A LOVER’S DISCOURSE
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Celine and Jesse loved each other so well, they no longer needed to speak.
After several years in their small apartment, the couple cultivated an expert familiarity. Having wiped her sudsy spit each morning from the bathroom mirror, and having poured two uncarbonated sips from the bottoms of all his beer bottles, they understood the problems and solutions to each other’s habits. And so a gradual shorthand of speech developed between them.
At breakfast, it took no discussion for Jesse to heat the coffee and Celine to grate the potatoes. And if there was a lingering question of whether Celine would like a refill, it was simpler for Jesse to hold out the coffee pot, raise his eyebrows, and hum a lilting sound in her direction than to expend the energy of asking, ‘Would you like some more, honey?’ Celine recognized the patterns of Jesse’s hums and hmms, and she replied with a soft smile or a rimple in her forehead. In turn, if the television was ever too loud, all she had to do was dart her eyes and make a quiet sigh, and in no time Jesse would rest a hand on her knee and lower the volume.
It was not a desire for efficiency that outmoded the couple’s verbal communication, but a circumstance of their remarkable closeness. From memory, Celine could trace the gestures of Jesse’s weeknight arrival: fussing with the sticky deadbolt, shaking off his work shoes, sneaking over the living room threshold to scoop her up and kiss her on the neck. Likewise, Jesse could anticipate a movement of Celine’s limbs the way a housefly can sense the effect of a swatting hand—flying into motion as soon as the fulcrum of one’s elbow begins to teeter. They were eager to meet each other’s needs, and they learned to distinguish the emotional references of each other’s shoulder blades.
It was a blissful time together, full of guttural noises. On Sundays they’d try out foreign recipes and dance around the kitchen, grunting and bumbling until the seasoning was just right. She trilled when he chopped bell peppers, curling her lips if the knifeblade got too close to his knuckles. He popped wine and hawed with laughter when she twirled an apron around her head. They maneuvered around each other with exquisite synchronicity, stirring one another’s saucepans and wiping up spills, clicking and purring with excitement about the week ahead.
Not to mention the gorgeous silences—crossing a stream on a walk toward the coast. With no announcement Jesse lifted Celine over the mislaid plank of a footbridge, and later at the shore, she shielded his eyes from a sandy breeze. A swarm of gnats pestered them when they kissed. They chuckled and swatted the bugs and kissed again, never saying a syllable. The sea shushed the snickering stream. And when the sun dipped below the horizon, they reflected in each other’s eyes a look of total safety. They held hands and smelled seagrass in the quiet darkness.
Celine and Jesse felt more passionate in this mode of communication, as though the energy they conserved without speech was fueling and stoking their love. After a year or two of abstaining from words, their physical gestures began to take on richer meanings. Celine would watch for hours the crevice of Jesse’s throat, gleaning from the little muscles a multitude of observations about his mounting frustrations at work, fixes for the current administration, or his insistent luckiness at having won over such a marvelous woman. So too, Jesse could tell from the frequency of Celine’s blinking that she was considering taking night classes again, and he cheered her on by smacking his lips and wiggling his fingers. Every thrum and passing glance was delivered on a wavelength to which only they were attuned. The strength of this mutual bond rendered even the most inane actions—the scratching of an itch or an involuntary belch—with an assertion of unconditional support and adoration.
Still they huffed as any couple through the occasional misunderstandings of building a life together. Eventually their tongues surrendered the capacity to form words altogether, and with the air conditioner on, Celine couldn’t always make out the pitch of Jesse’s warblings. Jess hissed viciously at having to repeat himself, or every now and then, Celine would roll her tongue to ask for a seltzer water, and he’d return from the kitchen with a glass of milk. After such event, Celine flickered her lashes to ask what’s the matter, and Jesse bucked his head and barked indignantly to prove that he was trying his best.
Celine was sad to wonder if these outbursts were on purpose, but always her confidence restored itself when considering the semantic nuances that wrenched other couples into disagreement and suspicion. She and Jesse sneered at the conversations of strangers, whose petty arguments seemed insecure and devolved when compared to their own relationship. The sheer ability of their wordlessness was reason enough to disregard the unconscious slights that sometimes seep, regrettably, into the truest of loves. After all, it was unfathomable now for Celine to take the side of rude bank teller, or for Jesse to act too coy around an attractive waitress, much less adjust the muscles in his mouth to form a coherent utterance. In this way, the couple’s lack of speech perpetuated a special and inevitable trust. Within this mode of communication, minor pains could not be seen, like a wilted petal in an expanse of daisies.
As Celine and Jesse receded further from their conception of nouns, their bodies became increasingly verbose. Jesse could at this point discern more truth than ever from Celine’s kneecap, and a hair on her eyebrow kept him up at night with its musings. Her body often spoke of an insatiable longing to be touched. Jesse too was always flapping his arms and squawking through the hallway, making enormous signals to convey the extent of his desire. Unfortunately, with all their practice of reading into each other’s gestures, making love felt almost excruciating in all that it communicated. Celine’s body shook from just a hand grazing the back of her thigh, and Jesse once cried at Celine’s mouth running down his chest. Physical contact bore an overwhelming intentionality—a distilled and concentrated outpouring of love that they could not otherwise articulate, nor could they any longer withstand. Eventually they learned to satisfy each other from across the room.
This physical distance may have sparked greater concern were it not overshadowed by the tightening intimacy of Celine and Jesse’s minds. So elaborately enmeshed were the lovers that they sensed each other’s neural patterns and experienced one another’s emotions with a privileged access that sometimes blurred the rightful owner of a given feeling. Jesse received his own love for Celine in addition to her worry that the burners on the stove might at any point be left on. Celine felt a pooling loneliness that wasn’t hers and an itchiness at her neck when Jesse went too long without shaving. At night they dreamed in unison, and on one occasion, when asking about his day, Celine called Jesse by her own name. This must have been a mistake, Jesse figured, until he reread the bloodlines on her eyeball, and sure enough he was only faintly there—a reflection on its glassy surface.
It was soon after that Jesse retreated inward. He slouched through his daily routine, grunting and cracking his knuckles at any sight or sound of Celine. His hums all tottered into a minor key, and he spent hours staring at the telephone. He holed himself up in the spare room, listening to speeches of former presidents and a cassette of his high school commencement address. To appease these moods, Celine made an effort to keep quiet, except she couldn’t remember how. Her static body released whispers like an electrical current. She insulated herself in a bedsheet so that Jesse could get some thinking done. When tensions grew high enough, they traded accusations about the source of Jesse’s unhappiness, each knowing the quickest route to hurt the other’s feelings. Celine would orient her gaze in Jesse’s direction, focusing just past his body, so as to minimize his entire existence. Jesse would knock Celine down with the palm of his eye and then tweedledee out the living room, or else scan her up and down with a rinsing glare, whistling a long decrescendo like the sound of an incoming bomb. When he scowled at her with all his might, she blew bubbles at him with her saliva.
They agreed to spend some time apart to recalibrate. Celine stayed alone in the apartment while Jesse checked himself into a hotel. The silence without him was deafening. To fend off loneliness, Celine tuned the kitchen radio in between stations, mimicking Jesse’s presence with the clicks and hisses of the fuzzy signal.
She waited up each night wearing makeup and new dresses for when he might return. Jesse did return, invariably, with a hunching posture and a discount bouquet. He sang to Celine. No words—just a swooning pitch, the aperture of his throat opening and closing in a voluptuous swell. And through this song Celine understood the depth of his regret. He insisted that he would work harder to unwall his feelings and appreciate her love. His hairline spoke of the old days, and how he was ready to have fun again, at which Celine couldn’t help from blushing with forgiveness.
In the weeks that followed, Jesse was renewed and more soulful. He played the TV louder and cooked breakfast with a little more butter. He vacuumed and poured out liquor bottles and made love with his actual body. But his positive strides never lasted as long they needed to. In time, Jesse slumped once more into his defensive sadness, angry outbursts, nights at the hotel, and all over again back to Celine, singing a whimpering song.
The couple had all but accepted this pattern as part of their ongoing routine. Until finally, something inside Jesse spoke up. Celine heard it one evening while reading on the couch: a voice outside the front door, talking on the telephone. ‘I miss you too,’ it said. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’ The words curled inside her eardrum and chiseled away at the nerve endings there. It must be one of the neighbors, she thought, until she heard a fussing with the sticky deadbolt, and in walked Jesse, shaking off his work shoes. Celine squealed from the couch. She ran to the hallway and pointed her finger at him like a pistol. His shoulders went up and his palms turned out, insistent that nothing had happened. But it was written on his shuddering lips. He said it. He said it, and he wanted her to hear. She pointed at him again, growling with her teeth unfurled, her brow knit dense and impenetrable.
His nostrils twitched.
She stomped her foot and pointed harder, cracking her elbow.
He bowed his head. ‘Celine,’ he began.
Tears spilled from her eyes when he uttered the first syllable. She collapsed in the hallway, her knees knocking against the hardwood. It had been years since he said her name aloud.
‘Honey,’ he went on. ‘I can explain. I never meant to hurt you.’
Her mouth strained to form some kind of retaliation, but the words were not there. All that came out was a heaving, retching noise.
‘I’ve been seeing someone,’ he said.
Celine gathered herself up and babbled around the apartment, flinging her arms. She rasped and glotted and knocked over a shelf. She coughed into his face and spat on the ground. She ripped her shirt and sobbed into the fabric and screamed until she tore her throat. Jesse stood there with his eyes downcast, flinching and nodding at every awful and inchoate gesture. He understood the extent of his betrayal, and he accepted her anger with solemn attention. And when Celine collapsed again, and her tears ran dry, and there was absolutely no strength left within her, Jesse unleashed the terrible truth inside his heart.
‘She and I met a few months ago. It was after one of our fights. I was at the hotel. I couldn’t sleep so I went for a drink in the lobby. That’s where I saw her. She said “Hi.” Her voice had such a ring to it. I felt I understood her from the very first word. There wasn’t anything to figure out. And so we stayed up all night, talking. Well, she did most of the talking. But the words started coming back, Celine. They started coming back and they felt new.’ He turned the last syllable over in his mouth. ‘New. Neeeew. Nuh-ew.’
Celine stared ahead, out of breath.
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Not with words. I guess…’ Jesse reached to put a hand on her shoulder, but then he stopped. ‘I guess that means I’m not sorry then.’
Celine’s face collapsed into her hands.
‘I mean… I’m not sorry enough to make this work.’
She heaved a tremendous sob.
‘I know that sounded awful. I— I— it’s not, the words, not all the way back. I can’t—’ He banged his palm against his forehead. ‘I can’t try what I’m saying to. I can’t say what I’m— Here, I can write it down. I’ll— I’ll— let me. A pencil. One second.’
But there was nothing left to say. When Jesse rushed back in with a pad of paper, Celine saw a light shining behind his eyes. It was a light that long ago shined for Celine and now lit the obscure path toward a future with someone else. After a quick examination of the vibrations of his earlobes, Celine confirmed that Jesse no longer wanted or needed her. He said he would come by the following day to collect his things. She clutched her chest. He said he would explain more tomorrow. She curled into a ball on the rug. He tried get her to look at him, but her quivering eyes refused.
‘I don’t know if it means anything now,’ said Jesse, ‘but we never slept together, her and I. All we ever do is talk.’
Jesse never did come by to collect his things. Maybe it was guilt that kept him away, or the fear of stirring up a decision that could not be undone. For weeks Celine waited up, cross-legged on a pile of oxfords, practicing a grand speech that she would deliver to reprimand his misgivings. She tried to utter the word ‘alone,’ but she could not say it. She could not even think it. Conjuring its definition, all that came to mind was herself right then—surrounded by his forgotten shirts, fingering their empty sleeves. She did this night after night and cried.
At the end of the month, Celine boxed up Jesse’s belongings and wailed as she kicked them down the stairs.
The following month, she moved out of the apartment. There were too many reminders around: traces of hair at the base of the toilet, a pink teapot that he purchased for her birthday. It was time for a new beginning. It was time for Celine to reinhabit herself. Maybe somewhere far away—on a farm, or the ocean, or Europe.
She wound up at the edge of the city, taking night classes at a nearby community college. She studied poetry. And though the words of her assignments contained no sensical reference anymore, she liked when the professor recited passages to the class. She gleaned meanings from between the sounds through a feeling of harmony and disharmony that was irreducible to thought. For her midterm essay on Yeats, Celine turned in a painting of an apple-blossom that she rubbed with grass and misted with liquor.
Years went by, and still Celine did not speak. She practiced everyday in the mirror or with strangers on the train, contorting her lips into bizarre shapes in an attempt to say ‘Good morning.’ But no matter how hard she tried, the words never returned. Perhaps the muscles in her tongue had irreversibly degenerated. Or perhaps she was simply waiting for the right listener. In any case, the existence of the world was enough of a conversation for Celine. She laughed along to the inside jokes of acorns and whispered to a river with her toes that everything was in its right place. If life ever appeared incoherent in its discord to Celine, it rang out now with the clarity of a churchbell. She possessed a private language that included no one else, except for the objects and inanimate forces who wished to listen. The universe seemed to begin and end at the tip of her nose. At night, she danced under a tree branch and pictured impossible objects in her mind. She heard the pain of the sidewalk and kissed the walls of a museum. She kept a beetle in an empty box.
Only once did she ever see Jesse again. It was a freezing day in Autumn. Green leaves fell from the trees. Celine passed a cafe on her way to the park, and that’s where she saw him, eating lunch around a wrought iron table. Across the table sat a young woman with a child in her lap. Jesse frowned at something the woman said, then he forked a french fry. The child spilled a glass of juice. Jesse held up his hand for the waitress, and the waitress smiled as she walked right past him.
Then his eyes met Celine’s. He blinked over and over again. The hair on his shoulders pricked up to make sure that it was her. His lip went to one side, then his bottom lip over his top lip. And in a single second he sang a silent song to say that he was sorry. His eyes cried out that he was wrong to push her away. Somewhere in the midst of their love he lost himself, and oh, what a shame to have lost her too. He screamed to Celine that she was a precious thing, that love is a matter of paying attention, and oh, how he wished he paid better attention. If he was more in charge of his love he would have given it all to her, oh, he would have finished out his days with her, Celine, he would grip her in his arms right now if he could, if it would make her smile.
But it was no use. The terms of this conversation no longer applied to Celine. She spoke a language that involved no reference, no person, no sound. It belonged to her alone. And she spoke only of her own priorities—loudly—to herself. The pleas of others did not anymore register as responsibilities, and any outside opinions on the matter were beyond nonsense now. The difficulty in this circumstance was relying on goodness, as there was no way for Celine to confirm her intentions with the outside world. But she trusted her efforts to harm nothing, to make peace, to invest in a solitude that affected no one else. It was a lonely effort, but how does one rely on herself if not alone?
Jesse’s jaunty muscles hung there dumbly in front of everyone, the young woman and their wet child. If he could only see her smile…!
And Celine did smile as she walked right past him.
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