—
I had gone to the Philharmonic for three or four years with someone I had been seeing. And I had noticed the man who played the cello. Because he was slow to get to the stage; he had a bad hip, from a childhood accident, I found out later （and have mentioned here before）， and he was a short man and just slightly overweight, and when he came onto the stage, or left it—because I would sometimes stay to watch him leave—he always walked very slowly and unevenly and he looked older than he was; he had gray hair around a small bald spot. And he played the cello beautifully. When I first heard him play Chopin’s étude in C sharp minor I thought: This is all I want. Except I do not know that I even had that thought. I just mean there was nothing else in the world I wanted except to listen to him play.
* * *
—
After I was through with the man I had been seeing, I went to the Philharmonic on my own twice, and I went home after the second time and googled the cello player and it took me a while but I found his name—David Abramson—and I did not know if there was a wife. There was almost nothing about him at all except that he played for the Philharmonic. The third time I went by myself, I suddenly thought as it ended and as I watched him walk off the stage: I will go to him. So I found the stage door that he would come through, and he did come through it, it was October and not that chilly, and as he walked out I went up to him and I said, “Excuse me, I’m so sorry to bother you, but my name is Lucy and I love you.” I could not believe that I had said that! And I said, “Oh I mean I love your music.” And the poor man stood there, he was almost my height—which is not tall—and he said, “Well, thank you,” and he started to move away. And I said, “No, I’m so sorry, that sounded crazy. I just meant I’ve loved your music for a few years now.”
And the man stood there beneath the light of the doorway and he looked at me, I could see him looking at me, and he finally said, “What did you say your name was?” So I told him again, and he said, “Well, Lucy, would you like to have a drink, or coffee, or a bit of food? Whatever your choice would be?”
Later he said it seemed almost providential.
We married six weeks after that, and I was not worried—as I had always been—about getting married again because of how strangely weird I got after marrying William.
With David Abramson, I did not get weird or strange at all, life continued with him exactly as it had since that night that I first met him.
* * *
I thought about William over the next number of weeks, and how I had thought that he made me feel safe. And I wondered why I had thought that, because it made no real sense. But things in life don’t make sense. And I thought: Who is this man, William?
I also thought how he had, as I said to him that day in Maine, married his mother. But who had I married when I married him? I had certainly not married my father—
My mother?
I have no answer for this.
And I thought of the enormously fat man I had seen at the airport on our way home, and how I had felt like him: that even though I feel invisible I also feel I have been marked but no one can see it right away. And then I thought: Well, William was marked too.
This made me think of Lois Bubar, who had leaned forward slightly in her chair and asked me, about William, “Is there anything—you know—anything wrong with him?”
And I thought: Lois Bubar, you can go to hell. Of course there was something wrong with William! Which made me almost laugh. That I would react to her now as William had.
* * *
And then one morning—it was early October—when I came into my building after going for my walk along the river, William was there in the lobby. He was sitting in one of the chairs reading a book, and as I walked in he closed the book slowly on his lap and then stood up and said, “Hello, Lucy.” His mustache was gone. And his hair was shorter. I could not believe how different he looked.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
And he laughed—almost a real laugh.
“I have come to ask you a question.” He said this with a slight bow, and then he glanced at the doorman and back at me and he said, “May I come up?”
* * *
—
So William came up to my apartment and he stepped inside with a tentativeness. “I forgot your place looked like this,” he said.
“When did you see it?” I was really nervous, and I did not know why, except that he looked so different with his mustache gone and his hair shorter.
“When David died and I came to help you with the business stuff,” he said, and he looked around.