Gravity

By C.E. Shue
Copyright 1999 by C.E. Shue

      David loves Emily, but Emily loves Robert. At least Emily thinks she loves Robert; she's not really sure. She is sure that she doesn't love David, however, although she is quite fond of him. David is positive that he loves Emily, and he believes that Emily truly loves him, deep down in her heart of hearts. Robert certainly feels something for Emily-more than mere friendship, not just simple lust. It could be love, he supposes, but never having been in love before, how can he be certain?

      David lives 2,000 miles away from Emily and it is killing him, he says. He writes prodigious letters to her about his life, at least that which passes for life, for how could he really live without her? The seasons are only markers of the time passing until he is with her again. The weather becomes a running motif in his letters.
      "The sun is hot, hot, hot," he writes. "I wake up in the morning thinking it's either a fever or you."

      Robert calls Emily every night. He invites her to movies, concerts, plays. She has a car; he doesn't. Emily half-suspects that this is why he likes her, but it doesn't really bother her. Robert gives her books to read: Goethe, Kafka, Marx. "You have potential," he tells her. "You just have to develop it." Emily is not sure whether she's flattered or insulted by this, but she is intrigued.

      When the time comes to make a decision, Emily makes it. She puts down Sartre's Being and Nothingness on Robert's nightstand. He turns out the lights.

      David goes out with other women; he cruises bars and sleeps around. He tells Emily all about it in great detail. He marvels at her ability to accept his infidelity; in fact, he loves her all the more for it. Emily thinks David is being ridiculous, but does not tell him so. She likes listening to his stories; they're like soap operas, only better because they're real.
      "Her name is Jessica," David writes. "I've slept with her three times, mostly because it was possible. I'm involved with her, but I'm serious about you. Do you understand the difference?"       "Yes," Emily writes in reply. "You're using her." She can see David laughing when he reads this.

      Emily reads David's letters with interest and concern. She wishes he could be happy, but she realizes that he does not want to be happy. David took his job with a prestigious company immediately after graduating from college. People are impressed when he mentions the name. He thought that Emily might come with him, but he did not ask, and she did not offer.
      David writes that he is miserable at work; he cannot stand the idea of spending the rest of his life in a white cubicle with fluorescent lights, pushing pencils and shuffling papers. This is how he describes his job, even though it is inaccurate. He makes good money, but it is of little comfort. His co-workers are pleasant, intelligent people, but David cannot bear to be with them because they only remind him that he is not with Emily, that he is 2,000 miles away from the life he wants to lead.       "A storm hangs heavy in the trees," he writes. "I wish it would just rain and get it over with."

      "I went to the movies with Robert last week," Emily writes back. "That makes two movies, one concert and three museums so far." Emily does not try to hide the fact that she and Robert see one another; she knows that David would not believe anything romantic was happening between them. How could it, when he, David, loves Emily so much? This is one of the things Emily likes best about David: his arrogance. It makes her feel safe.

      "Don't tell David we're sleeping together," Robert advises her. "It wouldn't serve any good purpose." Robert and David have met before. They have many mutual friends. Robert thinks David is uncouth; David thinks Robert is pretentious. Each thinks the other is immature, but neither will give the other the satisfaction of letting him know what he thinks. They are civil when they meet in public. Emily enjoys watching them be civil to one another in public-it is like watching people play charades, but only she can read the clues.

      Emily writes stories and sends them to David to read. He critiques them faithfully and sends them back. "You're still too autobiographical," he tells her. "You've got to learn how to lie." Emily is thrilled to think that David thinks he knows her so well. It delights her to know that she is a better liar than she ever believed she could be.
      David settles into the work he hates; he joins the office softball team and goes drinking with the people in his carpool. He sleeps around and doesn't feel guilty until the morning.
      He apologizes repeatedly to Emily for being unfaithful to her; she tells him he has nothing to feel badly about. "It's natural," she says. "I'd be surprised if you didn't do it." David refuses to believe she isn't wounded-what an unselfish girl she is! "I'll make it up to you," he says. "We'll have good times again, I promise."
      They have had good times, it's true. Their last semester of college was mostly spent at the beach and in bars. They talked of traveling around the world, of doing great things and writing great books.

      "It's strange going to the movies without you," David writes. "I had gotten used to your presence beside me in the dark."
      Sometimes Emily becomes impatient with David and his letters full of sexual innuendo; she wants to fling them across the room. It is his own fault he is unhappy, she thinks for the hundreth time. But she never scolds him, never tells him to grow up. Emily is half-afraid that if she did she would find him standing on her doorstep, suitcase in hand. She likes David best exactly where he is. Sometimes Emily holds onto his letters so tightly that she crushes them. Then she smooths them out again and puts them in a shoebox that she keeps in her closet. There is the future to think about, after all.
      She thinks about the letters that she has written to David. Where does he read them? Does he read them more than once? Where does he keep them? Will he keep them forever?

      Emily takes Robert to the park. They sit on the grass as he plays music by Segovia on the guitar. Emily never imagined that his music would be so passionate; she always thought that it would be pristine, orderly and civilized. When Robert finishes, Emily kisses him with such intensity that it surprises him.
      Robert lays with Emily's head on his chest and watches clouds roll across the blue sky. "How utterly romantic," he says, almost without irony. But it is too much for him. "In a very high school-ish sort of way."
      "How would you know?" Emily teases. "You told me that you skipped most of high school."
      "Well, it's how I imagine high school romance to be, then," he answers.
      Emily knows that Robert is younger than she is, but he won't tell her how old he is. He says that it doesn't make any difference, since he has never had any friends his own age anyway.

      Emily makes Robert do many things he's never done before. He likes it when she takes charge, although he does not tell her so.
      "What do you mean, you've never ridden a rollercoaster?" she says incredulously.
      "I mean, I've never ridden a rollercoaster," he says. "My family didn't do that sort of thing."
      Emily insists on taking Robert to Disneyland where they hold hands and stand in long lines, eating popcorn. A barbershop quartet serenades them. Emily's favorite rides are the obscure ones: Alice in Wonderland, The Submarine Voyage, Trip to Mars, The Canoes.
      Robert and Emily stroll by a crowd of children mobbing the Seven Dwarves.
      "Those costumes are hellish," Emily whispers. "I had a friend who was Sneezy for a whole summer. He said they could only be `on' for fifteen minutes at a time or else they would suffocate inside those giant heads. They even have one guy whose only job is to go around the park picking up 'characters' who have passed out from the heat." Emily tells Robert about the secret passageways between the rides so that employees can come and go unseen and about the basketball court hidden in the bowels of the Matterhorn.
      "The asteroids in Space Mountain are really close-up photographs of chocolate chip cookies," she says with authority.
      "How do you know all this?" Robert asks.
      "I practically grew up here," Emily answers. "You're looking at my childhood."
      He laughs at her, but not in an unpleasant way.
      "What about you?" she asks. "You never tell me about your childhood."
      Robert leans toward her until his forehead is touching hers. "I have no childhood. This," he says, "is my childhood."
      At the end of the evening, Robert buys her a stuffed Dumbo because he says it reminds him of her. Emily thinks he is a snob, but a sweet one.

      And Emily knows that this can't last, but is unwilling to give it up. She feels like a child on vacation, never wanting the summer to end.

      David's letters are full of plans for the two of them. To move away together, to go to graduate school together, to join the Peace Corps together, to grow old together.
      "Spring is trying hard to shine through," he writes. "There is no green yet-no blossoms-but every dog, cat, bird, and child knows that it is just around the corner."
      It would scare Emily if she thought David was serious about all this. She has no doubts about his sincerity; he is the most sincere person she knows. She also knows that this is just David's way of making his life more bearable until he accepts it as the life he has chosen. She writes to him saying, "Just you wait. You'll meet a gorgeous woman, fall in love and forget all about me." She is joking, but it is true, of course.

      Robert and Emily take a blanket out to the beach and spend the night looking at the stars and dark waves. The sand is damp, but the wind is warm. Robert points out Venus and Jupiter, orbiting around them. Emily knows that Robert writes poetry, but he won't let her read it. "It's not very good," he says when she asks him about it.

      Robert talks about theories of minimalism and deconstruction, poetry and politics. Emily listens to the rise and fall of his voice-his words wash over her, as if they were waves breaking on the shore.
      "Poetry seems more vulnerable than fiction, in a way," she comments, breathing in the salt air. "It's like you have to stick closer to the truth in poetry, somehow."
      Robert quotes: "'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To speak of many things: Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax-of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot-and whether pigs have wings!'"
      "Okay," Emily concedes even though she doesn't think he has really proved his point (she finds him especially charming when he is wrong), "So much for truth in poetry."
      She can hear David laughing when she tells him about this conversation, which she will, of course, carefully omitting the setting. She has started writing the letter in her mind already.