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: : : WHEN JANINE WAS YOUNGER, SHE ran away from home for a week. It was right after she told her mom that she was a lesbian.
Her mom had reacted by saying: —That's ridiculous. You're sixteen years old.
—That's old enough to know what I want, said Janine.
—Go to your room, said her mom, as if lesbianism were merely a more elaborate form of talk-back, something that could be punished away.
—No, Janine said. —I'm not going to my room. I want you to treat me like an adult. I want you to listen to what I have to say.
What she had to say was that she had been involved for three months now with a woman named Mica, that this relationship was the best thing that had ever happened to her, that being with a woman felt better than being with boys, and that she planned to be with Mica forever, so everyone had better get used to it, starting now. But as soon as she began to explain about Mica her mom said —Give me this girl's phone number. I think I need to have a talk with her parents.
—She's not a girl, Mom, Janine said. —She's twenty-one. And she lives on her own, not with her parents.
—Twenty-one? her mom said. —You're involved with someone who's twenty-one? I should call the police.
—Will you please just listen to me? Janine said. —I'm trying to explain. But the more it became plain that Janine had made her decision consciously and willingly, the more upset her mother grew, and after five minutes Janine ran out of the house, her face hot and red, her skateboard clutched to her chest. She would have to wait until later to explain. (Two months later her parents would dump her off in therapy, where she would get to explain over and over and over again.)
She rode to Mica's place that day, and told Mica what happened, and in the middle of the tale she burst into tears and said she didn't want to go back home, she didn't want to go back there ever. Mica smoothed her hair and put her to bed, and then she talked it over with her roommates. They decided that they would harbor Janine, that she could stay with them for as long as she wanted.
This ended up being about a week, exactly as long as it took Janine's parents to finally track her down. Mica wouldn't open the screen door when they showed up, so they had to stand there on on the porch, looking tired and humbled and old, calling to Janine through the screen, saying: —Janine, please come home. We miss you. We want to talk to you.
Janine agreed to go with them, half-planning to just stay at home long enough to put together a bag of her stuff. But when she got home and saw her own room and her own bed she knew she would stay. She'd secretly grown tired of not having any of her own belongings, having to wear other people's clothes, having to ask before she could so much as eat a cracker. And so she stayed. For a while she counted this as a defeat. But she had learned something in the week she spent away. Home was different after that. She had something else to compare it to. She would not forget sitting down for dinner with Mica and her roommates. Holding hands with them around the table while one of them sang a prayer to a goddess.
She doesn't have a dinner table in her current apartment. There's not really room. She'll eat at the kitchen counter most nights. If Thomas is over, like tonight, the two of them will go sit in the living room, holding their plates in their laps. She eats. She watches him eat. He is looking down at his plate, winding noodles carefully onto his fork. She wonders what he might be thinking. They've spent so much time together over the past few years—two or three nights a week, on average, since they got involved—but there are still times when she's not sure what's going on in his head.
—Thomas? she says.
He looks up. —Yeah?
—Are you happy?
—Happy, he says, in a way that makes it sound like he's never before considered whether the word might apply to his life. —Yeah, he says. —Sure.
After all, he thinks, what's not to be happy about? He's enjoying his relationship with Janine: they have fun, watching TV or playing games or fucking or whatever. He loves her, and he knows that she loves him. And once your basic needs are met, food and shelter and all that, isn't love the last thing you need before you can truly say that you're happy?
He's given up on some of his projects. He's let his website grow outdated and he no longer bothers to answer people who e-mail, asking when he'll update again. He's stopped recording his dreams; he's given up working on the sound map he was once making. He's stopped filling his yellow legal tablets with notes. But those things didn't really made him happy, not in the same way that these easy evenings with Janine make him happy. It is strange, though, to not be working on those projects anymore—without them, he sometimes wonders who, exactly, he is.
It is something of a relief not to know. It frees him of a certain burden.
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