hawk. Up in that eucalyptus.” Then you went on about how rare they are in Marin and how they’re sometimes called grasshopper hawks because that’s their favorite food and blah blah blah; I can’t remember the rest. I hadn’t actually gotten a look at the bird, and when we got to the restaurant I asked you to pull up a photo on your phone so I could see what I’d missed. After some hemming and hawing you admitted that you’d made the whole thing up. (She imitates my voice by dropping hers an octave and mumbling.) “There was no hawk.” That’s what you said. I asked you why you’d lied, and you got all bashful and said there’d been a dead dog lying on the other side of the road, that it looked like it had been hit by a car. (Her eyes get teary and she looks up at the ceiling then back down into the camera.) You didn’t want me to see it. (She wipes her eyes, tilts her head to the side.) You knew it would hurt me and you didn’t want— (She exhales.) Ironic, I know.
Anyway.
As I was saying.
How do you let go of something that lives inside of you?
How do you discard something that feels attached to your ribcage and wrapped around your heart?
How do you cut it out without losing a piece of yourself in the process?
You know what you are to me?
A phantom limb.
I can still feel it.
And I don’t just mean I can still feel you. I mean that I know you can feel me too.
There’s another pause. Another big sigh. Then she says: I hope you’re happy. That’s the truth. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope, more than anything, that you’re happy.
She examines the drawing for a time and eventually nods decisively, though the camera never pans around to her POV, and we never see the portrait.
A moment later she rips the drawing from her sketchbook, rips the portrait in half, rips those halves in half, and keeps ripping until the portrait is in hundreds of tiny pieces. Then she tosses what’s left of me into the trash bin near the kitchen table.
Done, she says.
I’d already been gone for two years by the time that clip was released. And though I dated in Montana—mostly women I met at the Great Northern, women who were as lost as I was, and too broken to give me any more than I could give them—not a day went by that a dozen things didn’t remind me of October. My whole world had become redolent with her point of view and passions, her commitment to life and to art, no matter how far away I was.
TWENTY-FOUR.
Four months before the debut of Sorrow: This Is Art, I got word that Bob had suffered a heart attack on a flight from Cabo San Lucas to Denver and had died in a hospital a few days later. His wife of two years, Maureen, sent me an e-mail explaining what had happened, but the e-mail sat in my inbox for over a week before I got around to opening it.
When I finally spoke to Maureen, she was tearful and apologetic, as if it were somehow her fault that I’d missed my father’s memorial service. Then she gave me the name and number of Bob’s lawyer and instructed me to contact him regarding my inheritance.
When I called Ingrid and told her that Bob was dead, she cried and said, “Oh, Joey, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you.”
I didn’t tell Sid and Maggie about Bob’s death. I don’t know why, except to say that I’m a weirdo, and I didn’t want them to make a fuss.
And anyway, Bob’s death wasn’t hard for me. He’d been gone from my life for a long time. The only difference was that now it was final.
When I contacted Bob’s lawyer, he told me that they were still dividing up the assets, but that when all was said and done, I would be left with enough money to live modestly for the rest of my life. I would never again have to take a job I didn’t want. I would be able to travel more. Maybe buy a house.
I didn’t foresee the money changing much else. Money can’t buy guts. It can’t sew up the broken pieces inside of you. And it certainly can’t make amends or substitute for love.