ANNA WOKE FROM A muggy, fitful sleep, the only possible kind of sleep in a hotel room in the afternoon of a late October day next to a lover you care nothing about. She took a moment to stretch and adjust her eyes. She looked to the clock. It was a quarter past four. Shit, shit, shit. Karl groaned, then sat up in bed.
“Is something immoral?” Anna guessed the word he meant to use was “wrong,” but it didn’t matter. In this case he was correct on both fronts. She dressed very quickly, put on her shoes, and grabbed her bag with every intention of leaving as she arrived, without fanfare. As she moved toward the door she pulled her cell phone out of her bag to check for messages.
The small red light blinked hotly. She’d missed thirty-two calls.
An unseen hand pierced her heart with an unseen sword. No. Anna let her bag fall to the floor. “Is okay?” Karl was fastening his jeans. Anna didn’t answer him. She scrolled through the list. Ursula had called. Then Bruno. Then it was Ursula, Ursula, Ursula, Bruno, Mary, Bruno, Daniela. The list of missed calls seemed endless.
“I turned my ringer off.” Anna said it to herself. There were messages. Her hand shook. Her fingers couldn’t find the buttons. But they did. They had to. Anna listened to the last one first. It was Bruno. His voice was rabid with sobs. Anna. Come home, please. You have to come home. Now, Anna. Come home now. “I have to go.” Anna said it even as she snatched her bag and bolted through the hall and down the stairs and into the waning day. A taxicab would be quickest. She ran across the street to the Kloten station and hurled herself into the first cab she came to. Dietlikon. She was out of breath. She spoke between gasps. Dee. Et. Li. Kon. The cab driver didn’t seem to understand. Dietlikon! She yelled and kicked the back of his seat. This got his attention. He put the car into gear and pulled into the street without looking.
november
18
TEARS ARE WET BUT THEY AREN’T WATER. BOTH LIQUID AND potable, it is possible to freeze them and, as is said, to drown in them. But they aren’t water. Theirs is a chemistry of fat, sugar, salt, antibodies, minerals, and at least a dozen other substances native to a living body, which, for the remainder of this digression, we will presume to be human.
There are three kinds of tears.
Tears that serve only to moisten the eye are called basal tears and they lubricate the lids like oil on a hinge. The tears known as reflex tears erupt when irritants like dust or onion vapors aggravate the eye. And while they may also flow when a person yawns or coughs, the particular function of reflex tears is to wash and clean. Their purpose is ablution.
The tears that come from pain are psychic tears and these need not be analyzed.
There are three kinds of grief.
The first is anticipatory. This is hospice grief. Prognostic grief. This is the grief that comes when you drive your dog to the vet for the very last time. This is the death row inmate’s family’s grief. See that pain in the distance? It’s on its way. This is the grief that it is somewhat possible to prepare for. You finish all business. You come to terms. Goodbyes are said and said again. Anguish stalks the chambers of your heart and you steel yourself for the impending presence of an everlasting absence. This grief is an instrument of torture. It squeezes and pulls and presses down.
Grief that follows an immediate loss comes on like a stab wound. This is the second kind of grief. It is a cutting pain and it is always a surprise. You never see it coming. It is a grief that can’t be bandaged. The wound is mortal and yet you do not die. That is its own impossible agony.
But grief is not simple sadness. Sadness is a feeling that wants nothing more than to be sat with, held, and heard. Grief is a journey. It must be moved through. With a rucksack full of rocks, you hike through a black, pathless forest, brambles about your legs and wolf packs at your heels.
The grief that never moves is called complicated grief. It doesn’t subside, you do not accept it, and it never—it never—goes to sleep. This is possessive grief. This is delusional grief. This is hysterical grief. Run if you will, this grief is faster. This is the grief that will chase you and beat you.
This is the grief that will eat you.
HE HADN’T BEEN PAYING attention.
He hadn’t been paying attention and he ran into the street.
What had they been playing, Charles and Victor? Was it cops and robbers? Tag? Red light, green light? Anna didn’t think children played those games anymore. Maybe they had just been chasing each other around in happy circles. The brothers played well together almost half of the time. Maybe this was one of those halves, Anna thought. As if knowing that made much difference, if any at all.
It didn’t.