A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,20
at all, I meant me. I’m going to shut up now. Do you understand what I meant?”
“Yes.” Elm nodded. She did understand. They needed to focus. Maybe that’s what she needed, to concentrate on her work, and maybe then she could move into the next stage of grief, whatever that was. Each new wave felt like he died all over again. She suspected that it would always feel like this, that each year would bring merely innovation instead of diffusion.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said. This was her solution to everything; she volunteered to be in charge. She knew, of course, that not allowing anyone else to help was a pathology that only deepened her disconnect from the world. It entrenched her in a battle with the day; it alienated even her husband. She knew this, and yet she didn’t know how not to feel this way, how to break the pattern.
Ian, however, was not going to let her. “We’ll fix it, both of us.” She wondered if he was pulling her back into the fold of humanity for her own good, or if he didn’t trust her.
“How?” Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes. Frustrated tears, she thought. She’d never known how many different kinds of tears there were until Ronan died. Like a parody of the old saw about all the Eskimo words for snow—tears of frustration, of hurt, pain, anger, angst. And there were new tears to discover all the time, vast galaxies of hidden stars and satellites of pain that orbited into view.
Ian turned up his palms. “We’ll think of something, sweetie. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t,” Elm said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. He hadn’t, really. Tears like these didn’t count.
Elm rubbed her eyes. “Do you think it’s seemly for me to go home now?” she said. “I’m having … I’m really tired.”
“Wait for me, we’ll walk out together.”
Elm turned off her computer and gathered the papers she was going to pretend to look over during the weekend. She spent the week dreading the weekend’s aimlessness, and then she spent the weekend dreading work. She looked at her watch. She could pick up Moira from school instead of letting Wania do it. She could go shopping. She could crawl into bed and read a magazine. None of the options sounded appealing.
There was soft music playing in the elevator, the same Beethoven symphony that recycled constantly. Elm had written e-mails to the office manager on more than one occasion, begging him to put some Sibelius or Handel into the mix. She did get Handel: the “Hallelujah Chorus” at Christmastime on repeat. She sighed heavily. Ian put his arm around her.
They stepped into the elevator. “Do you have exciting weekend plans?” he asked.
Elm shook her head. “You? Hot date?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t gone online yet.”
Elm laughed obediently. Ian paused. He was lonely, she knew, in a many-friends-no-partner way. She remembered that feeling of swinging trapezelike through her twenties. There was the net if you fell, but no one to link arms with midair. She should invite him over for dinner, or out for a drink, but she didn’t feel like it. Didn’t feel like coming up with witty jibes to match his zingers, to laugh at the jokes he inevitably made at his own expense. She would make it up to him another night.
He kissed Elm’s cheek. She felt his breath, warm on her neck. His tenderness was so sweet, it was another unexpected thing that brought tears to her eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them; they wouldn’t spill.
Gabriel
He walked past the restaurant once before checking the address and doubling back. What he’d heard as “La Tour de L’Oqueau” was actually El Toro Loco, a tapas place that was trying extremely hard to replicate some fantastic ideal of Spain. Tapas came from the north, País Vasco, and yet this place was a Southern Castilla of the previous century: dark wood, taxidermy, rustic tableware, and mustachioed waiters. Of course the featured beverage would be sangria. No one Gabriel knew drank sangria after age fifteen—cheap wine and 7UP guaranteed a headache. He opened the heavy door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. He imagined sitting at an ornate table for two with an open bottle of wine and an empty chair across from him. She might very well stand him up. She wouldn’t mean to, but something might come up.