Chapter IX: Ed Taughtauer
Meanwhile, Mitchell Mitkin tried to live. He was the youngest science teacher in his school but this was the least of his problems. Internally he was at war. For most of his senior year at Columbia, he had looked forward to teaching in a tough, inner city high school, romanticizing the impact he would make and the kids he would meet. He looked forward to the curriculum, to teaching science and the tangible world of empirical data. His father had looked forward with him; before his death he shared all his fondest memories of youth. “Teaching,” his father told him, “taught me about myself.” It was cliché but true. Mitchell Mitkin was learning a great deal about himself, none of it particularly pretty. He was wrought with abysmal emotion, a cocktail of polarities; one day he was lethargic, the next frantic. And he was skeptical. Trite lessons about cells and gravity, about “life’s little building blocks,” were suddenly impossible. Inertia became familiar while gravity became so tediously heavy that he imagined he might scream out in class one day. In short, he mourned his father by bemoaning his work. He became cagy.
“Today I want to talk to you about compounds,” he said, one day shortly after his father’s death. “Before we break into groups, be sure to recognize the aim of today’s experiment please. From the reading, who can tell me what you are trying to accomplish today?” He was standing straight up like a stork. His head bobbed from side to side looking for an answer. “Anyone?”
No one. “Nobody out there can tell me why you’re suited up and ready to mix compounds?” A black and brown pond of faces rippled with confusion. “So you’re basically wearing these stupid little masks and yellow gloves because somebody you barely know told you to, is that it?” More than a few students nodded. One shook his head, and with an amateur’s flair, Mitkin called on the “no.”
“I am doing it ‘cause if I don’t my mother will beat the hell out of me. I don’t do something because you tell me to, you can believe dat.” The child’s cool clarity washed over Mitkin and momentarily cleansed him of his brackishness. This young man became Mitkin’s favorite.
“Honesty,” he pointed at the brash student. “This kid is honest. You all should be so honest. I mean what else is there? Huh? Huh?” Mitkin’s approach confused the students and made them edgy, in need of direction. Mitkin too was in need of direction, standing there with a room full of kids, some good, some bad, some just wanting to get a grade, but all wanting direction. Mitkin was no leader. He turned to his new favorite student and said, “Is your father alive?” The kid rumpled his face.
“My father’s in South Carolina.”
“But he’s alive?” Mitkin asked. The boy was getting suspicious. No teacher had spoken to him like this.
“Yeah he’s alive, what you trying to say?”
The question went directly to the root of Mitkin’s soul. He couldn’t answer. He stared out over the class where a smallish girl shuffled her feet. Someone fiddled with a candy wrapper. “I’m…” He mumbled incoherently. All activity stopped now.
“I’m trying to say something about, about organisms I guess, and death and chaos and anarchy and reality.” He was rolling now, carefree. “Something about lies, something about courage, about confusion. I, uh, I, don’t know what I am trying to say. Do you?”
Another student spoke up. “Hey Mr. Mitkin, you shoulda called in sick, yo. Hey y’all, maybe he mixed one of these beakers all wrong last period. He looks sick, yo.” A contagious laughter splintered about and the students began to murmur one to the other. A girl snappily dressed and wearing a great deal of lipstick chimed in.
“Yeah, Mister, and if you go home make sure you dress yourself in the mirror this time.” Everyone burst out; hunting season was wide open. A wad of paper sailed toward the garbage can and a spindly boy followed the miss with a mock slam-dunk.
“Why is this happening?” thought Mitkin. “Why am I here?” He stretched himself tall but this had no effect on the jailbreak around him. “I don’t care about these kids. I don’t care about compounds, this job. This is all bullshit.” He looked out over a tempestuous pond, a flood really. No one wanted direction anymore and Mitkin was inconsequential. It grew very loud. Two kids in the back, two small, very quiet South American immigrants began a shoving match. In rushed the provocateurs. The words fight and kick his ass could be heard even beyond the closed classroom doors. Mitkin ran to the back and jumped onto a long black lab table. He kicked a glass test tube and it shattered, releasing an acerbic stench. Kids covered their faces, one girl cried.
“Order!” yelled Mitkin. “Order!”
He was high above them all, standing on the table, shouting. “Look at me!” One by one, they did and Mitkin quietly shuddered inside.
“There must be order!” He trembled. “Sit down, people. Sit down now!” He pointed at the well-dressed girl. “You, back to your seat.” With his forefinger trained like a laser, he guided her back to her chair. He did the same with another student. Methodically, he moved each student back with his finger, seizing each in his sights and steering them with a profound intensity.
The students muttered as they moved.
“What’s up with this guy yo?”
“What’s wrong with the schizo?”
“This white boy is trippin’.”
The honest student spoke directly to Mitkin. “What’s wrong with you, Mitkin?”
Mitkin paused. “My father died two weeks ago.” He slumped pathetically. “That’s as much as I can tell you.”
“Is that why you come to school looking all busted?” said the well-dressed girl. Mitkin nodded while glaring at her. She whispered something to her friend, and there was an uneasy silence. Mitkin regretted mentioning his father.
Then a peep from the back. “My father left us two weeks ago. I can’t understand why.” The little girl who spoke had a dark and chiseled face that reminded Mitkin of Raphaella. This girl would suffer and her face seemed to say as much. Many of the others, too, had that look. Suddenly Mitkin felt embarrassed. The sum of one’s suffering is an unsightly thing when offered before the pain of a child, he thought. He felt like a coward, like the coward his father warned him about. His stomach turned. He felt queasy. Mitkin was not well. He was so far from the unwavering Mitchell Mitkin, the confident son, the valedictorian of Columbia University. Confusion crept back into the room. It crept into Mitkin’s eyes, standing there so absurdly, high up on that table.
The bell saved him—the bell saved all of them really—the discomfort in the room was murderous. Mitkin dismounted. He still had the bulky, protective goggles stretched over his forehead, sticking up like a miner on lunch break. At the back of the room, a tall, plastic, scrawny human skeleton stood grinning at Mitkin, its bones numbered and its eye sockets filled with bulging, anatomically correct eyeballs. Mitkin pondered death, but his genius was obsolete. He turned and fingered the drawer to his desk and grabbed a brown bag filled with food. He started for the door and walked steadfastly to the little room reserved for teachers and their lunches.
“Mr. Mitchell,” cried a voice from the corner. “The young superstar of South Bronx Science, yep, yep. What’s that you’ve got in the old brown bag, Mitch?” Mitkin’s lunch bag wasn’t even visible. “I bet you’ve got bananas,” sang the voice. “Yep, yep.”
This was Ed Taughtauer, a most disproportionate and unattractive man. His neck was long, his face was long, his nose was long and so were his spindly legs. But in the middle was his belly, a rotund thing full of junk food and sweet drinks. He had a distinctly British face, and that means no chin. He was balding, but that didn’t stop him from wearing what little hair he had long, back, and nearly to his shoulders, almost like a tail. He was a jocular fellow who always greeted Mitkin, be it in the hallways, in the teacher’s elevator, or here, in the teachers’ lounge.
“Two bananas and a ham sandwich,” Mitkin said with hesitation. Taughtauer crossed the room, side stepping a teacher eating lunch. He slipped past two others with their brown-bag lunches strewn across undersized desktops, the same desks used by students in the classroom. Mitkin thought how Taughtauer looked like a drunk. He waited on him, perturbed. Taughtauer sat down with his mouth still filled with food, and Mitkin could smell corned beef.
“You look rundown, teaching these kids,” he paused to swallow, “It’s hell you know.” Mitkin cheesed a smile and nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the kids who make it hell, it’s the administration. They kindle it, hot like the nether regions.” He pointed to his crotch and took another bite. “You and I oughta get together for lunch sometime, talk about some things. Talk about things that matter. Really. I’ll buy.” He got closer and quieter. “Most of these teachers don’t know jack shit. I mean look around this place. Ain’t a brain in the bunch.”
Again Mitkin nodded, pretending to agree. He peeled a banana and was about to bite in when Taughtauer drew closer still. His desk scratched against the hard Formica floor as he slip-jerked it closer. He whispered, “If I thought I could get away with it I’d take the whole goddamned history curriculum and bury it in the Chancellor’s ass. I’d teach these kids a few things they’ll never learn in, and I quote, respectable society.” He nodded. “Mmmhuh. That’s what I’d do. We should get some guts and do it together.” Then in a voice not a whisper, he said, “Oh, but you don’t have tenure, do you?”
“No,” said Mitkin derisively, “I’ve been here a week. I thought you’d know that. You seem to notice things like that.”
“Oh you mean I seem to be watching you?” He picked at his teeth nonchalantly.
“Yeah, you seem to be watching me.” Mitkin was half-revived by the combative blood rushing through his veins.
“Here’s the deal. I have been watching you. I saw you at the first all-staff meeting, when you got up and questioned the assistant principal about homework, about, what was it, systematic evaluations?” He smiled. “Yeah, I liked that you stood up. You seem like the real deal, Mitch. Most new teachers, you know, got no guts, no courage, most are just looking for a paycheck.”
“Yeah, and why are you here?”
Taughtauer leaned back slightly and grinned. “Oh Mitch, so much anger. I started teaching because I imagined year-long investigations into what matters in this world, you know, unearthing powerful, courageous creatures ready to change the world. That’s why I came here, I wanted to teach some supermen, Mitchy. But the system sees to it that supermen die, oh yeah. Die.” His sudden intensity was contradictory—he didn’t look like any of this. He continued with a sideways look at Mitkin. “Do you know why I’m staying though?” Mitkin shook his head. “Rebellion.” He repeated rebellion in a whisper, his eyes darting back and forth cartoonishly. Mitkin looked at Taughtauer and wondered if he wasn’t maybe a fool, a patient in a ward somewhere. Taughtauer just stared back, grinning. “And you, Mitch?”
“Me, Mitch?” said Mitkin.
“Yeah, you Mitchy. Why are you here? Still. I’ve seen some leave after an hour in this shithole.”
Mitkin remembered his pledge to public education but that was a pre-death pledge, one that seemed empty now. Besides, Taughtauer didn’t really care, or did he? “I just wanted to teach.”
“Thou wraith telleth a lie, good Mr. Mitchell. Have not you come to spy a damsel’s eye?” He grinned a giant grin and warmly patted Mitkin on the back. “No?”
“No what?”
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t like a little teaching assistance from that one, come on Mr. Mitchell.” Both eyed a young, semi-attractive woman. With Taughtauer so close to him and so intent on talking sex, Mitchell felt slimy, like a rotted onion cut too thin.
“You’re too much,” said Mitkin.
“Now, Mr. Mitchell, that’s positively meaningless. You’re educated. You can come up with something a little more… yep, yep, illustrative. Can’t you? Come on, describe me better than that.”
Mitkin sucked twice on his upper lip. Then he cocked his head, regaining a confidence he had lost of late. “I read this once: ‘Where a man does not know, there that man must not speak.’ Here’s the point. You are a weak man who has no friends and in order to deal with this very debilitating reality, you have assumed certain things about me that are untrue. The first being that I am interested in talking to you.” It was the old Mitkin, just for a moment.
“Ludwig Wittgenstein.”
“What?”
“Ludwig Wittgenstein is the architect of your little quote, Mitchy. He was referring to his inability to understand things metaphysical. He copped out basically.” Taughtauer reached into his own brown bag and started on some chips. “He was a fraud.”
“He was no fraud, he was one of this world’s great thinkers. Anyone who knows anything about mathematics knows that.”
“Well, then I guess I’ll settle for knowing a lot about something else, something like the real world, something Wittgenstein had no clue about.” Gnawed bits of chips flew from his mouth when he said Wittgenstein. Mitkin brushed them off and leered at Taughtauer. “Oh, come on Mitch, relax. I know something about you that you don’t know I know. Smile and I’ll tell you.”
“What makes you think I care?”
“You care because what I know about you tells me you care.” He sighed as if bothered. “It’s the whole point.”
“What’s the whole point, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Whoa there, Mitchy. The whole point is this. I’ve read your stuff. I read the article you published in the Columbia Reader. Yep. Loved it. You’re a real man of the mind. Really, good, good stuff.” He chomped on another chip. The little window in the door to the teachers’ lounge filled with a pretty face, and the girl waved at Taughtauer. Taughtauer invited her in. She was a strong girl who possessed poise, and Mitkin thought how could a sharp student like this be enamored with a boor like Taughtauer? Mitkin looked at Taughtauer who smiled back. “She’s a beauty, huh, and smart, and, best of all, she’s got moxie. A good kid.” He looked Mitkin up and down. “You’ve got moxie too, right Mitch?”
“You really read my article in a college newspaper? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope, not kidding. Yep, did read it. Do you know how I found out about it? I read ‘em all. I’m a graduate—philosophy, class of seventy. Never miss an issue. Hell, I’m still paying for the damn thing, aren’t I? Anyway, I loved your stuff. A Call to Reason, yep, yep, good stuff.”
“I didn’t write the headline,” said Mitkin.
“Yeah, but you did write the part about Columbia’s abandonment of rational thinking, the part about sentimental policy decisions and unnecessary pandering to special interest groups. You wrote that, right? But the best, seriously, the best was when you brought the whole thing home, the whole thing right into the laps of the dogs who run the joint. And I quote you sir: ‘One day reason will bring us to conclude that those who educate us are no longer serving our best interest, and at that point we will have no choice but to tear down what they have built, tear it all down to the ground.’” Taughtauer leaned back in his chair as if blown by a big wind. “Right down to the ground! My sentiments exactly! Bravo, old boy.”
Mitkin looked hard at Taughtauer. This was no joke. This freakish individual had read his article. In Taughtauer’s birdie eyes there was real satisfaction, a genuine admiration, an admiration so profound that Mitkin shuddered. Flatly and fearfully he said, “What do you want?”
“Me?” Taughtauer raised an eyebrow. “What do I want?” He pointed at his own chest. “Why, what makes you ask such large questions, Mr. Mitchell? I mean I want lots of things in this world.”
“What do you want from me?”
Taughtauer got up and stood looking down on Mitkin. He finished a cheek-full of chips and then threw the bag into a wastebasket some feet away. “It’s not time yet. I just wanted to see if you were as brilliant as your father said you were, and I have my answer.” Taughtauer walked out of the room without looking back. Mitkin was bewildered. Confusion flooded in again, and on this fifth day of teaching, he could honestly say he disliked it all—the classroom, the administration, the students, himself, Taughtauer—he hated it all. But the thought of Taughtauer is what lingered. He could not dismiss this zealot, this odd man. He left the teachers’ lounge with its messy bookshelves and full garbage cans and returned to teach about simple compounds.
CHAPTER X: Someone New Moves In
Raphaella heard a knock at her door.
“Raphaella, it’s me,” came a voice. “Are you there, please?”
It was Mitkin. He had not come to visit in nearly a month, longer than he’d gone between visits for nearly three years. She opened the door and let him in. “Where have you been, Mitchell? Are you okay?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Downstairs, the whole time, in your room? Why didn’t you visit, or at least answer the door?” He didn’t respond. “David said he saw you, but he said you just growled at him.” He looked at her with forlorn eyes. “What is it?” She opened the door wide. “Come, have dinner with us. You must.”
He took up her invitation because he was hungry and lonely, and because she said that he must. Still wearing his teacher clothes, the outfit the students called mismatched, he followed Raphaella down the thin hallway into the kitchen.
“Raphaella, do you know how much I admire you?”
Raphaella stole a peek at Mitkin. He was staring down at his shoes like a broken man. “Admire?” she said.
“It’s true. Before my father died, I could not have told you this, but I think, well, I think I’ve always loved you.”
Raphaella shrunk. Loved? How loved? She loved him too, but this was different. This was a conversation grounded in fear and crisis, and the worst kind of desperation. Raphaella walked over and sat down across from Mitkin. She held his hand and looked at him sincerely. “Mitchell, tell me about your father and his death. What is happening to you, inside?” Mitkin slumped in his chair as the boiling water bubbled behind him. “Tell me,” she said again.
“I hate what is happening to me. I am no longer sure about anything. Nothing makes sense. The dream I had, the dream about teaching science and paying back for a few years, well, that’s gone. It went with my father. All of it is dead, everything from the past is gone.”
Irritated, he got up and meandered for a moment. He stopped and pointed. “The water.” Raphaella reached and turned the heat down on the stove.
“But that’s not true,” she replied. “What about science and everything you’ve ever told me? Your father’s death doesn’t change all that.”
“He lied, Raphaella. He told me death was one thing, and it turns out it’s something else. And he taught me that I was a coward if I was swayed by my emotions, but I can’t help it. There was more to his death than he thought. It was not the end.”
“But—”
“Have you ever seen someone die, Raphaella?”
“Yeah, I have.”
“Tell me what you felt.”
“What I felt?”
“Yes, felt, not thought.”
Raphaella was carried back to her teenage years. On the corner of 175th and Creston she had seen a young man, a boy who had always had a crush on her, shot in the head. She was the first on the scene and now, because Mitkin had asked, she tried to remember. “I felt helpless.”
He nodded. “Did you feel betrayed?”
“By J.J.? Not really.”
“Did you feel very, very insignificant?”
“I think that was part of it, yeah.”
“When I saw my father die, the first thing I felt was betrayal. Do you know why?” He spoke in typical Mitkin style, chin out and hands demanding attention. “Because when he died, when his system broke down, there was something in my body that corresponded with no physical or material constituent part. It wasn’t my pituitary gland or some highly evolved electrical system that moved me. Raphie, in one solitary second, one damn second, I was moved to question everything my father had taught me. That’s not normal. You see, something’s wrong with that. How could I hate him, or hate what he stood for so quickly? It’s not normal. How could his lie become so, so blatant, so fast? He was a fucking liar.”
She recoiled, and there was silence. “Mitch, maybe you need to find out more about the science of emotion or something. Psychology maybe.” Raphaella wanted to give him hope, something that he, the logician, could identify with, even if for her the answer lay elsewhere.
But he knew she was pandering. “You don’t believe in that shit.” Mitkin cursing? “Raphie, you are the most spiritual person I know. Since I’ve known you, I’ve known you to be different and now I know why. Help me, Raphaella.” Ill at ease, Raphaella got up and poured some rice into the boiled water. She brought the heat back up and went to the cupboard for a chopping board. His eyes followed her, their friendship seeming to hang in the balance. Raphaella did not want to lose him despite his rude ways and this new, manic adoration. She wanted to shake herself clean like a muddy puppy might, start over again, maybe return to the door and re-open it and invite in some other spirits, not the ones that came in just a few minutes ago, the spirits of anguish and agony and absolute timidity. She sat down again and smiled a broad, comforting smile.
“We’re all like you, Mitchell. We all learn something from death. There was more to your father than he said, but ignorance isn’t a crime, is it?”
“But what am I then? I’m not rational, I’m not clear. I don’t have the answers anymore. Raphaella, I can’t even get through a lesson on compounds, simple compounds.” He shrugged and looked around the room and then up toward the ceiling. “What is happening to me?”
“What’s happening is the same thing that happens to every earnest person when they think about life and death. Brain smoke.”
“Brain smoke, that’s good, but it’s more than my brain, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Raphie?” he repeated like a hopeful schoolboy.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”
“And you?” he asked with piercing blue eyes. “Has it ever happened to you?”
“It’s happening right now.” She took his hand and held it. “It happens to me every day.” Right there, in the kitchen with their hands together, Mitkin found a resting place. For the first time since his father’s death, he had found peace. She was his friend and he loved her. He wanted to hug her and thank her and stay the night, on the couch, protected by fellowship, but he could not bring himself to ask such things. His eyes darted from side to side as he waited for her to ask him. But she didn’t, she got up and went to finish preparing dinner.
***
Then that week, for the first time, someone settled into the first floor apartment, the one just below Mitkin. His name was Andrew Seever. He was a big, hardy guy from Wisconsin. He spoke as if in no hurry, his vowels long and lazy, his accent nearly Norwegian, his predilections purely American. I met him like I’d met Mitkin, moving in.
“Hey there, don’t let me get in your way now. I’m gonna prop these doors so nobody’ll have to worry about ‘em. Alrighty then?” He smiled and bounced a little. “Do you live here?”
“No, not really,” I said.
“Well I’m Andy Seever. I’m brand new to the city, just graduated from college, Wisconsin in Madison. The Badgers, ever hear of ‘em?” He welled with pride.
“Sure have.”
“I played baseball there. You like sports?”
“Sure,” I fibbed. I hadn’t followed any sport for a couple of years and lost interest about the time I graduated from high school. I was never coordinated enough to play, or patient enough to watch.
“Do you know of any softball leagues around here? It’s about all I can do now. Besides, I won’t have time with my new job.” Seever had a real endearing way, the type of guy who thought simple things aloud.
“New job, huh?” I felt obliged to ask.
“I’m going to be an underwriter for an insurance company downtown. Good bucks, good bennies, solid retirement plan. I’m real psyched. My mom’s sister, my aunt, she got me the job, said I’d make more money in New York than Milwaukee or Madison. My parents were a little nervous about the whole deal, you know, going away and all. But what the heck, I figure, why not?” He paused and then flexed like a muscle man, “I’m young. Besides, I hear most big guys don’t have problems, even in Harlem, hey. A black guy told me that, on the train coming out here.”
“A black guy, huh?”
“Yeah, he was a real nice black guy. Gave me his number, told me he’d show me around. I thought, no way, New Yorkers are supposed to be jerk-offs.” He smiled and then quickly put a conciliatory hand on my shoulder. “No offense.” I nodded a smile. “So, how’s this place? How’s the landlord? They seemed real unorganized when I went to sign the lease, like they were just trying to figure everything out.”
“Where did you go?”
“To a place in the burbs. It was someone’s house.”
“Well, the landlord just died and I guess things are a bit confused. Anyway, my,” I stumbled, “girlfriend hasn’t had any problems and she’s lived here almost eight years now.”
“Is that her that I saw? The girl with the green eyes, upstairs?”
“Is she my girlfriend?”
“Yeah, that’s your... wow.” He whistled. “She’s really something. She’s like from another world or something. Boy, you’re lucky all right. New York girls are so exotical.”
I waited and then thought, why bother, exotical, exotic, whatever. Plus, I thought, let him think she’s my girlfriend, she is, basically, sort of my girlfriend.
“Anyway, now all I need to worry about is getting a car. I want something solid but cool, like a Firebird maybe. Do you like cars?”
I was no longer interested in the conversation, and by pretending I was, I was only prolonging the pain. I should have told him he didn’t need a car in Manhattan, and then said something like, “See you around,” but instead I said, “Cars? Love ‘em, just don’t own ‘em.”
“Yeah lots of people told me not to buy a car in the city but I thought, hey that’s crazy, I’m gonna need to escape, you know? Plus, I’ve had a car ever since I was fifteen, that’s when I fixed up an old Dodge—”
I jumped in, “Sorry Andy, I’m a little late, I’ll see you around.” He yelled to me before I’d reached the second flight.
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“David,” I said.
“David, do you know of a good gym around here, a Gold’s maybe, or one with a tanning booth?”
I quickly answered, “Ninety-second and Third. Go down ten blocks or so. See ya.” A tanning booth? This would be interesting, I thought, Mitchell Mitkin and the tanning booth guy in the same building.
I told Raphaella about her new neighbor while I waited for Dana to get dressed. She thought having a third tenant was a good thing and that maybe he would befriend Mitkin when Mitkin needed it most. But in the back of my mind, this didn’t seem possible. The exceptionally pensive Mitkin had lived a long time with an exceptionally inquisitive Raphaella, and now the two were being asked to reside with an exceptionally simple all-American, a good guy, a suburban stud. For me, it wouldn’t work, but it really didn’t have to “work.” There was no reason any of them had to talk to one another, ever. This was a false expectation fostered by the close relationship Raphaella and Mitkin had developed, a relationship that had included Mitkin’s father.
As I opened the front door to leave, Dana in tow, I said, “Why don’t you join us? We’re going to the aquarium. You’ll love it.”
Dana cheered, “Come on Mom, you will. The whales!”
To my amazement, she said yes. We waited for a moment as she threw on some clothes, great clothes, clothes that she didn’t give a second thought to, but clothes that worked well.
Brown leather boots, perfect jeans, a familiar white cotton shirt and a well-worn leather jacket with embroidery on the cuffs. She quickly put her hair into two ponytails and we left. We watched the whales as a trio, Dana between us, our hands in hers, her cries of “Mommy this,” and “Daddy that,” lending a profound sense of normality to everything we did. On the way home, I rushed them off the subway at Times Square and we caught a concert in Bryant Park. It was classical music by the New York Philharmonic, and it was perfect. The fall air was crisp but not cold, Dana fell asleep in my arms as the final piece came to an end, and I bought Raphaella a bouquet of yellow flowers. The entire day was medicinal, curative, and I wouldn’t forget it. Perhaps, most importantly, I truly believed that she wouldn’t either, that she too was enamored, hopeful. She held my arm as I carried our daughter out of the subway and up to the front door of the apartment. She curled her long fingers tight around my bicep like she was my date.
“She’s heavy when she sleeps,” I said.
“Very. Let me take her up.” She scooped Dana out of my arms and paused. “I’m glad we went together. Thanks, David.”
“Me too,” I said, and we kissed, lightly, on the cheek. I waited for her to get safely inside, and then telling myself to go ahead, go on, I stood still. The streetlight behind beamed rosy and bright, and I didn’t want to move