by Elodie A. Roy
It happened like this: Dr. Black was writing a study on love and autism. I cannot recall why I agreed to take part. But I accepted, and soon we were meeting every two or three weeks in her office in central London. She worked at one of the big hospitals. It is strange: at first, I wanted to tell her everything. It was not exactly that I felt flattered by the intensity of her attention; rather I trusted her and longed to tell someone about Ray. I always wanted to speak about him in those days. Dr. Black listened. She only ever asked a few questions, but they were difficult ones. She asked how I first knew it was love. What love meant. What kind of color love was. Whether it made a sound. Whether it had happened before. She must have posed the same questions in the same melodious, patient voice to the other participants. Her queries soothed me. I felt wonderful when I left the hospital and waited for the bus to take me back to Dalston. I was mysteriously revived—as if I’d just seen Ray, much more clearly, in fact, than when we actually met. Dr. Black’s questions made him real. Her scientific interest lent an objective shape to my love. It gave it a weight and a place in the outer world.
Of course, Ray existed. But he often seemed to have no tangible substance at all. He was more like an apparition: a thin blond man listlessly smoking cigarettes, knocking at my door in the late afternoon, standing there in his battered navy coat, a worn record precariously tucked under his arm. I was always home in the late afternoon. He didn’t always come. He would turn up the moment I’d given up waiting. There were weeks when Ray didn’t visit at all. I had to invent stories for his sudden disappearance. I created the continuity, the consistency he so dramatically lacked. Dr. Black didn’t know how light and fragile Ray was. He had to be born all the time. I didn’t tell her I kept recreating him in my head so that he wouldn’t vanish altogether. But the truth was that most of the time he was barely there. It was something I couldn’t tell anyone. Even when he was sitting next to me on the sofa, softly stroking the cat, I had the feeling he had already gone off somewhere. He was transparent. So I jerkily embraced him, scaring the cat away with my brusque movement. And there were times I became so frozen and distant that it was simply impossible to reach out a hand to touch him or say a kind word. My whole body grew heavy and rigid. But this detachment wasn’t coldness—rather, it was the consequence of too much love in me. I was feeling overwhelmed.
So, you’re thinking, What did she tell Dr. Black if she never confided any of this? Let’s see. I stuck to the concrete details, the simple facts of his existence, the small rituals we lived by—the way he drank his coffee (with milk and a teaspoon of brown sugar); the music we both liked so much (Tom Waits and Bob Dylan); his weary, hesitant way of readjusting his heavy glasses, of taking them off when he grew sad. I told her about the only picture of him as a child that I’d seen. In the photograph, he sits at his grandmother’s piano with eager, stretched out hands—ready to play, to produce sounds, to be in the world. He wears a red jumper. The glasses haven’t appeared yet. It breaks my heart to see how open and happy he looks. I told her he made me want to close my eyes. Sometimes, when he sat across me, his face seemed too close, like the face of a giant. He felt very real then, but it was a grotesque, monstrous reality. I couldn’t take it. I was overcome with fear and dizziness. The only way to regain my composure was to block the image. When I opened my eyes again, I knew his face would have shrunk back to its normal proportions. He would smile.
Dr. Black met me for about six months, after which her study stopped. Perhaps she had gathered enough material from me and found the answers she was looking for. Or maybe there were no answers to be found. Shortly after I first spoke to her, I told Ray about the research. He laughed very quietly and repeated in a soft, perplexed tone, “Love and autism…” Then he asked, as if speaking to himself, what I could be telling this doctor. And I remained silent, because I didn’t want him to find out. I didn’t want Ray to discover that he was so frail, so invisible, so wonderfully difficult to believe in. Deep down I didn’t really want anyone to know. It was my secret. My love was like a cloud. It came and went. It had no permanent shape. Sometimes, it grew so tiny that an ancient sadness fell upon me, for I thought it had gone. And other times it filled every corner of the world like a great, hungry storm—it was everywhere and it really was a wonder that there should still be room for two human beings to stand and survive its violence.
Of course, Ray existed. But he often seemed to have no tangible substance at all. He was more like an apparition: a thin blond man listlessly smoking cigarettes, knocking at my door in the late afternoon, standing there in his battered navy coat, a worn record precariously tucked under his arm. I was always home in the late afternoon. He didn’t always come. He would turn up the moment I’d given up waiting. There were weeks when Ray didn’t visit at all. I had to invent stories for his sudden disappearance. I created the continuity, the consistency he so dramatically lacked. Dr. Black didn’t know how light and fragile Ray was. He had to be born all the time. I didn’t tell her I kept recreating him in my head so that he wouldn’t vanish altogether. But the truth was that most of the time he was barely there. It was something I couldn’t tell anyone. Even when he was sitting next to me on the sofa, softly stroking the cat, I had the feeling he had already gone off somewhere. He was transparent. So I jerkily embraced him, scaring the cat away with my brusque movement. And there were times I became so frozen and distant that it was simply impossible to reach out a hand to touch him or say a kind word. My whole body grew heavy and rigid. But this detachment wasn’t coldness—rather, it was the consequence of too much love in me. I was feeling overwhelmed.
So, you’re thinking, What did she tell Dr. Black if she never confided any of this? Let’s see. I stuck to the concrete details, the simple facts of his existence, the small rituals we lived by—the way he drank his coffee (with milk and a teaspoon of brown sugar); the music we both liked so much (Tom Waits and Bob Dylan); his weary, hesitant way of readjusting his heavy glasses, of taking them off when he grew sad. I told her about the only picture of him as a child that I’d seen. In the photograph, he sits at his grandmother’s piano with eager, stretched out hands—ready to play, to produce sounds, to be in the world. He wears a red jumper. The glasses haven’t appeared yet. It breaks my heart to see how open and happy he looks. I told her he made me want to close my eyes. Sometimes, when he sat across me, his face seemed too close, like the face of a giant. He felt very real then, but it was a grotesque, monstrous reality. I couldn’t take it. I was overcome with fear and dizziness. The only way to regain my composure was to block the image. When I opened my eyes again, I knew his face would have shrunk back to its normal proportions. He would smile.
Dr. Black met me for about six months, after which her study stopped. Perhaps she had gathered enough material from me and found the answers she was looking for. Or maybe there were no answers to be found. Shortly after I first spoke to her, I told Ray about the research. He laughed very quietly and repeated in a soft, perplexed tone, “Love and autism…” Then he asked, as if speaking to himself, what I could be telling this doctor. And I remained silent, because I didn’t want him to find out. I didn’t want Ray to discover that he was so frail, so invisible, so wonderfully difficult to believe in. Deep down I didn’t really want anyone to know. It was my secret. My love was like a cloud. It came and went. It had no permanent shape. Sometimes, it grew so tiny that an ancient sadness fell upon me, for I thought it had gone. And other times it filled every corner of the world like a great, hungry storm—it was everywhere and it really was a wonder that there should still be room for two human beings to stand and survive its violence.
Elodie A. Roy (she/her) is a French writer living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in The Stinging Fly, La Femelle du Requin, The Drouth, RAUM, Helix, and elsewhere. As a cultural theorist, she’s the author of two nonfiction books and is a regular contributor to academic publications.
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