by Alan Rossi
The coffee mug was halfway full, the coffee smell now stronger, as though water had brought the grounds to life. She looked back at her computer on the desk, near the window. The computer was facing away from her. She felt a strange aloneness – a person was just on the other side of a piece of metal, in the room with her and not – an odd separation. She wondered vaguely what Louis Walters was doing while he was waiting for her. She thought of how so much of what she was thinking she would not communicate with him, how she was alone with her thoughts, as she was so frequently. She remembered how culinary school came next for Nathaniel, and they paid for it in the same way that they paid for college, part of his grad school, and there was a fear that he would just drop out of culinary school as well, turn into a drifter, a drug dealer, a homeless person, maybe a mental patient, but he didn’t drop out. He flourished. He was a good cook, a chef, really, he was a chef. The first meal he cooked for her was one she would not forget: a simple grilled turbot with white wine emulsion, cabbage and carrot puree. Later, he moved exclusively, and she thought, riskily, to vegetarian food. He wanted simple, elegant, and also affordable, and also, humane. She couldn’t believe she still bragged about her children: well, Nathaniel’s a chef now if you can believe it. He’s been written about in two magazines. Oh Jesus, she had spoken the words of a television mother. In the years after this, though, she found that, strangely, he was her last tie to the world of youth. At the time, Nathaniel’s ‘existential crisis,’ as David had put it, had been an inconvenience in her life, a deep worry. Yet he had also enlivened her life. There had always been Nathaniel to think and worry about, and now that he was doing fine, she saw that both her worry was overdone and at the same time her worry had given the world an uncertain quality that allowed her access to kindness and care and, eventually, awe at the fact that Nathaniel was succeeding. For some time she couldn’t see an outcome for Nathaniel, now she could. For some time she couldn’t see his life, now she could. Her worry and anxiety, which still arose in her mind like a practiced emotion, was no longer connected to anything, to Nathaniel, and certainly not to Nicholas, who’d shunned what she deemed ordinary social life in order to take his family off the grid. She missed both of them, but didn’t worry about them in the same way. And couldn’t be awed by them in the same way. In the same way she couldn’t be awed by David. By herself. She understood it all too much, understood her life too easily. It was as though she’d figured out the math equation of her life and the answer was unbelievably banal: C equals twelve. She had been a girl, she had been a young woman, she became a woman, a mother, a professor, and now she was whatever she was, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. She had fulfilled her evolutionary duty. The universe seemed to have sensed Nathaniel was going to figure it out, watched with close attention, then had patted Katherine on the head, gave her a little certificate, checked off her duties for existence, and was finished with her. We’re ready for you to die, the universe seemed to say. Thank you for your service.
The coffee finished. The last drips fell into her mug. She didn’t want to go back to the computer, to the glowing Apple logo. She didn’t want to continue talking to Louis Walters, continue distracting herself from this situation with Nicholas’s son, from Nicholas himself, from Jack. She looked out the window: the mountain in blue morning mist. She considered how she and David used to hike almost every weekend. She remembered a time, years ago now, they were walking, and she’d said, We’re on a planet in the universe. Yes, he’d said. Be aware of that. Let’s be with that idea this whole hike, no talking. Yes, she agreed. No talking. Or, a little talking. Yeah, a little talking’s fine, David had said. They’d hiked some, their feet crunching leaves, mist moving between the autumn trees, leaves coming down in the wind, hanging in the air, deep oranges and browns and reds, the burned colors of the season, a shedding of life, the smell of dirt, fungus, crisp, colder wind, rush of the breeze through trees, swirling, the cries of hawks, their bodies warming to the walk, breath visible in the morning air, she felt her own being emptied out, cloudlike, as if being dispersed. It was beautiful, really beautiful, then she sort of started thinking about Nicholas, Nathaniel, wondering how they were doing, her once-young boys out in the world, then her job. I’m good with just general talking now, David had said after a little while, breathing harder. It’s been like fifteen minutes, she’d said. I feel we’ve done our duty. We got it pretty clearly, David said. We’re on a planet in the universe. Duly noted. There was a playfulness, a kind of easy letting go into the world, or an easy receiving of the world, occasionally complicated with anxiety and worry. Now though, walking in the woods was walking in the woods. She could not pull up any of the prior transcendence, if that’s what it had been. She wondered if David felt it too. They were just on a walk. The trees were trees, the leaves had fallen.
In the hotel room, her coffee ready, she went back to the computer and Louis Walters’ waiting face. She sat and blew on her cup of coffee then put the mug down. She wrote that she’d just been thinking of Kylie Newman who’d written her an email, one of those condolence emails. She wrote that she’d been recalling the time she’d been envious of Kylie’s breakup with her girlfriend. I remember feeling the world must have opened up to her again in her sadness. I thought, Katherine wrote, that soon it wouldn’t open like that anymore. Things would be what they were. A girlfriend leaving was just a person exiting your life. Your son’s death was not mysterious or strange. It was what the world did. There was nothing else to it. Louis Walters said that he wasn’t sure it was that simple and that they were sort of getting off point here. So what if we’re getting off point, she wrote. Maybe that’s the point, to get off point. Good point, he said. Not funny, she wrote.
She wrote to Louis Walters, who was both in the room with her and not, present with her and somehow not, how she remembered being in her office and getting the email from Kylie Newman that read, I’m so sorry for your loss. I don’t know what else to say beyond that, so I’ll just end with this quote, from Tolstoy, which I’ve found comforting in my own difficult times: ‘The meaning of life is life itself.’ In my office, I’d almost guffawed, both at the quote itself and the idea that it came from Tolstoy, in front of the computer, Katherine wrote. Then, inexplicably, I cried. I remember it with startling clarity because it was the first time I really cried hard since learning he was gone. I had my phone on the desk, my face in front of my computer, the light of it almost palpable on my face, that heat, you know, Kylie Newman’s weird email staring at me, a bunch of colleagues had been by and had given me little half hugs, shoulder hugs, and full hugs, dropped off flowers, and I cried. What was I doing in my office? I remember thinking. I couldn’t stop. It was all suddenly there: Nicholas was gone. Along with his goneness, I sensed that part of the reason I was crying, beyond my own sadness for myself and what and who I had lost, was for this Kylie Newman person. She hadn’t felt real suffering yet, the banality of it, the confusion of that banality. Of course, she knew it to be a fact of existence, certainly, knew, most likely, it was coming for her, but she had never touched it, and thus, it had never touched her. Her girlfriend had left her, she was heartbroken. But there was a certain sort of sense, a logic to a leaving girlfriend, the separating. There was no logic with Nicholas. He was here then he was not. I cried because I was in my office. Because of this email from Kylie Newman. Because of everyone who stopped by. Because Nicholas was gone. Because I couldn’t convey to anyone what this meant to me. Because I don’t understand what it means. I want to understand. That’s why I’m not talking, and also because I can’t take talking with people.
Katherine stopped typing. She remembered that she had been in her office to be alone and was crying in front of her computer, her door still open because colleagues had been visiting, and she couldn’t get up to close it, she was crying, just crying, and feeling as though she was falling a little. The shadow of a person, Mark Feltzer, had walked by, then he had slowly backtracked, stuck his head inside her door, an
d asked if she needed anything. There were flowers on her desk, a box of chocolates, her computer glowing in the dark room, a room in which she hadn’t turned the lights on, and now her phone was also glowing with a call from David. No, she’d said. Just close the door please. He did, with a contemplative little nod and lips pursed in understanding. She thought of this Kylie Newman person and felt sick knowing that this playful person would be slipped out of herself when certain realities arose. She felt a deep sympathy for her: she hoped it wouldn’t happen. Then thinking of Kylie Newman transmuted into thoughts about Nicholas, which she could barely stand. She remembered how Nicholas had seemingly slipped from the world, years before, too young, she often thought, his alienation present from a young age, distant from people, even as a boy watching people, thinking about them, much like herself, she thought now. She cried for this and for Kylie Newman and for the fact that Nicholas was gone. She cried for his past self and his gone self, for herself and for Kylie Newman, for the people who had brought her gifts, had mumbled only partially felt sympathies, no less sincere for it. In the hotel, sitting before the computer, waiting for Louis Walters to say something, she remembered crying for herself, for her son, for this other person she barely knew.
Before Louis Walters could say anything else, she wrote to him that she remembered feeling and thinking all of these things in front of her computer, crying, when he arrived at her office. You opened the door and immediately shut the door behind you, pulled a chair next to mine, and held my shaking shoulders. I remember, Louis Walters said. She looked at Louis Walters, and wrote, Why don’t I feel any different? He read the message and seemed to think, opened his mouth, and then said he didn’t know. Concerning what? Concerning us? She shook her head and wrote that that was maybe the most selfish thing she’d heard in a long time. He said, Okay, so concerning Nicholas. Well, I didn’t know you didn’t feel any different. You hadn’t told me that until now, and I actually can’t understand how that could be true. So that’s why I asked concerning us. But, to answer your question, Louis Walters said, I think you’re probably still too close to it. You’re trying to look at yourself and figure out who you are now, now that, you know, he’s passed away. She put a finger up, stopping him, and wrote, Say ‘died.’ I don’t like passed away. It implies he went somewhere. He didn’t go anywhere. He didn’t pass. He isn’t away. He’s dead. Just gone. Not away. Away feels like he was once in this way, and now is in this other way. Away. He’s not. He’s dead. Louis Walters read and said, See, just that there, just you talking about it like that. I think you haven’t had any time alone to digest this. Why the food metaphor? she wrote. Why, when we’re talking about understanding something, do we say we need to ‘digest’ it, or let it ‘marinate,’ or say that we’re ‘stewing in our juices’? You’re right though, I need to roast on this a bit. Haha, Louis Walters said. She sat back in her chair. I need to sign off, she wrote. I don’t like this. This, talking with you, this is me trying to bring a normal something from my life in order to feel normal and not feel the change of things. I’m distracting myself. Louis Walters said he wouldn’t characterize it like that at all. She wasn’t distracting herself, she was afraid of being alone and right now, she shouldn’t be, he said.
She looked away from the laptop and saw a text message lighting her phone’s screen. David. Doing okay? it said. She looked at the computer screen and wrote to Louis Walters, One second. She picked up her phone, hesitated, then replied, All is well. After a moment, another text arrived, which read, Artisan wheat or Tuscan bole? She could barely comprehend the question and wanted, for a brief moment, to write back, Sunbeam White. You choose, she wrote. She put the phone back down and thought that Louis Walters was wrong in the same way her husband was wrong. She knew she needed to be alone. She could feel the information being conveyed to her as though in alien code, through telekinesis or something. Be alone and know, this intuited information seemed to say, repeatedly. But know what? The hotel was the first time that she’d had the chance to be really by herself in over a week. With David gone, before she’d contacted Louis Walters, she had tried to just sit in the hotel room, to just sit there with the fact of it, feeling only the fact of Nicholas not being there, as though calling up the experience in her office, to feel authentically devastated, but sitting alone in the hotel room – two plastic cups from the night before on the dresser, one about half-filled with water, the other empty, smudgy fingerprints on the plastic, orange peels next to the cups, David’s overnight bag on his side of the bed, opened, a shirt hanging out, her bag zipped closed in a corner, the small refrigerator clicking on, the heater clicking off – she couldn’t understand it, couldn’t recall any sadness, felt only a sort of blankness. She had gone to the window, which she was staring out now, not looking at Louis Walters.
The mountain loomed out the window, mist gently rising from it, dispersing, and below, the town’s main street was empty in the early morning. If the mist wasn’t moving she could’ve been looking at a postcard of a rural American town. She thought of when she had still been speaking, maybe three days after, still in her own house, and she’d told David that she didn’t understand. She knew Nicholas was dead, but the world seemed no different. The world isn’t different, he’d said. Your world is. She hadn’t been able to withhold her frustration at the comment. How thoughtful of you, she’d said. How intelligent. Philosophical even. David sat next to her in the breakfast nook and said he was sorry, this was just how he thought about these things. Sunlight came through the window and fell against the wall in the elongated shape of the window. He pulled his chair close to hers. He’d put his arms around her, hugging from behind and the side, very much like how Louis Walters had the previous day in her office. And because of this, she hadn’t wanted David touching her anymore. She felt as though he’d be able to sense this other man on her, some psychic connection would flash in his mind, and he’d know she’d already been comforted in this same way. And he’d know it at the worst possible time. This same hugging, she irrationally thought, could lead to David feeling this man’s presence in other ways. Moments like this had occurred before. If she watched television after being with Louis Walters, she couldn’t do that with David at home. If she ate food with Louis Walters at work, she took her dinner into the family room, claiming that her back hurt. If she drank a glass of wine with Louis Walters, she didn’t have one in the evening with David. And in the moment David comforted her by holding both of her shoulders, almost like picking up a child from behind, she withdrew from him. As she did it, she also wanted David’s tenderness, his warmth, his body next to hers, and his words, whatever they might be. She wanted his comfort and she didn’t want him to touch her. In the space between these wants, she felt frustration and annoyance at herself, which immediately she had directed at David with her sarcastic reply. After a moment of composing herself, she had told him as gently as she could that she understood what he meant, her world was probably different. She just didn’t feel it yet. She apologized. She was just easily frustrated, that was all. He got up to make coffee, she remembered now as she watched the clouds drift up the mountain. Her annoyance at him, at herself, had also been a dispersing cloud in the sky: there and then gone. And after the annoyance was gone, she had considered this thing David said, turning the phrase over in her mind like turning over a moon rock: Your world is different.