grow out of once she met the right man.
I was not the right man.
I never met her family. I never spoke to them. As far as they knew, I didn’t exist. Whenever a relative came to town, Yasmina would dig out an antique silver hamsa and hang it on the nail by the front door. That was my cue to pack an overnight bag and arrange a place to sleep. It was demeaning, the two of us running around trying to cover our tracks like naughty children. Banished to Drew’s sofabed, I would fulminate as he threw darts and grunted sympathy.
Nor had Yasmina met my parents, who never visited me and whom I never went to visit. I’m not sure what she expected if we couldn’t or wouldn’t get everyone in the same metro area. That we loved each other was never in doubt. We made each other laugh; we fascinated each other with our Otherness. But we were destined to fail. We both knew it. To be honest I think we found the sense of inevitable doom rather romantic.
There was one more sticking point. Though she claimed to have fallen for my intellect, I always suspected that deep down, Yasmina had other plans for me. She sometimes referred to a nonspecific point in the future when I “stopped,” the implication being that I would eventually own up to my shortcomings and find gainful employment. And if she wanted to remake me, I must confess that I sometimes felt the same way. She could be overbearingly pragmatic. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to get married, and if I did, I wondered if it could be to someone who wasn’t a philosopher.
The argument that led to her throwing me out began over something insignificant. I can’t even remember what it was. Isn’t that the way it always is, though? It starts with a dirty plate or the default orientation of the toilet seat, and before you know it you’re at each other’s throats. She accused me of being distant, citing my dissertation as proof that I couldn’t commit. I replied that Hegel didn’t finish The Phenomenology of Mind until he was thirty-six. By that measure I still had six years. For a fuller explanation of what ensued, the reader is referred to chapter one.
THERE ARE TWO CAMBRIDGES. There’s the magical Cambridge, steeped in history and ripe with opportunity, the postcard of my undergraduate years and the first few years of grad school, before I fell from grace. Then there’s the real Cambridge, the one where real people live, beyond the walls of the ancient cocoon. In the real Cambridge, there are no carrels. No grants. No deeply meaningful all-night discussions. Pride of membership is noticeably diminished. This second Cambridge can come as something of a shock to the system when you’ve spent a decade living in the first. All through my twenties I’d been hanging on for dear life, but as I slogged through the filthy slush, headed for a job interview with a stranger, I felt myself headed into hostile territory. Glancing back at Memorial Hall, I saw its bell tower giving me the finger.
It’s a testament to the insularity of life in the academy that I could walk less than a mile off campus and find myself on a street hitherto unknown to me, a charming little cul-de-sac lined with white oaks and red maples. Cars lay buried under snow. A sidewalk in dire need of shoveling fronted a long row of clapboard Victorians—some high-gabled Gothic Revivals, others bracketed simply in the American folk style, all except the last converted to duplexes and triplexes. Number forty-nine’s empty driveway revealed that the house ran quite far back. Soon enough I would discover what those depths held.
Down at the corner, a silent procession of pedestrians and taxis, spectral in the winter haze.
I could not blame my prospective employer for wanting to have her conversation delivered in. Getting to the end of the block would be nightmarish for someone with bad hips or an arthritic knee.
One benefit to being so tucked away: it was quiet. Blissfully so. I grew aware of my own breathing,
I was not the right man.
I never met her family. I never spoke to them. As far as they knew, I didn’t exist. Whenever a relative came to town, Yasmina would dig out an antique silver hamsa and hang it on the nail by the front door. That was my cue to pack an overnight bag and arrange a place to sleep. It was demeaning, the two of us running around trying to cover our tracks like naughty children. Banished to Drew’s sofabed, I would fulminate as he threw darts and grunted sympathy.
Nor had Yasmina met my parents, who never visited me and whom I never went to visit. I’m not sure what she expected if we couldn’t or wouldn’t get everyone in the same metro area. That we loved each other was never in doubt. We made each other laugh; we fascinated each other with our Otherness. But we were destined to fail. We both knew it. To be honest I think we found the sense of inevitable doom rather romantic.
There was one more sticking point. Though she claimed to have fallen for my intellect, I always suspected that deep down, Yasmina had other plans for me. She sometimes referred to a nonspecific point in the future when I “stopped,” the implication being that I would eventually own up to my shortcomings and find gainful employment. And if she wanted to remake me, I must confess that I sometimes felt the same way. She could be overbearingly pragmatic. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to get married, and if I did, I wondered if it could be to someone who wasn’t a philosopher.
The argument that led to her throwing me out began over something insignificant. I can’t even remember what it was. Isn’t that the way it always is, though? It starts with a dirty plate or the default orientation of the toilet seat, and before you know it you’re at each other’s throats. She accused me of being distant, citing my dissertation as proof that I couldn’t commit. I replied that Hegel didn’t finish The Phenomenology of Mind until he was thirty-six. By that measure I still had six years. For a fuller explanation of what ensued, the reader is referred to chapter one.
THERE ARE TWO CAMBRIDGES. There’s the magical Cambridge, steeped in history and ripe with opportunity, the postcard of my undergraduate years and the first few years of grad school, before I fell from grace. Then there’s the real Cambridge, the one where real people live, beyond the walls of the ancient cocoon. In the real Cambridge, there are no carrels. No grants. No deeply meaningful all-night discussions. Pride of membership is noticeably diminished. This second Cambridge can come as something of a shock to the system when you’ve spent a decade living in the first. All through my twenties I’d been hanging on for dear life, but as I slogged through the filthy slush, headed for a job interview with a stranger, I felt myself headed into hostile territory. Glancing back at Memorial Hall, I saw its bell tower giving me the finger.
It’s a testament to the insularity of life in the academy that I could walk less than a mile off campus and find myself on a street hitherto unknown to me, a charming little cul-de-sac lined with white oaks and red maples. Cars lay buried under snow. A sidewalk in dire need of shoveling fronted a long row of clapboard Victorians—some high-gabled Gothic Revivals, others bracketed simply in the American folk style, all except the last converted to duplexes and triplexes. Number forty-nine’s empty driveway revealed that the house ran quite far back. Soon enough I would discover what those depths held.
Down at the corner, a silent procession of pedestrians and taxis, spectral in the winter haze.
I could not blame my prospective employer for wanting to have her conversation delivered in. Getting to the end of the block would be nightmarish for someone with bad hips or an arthritic knee.
One benefit to being so tucked away: it was quiet. Blissfully so. I grew aware of my own breathing,
Similar Books
