a week to Singapore’s Banana Leaf inside the Farmers Market until they start giving us free mango juice and, in a coup, free rice crackers. We hike Fryman together. He runs back and forth without his shirt, all crazy and Catholic and self-flagellating.
When it unpicks, we calmly follow the cotton as it unwinds. He doesn’t want to raise children in America and I do. I am second to the ocean, it is a religion I can’t understandand that I resent. It is the easiest, sweetest breakup. We go camping in the redwoods of northern California. We aren’t going there to break up with each other, or maybe we are. We visit the Henry Miller Library. We eat incredible pancakes. We hold each other. Then he asks if I want to stay together and I say “no” and I ask him and he says he doesn’t think we should stay together either. I cry my eyes out because he’s so lovely and then we drive back down the coast holding hands and listening to Neil Young.
He waits until I’m not there to pack up his things from our home, leaving me a note like nothing I ever thought I’d deserve:
Emma, I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming. I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright.
I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.
You are a great woman, and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. Butif left with just the experience we’ve shared, I know my life was better because of it.
That day, hiking Fryman Canyon, I come down the hill and see a car with the license plate HEWZ VAN . It makes me happy. It’s cherry red. Maybe Hugh drives children and is a FUN DAD . Or it’s only him and he takes joy where he can, this case being his car. I go home and do a phone session with Dr. R. I try to tell him about HEWZ VAN and the joy it brought me, but he keeps coughing.
“You’re coughing. Do you have a cold?”
“I’m fine.”
Then I take ten minutes telling him about Abba-Zabas.
“There’s this candy called Abba-Zaba that I bought because I don’t like it—it’s chewy peanut-butter taffy—so I figured I wouldn’t eat it. Instead, I got completely addicted to eating something I don’t like.”
I wonder if I knew this would be the last time we’d ever speak, subconsciously, and that’s why I filled the conversation with flighty inanities, so he’d know I was cheerful and fine.
I don’t have much to say. The breakup with Christopher has been so dignified and respectful. I am ashamed to say I wrap up my session with Dr. R before the fifty minutes are up. I say he sounds sick. I say he sounds like he should go. “I’ll call you if I need you,” I say, though I’ve a feeling it won’t be for a while. And then we hang up.
The next morning, I see Heath Ledger at the Laurel Canyon Country Store, with his little girl on his shoulders. His skin is gray. He’s buying Lilly’s coffee from her cart. Hecomes over and sits with me for a few minutes and I give him the half of the
New York Times
I’m done with and he says thanks and to tell Christopher he wants to surf this weekend. His daughter’s wriggling to get going, and he heads off with his paper cup.
The crazy thing is: it turns out to be a magic coffee and it stays in his system so that, a week later in New York, he doesn’t die and instead of taking an overdose at Mary-Kate Olsen’s, he goes to Dr. R, who helps him get back on the wagon and
When it unpicks, we calmly follow the cotton as it unwinds. He doesn’t want to raise children in America and I do. I am second to the ocean, it is a religion I can’t understandand that I resent. It is the easiest, sweetest breakup. We go camping in the redwoods of northern California. We aren’t going there to break up with each other, or maybe we are. We visit the Henry Miller Library. We eat incredible pancakes. We hold each other. Then he asks if I want to stay together and I say “no” and I ask him and he says he doesn’t think we should stay together either. I cry my eyes out because he’s so lovely and then we drive back down the coast holding hands and listening to Neil Young.
He waits until I’m not there to pack up his things from our home, leaving me a note like nothing I ever thought I’d deserve:
Emma, I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming. I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright.
I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.
You are a great woman, and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. Butif left with just the experience we’ve shared, I know my life was better because of it.
That day, hiking Fryman Canyon, I come down the hill and see a car with the license plate HEWZ VAN . It makes me happy. It’s cherry red. Maybe Hugh drives children and is a FUN DAD . Or it’s only him and he takes joy where he can, this case being his car. I go home and do a phone session with Dr. R. I try to tell him about HEWZ VAN and the joy it brought me, but he keeps coughing.
“You’re coughing. Do you have a cold?”
“I’m fine.”
Then I take ten minutes telling him about Abba-Zabas.
“There’s this candy called Abba-Zaba that I bought because I don’t like it—it’s chewy peanut-butter taffy—so I figured I wouldn’t eat it. Instead, I got completely addicted to eating something I don’t like.”
I wonder if I knew this would be the last time we’d ever speak, subconsciously, and that’s why I filled the conversation with flighty inanities, so he’d know I was cheerful and fine.
I don’t have much to say. The breakup with Christopher has been so dignified and respectful. I am ashamed to say I wrap up my session with Dr. R before the fifty minutes are up. I say he sounds sick. I say he sounds like he should go. “I’ll call you if I need you,” I say, though I’ve a feeling it won’t be for a while. And then we hang up.
The next morning, I see Heath Ledger at the Laurel Canyon Country Store, with his little girl on his shoulders. His skin is gray. He’s buying Lilly’s coffee from her cart. Hecomes over and sits with me for a few minutes and I give him the half of the
New York Times
I’m done with and he says thanks and to tell Christopher he wants to surf this weekend. His daughter’s wriggling to get going, and he heads off with his paper cup.
The crazy thing is: it turns out to be a magic coffee and it stays in his system so that, a week later in New York, he doesn’t die and instead of taking an overdose at Mary-Kate Olsen’s, he goes to Dr. R, who helps him get back on the wagon and
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