I tell her about Carroway’s call at the office.
“You haven’t tried to see him?” she asks. “That’s not like you.”
“I feel as if I can’t bear not to see him,” I say, “and other times it’s as if it never really happened. (When I talk to Grace it’s like talking to another version of myself.) Can you understand that? I worry about losing my own experience.”
“I think I knowwhereyou’re coming from,” says Grace. “How’s Yuri handling it?”
“He has very little reality for me these days.”
“To tell you the truth,” she says, “I’ve always had some problems with Yuri. Do you know what I mean? I think he comes on to me.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say.
“I can’t really explain,” says Grace. “I feel like, you know, he can’t tell the difference between us.”
Yuri is occupied watching a movie on television when I come back downstairs. I say “Hi” and he smiles in delayed reaction.
The movie is a Hitchcock film called “Marnie,” which I had seen pieces of on television before. (Whenever I watch, Marnie seems to be on horseback, the horse out of control.)
During a commercial he asks who I had been talking to for almost two hours. I see no reason not to tell him. “It was Grace,” I say. “My mother is worried about my step-father’s health.” Yuri mumbles something. I feel calmer, sit down on the couch and do a drawing, a self-portrait with half the face blurred out. We have returned to our routine of silence. After his movie is over, Yuri says goodnight, looks over at me, expecting something (what, Yuri?) and goes upstairs. “Sleep well,” I say to him. I feel tender toward him in his impending absence.
When you no longer love someone it is hard to remember how it was when you did.
In the office we share I come upon a notebook of Yuri’s which contains journal entries of the past year. I open the book on a sudden urge, intrigued with what’s going on with him. I stop to read certain passages in which my name appears or the names of other women are mentioned. He has not been so innocent. A line strikes me. “I am in mourning for an object which is itself in mourning.” I repeat the sentence to myself.
It is five minutes past midnight when I phone Carroway from the office. He answers in a harsh voice on the second ring. “I’m sorry if I woke you,” I say in a whisper. “Who the fuck is this?” he says, shouts. (As if I were malting an obscene phone call.) I hang up, then moments later call again. I am in a state, my heart flapping wildly, though also in control. This time he answers on the first ring, says in a muffled voice, “What do you want?” “So you knew it was me,” I say. “I don’t expect to be treated this way from a….” The sentence doesn’t end.
“Why don’t I call you back first thing in the morning,” he says.
“I want to talk now.”
“I think it would be better if I got back to you in the morning,” he says. “Good night, sir.”
“Anna Marie is in the room, I suppose.”
“That’s an intelligent assumption. Good night.”
“Do you ever think of me?” I ask.
“I’m going to have to hang up now,” he says. “Okay?”
I say nothing, wait for the axe.
“Get some sleep,” he says and is gone.
I feel nothing. I am afraid to open myself to whatever I am really feeling. When I turn around there’s Yuri, in the dark blue silk bathrobe I had once given him for his birthday, watching me from the doorway. “Do you want something?” I ask him. There is a rash on his forehead that extends almost to the bridge of his nose.
I want to know who you were talking to on the phone,” he says in a voice full of childish belligerence.
“It doesn’t concern you,” I say cooly.
“If I’m concerned, it concerns me,” he says. He has his hands on his hips and sways slightly as he talks.
He is angry enough to smash me, I sense, though I feel no danger. He’ll be sorry if he lays a hand on me. That’s what I’m thinking. “Come off it, Yuri,” I say to him.
He repeats his demand, takes a step in my direction.
“It will only hurt you to know,” I say. “Do you think I want to hurt you? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“And Nixon is not a crook,” he says. “I think you get off on hurting me.” His face looks as if the skin had been scraped with sandpaper.
“I have my own problems,” I say. “I’m not going to be sucked into yours.” I walk past him in the narrow space to show him I am not afraid of him. He brushes me with his shoulder.
He waits until I am past him, until I begin to climb the steps, before shouting my name. “Have the decency not to throw your shit in my face,” he says.
“You think I’m indecent, Yuri?” I ask the question without turning around. My legs ache. I am aware suddenly of being exquisitely tired. “Is that what you think of me, Yuri?”
He follows me up the basement stairs into the living room before answering. “That’s the kindest way it might be put,” he says.
“Say what you mean, you mother fucker.” I keep my voice down, focus my anger.
“I didn’t get that,” he says.
“I’ll tell you something, Yuri,” I say. “If you sawa movie about our lives,” I say, “you’d find me the more sympathetic character. You know that’s true.”
He shakes his head in denial, looks lost. “Anything is possible,” he says, “in a medium that means to deceive. As a matter of fact, Adrienne, you’re full of shit.”
I have the sense of being an observer of some obscene public event. I am watching an ugly domestic squabble in the movies in which someone like myself is a major participant, a crazy fight to the death has just begun, a fight that will get uglier and uglier until it breaks off into something else, some vulgar and painful resolution, and I watch myself think, No, I don’t want this, and I hold up my hand like a traffic cop. I witness myself holding up my hand. “I don’t want to talk now, Yuri. Okay?” I disengage.
He follows me up to the bedroom, stares his anger at me for a long time without saying a word. It doesn’t frighten me. There isn’t anything he can do to frighten me.
“Yuri, if you have something to say, say it. What do you want?”
He turns around, returns downstairs.
It is a relief to be free of him. I make a bet with myself that he will return (I know him too well) in five maybe ten minutes for a final flail. There will be an unfelt apology or a last angry word. I put off going to sleep.
I am wrong as it turns out, but not very far wrong. (I know Yuri. I can set my watch on his heart beat.) At breakfast the next morning, he leans over to me and says he is sorry about last night. Rebecca is at the table so I merely nod in acknowledgement
Later, as he is leaving the house, I say, “You don’t need to apologize to me for anything, Yuri.”
He nods, offers me the trace of a smile. “I think I apologize to you because I want you to apologize to me,” he says.
“I think I know that about you,” I say.
Yuri goes out, closes the door behind him. Before I can sit down to my second cup of coffee, he is back.
His hair is in disarray even though he has been outdoors less than a minute. “I feel patronized by you,” he says. “That’s all I want to say.”
“Let’s not have another fight,” I say. “Okay?”
“What else is there?” he says. “It’s the only contact left us.
“Please don’t shout,” I whisper. “At least close the door, honey. You know how I feel about public scenes.”
“Whenever I say something you don’t want to hear, you accuse me of shouting,” he shouts. “The neighbors are in the audience watching the movie of your life. Show them how sympathetic you are.”