I read somewhere, I believe it was Wittgenstein—back when I read writers like Wittgenstein—that a private language is not conceptually possible, or at least evolutionarily unlikely, because the ability to talk to oneself is a later internalization of the ability to talk to other people. Isn’t that interesting? We learn to talk to others before we know how to speak to ourselves. And what about certain people who never learn to speak to themselves and their own inner consciousness because they had too difficult a time speaking to others? There were two types of people I thought then: those who could hold forth in a conversation with or within their own minds, and those who could not.
I was thinking of myself again and wondering which I was.
I met him when I was twenty-two, a young woman fresh out of college, confused, purposeless, afraid. He was Morocco by way of Bennington. Meanwhile, I was Brentwood by way of Berkeley. Doomed from the start. I thought his original disappearance from my life would certainly be permanent. The world was so large after all and only just opening up for me. So when he showed up again thirty years later it was not relief, not joy, certainly not pleasure I felt, but a weary indifference. Or was it? He didn’t seek me out though I’d spent years looking for him. Our paths simply crossed the way sometimes paths strangely do, like an incomprehensible distraction or speeding trains on the wrong track.
We met in Sacramento. That drowsy town with too few jobs, too little homes, and not a single surviving book shop. A town surrounded by agriculture but nowhere to eat. I was at the state capitol to celebrate my early graduation from Berkeley with a dinner courtesy of my parents, who recently moved to the city after selling their home in Los Angeles. Our home. It was the eternal threat. No more money. I was being cut off. They gave me a final check and a word of warning: Lead a worthwhile life. The truth was I had made plans and goals which were to give my life shape and meaning but my parents were the types of people in whom I would never think of confiding. When they left to go home early—they’d stopped drinking in their later years, before taking it up once again in their last—I returned to my hotel room and wondered what to do with myself the rest of the evening. I looked down upon Cesar Chavez Plaza from my eleven-story hotel room window and saw a crowd forming. Like geese or a beautiful cancer they individually moved and swayed until they combined. The elevators weren’t working. I took the stairs.
It was a scene I would go on to remember and review in the years to come. Though I was adept at protests and marches, I felt deeply out of place here. I tripped or was pushed and it was him who offered a hand to help lift me up. Because he wore a bandana over his face it was his green eyes that struck me first. Deep green, like algae or a snake’s. He lifted me up and offered me kindness when, at the time and even more so now, kindness was in short supply. My parents, my friends, the professors from school, everyone I knew, were all poisonously unkind. There was no helping hand or explanation or word of guidance. When kindness presented itself and the only other option was the dark and dank gutter, I walked toward kindness.
Somehow kindness knew I’d only just come from the hotel. Kindness said his name was Joe. That was kindness’s first lie. Kindness needed a place to charge his phone. His mother was ill, in the hospital, and if something were to happen he needed to be able to keep in touch with her. That was most likely kindness’s second lie. There are worse excuses and far more unruly lies I have allowed kindness into my room. Or better excuses and less lies, depending on your point of view. He plugged his phone into the desk outlet where my unopened copy of The Bell Jar sat like a constant reminder of my everyday flailing. Just the thought of reading that summer exhausted me. It may not have been the The Bell Jar. It could have been Normal People. Or Between the World and Me. Where did I pick up the habit, being from where I was, of always carrying a book wherever I went as if its mere presence could satiate, comfort, or protect me if I ever were to find myself in a bind? Kindness took his jean jacket off. The lapel was decorated with several pins and buttons: BLACK LIVES MATTER. STOP THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE. FEEL THE BERN.
“Do you mind if I take off my mask?” he asked, and before I answered it was too late. He placed the bandana gently on the tabletop and motioned at me, which I understood meant for me to do the same. “You are beautiful,” he said when I removed my mask, which I purchased on sale at, I think, some department store that was going out of business earlier that winter when every department store was going out of business. We were on different paths and from different places but for that one night we were brought together like two waves cascading into one. Cascading is one way to put it. Crashing is another. Fate is often thought of as romantic but it has never been so in my experience. Though the concept of fate is a useful tool because it can free you from the restraints of responsibility. And who could have known that despite our diverging and long distanced paths of sorrow in life we were headed toward the same destination regardless?
We made love twice and talked for the rest of the long night. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked and opened the window the two or three inches it was capable of opening. I was reminded of these great spacious balconies at the Palms in Las Vegas that were locked shut for fear of suicidal gamblers after they lost it all at the poker tables. Imagine all that unused outdoor space when all these people needed was a breath of fresh air. Instead, they were trapped inside those bland hotel rooms, nowhere to go except the airport to return home to their pale-faced families empty-handed. I felt that is what could really make a person suicidal. Not opportunity. The transformative power of outdoor space has always been important to me. It’s why for several years I spent all of my time outside, on the street. That’s what I tell people anyway. Though Joe made a valiant effort to blow the smoke out the crevice of the window, the mean California wind had other plans, as it so often does. I knew I would be forced to pay a $100 in-room smoking charge. I bummed a smoke and that is the night I began my twenty year relationship with the Marlboro man. Although it’s been years now since I lit up, I still sometimes feel something is lacking, some nameless wanting usually after a meal or a special occasion when I can feel the phantom cigarette in my fingers and upon my lips. “I am going to marry you,” he said before we drifted to sleep. Did it ever occur to me that this man did not love me, could never love me, and simply needed a place to sleep? Just all night and every night since.
The sun rose late that morning. I expected it earlier. While Joe showered, I peeked inside his wallet and found his name was actually Amir. His Bennington College photo ID was five years expired and he had two twenty dollar bills rolled up into tubes. I said nothing. Why ask the question when the answer is obvious? Downhearted, I felt a newborn pain before it became a compassionate torpor. This sad unknowable soul next to me! An ignorant compassion is simply sympathy without truth, or so I’d read. He entered from the bathroom, dripping wet, and in only a towel. We embraced. We kissed. “I loved meeting you. Thank god you joined the protest. When you come upon a protest, of course, you join it. Don’t matter what the protest is. You join it,” he said. That was it. “You join it.” We dressed quickly and made our way out. Everyone was meeting at the capitol, save for me. Joe, or Amir, retied his bandana and that would be the final time I would see that blank and beautiful face and those green treacherous eyes for the next three or four decades.
Years from then, after I’d given, and even then— gifted?—my daughter to my parents, years ago from now, I was wandering K Street downtown looking for my keys. That was a process that took many months before I realized I hadn’t any keys to begin with. They’d been taken from me when I was evicted. I cruised down S Street on a scooter I stole and I swear I saw him. I would see him on every corner. I couldn’t be sure it was him because my brain was foggy then and he was so far away, unreachable like in a dream, across the street, in front of the court house, where they let you out on a bus after you’ve been released from the jail. Prison is a whole different story, I’d come to learn, they just let you out wherever you’ve been sent. So, say, you were sent to Seattle? Well, start walking home. There’s no ride for you and no ticket waiting at the station. It wasn’t him. It never was. Different eyes. But whomever he was, he saw me staring. I screamed and pressed the pedal on those idiotic motorized scooters that were popular then and took off. I would have said hello and asked for a kind word or a dollar if I wasn’t caught in such a moment of distress. But, unfortunately, I had places to be. I had to find my keys. I hadn’t seen my daughter, Catherine, in a year. Since the last Christmas when it was through the window and I was in Sacramento looking for keys to a house that was not mine or perhaps did not even exist. Sure, I had family and friends and colleagues, but when the opportunity presented itself to disappear I took it. I ditched it all—credit cards, identification, money, connections. My car I left at the onramp where the 80 and the 50 and the 5 all connect. So Californian, I know. What I wanted to leave behind is what so many of us treasure: All of it. Family. Motherhood. Work. I am reminded of a friend I knew who one day woke up, realized he would have to go to work every day for the rest of his life and became horribly depressed. He was later found dead floating face down in the Feather River. There was little suffering. It was a quick drowning. He shot himself in the head right before.
It was what is sometimes referred to as a “mental break” and it’s true a break was what I was after. It sounds so simple and yet so stupid if you think about it: Kill yourself quickly or let yourself be murdered slowly. I understood. I used to think I was bound for higher ground but when I met Amir I was right where I belonged. Sinking. Nobody ever called me a promising young woman. There was a reason for that. My mind takes breaks. There are gaps. Lulls. Lapses. Holes in the logic. A looseness in the weave.
I spent the next year, maybe more, wandering around Sacramento searching for those damn keys. Where were they? In this bush? On that porch? Under this pot? In whose pocket? Nowhere. Soon, I would get my act together, or I wouldn’t—as so many people I’d known had not. On K Street, I would recognize the strangers from my occasional meetings and homeless service centers. Many times these people would disappear and probably go on to lead successful lives. But others surely didn’t. They wound up under the overpass or became one of those people who live at the beach. And what I mean when I say “at the beach” is on the sand. Not a terrible fate, all things considered. Others surely overdosed and died. Some might be murdered. Others might murder. By a chance that one might wish to call resolve, I screwed my head back on tight and I returned to my parents’ suburban home for a spell. They refused to see me or let me see Catherine for two weeks as I dried out so I lived in the windowless garage and waited. It was the opposite of a padded room but, to be sure, it shared the essence of an insane asylum.
It was a stroke of bad luck, otherwise known as idiocy. Amir disappeared so once our daughter was born I made myself disappear, too. What can I say? It felt right at the time and in my head. Other times, of course, it didn’t feel right at all. It felt deadly wrong. But by then I was stuck on finding those invisible keys hoping to unlock—What? What, exactly? A room in my mind? Some new and different life? A clarifying fact? What?
Once I regained—if not a sense of myself—at least my composure, I was able to take Catherine back. My dreadful parents soon died, one after the other, not by heartache or loneliness, or drinking, but by sheer boredom in their separate double beds one bad irretrievable evening. What else did they expect leaving Los Angeles for the uninspired green plains and falling down barnyards of Sacramento? They never asked me once about Catherine’s father. Who was he? Why had he fled? Where did he go? They didn’t care to know. But I wanted to know.
Amir was the father of my daughter but he never knew her. Doesn’t know her. He was impossible to trace. There was one Amir who was an organizer and activist but when I saw his picture on the cover of the Los Angeles Times, killed by the police long after we’d met, I was able to rule him out. Too short. Eventually I returned to Los Angeles, ten-year-old daughter in tow. Though not exactly Los Angeles. Pasadena. Time moved so slowly there I felt it offered more opportunity I could make up for lost years with Catherine. But some days Catherine refused to talk to me at all and I wondered if the day would ever end. On these days I feared her resentment might not subside and she would continue to hate me for the rest of our lives. She had her father’s green, menacing eyes. I viewed my child as my closest friend, my only friend, a mistake I didn’t realize until my sixties. Never a friend, my daughter viewed me always as reckless and intolerable, stupid, and quick to judge. Her hatred of me was depthless. We lived in a house on Orange Grove Avenue, and though the orange groves were long gone by then, I swear, some nights, I could smell the sweet citrus wafting into the living room along with the mean but cool Southern California breeze. “You’re crazy,” she would say to me often, crushing my heart every time.
When Catherine turned thirty we traveled to Paris. She always wanted to see Paris and I needed an excuse to spend time with her, to get to know her, this unknowable child of mine I had so grandly fucked up. She insisted on separate rooms on different floors. She wanted nothing to do with the Mona Lisa, but I wanted to see her, so one early morning I left our hotel and walked the many winding streets over to the Louvre. I knew exactly where to go. Where everyone was headed. The truth is I didn’t see her, not even a glimpse. There were hordes of people, even that early in the morning. I saw the space behind her, the top of her head, maybe. I left quickly, stopping at a cafe to get two cappuccinos and two croissants, one of each I would give to Catherine when she woke up, and wondered with just a little worry what we would do for the rest of the day. Back in the hotel lobby I was startled to find a man with a pair of eyes I recognized. Amir. There he was, after all this time sitting cross-legged and smoking an e-cigarette. He was handsome, still, but uglier than he was thirty years ago, heavier, balding, an old man now. He glanced up at me before awkwardly looking away. I sat down across from him, putting the cups of coffee and the bag of croissants on the table between us.
“Bonjour,” he said, “English?” I nodded. He looked at me with the same pair of green eyes that I found so captivating all those years ago. Of course he had no other option. With what else could he look at me? It’s not like he possessed another set of eyes hidden away somewhere. But, then again, maybe he did. In my memory over the years he was always masked with the bandana, but when he spoke I instantly remembered the jawline, the lips, the soft touch. “Do we know each other?”
“We do. We did. A long time ago. What are you doing in Paris?” I said, smiling, but unsure of what to say at all as my brain began splitting in two. I was trying to push away the gaps. Suppress the lulls. Ignore the lapses. Unlock that room in my mind. I did not want to land back on the street again.
“Visiting friends, of course. Staying here for the night and off to Provence in the morning for the summer. Now, how do I know you?” He wore pointed leather Oxford shoes. There was a bowler hat on his knee he must remove when he is indoors. A gentleman. Still, a bad hat.
“Amir. Or Joe, Joe. What was with that? It’s me. It’s Alice. We spent a night together in Sacramento. Years ago. At The Citizen Hotel. Remember? It was the night of the protest. For BLM. Or was it the Women’s March? Maybe you’ll remember?” I didn’t want to sound unhinged so it’s possible I sounded tired or uninterested. I wasn’t. I was riveted.
“Ah, yes. Alice. From Sacramento. How have you been? You look well. I can’t believe it’s been—thirty, forty years. It’s wonderful to see you. I swore I knew you as soon as you walked into the lobby. It’s a beautiful hotel, isn’t it? We always stay here when we’re in town.” He stood gently, smiled, and motioned to the two cups of coffee. “Are you here with your husband?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m not married.” I saw his eyes dart toward the front desk. I unstrapped the gigantic purse from my shoulder and placed it beside me, opened it, and rummaged past the comforting novel I would never read for a pen and a piece of paper. I couldn’t find the damn pen and piece of paper. I couldn’t find them.
“My wife,” he said, “Have you met? I can’t remember. My wife. Do you know Alice?” A woman approached, beautiful, elegant, Black, in incredibly lush leisurewear I could only pray to ever own much less wear outside the house. I stood to greet her and she took my hand in hers. It wasn’t a handshake, more like a faint caress.
“Alice,” she responded. “Alice? I don’t think so. Hello! My name is Marie. Bonjour! Bienvenue à Paris.” She was French. “Do you live in New York? Is that how we know you?”
“No, Los Angeles. Well, Pasadena.”
“Oh, we love Los Angeles. When we’re not in New York, we’re either here in Paris or at a hotel on the beach in Los Angeles. Beautiful city. We left early last time because of the fire in Malibu. I hear those wildfires are only going to get worse. Is that true? Amir, will you grab the bags? Well, it was lovely meeting you. Or meeting you again if indeed we have met before.”
“Yes, wonderful,” I replied. She smiled brightly and caught my hand again as if it were a sign of an apology, which I allowed because it kept it from shaking.
“Vous êtes épuisant. Les sacs. Les sacs. Rapidement. Vous n’appréciez pas mon temps,” Marie said to Amir and departed quickly. Amir, now holding two gold-colored and monogrammed luggage bags, was left alone, but with me. He tilted his head and raised his shoulders as if to apologize that he must go. Our time was up.
“We’re wiped. We took the redeye in and neither of us slept. Both working. She’s a workhorse. Hopefully this trip will give us some time off.”
“I didn’t sleep on the flight over either. I was too excited. Imagining all the people and places me and my—my daughter will see.” I searched for even a hint of recognition. There was a sadness or a resignation in his eyes I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps it wasn’t there back then or possibly I didn’t have enough time to see it. Anything of consequence or perception took just so much time. And even more headspace.
“Enjoy your trip! And avoid Avenue de Breteuil if you can help it. They’re protesting in the streets again. Or, of course, join the protest if that’s more your persuasion.” He smiled, directly at me, and held my eyes for what felt like an eternity but could only have been mere seconds. “Au revoir!” He retreated to the elevators and I collapsed down onto the armchair. I can’t be sure because my eyes began to well with tears and a fog entered my brain but I swear he turned to see me a final time. He may have waved. He may have winked. Or he may have trudged ahead and not looked back at all.
“Who was that man you were talking to?” Catherine asked me when she appeared immediately afterward.
“What man?”
“You were just talking to some guy. I saw you. You looked like you were in love or something dumb like that. Is this for me? Thanks,” Catherine said and tore into the bag with the stale croissant. She hastily bit into it and reached for the cappuccino, which must be, by now, cold as ice.
She had his eyes.
“When you come upon a protest, of course, you join it,” I remembered, aloud. Talking to myself was nothing new for me. Listening to myself, on the other hand, was more difficult.
“What? Tons of protests I’d never join. Not anymore. So who was he? Does he work here? Ask for fresh towels.”
“He was no one,” I lied. “No one at all. Doesn’t matter.”
“You’re crazy,” Catherine said, crushing my poor heart once more.
