Her voice trailed off as they both silently rejected the idea. It was two weeks after the terrorist attacks. With the smoke still billowing over lower Manhattan, who could fly anywhere, or would even want to?
“We’ll go to Vermont,” Melanie said. “Or the Berkshires or Saint Lawrence. We’ll take a nice trip somewhere. I haven’t had a vacation in years.”
He pushed up on his elbow, his other hand still running over her body. “I’d like to get you a ring,” he said. “Would a ring just be unbearably contrived? Sickeningly romantic?”
She kissed him. “You’re adorable. You know that?”
“So you tell me.”
She turned into him, burrowed her head against his chest. “I would love to have a ring.”
They got licenses, made an appointment at city hall and reservations for lunch afterward. They bought matching platinum bands. Erik owned one suit, and it was an embarrassment, so they went to get him a new one. Melanie bought a lovely sheath dress in ivory wool.
Erik’s mother would come, but his brother was participating in clinical trials for a new kind of cochlear implant and would be under the knife in Chicago. He and his wife sent their best wishes and a beautiful set of cast-iron skillets which Melanie all but took to bed with her.
“If you ever touch these with soap, I will beat you senseless.”
So it was Christine Fiskare and Melanie’s sister, Julia, who would stand up with them. The only other guests were Miles and Janey Kelly. The night before, Erik approached Melanie as she strode from closet to dresser to suitcase, packing for the trip they had booked to the Thousand Islands.
“You proposed in bed, so I can give you this in the closet.” He took her left hand, slid on the ring he had secretly bought under Miles’s guidance. A small square diamond in a simple platinum setting. Straightforward. Just like Melanie.
She gazed at it a moment, her lips quivering. She looked sideways at him with bright, brimming eyes. “You’re not even kneeling.”
Smiling, he put a knee down. Then he put the other knee down and the smile faded. He sat back on his heels, palms open and empty in his lap, gripped by the moment. He looked up at her. Couldn’t think of anything not contrived or sugary, so he tried to let his eyes say it all.
This is me. This is all I am. It’s damaged and flawed and parts of it are buried and secret and frustrating to you. I’m not a dream or a prize.
Will you have me?
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you.”
Her hand caressed his hair. “While you’re down there…”
He’s Not Here Today
“The Man I Love”
Transcript from the National Public Radio series, Moments in Time April 27, 2002
Karen Stark: You’re listening to Moments in Time. I’m Karen Stark, thanks for joining us.
April brings a tragic pair of anniversaries to the country. Last Saturday, the twentieth, marked the three-year anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, an ordeal still fresh in our minds. And the day before, April 19th, was the anniversary of the shootings at Lancaster University in Pennsylvania. It has now been ten years since the massacre left seven dead and fifteen wounded, stunning the nation with its chilling randomness.
NPR correspondent Camberley Jones covered the Lancaster shootings in 1992 for our sister station WHPA. She went back to the university last weekend, where a memorial ceremony took place, attended by students, survivors, and victims’ loved ones. The event culminated with the re-dedication of the theater, in the name of a beloved professor who was killed that fateful day.