“We have only a little time to please the living, but all eternity to love the dead.” –Sophocles
He insisted on ordering squid, or whatever that nice word is they use so you don’t know you’re ordering squid, even though she said she had tried it before and didn’t like it. Not as fresh as here, he insisted. Fresh makes a difference. And when it came, she found he was right. It wasn’t like the rubber bands wrapped in breading that she remembered from the date she went on in college with some fraternity boy who tried to impress her by ordering the most expensive seafood on the menu in their little college town in Wyoming. You never order seafood inland, he told her as she reached for more of the squid. You order here, near the ocean, so you know it’s fresh.
It was the third week, the point where it had begun to feel like it was going somewhere. The point where she felt comfortable enough to think that maybe something was going to happen tonight when she went back with him to his apartment on 7th street. There had been some heavy petting, enough for her to have learned with her hands that his stomach was a tight series of ridges that he hid well under his clothing. She liked that his abs were a secret—that he didn’t feel the need to wear t-shirts that were two sizes too small so that the world could know that he punished himself daily on free weights. She liked the idea that his abs were something only she knew about. No one seated around them—not the elderly couple at the table next to them, nor the waitress who kept passing their table without asking if they had settled on their entrée order, nor the host who had seated them—knew what was under his button-down shirt, which looked fitted, but not fitted enough to show the reality of that stomach. She felt like Lois Lane—the only person in the whole place who knew she was having dinner with Superman.
The squid was almost gone. He demurred to her with a gesture and a smile. I told you that you’d like it. She greedily cleaned the last of it from the basket, and then found herself picking the small bits of breading out of the paper that lined it before she thought about how rude that might look. He didn’t seem to mind.
The waitress finally remembered they existed. She ordered the steak; he ordered a grilled chicken with wild rice that cost half as much, and she felt guilty. She should pay. This was an era when that was acceptable, but she hadn’t thought. Her mother had always told her, Always let him order first; then order something that costs less. If he insists you order first, tell him you haven’t made your mind up yet. Don’t look like a gold digger.
Instead of raising an eyebrow, he suggested they should get wine, and when she admitted she didn’t know what would pair well with the food, he asked if it would be OK for him to order. He didn’t look at the wine list, but ordered by the glass, a Shiraz for her and a Pinot Noir for him. The waitress suggested they pick one and order by the bottle because it was cheaper, but he insisted they needed something complementary to their entrees. And light on the greens in the salads, he said. The greens are mostly filler, he told her when the waitress had walked away.
This was the first real dinner out, the first real restaurant that wasn’t part of some other outing—an afterthought from the museum or the movie theater. She knew it wasn’t the mark of a liberated age, but if he wanted to, tonight was the night it would happen. Not just because of the meal and the restaurant, but because this felt like the natural progression.
I’ve been reading that book you suggested, he said when the salads arrived. She had told him about a book of poetry that she had found in a little bookstore near the University. She had tried her best to avoid all the terms like “life changing” that would build up his expectations so much that it was impossible for the book to live up to them. Instead, she had talked about what had really struck her—the language, the images, the intensity of the emotion even though the verse was straightforward, not flowery and everything that she had learned to dread from her graduate classes. She had assigned it in her class at the college, and told him about it when he asked for an example of what she was teaching.
What do you think of it? she asked him, and a smile spread across his face that was almost beatific in the light that came through the glass of the front windows and washed across their table in the early evening.
Everything you said and more, he told her. You sold the book a bit short so I wouldn’t be disappointed, didn’t you?
Maybe, she said, looking down coyly at the salad and smiling. It meant a great deal that he understood it the way she did. She knew most people would have probably not even picked it up, much less bothered with reading it.
The mother’s grief, he said, it’s amazing how she can make something so beautiful and pure out of such a horrible thing.
Without it sounding like the product of some self-help seminar, she added, and he nodded emphatically.
I don’t think I could find it in myself to be able to process someone being murdered like that and have it turn into anything other than bitterness and hurt, he said. I don’t know if I could ever even process it into something I could turn into words.
My students are stunned by it, she said. Even the ones who claim to hate poetry. Some of them have read it twice, even three times. Even the students who I know have blown off most of the other reading assignments can’t stop talking about it. Not just because they understand the language of it, but because they are grappling with the actual feeling of the poems, the arc of the telling.
What you do is beautiful, he said, and she blushed.
I’m just lucky this one time, she said.
It takes a good teacher to get students to open up to something they would normally avoid, he said, and when she didn’t say anything to that, he added, You opened me up to something I never would have read otherwise. He laid his hand on the table, open and turned upward, and she accepted the invitation, feeling the firmness of his palm against hers as their fingers intertwined.
It’s the book, she insisted. It could pull anyone into it.
But you are its champion, he said, looking directly at her, and this time she couldn’t avert her eyes, and she felt a little thrill build inside her, thinking, for perhaps the first time, that she really did accomplish more than just grading essays and trying to make sure that her students passed her course with something that wouldn’t impact their GPAs too harshly.
What about your book? she asked, trying to shift the subject away from her. She had found his first book, though she had not told him that she had read it, afraid it might look obsessive this early. And there was something so intimate about reading a memoir—she felt like she had been spying on him, snooping through his personal life, even though it was out there for everyone to see if they searched it out. She had struggled with understanding why it had not caught on more, why other people hadn’t found the beauty of his language, just as beautiful as the book of poems they had in common now.
I don’t know if it’s going to happen, he said. There’s only so much life I’ve had at this point. I don’t know if there’s a second book to be had from it. Maybe some essays to send out, if anyone wants them, but I think I should be thinking about fiction maybe. Or maybe I should just go back to school, see if I can get a job doing what you’re doing.
She thought of her writing students who she guided with less assuredness than her literature classes. At any other school, she wouldn’t be granted the opportunity to work with the creative writers, but the college faculty was small enough that they couldn’t justify someone full-time for creative writing, at least not the introductory courses, so she was blessed with the chance to try to shape these beginners who came with ideas but no stories, or grand plans of spinning memoirs from lives that had barely begun and had so very little happen in them that there really wasn’t anything compelling to tell to an audience. Ten-page essays on the cruelty of parents from the eyes of people barely out of their adolescence, when every act of parenting is seen as a cruelty.
I’m sure there’s more there than you give yourself credit for, she said, then reluctantly added, afraid she was tipping too much of her hand to him, I would read more.
More? he said, and she blushed again.
I may have found your book and read it, she said, then added without meaning too, I’m sorry.
No need to be sorry, he said, and laughed lightly. I’m glad someone read it.
You put more effort into understanding why your father left than most people would, she said. You show so much empathy for someone who hurt you and your mother so much.
Well, he said, if I didn’t try to understand it, I’d never be able to forgive him, I guess.
Has he read it?
I don’t know, he said. I still haven’t heard from him. The last thing I know about him is in the book—he lived with my aunt for a year after they let him out of jail. I lied in the book though. He didn’t leave a note when he left her. She went to work one day, and he said he was going to try finding a job again, but when she came home, his things were gone. It took me a year to track her down, because his relatives don’t speak to each other, and when I got there, the trail was cold. I didn’t want to leave the book that way, so I faked the note, otherwise there wasn’t an ending.
It felt true, she said, feeling a little disappointed that it wasn’t.
It’s what I thought he would have said, knowing what I had learned about him. I guess that’s the closest to truth we can know about anyone who leaves us behind.
Somehow, that felt like reason enough.
He had chosen the restaurant well. The food was amazing, and the wine complemented her steak perfectly. She was so satisfied at the end that she begged off on a dessert, not, for once, because she felt like she had ordered too expensively, but because she didn’t want to risk anything that would be a letdown after the food she had eaten already.
But they each ordered a dessert coffee as the street lights flickered on outside and the avenue lit up brighter than it had been in the waning evening light.
I hope it’s not a disappointment, he said suddenly, and her face must have betrayed confusion because he clarified, about the ending of the book. I felt like I needed to have something final from my father or the reader wouldn’t understand him the way I think I do.
No, it’s not a disappointment at all, she said, believing it more so now that she saw the look on his face that showed he wasn’t trying to make an excuse. And you might be right. Maybe you learned enough about him while you were writing it that you were able to give him final words that he would have left if he’d known how to say them.
They were quiet for a few moments, and he said, When I started that book, I honestly thought I would find him by the ending, but wherever he is, I don’t think he wants to be found. I think the life he left behind when he left Mom and me is a life that he has no interest in getting back or providing closure to. I think he likes beginnings, but doesn’t want to hear how the story goes once the complications set in.
Maybe there’s a book in that, she said, and he nodded vaguely.
I didn’t mean for this to get so heavy, he said, straightening his shoulders and brushing his hair back from his forehead. He laughed a bit and she reached for his hand this time. He took it quickly, as though he had been afraid it wouldn’t be offered.
I like that you’re so open with me, she said. He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed it back, thinking, suddenly—and she thought, perhaps, a little inappropriately—of the ridges of his abdomen and how badly she wanted to run her lips over them. This beautiful man seated across from her, who wanted nothing more than to understand the things he had lost so badly that he was willing to help the world understand them better than he did himself.
He paid the check, and they exited into the cool breeze outside, where the heat of late summer was beginning to give way to the autumn that had been long-delayed in coming. She wished she had worn her coat, but it had been so beautiful when they had set out earlier that she had left it slung over the hook beside his front door. Now the wind was coming up from the Atlantic and pushing through the streets, whistling quietly around the edges of buildings and signposts and cutting through her light sweater, though she resisted a shiver. He took her hand, and she leaned into him and they walked along the sidewalk, crowded with more people than she was used to on a Sunday evening, though the street itself was almost clear. Still the time of year when no one was willing to let go of the idea of summer, even as it let go of them.
You have classes in the morning, he said, half question, half statement, and she shook her head.
We celebrate the Italian conqueror tomorrow, she said, and Tuesday as well, by not having classes so everyone can rejoice or mourn or drink—however they prefer to recognize the event. He laughed and she joined him.
I was thinking, if you didn’t mind, that I might stay over tonight, she said, feeling bold. Her mother would be horrified. This was the first time she had ever been the one to make the suggestion first.
Oh I don’t know, he said, his voice sly as he delivered the joke, I have two dates later tonight, and my wife is expected back in town tomorrow. They both laughed, and she shoved him lightly.
It was only a light push, meant to be in jest. A comic response to his joke. But they had drifted closer to the curb in the crowd of pedestrians, and his heel caught the edge of the pavement.
What happened next, she would play over again and again in her mind. In nightmares. In therapy. As she laid in bed on the endless nights that sleep wouldn’t come at all, when even the tranquilizers would not help her find blessed unconsciousness.
The cab was moving too fast, using the unexpected emptiness of the street to make better time getting its passenger to the airport, or the train station, or maybe just home. As he fell outward into the street, he was still grinning and laughing from the joke they had shared, the smile faltering only as he felt the danger approaching, and then it was too late.
The front of the cab hit his hips and drove him up and over the hood, where he collided with the top of the windshield, his body leaving a spider web of cracks in the glass as he became airborne, rising up and over the roof of the taxi, where he flew for a moment, as though he might rise above what was happening, ascend into the sky and perhaps touch down again, bruised but intact. As he spun through the air, the wide grille of the moving van that followed in the cab’s wake caught him and launched him into the parallel lane, bouncing him like a rubber ball coming up off pavement, until he collided with the front of a bus, its wheels screeching and the air exploding from the brakes as the driver tried to avoid the impact.
The inertia slid him several feet when he finally touched the ground. It must have happened in less than a few seconds, but it seemed to play out over minutes on end as she watched him come to a stop in the middle of the pavement and gawkers pulled their cell phones from their pockets to record the aftermath.
Her feet refused to move. She tried to will them to do anything, even if it only meant her legs giving out from under her so she could collapse, but at first they were frozen, as though they too could not register what had just happened. Then she took a step into the street, where the taxi had finally come to a stop half a block away, the moving van not far behind it. The bus driver had thrown the door open and was staring in disbelief at the pile of man in the lane in front of him, and she felt one foot creep in front of the other until she was at a run, crossing to him, reaching down for his shoulder to roll him onto his back while someone in the crowd urged her to move away from the body.
The right side of his face was gone. The one eye that remained stared into the distance at an impossible angle, looking beyond everything at something she couldn’t see. Blood poured from the open wounds, pooling in the street, spreading out from his head like a crimson half-halo in a portrait of a martyr. His exposed teeth shined an impossible whiteness in the midst of the red, with the glint of a single filling shining in the street light. In spite of this all, she reached down and grasped his hand.
This, too, was broken.
