He’d sit there while we rode clear across Warwickshire until I could pull myself together. Then we’d calmly disembark, the wallflower and his demented American companion. I cried in the library, in the grocer, watching him coast back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his house on his scooter. I cried when anyone was rude to me, and even more so when they were kind.
In my room, I wrote murderously bad poetry and chugged from bottles of warm white wine and was occasionally very concerned about my mental health. I got Sundays off, but Sundays were the worst.
There was this Sunday in Stratford, overlooking the River Avon, my raincoat flapping in the cold rain, when I felt my aloneness so keenly that I realized that I had no chance against it. All I could do was give in.
But what would giving in look like? I could tip right over into the river, falling asleep in the current. That seemed to be the most straightforward approach to resolving the paradoxes of the heart.
And just then, as if it were a real person, I felt my massive loneliness beside me, and I greeted it—my lifelong twin—and made friends with it, and for however long I stood there next to it on the bridge, I understood what love was.
* * *
—
Juliet?
My mother is knocking rapidly on the closet door.
I push open the doors. She stands there looking surprised. I haven’t hung out in the closet for a couple of days. Maybe she thought I’d quit.
Do you have an appointment? I joke.
But my mother doesn’t laugh. She looks pale.
She’s back, my mother says. The policewoman.
She is? Did she—
I have no idea, my mother says. She wants to see you.
We walk down the hall in silence. At the landing, I see that Duran is already standing at the back windows of the living room, looking outside. We descend the stairs. She turns and smiles prettily. This can’t be the expression of a person about to come and deliver terrible news.
Birds, she says. There are so many birds in your backyard. That’s the difference between a place like this and the city. And there’s so many different kinds. It’s like a national park back there.
They—they like the brook, I say. The water attracts them.
Beautiful, she says. She looks back outside. A world of birds, she says.
I step closer to her. That purple bush, I say, pointing, the rhododendron. It always blossoms this week. I can set my watch by it. Just for a couple of days. Then all the blossoms fall off in an hour.
Poetry, Duran says, lost in thought.
My mother clears her throat. I look at her. Her eyes are wide, urgent.
Where’s your partner? I ask Duran.
Who knows, she says. Somewhere sucking on a lemon.
Then she laughs robustly.
I’m not sure if it’s wise for me to laugh along.
Hey, she says, businesslike. I have something for you.
She takes Michael’s logbook out from under her arm and hands it to me.
We found Harry Borawski, she says.
Alive? my mother says. Then, to soften it, Thank God.
Yeah, Duran says with a chuckle. We got a call from a partner on the police force that an old crazy gringo was found wandering the streets of Mompox. That’s a little tourist town not far from Cartagena. You can only get there by boat. He got there somehow, stayed on for a while, then became disoriented, didn’t know how to get back. When they found him, he didn’t know where he was, didn’t know where his belongings were. But he seemed happy. You know, I’ve always thought that senility would be a relief. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t worry about the consequences. You just hop on the damned boat. Better that than a tiny room in assisted living.
Duran pauses. My mother and I stand side by side, gaping.