"Seasons Clear, and Awe" - Chapter 9
by Matthew Gasda
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“Seasons Clear, and Awe” chronicles three decades in the life of the Gazda family, whose children inherit not wealth but something more dangerous: their parents’ unlived ambitions and their mother’s gift for psychological dissection. As Stephen and Elizabeth grow from precocious children into neurotic artists in their thirties, Matthew Gasda reveals how post-industrial, late 20th century America created a generation too intelligent for ordinary happiness, too self-aware for decisive action: suspended between the working-class pragmatism of their fathers and the creative and spiritual aspirations of their mothers, capable of everything except building lives.
Matthew Gasda is the founder of the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research and the author of many books, including the recent novel The Sleepers and Writer’s Diary.
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Elizabeth held the wine glass by the stem as if she intended to hurl it and wake up the whole German house. And John, her tall blonde boyfriend who had grown up in Connecticut with German parents from Hamburg, who was fit and strong and otherwise intimidating, was mortified.
— Elizabeth, he whispered in slightly accented English.
— Fuck off, she said in German.
John crept up and she was trembling and he grabbed her by the arms so that her wrists and hands were still free. And then she dropped the glass intentionally, so that it shattered at their feet and they both just slid back instinctively.
—Fuck off, she repeated in German.
—You have to help me clean this up, he said in English.
She was thinking about what her brother had said at the Megabus station before he left. —If you don’t really love John, you’re only going to ruin your own happiness. You can’t beat him into being a warmer person and there’s a chance you find out that he’s a colder, more German version of Dad.
—I’m not cleaning up shit.
—Yes you are.
—Fuck off.
—You cannot behave like this; it’s absurd.
—Why are all men so afraid of emotion? Elizabeth’s voice was shaking. —Why are they all so afraid of the emotion inside of me in particular?
John got down on his hands and knees and started picking up shards of broken glass.
—You’re going to hurt yourself, we need to get gloves or like a sweeper thingy.
—Okay well I asked you to help me.
—Do you have a mop or broom or anything?
—Yes in the hallway closet.
—Okay.
Elizabeth retrieved a broom and pan, and shooed John away from the disaster. —Let me do it.
—Okay.
The German house rooms were big: John had a bed and a couch; the shared kitchen was downstairs; he had his own bathroom. She had lived here the previous year, which is how they met. She planned to move to Germany after college if she could get BU to hire her to work for the abroad program in Dresden. She watched him out of the corner of his eye, the way a cat watches a stranger when they enter its domain.
—You realize that you broke this glass, not me, right? she asked.
—Is that a riddle?
—No it’s...
John stared at her, resistant to metaphors and games.—You broke the glass.
—If you don’t express, if you don’t... let any emotion you force my hand.
—So you could go out into the street and murder someone and it would be my fault?
—Yes in a way.
—That’s... there’s no way of...
—No way of what?
—Communicating properly.
—What’s properly John?
He walked back towards her, even though she was holding a dustpan of broken glass in a threatening fashion.
—Rationally.
—Is that the best you can come up with?
—I think it’s important to have reasons for the things you say.
—You’re like the rest of them, aren’t you? Elizabeth could see that her boyfriend had no idea what she was referring to, and continued, —You just want to justify and justify and justify and you don’t want to actually look another human being in the face and admit that you’re causing them to suffer.
—How am I causing you to suffer?
She was shaking. —Just by not seeing me John; it’s terrible.
—You’re literally talking circles, he asserted in his low, accented voice.
John was so beautiful: blond, muscled (he went to a climbing gym), tall, high cheekbones; in high school she could have never imagined dating someone so hot; there was no one like him at Liberty High School.
—I’m not; you’re not listening, or capable of hearing me.
—Elizabeth, this is stressful.
—Yeah well.
—Do you wanna go for a walk.
—No I wanna sit here.
—Please?
She rattled the glass. —No. Don’t get close to me.
—You’re acting completely... out of control.
—Yes because that’s the worst thing, losing control.
—I can’t keep doing this Elizabeth, John said coldly, not moving.
—Yes yes because you won’t be forced to think about anything you do.
—A relationship shouldn’t be punishment.
—That’s true.
—There should be kindness.
—Yes, Elizabeth said curtly.
There was a pause, John took a step forward and she scattered all the glass at his feet, and he was forced to stop. He was just wearing socks.
—Whoops.
—This is unacceptable.
—I DON’T CARE.
—Unacceptable.
—John... Elizabeth said, suddenly feel exhausted, —John... please can you hold me. I feel so tired all of a sudden.
—It’s not safe to cross the room.
—Here.
Elizabeth threw the broom to him. —Easy fix.
John shook his head, but began to sweep. She slid him the dust pan next.
—I’m sorry I’m like this.
—It’s okay.
—I really am.
She felt her mood shifting rapidly, from red to blue.
—I don’t know what to tell you Elizbaeth.
—There’s nothing to tell me. I’m lucky you still like me.
—It’s not about liking you.
—No it’s about whether you can tolerate me.
—I guess.
—My mom keeps telling me when I come home for holidays that I remind her of her mother.
—In what way?
—I dunno, like she thinks I’m a bitch and she thought her mother was a bitch.
—Oh.
John had swept up most of the glass; thankfully she had broken the glass on the hardwood, not the rug, so it was easier to sweep up.
—My brother will say the same thing too, but only if he wants to hurt me; he actually knows better.
—How about a walk now?
Elizabeth shook her head.
—I just want to sit here.
John sat down on the floor next to her, his eyes scanning for glass.
—I don’t to spend our last year of college doing this bullshit Elizabeth.
—I’ll be better, she said, like a little girl.
—Well.
—Are you breaking up with me?
—I don’t know.
—What is a single thing you know?
—That I’ve never met anyone like you.
—Oh thanks.
—It’s true.
—I don’t care about being special. That’s not what I’m after.
—What are you after?
—Please, she pleased, stop making me repeat myself.
—Please stop talking in riddles.
—I’m being extremely clear.
—Please...
—I am.
Elizabeth’s disparate experiences remained entirely disassociated from one another. The sensation of being with John, of fighting with him, never accumulated into a felt meaning. She left the German house, she left that mental compartment.
She walked back down Commonwealth Avenue to meet her brother for a drink near her apartment, without the self-recognition that allowed other people, like Stephen specifically, to function from day to day. Elizabeth lacked the feeling that time was a continuum, flying from past into future. She felt herself to be a pluralistic conglomeration of persons: mobile, nomadic.
The reason she had trouble finishing her papers was that she had so many different perceptions and perspectives she wanted to bundle together, but she struggled to do so. Was it over with John? She didn’t know. She could see the same situation playing out all year: they fight, she screams, she breaks something, they have sex, she submits to his veil of beauty. And then the weird gap, the moment of psychic flux, leaving his apartment, leaving the compartment, trying to construct a sense of what had happened, but being unable to. Permanently plastic and flexible.
The last time she had felt whole was the night before her grandfather died, or rather, had his heart attack, and her mother drove to the hospital without her, gobbling up Pop-Pop’s death for herself. Elizabeth thought that she loved Pop-Pop more than anyone, even her own mother, just as she loved her own father, Michael, more than anyone else, including Stephen and Adele, or Michael’s siblings, or even his students or friends.
She’d hoped John could be one of those structuring male figures, but he was woefully inadequate.
The next day, after sleeping (after a dreamless sleep of more than 10 hours), Elizabeth woke up and found her brother reading on the couch, which was nestled under the bay windows in the living room.
—Lydia and Troy went to Lydia’s parents’ house for the day or the weekend or something, Stephen said, —so I’ve been enjoying having the house to myself for a few.
—Oh, I passed out.
—Passed out? Stephen echoed.
—I mean, I was at John’s and then we got in a fight and I bought a bottle of wine and walked around Boston and then I got back here at like one in the morning, drank it, and you were asleep on the floor, on your camping mat on the floor in my room and I didn’t want to wake you, so I just kind of sat in the living room and cried quietly so that I wouldn’t wake up fucking Troy, who was like literally complaining about it.
—Yeah, Stephen said, mimicking Troy’s squirrelly voice, —fuck you for having an existential crisis in the apartment where I don’t pay rent but I spend all my time.
—Yeah, basically, that’s how he acts, Elizabeth said.
—I truly wonder how some people give themselves permission to act like that.
—Probably because his mother gave him permission to do whatever he wanted.
—Hey, don’t look at me, Stephen said. —What’s going on with you and John?
—We’re both trying to vanquish feelings of jealousy, I guess, or fear and it’s not working.
—Who are you jealous of? Stephen asked vaguely, surprised that his sister would ever consider another woman a threat.
—I don’t know, the other girls in the German house definitely want to jump him. These guys are the hottest. I mean, they’re like me last year. I thought he was so hot and I wanted something to happen for months before it did.
—Who’s he jealous of? Stephen asked.
—Who’s he jealous of? My male friends. It’s like philosophy boys and friends who I can talk to about things. Not sexually jealous, but he’s emotionally and psychologically jealous.
—Makes sense, Stephen said.
—What did you do with your night?
—Yeah, I just walked to the movie theater. Saw Melancholia and walked back because I don’t really know much else about Allston. I didn’t want to get lost. I just knew how to get there and back.
—Sorry for abandoning you, brother.
—It’s okay. I don’t mind. I enjoyed it. I’m happy to have a low-key visit.
—What time are you driving back today? Elizabeth asked.
—Trying to get rid of me?
—No, you just said you were going back today.
—Yeah, I’ll probably leave tonight because I don’t like driving during the day. There’s too much traffic. I can make good time at night.
—That’s cool, Elizabeth said.
—Did you enjoy your visit?
—Yeah, it’s been nice.
—Well, that’s good. I’m glad. I like hanging out with my sister.
—What do you have going on this week back at school?
—You have no idea how little I have to do, Stephen said. —I’m just taking Philosophy of Education twice a week. And then I’m doing a quasi-thesis with one of my philosophy professors.
—Oh yeah, you haven’t told me about that. You mentioned it.
—Well, I’m doing a shit job. It’s supposed to be like philosophy, but I’m writing about Virginia Woolf and time. And I don’t really understand how to make the philosophy part work with the literary analysis part. I kind of regret doing it, but hey.
—Is this to help you use as a writing sample for grad school? Is that something you’re thinking about doing? Elizabeth said, sounding to herself a little bit like their dad, whose questions were always about how one event could improve the odds of another career or money-making event.
—Hypothetically, yeah, that’s right, Stephen said. —Again, my lack of motivation to do this kind of work is maybe a sign that I shouldn’t sign up to do more of it in the future.
—So, what else are you going to do?
—I don’t know, Stephen said. —Blow my brains out. Lie in the gutter. Become a troubadour.
—You’ve never even had a service job, Elizabeth said.
—Why would I want a service job?
—Because it’s a job?
—Have you had a service job? Stephen asked.
—No, Elizabeth said. —So maybe I’m attacking myself here, too.
—Yeah, sounds like it. But I have an extra year, Elizabeth added, again as if to reassure herself.
Her brother was wearing pajamas and a Seattle SuperSonics jersey that he had thrifted. He was reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, which was facedown on the coffee table. She hadn’t noticed, but picked it up now.
—I haven’t read this one, is it good?
—What have you read? Stephen asked.
—I read To the Lighthouse in a class last year, and then I read Mrs. Dalloway on my own. They were both really wonderful, I love them.
—This might even be better. But that might be... like... that might be overcomplicating it a little bit. It’s definitely more ambitious, but I don’t know, I’m trying to figure out what ambitious means for works of literature.
—Did you make coffee by any chance? Elizabeth asked, still feeling blank and disoriented, like she’d suffered from a bout of aggressive epilepsy.
—Yeah, there’s the French press in the kitchen, I think there’s another cup left, Stephen said.
Elizabeth padded through the open archway to the kitchen and the kitchen counter, where indeed the glass French press was a third full. She took a mug down and poured it out and took a sip, leaning against the counter as if to steady herself. Every day of her life she encountered pseudo-paradises, pseudo-infernos, magic and gnosis and nothingness, high and low, happy and sad, spinning in a hallucinatory cycle.
—I guess I’m not going to see you again until Thanksgiving, Elizabeth said, returning to the living room.
—Well, I guess not.
—You said you’d stop debating, you know I’m not going to go to any more tournaments. Is that right?
—Yeah, there are a shit ton in Boston, but MIT, Harvard, BU, Boston College, but yeah, I’m not going to, I’m just done.
—Why is that exactly? Elizabeth asked, knowing that her brother had a tendency to quit things that got too hard, that he couldn’t solve easily.
—I keep getting high personal speaker scores and we keep tying rounds, but we always lose the decision in the end, and the judges write things like, this was interesting, or, I never thought of things this way, and then they give the round to like Yale or Dartmouth or MIT, and it’s like, I know why you’re doing that, because you can’t help yourself, because you can’t look at Syracuse and think, we should win because we’re a middle-class party school.
—It is a middle-class party school, Elizabeth said.
—Yeah, but I’ve also built something that’s functioning on a higher level, and we have like a core of people who are super smart, and it’s just frustrating to hit the same wall over and over again.
—Well, maybe you’re just not good enough, Elizabeth said with cold ratiocination. —That’s a possibility too.
He was just like their mother, Elizabeth thought, studying her brother, who did not like this conversation, was not making eye contact, did not stand up well to interrogation or to challenge. He excelled at front-running, but took himself out of the race if he fell behind even for a moment, as if his psyche couldn’t bear any reality in which he was not superior.
She genuinely wondered what he would do and how he would manage after college ended. He had found all sorts of ways to make Syracuse feel more prestigious to himself, more Ivy League, because he had blown off high school. The frustrating thing, though, to Elizabeth was that, even though her brother worked much less hard than she did (she had finished in the top fifteen of his class), she had still been rejected from Vassar and from Swarthmore and from Brown, and so had to, with tremendous reluctance, after great psychic trauma, accept her offer to BU, a school only marginally more academically superior to Syracuse.
Her mother, of course, insisted that both children had done well, that they were both going to top fifty schools, or in her case, a top thirty-five school, but that only made Elizabeth feel more pathetic. Stephen had an easier time maintaining his aristocratic sense of himself. By his logic, the world didn’t understand him, teachers didn’t understand him, admissions officers didn’t understand him, it was their loss.
But Elizabeth knew she had internalized the rejection, even as she had settled in to BU and made friends and found a track in art history that she enjoyed. She felt the burden of failure, felt her less-than-ness. Her brother was almost nakedly himself and for himself: egocentric, outgoing, romantic, assertive. She was nakedly against herself and unsure of herself, irritable, easily made and self-preoccupied.
—So is it over with you and John?
—I don’t know. Is it ever over with us? I think he’d probably be happier if he were with someone more normal, someone that he could take home to his mother, who his mother could talk about Waterford Crystal with, but he’s also hooked on me and knows I’m the most interesting person he’ll ever meet. And so, yeah.
Her brother’s fine-featured face scrunched up like a paper airplane hitting a wall at high velocity. —Just break up with him.
—There’s no one else I want to have sex with, though, Elizabeth said.
—If you give yourself some space from him, there will inevitably be someone you’re attracted to, or you’ll inevitably find them.
There was a graduate student in the sciences, she forgot which science, named Paolo, who she’d met at a party the weekend before, who interested her, and who’d asked for her number, and whose number she’d received in return. But Elizabeth chose not to tell her brother about this. She actually preferred to keep the story in place, that John was the only one that interested her, because she was so terrified of rejection from any other man, and John had not rejected her, had accepted her over and over despite her anger and episodes.
And Paolo, a sweet, gentle Spaniard, wouldn’t necessarily be willing to endure the melancholy that she would inevitably pour into him. And then there was the possibility that John would marry her, that his shamefully pointless Connecticut German life would become hers, and that she would have this firm, methodical structure to exist in for the rest of her life, that could save her from the disorder of her Mediterranean and Slavic working middle-class family, erotic and all too close, and all too intelligent and clever and inquisitive and pushy. There was the chance that John’s cold, materialistic, frigid family could be hers instead of his, and that they could have children who somehow split the difference of Mediterranean and Nordic, and children who would be better than them both, receiving only the benefits of both of their spiritual and ancestral inheritances.
—What are you thinking about? Stephen said, sensing that he’d lost his sister.
—I’m thinking about how we’re too over-educated, over-talkative, middle-class, and neurotic to have relationships.
—Probably, Stephen said. —But fuck it.
—Do you still talk to Finley?
—No, not really. She’s in London. I’m on campus.
—Have you been seeing anyone?
—Like, having a series of two- to four-night stands.
—Why don’t they go beyond four nights?
—Because, Stephen said, it’s senior year and no one’s looking beyond that, and it’s nice. It’s got low stakes.
—Unidealistic. Yeah, I can’t have sex like that, Elizabeth said.
—I can, Stephen said, as if to ward off shame.
He was just like their mother in that sense. Willing to overshare, and refusing to acknowledge that there might be any problem with that.
