We walked on, holding hands. Was I ready for something more than we already had? I didn’t want to commit myself to something I couldn’t handle. Klotzman, who was otherwise wary of compliments, said I had made considerable progress. I often wished matters could decide themselves. I still had a large passive streak, which explained why I preferred during our sex that she was the one on top. Still I had the feeling that we were evolving into something new.
Walking together was our mode. It was how we started out and whatever else happened came from it. So we continued walking — it was a breezy day — mostly in silence.
“I’m blissfully happy,” she said.
“We could try living together for a week,” I said, “as an experiment.” My offer surprised me. We had our separate apartments as a fallback position. I had gone forward half a step and was already falling back in my mind.
“We could alternate,” she said. “One week at your place, one week at mine. We wouldn’t have to give up our separate apartments.”
I had never thought of giving up my apartment, which was my sanctuary. Her offer frightened me and I suddenly regretted the direction we were going. Wasn’t everything fine as it was, except for my nagging jealousy over Ron. If we lived together, there would be no space for Ron to push himself in. “We could try the arrangement you suggest,” I said doubtfully, “and if we’re not happy with it, we could return to the way we are.”
“Why shouldn’t we be happy with it?” she said. “I’m already happy with it.”
I could hear Klotzman say, “When you start going forward, it’s no easy trick going back.”
We had already walked further than we did on our usual walks, but we kept going.
I was glad the word marriage had not come up in our discussion. It might not be so bad living together if we didn’t have the obligation of marriage over our heads. We both had jobs so it wasn’t as if we would be together all the time, though we did work in the same place.
After we returned from our walk, Eva filled a bag with some clothes and so began our new arrangement.
I was a little antsy the first few days, but I began to get used to Eva’s continuous presence. I told Klotzman I missed my times by myself, but even in the previous arrangement I missed more opportunities to be by myself. Klotzman advised me to tell Eva about this need, indicating that my apartment was large enough to get off by myself.
Some time I would get out of our bed in the middle of the night and go off into another room. After an hour or so by myself I would return to our bed, almost always finding Eva still asleep. In such fashion, the week slipped by.
When the week ended, I wasn’t ready to move into her place, but I felt I had to honor our agreement.
I took a minimum amount of clothes in a paper bag and went reluctantly to my new temporary home. If I knew how, I would have ended this experiment immediately. For Eva’s sake, I tried to look happy living in her place, but I wasn’t fooling her.
“Would you like to take a break and stay in your place one night?” she asked. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t say yes.
“If I want to go back to my own place, I’ll tell you,” I said.
It was a slower week than usual. Apart from work, which provided a relief, my only break from the new routine were my visits to Klotzman’s office.
I reported my dilemma in wary understatement. I knew his response before he actually made it. “Tell Eva what you want,” he said. “It is the only way to avoid resentment, which will build and destroy your relationship.”
“I don’t know how to,” I said.
“Is overcoming this fear of being outspoken worse than destroying your feeling for Eva?”
Another question to which I had no answer. “It’s not so hard living in her apartment,” I said. “I’ll get used to it.”
“If it isn’t hard, why bring it up?” he asked.
“It’s only for a few more days,” I say.
“And then what?” he asked.
“We have to decide whether we want to continue living together,” I said.
“What will you say?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
“And if you don’t want to continue, what will you say?” he asked.
I didn’t know and couldn’t say. “I’ll think of something.” I said.
“How much easier life would be for you, if you could tell the people you’re close to how you feel when it is in opposition to what you think they want to hear.”
We had been down this road before. Yes yes yes yes yes, I wanted to say but didn’t. “You had said I was making progress,” I said. “Are you recanting now?”
He looked exasperated with me. “You go back and forth,” he said. “Living with Eva was a huge step for you.”
“That’s why I don’t say anything,” I said. “I don’t want to lose what I have. I just want to modify our arrangement.”
“Eva seems to care for you, Mel. Do you really think a modification in your arrangement would cause her to break things off?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What I really don’t understand is why she cares for me.”
“That’s another matter altogether,” he said. “You do accept that she does care for you.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “Maybe she’ll wake up one day and discover that she doesn’t.”
He shook his head sadly. “You’ve been friends for a while now, haven’t you. Do you have any reason to believe that her feelings are frivolous?”
I admitted that I didn’t. And that was that. Nothing was solved except that I knew I had been in the wrong again. And there was nothing to be done or at least nothing that I was willing to do.
When we finished the week living together in her place, I said, “Let’s take a few days off before making another decision.”
“If that’s what you want,” she said. “I thought the arrangement went pretty well, though it was more comfortable in your apartment.”
I’m glad she recognized that. In her apartment if I wanted to be by myself, I’d have to go in the bathroom, which I did a few times.
The next few days we each lived in our separate apartments and I confess that after the first day I felt kind of lonely. On the fourth day, at my suggestion, Eva moved back into my apartment. I was comfortable with her there, even occasionally happy.
We completed a week of living together in my apartment. I was reluctant to move again into hers, which seemed the next step, but Eva suggested that we spend another week in mine. It was as if she were reading my mood. I agreed, feeling grateful to her, though I played down my appreciation, not wanting her to know that I was not happy with the other alternative.
“When it’s fixed up,” Eva said, “your place is quite nice.” I neglected to mention that Eva had done some redecorating, mostly in the interest of neatening things.
So we lived together another week in my place, which was mostly okay. During one of our walks I said, muttered actually, “Why don’t we just stay in my place?”
She didn’t answer for a while — perhaps she hadn’t heard me. I wasn’t up to saying it again. A few minutes later she said, “I’m not ready yet to give up my own place altogether. Why don’t we try another week in your apartment?”
I agreed, though I worried where we would be after the week ended. All week I concerned myself with what lay ahead for us.
I had a chance to talk to Klotzman before the week was over.
“I’m impressed with how you’re doing,” he said, “but nothing comes easy to you.”
“If I could,” I said, “I would go back to the way things had been before Eva and I started living together. Life was simpler then.”
“There were different problems,” he said.
“I can imagine myself on a more casual footing with Eva. I was less tormented then.”