Losing Julia Read online

  She looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before, excitement tugging at the corners of her eyes, as though she had suddenly found something she was looking for. Then she stood and leaned against a birch tree, her arms stretched behind her around the trunk, and said, “When I was in Paris I went to the Louvre. It was my first visit. I was overwhelmed!”

  I could see it immediately in her eyes and I thought of how wonderful it would be to wander through the Louvre with her, arm in arm and painting by painting, and then sit by the Seine and watch the world from the safety of our togetherness.

  “I spent all day wandering up and down the hallways, staring at the Mona Lisa and Canova’s Psyche and Cupid and the Venus de Milo and Caravaggio’s The Death of the Virgin and hundreds of other works in all shapes and sizes and colors. My feet were killing me. And just before I was about to leave, I was staring at Michelangelo’s The Dying Slave, and I suddenly realized that every single work I had seen expressed the same thing, the same intense longing for beauty and immortality and justice and compassion. It was as though all of these artists from throughout history were there in those long hallways crying out the same anguished plea in a thousand different languages. I burst into tears and started running. I just had to get out.”

  I said nothing as I watched the beautiful woman with tears in her green eyes running from the Louvre and then through the Tuileries, disappearing in a crowd.

  “After that I didn’t feel so alone anymore. Suddenly I realized that the deepest, most, indescribable parts of my soul had been felt and understood and transcribed by these artists. But it made me sad too, because I realized that that is the best we can do: to express our longings and pain. We can never stop it.”

  “But is everything in the Louvre so sad?”

  “Most of it seemed sad to me. Exquisitely sad, because it was so beautiful too. The entire human soul is on display there. It’s all said.”

  “And the comfort is in knowing that it’s been said.”

  She nodded. “And when I thought of what it took to make those works, painting or sculpting by candlelight with tired limbs and strained eyes, well I knew those artists must have been suffering tremendously deep inside. Can’t you see them, toiling away all their lives because they have to?”

  I tried, but I kept coming back to her smile and then the tears and the woman fleeing from the Louvre.

  DANIEL AND I were foraging for apples in an orchard when we came across a wrecked Fokker, the front end smashed into the ground and the tail pointing in the air. The pilot was still in his seat, slumped forward and covered with flies. We both peered into the cockpit but the smell drove us away.

  “How long you figure he’s been here?” I said, walking slowly around the plane and staring at the big black crosses painted on the tail and wings and fuselage, which was punctured by a row of bullet holes.

  “Couple of days,” said Daniel, inserting his finger into one of the bullet holes.

  Neither of us had seen a plane up close before and we spent several minutes studying it and running our hands along it and tapping it with our boots, as though we’d come across the carcass of a predator that we weren’t convinced was dead.

  “I wonder if he’s one of those famous aces?” I asked, looking again at the pilot, whose face was so mangled that I had to turn away.

  Daniel shrugged. “We should bury him.”

  “You’re joking?” Though I knew immediately that he wasn’t.

  Daniel pulled out the small trench shovel from his pack, walked a few paces from the plane and began digging. We switched off every twenty minutes until we had a carved out a shallow but serviceable grave.

  Then we crawled through the wreckage of the fuselage until we were on either side of the pilot. Grabbing him under the armpits, we counted to three and heaved. He didn’t budge. We shifted positions, then tried again, squinching our faces at the smell and trying to blow away the flies.

  “It’s useless,” I said, jumping down off the wreckage after we’d struggled for fifteen minutes. “His legs are trapped.”

  “We’ve got to get him out,” said Daniel, yanking again on the pilot’s arm.

  “What does it matter? Christ, the guy’s dead.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to be buried?”

  “I’m not sure I’d give a shit,” I said. Did I? Neither option seemed appealing.

  Daniel crawled up on the fuselage, then stood above and behind the pilot and began pulling frantically at his coat. “Come on, damn it!” He yanked again and again, until the sweat was pouring down his face, then finally he let go and smashed his fist against the plane. Then he slid down against the side of the wreckage and buried his hand in the crook of his elbow.

  I’d never seen him lose control before and it unnerved me, like a child seeing his father cry. I went over to him and put my arm on his shoulder. “Come on,” I said. “Time to go.”

  Daniel banged his free hand against the side of the plane again. I could see his shoulders shaking.

  After a few minutes of silence he slowly stood up, packed his shovel and picked up his sack of apples. Then we walked on through the orchard and to the road and headed back to camp.

  My senses are charred; I don’t take the cigarette out of my mouth when I write Deceased over their letters.

  —Wilfred Owen, British Army, in a letter home.

  Killed in action, 1918, seven days before the Armistice.

  I SKIPPED dinner last night. Instead I sat in my room at my desk and worked on a drawing of Julia. I thought I had something for a while, at least the mouth and the high curve of the cheekbones. Then it fell apart on me so that I couldn’t even look at it anymore. I put it into my drawer, next to the others. Then I went outside and sat and looked up at the stars until my neck ached.

  Ever since I was a child, stars have made me feel wonderfully insignificant. Maybe it’s because the heavens are one of the few things large enough to dwarf my own problems, to place even my acute anxiety into some perspective. I’m quite content to feel diminished if my problems are equally demeaned, which is why I love oceans and hate Sunday nights.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. In the vast darkness I saw my grandmother sitting next to me on the front porch, rocking. She held my hand in hers and sang, “I see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody I’d like to see… ”

  I opened my eyes and wrapped my sweater tight and stared at the flickering pinpoints above, feeling the chronology of my life tumble out of order. I could be eight years old now, or twelve, or twenty-four, or thirty-four, or fifty-eight; the stars look exactly the same. How many other things in our lives remain constant even as we decay? Not enough.

  Do I want an epitaph? I made a note to think about whether I might be willing to hang my hat on a pithy phrase for eternity, though I doubt it. What on earth would I say? THE JIG IS UP?

  I read once that the sun will expire in about five billion years. Not an immediate concern but I can’t help wondering: if we knew for certain that the human race and all we’ve created would eventually be destroyed in a great big solar surgical scrub, would it change anything? Certainly all of the world’s problems would suddenly be cast in a more temporary light, though the same would be true for the planet’s rain forests and art treasures. The knowledge of our ultimate annihilation would be no small blow to our illusions of self-importance and would make our Darwinian scramble to pass on our genes laughable. (After all, who would want their offspring to be around when the lights go out?)

  I turned and looked through the large window into the recreation room, which glowed with a yellow warmth. It was bingo night and the white-haired men and women were hunched over their tables trying to find a three or an eight or a seven and I could tell by the way some of them looked sideways at each other that there was some confusion as to which numbers had actually been called and what game was actually being played. Then I saw Mitzie walk in and sit down with the slow, hydraulic movements of old age, and I thought of he
r dreaming of gentlemen callers who never called.

  Returning to my room I walked past wheelchairs parked every which way, as though left over from some ancient and catastrophic traffic jam. Their drivers sat immobile, urine- scented blankets—the teddy bears of old age—draped over their laps. Urine and floor cleaner, that’s the smell, with a trace of Bactine or some similar antiseptic. I tapped my cane softly on the floor as I zigzagged past, feeling remarkably nimble under the circumstances. The few other patients in motion moved so slowly that they appeared to be some sort of special effect, while the nurses and visitors looked almost Chaplinesque in comparison.

  First I washed my hands, and then I carefully unbuttoned my shirt and hung it on the first hook in my closet, next to my blue blazer. After putting on the top to my pajamas—plain, light blue cotton with ridiculously large buttons—I sat back on my bed and struggled with my pants. Finally I got back up and brushed what’s left of my teeth before returning to bed with a half glass of water. Martin was already asleep, flat on his back with the sheets tucked under his armpits and his bare arms resting on his stomach. Too tired even to read, I lay on my back and pulled the covers tightly to my chin. Then I closed my eyes and listened, first to the sounds of the hallway, the sounds of footsteps and muffled conversation; then to the sounds of my body itself. Gradually, as the sound of my breathing grew louder, I felt myself falling backward into oblivion, my arms cartwheeling in the air.

  Will I comport myself with some dignity at the end, the proper carriage and grace, or will I shriek in holy terror like one of those Rhesus monkeys locked in some university basement with electrodes implanted on their exposed brains? More likely I will expire like most everyone else at Great Oaks: routinely and even meekly, my final diminuendo barely noticed. Then the sheet pulled over my head and away we go, the gurney squeaking down the hallway, my toes and nose jutting upward like goal posts as I’m hustled off to my eternal repose.

  And after that? Pure nothingness? Are we expunged from the very earth itself? (Well, at least I like to think that death brings about a cessation of both anxiety and diarrhea, which is no small victory.) Or can I somehow triumph even in death? Failing religion, which has always failed me, what’s the best I can do? Leave behind an achievement, some painting or structure that can withstand another couple of hundred years before it too succumbs? I haven’t the talent. Do my children assure me some kind of biological immortality (though I shall be dreadfully diluted in a few generations), and if so, shouldn’t I have scattered the seed with great profligacy? Or can I inoculate myself from extinction by sheer love? How about a noble deed or act of charity that might assure me goodwill beyond the grave, perhaps even a statue in the town square? Might I then be sustained as a fond memory in the hearts of others? What happens when those hearts fail, as they must?

  Certainly the problem with money is that you can’t take it with you, but that’s true for everything else as well: Mozart’s genius, friendships, love, a good recipe for crab cakes. And the more you have, the more you have to lose, which is why I no longer regret not learning a second language.

  I rolled to one side and then another but couldn’t get comfortable. I returned to my back but only briefly; ever since I was a child I have been unable to fall asleep in such an exposed position. Instead I curl up in a protective crouch as though bracing for blows. I think people who sleep on their backs are more confident than people who sleep on their sides and stomachs. Or maybe people who sleep on their backs are just asking for trouble.

  If I intended to be buried in a casket—and I don’t—I would insist on being placed on my side or stomach.

  I rolled back to my left side and thought that the whole business of dying would be a lot easier if we had someone to blame. Instead we spend our last days shadowboxing with the vagaries of modern medicine. Mass genocide with no accountability whatsoever. I want war criminals in dockets and tribunals and convictions of crimes against humanity. I want, at the very least, someone to wag my finger at.

  Dignity’s what I’m lacking, no doubt about it. Why should I babble and quake before the firing squad when I can stand unbowed, perhaps even cheating my assassins of their cheap thrills? Why not flip them the birdie and leave this earth with a defiant smirk on my face, like a martyr who refuses to change allegiance even at the stake?

  But a martyr for what? I’m tied to a stake with smoke filling the air and my lungs and my nostrils and I don’t even know the charges. What are the charges? Will somebody please read me the charges?

  CAMUS WROTE that man carries on a kind of “gloomy flirtation” with God. I have stopped flirting altogether.

  I WANTED to take hold of Julia but I didn’t. What would I do, just reach for her? Ask her? What would she do? Yet she was still grieving for Daniel, and I, well I was married. Maybe that’s why she felt comfortable with me. I was a safe man. Like a brother. But I hardly wanted to be seen like a brother. And the days were slipping by. Was it possible that she felt none of the attraction that overwhelmed me?

  She was quiet on the hike back to the car but on the drive to the hotel she told funny stories about her childhood, sometimes laughing so hard that she folded her hands tightly across her chest as though trying to keep herself from coming apart. All the sadness seemed to have fallen away from her so that she looked lighter as she talked, changing her voice to capture different characters and even singing bits of old songs. But as it got dark she grew silent again, concentrating on the single yellow flower she had picked from a field and now held by the stem with both hands.

  “I’ve enjoyed spending this time with you,” she said, turning toward me. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Neither will I.”

  “You’ll be glad to be back with your family.”

  I looked at her, about to say something. But no words came. I turned away.

  She spun the flower in her fingers. “I’ve decided that the preachers are right: if we can’t find meaning in our suffering we won’t find meaning in our lives. The pain just overwhelms everything.”

  “‘A deep distress hath humanized my soul.’”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Wordsworth.”

  “Say it again.”

  I did. Then I said, “I think he was saying that his own sadness or pain made him more sympathetic to what others go through; that suffering should bring us together, bring out the best in us.”

  I slowed the car as a farmer led a donkey across the street by a thick, frayed tether. To my right I noticed a small street sign with faded German lettering nailed against a white, mortared wall.

  After a moment Julia said, “I think that most people feel that their lives are private martyrdoms to some secret fear or passion.”

  I turned and looked at her. She held my gaze. “Can’t you see it in people, especially older people?” she asked, tilting her head slightly. “I saw it in my mother: in her eyes and the deliberate way she controlled her gestures and the way she walked with her neck straight and her chin up. Maybe that’s what courage and grace mean when we grow old; maybe they mean not talking about it.”

  ABOUT WHAT, Julia? What?

  “MARTIN?”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “You want me to call the nurse?”

  “No, I just wanted to say that I don’t feel so good.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you do. Too bad we didn’t meet earlier. We would have made great roommates. Can you imagine us with a nice walk-up in Greenwich Village? We would have had a good time, you and me. Think of the parties.”

  “But I was married then.”

  “I know you were. I’m just dreaming here,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m with you.”

  “You never complain, do you?”

  “No use in it.”

  “What do you think about, lying there?”

  “I don’t know. Places I’ve been, that sort of thing.”

  “No
thing in particular?”

  “No, not in particular. My mind sort of wanders.”

  “Yeah, mine too. After all these years I think of it as an old dog who still explores every inch of the backyard each day even though he’s been living there for years. He trots back and forth, smelling the same old bushes and the trees and checking for openings in the fence.”

  “You always find something new, don’t you?”

  “Yes, you do, don’t you?”

  “I hope you feel better.”

  “Thanks.”

  I CAN ALMOST feel her hands on me. And her lips and the press of her soft skin against mine. So many years ago, and yet, suddenly, there she is, staring right into my eyes, pulling me toward her, whispering my name. Over and over and over again.

  Will you drive me mad?

  I AM SITTING outside on a wooden bench near a stand of pine trees out behind the center with an old paperback edition of King Lear in my lap. All day I have been feeling lousy and now I feel even worse, sometimes gripping the sides of the bench to fight off dizziness. I carefully take off my glasses and clean them with the corner of my dark blue sweater, bending my head down to slide them back on. Then I pull out my small notepad from my shirt pocket and scan my notes. The top item says, “check zipper.” I glance down at my fly. It’s wide open.

  Damn.

  After I zip up I watch two young boys play on the front lawn, turning somersaults and cartwheels and firing at each other with stick guns. Their mother must be inside delivering yet another shipment of See’s candy to Grandma.

  “I shot you! You have to fall down.”

  “You didn’t shoot me! You missed.”

  “What do you mean I missed? I was this close! I shot you right in the head.”

  “Bang! Now I shot you.”