“They asked. Some burglaries are personal apparently.”
“And Harlan has you convinced you should have mentioned me to the police?” Jackie is incredulous. Driving by someone’s house, however embarrassing and lamentable, is not in the same league as burglary.
Nasira purses her lips. “I don’t think we should keep talking about this.”
“Probably not.” Jackie stands. She regrets having approached Nasira at all. The young woman is naive and will believe whatever Harlan tells her. It pains Jackie to admit she had been exactly the same only a few years ago. She feels a surge of empathy for her younger self—and Nasira. “Just be careful.”
“That’s ironic, Jackie.” Nasira has boxed in her anger and returned to her prim Disney-princess persona, lifting her chin slightly, widening her eyes. “Because that’s exactly what Harlan said to me about you.”
Jackie hurries out of the café and pulls her phone from her coat pocket as she race-walks toward the dry cleaners. She pecks the screen, calls Harlan. The sidewalk is jammed with holiday shoppers, and Jackie weaves through them, her blood pressure rising as the phone rings again and again and again. He’s avoiding her, the coward. The call goes to voice mail; his recorded message is slick and precise and infuriating.
Beep.
Jackie stops at a lamppost to let the foot traffic flow by her. “It’s Jackie. Listen, Harlan, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but Nasira is my postdoc. I work with her, and I can’t have you telling her I’m dangerous or whatever nonsense you put in her head.” Her heart is pounding, but she’s not finished. “Same goes for Miles. He might be your friend, but he’s my husband first, so stop whispering in his ear. Stop interfering in my life.” She closes the call and stuffs her phone in her pocket.
She ought to feel better for having told him off, but she doesn’t. As she pushes open the door of the dry cleaners, she imagines him listening to her indignation and hearing it, recognizing it, as defensive.
Jackie arrives home and leaves her bags inside the door. She carries the dry cleaning upstairs, hangs up the knit dress she wore to work, and slips on pajama pants, thick socks, and her favorite sweatshirt. Her plans for the evening no longer seem simple and relaxing; they seem pathetic. If only Miles were home. She thinks about calling him, but remembers his meetings with the players and their coaches will run until nine or later.
She microwaves some leftovers, and curls up on the couch with her food, a glass of wine, and the remote. She scrolls through the offerings and finishes her dinner before finding anything worth watching. Giving up on TV, she retrieves her Kindle from the bedroom, makes popcorn, refills her wine, and settles on the couch once again. She’s halfway through a suspense novel about a missing husband. The wife is uncovering some ugly truths that leave her torn about whether she actually wants to find the bastard. Jackie is becoming increasingly impatient with the wife’s vacillation and hopes it turns out that when she does find him, she exacts revenge. She reads a few pages and puts the Kindle aside.
So easy to talk tough about a hypothetical situation in a book, Jackie thinks. Distance—and perspective—are everything, which is why she started her career studying theory of mind.
A huge cognitive milestone for a child is the ability to take someone else’s perspective, to imagine herself in another person’s shoes. Before the age of four or five, a child can’t differentiate between what she knows and what someone else knows, and she can’t generalize from her own internal experience (her mind) to that of others. A three-year-old will hide himself by covering his eyes because he hasn’t figured out that just because he can’t see doesn’t mean everyone else is also in the dark. He doesn’t know that different minds can see the world differently (literally and figuratively) and have different information.
But once children develop a theory of mind, once they get that not everybody sees and knows what they do, their horizons explode. Hide-and-seek works because they don’t leave bits of themselves sticking out. Secrets become possible. Telling the truth becomes optional. And emotions get complicated. The moment you see yourself as others see you, you become self-conscious. Welcome to embarrassment. And shame.
And empathy. There is a bright side.
Jackie feels empathy for the fictional woman whose missing husband may not be worth finding. But the woman is caught up in the quest, is desperate to find the truth, and Jackie understands that, too. It parallels her own situation, after all. If only Jackie’s frustration with herself were enough to change her behavior, to make her stop caring about what Harlan feels for Nasira. She wants to get inside Harlan’s mind and know, really know, what he thinks of Nasira, and of her. Jackie’s only clues are his behavior, and lately none of it makes sense. When Harlan was hers, she understood him, and trusted his view of her. She was certain of his perspective. She saw clearly through his eyes, and what she saw made her happy.
Isn’t that what love is, the belief that you exist in the private world of someone else’s mind as a beautiful, cherished being? Perhaps that’s the problem with love: it’s unverifiable.
She gets up, pours another glass of wine, and checks the time on her phone. Almost ten. She calls Miles, and it goes straight to voice mail. She texts him, asking if he is still working. While she waits for his reply, she empties the dishwasher. Still no text. She goes back to the couch and her book, willing her attention to stick. The next time she checks her phone, it is eleven, and Miles hasn’t responded.
She imagines Miles with his arms around another woman, a faceless other. The knifepoint of jealousy pierces her.
Jackie pours the wine remaining in her glass down the sink, checks the front door is locked, and heads to bed. She is foolish to make anything out of an unanswered text or of the slight but undeniable increase in the distance between her and Miles since Thanksgiving. Still, she cannot deny her loneliness. She never expected to be isolated inside her marriage. The point of marriage is to have a partner, to belong. Her husband has become her roommate, an occasional one at that.
As she brushes her teeth, she parses her emotions, teasing jealousy apart from regret, love apart from nostalgia, pain apart from self-pity, all with limited success. The wine has not obliterated her encounter with Nasira, only deepened how shitty she feels. She takes an Ambien and puts her faith in pharmaceutical sleep. Until it arrives, she lies in bed, facing the empty space where Miles ought to be. She cannot possibly sleep facing away from this void, but tonight confronting it is just as bad.
While she is alone and medicated, Harlan and Nasira are enjoying a drink together, relaxing on Harlan’s low-slung tweed couch. He’s talking about how well the grant is coming along, how strong her writing is, or a more intimate topic, how beautiful she looks. While Jackie stares into the empty room, not bothering to close her eyes to help bring sleep, Nasira moves closer to Harlan, tucking her feet neatly beneath her like a cat wrapping its tail along its leg, conforming her body to the space he makes for her against his side, under his arm. While Jackie hates herself for her dissatisfaction and selfishness, for her inability to release the past, for her thoughts that will not unhook from the happy couple, the happy couple is thinking of nothing other than each other, and pleasure.