You Think It, I'll Say It(60)
Immediately, Sylvia says, “Do you remember that kid Bruno in the grade below ours? The day after our prefect announcement, he staged a one-person picket outside the headmaster’s house to try to get them to release the final vote tally. And I thought he was a freak.”
Carefully—it’s difficult to discern whether her mood is more ruminative or combative—Clay says, “I do remember Bruno.”
“The truth is that when Dean Boede handed you the election, I didn’t think it was that weird,” Sylvia says. “At the time, I was good at not getting what I wanted. Plus, I was sort of shy. I’d never have run for senior prefect if my crew teammates hadn’t encouraged me. So I thought, Okay, this makes sense. I’ll be the sidekick. When I told my parents, they were confused, and I could tell they thought it was strange I didn’t know the vote tally. But they didn’t push it, and they were proud of me for being assistant prefect. It wasn’t until I described what had happened to my college friends that anyone ever said, What the fuck? They were like, Why did no one protest? Why did no adults intervene?”
Partly to humor her and partly because he believes it, Clay says, “So it was all of us except Bruno who were the freaks.”
“Good old Bruno,” Sylvia says, and her voice sounds warmer than it did at the restaurant, though he’d be foolish to entirely trust her. “The other thing,” she says, “is that even though I made fun of you for not knowing sexism existed before last fall, I was shocked when Hillary lost and Trump won. I’m still shocked. Every single day, every time I see in the news what Trump has said or done, I literally can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.”
“Apparently, that’s very white of us—being shocked by the election. Do you have any black friends?”
“Sure,” he says.
“Who?”
“A guy I play tennis with, a guy in my building. Do you want their names?”
“I don’t have any black friends,” she says. “I know people, obviously, but there’s no one I hang out with. Although, do I have friends, period? I work fifty hours a week, and I have three kids.” They are both quiet, and she adds, “In general, I have no desire to ever have another conversation about Hillary Clinton, to debate the role her gender played. I’m not sure I want to have any conversation about sexism. If someone doesn’t see that gender played a huge role, why would I waste my time trying to convince them?”
“That’s reasonable.”
“But I also can’t help seeing the election as a metaphor. It turns out that democracies aren’t that stable, and neither are marriages. And I’m so fucking confused! I didn’t think I’d be this confused when I was forty-three.”
“Well,” he says, “I’m divorced. It goes without saying that this isn’t exactly what I had planned.”
“I thought I had my act together,” she says. “I have my job, I have my family, we’re all, knock on wood, pretty healthy. There was this story I told myself, that growing up I’d been the awkward good girl, the responsible student, and I’d missed out socially but in the long term I’d come out ahead. So it was all fine, it all comes out in the wash, or whatever it is people say. I thought I was finished being the teenager who lay in her dorm room and felt racked with misery, wanting things she couldn’t have. But something came loose inside me, something got dislodged, and I am still that teenager. In a way, it started even before Nelson got laid off—it started when this dad at my kids’ school was killed in a motorcycle accident. It was awful. His children were in fourth and seventh grade at the time. And you’d think that would make me treasure my own family, make me grateful for what I have, but instead, it made me sort of reckless and crazy. Like, who knows what will happen to any of us, so why shouldn’t I enjoy myself in the way I’ve never been good at? Why shouldn’t I get to have fun, too? I’ve never done drugs, I’ve never even really seen drugs, but recently I’ve wondered, Should I try to find some cocaine? Or Ecstasy? Because I want a hit of something—I want some kind of lift, something to break up the monotony. What’s maybe weirdest about having reverted to my teenage longings is that this time around, I don’t know what they’re for. Back then, they were for you, but what am I so desperate for now? What can I get or do that will make me feel better instead of worse? That’s why I came to Chicago and pretended we were on a date. I just wanted something.”
“Before you try street drugs,” Clay says, “have you talked to your husband about any of this? Or to a therapist?”
“I know I sound like a horrible wife, and maybe I am—the part of me that looks at Nelson and thinks, Pull yourself together. But at the same time, I am sympathetic and I recognize how much pain he’s in, and how, as a man, his self-worth is more tied up in providing for our family than mine is. It’s easy to pretend that if I got fired, I’d train for a triathlon and declutter our house, but I’d probably just sit around on my ass, too, being depressed.” She pauses. “I didn’t answer your question, did I? We sort of talk about it. And I went to a therapist a few times, but she wasn’t very smart.”
“This is just my two cents, but you don’t seem like a person who wants out of your marriage,” he says. “Maybe you will eventually, but you don’t now.”