that I tucked your letters into, I wrote a quote from Anna Karenina. The entry is dated July 22, 2012, about three months after I’d come back to Louisiana. I must have been re-reading Anna’s story to find some solace in my own unhappiness at being back in the South, bored, and unexpectedly lonely.

What I had copied down was from a chapter where Vronsky is hours late to meet Anna:

She placed both hands on his shoulders and gazed at him for a long time with a deep, rapturous, and at the same time, searching look. She studied his face to make up for the time in which she had not seen him. 

As at every meeting, she was bringing together her imaginary idea of him (an incomparably better one, impossible in reality) with him as he was.

You were different. I wondered if I’d somehow created an imaginary idea of you, of us. You were so angry, sometimes at me, sometimes at the world, but you directed it at me because I was there.

You’d moved into an apartment on Iberville Street in New Orleans, and I’d stay weekends with you, expecting us to make up for lost time, but you left me alone for long periods where I laid around on your bed, reading. Once you locked me in the apartment from the outside, saying I shouldn’t leave, and then came back to grab some notebooks from on top of your fridge and angrily said “just in case you thought you could snoop while you’re here.”

Out of spite, I opened your laptop and read every document you had saved. None of it was worth anything. Useless fragments of term papers, starts of poems, garbage.

***

My close friends had planned a night out for my birthday. You arrived late, pissed off, aggressively possessive of me, forcing me to sit on your lap, too affectionate in front of everyone. I was uncomfortable.

You left early. I went home with my best friend, explaining that you were just stressed out, trying to wrap up your thesis while working nights. I didn’t want her to see how sad I was, how disappointed, and after all, you were planning to make it up to me tomorrow; you’d gotten a room at a nice hotel downtown.

When we met up the next day, the air between us felt heavy. I was afraid, though I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t say anything as I got into the passenger seat of your car and you loaded my suitcase into the back.

“I need to stop by Spencer’s,” you said. “I left some medication that I need there.”

“We haven’t seen Spencer in a while,” I said.

“He’s not home. I’m just going in to pick something up.”

I went inside with you and sat down on the couch while you went into the back. I didn’t question why you brought, let alone left, medication at a friend’s house. You came back into the living room, livid, yelling about how Spencer, your best friend, had stolen your medication.

“Why would he steal medicine from you?” I asked.

You picked up a pile of books on the coffee table and threw them across the room, so angry that you were close to tears. “Because he’s a fucking asshole,” you screamed.

I stood there, shocked and repulsed. I didn’t mean to, but I started laughing. “You are acting like an idiot right now, and it’s seriously unattractive,” I said, walking outside to sit on the porch, willing my heartbeat to slow down.

I didn’t know you were doing heroin regularly.

***

We imploded spectacularly. I kept searching for what I thought must have been the real you—I couldn’t understand where the person I’d known and loved had gone. I started to feel crazy, like I’d completely imagined you, or like I could no longer trust my own judgements and feelings. The version of myself I’d fallen for, that lovely reflection in your eyes, withered and died. I’d become a burden to you. You told me, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have a real life, and things that are bigger than you.” I’d lost myself in you, like Narcissus drowning, fooled by what he’d thought was real.

***

The last time I saw you was at your house on Iberville. I came over because you asked me to. I realize now that you were probably scared. You were losing yourself, you were so unhappy. I was numb. You stood against the wall and sank down to the floor. It was raining outside and you were crying. “Please, can’t you just love me the way I am?”

As at every meeting, she was bringing together her imaginary idea of him (an incomparably better one, impossible in reality) with him as he was.