by Glenn Dixon
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
“Is Romeo dying?” Andy asked. Allison, a few desks to the right, shook her head in the resigned fashion of one who is embarrassed by her boyfriend.
“In a manner of speaking,” I said, “Romeo is already dead.”
“Are you wrecking the ending?” Devin asked.
“You already know that they die, so no.”
Only Minh looked a little startled by this revelation.
“Right from the beginning,” I said, “Romeo and Juliet’s fates were sealed. It was inevitable.”
Allison shook her head sadly.
“No,” I said.
A few heads rose.
“No,” I said again, maybe a bit louder than I should have. “Fate,” I pressed, “is just an illusion.”
Andy glanced down at his book. “Mr. Dixon,” he said, “where’s that written?”
“It’s not in the book,” I said. “It’s me, and I’m telling you that real life isn’t a fairy tale.”
“But—”
“Things are not preordained. Life is more chaotic than that. Everything seems fine, and then, ka-boom! The consequences of a thousand stupid decisions collide and blow your heart apart.”
My students froze. Who was this person at the front of the room?
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe that’s enough for today. You can have free time till the bell rings.”
When it did, they scurried out the door, no one daring to make eye contact with me. At the very end of the day, though, Marc appeared at my door.
“Mr. Dixon?” he said.
I glanced up from the papers I was marking.
“I just came by to say thank you.”
Marc was a rough kid. Some of the teachers had already pegged him as a hoodlum. He smelled of pot sometimes. “Thank me for what?” I asked.
“For letting me be a part of your English class.”
“You are a part of my class,” I said.
He stood there a moment. “You know what I mean.”
I looked at him now, this kid in his gangster pants, his eyes wide and vulnerable.
“Well,” I said, “you’re welcome.”
He lingered at the door a moment longer. “And, I wanted to ask you . . .”
“Yes?”
“Is everything okay with you, sir?”
“I . . . uh . . . yes, everything’s fine.”
“Because you don’t seem yourself these days.”
He was right, of course, but I had no idea it was that obvious.
Marc shrugged like he was sorry for asking. “Okay, then,” he said. “I gotta catch my bus.”
“Right,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by.”
He lingered for another moment at the door, this tough kid, and I knew he understood.
Wilt thou be gone?
Outside the narrow classroom windows, the first bubbles of sap appeared on the poplar trees. Slender green shoots were breaking through the buds. The students tracked in mud from the melting fields and the sun rose high in a sky as blue as a robin’s egg.
In the play, we’d come to the heart of it. We’d come to the scene that, for me, is much more poignant than the balcony scene. The lovers are in Juliet’s bedroom. Romeo is lying beside Juliet just as the call of a lark drifts in through the window. They’ve been together the whole night, but now dawn is breaking and Romeo knows he must steal out of the city before sunrise or risk death. These are the lovers’ last moments together. Only they don’t know it yet.
Look love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I read the lines out loud to the class. “Did you understand all that?”
“Night’s candles are the stars,” Devin said.
“That’s right,” I said. “The stars are going out. Dawn is breaking.”
Andy put up his hand. “If the stars are going out,” he said, “does that mean Romeo doesn’t believe in fate anymore?”
I thought for a second. “Maybe.”
Two rows over, Allison stole a glance at him. I think they’d been discussing this, maybe discussing my outburst the day before.
“Oh thinkest we should ever meet again?” I continued. “Juliet says this and there is no sadder line in all the play—because they won’t. They will never be with each other again, at least not alive.”
The clock on the wall ticked.
“Andy,” I said, “do you want to read Romeo’s answer?”
Andy shuffled in his seat, then read in a clear voice:
I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our time to come.
Andy’s eyes found mine, checking to see if he’d pronounced the words correctly. I gave him a nod.
“Romeo is saying that someday far in the future, they’ll be able to laugh about all this.”
“Only they won’t,” said Devin sullenly.
“No,” I said. “They won’t. It’s over for them. It’s over.”
* * *
Claire fled for a couple of weeks. She went off to her family cabin, deep in the woods. She needed to escape for a while. I remember her shaking her head at the thought of it all. “It’s real now,” she said. “It’s real.”
My letter from Juliet was forgotten. The idea of taking Claire to Italy was dead. The days were lengthening and the evenings were growing warmer. Crocuses bloomed and the river swelled. Claire and I texted back and forth, meaningless pleasantries, and I really didn’t know what was going to happen next.
Sometimes, in Shakespeare, you stumble across a line that speaks directly to you, a line that rings across the centuries and strains at your heart.
“How is’t, my soul?” Romeo says to himself. “Let’s talk.”
* * *
“Okay,” I said, “where were we?”
“Jeez, Mr. Dixon,” Devin said. “Romeo’s just gone out the window.”
“Right, so then Juliet’s mother comes in to tell her that she is to be married, immediately.”
Devin and then Andy jolted in surprise. Allison raised her hand. “But Juliet’s already married,” she said. “To Romeo.”
“That’s the problem. No one knows that, though, and the father has arranged a marriage for her, a marriage she certainly doesn’t want.”
Sadia’s desk at the front of class was still empty. And thank goodness. I’d been worried about going through this scene with her in the room.
“It gets worse,” I said. “When Juliet’s father bursts into the room, he goes completely insane because Juliet refuses to be wed. Then he attacks Juliet.”
“Not cool,” muttered Devin.
“Not cool at all.” I read the father’s lines. “Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets for, by my soul, I’ll never acknowledge thee.”
“He’d leave her to starve in the streets?” Andy asked.
“Yes. At least that’s what he says.”
“But she’s his daughter,” said Allison.
“I know. He’s on the verge of hitting poor Juliet,” I went on. “She’s crying, but her mother gets in front of Lord Capulet, the nursemaid does too, to protect Juliet from him.”
“Whoa,” said Devin. “This is crazy.”
“Yeah, it is. At the very end, the father storms out and Juliet collapses on the floor in misery.”
A pall hung over the classroom. “I think maybe that’s enough for today,” I said. “Maybe we can just watch a bit of the movie.”
Allison nodded. “Good call.”
* * *
After school, I spoke again with Sayed, the cultural liaison worker. “I have spoken again with the father,” he said. His voice buzzed through my classroom phone. “I am sorry. He insists that he has made a goo
d match for his daughter. I have also spoken with Sadia.”
“Is she okay? She’s missed quite a lot of school now.”
“She is very upset.”
“So what do we do?”
“You must understand, this is very difficult for everybody.”
“Did you speak with the imam?”
“Yes. He also tried to reason with Sadia’s father, but the man will not change his mind.”
“Is he dangerous, do you think? The father?”
“Dangerous? No, no. It’s not like the movies. He is a good man. He is quite traditional and he’s trying to do his best for his daughter.”
“Well, he’s not.”
“Maybe this is not for us to decide.”
“It’s for Sadia to decide,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, with this I agree.”
“So will you phone Kelly?”
I heard nothing but silence at the other end for a long few seconds. “Yes,” he said. “Perhaps it is time to arrange an apartment for her—if this is what she wants.”
By the end of the week, Sadia had moved out of her house. Kelly arranged everything. The principal got involved and so did the imam. I stepped back. Sadia’s apartment was furnished with pots and pans and a TV and bedsheets scrounged from various teachers’ homes. She had everything she needed to become self-sufficient.
* * *
The thing is, Sadia lasted exactly two nights in that apartment. She cried the whole time. She missed her family—including her father. Sayed phoned me on Monday morning—before classes started—to tell me all this. By that point, Sadia had packed up and gone back home.
That’s not how this was supposed to turn out. We thought we were saving Sadia from a marriage she did not want. She herself had begged us to do so. I didn’t really understand.
On the phone, Sayed waited for me to take it all in. “There’s one more thing,” he said, his voice calm on the other end of the line. “The father has decided to call off the marriage.”
“What?” I said. “That . . . that’s amazing.” The time was eight o’clock. My students would be charging into class in about fifteen minutes. “What happened? Why the change of heart?”
“I believe the father realized that he would truly lose his daughter and he could not live with that. So,” Sayed continued, “in the future, Sadia will be a part of any discussion about her availability for marriage.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s fantastic.”
“I understand Sadia wants to go on to university,” Sayed said.
“Definitely,” I said. “She’s one of my best students.”
“They are, you understand, a very close family. And the father accepts her wishes to pursue an education.”
“That’s great,” I said. “That’s great news.”
“Yes. As I said, her father is a good man and he has come to see the wisdom in this course of action.”
As surprised as we all were by this turn of events, the research on love could have predicted this outcome. One of the most studied concepts in psychology is something called attachment theory. It goes back to one John Bowlby, who had some new ideas about human behavior in 1969. He rejected Freudian analysis and Pavlovian conditioning and wrote that we are literally hardwired to need human contact. Not just to want it, but to physically need it.
Infants need the caresses and swaddling of their mothers as much as they need food and shelter. And separation from their mothers is like a tiny death. In adult relationships, things are not so very different. We will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the loss of love—all kinds of love.
Separation has two stages. The first stage is denial. A baby will wail its disapproval, but an adult may turn to drinking or other self-annihilating behaviors. The second stage is worse. It is a state of pure despair, more powerful and more sustained than almost any other human emotion. Of course, there’s a neurochemical process underlying this—called the corticotrophin-releasing factor, or CRF for short—and yes it’s the same paralyzing potion that hits junkies in withdrawal.
This might very well be the central problem of love. The aversion to loss is actually stronger—quite a lot stronger—than the rewards we feel when things are going well. We are, as I said, hardwired that way. It’s a burst of neurochemicals that we are almost helpless to fight against. They are simply overwhelming.
Sadia was back in class the following day, but her eyes were red-rimmed. She moved self-consciously to her seat at the front and sat down without a word.
I waited a moment while the rest of the students settled. I tried to catch her eye, to silently welcome her back, but it was clear she didn’t want to be singled out. She just wanted to be normal again.
“All right,” I began, flipping open my book. “Romeo has fled. He’s hiding in the nearby city of Mantua.”
“And Juliet?” Allison asked. “What about Juliet?”
I stole another glance at Sadia. She didn’t look up from her book, but she was listening.
“Juliet,” I said, “goes to Friar Lawrence.” I hesitated for just a second. “She says she’s going to kill herself if he doesn’t help her.”
“And does he help her?” asked Allison.
“Yes, or at least he tries to. But get this,” I went on. “Friar Lawrence says that she should kill herself.”
“Good idea,” Sadia grumbled.
“Whoa. What’s with you?” Devin asked.
Sadia whirled on him. “What’s with you?”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “What’s really happening here is that Friar Lawrence has come up with an idea. He thinks that Juliet should fake her own death.”
I explained the Friar’s expertise with herbs and plants, how he could concoct a potion to make her sleep for a time, to appear dead, then wake up some forty hours later. I waited for questions but there weren’t any.
“So the plan is, Juliet will pretend to kill herself. Friar Lawrence will send a letter to Romeo explaining the plan, and then, when she does wake up, Romeo will be there and they can run off together. No one will ever know.”
“Until they open the vault again,” said Devin.
“Sure,” I said, “but that could be months or even years later.” I paused. “There’s just one little problem.”
It was Minh, quiet, diminutive Minh, who put up his hand.
“Minh?” I said. “You have something to say?”
“Star-crossed,” he said. “They are star-crossed.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Nothing can stop what’s going to happen next.”
* * *
Claire texted me to say she would be returning the following day. But that didn’t make sense. I was pretty sure Claire was already home. I couldn’t help but notice that there were lights on at her house and that there was a truck parked in her driveway.
The next morning, I phoned her. “Hi,” I said. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.”
“Um, are you still doing renovations?” I couldn’t get it out of my head, that truck parked in her driveway. It was obvious who it belonged to.
“Renovations? No, Rick just dropped by to say hi.”
“Claire,” I said, “c’mon, what’s going on?”
“Okay.” She sighed. “I’m coming over. We need to talk.”
She appeared a while later, slinking around to the screen door on my back patio. The expression on her face was strained. We went inside and sat on my black leather couch. “You know most of everything,” she said, “but there’s one more thing.”
My face tightened into a frozen smile.
“Rick is the father.”
Even though I’d known it, hearing it confirmed was devastating. I was angry. I’d been blindsided—twice. “So now he’s moving in with you? Is that it?”
No answer.
“You lied to me.”
She wouldn’t meet my eye. Outside, I could hear a train rumbling by.
“He came over one day,” she said.
/> “Yeah?”
“He had come over to fix something or other—the hot water spigot, I think . . .”
“And . . . ?”
“I left the ultrasound pictures on the kitchen table.” She glanced up then, meeting my gaze. Her eyes were liquid. “He saw the pictures and he knew.”
I let out a single whimper of pain. I couldn’t help it. I felt like I was underwater, that something heavy lay on my chest, pinning me down.
She spoke softly. “I told you—you can’t help who you fall in love with.”
I tried to say again that I had been right beside her all this time, all these years, that I had loved her, that that should count for something—but nothing came out. I raised my hands in frustration, then let them collapse on my lap.
Claire slumped on the couch, resting a hand on her belly. “It’s going to be a boy,” she said.
I folded over, elbows on my knees, my hands coming up to form a little triangle around my mouth. “I can’t do this,” I said.
“You were fine,” she said, “with me being pregnant.” I could see she was working up her argument. She’d always been good at that.
“You said the father wasn’t in the picture.”
“He wasn’t then.”
“I asked you point-blank if it was him. You lied.”
“I was trying to protect him. He didn’t even know.”
“And now he’s moving in?”
“I can’t do this alone, Glenn.”
“No,” I said. The back of my jaw felt like someone was whacking it with a ball-peen hammer. “There’s got to be another way. Please, I’m begging you. Don’t do it like this.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Her face contorted into agony. I knew she had very few choices. I knew this was hard for her, crushing for her, but I couldn’t bear to have them living together and not so far away from me. I just couldn’t bear it.
“Claire, I loved you . . .” I began again, but it was useless. “And now,” I whispered, “I’ve lost you. I’ve lost you and it kills me.”
When Claire left my place after that, I think we both knew it was for good. It would never be the same again. I hugged her at the door. In fact, we held each other for a while. I cupped the back of her head in my hand, felt her face buried into my shoulder. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she drew back. She was as tortured and defeated as I was. And then, that was that. She whisked out the door and out of my life forever.