American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [17]
So, no stories today? she asked.
Nope. Why don’t you tell me one? You never tell me anything about yourself.
You never ask.
That’s not true. I did once.
She thought of what she might tell him and then decided against it. They were quiet for a long time.
You know, you’re helping me, he said.
How can you tell?
Because I want to know what’s going to happen next.
I guess that’s called having something to live for, she said. I’m glad to hear it.
And she was. She was smiling.
Maybe one of these days you’ll tell me something about yourself.
Maybe, she said.
She would sit and think about whatever she had seen with him as she rode home on the subway. Sometimes she listened to her iPod while she thought. This was the time in her life when she listened to music to save herself. Her music and her soldier’s stories, they kept her from falling apart. The sounds wound around her like gauze. She’d had a friend, someone she didn’t talk to anymore, and he had given her a book by Ralph Ellison about jazz. It said: In those days, we could either live with music or die with noise, and we chose, somewhat desperately, to live.
The iPod sat in her lap. She realized that the music had stopped some time ago and that she had just been sitting with the earphones in and no sound. At her stop she got out and walked home down the uncrowded streets to her walk-up. She felt less and less as though she lived in her small apartment and more as if the hospital uptown were her home. The time between her visits to her soldier seemed as though it was not her real life. She saw other clients, worked some days in a doctor’s office, took classes, had her friends. But she found that she had to remind herself of who she was and sometimes riding on the train or walking down the street she would tell herself: You are Honor. You are twenty-one. You are not a dancer, anymore. You live alone.
The time she spent with Milo was now becoming something of its own secret. At first she told some friends about him, the mysterious soldier who wouldn’t lie on his back. But why not? they would ask. What’s wrong with him? What happened to him? Why didn’t she know? Why didn’t she ask him? Then they became bored and talked of other things. There were relationships, films, jobs, people moving in different directions, changing lives. But she was not concerned with any of those things anymore. Some of her friends were worried about her. She had changed. Was she doing okay? She said she was but really being okay or not okay was not important to her anymore. Being okay seemed like a state of mind from another life. Her old life was as insignificant to her now as a passing shadow she had stepped across yesterday, or a lost scrap of conversation overheard. She could not remember her old life. She could not think about the person she had been. She was thinking about her soldier.
There was a woman swaying underwater, her black hair wafting weightlessly like ink. The woman became a tree. The trees were moving in the darkness. It was evening when they left the museum and walked down the steps and saw the park.
They were not holding hands. They walked quietly west. Joe said he felt like he was forever walking her to the subway. Forever saying good-bye.
That’s really all we can say to each other, she said.
Don’t say that, he said.
I don’t want to be angry with you for the way things are, she said. Don’t be angry with me.
I couldn’t be.
You could, she said. But don’t be. I was just being honest.
The stately buildings along the street were turning purple now and their stoic faces gazed out gravely at the ornate hulk of the museum. They were a bastion of traditional values, of responsibility and discipline and order. They seemed to be broadcasting that it was time to go home. People should be inside now, having dinner, sitting with families. Joe hunched a little under the heavy shadows.
We have to say good-bye, she said. This really isn’t possible.
His face was right up next to hers. She was in his shadow now.
I know, he said. Then he whispered: