We knifed through clouds that appeared to have the viscosity of foam, the plane angling north, then east on its ascent. There were no other planes in view, no buildings on the one mountain that broke the cloud-plane, no sense of the density of the world below.
Later, the clouds thinned to wisps and the towns, lakes, cars below came into view. Later, the sense of it all returned.
I can’t count how many times I’d searched on those particular terms. This was the night, though, that I found the answer. Clicked the link. Admitted to myself that I have never, ever given up hope.
Every day appears auspicious if you base your evaluation on the crowds outside the Rock River Casino bus office. The men and women shuffle toward the bus, clutching purses and bags, ready to ride toward Napa Valley but interested in gold, not rosé. Two by two they board and sit. Two by two they return, with or without their fortunes.
In this city on the water, seagulls holler overhead, louder than the trucks rattling by on the freeway below. One morning, metal scraped a long, angry tear on the freeway, and for a moment, the neighborhood silenced, like one of those moments when every conversation at the party stops. Even the gulls wheeled mutely, headed back to the port, outrunning the stop-action below. They left as if they knew it would be only minutes before the helicopters arrived to slice the air into ribbons of rhythmic noise.
Nearly a month after the wineglass shattered, light through the living room window glinted on another wayward shard, 15 steps away from the site of the breakage.
I picked it up and turned it over and over in my palm. This is how it is, I thought. There’s that moment of breakage, but weeks of finding pieces of glass in the most unexpected places do not let you forget that initial disintegration.
“Have you talked to him?” asked my mother.
“No, not since I left,” I said.
“What about the other one?” she asked.
“The other one,” I said. “Yeah, he says he wants to get together, but when I actually ask him about a specific time, he’s never available.”
“He’s afraid of relationships,” she said.
“They’re all afraid of relationships,” I said.
Here is the thing about being married: it’s hard, it’s work, it’s sometimes lonely, it’s anti-selfish, except when it’s not, and then it’s awful.
But there is the sweet with the bitter. There are the moments when hands meet under a table, while watching kids on stage, in bed after a terrible fight. There are the moments when your eyes meet and you don’t have to say anything at all to know what each other is thinking.
This is why we do it again, and again, and sometimes more agains than that.
100 Proof 