Page 61 of Full Contact

“Was the distance what ended it?”

“Partly. Toward the end, we’d spend half of every visit deciding who was making the next one. Then one weekend we had a wonderful time: dinner, a walk, and a movie at home. We went to bed, and he started crying.”

He put his coffee down.

“He said he didn’t want to keep having visits. He wanted us to live together again. I didn’t have an answer for that.”

“How long ago?”

“Seven years.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“Once. At a mutual friend’s birthday. He has a husband now. They showed me pictures of their kitchen renovation.”

“That sounds difficult.”

“It was, a little. His husband seemed nice. I’d have preferred someone with at least one obvious defect.”

I laughed softly.

“I was happy with him. I don’t want to give you the impression it was four years of arguing about whose job mattered.”

“I didn’t get that impression.”

“Good.”

For a few moments, I heard only the refrigerator running in the kitchen.

“Was he the music person?” I asked, nodding at the symphony program.

“No. That was my mother.”

“She took you?”

“Once a year, usually. She worked in a school office, and a teacher there had tickets she sometimes couldn’t use. Mom would bring good shoes to work in a grocery bag so we could go straight downtown.”

I pictured young Mark waiting outside a school office.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“The first time, I enjoyed having her to myself. There was a lot of sitting still for the rest of it.”

“How old?”

“Eleven. She bought me a ginger ale at intermission and asked which instrument I’d liked best. I said the cymbals. There had only been one crash, but I’d been awake for it.”

“And she took you again?”

“She liked going with me. By the third concert, I could give her better answers.”

He looked at the program beside my feet.

“When I bought this subscription, I called her before I called anyone else. She wanted to know where the seats were. I sent her the seating chart, and she printed it.”

“Does she come with you now?”

“When she visits. Gwen is gracious and lets Mom take her place. Mom dresses up. I tell her she doesn’t have to, and she tells me she knows.”