“I like to put them on sometimes.”
“And here I didn’t get you anything. I’m just appalling.” She was crying, just a little. She looked up, meeting my eye. “You’re not the only one who blew it you know.”
“Liz?”
She reached out her hand touched my cheek. “It’s funny. You can live your whole life and then suddenly know that you didn’t do it right at all.”
I wrapped her fingers with my own. Outside, the snow fell upon the sleeping city.
“You should kiss me,” she said.
“Do you want me to?”
“I think that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”
I did. I brought my mouth to hers. It was a soft, quiet kiss—peaceful would be the word—the kind that obliterates the world and makes all time turn around it. Infinity in a moment, the hem of creation brushing the face of the waters.
“I should stop,” I said.
“No, you shouldn’t.” She began to unbutton her blouse. “Just please be careful with me. I’m kind of breakable, you know.”
21
We became lovers. I don’t think I’d ever truly understood the word. I don’t mean just sex, though there was that—unhurried, meticulous, a form of passion I had never known existed. I mean that we lived as richly as two people ever could, with a feeling of absolute rightness. We left the apartment only to walk. A deep cold had followed the snow, sealing the city in whiteness. Jonas’s name was never mentioned. It wasn’t a subject we were avoiding. It had simply ceased to matter.
We both knew she would have to return eventually; she could not simply step out of her life. Nor could I imagine the two of us being apart for one minute of the time she had left. I believed she felt the same. I wanted to be there when it happened. I wanted to be touching her, holding her hand, telling her how much I loved her as she faded away.
One morning the week after Christmas, I awoke in bed alone. I found her in the kitchen, sipping tea, and knew what she was about to tell me.
“I have to go back.”
“I know,” I said. “Where?”
“Greenwich first. My mother must be worried. Then Boston, I suppose.” She didn’t have to say more; her meaning was plain. Jonas would be home soon.
“I understand,” I said.
We took a cab to Grand Central. Few words had been spoken since her announcement. I felt like I was being taken to face a firing squad. Be brave, I told myself. Be the sort of man who stands tall with his eyes open, waiting for the guns’ report.
Her train was called. We walked to the platform where it awaited. She put her arms around me and began to cry. “I don’t want to do this,” she said.
“Then don’t. Don’t get on the train.”
I felt her hesitancy. Not just the words; I felt it in her body. She couldn’t make herself let go.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
People were hurrying past. The customary announcement crackled overhead: All aboard for New Haven, Bridgeport, Westport, New Canaan, Greenwich … A door was closing; soon it would be sealed.
“Then come back. Do what you have to do, and then come back. We can go someplace.”
“Where?”
“Italy, Greece. An island in the Pacific. It doesn’t matter. Somewhere nobody can find us.”
“I want to.”
“Say yes.”
A frozen moment; then she nodded against me. “Yes.”
My heart soared. “How long do you need to tie things up?”
“A week. No, two.”
“Make it ten days. Meet me here, under the clock. I’ll have everything ready.”
“I love you,” she said. “I think I did from the start.”
“I loved you even before that.”
A last kiss, she stepped toward the train, then turned and embraced me again.
“Ten days,” she said.
I made ready. There were things I needed to do. I composed a hasty email to my dean, requesting a leave of absence. I wouldn’t be around to know if it had been accepted, but I hardly cared. I could imagine no life beyond the next six months.
I called a friend who was an oncologist. I explained the situation, and he told me what would happen. Yes, there would be pain, but mostly a slow receding.
“It’s not something you should manage on your own,” he said. When I didn’t reply, he sighed. “I’ll phone in a prescription.”
“For what?”
“Morphine. It will help.” He paused. “At the end, you know, a lot of people take more than they should, strictly speaking.”