Chapter 24 Griffin #2
I am not preparing to go. I’m getting ready.
That is what the six weeks is for. I had not understood until just now what the six weeks was for.
The six weeks is not for me to decide. The six weeks is for me to look at what going is, what it actually is, in detail, on a Monday afternoon, with my sister’s voice still in my ear, and to look at what staying is, with the same level of detail, and to choose between them having actually looked.
I had been thinking about Reed. I had been thinking about Reed for ten days and I had not been thinking about Sara.
I had been thinking about Reed and the new town and the soup and the bed and what it would be like and I had not thought about Sara.
Reed had been doing the work of asking me to look.
Reed had been telling me to decide for myself and not for him.
Reed had been telling me he could do both versions.
I had been hearing him and I had been thinking about it from the Reed direction.
I had not been thinking about it from the Sara direction. Now I have.
Now I have, and what I see is ugly. Going means a sister who buries me.
Going means a mother who loses her son a second time without ever having known she lost him the first time.
Going means becoming a man who has chosen to do to his family what was done to him, and to do it knowingly, and to do it on purpose.
I sit on the couch. After a while I get up. I wash my face. I go to make dinner. The dinner is for Reed. He will be over at seven.
I am going to think about Sara. Every day for the rest of my life. It is not going to stop, and I am not going to make it stop. That’s the price.
Reed told me last week that the leaving was the choosing. He stood in a post office holding a postcard for I do not know how long, and he tore it up, and not sending it was the love. I have been carrying that sentence for a week.
If I go, I am going to be the one who tears up the postcard.
I am going to be the one who stands in the post office.
Sara is going to be the version of me buried him.
She is going to grieve a person who is alive somewhere having a soup.
She is going to do it because I have decided she has to.
I am going to do to her what was done to me.
I had thought, until this week, that this was the argument against going. That if I have learned anything from being on Sara’s side of it, the lesson is do not put anyone else there.
Tonight I see that the lesson is not that.
The lesson is not sending it. Reed did not get to keep me by sending the postcard.
He kept me by not sending it. The love was in not sending it.
If I go, I do not get to keep Sara by staying.
I keep her by carrying her. Carrying her is the only thing I’ll get to do.
It will have to be enough. It is going to have to be enough because the alternative is staying and not having Reed, and staying and not having Reed is not a life I am going to choose just because the choosing not to is hard on Sara.
Sara would not want me to. I sit with that for a minute.
I sit with the thought Sara would not want me to and I let myself test it.
Sara, who has been my older sister for thirty-one years and who has been letting me set the pace of our contact since we were children, Sara would not want me to stay in a half-life out of guilt.
She would not. She would want me to go. She would not get to know that I had gone, and she would not get to know that her wanting it was the thing that let me, but I know it.
I know it sitting on my couch in my apartment on a Monday night in February, and I am letting it count.
The dinner is in the oven. He will be here at seven. I am going to feed him and I am going to sit across from him and I am going to not tell him about the call. Not tonight. Tonight is mine.
I’m going to think about it for a few more weeks, the way I’ve promised him I would.
I’m not going to decide tonight. But something has moved tonight, and I want to be honest that it has.
Leaving — going with him — is no longer the option I’m leaning away from.
It’s the option I’m leaning toward. Sara isn’t the argument against. Sara is the cost. The argument against was something else, and I can’t, sitting here tonight, remember what it was.
He comes at seven. He kisses me at the door. He looks at my face. He does not ask. He has learned, in the last month, that he does not have to ask. He puts his hand on the side of my face and he holds it there for a second and then he takes off his coat and he sits down at the table.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“How was your day.”
“Long.”
“Okay.”
“How was yours.”
“Quiet.”
“Okay.”
We eat. The garlic is too far. He does not say it. I do not say it. We eat.
Reed comes over Tuesday night. He has not been over Monday.
He has been at his apartment Monday night, working on the response paper for the political theory seminar, the one he is taking with the Eastern European theorist whose name nobody in the cohort can pronounce.
He has been at his apartment for two nights and I have been at mine and that is fine.
We have been alternating. We have been not-alternating, lately, more often than alternating, and Monday alone in my apartment was a thing I noticed.
I had noticed and then I had set the noticing down and I had gone to bed and I had slept.
I had been good at it. I am getting better at sleeping without him in the bed than I have been all year.
Tuesday at six-fifty he texts me coming over and at seven-twelve he is at the door.
I let him in. He is in the gray coat. He has the bag with his laptop and his notebook.
He is in his Tuesday face, the seminar face, the one that has been thinking about an article for an hour and has not yet stopped thinking about it.
He puts the bag on the chair. He takes off the coat.
He hangs it on the hook. He looks at me.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“I want to tell you something.”
I look at him. The seminar face is gone.
Underneath the seminar face is a face I have seen on him three times.
Once on the sidewalk in October. Once on the night of the postcard.
Once on the night he told me Mendez had asked if there was anyone in his life.
The face of a person who has been carrying a sentence and has decided to set it down where I can see it.
“Okay,” I say. “Sit.”
He sits. He sits on the chair, not the couch.
I sit on the couch. The kitchen is doing the thing it does at seven, which is have something on the stove that is going to need attention in about ten minutes.
The thing on the stove is a pot of beans I had been planning to feed him.
The beans are not ready. Nothing is ready.
He has come over earlier than I had been expecting and I am sitting in a kitchen with a pot of beans that wants attention and a man who has been carrying a sentence.
“I saw a car today.”
“Okay.”
“On the way home from Carrigan. Walker, then up the small street with the garage. The car was parked at the curb in front of the auto-body place. Gray sedan. Driver in the seat. Phone in his hand. Not looking at me.”
“Okay.”
“It’s the second time I’ve seen a car like that in this town. The first time was in November. I didn’t tell you about it then.”
He looks at me.
“I want to tell you about it now. I saw a car in November. Wednesday afternoon, in front of the elementary school. Same model, different color, lighter gray. Driver with a phone. I’d also seen a similar car on Mason on a Saturday morning the week before.
Two cars on two days. I didn’t call Mendez.
I’d been planning to call Mendez. I wrote myself a sentence in my head that said it is one car, two cars on two days is two cars on two days, and I kept walking.
I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how to say it.
I didn’t tell Mendez because I didn’t want to give up Saturday with you. ”
I sit with that for a second. I sit with it because it is large and I am not going to swallow it whole. He has sat in his apartment for three months knowing he saw a car in November and he has not given me the sentence until now.
“Reed.”
“I know.”
“You sat with that.”
“I sat with it. I have been sitting with it. Today on Walker my body did the same thing it did in November and I knew I was not going to keep sitting with it.”
I look at him. The pot of beans on the stove makes the small sound a pot of beans makes when it has decided to be a pot of beans that wants attention. I get up. I turn the burner down. I come back. I sit on the couch again.
“Tell me what you saw today. The whole thing.”
He tells me. He goes through it the way he went through the November car: where, when, what color, what model if he could read it, what the driver was doing.
He didn’t change his pace. He didn’t look back until he’d crossed the street two blocks later.
The driver wasn’t looking at him then either.
When he got back to his apartment he sat at his desk for ten minutes and decided not to call Mendez tonight.
He decided to come over here and tell me first.
“Why,” I say.
“Because I am supposed to tell you. We agreed I was supposed to tell you. I would have told myself in October that telling Mendez was the only telling that mattered. I would have called Mendez first and told you nothing. I am not doing that. Not telling is what got me into this. I am telling you first. Then I am telling Mendez.”
“When are you telling Mendez.”
“Tomorrow. Or whenever he calls. Day twelve. He is supposed to call this week.”
“And until then.”