In Which Time Was Fractured There Was No Cause And Effect

from Sylvia

by LEONARD MICHAELS

"Go, I don't love you. I hate you. I don't hate, I despise you. If you love me, you'll go. I think we can be great friends and I'm sorry we never became friends."

"Can I get you something?"

"A menstrual pill. They're in my purse."

I found the little bottle and brought her a pill.

"Go now."

I lay down beside her. We slept in our clothes.

       JOURNAL DECEMBER 1960

At the end of the summer we returned to New York. Naomi moved out of the MacDougal Street apartment, Sylvia and I moved in. By then, fighting every day, we'd become ferociously intimate.

Like a kid having a tantrum, she would get caught up in the sound of her own screaming. Screaming because she was screaming, screaming, screaming, as if building a little chamber of rage, herself at the center. It was all hers. She was boss. I wasn't allowed inside. Her eyes and teeth were bright blacks and whites, everything exaggerated and contorted like the maelstrom within. There was nothing erotic in this picture, and yet we sometimes went from fighting to sex. No passport was required. There wasn't even a border. Time was fractured, there was no cause and effect, and one thing didn't even lead toward another. As in a metaphor, one thing was another. Raging, hating, I wanted to fuck, and she did, too.

Fights often began without warning. I'd be saying something ordinary and neutral, but Sylvia was suddenly rigid, staring at me. She knocked the telephone off the shelf. I stopped talking, startled, jerked to attention. She knocked the cup and saucer that had been sitting beside the telephone to the floor. They smashed to pieces. Now she was screaming, denouncing me, and I was screaming back at her. She went for the radio, to fling it against the wall, and I lunged at her, trying to stop her. She twisted loose and came at me. Then it was erotic; anyhow, sexual. Afterwards, usually, she slept. Neither of us mentioned what had happened. From yelling to fucking. From unreal to real was how it felt.

Ordinary or violent, the sex was frequent, exhausting more than satisfying. Sylvia said she'd never had an orgasm. As if I were the one who stood between her and that ultimate pleasure, she announced, "I will not live my whole life without an orgasm." She said she'd had several lovers better than I was. She wanted to talk about them, I think, make me suffer details.

I began trying to write again. Sylvia began taking classes at NYU, a few blocks away across Washington Square Park, to complete her undergraduate work. She asked me what she ought to declare as her major. I said if I were doing it over, I'd major in classics. I should have said nothing. She registered for Latin and Greek, ancient history, and a class in 18th century English literature. She had to learn the complex grammars of two languages, read long poems and fat novels, and write papers, all while living in squalor and fighting with me every day. It seemed to me a maniacal program. I expected confusion and disaster, but she was abnormally bright and did well enough.

There was no desk in the apartment, but Sylvia didn't need such conveniences, didn't even seemt to notice their absence. I don't think she ever complained about anything in the miserable apartment, not even about the roaches, only about me. She studied sitting on the edge of the bed in a mess of papers. Her expression would go flat, her body limp. She would be utterly still except for her eyes. She didn't scratch, she didn't stretch. She was doing the job, getting it over with. I'd sit with her sometimes for hours, reading a novel or a magazine. We ate together in bed, usually noodles, frozen vegetables, and orange juice, or else we went out for pizza or Chinese food. Neither of us cooked. My mother often gave us food. I'd carry it back to MacDougal Street after our visits downtown, two or three times a month.

One night, after dinner at my parents' apartment, my mother slipped away to the bedroom with Sylvia's coat and sewed up a tear in the sleeve. AS we were about to leave, she surprised Sylvia with the mended coat. Sylvia seemed grateful and affectionate. In the street, however, she became hysterical with indignation, saying she'd been humiliated. I tried to make her understand that my mother was being sweet, doing something good for Sylvia. My mother intended kindness, not a comment on Sylvia's coat. I didn't say that Sylvia made a pitiable, waiflike impression in the torn coat. I said my mother wanted Sylvia to like her. Saying such things, I embarrassed myself.

Then I became angry. What difference did the motives make? Sylvia wanted to be pitied; my mother wanted to be liked. Who could care? What mattered was that my mother's gesture had been affectionate. To defend her against Sylvia brought up questions of loyalty. Maybe that was the point. But, to my mind, my mother needed no defense. I was wrong to defend her. I shut up. Sylvia could interpret things however she liked. I couldn't instruct her in feeling, and I refused to sink into a poisonous and boring morass of motives.

Thereafter, I visited my parents alone.

Leonard Michaels died in 2003 at the age of seventy. The above excerpt is taken from his novel Sylvia, which you can purchase here.

"Flocks I" - collections of colonies of bees (mp3)

"Flocks III" - collections of colonies of bees (mp3)

"The Fader" - toe (mp3)