Chicago
1987
"Don't close the shades."
"I won't. No one can see in anyway."
"I like to feel the sunlight. I can still feel it."
Coming off the train. You stepped off and didn't see me immediately. You looked the other way. You must have thought you saw me there for a second, because you put your hand to your mouth and started to wave and to run that way but then you stopped. I called to you once and you didn't hear me and I called again and you did.
Your expression as you turned.
"I sent you a postcard."
"A postcard."
"From the lobby. They have postcards in the lobby so I sent you one."
"I didn't get it."
"You will. I sent it home. You'll get it when they forward it. I pretended I was on vacation and you were home."
The moon through your veil.
"What do they say for today?"
"Nothing."
"They say nothing?"
"No. They say they will do nothing. Today we just wait. Rest for tomorrow."
"What is tomorrow?"
"I'm not sure. More tests."
The first time we went anywhere and you drove. Your brother's car when I visited you in Washington at your father's house one of the first summers. We drove into Georgetown. We walked around for about three hours and then you drove me to the airport and I went to New York.
The way you held my hand as I looked on the schedules for my flight.
The way you waved to me while the stewardess was taking my ticket. The way you watched me until the tunnel turned.
The way I saw you standing at the window staring out at the plane as we taxied away, staring even though you couldn't see me. I could see you.
"We forgot sushi."
"Sushi?"
"When I was in England. We had a list of things that we were going to do as soon as I got back. Neither of us had had sushi. What were the other ones?"
"We were going to go bowling."
"That's right. You were aghast that I had never been bowling. I don't think I would have been very good."
"You would have been horrible."
"Are you any good?"
"No."
A picture of the two of us in my back yard. You turning away and me looking down. I had a whole roll of pictures. All the others got sent to relatives, pasted in albums, made into slides. Twenty-three pictures of your smiles and your eyes and me. The only one I have left is this one. You can hardly see you at all. I look like I dropped something. In the other pictures we look like two kids posing. This is the only one where we look together. It's the only one that you couldn't cut in half with scissors and have two separate pictures of two separate people.
"I'm glad it wasn't Chicago."
"I am too."
"I'm glad I can at least look out and see things I've seen before. I can see the river. I can see streets. In Chicago I wouldn't have recognized anything."
"Chicago was over a year ago. That's why I'm glad it wasn't there."
"I know."
"Would you go to Chicago if it meant another year?"
"At the beginning I would have."
"But now now?"
"No. Not any more."
The night the power went off in Vermont. We went to bed at eight o'clock because we couldn't see anything. At three a.m. the power came back on and at four the alarm clock rang. We took three sleeping bags outside and tried to sleep naked in the snow.
"I wish the TV had a radio."
"Why?"
"So I'd have something to do when you're gone."
"Why don't you watch TV?"
"I shouldn't."
"Shouldn't?"
"There are too many commercials. I'm not buying anything. I feel like I'm wasting their time."
"There are commercials on radio, too."
"Seeing is different."
Your little phone book that you wrote my name in the first time you met me. You spelled it wrong, and you didn't find out for two months.
The biggest piece of the wine glass we broke, trying to see how many dishes we could pile up in the sink at once. Your sister gave us the pair for our first anniversary and we couldn't tell her.
These are the things I'm going to keep.