“I don’t think I ever believed that the world was straight,” I said.
“Well, I did. And I was wrong.”
We walked on. Below us, the East River—dark and cold—progressed steadily toward the sea, carrying away the pollution of the whole city with its currents.
“Can I ask you something, Vivian?” he said after a while.
“Certainly.”
“Does it make you happy?”
“Being with all those men, you mean?”
“Yes.”
I gave this question real consideration. He hadn’t asked it in an accusing way. I think he genuinely wished to comprehend me. And I’m not sure I’d ever pondered it before. I didn’t want to take the question lightly.
“It makes me satisfied, Frank,” I finally replied. “It’s like this: I believe I have a certain darkness within me, that nobody can see. It’s always in there, far out of reach. And being with all those different men—it satisfies that darkness.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “I think I can maybe understand that.”
I had never before spoken this vulnerably about myself. I had never before tried to put words to my experience. But still, I felt that my words fell short. How could I explain that by “darkness” I didn’t mean “sin” or “evil”—I only meant that there was a place within my imagination so fathomlessly deep that the light of the real world could never touch it. Nothing but sex had ever been able to reach it. This place within me was prehuman, almost. Certainly, it was precivilization. It was a place beyond language. Friendship could not reach it. My creative endeavors could not reach it. Awe and joy could not reach it. This hidden part of me could only be reached through sexual intercourse. And when a man went to that darkest, secret place within me, I felt as though I had landed in the very beginning of myself.
Curiously, it was in that place of dark abandon where I felt the least sullied and most true.
“But as for happy?” I went on. “You asked if it makes me happy. I don’t think so. Other things in my life make me happy. My work makes me happy. My friendships and the family that I’ve created, they make me happy. New York City makes me happy. Walking over this bridge with you right now makes me happy. But being with all those men, that makes me satisfied, Frank. And I’ve come to learn that this kind of satisfaction is something I need, or else I will become unhappy. I’m not saying that it’s right. I’m just saying—that’s how it is with me, and it’s not something that’s ever going to change. I’m at peace with it. The world ain’t straight, as you say.”
Frank nodded, listening. Wanting to understand. Able to understand.
After another long silence, Frank said, “Well, I think you’re fortunate, then.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because not many people know how to be satisfied.”
THIRTY-ONE
I have never loved the people I was supposed to love, Angela.
Nothing that was ever arranged for me worked out the way it was planned. My parents had pointed me in a specific direction—toward a respectable boarding school and an elite college—such that I could meet the community I was meant to belong to. But apparently, I didn’t belong there, because to this day, I don’t have a single friend from those worlds. Nor did I meet a husband for myself at one of my many school proms.
Nor did I ever really feel like I belonged to my parents, or that I was meant to reside in the small town where I grew up. I still don’t keep in touch with anybody from Clinton. My mother and I had only the most superficial of relationships, right up until her death. And my father, of course, was never much more than a grumbling political commentator at the far end of the dinner table.
But then I moved to New York City, and I came to know my Aunt Peg, an unconventional and irresponsible lesbian, who drank too much and spent too much money, and who only wanted to cavort through life with a sort of hop-skip-tralala—and I loved her. She gave me nothing less than my entire world.
And I also met Olive, who didn’t seem lovable—but whom I came to love, nonetheless. Far more than I loved my own mother or father. Olive was not warm or affectionate, but she was loyal and good. She was something of a bodyguard to me. She was our anchoress. She taught me whatever morality I possess.
Then I met Marjorie Lowtsky—an eccentric Hell’s Kitchen teenager whose immigrant parents were in the rag trade. She was not at all the sort of person I was supposed to befriend. But she became not only my business partner, but my sister. I loved her, Angela, with all my heart. I would do anything for her, and she for me.
Then came Marjorie’s son, Nathan—this weak little boy who was allergic to life itself. He was Marjorie’s child, but he was my child, too. If my parents’ vision for my life had gone according to plan, I would surely have had my own children—big, strong, horseback-riding future captains of industry—but instead I got Nathan, and that was better. I chose Nathan and he chose me. I loved him, too.
These random-seeming people were my family, Angela. These people were my real family. I’m telling you all this because I want you to understand that—over the next few years—I came to love your father just as much as I loved any of them.
My heart cannot offer him higher praise than that. He became as close to me as my own, beautiful, random, and real family.
Love like that is a deep well, with steep sides.
Once you fall in, that’s it—you will love that person always.
—
A few nights a week, for years on end, your father would call me at some odd hour and say, “Do you want to get out? I can’t sleep.”
I’d say, “You can never sleep, Frank.”
And he’d say, “Yeah, but tonight I can’t sleep worse than usual.”
It didn’t matter what the season was, or the time of night. I always said yes. I’ve always enjoyed exploring this city, and I have always liked the nighttime. What’s more, I’ve never been a person who needed much sleep. But most of all, I just loved being with Frank. So he would call me, and I would agree to see him, and he would drive over from Brooklyn to pick me up, and we would go someplace together and walk.
It didn’t take us long to walk every neighborhood in Manhattan, and so pretty soon we started exploring the outer boroughs, as well. I never met anybody who knew the city better. He took me to neighborhoods I’d never even heard of, and we would explore them on foot in the wee hours of the morning, talking all the while. We walked all the cemeteries and all the industrial yards. We walked the waterfronts. We walked by the row houses and through the projects. We eventually walked over every single bridge in the greater New York metropolitan area—and there are a lot of them.
Nobody ever bothered us. It was the strangest thing. The city was not a safe place back then, but we walked through it as though we were untouchable. We were often so deep in our own conversations that we often didn’t even notice our surroundings. Miraculously, the streets kept us safe and the people let us be. I wondered at times if people could even see us at all. But then sometimes the police would stop us and ask what we were doing, and Frank would show his badge. He would say, “I’m walking this lady home”—even if we were in a Jamaican neighborhood in Crown Heights. He was always walking me home. That was always the story.