I tensed my body to stop myself from squirming. I knew his question had merit.
“You see the real me.” Again, almost the truth.
“And I’m also more than twice your age—I won’t be around forever.” He shook his head. “Don’t you ever want to settle down with somebody one day?”
I shrugged one shoulder, hoping it seemed casual. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”
Of course I’d thought about it. About what it would be like to have someone whose day was better for having you in it. Someone whose mind you occupied even when you weren’t there. Someone who trusted that you would treat their heart gently—and would take on the sacred duty of doing the same for you.
“Well, I don’t wanna get all grandfatherly on you, but maybe you should. There’s nothing like being in love—even if it doesn’t last as long as you want it to.” Leo’s eyes shone as he looked up at the glamour portrait of his wife, Winnie, who watched over our mahjong games. They’d been quite the socialites on the jazz scene in the fifties and sixties, but their enviable romance (which I never got tired of hearing about) was cut short when Winnie died in a car accident at thirty-five. And more than fifty years later Leo still wore his wedding band. I think that’s another reason he and I got along so well—our grief could coexist. I loved that he’d kept his ring, even when people suggested it was time he took it off. It frustrated me that society was so determined to quantify grief, as if time could erase the potency of love. Or, on the other hand, how it dictated that grief for someone you knew fleetingly should be equally as fleeting. But while a mother who miscarries might not have ever had the chance to hold that child, they had plenty of time to love them, to dream and hope for them. And that means their grief is twofold—they’re not just grieving the child, but the life they never got to experience.
Who are we to tell anyone their pain isn’t worthy?
Leo blew a kiss in Winnie’s direction then went back to frowning at his tiles. “You know, everyone talks about how they want to live forever, but they don’t think about what it’s like when your wife and all your friends are dead, and you’re the only one left. It’s lonely.”
An ache welled in my chest. I didn’t need to live forever to know what loneliness felt like.
* * *
I stood at my stove later that night, warming milk for hot chocolate and ruminating on my conversation with Leo. As well versed as I was in the intricacies of fictional romantic love, I had yet to master it in real life. Or, more specifically, yet to even experience it. My imagination, on the other hand, needed only a glance or a brushing of shoulders to ignite the fuse of a daydreamed crush. I’d had many of those over the years—baristas, librarians, bus drivers, supermarket cashiers—but most of the time, they didn’t even notice I existed. And I was too shy to try to get their attention; I wasn’t sure I was even worthy of it. So instead, I preferred to live in my head, observing the people around me, and on screens, living vicariously through their relationships. It was safer that way.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled the steam from the milk and cinnamon as it bubbled in a low simmer in the copper saucepan. The handle bore tarnish marks in two distinct places, the result of three decades of use between me and Grandpa. The creamy brown liquid formed a meditative spiral as I poured it from the puckered side of the saucepan.
As I clasped my hands around the ceramic mug, a familiar longing niggled at me. An incongruous tug-of-war between the need for solitude and the craving for emotional connection—I didn’t want company, but I didn’t want to feel alone.
I positioned a chair at the corner of the window, then rested my mug on the sill and wrapped myself in the alpaca blanket. Extinguishing all the living room lights, leaving only the spillover of the streetlamp, I slowly pulled up the blinds so that the movement was imperceptible from the outside. George ambled over, ready to assume his role in this routine he knew well. I pulled him onto my lap and lifted the binoculars to my eyes.
The light of the living room opposite burned bright, like a lighthouse to my ship. There they were, as usual around this time of night, seated at right angles to each other at their dining table.
Julia and Reuben.
Not their real names, of course. At least, probably not their real names; I’d never actually met them. But I knew them intimately. I knew that Reuben did most of the cooking, but Julia always chose the wine—usually a red—and drank two glasses to his one. That they always stopped for a brief kiss during dinner, like a palate cleanser between the salad and the main course. That when they watched TV on the sofa—Reuben always to Julia’s left—he would absent-mindedly rub circles on her back while she would comb her fingers tenderly through his hair.
Tonight I watched as Reuben embraced Julia from behind as she did the dishes, reaching his arm around to pull a stray curl from her eyes so that she wouldn’t need to use her wet, gloved hands. Then later, the way they alternated dipping their spoons into the shared tub of ice cream as the opening credits of a movie flickered against their faces. I thrived on their intimate bond—a love that was implied rather than declared—as if it belonged to me.
Gradually, the longing in my chest began to subside.
16
I get it. It’s a little strange that I’m thirty-six and don’t have any friends except for my eighty-seven-year-old neighbor. For anyone who’s always had friends, it’s probably hard to imagine how someone could go through life without any. But it’s actually easier than you might think. The truth is, the solitary life snuck up on me. Kind of like how innocuous drips of water can suddenly become a problematic puddle.
Humans find comfort in habit—that’s why you can understand people from their patterns, as Grandpa taught me. The trouble is, once you think you understand something or someone, you’re usually reluctant to question that assumption. I didn’t spend all my school lunchtimes under a tree with a book because I didn’t like my classmates. I did it because reading felt like the greatest adventure—a way of traveling to new worlds and seeing life through other people’s eyes. In my mind, I was an intrepid explorer, but my classmates’ assumption was that I was a weird loner. And since they didn’t engage with me, I didn’t try to engage with them.
To be fair, my fascination with death didn’t help matters—especially during high school. It probably wasn’t smart to focus all three of my ninth-grade social studies projects on death. Or to write a poem for English class from the perspective of a mortician. But since death had shaped my life from the time I was five, I wanted to observe it, to decode it. I wanted to find sense in the thing that felt so senseless.
I did try to make a friend once in high school.
Priya’s family had moved to Manhattan from Singapore at the beginning of my tenth-grade year at Stuyvesant High School.
The afternoon the guidance counselor brought her to our social studies class, I’d been staring out the classroom window watching the thunderstorm clouds roll across the Hudson River. The room always had the same scent—the woody spice of pencil shavings competing with the wet-dog-like aroma of teenaged boys.
My heart leaped when the teacher directed Priya to the desk next to mine. The one that was always empty.
“Hey.” She smiled shyly as she slid into the chair.
“Hi,” I replied just as shyly, trying to hide my shock that she’d spoken to me. “It looks like it’s going to rain.”