Epilogue (21 page)

anywhere on this planet, He is in the love one human can feel for another, sexual love included. I don’t mean pedo-philes. This exception weakens my argument but excep-tions don’t so much prove a rule as erupt like mushrooms on the lawn after a rain. There. I send my e-mail and I go to bed.

I think of all the e-mails I have received from Albany. The worldview is angry, furious even, as if some band of evil spirits had set fire to the Eden that once was home. There is a consistent lack of compassion in all the material, whether the subject is the intelligence of the poor, or the needs of the welfare mother, or the marriage of homosexuals. It is not the point of view that is so disturbing, it is the undercurrent of rage that burns and burns on. Why am I reading all these e-mails? Why am I ignoring what they say about the sender? But perhaps I am being provincial. If I can only have a relationship with a man who thinks as I do I will cut off most of the world. Perhaps I should be patient and see what comes next. I go to my computer. I look again at the photographs of the schoolboy with the suspenders on. I see the man on a hilltop in Korea, a big man, with the stance of a warrior. I see the sad-eyed man smoking a cigarette, a black-and-white photo of a man with a mind—handsome, but that is not the point, it is the brooding darkness, the poignant steam that comes from the lines in the face. Is it fury or sadness I see? I lean over my computer till my nose is almost against the screen. I want to protect this man. I want him to protect me.

I KNOW MY DAUGHTERS WELL, BUT THERE ARE M ANY PL ACES

our conversations do not go, where they would barricade the doors against my entrance. This is fair. Even if I have a god-given right to know everything about them, given the changing of the diapers, the milk from the nipple, the holding of small hands, the pushing on the swing, etc., I renounce that right, in the name of reality. I am willing to settle for a crumb or two, an afternoon of conversation. This is a bond that pulls and pushes at the same time.

My daughters do call but their calls only make me thirst for more. I am greedy for their voices, addicted to their voices. This must stop, I tell myself. This will stop, I tell myself. Time will shift my attention elsewhere, I tell myself. However, at the moment I am staring at the clock. I will call after seven p.m. I will think of something to say, a reasonable reason for the call. Or perhaps I can hold off

until tomorrow evening. Or they will call me? They usually do. Do they know how much their calls mean to me? I hope not. I expect so.

• • •

It is the evening of my ancient biblical history class. I set off all wrapped up in my down coat, warm scarf, gray wool gloves. I head up the block, the wind off the river at my back. It is early and people are returning from work, briefcases, tote bags, hurrying along the street. There is a woman with two little girls, holding her hands. There is a man who lives in my building pushing his bike. There are the lights of cars on the avenue, the lights in the rooms around me. There is the black river at my back. I want to turn around and go back to my apartment. I don’t. I walk the few blocks along Broadway, past the Chinese-Cuban restaurant now filling up with customers. I hurry by the French bistro where H. always ordered the skate and cross the street in front of the Indian-owned newspaper store that sells lottery tickets. I walk carefully on a narrow path with scaffolding overhead where a new building is rising. At its base security guards are standing. Avoiding the wind, I cling to the walls of the grocery store where I see long lines at the checkout counter. I get on the bus and I want to get off but I don’t. I get to my class. I forget myself and the odor of aloneness that follows me around, I am swept into the invading armies from the East and the rebuilding of temples and the forced marches of souls away from their homes. I am alive. I go home content. I order dinner from the Mexican restaurant and I eat it in front of the television. I drink a glass of red wine.

• • •

I send an e-mail to Albany. I have not asked him to visit. I have grown a little cautious. In my e-mail, I write that I think we may be too different from one another. I write that my worldview is not so much to the left of his as somewhere in another universe. I tell him how much I respect him but fear that our relationship has come to an end. He sends me another e-mail. “We will get past this too,” he says. “Don’t rush to judgment.” I am calmed. Perhaps it will be all right. I send an e-mail later that evening with a report on my class and I tell him the names and ages of my children. Hardly an hour has passed and there on my computer is his answering e-mail. He talks of the evil of the homosexuals who took over the seminaries in the 1960s and admitted only homosexuals to their priestly ranks and how they abused little boys and the cover-up that followed and the disgusting behavior of the homosexual priests and how they conspired to take over the Catholic Church. I certainly don’t approve of Catholic priests abusing little boys but we were talking about homosexuality, not pedo-philes, not perverts. He has conflated the two. I puzzle. Was he abused as a child by a priest, perhaps a teacher in his Catholic military school? He talks about the way homosexuals want to unravel decent society, destroy children,
etc.
And now I hear him. He means it. Here is the heart of the matter. And I cannot ignore his voice. I think of him in his condominium in Albany raging at the forces in society that have pulled us into a more liberal and tolerant world. I think of him as a lion with a splinter in his paw. I would remove it if I could. But I know I can’t. In order to try I would have to get very close to his fangs, his open mouth, his huge weight. I know I can’t and shouldn’t try. I

send him an e-mail. “We have to stop writing each other. I am sorry. This will not work. This is the end.” He doesn’t answer. He sends me more articles from the
Weekly Stan-dard
. The next week brings me at least fifteen more links to right-wing radio hosts and others. I understand that all over America there are people reading and believing this material. It all has a conspiratorial ring, it all rages against some liberal souls who have undermined the decent and the good. I don’t read all the way through. I e-mail Albany, “Take me off this list, please.” He e-mails me back, “I did,” and that is that. I miss him. I miss his e-mails.

Most of all I miss the possibility of him, the visit that we never had, my walk with his dog that never took place, the weight of his body against mine, which never happened. I wonder if I cut our dance short out of fear of change. I wonder if I was right in ending it. Was I a coward? A friend tells me that he was an unsuitable man, unsuitable for me and probably anyone else. I still miss imagining him.

I have known others with his perspective. They have been my dinner partners, my friends’ husbands. I have enjoyed the fresh parry and thrust of argument. I wonder if it is a sign of age that I now don’t want to fight, don’t like the person who arrives, ready to battle, armed with his harsh views. I have heard it all before, and now, as I hear the volcano within bubbling at its core, the molten rocks shifting in the center, the anger that runs up and down the spine, makes the tongue sharp like a razor, I no longer understand the words. Whatever I may be looking for in a man it isn’t Darth Vader, and I fear Albany has gone over to the dark side.

• • •

I do not delete from my computer the photos he had sent me. Not yet.

The days seem to be getting longer again. The darkness arriving later, after the evening news. It is in the early evening, as I watch the people coming home from work, walking down the long block toward my building, as lights are turned on in the windows, as the lamp lights glow, I reach for the telephone. I need to talk about anything with anyone who will talk with me. I see the pale white moon, larger today than yesterday, hanging low above the avenue, barely above the traffic lights that change from red to green and green to red like the station lights of my brother’s train set. I hear a siren wail. I used to ignore sirens, so many, so fast, appearing and disappearing in an instant. Now, I pause at each and consider, Who has had a heart attack? Who will grieve the person lying now on the ground, in a store, in a restaurant? Or has someone been hit by a car or has someone been stabbed or shot? I take a moment or two to consider all the possibilities. I listen now to the sirens, I wonder who was listening when the ambulance came roaring down our block for H.

I am thinking that perhaps all this e-mailing and meeting of strangers is a pretense, a play at living, a diversion. Perhaps I do not want to find another mate. It seems so hard to exchange stories, to reach out your hand, to listen again and again, to attempt to come closer. I know that I might step away if anyone tries to come close to me. It seems too hard to begin again, to find out what movies someone likes, what their children’s names are, what memories haunt them, what enrages them, what soothes them. It seems too hard to bring someone else into my head. It

is too hard to begin, to hope, to f lare up one’s inner fires, to daydream the furnishings of a future that within days or weeks turns to ash. I’m done. Am I really done? We’ll see. I have two new friends. They are friends of friends who live in my building. They invited me to dinner. I talked too much, I think. I was pleased to be in their home. The man is an artist and he gave me a photo-drawing he has done. It is of a jar with green paint on it. It sits disembodied on a black background. I stare and stare at it. I cannot explain why it holds me this way. Some matters are not translated into words. I am going to the framer to have it framed. It is the first thing I have owned that has not been gathered with H. at my side. He framed our drawings. He chose our drawings. I was happy at his happiness but I hardly looked. This one is mine. I am suddenly appreciative of the eyes I have to see, the hands I have to hold this piece, the space it

will take on my wall.

• • •

I don’t open any e-mails from strangers. I suspect I will not find the elusive male companion in cyberspace. It is the disappointment in Albany that has convinced me.

I have always wondered about hermits in their caves. How do their days go by? I am not a hermit. I say hello to the doorman every morning. I have a conversation with my cleaner at the corner when I drop off my cat-haired sweater. I have a long talk with a friend about a political column in the
New York Times
. I have a computer with e-mails on it from friends. I am expecting a friend from Israel to stay a few nights next week. I am having some friends over for dinner on Sunday and one of them is going to read Book

Two of the new translation of
Aeneid
aloud in my living room. However, I think of myself, on my fourteenth f loor, as growing moldy, undernourished, un-groomed. People make jokes about hermits. They are, to the degree that they actually exist, probably the mentally ill, the homeless, the ones hearing voices, that are on our streets, sleeping on the church steps, covered by filthy blankets and tattered shirts. I am not one of them. Any comparison is melodramatic, I know. Melodrama is a bad habit of mind. It’s the first baby step toward madness. I don’t mind ending up dead, but I do mind ending up mad.

A friend tells me to buy some new expensive clothes. My friend says I could use sprucing up. I don’t want a man who wants me only if I am spruced up. “It’s just to lure him,” she says. “It’s just so he would want to get to know you.” But I don’t want a man who needs to be lured by the cut of my clothes. The issue goes deep into the vein of who I am, a natural woman, a woman without guile, at least the kind you wear. I am resistant to the idea of luring anyone. A lure contains a hook disguised by pretty feathers. The result is serious harm to the prey. Am I being stubborn about this? Am I making a mountain out of a new dress?

• • •

I’ve noticed that my friends are now disappearing for a few weeks at a time or more. It’s not that they are abandoning me, it’s that they seem to be enduring private travails. Perhaps they don’t want to burden me with their own stories. They don’t want to talk about MRIs for suspected malig-nancy or the agonies of a child in trouble in another state or a very old parent in need of hospice care, or a major dental