I told him everything. When I had a new lover, I told him. When I had a fear, I told him. When I had a victory, I told him. I was not accustomed, Angela, to having men listen to me.
And as for your father, he was not accustomed to being with a woman who would walk five miles with him in the middle of the night, in the rain, in Queens, just to keep him company when he could not sleep.
He was never going to leave his wife and daughter. I knew that, Angela. That’s not who he was. And I was never going to lure him into bed. Aside from the fact that his injuries and his trauma made a sexual life impossible for him, I was not a woman who could have an affair with a married man. That’s not who I was. Not anymore.
Moreover, I can’t say I ever fantasized about marrying him. In general, of course, the thought of marriage gave me a hemmed-in feeling, and I didn’t long for it with anyone. But certainly not with Frank. I couldn’t imagine us sitting at a breakfast table, talking over a newspaper. Planning vacations. That picture didn’t look like either of us.
Lastly, I can’t be certain that Frank and I would have shared the same depth of love and tenderness for each other, had sex ever been part of our story. Sex is so often a cheat—a shortcut of intimacy. A way to skip over knowing somebody’s heart by knowing, instead, their mere body.
So we were devoted to each other, in our own way, but we kept our lives separate. The one New York City neighborhood that we never explored together on foot was his—South Brooklyn. (Or Carroll Gardens, as the realtors eventually named it, although your father never called it that.) This was the neighborhood that belonged to his family—to his tribe, really. Out of respect, we left it quietly untouched by our footsteps.
He never came to know my people and I never came to know his.
I introduced him briefly to Marjorie—and certainly my friends knew about him—but Frank was not somebody who could socialize. (What was I going to do—have a dinner party, and show him off? Expect a man with his nervous condition to stand in a crowded room and make idle chitchat with strangers while holding a cocktail? No.) To my friends, Frank was just the walking phantom. They accepted that he was important to me because I said that he was important to me. But they never understood him. How could they have?
For a while, I’ll admit, I’d indulged a fantasy that he and Nathan might meet someday, and that he could become a father figure to that dear little boy. But that wasn’t going to work, either. He could barely be a father figure to you, Angela—his actual child, whom he loved with all his heart. Why would I ask him to take on another child to feel guilty about?
I asked nothing of him, Angela. And he asked nothing of me. (Other than, “Do you want to go for a walk?”)
So what were we to each other? What would you call it? We were something more than friends—that was certain. Was he my boyfriend? Was I his mistress?
Those words all fall short.
Those words all describe something that we were not.
Yet I can tell you that there was a lonely and untenanted corner of my heart that I’d never known was there—and Frank moved right into it. Holding him in my heart made me feel like I belonged to love itself. Although we never lived together or shared a bed, he was always a part of me. I saved stories for him all week, so I would have good things to tell him. I asked for his opinions, because I respected his ethics. I came to cherish his face precisely because it was his. Even his burn scars became beautiful to my eye. (His skin looked like the weathered binding of some ancient, sacred book.) I was enchanted by the hours that we kept and the mysterious places we went—both in the course of our conversations, and in the city itself.
The time we spent together happened outside of the world, is how it felt.
Nothing about us was normal.
We always ate in the car.
What were we?
We were Frank and Vivian, walking through New York City together, while everyone else slept.