Cul-de-Sac

He had always projected an image of unshakeable good health, but suddenly, alarmingly, sickness had overwhelmed Alex. Today, he was due for a grave-seeming consultation, a follow-up to last week’s appointment, a general checkup, where he had casually informed his doctor of an array of what he called “trivial symptoms.” Hannah, his girlfriend of ten years, drove him. Normally, he would take the commuter rail to the hospital, but on the previous visit—which Alex had not told Hannah about—he had been late. Driving proved worse. They were both late and lost.

“Shouldn’t we be on the highway?” Alex asked. “Why can’t you do anything right?”

“It’s a shortcut,” said Hannah, driving faster, spinning past sprawling suburban lawns.

They were a couple whose disagreement seemed to extend down to their very physiques. Hannah was tall and thin, with natural blonde hair and long tan legs. Alex was shorter and had a stockier build, with an overdeveloped chest and a buzzcut—to control curly, unmanageable hair. Hannah wore sparse, revealing clothing to accentuate her physical features. Alex draped clothes carefully, to hide himself.

“You missed it,” Alex said. “That was route two.”

Hannah hit the brakes and started to reverse.

“Line of cars behind you,” Alex said. “Drive around again.” The cars honked.

She hit the gas, zooming back around. Alex looked at her with a sad, pitying smirk. 

“Don’t act like I’m not doing you a favor,” Hannah said.

“I said thank you,” Alex said. “Didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did, didn’t you,” she said. “You said it just like that. You threw it in my face.”

“That was the turn,” he said. The car slammed to a halt.

 “I’m not dealing with this.” She unbuckled.

Alex got in the driver’s seat. They drove in silence.

***

Hannah left Alex in front of the hospital and drove to work. Her job was in philanthropy. It was a job she hated. There had been other, higher things due to her, she thought.

Hannah had wanted to make films. She loved Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring and that Czech film Daisies. All through college she made flip, funny shorts about femininity and friendship. And they’d been good too—her teachers and classmates had always said so. But making films in school and working in the industry as an adult couldn’t have been more different. In school, even if she missed an assignment or skipped class or didn’t quite finish editing, everyone always praised her artistry. In the industry, everyone always yelled at her: 

“Where’s the coffee?” 

“Where’s my call sheet?” 

“Where are you, Hannah?” 

There wasn’t any praise at all. Without that encouragement, Hannah couldn’t face the years of grueling work ahead of her. So she sold her old cameras and quit. A week later, her Uncle Bryan offered her a job. Hannah could work in the philanthropy office of his venture capital firm—$125K, 401K, health, dental, four weeks of vacation, Equinox membership. And no one yelled at her anymore.

It was dull, contentless work—muted Zoom calls, mindless emails, spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Hannah’s uncle was rich beyond concern and his giving—through a donor-advised fund—was chiefly for the purpose of avoiding capital gains taxes. He was not interested in charity itself, in its possibilities to change lives, to improve the world, to offset corporate greed. No matter what charities were presented to him, no matter what humanitarian crisis the world was suffering through, he’d always direct at least 70% of his giving to The National Tennis Foundation. Bryan liked tennis. He’d played every morning for forty years. No one could convince him there was a better place for his money, and Hannah was no exception. She was a non-essential part of a non-essential team, a pity hire in the pity industry. 

Downstairs, she made herself breakfast in the break room—Grape-Nuts and Icelandic yogurt. Dry, tasteless. She ate from the bowl with slow, abiding sadness. What kind of man can’t understand why his girlfriend would be nervous driving him to the hospital? The kind of man who can’t understand a woman at all.

This was not much of a deduction. After all, Alex had always been open about his inability to differentiate between the sexes. Not on a biological level—he knew about all that—but on a psychological one: He didn’t believe that women thought differently than men. He didn’t think they were more sensitive, more impulsive, more emotional. And he strongly rejected anything that did, not as misogynist necessarily—he wouldn’t have cared about that—but as false to life. 

It was this same gender-based naïveté that originally endeared him to Hannah. They met in film class. Film 300: Realism, Melodrama, Madness. Alex hadn’t even been cute back then. He was still flabby—a last layer of fat from a shy, recumbent childhood—and couldn’t dress—ratty hoodies, chunky New Balances, billowing basketball shorts. But he was outspoken and out of line, a sexy bad boy if you squinted a little. 

In almost every class, Alex would go on long, puzzling rants disparaging the basic idea of the course. He didn’t believe that melodrama could be realism. He especially hated Cassavetes and Almodóvar, with their histrionic heroines. He felt it was offensive for male directors to insist on female irrationality and absurd that they’d be praised for it by women—women like his classmates, his teacher, Hannah. 

When Alex ranted, his round face curled into a smirk, everyone sat in stunned silence. No one wanted to argue that women were hysterical, emotionally unstable, quick to hate, and quick to forgive, but, at the same time, no one agreed with Alex. It was shameful, it was embarrassing, it was maybe not quite feminist, but Hannah and the whole class knew, on some deep level, that those movies were true. That Gena Rowlands pirouetting to “Swan Lake” as the stage of her life caught fire was universally feminine and utterly relatable.

Even though she knew he was wrong, Hannah thought it was sweet that Alex didn’t buy it—that he stood up against the stereotype. One day, after class, she suggested they watch one of the films together. They sat on bean bags together and projected Wanda on the wall. And before Alex could start talking about crazy this or irrational that, before he could question the validity of divorce or bank robbery, she kissed him. The next day, in class, he hardly said a word. 

After they started dating, his rationality became less endearing. Alex didn’t just apply it to film criticism, but to every aspect of his life. He saw life as one long test. How to get promoted (golf). How to connect with your father (baseball). How to style your hair (short). He carefully studied problems and worked hard to score perfectly. When other people, people like Hannah, revealed they hadn’t prepared, he had little patience. Alex would offer them possible solutions and, failing that, criticize. 

Early in their relationship, Hannah had shown up late to get drinks. It was summer, the sun was still out, and she was gorgeous—short sparkly black dress, purple leggings, Mary Janes. You can’t look that good and show up on time. Every girl knows that. 

But Alex pushed her: 

“What happened?” 

“Where were you?” 

“Is everything okay?” 

She lied and said she’d taken the wrong bus. Instead of buying her a beer, Alex gave her a lecture. He showed her scheduling apps and subway timetables. He advised her to set a sequence of alarms on her phone. It was absurd. A complete holistic approach to timing and travel for someone who was late on purpose. The next week, they had another date. Hannah didn’t bother to dress up. She showed up an hour late in jean shorts, a white tank top, scuffed tennis shoes. He said, “You know it’s a stereotype, don’t you? Women being late.”

Another time, years later, Hannah declined to give Alex a blowjob. She was tired. It was raining. Her parents’ dog had died. Things just weren’t sexy. He said, “You only hate giving oral sex because you’ve been told to by faux-feminist media. By withholding from me, you are expressing a secondary feeling, a pop culture cliché you’ve mindlessly accommodated into your sexual psyche.” 

Alex did not receive many blowjobs after that. But, as a badge of rationality, he continued to eat pussy with style, aplomb, and success—something that Hannah loved and hated equally. This was quintessential Alex: His methodical nature allowed him to master a task completely while conversely making his mastery of it weird, offensive, and, frankly, unattractive. Despite Alex’s perfect clitoral technique and his trained, teasing G-spot stimulation, when he went down on her all Hannah could think about was how embarrassing it was that he’d studied oral sex from some book.

Early on, when they first dated, Alex had allowed himself a brief period of vulnerability, an interval to explain himself. He told Hannah about his childhood weakness, his unpopularity, his rejection. And he told her how he had developed his rational approach, to ensure he could outwork and overcome his natural betters—how it had helped him lose weight, win Homecoming King, become valedictorian. Hannah had told Alex, without shame, that she had always been pretty, had always been talented, had always been smart. That she had never needed to work hard and now, late in college, didn’t imagine she ever would. Life, she had expected, would come to her. 

It didn’t. Alex was successful, she wasn’t. But, again, he was both right and wrong. 

What Alex didn’t know, and Hannah did, was that people are, at bottom, irrational clusters of drives and abilities. That no amount of effort or discipline can fully change your essential self. And that even if you could refashion yourself, the world wouldn’t accept that ersatz person. People want the genuine article, not the generic copy. They like geniuses, not grinders. The one thing hard work could never achieve—and the one thing that really matters—is effortlessness. That’s why Alex could manipulate Hannah into an orgasm but would never get her to think about him when she was in bed alone.

So why did she like him? Well, Alex was wrong about everybody, but—for better or worse—he was right about Hannah. She was the kind of effortless sham-artist he saw right through. Not that he didn’t think she was gifted—Alex had talked endlessly, wild with jealousy, about the deep well of human feeling in her senior film, Macy’s Mallrats go Mental—but that she undermined herself with laziness. He knew her gifts had cost her more than they’d ever give. He knew that a complete inability to try had left her immobile, inches from the finish line. But even as he criticized her procrastination and self-protection, he idolized her grace and poise. And Hannah, for her part, equally loved and hated his panting determination—she could never have accepted it in herself, but she was drawn to it in another.

That wasn’t enough. Opposites attract but they are still opposites. However much Hannah was drawn to Alex, she also looked down on him. Alex could make her love him, but he’d never make her respect him. His method had won her over—it just hadn’t won all of her. And now, finally, it had lost her. After that idiocy in the car, that random act of “rational” rudeness, she was done. She’d decided to take the exit. No more laps around the cul-de-sac. 

“Are you okay?” a coworker asked, grabbing Hannah’s arm.

Hannah felt faint. Blood, she realized, was dripping from her lips. The Grape-Nuts had cut the roof of her mouth. She looked down at the yogurt. It was white spotted red, like a deer shot dead in the snow.  

***

“Now cough for me,” the doctor said. He groped Alex, the gloved hands cold on his skin.

“Have you noticed any pains? Any trouble sleeping? Headaches?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “All of them.”

“Hmm.” The doctor withdrew the cold hand. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“Can I put my clothes back on?”

“No.”

Alex sat shivering on the exam table—his hard stomach crawling with cold sweat. He read the eye chart. EFPTOZLPED. He listened to himself with the stethoscope. His heart was beating very fast. He laid on his back and tried to think. Nothing came to mind.

Fifteen minutes later, the doctor came back. He had another doctor with him, a taller, more refined looking doctor—Moscot glasses, Breguet watch, tasteful aesthetic work on the eyelids. Maybe it’s his boss, Alex thought.

The other doctor said, “I’m Doctor Abramson.” He snapped on latex gloves. “Can you cough for me?” he said, groping Alex. He nodded to Alex’s doctor. Then, he told Alex exactly what was about to happen.

***

Three hours later, Alex was wheeled out of the hospital. He had a plastic bag with a paper packet explaining his life in the coming weeks. While sedated, he had asked that they not bother Hannah. Now, woozily, he was walking away from the hospital into the park. An orderly watched him go, confused and slightly impressed. What kind of man insists on walking home from surgery?

As he walked through the parking lot, Alex realized how weak he’d become. His heart was racing almost immediately, his knees quivering with every step. When exactly had it started? He remembered falling at work six months ago, dropping the barbell a year ago, losing twenty pounds in the last two months. It must have been a while, he thought. Think how much mental strength it must have taken to maintain normalcy. He was impressed with himself. Then, reconsidering, horrified.

Around the corner from the hospital, safe in the anonymity of a public park, Alex sat on a bench. The breeze blew through his short hair. I’m in shock, he thought. He knew what to do when other people went into shock—you throw water on them, give them smelling salts—but what did you do when you went into shock? You can’t shake yourself, he thought. 

The last time he’d been this upset, Alex had been ten years old at soccer practice. Another boy had punted a soccer ball towards him at close range. In that moment, Alex had felt the typical dawning of sadness and despair, the tears, the tightness in his throat, the self-hatred—and then, suddenly, he felt something different. Strength, power, a solution. He had lunged at the boy and beaten him. From then on, Alex was never sad. He had problems, and he beat them. 

But there was no beating this. Those were Dr. Abramson’s exact words. He was done. He could have a good death or a bad death, but he couldn’t help dying. It was over. Alex had fought so hard, fought the whole world, it felt like, and now here he was losing to himself. 

He closed his left eye, watching the floaters in his right. They drifted across his vision like clouds: a horseshoe, a carrot, a smile—a personal constellation that would die with him. How long did an eye take to decay? he wondered. Months? Weeks? Days? It must be quick. You never see a skeleton with eyes.

With difficulty, Alex walked across the grass to a convenience store. He bought a selection of crap and candy: lottery tickets, cigarettes, Cracker Jacks, chocolate. Outside the store, he scratched the tickets. Nothing. 

Back in the park, now next to the lake, he watched a Mexican family spin wildly on a paddle boat. Only the youngest child paddled; everyone else argued loudly in Spanish. The ducks on the lake flew away from the gyre. They landed at his feet. Alex opened the Cracker Jacks and fed them. The ducks ate greedily, gulping down the caramel popcorn. Alex was pleased. He hadn’t been hungry anyway.

He lay back in the chair, letting the nicotine soothe him. Closing his eyes, he thought back to his childhood. He remembered at five, coming home from a playdate and not wanting to go back. He remembered at seven, telling his mom he wanted to spend his birthday by himself. He remembered at nine, asking his mom what to do when none of the other kids like you. “Well, you can’t not go to school,” she said. “There’ll be other kids in high school.”

What a horrible thing for a nine-year-old to realize, thought Alex, that a random public-school lottery had left you friendless, alone. What a clear demonstration of the irrational hatred of the world. Worse still, in high school and in college—with the help of several goopy self-help books—he realized that his mother had been correct. There were plenty of other people. People he liked. People he got along with. People who could have been friends. They just hadn’t been in his elementary school. After all, he still knew those kids—they were second-rate adults too. 

Alex opened his phone and checked his notifications. There was a text from his boss. Alex hated that. A boss should call or email—maybe send a signed affidavit. But a boss should never text. It was unbecoming, he thought.

“Everything okay at the doctor? You need to take the day off? If not, I’d love your help with the McGuckin brief…”

Pathetic, he thought. Fire me. Sue me. Work me to death. But don’t text me an ellipsis.  

He texted back: “Bad news. I need the day off. More tomorrow…”

The reply was instant: “Okay champ.” Alex turned on Do Not Disturb.

What was the point of all this, really? Having the big, adult job would allow him to die with dignity. They’d pay for insurance in his last painful months. He’d have the luxury of not having the tubes snatched out of his nose and his poor, distant parents wouldn’t be crushed under a mountain of medical debt.

But work didn’t make him happy. His relentless drive made him extremely well-suited for law and lawyering, and he had enjoyed the dignity and dominance of demonstrating that ability, but it was, ultimately, soulless, shameful work. Estate. Divorce. Patent. Antitrust. Not evil, just evilly dull. 

173 LSAT. Perfect grades at Brown. Two-time national semifinalist in Speech & Debate.  Hours watching Suits and Better Call Saul. The family constitution he wrote, pushed through, and enforced. Alex was so well prepared, so much better than the competition. He just couldn’t bear to leave such an easy victory unclaimed. But now, looking back, all he saw was loss.

Back in college, he had cared about other, higher things—film, literature, the arts. And friends from back then, friends who never scored a 173 LSAT, had gone far in creative careers. They’d written screenplays, published novels, held solo shows. They weren’t any more capable than him. If anything, they were limited people, with singular overriding talents. Alex had a greater gift—the ability to develop talent, to not just rely on God-given gifts but to give gifts to himself. And, unlike God, he had been generous. He could’ve been a computer scientist, a physicist, a doctor, a politician. He could’ve been anybody, and none of his classmates could ever have been anything but themselves. 

What happens to a gift left wrapped? To a talent that could have flourished in the world. Does it rot, and flatten, and fade away? Do you get no credit for the life you chose not to live? Alex remembered the screenplay he wrote secretly on his laptop during Film 300: Realism, Melodrama, Madness. He remembered showing it to the professor. He remembered cold-emailing production companies. He remembered acting it out with Hannah. He remembered the final line: “I, Mort Kelliher, reject the key to the city. I will not be your king. You, citizens of Wyrmwold, must rule yourselves—with kindness, decency, justice, and law.” He remembered how Mort had flown away in his spaceship, back to his home planet of Juris. Sometimes, he thought, it feels like part of me flew away with him.

What was the saving grace then? How had he managed to make it through almost a decade of post-graduate life? Why hadn’t he quit, or driven off, or shot himself? The answer was simple. It was Hannah—she was the trophy, she was the buoy, she was the prize. I’ll lose my job. I’ll lose my health. I’ll even lose my life. But at least I get to have Hannah, Alex thought. He would still get to wake up every day and see her blonde hair on the pillow. And on that sweet final note, he opened his phone and called an Uber. She’d still be at work. He could surprise her. There was even time to get flowers.

In the Uber, Alex watched Boston whip by. He remembered another drive through these streets. It had been near the end of their time at Brown, and he and Hannah had come up for the Harvard-Brown game. Brown won and the ensuing party kept them up all night, drinking and talking. Alex was in top form. Telling well-rehearsed stories. Getting tipsy and agreeable without getting drunk. Forging connections with the right friends. Exchanging phone numbers and making actionable plans. Hannah got drunk and annoyed.

Late in the night, she confronted him on a fire escape. 

“You know, you don’t have to impress everyone all the time,” said Hannah. “It’s okay to just be dumb at a party sometimes.”

“You’re right. I should try harder to try less hard,” he said. “I met someone in there, by the way. She’s working on a pitch for the Kodak Short Film Fund. I can introduce you.”

“God, who cares? What do you even think would happen, if you just did what came naturally?” 

“I’d fail,” he said. “What do you think would happen if you tried harder?”

“I’d fail,” she said. Then he kissed her, and the issue was closed. 

As they went to bed, Alex insisted on an early start back to Providence. He reminded Hannah that they both had thesis work to do. A morning spent exploring Back Bay and Brattle Street would be unproductive.

He stuck to the plan: shaking her awake at 7 and shoving her out the door to start home. They started the drive in silence, a slow, sober Sunday dawning on them. A diner passed them on the right. A sign out front said, Try Our Famous Pancakes. Hannah put her hand on his leg and said, “Alex, if you don’t take me to breakfast before we go home, I’m going to break up with you.”

In that moment, his mind had gone blank. For the first time in years, he had no reply, no repartee, no rebuttal. Without a word, without so much as a gesture of response, he turned the car around and drove to the diner. 

It was a cheap, poorly-lit place—bad food at worse prices. Teasing, Hannah insisted he order a sweet breakfast. “Today’s about making the wrong choice,” she said. “Pancakes, not protein.” And that became the rule for the day: nothing planned, nothing productive. They walked around Boston without any destination, poking into shops and stores, making impulsive purchases. They even talked to strangers—a French tourist called them “extremely bohemian for Americans.” For dinner, they ate hamburgers on a bench by the river. Alex kissed a smudge of ketchup off the side of her face. Hannah smudged ketchup on him and kissed him back. It was stupid, it was cliché—the kind of sappy nonsense you see on a billboard or in a beer commercial. Alex thought it was the happiest he had ever been. 

***

Hannah was running out the clock on her day. No more Zoom calls. No urgent emails. Nothing to stop her from texting. Which was good, because she had already broken the news in the girls’ group chat. 

Anna said, “Dump him!”

Suzanne said, “Good riddance.”

Katie sent a confetti emoji, then texted, “When I told Alex I was going to BU Law, he quoted stats on non-T14 salaries for an hour. He was an asshole. Sorry.”

Hannah was happy. Her decision had proven popular. Her bravery and self-knowledge had been praised. Now, all hands were on deck. Potential Hinge photos were under review. (Bikini? Miniskirt? SKIMS dress?) Set-ups were being set up. (John? Chris? Stuart?) And Hannah had written, revised, and deleted a breakup text to Alex. The latest draft read like this:

Alex, there’s no easy way to say this, but I don’t want to be together anymore. Every day with you I feel like I’m more and more stuck in a smaller and smaller place. And, Alex, I’ll translate: That doesn’t feel good. I know this must be hard to hear but, even if you don’t believe it right now, I do care about you, and I will miss you a lot. I don’t expect you to take this well and I’ll really try to understand when you don’t. But, as one final favor to me, don’t get too angry, or act too hurt, until I’ve moved out. It doesn’t feel right to say I love you. But I do. Alex, I love you. Goodbye.

She had just begun to write another, gentler version when Alex arrived at her desk. He looked thinner, sicker than earlier—his round face had gone hollow, his stocky chest had caved in. Fumbling, Hannah flipped her phone over and blushed. He handed her a bouquet, convenience store crap: chemical-smelling carnations, a brown sunflower, a white rose.

“I got you these,” he said. “I love you, Hannah.”

 “Thank you,” she said, holding the flowers away from her chest.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I shouldn’t have freaked out at you this morning. It was early. I was worried about the doctor. They say a white rose symbolizes new beginnings—”

“Alex, we need to talk,” she blurted out.

“Alright,” he said. “I have something to tell you too.”

They didn’t speak on the walk to the car. Both considered their words and, sneaking glances, tried to intuit the other’s emotions. 

They reached the car. Hannah sat down. Alex sat down. She took his hand tenderly between hers, stroking the skin. Both spoke at once. They stopped and laughed nervously, without humor. 

“You go first,” he said, drumming his fingers on the dash.

“No, you go first,” she said, sweeping hair out of her face.

He went first.