ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part Two, Chapter 21: Another Imaginary Conversation with Ernie
“Fuck your writing, Ernie! I’d rather have known you, all of you, in real life than come to know you through your novels and stories. Or through what I’m piecing together in this writing. Or through random notes you left behind on envelopes and scraps of paper. . . . Do you know what I found last night when I was looking for the little red car’s registration paper?”
“No. What?”
“On the front of the envelope containing car papers, you’d written: Let the nightmare begin — crazy character. I’d just written a chapter on your recurring nightmare — the one when you dream you’re dead. Then I find that sentence: Let the nightmare begin. I feel as if I’m in a nightmare. That I can’t awaken from it. It’s begun, and it keeps going.”
“Remember the line Bryan says to Arabella? It goes something like this: ‘You’re a dream.’ And she says to him: ‘No. Touch me. I’m real.’ ”
“I guess I didn’t know to touch you, Ernie. You weren’t real to me. And I didn’t absorb the you in your novels and especially your memoir. It’s all there. Your hurts. Your deep fears. You lay yourself bare. I read your words but didn’t get them. Nothing sank in.”
“I tried to tell you, Ernestina. You never seemed to get anything. To get me. To love me. You seemed so cold-hearted. Nothing got to you.”
“It’s getting to me now, Ernie. Everything. And it’s too late.”
“For you and me? Yes, it’s too late. I’m gone. For you? You’re just beginning.”
“I didn’t know how to love, Ernie. I was too scared to love. Too scared of the pain of losing you to love you. Isn’t that crazy?”
“We’re born knowing how to suck, Ernestina. We suck on our mamas. That’s what we know to do. We aren’t born knowing how to love.”
“How do we learn?”
“If we’re lucky, Ernestina, our mamas and daddies show us love. That’s how we learn to love. Was I lucky in this first love? Not lucky enough, I guess.”
You sigh. You’re getting tired. You’re not used to heart-to-heart talk and neither am I. In real life, we never had this kind of conversation, did we? I so miss it.
“I don’t want to tire you, Ernie. I’m tired, too.”
Your voice softens. “Later, Ernestina. We’ll talk more later.”
