“Really? Why?”
“I want to read the one about your dad. No pressure. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Okay. Soon. There’s more than one about him.” Actually, there were many, though he’d never shared any of them, written or otherwise, with anyone. His chest tightened at the thought, but his arms also tingled with some strange positive energy which must have emanated from her, and his heartbeat stepped up a notch as her scent, even in the open air, pressed its way in with hints of jasmine, rose, and orange.
Then a strange thing happened: he flooded with ideas, snippets of love song lyrics, based on words she’d said or he’d thought about her. Tried so long to make things right. Not sure I’ll ever make it through. Too much weight. And in that moment, right after he tucked a few lyrics away, he knew—she was his muse. How did that happen? And so soon? With her at his side, he could become the songwriter, the poet he’d longed to be for years. Of course she needed to see his poems. Or better yet, hear them. And as soon as possible. He took a deep breath. And another. “I can recite one now if you want.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. I’ve never done one out loud, but I want you to hear it. This one is called ‘Christmas.’”
“I don’t like holidays anymore.”
“Me neither. Here goes. Christmas. Today, years after memories have faded, they sharpen again, splinter further. The puzzle seems enormous, sprouting new pieces, blurred images, rumbled sounds partially dissolved, muffled in tears waiting.”
“Nice.”
“Then a gift, a familiar guide from someplace deep inside, calls. I hear my father laughing at the Christmas dinner table years ago. My mother, young and beautiful, smiling as he pours her a glass of wine.”
As Sassa walked, listened, she rolled a black bead on her gold necklace between her fingers, like the necklace had meaning, like she was conjuring. “We drank red wine in our house every night at dinner.”
“We did too. Next verse. With this image, I realize this is just another holiday passing. While there is rejoicing with family, with friends, there is also inventory-taking of loved ones lost.”
He wrapped his arm around her hip and pulled her close. The rest of the people, the cars, the city hum, faded until only her smell, her touch, remained. Walking like that, in a city of millions, joined in an impossible-to-define way, was nirvana-like. Maybe, over the coming months, they should walk the whole city together? Eventually, he asked, “Is the necklace special?”
“No. Just something I picked up at a vintage shop.”
“Ah. I’ll keep going. Last verse. The same cycle of mourning and relief repeats every year, though the waves don’t seem as large, as long, with time. A friend once told me all loss is the same after the first one. He is right.”
“You’re right.”
• • •
On Thursday, Nick opened his apartment door halfway and nodded Sassa in. She’d come over to watch Persona. At 700 square feet, the apartment consisted of a combined living room and kitchen with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto Charles Street, and a small bedroom barely larger than the queen-size bed it contained. Furnished with two mid-century modern chairs, a sofa and a dining room table that doubled as a desk, all acquired from a secondhand shop in his hometown of Denville, New Jersey, he’d made the place his own. Two old, frayed, red Heriz rugs covered the hardwood floors, each worn in multiple spots to the point where little color remained. The bookcases, filled equally with books and CDs, lined one complete wall of the living room. Multiple guitars stood on stands throughout the room. A small LED flat-screen television was positioned on the wall opposite the sofa, and displayed the Persona DVD home page. “Hey Jude” played in the background.
“Nice place. Expensive?”
“Cheap. A friend of my dad’s cut me a deal.”
“Before we get started, let me freshen up.”
“First door on the right.”
“Be right back.”
The first time he’d seen Persona was much different.
Freshman year, Nick skipped his morning classes at Columbia and plodded more than a hundred blocks from campus to see the first showing of Persona at the Village Cinema. Once there, he settled in the row behind an older man two seats to his right. The two of them had the theatre to themselves. The patina of the place drew him in; the smell of popcorn melding with spilled soda, crushed candy, and who-knows-what-else was just right. Diet Pepsi in hand, he watched previews, and waited anxiously for the feature to start.
The opening sequence of Persona rolled across the screen. Disjointed images and atonal music transported him. An erect penis, a cartoon, a tarantula, the crucifixion, a boy, all flashed before him in black and white. They woke him up, seemingly from a dream, leaving him more alert than he’d been in a long time. Who was that boy? What had he lost? He pushed back in his theater seat and straightened up. He parked his drink on the floor.
The camera zoomed in on Liv Ullmann’s face and stayed there for over a minute. Her face: the entire human condition, somehow holding boundless sadness and hope. She hovered in front of him, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. A true Nordic goddess.
Later, Liv’s character, Elisabet was on the beach with Alma wearing dark and light hats. What an image. On the island, they created a place of light. And dark. A compartment. Elisabet studied Alma as if she were preparing for a part in a play, gathering in her feelings so she could use them when needed. So many beautiful truths within each of them. Why did they keep their most vivid ones hidden?
Later, the women’s faces merged into one—the most poetic film image Nick had ever seen. Could any one human see another completely and not fall apart?
After the film ended, Nick remained in his seat. He stroked the blue velvet on the arm of his chair with his finger. Nothing he’d experienced, in or out of a movie theater, compared to Persona. Shaking, tears welled up until he willed them back down. After the lights came on, he stayed in the theatre for a long time.
He was like Liv’s Elisabet.
In the dark, safe, he’d gathered feelings without saying a word. He’d learned about intimacy without the real risk of revealing anything about himself. He’d banked emotional scripts for future use. Life since his dad’s death had consisted of distant and dishonest relationships. How could he trust again? How could he be trusted? Could he let down his guard and enter into emotionally intimate relationships that were deep into things?
Back in his dorm room that night, he sprawled at his desk, opened his economics book, and began working on his midterm paper. The euphoria from the afterglow of Persona permeated his writing as he whistled “Hey Jude.”
As “Hey Jude” faded in the apartment, Sassa joined Nick on the sofa. They both slid off their shoes and put their bare feet up on the coffee table. He offered her freshly made popcorn and a glass of wine. Minutes into the movie, she reached over and took his hand. Only a short way into hand-holding, he convinced himself he could stay on that sofa, watching Persona with Sassa, forever. As the movie progressed, they remained transfixed, on occasion squeezing each other's hand, feeding each other popcorn or rubbing feet. When the final image faded, Nick glanced over to get Sassa’s reaction; tears streamed down her face.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“There’s too much betrayal,” she said. “Elisabet isn’t honest.”
“True. What I love about the movie is that Elisabet and Alma try to pierce through each other’s veil.”
“They do for a bit.”
“They couldn’t handle what they uncovered.”
“Liv Ullmann has the most expressive face I’ve ever seen.” Sassa pulled Nick’s arm across her legs and began tickling it slowly from his palm all the way up to his bicep. His hair moved in one direction, then the other, as if the tips of her fingers were magnetic. She did this for a long time, the whole time apparently deep in t
hought. Finally, resting her head on his shoulder, she asked, “Do you think two people can walk through life together and each know the complete truth about the other?”
“Yes.”
“You really think it’s possible for two people to connect without any masks?”
“It depends on what we do with the fear.”
“It doesn’t go away.”
“No, but it may get in the way less and less.”
• • •
A few days later, Nick arranged to meet Sassa uptown at Luca’s for dinner at eight o’clock. He arrived early and, out of habit, waited for her outside the restaurant. He had a thing about being on time and had been disappointed that she’d been a few minutes late for their earlier dates. As he waited, he recalled his college internship at a hi-tech company where his boss, a forty-something Portuguese woman with thick, streaming black hair, black eyes, and dark brown skin, had schooled him on tardiness. “Being late is a form of violence. Everyone’s time at the company is just as valuable as yours.” At first, upset by her choice of words, he’d pushed back. But soon after, he accepted that she was right. From that day on, he never arrived late for a meeting, not even by a minute.
Sassa flowed toward Nick at twenty after eight, wearing a red sleeveless summer dress that reminded him of a picture of Charlize Theron he’d seen once. Her pumps matched her dress. A single strand of pearls encircled her neck. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, highlighting her makeup-less face.
“You look great. I love your hair.”
“Inspired by Liv. Sorry I’m late. I had trouble hailing a cab.”
“No problem.”
“Nice suit.”
He owned exactly one suit, black with dark blue pinstripes, which he purchased right after watching Marlon Brando in The Godfather give the greatest performance by an actor in the twentieth century. “Thanks. Let’s find a quiet table out of the way and start with a good bottle of wine.”
The sommelier took his order for an Amarone from his favorite vintner. As Nick waited for the wine to arrive, he detailed his love of dark reds. Full-bodied. A long aftertaste. Hints of oak and cherry in the best of them. The sommelier returned promptly and unknowingly echoed Nick’s view while decanting the bottle. He let Nick sample the vintage, then poured the first glass for both of them.
Sassa raised the glass to her lips and sipped the wine. “Oh my!”
Nick smiled and took a sip. He ripped off a piece of Italian bread, dipped it in hot pepper-infused garlic oil, and savored a bite. Since their last meeting, he’d been thinking about telling her about his past lovers, another thing he’d never done before with previous girlfriends. For the first time in his life, he wanted a woman to see everything, and despite all of the naysayers running around in his head, the ones who portended awful consequences after the big reveal, he pressed on. “Do you want to hear about who came before?”
“If you want to.”
“Okay . . . Basically, I was a jerk. I manipulated to get what I wanted.”
“We all do that.”
“Not like this. I didn’t treat my girlfriendw as equals. I held back and I tried to control everything.”
“Why don’t you tell me about one?”
Freshman year, Nick stepped onto the Columbia University campus feeling confident, committed. He intended to fix himself at school. He imagined leaving home and studying in the city as just the change he needed to get over what had happened to him. He’d made a pact with himself to try new things, to encounter new people, to study hard, to write more songs, and to seduce girls. He would heal. Or at least have enough diversions to keep his mind off his father.
He dated Raine only one time freshmen year, but she was the girl that stayed with him emotionally long after college ended. They had all of the same classes and, after continuously flirting one day, decided to study together that night. In the library, they found an empty table near a wall of Eastern religion books, and studied there for a couple of hours, though for a good portion of the time they whispered strangely erotic passages back and forth from random books.
Passages complete, he ushered Raine back to her dorm room. The campus night light pulsed as a driving wind paraded clouds past a crescent moon. Along the way, he fetched her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed each finger. At the entrance to her dorm, he pulled her in close and caressed her face, brushing his lips lightly on hers. As she moved with him, he gradually went deeper, with more intensity, until Raine snatched his hand and led him through the door.
An hour later, he slipped back into his jeans and pulled his shirt on over his head. He glanced over at Raine, still in bed, watching him dress. She glistened with sweat. There was something about working his way into a girl’s bed, then losing himself in that moment without thought where life and death intermingled.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“You scared me.”
“I did? Why?”
“How do you feel now?” she asked.
“Relaxed. The sex was intense.”
“That’s why you scared me. Do you think there’s a difference between intensity and intimacy?”
“Sure, I meant intimate. Sorry.”
She sat up in bed and crisscrossed her arms over her breasts, and that image stayed with him long after the night ended.
At the restaurant table, Nick folded his arms across his chest, and while looking right at Sassa, said, “I didn’t know the difference.”
She put her wine glass down, reached across the table, and placed her hand on his. “You weren’t ready. You were doing the best you could. Loss will do that to you.” She was quiet a moment. “You know, fear is a fickle companion.”
“Good line . . . I could have done better.”
“Not on the line.”
“Sorry, I meant—”
“We all need to forgive ourselves for who we used to be.”
“Easier said.” Why was forgiveness such a difficult idea for him? It had been for as long as he could remember. He didn’t understand its pull, its power. Even though others had pushed him toward it, he’d stayed firmly planted. In work. In song. In moments without thought. But somehow Sassa’s words made him want to try to take a step forward. More than her words. “Have you forgiven yourself?”
“I think about it now and then,” she said. Smiling, she slipped off her shoe and stroked his leg slowly, all the way from his ankle up to his thigh, and back down again.
“Oh my.”
“I told you words are overrated.”
The waiter arrived at the table with their entrees. Nick had ordered osso bucco with toasted pinenut gremolata, and Sassa had ordered tortelloni radicchio with parmigiano cream. To save money, they’d skipped the appetizers.
She took a bite. “This is fantastic!” She tacked on a little melody at the end of –tastic.
“Mine too.”
They ate their dinners slowly, savoring each mouthful. He fantasized that at any moment she might reach across the table, fork in hand, and let him taste her food. Instead, she deconstructed their entrees in glorious detail. He had no idea what gremolata or parmigiano cream entailed. He had no idea how much thought and work went into preparing food. He had no idea. Period. She was accomplished. And had fractal blue eyes. And had embraced his past. But what about her loves? What was her love story?
Over coffee and tea, he asked, “So how about you? How many people have you loved in your life?”
“I’ve loved no one.”
“Not even your parents?”
“I loved them, I guess. I don’t think about them.”
“Why not?”
She lifted the prongs from the table’s sugar bowl and slowly dropped three cubes of sugar into her tea, one at a time. Instead of stirring, she rocked the teacup back and forth until the cubes dissolved, then she took a slow sip. After the cup had securely returned to the table, s
he said, “They died, along with my sister, in a car accident right after I turned thirteen.”
“Were you with them in the car?”
“Only survivor.”
“I’m so sorry, Sassa.”
“Thank you. I’m okay. It was a long time ago.”
“Who raised you?”
“My aunt and uncle. They were genuinely kind, but you can’t replace parents.”
“How true.” He reached out, gathered her hands, and didn’t take the conversation further that night. He hated when people pushed him about his loss and had no intention of doing the same to her. They finished their dinner on lighter topics, then he walked her home.
• • •
Late the next evening, Nick waited for Sassa at a Village diner. He’d grabbed a booth and ordered coffee, tea, and a piece of German chocolate cake. Her favorite. As he sipped his coffee, he spun his fork around as if it were a bottle. She hadn’t loved anyone? How did she go all these years and not love a man? What exactly had happened to her parents and her sister in the accident? Where should he take the conversation when she arrived? Back to her story, to loss, to the accident, to past boyfriends? Or to Romeo and Juliet? With many of his former girlfriends, he’d directed a conversation about Romeo and Juliet, almost as a test, as a way to understand what they believed about love, about honesty. Maybe the time had come to do the same with Sassa? Maybe not.
After she arrived and over the delicious shared piece of German chocolate cake, he jumped right in and asked, “What do you think of Romeo and Juliet?”
“Have you used that line before?”
“Kind of.”
“Maybe you could try something a little more unique?”
“I’m sorry. The words are unique but informed by the past.”
“That sounds like another line.”
“I may have to stop.”
“Your choice. Don’t stop for me.”
He stirred his coffee with his cake fork. Maybe he should stop. He had used the line before and had always been disappointed with the resulting R&J conversation. Past girlfriends didn’t have a strong enough view of love. Or honesty. Or how to evolve a relationship. But Sassa was different, and he had to know where she would take R&J, had to know if it would help open her. He cut off a piece of cake and popped it in his mouth. Chocolate and coconut—what a combination. “Okay. One last time. The ending wouldn’t have been tragic if either of them had practiced a little more honesty.”
The Color of Home: A Novel Page 2