My window

Keep writing about him, she said (3)

Among the images in our family album is one of you beaming in a snazzy suit. Good teeth, Pat. You’re at my first wedding, in my mother and stepfather’s front room on Dec. 21, 1979.

Forty-six years later, to the day, you will die suddenly.

Shouldn’t I be more familiar with grief by now? What I’m familiar with is the jolt of strangeness and pain, threaded with a recognizable element yet new each time.

The past couple of weeks I am aware of having dreams but they seem to be underway in an adjacent room of (un)consciousness, like a sedate social gathering that prefers not to disturb me.

But two nights ago:

I’m living with a woman in her apartment, a spacious, light-filled loft. The rental unit is located in a posh, bustling hotel. Very comfortable we are with each other. The arrangement feels like it could become permanent. She talks with me a lot and seems to regard me fondly but with a certain distance.

Someone visits, a male acquaintance of hers, and I feel self-conscious when he notices our empty wine bottles strewn around. I gather them into plastic bags. I ask if there’s a Dumpster.

From a wide, upholstered chair she gazes at me, pauses, and says the name of a man who works at the hotel and “takes care of that.” By her voice and the way she holds herself, she seems to be implying that this matter is something I needn’t be concerned about. That I’m focused on the wrong thing.

Then she is talking to someone else, a member of the hotel staff. She speaks to him pleasantly and fast. “But maybe I’m just being ___,” she says, using an odd word like “kettish.” She makes joke after joke with him. She knows I am overhearing. I don’t laugh. She’s aware that I know the jokes are funny, but that for me to react is not necessary as a demonstration. We are on that kind of terms. Witty banter is simply her way. I want to take her face in my hands and kiss her.

Next I am moving briskly through the busy hotel. I pass a rotund waiter who says to me in a mock-serious way, “Well good morning again, sir!”

Then I am in a bathroom stall, finishing up. The door is locked and I can hear all the commotion on the other side. Men packed together, men coughing and blowing snot, men lined up at the urinals grunting and farting, too late now but I could never be gay.

I’m fastening my belt when, sure enough, some guy manages to get the door open. Seeing me, he retreats and mutters a non-sorry apology. Which registers with me, but I’m intent on ignoring him. I zip and leave.

My friend Sue – your friend as well, Pat - emails me. “When my girls were younger and there were loud arguments while trapped in the car and I couldn’t get them to stop, I remember rolling down the window as if all the words would fly out the window, bypassing my ears. It did not work but I felt it helped. Talking and writing can be your window.”

Chris, another friend emails (does he know about you? I can’t be sure). “I really do appreciate the decades of your humanity you’ve shared with me. I love you more than you know. Next time I head South, I’m contacting you in advance so you can make room for me on your dance card.” I don’t dance no more, as Russell Smith sang with the Amazing Rhythm Aces, a few years before that image was captured. Your dazzling teeth, today bones in a box of ash. Instead of dance I shuffle, from my chair to the punch bowl and back.