Page 67 of After His Eulogy
I hadn’t understood that going meant doing this to her.
I had thought going meant me losing my life. I had thought going meant me losing her. I had not thought going meant her losing me. I had not thought going meant her grieving me. I had not let myself think it through from her side. I had been thinking it through from mine for a week. Hers I had not. She will be the version of me from two years ago. She will be the version of me came home one Tuesday and got a phone call and sat down on the kitchen floor and could not get up. She will be the version of me buried her brother. She will be the version of me wrote a eulogy and said it in a small room and tried to put it away and couldn’t, because there was nowhere to put it. Sara will be me. Sara will be the person Reed left behind and I will be the person Reed used to be. I sit on the couch. I cry until I cannot cry anymore. When I am done I sit there for a long time. I do not get up to wash my face. I do not move. I sit on the couch and I look at the ceiling. I think about my sister in her kitchen in Chicago. I think about my mother in the home in Lake Forest who knows her a little less every month. I think about the chess club. I think about the regional bank. I think about Door County. I think about all of it, every detail. I let myself know that I am thinking about it because I am preparing.
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. Heputs 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.”
