I thought as I walked back to the airport—I thought: I know what that man feels like. （Except of course I do not.） But I thought: It’s odd, because on one hand I think I am invisible, but on the other I know what it is like to be marked as separate from society, only in my case no one knows it when they see me. But I thought that about that fat man. And about myself.
* * *
—
From a window in the airport, I saw William as he walked around the huge parking lot: He walked up one side until I almost couldn’t see him, and then I saw him walking back down the other way, and as I watched he stopped walking and he stood shaking his head again and again. And then he started walking once more.
Oh William, I thought.
Oh William!
* * *
As we sat in the seats in the airport, I noticed William’s face again. I recognized that expression so well: He was gone. He said to me, “You tell the girls what happened, I don’t feel like it.” And I said that I would do that. We boarded the plane; it was a small plane and we could not find room to put our luggage above us, so the attendant—a pleasant young fellow—took it from us and said we could get it planeside, meaning when we got off the plane they would have it on the jetway.
William sat in the aisle seat because his legs are longer than mine, and we spoke about various things—he spoke in a flat tone, once more, about the fact that Lois Bubar had not wanted to see him—and then we settled in and the flight was not long. As I looked out the window at New York City, I felt what I have almost always felt when I have flown into New York, and that was a sense of awe and gratitude that this huge, sprawling place had taken me in—had let me live there. This is what I feel almost every time I see it from the sky. I felt a rush of tremendous thanksgiving, and turning to William to say this I saw that he had one drop of water coming down the side of his face, and when he looked at me fully he had another drop of water coming from his other eye. I thought, Oh William!
But he shook his head in a way to let me know that he wanted no comfort—although who does not want comfort?, but he wanted no comfort from me—and as we waited for our bags on the jetway he said nothing and he had no more tears. He was just gone, as he had been increasingly since we drove to the airport at Bangor.
We pulled our suitcases to the taxi stand and William got into the taxi ahead of me and said, “Thanks, Lucy. Talk to you soon.”
But he didn’t. He didn’t talk to me soon.
* * *
Riding over the bridge—in the back of my own taxi that evening—I suddenly remembered times early in our marriage in our Village apartment when I had felt terrible. It was about my parents, and the feeling that I had left them behind—as I had—and I would sometimes sit in our small bedroom and weep with a kind of horrendous inner pain, and William would come to me and say, “Lucy, talk to me, what is it?” And I would just shake my head until he went away.
What a really awful thing I had done.
I had not thought of this until now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me—oh, it was an unspeakably awful thing.
And I had not known.
This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.
* * *
When I stepped into my apartment that evening we came back, it was so empty! And I knew it would always be empty, that David with his limp would never walk into it again, and I felt unbelievably desolate. I wheeled my suitcase into the bedroom and then I went and sat down on the couch in the living room and looked at the river, and the emptiness of the place was horrifying.
* * *
—
Mom! I cried to the mother I have made up over the years, Mommy, I hurt, I hurt!
And the mother I have made up over the years said, I know you do, honey. I know you do.
* * *
—
I thought of this:
Many years ago, I saw a documentary on women in prison and their children, and there was one woman, a very large woman with a lovely face, who had her small son on her lap—he may have been four years old. The documentary was about how important it is to have children with their mothers, and this prison let the children visit with their mothers—at that time—in a new way. And this little boy sat on this woman’s huge lap, and he looked up at her and he said quietly, “I love you more than God.”
I have always remembered that.
* * *
I met the girls at Bloomingdale’s that Saturday. It was wonderful to see them, and to see all the other people there as well. Usually in late August one thinks of all the rich people of New York having left for the Hamptons, but there were plenty of the usual types: women who were old and stick-thin with their faces stretched and their lips puffed up. I loved seeing them; I felt love for them, is what I mean.