After camp, I wrote the boy from California. He lived in Pasadena, and one day, an earthquake closed the schools. I tried and tried to call his house, but all circuits were busy.
We didn’t have email, or cellphones, or text messages. He had sent me a letter or two, written on three-hole-punched notebook paper. I held the letters. I wished for him to call me, to tell me he was OK.
When I finally reached him after the circuits settled down, he seemed surprised I’d been so worried.
Without him in the house anymore, I became unmoored. I ate non-breakfast leaning against the counter—leftover pasta and meatloaf and sautéed spinach. Ice cream. I stayed up too late and struggled to awaken in the morning.
Once, it was only my friend banging on the window of my room that roused me. She had gone from door to door, window to window, until she pounded on the glass next to my bed.
Are you OK? she asked.
I stood on the slippery porch, disheveled and sweating.
On those days, I left as the sun came up, and I returned after the sun went down. Our street was deeply dark, strangely lacking enough streetlights, and our porch was painted with gray paint that grew slippery when it was wet. It was slightly slanted in that old house, soon-to-collapse sort of way. Sometimes, when I walked up the steps, my feet slid backward. Every day, in winter, I felt just one wrong step from disaster.
She stood up and very nearly fell. The dizziness had come over her so quickly as to almost not be believed.
“It’s just blood to the head,” he said. “It’s just a shift in pressure.”
Beads of light darted in her vision. She had been so grounded before, but now, unbidden, the earth had fallen away.
She was so patient with the strawberries: slicing them thinly, letting them come to room temperature so their flavor swelled to bursting, macerating them in balsamic and brown sugar for an hour before serving them. But with him, she could not be patient, could not wait for the deliciousness to begin.
Your face was placid, neutral, devoid of whatever could be called fierce or righteous. There was no indignation there. There was no passion. There was only blankness to belie what was really happening—the fact that you were not slipping away, that you slipping away would indicate a there that was never there. What I mistook for love was simply fear of saying goodbye.
They didn’t question who should lead when they danced. That was the best of them, their sheer equality, their balance, their joy in putting their other first. We waved maple leaf flags and ate potluck with such joy that the cicadas could not sing loud enough to properly celebrate.
This was the wedding of my dreams: Two people truly in love. Two people truly committed. What did it matter that they were among the most fabulous women I’ve ever known?
100 Proof 