I remember the first time we had sex. Or tried to. It was eleven years ago, at his studio apartment in Manchester. I was twenty-nine, a broke graduate student who flew to another continent to spend two months with someone who might or might not like her. On my first night there, after a meal of chicken tenders and fries, after smoking a blunt and drinking two rounds of ginger chamomile tea in whiskey glasses, he tried to sleep on the futon. I coaxed him to the narrow bed. We are too close for that. And I won’t bite, I promise. We fumbled through whatever it was we did in the dark. It was urgent, full of need, and many interjections of what-the-hells and pealing laughter, and a little pee and semen and sweat and a little blood. It was mostly on me, my virginal self. But we laughed through the night. And I knew I had been worried for nothing.

…

We had what some might call rules of engagement. 

One evening during that first summer in Manchester, I was sitting at his small kitchen table, drafting the abstract of my thesis when he barged in from the storm, puffed up with raindrops.

‘Are we going to do this or not?’ He asked, leaning on the edge of the table, arms akimbo. The trickle of the faulty kitchen tap was persistent in the quiet.

‘What?’ 

‘This.’

 I closed my laptop and looked up at him. He took my hand and stared at each other. It set a precedent for the years to come, what we learned not to say with silence. 

‘We have to have some kind of guidelines. Some kind of rules.’

‘You realize that this is not normal, right? This is not how rational people start dating.’

‘Dating?’ A smile danced at the corners of his mouth, and his fingertips caressed my open palms. ‘Yes. Dating.’

‘So you want like a contract?’

‘No. That’s too much.’ He walked to the TV console and brought out a pack of index cards from one of the drawers. He pulled a chair beside me, sat, and took my pen. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want?’

‘What I want?’ 

‘What do you want from me? From this?’

‘Okay?’ I thought for a little bit. ‘Umm… Well, respect.’

‘Respect.’ He wrote the word on an index card and placed it at the center of the table. ‘What else?’

‘You tell me what you want too.’

‘No.’

‘Then I know the next word. Reciprocation.’ I wrote on a card. ‘We both must reciprocate. No one person carries all of the emotional labor.’ That went to the center too.

‘Well, I don’t know how to do this. So… Please be patient with me.’

‘Patience. I like that.’ I wrote on another card.

‘What happens when one person wants to leave?’ He looked away.

‘Fortunately and unfortunately for you—,’ I cupped his face in my palms, ‘—I am not the leaving kind.’

 He kissed me then, our tongues and lips making tranquil promises and finding something akin to joy,  something feral. The cards piled up on that table. Never lose one’s sense of self. Keep at okay sex until okay sex becomes bomb sex. Fights would not go on for too long. Lots and lots of kissing. Financial support. Spend summers together.  Make up for the potential long-distance months. Buy a house in the woods. Give each other the benefit of the doubt. No pressure about anniversary gifts. Protect what we have. No posting of couple photos on Facebook. Never stop creating. The only  referred back to the cards  when we needed a reminder of our anniversary. 

We had signed the last one. in love and with love, olivia and dola. 15th of July, 2011.

…

This house is my new house. A hidden trail from my garden leads to the forest. Willow trees and Hawthorns. American beech and Butternut. In the mornings, deer walk the overgrown path and they watch me, and I watch them. This house is my new house, even if it’s 101-years-old and the paint is all peeled off and the kitchen beams are giving away. The sitting area is 634 feet. I work mostly at night, grateful for the summer light. I paint the walls charcoal. The purple-gray hue absorbs all of the radiance. I sand the floor with refinishing liquid and use a water-based finish. The walnut is suddenly stunning. I install a terracotta bust of Oduduwa. I google L-shaped sofas. When Amazon delivers light fixtures, I open the email with the playlist of home makeovers. His face fills the screen, telling me to remove the canopy and be on the lookout for black, white, and copper wires.

…

Year Four I finally persuaded him to go to the hospital. I knew the ground under us was shifting. We were living together. I’d started my Ph.D. in Portland and he got a job at a startup. It wasn’t just the disorganized thinking, or his leaking brain as he jokingly called it. That was okay; putting his laptop in the fridge, buying a panini press we couldn’t afford and then swearing he couldn’t remember getting it, cooking with flour instead of salt and turning our meals into thickened portions of something unrecognizable, trailing off in the middle of every conversation. But his language about himself had changed too. Foolish, stupid, or thrash were his go-to words for the smallest slip-ups. On days when work was particularly hard, he would say, Well my mother didn’t want me too. 

He’d wait till I slept and then go to the living room and spend the night conversing with himself. He stopped running (I am a black man in America), stopped dining out (I need to see how my food is prepared before I eat it), stopped greeting the next-door neighbors (I think they are watching us.) 

I pleaded with him. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me, for us. The more he tried, the more reluctant he became to medication. His body rejected all of it. Ativan. Lexapro. Diazepam. Ritalin. Haldol. He threw up at night. Got fat. His hair fell out. He slept a lot. Couldn’t make love. Lost his job. He gave up at Lithium. It was the first time he said I could leave if I wanted.

…

My house has two bedrooms. One is a literal bedroom. No chairs or tables or paintings or dressers or rugs or lamps or TVs or sound systems. A bed and a bed only. For the guest room, I lay two tatami mats. The walls are beige. The floor is furry. I arrange new towels and toothbrushes in a raffia basket. I fix floating shelves and fill them with cracked figurines and my recent reads. Notes on Grief. In Search of a Vivid Blue. Yoruba Legends. The Skin Is the Elastic Covering that Encases the Entire Body. Swamplandia! The Meaning of Madness. Cuíer. There is a chair and table and a wooden WELCOME TO OUR HOME plaque. When I finally hang a painting, I choose our first-anniversary gift. It is a digital illustration of us, two prostrate bodies in the shadows, on a patch of grass, with no faces and feet.

…

The email was barebones. Unfair. Absolute. Buy your house. In the woods. Away from the noise. A small house with a garden sounds nice. Make sure there is enough space for your pottery. I know you would want to do most of the work yourself so I put together some videos to help you get through. I love that you hate instruction manuals, but please watch till the end. I will forever be sorry. with love, dola. 

There was a deposit of $421,500 in my savings account. 

…

The basement is the most important part of my house. When I show my contractor Rafael my plan, he asks segura? These walls are high. Yes, I am sure. The cold is setting in so we work fast. Heating is installed first. Then, top-to-bottom bookshelves fill the longest wall. My fifteen-year-old collection of titles has found  a permanent home. I varnish the opposite wall with chalkboard paint. The 142-inch cloud sofa arrives.  The workers struggle with carrying its sections down the narrow stairs. I drag a ladder down and Rafael and I paste large prints of fragments from tired letters in the middle of the roof. My neck hurts. I spend the night wrapped in a hug by my sofa reading from my new sky. Liv, you are all that I see, all that I need. The joy of attaining depths with you is worth the work. You are my good thing. I hope that I am loving you. I hope you feel loved. I am giving myself over to your pursuit now and forever. I have never shared so much with another person as I have with you. Thank heavens we are a team! I have never been this open to oneness. I feel like I cannot be happy or fulfilled outside you, Olivia. A naked you? Good god. You are the most important part of my life. I love you with all my heart: no half measures. You are mine. You are my more. I fasten metal prints of my book covers and publications on the wall my workspace is nested against. I buy house plants online. Six silver satins. Five Chinese evergreens. Four lucky bamboos. Three sago palms. Two dragon trees. One large monstera. 

…

We spent Year Five pretending Year Four didn’t happen. Year Six is good. Year Seven is even better. I stopped to wonder  whether he  was withholding from me. But I was too busy wrapping up my doctorate. He starts a tech company and sells it in a few months. And then does it all over again. We moved to a luxury high-rise apartment. I want a house. Our house. Our families bother us about marriage, babies. We spent the summer in Antigua. In Year Seven, I published a book. We began to fight over small things. He became resolute about everything including a nose ring. It seemed ridiculous, the notion of an almost-forty-year-old spotting a nose piercing. People our age suffer a midlife crisis now and then my love. 

When the ER nurse later asked me why I think he did it to himself, it was the answer I gave them. A midlife crisis. He had locked himself in the bathroom of a coffee shop, taken a pair of scissors to his nose, and sliced it in two. 

…

The attic is for storage. I arrange vestiges of my old life on the shelves. My grandmother’s gold pieces. My padre’s tennis rackets. I display an assortment of broken things: my first camera, my step-sister’s glasses, a monochrome photograph, a birdcage from our first apartment, a vase from our last apartment. I label the boxes, large and little. Old photo books. Costumes. Wires. Old college swag. Holiday decor. Tools. Tourist stuff. Masters’ stuff. Doctorate stuff. Hair Stuff. Sewing stuff. Winter stuff. Instruments. Accessories. Outdoor. Beach. Supplies. Dola’s presents. Dola’s toys. Dola’s books. Dola’s sex toys. Dola’s clothes. Dola’s sneakers. Dola’s games. Dola’s gadgets. Dola’s prints. Dola’s paintings. Dola’s posters. Dola’s documents. Dola’s this. Dola’s that. Dola. Dola. Dola.

…

We lay in silence the night he was released from psychiatric hold.  I waited for him to answer the questions I did not ask. I had been warned not to push. He was the big spoon, holding my waist, and the bandages from the minor reconstructive surgery grazed my neck. He sobbed till he slept. He kept up with his CBT appointments. Used his pills. 

But he entered a simmering rage, a spiteful stillness in Year Eight, emerging only to drop missiles in my heart:

‘My therapist is a slob. He is not even that smart. Fucking dolt.’

‘Sometimes when I’m walking down the street I don’t think anybody sees me.’

‘There is a black hole in my chest. I feel like—like—it is tugging me down.’

‘Stop looking at me like that! Why the hell do you keep looking at me!’

‘Liv. Sometimes I feel like disappearing. Forever.’

‘I can’t even imagine touching you anymore.’

‘ If I disappear, I would start over in a small village. Maybe in Antarctica. Become a bartender. Or open a book cafe. Might be fun.’

‘Why are you still here, Olivia? It makes no sense.’

‘It’s a good thing we never got married. Or had children. Now that would have been a fucking disaster.’

‘Olivia. Can you see me? Touch me. Can you feel me? Am I still here?’

‘Did you know that attempted suicide is a crime in some countries?’

‘Euthanasia is now legal in eight countries. Even next-door Canada.’

‘You can leave, Olivia. I won’t hold it against you.’ 

‘I don’t know how to be kind anymore.’

‘I am going to stop these pills. I don’t care. This is not me.’

…

I spend the next few days in the garage. I slowly turn it into a studio. I rinse down the limestone walls with a natural stone cleaner. The kiln, a ROHDE KE 750 S gets installed and wired up by Rafael. I am eager to see my first firing graph. There is a potter’s wheel by the only window. Tools arrive in delivery boxes. Dipping tongs and sponges. Clay molds and shapers and cutters and trimmers. Ribs and scrapers. Rolling pins and loop tools. Reclaim buckets and metal racks. I store porcelain and stoneware clay. I order a personalized potter’s stamp from Etsy and it takes three tries to get it right. I’ll begin throwing in winter. At night, I sketch new designs of candleholders and dinnerware on my iPad. I write a business plan for a store on Squarespace.

 …

Year Nine passed quickly. I published two more books. We hardly talked to each other. It’s been 710 days since we last kissed. He started sleeping on the couch. Left his dinners untouched. He played Final Fantasy VII, VIII, XI and XII in a stretch. I wrote him long letters. I left them in his shoes and sweatpants. In his leftover pizza box in the fridge. On the bathroom sink. Then he bought a tripod, a Rode wireless mic, and a Sony ZV-1 camera. He hid as he filmed. He started to run again. 

…

The snow is a spotless background for the stainless-steel kitchen. I leave the bulk of the work to Rafael. I move my classes online. I help his men, asking questions and smoking and eating quick lunches. It comes together in days. The knocked-out wall balloons the space. Appliances and countertops shine in a glossy black. Linear chandeliers lengthen the room. I don’t cook so I only care for the breakfast nook. I choose tan leather for the chairs. I calligraph Maggie Smith’s words for my line of sight as I eat. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

…

In Year Ten, he allowed me to hold his hand in the doctor’s office as ECT was prescribed. Small electric currents will pass through your brain, and you will experience a brief seizure. It is safe, don’t worry. You will be under anesthesia. I asked questions about memory loss and other side effects. Maybe. If there is any memory loss, it would last minutes to hours. We cannot be sure. But it is not permanent. Fatigue, headaches, nausea. The usual. He was fidgety as I drove back. At home, he remained on the sofa, the light from his laptop illuminating the lines on his now gaunt face. I cleaned, took a long bath, laid out his dinner. But he remained quiet, unmoving. I opened my eyes hours later from a bad dream to find him kneeling over me in our bedroom, his two hands above my head on the pillow.

‘Olivia. There is no way in the world I am doing it.’

‘Dola, please.’

‘You didn’t even try to hear me out.’ He got off the bed and picked up a stack of papers from the bedside ottoman. ‘Read this—,’ he shoved them in my face, ‘—I said, read it.’

‘Dola, this is not living. You are sick. We cannot go on like this.’ I got up from the bed and put on my night coat. I moved away from him to the window seat.

‘You want them to brainwash me Liv? Is this your plan?’ 

‘What are you talking about?’

‘ Read these. Started in the 1950s. The Cold War. It is simple: break down the mind and build it back again with whatever you what—’

‘Just stop, stop for a sec—’

 He read out loud. ‘Distressing memories and pathological behaviors were annihilated from the patient’s mind through an unrelenting regime—’

‘ Dola, I’m begging you.’ I sank to my knees, my hands clasped into one large fist in front of me. ‘This is only going to get worse—’

‘…patients were placed in front of tape machines emitting endlessly looping messages designed to push them towards particular psychiatric epiphanies. Messages were repeated for days, weeks,  months on end, to overwhelm the patient’s conscious defenses. When patients became distressed, they were restrained by securing their headphones with tape to immobilizing them with hallucinogenic substances—’

‘Dola. Dola, calm down, okay? When did you become a conspiracy theorist? Plus, nobody is going to repeat anything to you. You are not going to be there for months. We are a team—’

 He ripped the papers in half and tossed them in the air. He dragged the sheets off the bed in a swoop. He threw a painting across the room.

‘You never fucking listen. You go around pretending like everything is perfect—’

He slammed the bedside lamp against the wall. Our framed photograph clattered to a corner.

‘This is all your fault. I fucking hate you.’ 

There are two, three, four fist-sized holes in the wall. The figurines on the dresser crack on the floor. The jewelry tray. My bottle of Violet bouquet. The first vase I made.

‘I am sick? Am I damaged goods now? After all these years? You wanna lock me in a psych ward? You want to—want to lock me inside my own head? Great! Just great Liv!’

He ripped the soundbar from the wall. Using it like a baseball bat, he swung it at the TV. Then the console. The wall. The mirror. The window. The table. The chairs.

‘You think you are the star of the show, uhn? Get out. Go and be perfect Doctor Professor Olivia Oba-Pedro since I am ruining your life. Go and write your books. Since you are not living. You want them to induce a seizure? Did you hear anything the doctor said? Does it matter to you if I lose my memory? Or that I can even put on a shirt by myself?’

His voice was a crescendo, his footfalls a small thunder in the room. When he finally looked at me, I was lying on the floor, crying, my hands over my head. I will never forget the look on his face.

‘Good God. You are running from me? ’

Maybe I should have gone to him as his face crumpled and he dropped to the floor. He started to shake and cry. Maybe I should have held him as he clawed at himself, as he punched the floor until his knuckles bled. I should have said something as he kept muttering to himself. I am so tired, I wish I could die, Fuck hell, I am so sorry Olivia, I want to cut my head off, I would never hurt you, I am so sorry Olivia, I am so sorry.

Perhaps I should not have packed a bag and checked into a hotel. Perhaps I should have called the police, or his doctor. If I could tell him now, I would swear that I wasn’t leaving. I cried in the hotel room for hours. There was no relief, no euphoria, no game plan. I just let the fatigue wash over me. When I came back to an intact apartment with no Dola and later, the scheduled email, I couldn’t stop imagining all the things I should have done differently.  

…

It is almost the New Year. I throw and turn. And as I work, I daydream. I prepare some clay. He is in Antarctica, clad in a sherpa coat, baking cookies for his book cafe slash bar. I center clay on the wheel. Or he has gone back to that studio apartment in Manchester, reliving the days of our new love but with a dog named Olive. I spend hours throwing off the hump and forms emerge. He flew to Canada and paid CA$405 to be euthanized. I detach pieces—cups and vases, plates and bowls. He started doing opioids because it helps relieve his symptoms and now lives in a crackhouse somewhere in Portland. The candleholders are too dainty so I begin afresh. He is somewhere in Luxembourg with a new name and a new company. I leave them to dry until they are leather hard. I imagine that maybe he is magically better and he is too ashamed to come back to me. I trim, draw patterns, add handles. And one day, he finds my online store and buys a ton of ceramics. I bisque fire the merchandise. When he receives them, he traces them with his fingers and holds them close, so close that the stamp in love and with love, olivia and dola is crystal clear.