Necessary and Sufficient

This one is for you.

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Ethan and I went to see a movie last weekend.  Or, I went to a movie, while Ethan played with his cell phone and occasionally napped.  His ability to fall asleep in any environment is one of the things I envy most about him, along with his strong cheekbones and steel-like digestive system.  But that night, I wasn't envious, I was just annoyed.

"You couldn't stay awake for two hours?" I asked him, as we walked back to his apartment in the rain.  He had brought an umbrella, but I forgot mine, as I usually do.  I squatted under his umbrella on the way to the movies, but on the way home I refused to share his personal space, which I assumed was fine with him, given his general belief that two men should keep at least five feet apart at all times while in public.  It took quite a bit of cajoling to get him to sit next to me in the movie theater, but I bribed him with a box of Junior Mints and a promise that I would not share his armrest.

"Sorry."  We walked for a few minutes, while I waited for the rest of his answer, which I knew would follow shortly.  It isn't quite like pulling teeth; it's more like waiting for them to fall out of your mouth.  

"It was just not the kind of movie I like," he said, trying to shield me with his umbrella from the falling rain.  I was having none of it, however, and ended up walking the rest of the way back in the ditch, just to send him a message.  True passive-aggressives suffer for their art.

Of course it wasn't the kind of movie he liked.  Ethan doesn't like most of the movies I like.  In fact, we agree on almost nothing when it comes to movies, television, music, art, literature, politics, international relations, interior design, fashion, coffee talk, toilet paper, tomato-based products, and pretty much anything else that people do in their daily lives.  I didn't really expect him to like the movie, but everyone else I knew had already seen it so I needed to go with him.  The alternative -- going by myself -- was unthinkable.  I hadn't gone to a movie by myself since I was 16, when I snuck into that movie where Rosie O'Donnell played an S&M hooker.  Perhaps not so coincidentally, the following day I had phone sex with a man for the first time.

After a year, though, I had mostly grown accustomed to our differences.  When I found a new television show, or song, or movie that I liked, I just assumed Ethan wouldn't like it.  But instead of trying to change him -- my parents weren't great role models for healthy relationships, but at least they taught me how to avoid an unhealthy one -- I just resigned myself to a future of quiet, tomato-free, dinners.

That night, though, the sacrifice loomed larger than usual.  I wasn't sure why, though I suspected it had something to do with the coffee I'd had earlier with my friend Mark and his fiancee Lauren.  He had recently proposed to her, or she had recently proposed to him, I still wasn't sure who did the proposing.  It didn't matter anyway.  They were pretty much just extensions of one another, completely lacking in discernible boundaries.  One of them should have donated their organs to medical science.  It seemed selfish for one person to occupy two, healthy bodies.

The conversation naturally turned towards Ethan, as it always did with my friends lately, either out of morbid curiosity or judgmental concern.

"I knew this was going someplace bad from day one," Mark said.  Or Lauren did.  They moved their lips in unison, as they shared a banana nut muffin and a latte.  Being both lawyers, they could have afforded two banana nut muffins and two lattes, but then they wouldn't get to share, and sharing is the most important part of a relationship.

"Sharing is the most important of a relationship," Lauren said.  Or Mark did.  I tried to move the conversation away from Ethan, onto more comfortable topics, like my recently diagnosed diverticulitis, and human migration.  They both had a keen interest in migrating populations.  Because the individual is always less important than the collective.

The conversation lagged, after we had sufficiently delved into the regularity of my bowel habits and the plight of the Yamama Indians.  I sipped my orange juice, acutely aware of the vacant chair next to me.  Ethan didn't want to come to coffee.  There was some kind of sports game on television.  There was always some kind of sports game on television.  Jocks are as jocks do.

"So Ethan couldn't join us?" Lauren asked, or Mark did, fully aware of the answer.  "Couldn't even meet your friends for coffee," they said, shaking their heads.  I had a momentary impulse to punch one of them, but I couldn't choose which one, so I settled for the mental imagery.

"It's not so bad," I said, signaling for the check, while Mark indicated to Lauren that she had milk on her top lip.  It felt vaguely pornographic to even sit there with them.  They weren't being sexual at all, or even overly affectionate -- I'd hope my fiancee would tell me when I have milk on my top lip, too -- but somehow they were managing to have sex right in front of me.

"I know he's attractive, Jonah," Mark began, and I knew what was coming next.  It wasn't anything I hadn't heard before.  I concocted a relationship out of physical attraction.  I was making up for my drama-geek adolescence by sleeping with the quarterback of the football team.  I needed to work out these self-confidence issues in therapy.  I wasn't a full human being.  Not like Mark and Lauren, who could survive on one banana nut muffin.

"Ethan and I are going to the movies tonight," I said somewhat proudly.  See, Ethan was going with me to the movies, it couldn't be all bad.  It wasn't hopeless.  But their four eyes bore into me, suspecting that there was more to the story.  "Well, Ethan doesn't really want to go, but he said he'd go with me," I added, berating myself for my compulsive honesty.  Contrary to popular belief, honesty is not always the best policy, especially when you're lying to yourself.

Mark asked me what we were going to see, or Lauren did, just as the obviously homosexual waiter brought us the check.

"Oh, I've been wanting to see that forever!" the waiter said, brightly, apparently fishing for more than just a tip.  I hurried off, before Mark and Lauren could point out the obvious.

Ethan and I spent the remainder of the walk back to his studio apartment in silence.  I stopped trying to avoid the puddles, figuring that the wetter I got, the more guilty he would feel for his behavior at the movies.  It didn't work, or at least, he didn't express any further remorse.  Of course, he could have been beating himself up inside, but that didn't do me much good.

I sat down in the living room/bedroom/kitchen, soaking his couch in the process.  It wasn't part of his punishment -- I only take my anger out on personal electronics, not home furnishings -- but I didn't have any dry clothes to change into.  Ethan never let me leave anything in his apartment.

"I just don't feel comfortable with it," he said, handing me a sealed Ziploc with my toothbrush in it, as if I had left a stack of kiddie porn in his bathroom.  "What if someone comes over and sees two toothbrushes?  They might start asking questions."  

Sensing my displeasure, he promised to keep a full stock of new toothbrushes for me to use.  Sure enough, the next time I came over, I found several rows of toothbrushes in his medicine cabinet, of varying colors and types.  "I wasn't sure what kind you liked," he said, and I forgave him instantly.

But I only had so many instant pardons in me, and it felt lately like I was running low.

"I'm sorry I didn't like the movie," he said, handing me a towel.  The towel smelled fresh and clean, like it had never been used.  His whole apartment looked fresh and clean, and except for a Simpsons magnet that I had given him for Christmas, lacked any indication of my existence.  He had permitted the Simpsons magnet to remain, since it was something he would buy himself, so it didn't invite any unnecessary questions.

Mark and Lauren's faces danced in front of me.  What were they doing right now?  Probably huddled under a hand-weaved Afghan, sipping out of the same Egyptian tea cup and watching a documentary about Sudanese refugees together.  Or maybe even adopting a Sudanese refugee themselves.  I wondered if they'd send seven cents a day, or double it, because technically there were two of them.

Ethan went to take a shower, and I scanned his magazines, which ranged from moderately offensive capitalistic fodder to moderately offensive mysoginistic fodder.  He knew how I felt about the latter, but it didn't stop him from continuing to read them, or saving them under his television stand.  Occasionally I would throw one away behind his back, but usually I just tried to cover them with the one issue of U.S. News and World Report that he owned, so I could effectively fool myself into forgetting their presence.

I wasn't in any of the pictures on his walls.  My clothes weren't in his drawers.  His friends and family didn't know I existed.  I could disappear tomorrow, and nothing would change in his life, except a cell phone number that could be easily deleted, and a wet spot on his couch.

"Hey, I think your cell phone is ringing!" Ethan called from inside the bathroom.  He had an excellent sense of hearing, probably honed while on high alert for potential FBI raids of his apartment, looking for strange men's toothbrushes.  

It was my mother.  After debating for a moment, I picked it up.  It was usually better to speak to her when I was already in a bad mood, because I'd be in one by the end of the conversation anyway.

"Yeah, your grandmother is driving me crazy," she said, before I could even say hello.  "I should never have moved so close to her!"

After my parents' divorce, my mother moved in next door to my grandmother and her second husband, Stan.  The arrangement wasn't too unhealthy, as long as Stan was around -- my mother didn't care too much for Stan, so she avoided going over to their apartment too often, usually only stopping by when Stan was simonizing his car -- an activity which could take a full afternoon -- or when she ran out of food (somehow, after the divorce, my mother forgot how to operate a stove).  But when Stan died a few years later, my mother and my grandmother were free to pick up where they had left off at the end of my mother's own dysfunctional childhood.  

"She's getting nuts about your cousin Jason again."  

"Ma, Jason is her grandson, and he's a drug addict, of course she gets upset about him," I replied, pointing out what would be obvious to anyone else.  There was often a significant amount of grey area between what was obvious to anyone else, and what was obvious to my mother.

"But why does she have to get nuts!"  

I stepped outside into the hallway, sensing that this was going to be a long and potentially voice-raising, hair-pulling conversation.  Of course, the hair would be only my own, so once I got into the hall I cupped the phone between my ear and my shoulder, and sat on my hands.  I was already treading the delicate line between a maturing hairline and male pattern baldness, and precautions needed to be taken.

While my mother ticked off a detailed list of the flaws of her mother (a pasttime with which I was intimately familiar), I felt Stan's absence more than ever.  He was a natural boundary between them, inadvertently protecting them from the spiral of codependence, the bottom of which they still had not found after years of screaming matches and dueling insults.  Unfortunately, his utility went unacknowledged while he was alive.  

"He's such a cheap loser," my uncle complained about him repeatedly, as my mother vigorously agreed.  My mother vigorously agreed with pretty much anything my uncle said, but especially when it came to Stan, who they both intensely disliked, though they usually had the good sense not to bring their distaste to my grandmother's attention.  "I don't know what she sees in him."

"She's his slave," was my mother's usual reply.  "It's a marriage of convenience, it's convenient for him."

And although I didn't dislike Stan myself -- save his occasional diatribe against my compulsive television viewing, and his odd competitiveness during shuffleboard -- even as a kid, I understood what they meant.  My grandmother liked the opera, and reading classic literature, and debating about politics.  Stan liked simonizing his car, and napping during the day.  My grandmother was fashionable and glamorous (a trait she has not abandoned to this day -- she's probably the only 85 year old woman who doesn't wear reflective clothing).  Stan wore his pants up to his chest, and refused to cut the little hair he had until my grandmother would bribe him with a lamb chop dinner.  And even if she wasn't technically a slave -- Stan, like any other member of the family, would kowtow to her when the situation demanded -- their partnership did appear to be somewhat one-sided.  My grandmother would cook the banana nut muffins, and Stan would eat them all himself.

When my uncle died, Stan didn't seem overly upset.  Not that he was celebrating, either.  He just seemed to observe the proceedings, like an outsider, not like a step-father or husband.  I figured that the animosity between them had been less understated than I originally thought.  But then again, maybe my uncle had been right.  Maybe Stan and my grandmother were just too different for their marriage to be anything more than one of mostly convenience, occasional companionship, and frequent early-bird dinners.

I didn't see my grandmother much in the days immediately after my uncle died.  We all stayed in his apartment for a week after he died, and we tried to console each other as best we could, but making each other feel better was not our forte.  We were better at the opposite.  The opposite doesn't require hugging, or touching, or closeness.  It only requires a loud voice, and an intimate knowledge of profanities.  So mostly we just stayed out of each other's way, because that was the most respectful thing we could do for one another at the time.

My grandmother and Stan slept in my uncle's bedroom, while the rest of us slept in the living room, making sure that there was at least four feet between each other.  The night before the funeral, no one was saying anything at all.  My mother sat by the window, painting and re-painting her nails, because none of the colors seemed just right.  My sister talked on the phone in the kitchen with a friend from college, where she had found a family of her own, one that didn't need four feet of distance at all times.  It seemed like a perfect time to catch up on a little television for me.  When the television goes on, I go off.  

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the remote control, and my uncle owned one of those televisions that are unoperable by human hands, the modern day version of the sword in the stone.  So I went to my uncle's room to ask my grandmother where the remote was, since my grandmother usually had all the answers.

I knocked, and when no one answered, I opened the door.  My grandmother laid on my uncle's bed, curled into a ball and sobbing quietly, while Stan laid next to her, stroking her hair.  I had never seen my grandmother cry before.  But while I was almost appalled by the scene -- how dare this woman, who just lost her only son, show such extreme emotion -- Stan's expression showed nothing except compassion.  He didn't tell her to stop crying, or push her away, or pretend not to hear her.  He didn't paint his nails, or talk on the phone with his friends, or mindlessly stare at the television.  He just dabbed her eyes occasionally with a tissue, and laid next to her, pulling her closer with each sob.  And she didn't protest.  She just laid there, and let him take care of her, and her hand rested on his arm, like it was protecting her from something that was too big and too unimaginable to survive.  But she survived it, and he survived it, because they survived it together.

I never told them what I had seen, and Stan passed away a few years later, leaving my grandmother to once again survive on her own.  My mother still dropped occasional insults about him, whenever she ran out of other things to insult, but I stood up for him.  I thought it was the least I could do, especially considering I had beaten him at our last-ever shuffleboard game.

And once again, I found myself outside Ethan's apartment, thinking about painted nails and strong arms and unacknowledged protectors in our lives.

"I just can't stand your grandmother when she's like this," my mother said, for the fifth time in the conversation.  The conversation went on for a while longer, though it was more of a monologue from her side of the telephone with the occasional affirmation from my side of the telephone, which is all my mother really wanted anyway.  After a cursory inquiry into my life -- "so you've been feeling ok?" "yes" -- my mother had to go, because she and my grandmother were going to a Mexican spa the next morning.  I thought about alerting the Mexican authorities, but didn't want to be the inadvertent cause of more illegal immigration when the spa's employees fled toward the border.

By the time I came back inside the apartment, Ethan was already in bed.  The lights were off, and he was laying with his back to the room, which was fine with me.  Mark and Lauren were probably just beginning a post-coital walk down memory lane -- "remember when I proposed to you, honey?" "you proposed? I thought I did!" giggle giggle -- but I had had enough of the miserable, banana nut-filled day.

I stripped off my clothes, which were still wet, and quietly crawled into bed, trying not to wake Ethan in the process. I ran through the conversation with my mother in my mind again, trying to find the spots where I could have made everything better, if I had only said this, or I could have helped her, if only I had said that, or I could have brought my uncle back to life or cured my mother's manic depression or erased my entire childhood in one fell swoop, if only I had done the right thing.  And as hard as I tried to remain still, I trembled slightly, as if my body was working overtime to expel a septic infection.  To the casual observer, the trembling was almost imperceptible, perhaps the result of a slight chill in the room.

Ethan, though, knew better.  His eyes opened slightly, and he tilted his head towards me.  I turned to face the wall, unable to meet his gaze.  The trembling worsened, so that the whole bed was shaking.  I was ashamed at my own weakness, and my shame only made me tremble more.

"It'll be ok," he said softly, half-asleep, as he turned over and pulled himself close to me.  His arm found its way across my chest, and in a moment, all the toothbrushes in his cabinet, and magazines in his television stand, and pictures on his walls, they all dropped away, so there was nothing else in the world except his arm, and my hand, and his breath on the back of my neck.  

My trembling subsided, and I began to doze off, wondering whether Mark and Lauren had finally figured out who had proposed to who.  And as I fell asleep, laying in his arms, I couldn't even remember the name of the movie we had seen that night.