"I wouldn't fly off without a word. I wouldn't leave with you mad at me."
"I'm not mad at you."
"Hm," I said. "Just mad enough to stop the nicest friendship I've ever had."
"Listen, Richard, really: I'm not mad at you. I was furious the other night, and disgusted. Then I was sad, and I cried. But after a while I stopped crying and I thought about you a lot, and I finally understood that you're being the very best person you know how to be; that you have to live with that until you change and no one is going to make that happen except you. How can I be
mad at you for doing your best?"
I felt a wave of heat in my face. What a difficult, loving thought! For her to understand, in the midst of that moment, that I was doing the best I knew how! Who else in the world would have understood that? The burst of respect for her triggered a suspicion of myself.
"Well, what if I'm not doing my best?"
"Then I'm mad at you."
She nearly laughed when she said it, and I relaxed a little, on the couch. If she could laugh, it wasn't the end of the world, not quite yet.
"Could we write a contract, come to a very clear arid careful agreement of exactly what changes we want?"
"I don't know, Richard. It sounds like you're playing games, and it's too important for that. Games, and your litany of old phrases, your old defenses. I don't want them anymore. If you have to defend 'yourself against me, if I have to keep proving over and over that I'm your friend, that I love you and I'm not going to hurt you or destroy you or bore you to death, that's too much. I think you know me
well enough, and you know how you feel about me. If you're afraid, you're afraid. I've let you go, and I feel good about it, I really do. Let's leave it at that. "We're friends, OK?"
I thought about what she said. I was so used to being right, so used to prevailing in any debate. But here, try as I did to find threads broken in her thinking, I couldn't. Her argument collapsed only if she were lying to me, only if she were out to hurt me or cheat me or destroy me. And that I could not believe. What she could do to anyone else, I knew, she could one day do to me, and I had never seen her cheat or wish pain to anyone, even people who had been cruel to her. She had forgiven them, every one, no bad feelings.
Had I allowed myself the word, that moment, I would have told her that I was in love with her.
"You're doing your best, too, aren't you?" I said.
"Yes, I am."
"Doesn't it strike you as strange that we would be the exception, you and me, when nearly no one can make intimacy work? Without shouting and slamming doors, losing respect, taking for granted, boredom?"
"Don't you think you're an exceptional person?" she said. "Don't you think I am?"
"We're like nobody I've ever met," I said.
"If I get mad at you, I don't think there's anything wrong with shouting and slamming doors. Throwing things, if I get mad enough. But that doesn't mean I don't love you. And that doesn't make any sense to you, does it?"
"None. There's no problem we can't solve with calm, rational discussion. When we disagree, what's wrong with saying, 'Leslie, I disagree, and these are my reasons'? And then you say, 'Quite so, Richard. Your reasons have convinced
me that yours is the better way.' And there's the end of it. No crockery to sweep up, no doors to repair."
"Don't you wish," she said. "The shouting comes when I get frightened, when I think you aren't hearing me. Maybe you're hearing my, words, but you're not understanding, and I'm scared you're going to do something that will hurt us both and we'll be sorry and I see a way to avoid it and if you're not hearing I have to say it loud enough so you will!"
"You're telling me that if I listen to you, you won't have to shout?"
"Yes. I probably won't have to shout," she said. "Even if I do, it's over in a few minutes. I get it out of my system and I calm down."
"Meanwhile I'm a quivering ball clinging up at the top of the curtains. . . ."
"If you don't want anger, Richard, then don't make me mad! I've grown into a fairly calm and well-adjusted person. I'm not hair-trigger set to blow up at the smallest thing, but you are one of the most selfish people I have ever known! I've needed my anger to keep you from trampling right over me, to let both of us know when enough is enough."
"I told you I was selfish, a long time ago," I said. "I promised you that I'd always act in what I thought was my own best interest, and I hoped you'd do the same. . . ."
"Spare me your definitions, please!" she said. "It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might someday be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be lonely and searching and lost. . . ."
We talked on for hours, as though our love were a terrified fugitive, leaning wide-eyed on a twelfth-floor ledge, set to jump the instant we stopped trying to save it.