Free Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley Page A

and a sign of how you were to be treated by others. But Max’s feelings (Elena was sure) about Zoe went beyond those prescribed by the system, even, as far as Elena could tell, beyond his history or psychology. He found her at a party, he was married to her for ten years, fixated on her for another ten, and never for a moment did he cease—what? Maybe it was something Elena could not imagine, but it was very romantic, larger than life. Desiring her, of course; contemplating her, of course; longing for her, wondering about her, molding her, wishing to touch her, be next to her, look at her, fuck her, make love to her, give her things, serve her, make an impact on her even when she was thinking about something else. Once he had said to Elena (and she thought about it for days), “What I wanted was to be fused with her, for our molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles to be intermingled, and then, when Isabel was about two and we were watching her and talking about how she looked like each of us, I realized that I had had my wish—in the fusing of sperm and egg, there it was, we were intermingled at the minutest possible physical level, but it didn’t satisfy me. The result was Isabel, an entirely separate human being, a child that I loved, but not what I wanted in terms of the potential outcome of my feelings, which felt like it should be an explosion or a melding, not another person. I considered this a tragic revelation about the impossibility of true love.” When he told her that, he laughed at his folly, but what he said was so like what she felt about him that at first she felt like she wasn’t going to get over hearing him say it about Zoe (though jealousy was the ultimate incorrect thing).
    In the end, Elena saw what Max had felt for Zoe (she saw this privately—she had never confided this idea to Max himself) as a gift, an example of unprecedented inspiration on Max’s part in which he recognized the inherent possibilities of romantic love, not only for himself and Zoe, but for everyone. He had been in the grips the way everyone wanted to be in the grips but couldn’t manage, or was afraid to permit. And furthermore, it was
his
inspiration, not
theirs
—that much was evident in Zoe’s attitude. She treated Max as if he were her father or uncle, whose affection she could rely on but whose wrath she preferred not to incur, not because she was afraid of it, but because it would inconvenience her. Look at how she had apparently consigned Delphine to him, and he and Delphine continued to live together the way estranged couples were said to do in Japan—separate living quarters, separate entrances, separate recognitions that the arranged marriage didn’t work as a form of intimacy, but did work as a way of life. He did say, “It’s okay for me that Zoe and I aren’t married anymore. I never actually wanted to be a family with her. It was just that that was the only form available to embody what I felt about her.” Elena contemplated this as she gazed at Zoe.
    The new Max, the Max that loved her, Elena, had chosen not to engage in that Zoe sort of love anymore, or ever again. He was kind, attentive, faithful, thoughtful, conversational, and sexy, just exactly what Elena had always looked for. Every day she marveled that she had found him, attracted him, and had many minutes and hours to enjoy him. It was love of a very correct sort, much like finding your notions, plans, and presuppositions satisfactorily confirmed—you thought that you wanted a certain thing, you got it, and it turned out to be everything you had hoped for and more, because your capacity for enjoyment turned out to be larger than you had realized. So—nothing wrong there. But how was she to think of Max’s progress? Had he been sick before and now he was well? Had he transcended before and now he had come back to earth? Had he painted his masterpiece and now he was idling out his later life? Had he embraced an illusion and now he was back