“If you want to talk . . . ,” they say.
I don't. I really don't have anything to say. Because after the shock of my fainting spell, the most surprising thing to me has been how little I feel about William's death at all.
the sixteenth
Dexy is mourning enough for the both of us. She's been in full Jackie O. funeral regalia, widow's veil and all, ever since it happened.
“I don't know how you're managing,” Dexy said over coffee at Tom's, in the grave tone she has adopted of late.
“Dexy, we weren't that close,” I said, stirring in my sugar. “I know it's not in good form to speak ill of the dead and all, but the truth is, he really got on my nerves.”
“But you hooked up with him!”
“And I've regretted it ever since!”
“But you hooked up with him and now he's dead,” she said, stating the obvious.
“You make it sound like I killed him,” I said. “Like he died of a heart attack while we were having sex, like a billionaire geezer in a bad movie.”
“But still,” Dexy intoned. “No guy I've ever hooked up with is dead.”
I wanted to point out that there was no way she could possibly know this, as cataloging her sexual conquests would require the invention of complex bioinformatic databases by some of the world's top statisticians. Fortunately, some of them teach here at this very university, so maybe we could get them on it.
“We should have gone to his funeral,” she said.
“It was in Texas!”
“I feel bad about it,” she said, her eyes wet with tears.
“That's exactly why I want to be cremated,” I said. “I don't want a funeral, and I definitely don't want to be buried in a cemetery because I don't want anyone feeling guilty about not visiting my grave.”
Those last words triggered something in my brain that impelled me to look at my watch, which, in turn, provoked a succession of matter-of-fact observations: Today is August 16. It would have been Matthew's twenty-fourth birthday but it's not, because he—like William—is dead. Right now my parents are in Pineville mourning Matthew. And I am here.
I neglected to share this with Dexy, who had begun singing somberly, horribly.
“It seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind . . .”
As I listened to Dexy, it dawned on me that she didn't know I was in Pineville last month until I called her, and I'd already been there for more than a week. I could have just as easily been dead in my room from natural causes, but she was too busy to worry.
“Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did . . .”
Even though she's my closest friend at school right now, I've accepted that I'll never be able to rely on Dexy. Which makes me wonder: How long would it take for someone to find me? And who would that someone be? Who would miss me enough to come looking for me?
And what does it mean when the only people who come to mind—Hope and Marcus—are the two people I am least likely to see, for reasons that are entirely of my own doing?
the twentieth
William's death has really been a buzzkill on the adulterous banter. Bastian, like everyone else, is making way more out of my relationship with William than is deserved, so he's keeping a respectful distance. The more I insist I'm fine, the more he insists I'm hiding my grief.
“What does my face say?” I asked today.
He inspected my features.
“It says that you are trying too hard to look relaxed.”
“Aha!” I cried, pointing an accusatory finger. “I'm always trying too hard to look relaxed. That's my natural state. Which just proves that I'm fine.”
“You are . . .” He paused to choose his words carefully. “Complicated.”
I tried not to get too turned off by the fact that the only other person who has described me in that same way was my mother.
When I got back to the dorm, I found a note on my door from Dexy: CRISIS!!! This wasn't unusual. She was often leaving one-word cries for help on my door. HELP!!! YIKES!!! AGONY!!! DRAMA!!! None of which ever lived up to the exclamation points.
“Bastian called me complicated,” I said, breezing through her door. “You know who else calls me complicated? My mom. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think a potential lover should remind me of my mom. And if you start singing Avril Lavigne, our friendship is over . . .”
It wasn't until I was in her room that I noticed something was odd: Dexy was crouched on the corner of her stripped bed, wearing gray yoga pants and a T-shirt, her hair in an unkempt ponytail. It was the most unassuming, un-Dexylike outfit I'd ever seen on her. And the walls—usually strung up with Christmas lights and strings of beads and feather boas and other spangled, glittering personifications of Dexy herself—were bare. And then there were the lumpy garbage bags on the floor, stuffed with what I could only assume was the aforementioned wall décor and the contents of her now empty closets.
“Dexy, what's going on?”
“I have to leave,” she said in a childlike voice. Her face was as red and raw as a skinned tomato. She was rocking back and forth and back and forth. With each swing of her body, the bed squeaked as if in pain.
“What?!” I asked as I sat next to her on the flimsy mattress.
“This whole Mini Dub thing has really . . . freaked me out,” she said, her eyes wild, like every mug shot on the serial killer trading cards.
I was willing to put up with all her Jackie O. bullshit. I knew I had to tolerate some over-the-top overtures if I wanted to be friends with someone like Dexy. After all, her exuberance is a considerable part of her appeal because it's so lacking in myself. But I'd had it. This was taking the grief a bit too far.
“Dexy!” I yelled, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Enough with all the death drama!”
She lazily turned to look at me, almost as an afterthought.
“There's a lot you don't know about me,” she said in a hollow voice.
And that's when I learned everything I should have already known about someone I called a friend.
Dexy is bipolar, clinically so, and not in that casual way that people (like me) use to describe moody people (also like me). I knew Dexy has been taking meds for years—far beyond the usual Prozac and Ritalin, Strattera and Concerta—stuff I've never heard of and I'm a Psychology major. But it didn't seem like a huge deal. Sure, she popped more pills in a day than I have in my entire life, but a dependency on pharmaceuticals is hardly uncommon around here. In fact, I'd always had a perverse sense of pride in knowing I was one of the few people at school who didn't medicate my chronic blues, choosing to feel sad and real rather than happy and fake. And when Dexy popped a few extra Adderall to zoom through midterms and finals, I didn't blink. I don't know if it's the jaded influence of New York, of Columbia, or of college in general, but as I've said before, behaviors that would have been troubling in high school pass as normal now. I mean, I used to be really worried about my chronic insomnia. But here, no one thinks twice about not going to sleep until the sky whispers a purple-pink hint of a sunrise.
So I listened while Dexy taught me the difference between a few harmless personality quirks and mania. When I was sixteen, I was saddened when Hope moved away, but I never seriously considered suicide. When Dexy was sixteen, she was saddened when her first boyfriend dumped her, so she washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with vodka. She passed out, puked it up, and was put into a psychiatric hospital for three months. When she came out, she channeled her excess energy into creating characters and costumes, a different persona she could pretend to be every day because it was easier than being herself. She learned to always keep busy, so she would never be quiet enough to listen to her own dark thoughts. She put on a good front. And the prescriptions, combined with regular appointments with a psychologist, had kept her fairly stabilized throughout the remainder of her high school years. Enough to convince her parents to let her go to Columbia, only a short train ride away. And she had thrived here, which she
attributes to being intellectually stimulated for the first time in her life.
But William's death changed that.
She admitted that the widowlike mourning was a pose, one that helped her think of William as a character and not a genuine person. But then the reality of his death set in and she got wrapped up in a heavy mantle of sadness.
“He died, J,” she said. “He was alive, and now he's dead. Who's to say that the same can't happen to me tomorrow?”
“It won't . . .”
“You don't know that,” she said with finality. “And the only way to solve the problem about uncertain death is to put matters into my own hands. Suicide started making a lot of sense again . . .”
“This is all happening so fast,” I cut in, breathless with tears. “You were fine . . .”
She smiled wanly. “That's why it's called bipolar.”
“Why didn't you tell me this before?” I asked. “I would've looked out for you . . .”
“You were looking out for me, J.” She rested her head on my shoulder. “As much as I'd allow it.”
That's what all love comes down to, doesn't it? We help others only as much as they let us.
Fortunately, Dexy had the presence of mind to help herself. She called her shrink, who called her parents, who were already on their way from their home in Bucks County when I arrived. I sat with her until they showed up and they were exactly like Dexy had described—two polite, nondescript people as plain as Dexy was flamboyant. In the waiting hours, I encouraged her to sing every song that popped into her head, as loudly as she wanted to.
And I'd never heard such a beautiful noise.
the twenty-ninth
The whole city has been paralyzed by the stampede of elephants and those who protest them. Aka the Republican National Convention. Any strange public behavior can be interpreted by the police as red alert terrorist activity, so we've been advised to temporarily suspend the Storytelling Project until the GOP is G-O-N-E. This is absolutely absurd. I would go off on fascism masquerading as national security but out of respect for William, I'll stop myself.
Besides, I've got something more important to write about.
Because today was the last day of the Storytelling Project for the summer until it resumes a few weeks into the fall semester, Bastian and I commemorated the occasion by returning to our very first spot: the corner of 110th and Amsterdam. About two hours into our final shift, we were revisited by one of our most colorful characters.
“You hippies came back!” gurgled the old man, still in his fedora. “Lights, camera, action! I've got a doozy of a story for you!”
What brought on this change of heart, I'll never know. But this unlikely source provided us with the most poignant story I've ever heard, in or out of the Storytelling Project. I wish I could tell it the way he did, and I almost kept the tape for myself but I thought the Project would suffer for my selfishness. So here's my version of the story, with as few embellishments as possible.
Henry's Story
When Henry McGlinchy was a young boy growing up in the 1920s, he had a huge crush on a silent movie actress named Lulu Livingstone. A delicate wisp of a girl, Lulu was every black-caped villain's favorite victim in the Westerns Henry loved. She was a raven-haired lovely, prized for her delicate heart-shaped mouth and swanlike neck, rhapsodized over for her flawless porcelain skin and pleasing bosom. But despite her many virtues, it was Lulu's eyes that drew Henry in, eyes that sparkled with hope and wonder even when she was tied to a train track or barreling toward a cliff in a runaway stagecoach.
Henry was so smitten with Lulu he was inspired to write a letter professing his undying love in the way that only six-year-old boys can: Your verry prety. I love you. He sent it to the address he found in the back of his mother's PhotoPlay magazine, c/o Columbia Pictures, hoping against hope that he would hear from his beloved. Every day little Henry ran to meet the mailman, eager to see if today was the day that his affections had been returned. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, until one day, nearly a year after he had sent his epistle, his mailbox vigil was rewarded with a jumbo envelope with a return address from Hollywood, California. Young Henry tore open the envelope faster than any birthday present he'd ever gotten. Inside was an 8 × 10 glossy photo of Lulu's gorgeous face, and a personal message signed in large, looping letters in genuine ink: Dearest Henry, it said. You're the gnat's whistle! Love, Lulu.
Henry, now all of seven years old, treasured this photo more than anything else, more than his trick yo-yo, his Lionel train set, his Babe Ruth baseball card. He pinned it to the wall above his bed. Every night, he knelt on the floor and spoke to her like he was supposed to be speaking to God. “I love you, Lulu” were, for a long time, the last words he whispered before falling asleep.
Years passed and both Henry and Lulu grew older. Lulu's Hollywood career was curtailed by the emergence of the talkies, as they cruelly exposed that she had a rather strident, nasally voice that was unpleasing to the ears. Her popularity quickly waned, and by the mid-1930s, she could no longer be found onscreen or in the pages of any magazines.
Henry wasn't so fickle. In fact, Lulu's absence only made his ardor grow stronger. Her picture stayed on his wall all throughout his childhood and adolescence. It became a sort of curio among his family and friends, a relic from a bygone era, a conversation piece. But to Henry, it meant so much more. It meant hope and wonder. And so, it was one of the few personal items he took with him when he was deployed to the South Pacific during World War II. Other guys could have their Betty Grables and Rita Hayworths—for Henry, it was all about Lulu Livingstone. And he took the photo with him to New York City when he enrolled at Columbia University, courtesy of the GI bill. And it was with him even when he met, married, and moved in with Barnard College student Edna Goldblatt. Edna, a sturdy, wide-hipped blonde who looked nothing like Lulu, made light of her husband's adoration, and even had the old 8 × 10 framed. Throughout their fifty-seven-year marriage, until her death from ovarian cancer at age seventy-nine, Edna cheekily referred to the woman in the photo as her husband's “girlfriend.”
After Edna's death, Henry had no desire to stay in their sprawling house on Long Island. So he moved into an assisted-living community in Morningside Heights near his oldest daughter, who happened to be a professor at his alma mater. There, as one of the healthier, more mobile men in the community, Henry kept his own room and a number of fawning old biddies at bay. In that apartment, among numerous photos of his adored wife, four children, eleven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, was that old 8 × 10 glossy of Lulu Livingstone. It was badly faded after all these years, the message only legible to those who already knew what it said. But Henry gave it a special place away from all the rest, on the kitchenette counter next to his heart pills.
One day, about a month into his new residence, Henry didn't make it to breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Concerned, one of the on-call nurses, Dora, came by his room to see if he was okay, or more specifically, still alive. Henry was still indeed breathing, feeling fine, but had decided to make his meals for himself that day because he wasn't in the mood to fend off the advances of the lusty ladies in the dining room. On the way out of his apartment, Dora spotted the picture of Lulu on the counter and stopped in her tracks. She'd seen this photo before in one of the other residents' rooms. Had Henry, she asked, ever met a woman named Lucille Greene?
Her hair was brittle and white. Her skin was mottled with spots. Her bosom had shrunk, her neck hung loose. Her lips were concealed by an oxygen mask. But her eyes, oh, her eyes were unchanged, still radiant with hope and wonder, despite being confined to the bed.
Just one look and Henry knew that this old woman was Lulu Livingstone.
For the next two months, Henry visited Lulu every day. He wheeled her around the halls, cut up her food, changed the channels, read books, played music, kept silent company while she slept. But most important, he entertained her with stories about his life. After a few weeks, Henr
y felt brave enough to show her the cherished photo and Lulu blushed with coy embarrassment over his devotion. It was that afternoon he also mustered the courage to say, “I love you, Lulu,” as he had so many times before, alone in the dark. But this was the first time those worshipped lips responded in kind. “And I love you, Henry.”
They talked of marriage, but only in the abstract way one talks about things that will never come to fruition. They both knew what would come next, but never talked about it, choosing instead to spend their limited time together in happiness. And they did, until the morning that Lulu Livingstone died in Henry McGlinchy's arms, barely two months after they had finally met, and eighty years after Henry had first pledged his love.
When he was done with his story, all of us, Henry, Bastian, and I, had lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes. Finally, after a few moments of reverential silence, this ornery old man took off his crumpled hat, held it to his heart, and spoke.
“Love,” he said, “has the longest arms.” And then he walked downtown.
My tears turned to sobs. Heavy, heaving, heaping sobs. I wish I could say it was because I was so moved by this man and the certainty with which he pursued this pure, devoted love, but I'd be lying.
Henry and Lulu made me start thinking about my grandmother Gladdie and Moe, her “beau” from the nursing home where she spent the last year of her life. They too met and fell in love in their nineties after a lifetime spent with someone else. Were they fortunate enough to find true love twice? Or were Henry and Lulu, Gladdie and Moe, passing the decades with someone merely good enough before they found the brief but true love they were always meant to have? I'll never know the answer. Even if I had been brave enough to ask Moe, he died less than six months after my grandmother. Both Gladdie and Moe are buried next to their spouses, separated for eternity.
Love may have the longest arms, but it can still fall short of an embrace. So I wasn't crying for Henry and Lulu. I was crying for Marcus and me.