Because I love her & I think somewhere she still loves me.
The truth is, we just can’t get the timing right.
We can’t seem to love each other in the same way at the same time.
* * *
—
I shut the logbook.
I step out of the closet, blinking, and try to come back to this world, this room. From the light, I figure it’s one or two in the afternoon. George returned to school today, his fever having been one of those things.
Just then my mother walks into the bedroom carrying a basket of laundry.
Oh, she says. You surprised me.
I’m sure I look strange to her. Standing in the middle of the bedroom. Standing there, doing nothing.
I thought you’d be in there, she says, glancing toward the closet.
Oh, I say. Yeah. I needed a break.
I realize I am still holding the logbook. I put it on the nightstand, and I sit down on the bed.
I see my mother glance at it.
That’s Michael’s logbook, I explain. About our trip. And other things. It’s more of a diary, actually.
Oh, she says. And you’re reading it?
Of course I’m reading it, I say.
She nods, unsure of what to do with the basket.
I stretch out my hands to take the basket from her. But something in the plaintive gesture breaks me. I put my face in my hands and I sob.
My mother drops the basket to the floor.
She grabs my hands and pleads, Juliet, what happened?
This is torture, I want to tell her. It is a torture I’m not sure I deserve.
(But then again, I might.)
Poor Juliet, she says, as I weep into her shoulder. Oh, my daughter. I wish I could take the pain away.
We sit on the bed. I lean against her.
You don’t have to talk about it, she says. You can just cry. Cry all day if you need to. That’s right. That’s right.
For example, back in CT, I’d watch her across the yard, gardening, & something in me would just kind of…roll over. Melt. She used to swear at the plants as if they could hear her. She’d bend over those plants in some charitably short shorts, threatening them, not a strain in her posture or bend in the knee, & my pulse would start flying, because she is so real & so well-made & she is my wife, my Juliet.
Then she’d walk toward me. I’d be full of this feeling & about to tell her, when she’d say something like, Goddamned poison ivy. She’d shake a fistful of it in my face. I must have asked you a hundred times to spray this shit, Michael!
* * *
—
The spring days are getting longer. A hint of celestial lilac outlines the houses across the street. I stand looking out the bedroom window. The streetlight clicks on. Its halo, empty. Waiting to be stepped into.
Below, I hear the lilting of Sybil’s voice as she asks my mother a question. My mother’s deeper voice coos an answer. Their talk is birdsong. I mean, just tone. And there’s George too. Clumsy squawking. Soon—any minute—I’ll go downstairs. I’ll say, Wow, what a wonderful painting, Doodle. You got a Fab Tag in school today, Sybie? That’s super.
Any minute, I’ll do that.
Gambier. January. You’d die of hypothermia without those lampposts they placed all around campus. They lit your drunken way through winter.
I do what with my face when I’m taking notes? I asked the boy standing in front of me.
You make this—he rounded his lips, and then reached up to touch them—this little O. Like this.
It was winter, very cold. I wore a man’s coat I’d bought at the Gambier Salvation Army. The friends I’d gone to the play with had wandered away, laughing at me over their shoulders.