As the semester unfolded, Julia was under tremendous pressure to
complete her thesis, and Katherine Picton was pushing her to submit chapters more quickly. Quicker chapters would make it easier to speak more specifically about Julia’s abilities to Greg Matthews, the Chair of the Department of Romance Languages at Harvard, should he follow up on her reference letter.
Julia couldn’t concentrate when Gabriel was around. Her voice grew soft when she told him why. Something about blue eyes and sexual pyrotechnics and a chemistry that vibrated in the air between them, all of which kept her from focusing on the tasks at hand. Gabriel was extremely flattered.
So the happy couple worked out a compromise. There would be telephone calls and texts and the occasional Gmail, but apart from a lunch or dinner during the week, Julia would stay at her apartment. On Friday afternoons she would arrive at Gabriel’s in order to spend the weekend with him.
One Wednesday evening in mid-January, Julia called Gabriel after her homework was done.
“I had a rough day,” she said, sounding tired.
“What happened?”
“Professor Picton is making me scrap about three-quarters of one of my chapters because she thinks I’m offering a Romanticized version of Dante.”
“Ouch.”
“She hates the Romantics, so you can imagine how annoyed she was. She went on and on about it. She makes me feel stupid.”
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“You aren’t stupid.” Gabriel chuckled into the phone. “Professor Picton makes me feel stupid sometimes.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“You should have seen me the first time I was summoned to her house. I was more nervous than I was on the day I defended my dissertation. I almost forgot to wear pants.”
Julia laughed. “I can only imagine that a pantless Professor Emerson would be very well received.”
“Thankfully, I didn’t have to find out.”
“Professor Picton told me that ‘my strong work ethic makes up for my occasional lapses in reasoning.’”
“That’s high praise coming from her. She thinks most people fail to reason at all. The way she describes the world today, most people are monkeys who happen to wear clothes. On occasion.”
Julia groaned, rolling onto her stomach. “Would it kill her to tell me that she likes my thesis? Or that I’m doing a good job?”
“Katherine will never tell you that she likes your thesis. She thinks positive feedback is patronizing. This is simply the way those old, pretentious Oxonians are.”
“You aren’t like that, Professor Emerson.”
Gabriel found himself twitching at the mere change in her tone.
“Oh, yes I am, Miss Mitchell. You’ve simply forgotten.”
“You’re sweet with me now.”
“I should hope so,” he whispered, his voice almost breaking. “But remember, you’re my lover, not my student.” He grinned wickedly. “Except in the ways of love.”
She laughed, and he found himself laughing with her.
“I finished the book you lent me, A Severe Mercy.”
“That was quick. How did you manage that?”
“I’m loneliest at night. I’ve been reading to help me fall asleep.”
“You have no reason to be lonely. Take a cab to my place. I’ll keep you company.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “Yes, Professor.”
“Okay, Miss Mitchell. So how was the book?”
“I’m not sure why Grace liked it so much.”
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“Why?”
“Well, it’s a romantic love story. But when they became Christians, they decided their love for each other was pagan — that they’d made idols of one another. That made me sad.”
“I’m sorry it saddened you. I haven’t read it, although Grace used to talk about it.”
“How could love be pagan, Gabriel? I don’t understand.”
“You’re asking me that question? I thought I was the pagan in this relationship.”
“You aren’t a pagan. You told me so yourself.”
He sighed thoughtfully. “So I did. You know as well as I that Dante views God as the only thing in the universe who can satisfy the longings of the soul. This is Dante’s implicit critique of Paolo and Francesca’s sin. They forego a higher good — the love of God — for the love of a human being. Of course, that’s a sin.”
“Paolo and Francesca were adulterers. They shouldn’t have fallen in love with each other in the first place.”
“That’s true. But even if they were unmarried lovers, Dante’s criticism would be the same. If they love one another to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, then their love is pagan. They’ve made idols of one another and their love. And they’re also very foolish, because no human being can ever make another human being completely happy. Human beings are far too imperfect for that.”
Julia was stunned. Although there were aspects of Gabriel’s explanation that she knew already, it truly surprised her to hear such words from his lips.
It appeared that she was a pagan about her love of Gabriel, and she hadn’t even realized it. Moreover, if he actually believed what he was saying, then he had a much less exalted view of their attachment. She was shocked.
“Julianne? Are you still there?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“It’s just a theory. It has nothing to do with us.”
He spoke the words, but the unease remained. He knew that he’d made an idol of Julianne, his Beatrice, and no denial or sophisticated rhetoric could make that truth false. Given all the time he’d spent in a twelve-step program that encouraged him to focus on a higher power and not himself, his lovers or his family, he knew better.
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“So why did Grace like this book? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know,” said Gabriel. “Maybe when Richard swept her off her feet she viewed him as a savior. He married her, and they rode off into the sunset of Selinsgrove.”
“Richard is a good man,” Julia murmured.
“He is. But Richard is not a god. If Grace married him thinking that all her troubles would disappear because of his perfection, their relationship would not have lasted. She would have become disillusioned eventually, and she would have left him in order to find someone else to make her happy.
“Perhaps the reason why Richard and Grace were so happily married was because they had realistic expectations; they didn’t expect one another to meet all their needs. It would also explain why a spiritual dimension was so important to each of them.”
“Maybe you’re right. My book is a lot different from the Graham Greene novel you were reading.”
“They aren’t so different.”
“Your novel is about an affair and a man who hates God. I Wikied it.”
Gabriel resisted the urge to growl. “Don’t Wiki things, Julianne. You know that website is unreliable.”
“Yes, Professor Emerson,” she purred.
He groaned.
“Why do you think Greene’s protagonist hates God? Because his lover gave him up for God. We both read a novel about pagans, Julianne. It’s just the endings that were different.”
“I’m not sure they were so different.”
Gabriel smiled in spite of himself. “I think it’s a bit late for us to be having this conversation. I’m sure you’re tired, and I have some paperwork I need to do.”
“I love you. Madly.”
Something about the way her voice sounded in his ear made his heart quicken.
“I love you too. I love you far too much, I’m sure. But I don’t know how to love you any other way.” His final words were a whisper, but they burned in the air.
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“I don’t know how to love you any other way, either,” she whispered back.
“Then God have mercy on us both.”
P
If you were to ask Gabriel if he wanted to be in therapy, he would have said no. He didn’t relish the idea of talking about his feelings or his childhood, or being forced to relive what happened with Paulina. He didn’t want to talk about his addictions or Professor Singer and the myriad other women he’d bedded.
But he wanted a future with Julia, and he wanted her to be healthy — to bloom fully and not just partially. He privately worried that he was somehow impairing her ability to blossom, just because he was, well, Gabriel.
So he vowed to do everything in his power to support her, including changing his behavior for the best and focusing more on her needs. In so doing, he recognized that he could do with an objective evaluation of his own selfishness and some practical advice as to how to overcome it. Consequently, he was determined to brave the discomfort and embarrassment of admitting he needed help and see a therapist on a weekly basis.
As the days of January slipped by, it became abundantly clear that both Gabriel and Julia were very fortunate in their choice of therapists. Drs. Nicole and Winston Nakamura were a married couple who sought to work with clients on their psychological and personal issues with a view to integrating those considerations with both existential and spiritual pursuits.
Nicole was concerned about the nature of Julia’s relationship with her boyfriend. She worried that the power differential between Julia and Gabriel, coupled with his strong personality and Julia’s diminished self-confidence, would make their romantic relationship more of a mental health hazard to Julia than a help.
But Julia claimed to be in love with Gabriel and to be very happy with him, and it was clear that she derived a lot of pleasure and no small amount of security from their relationship. However, the strange account of how they met and then met again, when added to certain
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facts about Gabriel’s past and his addictive personality, raised all sorts of red flags in Nicole’s mind. The fact that Julia did not recognize these red flags showed more about her own psychological state than she could reasonably realize.
Winston pulled no punches, informing Gabriel that he was placing his recovery in jeopardy by continuing to drink alcohol and by failing to go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. What was supposed to be an introductory meeting exploded into an angry confrontation, which resulted in Gabriel storming out of the office.
Nevertheless, Gabriel returned to his next session, promising that he would attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He attended one or two and never returned.
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