“Do you have someone?” I asked.
Another swallow. “Yes,” he said, quietly.
“Do you love him?”
This time, there was no hesitation. He looked directly at me. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was steady.
Suddenly I was very sad. My poor granddaughter, whom I was marrying to a man who would protect her but would never love her, at least not in the way we all need to be loved; this poor boy, who would never be able to have the life he should. He was only twenty-four, and when you’re twenty-four, your body is for pleasure and you’re constantly in love. I saw, suddenly, Nathaniel’s face when I had first met him, his rich dark skin, his open mouth, and I turned away, because I feared I might cry.
“Sir?” I heard him ask, his voice soft. “Dr. Griffith?” This was the voice he would use to speak to Charlie, I thought, and I made myself smile and turned back to him.
We came to terms that afternoon. He didn’t seem to care much about the dowry, and after we’d signed the papers of intention, we walked downstairs together, his marriage card in my briefcase.
On the sidewalk, we bowed again. “I’m looking forward to meeting Charlie,” he said, and I said I was sure Charlie would be excited to meet him, too.
He was leaving when I called out his name, and he turned and walked back to me. For a while, I didn’t know how to begin. “Tell me,” I began, and then I paused. Then I knew what I wanted to say. “You’re a young man,” I said. “You’re handsome. You’re bright.” I lowered my voice. “You’re in love. Why are you doing this now, so young? Don’t mistake me—I’m glad you are,” I added, quickly, although his face hadn’t changed. “For Charlie’s sake. But why?”
He stepped closer to me. He was tall, but I was taller still, and for a second, I thought, ridiculously, that he might kiss me, that I would feel the brush of his lips against mine, and I closed my eyes, just for a moment, as if doing so would make it happen. “I want to be safe, too, Dr. Griffith,” he said, just louder than a whisper. He stepped back then. “I have to keep myself safe,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do otherwise.”
It wasn’t until I got home that I cried. Charlie was still at work, thank goodness, and so I was alone. I cried for Charlie, for how much I loved her, and for how I hoped she would know that I did what I thought best for her, how I had chosen her safety over her fulfillment. I cried for her perhaps-husband, for his need to protect himself, for how limited this country had made his life. I cried for the man he loved, who would never be able to make a life with him. I cried for the men in the cards I’d seen and rejected on Charlie’s behalf. I cried for Nathaniel, and David, and even Eden, all of them long disappeared, none of whom Charlie remembered. I cried for my grandparents and for Aubrey and Norris and for Hawai‘i. But mostly, I cried for myself, for my loneliness, and for this world I’d helped make, and for all these years: all the dead, all the lost, all the vanished.
I don’t often cry, and I had forgotten how, beneath the physical discomfort, there was something exhilarating about it as well, every part of the body participating, the machinery of its various systems lurching into movement, plumping the ducts with liquids, pumping the lungs with air, the eyes growing shiny, the skin thickening with blood. I found myself thinking that this was the end of my life, that if Charlie accepted this boy, I would have discharged my final duty—I had protected her from harm, I had seen her to adulthood, I had found her a job and a companion. There was nothing else I could do, nothing else I could hope to do. Any life I had beyond this point would be welcome, but unnecessary.
Not too many years ago, Peter, I thought for certain that I’d be able to see you again. We’d have lunch together, you and me and Charlie and Olivier, and then maybe the two of them would go somewhere, to a museum or a play （we’d be in London, of course, not here）， and then you and I would spend the afternoon together, doing something you did every day but which had become exotic to me—a trip to a bookstore, for example, or a café, or a boutique, where I’d buy something frivolous for Charlie: a necklace, maybe, or a pair of sandals. As the afternoon grew long, we’d go back to your house, the one I will never see with my own eyes, where Olivier and Charlie would be making dinner, and where I’d have to explain some of the ingredients to her: This is shrimp; this is sea urchin; these are figs. For dessert, there’d be chocolate cake, and the three of us would watch her eat it for the first time, watch as an expression I hadn’t seen since before she got sick bloomed across her face as we laughed and applauded, as if she’d done something marvelous. We’d have our own rooms, but she’d come into mine because she would be unable to sleep that night, so overwhelmed would she be by all she’d seen and heard and smelled and tasted, and I’d hold her as I had when she was a little girl, feel her body twitch with electricity. And the next day we’d get up and do it again, and then the next, and the next, and although much of her new life would eventually become familiar to her—I falling back into it within days, the old memories reasserting themselves—she would never lose her new expression of awe, she would look about her with her mouth always slightly open, her face pitched to the sky. We would smile to see it; anyone would. “Charlie!” we’d call, when she got into one of her trances, to wake her up, to remind her of where and who she was. “Charlie! All of this is yours.”
Love, C.
My dearest Peter, June 5, 2088
Well, it’s official. My little cat is married. It was, as you can imagine, an emotionally complicated day: As I stood and watched the two of them, I experienced an unusually vivid bout of one of those time jumps I’ve been having more and more frequently—I was back in Hawai‘i, I was holding hands with Nathaniel, we were looking toward the sea, in front of which Matthew and John had positioned that bamboo chuppah. I must have looked strange, because at some point my now grandson-in-law glanced over at me and asked if anything was wrong. “Just old age,” I said, which he accepted; to the young, anything unpleasant can be blamed on or attributed to old age. Outside, we heard troops marching by, the shouts of the insurgents in the distance. After they had signed their papers, we returned together to what is now their home and had some cake made with real honey that I had bought them as a special treat. None of us had had cake in months, and although I had feared conversation might be stilted, I needn’t have worried, because all of us were so focused on eating that there was little need to speak at all.
The insurgents have now taken the Square, and although the apartment faces north, we could still hear them chanting, and then the loudspeakers blaring above them, reminding everyone of the 23:00 curfew, warning that anyone who failed to obey the order would be arrested immediately. That was my cue to go home to my new apartment, a single room in an old building on 10th and University, just four blocks from Charlie: I moved in last week. She had wanted me to stay with them, just for another week, but I had reminded her that she’s an adult now, a married adult, and that I would come see her and her husband for dinner the next day, as we’d agreed. “Oh,” she had said, and for a moment, I thought she might cry, my brave Charlie who never cries, and I had almost changed my mind.