Loss

ROMANCE is short,” an old woman said as a young nurse stooped near her bed. “A laugh, a tear, a sigh, and then the winter’s chill. I noticed you, how you cried when you read the letter . . . when you read from the light from my bathroom—and I saw your whole life magnified in the tears that fell from your cheek. Do you mind, child, if I tell you my story?” The old woman reached out her hand as if to grasp her.

“What? What?” The young nurse was distracted and seemed hardly to hear her.

“Listen, listen.” The old woman’s gnarled and wrinkled hand took hold of her wrist. “I have something to say to you.

“Who knows all the longing of a young girl better than I? Even I was young once. You look at me in disbelief, but it is true.” The young nurse smiled and slightly nodded toward her. The old woman tightened her grasp upon the nurse’s wrist.

“I do not know if I were beautiful or not, some said yes, some didn’t notice me. But there was something in my eyes which attracted men. I don’t know what, maybe they didn’t either, they only said, ‘May, your eyes are beautiful, do you know that?’

“Men there are a-plenty if you’re pretty, as you, my girl, well know. But I could not love many men; perhaps I might be lucky and meet one, or maybe two men I could love, not more. I was ready for love. Love desired me as the birds long for dawn, as the willow wants the wind. My heart was full; I wanted to give it away; I could not stand to keep it. But—there was no one for me to love. You are listening now—good.

“Yes, there were lots of boys. Frivolous, plucky, gallant, handsome, funny, charming, cute—a gamut. But there were no lovers. Once love has whispered in your dreams, tickled your heart, filled your eyes with the sadness and longing of life, once love, which is life itself, has breathed on your cheek, shaken your bones, and tugged you by both hands stumbling out onto the grass, made you reach into a blue sky, look, and find in that vast distance knowledge, made you pull it down to you, hold it in your arms, hug it, cling to it, that knowledge of what love itself is, once you have done that, my dear, you know whom you may love. A glance will show you. It’s a shared secret. Once you have enjoyed its sweetness, a touch will tell.

“Perhaps you do not understand what I am saying?” The old woman smiled. “Yes, child, I see that you do.

“My family was poor. It was the depression. We hardly knew where the next meal was coming from. But we were a happy family. This is trite, I know, but old people can be trite: Happiness is meal enough if you know how to eat it. I suppose that was my disadvantage. Too much happiness as a child can make the rest of your life bereaved. Where is that beautiful thing you remember? A motif for the rest of your life is begun.

“I was in the happy solitude of seventeen when I met him, too innocent to know loneliness and too shy to have many friends. My older brother, John, joked with me often in front of our family about some fellow who soon would die if soon I did not love him. But when we were alone together, he spoke earnestly and seriously with me about our future, his thoughts on life, love, and mortality which I doubt he ever shared with a single other soul—even his wife. The front porch and dark nights loved those conversations, and I love my brother now because of them.

“In this bliss—uncertainty is bliss if only we could know it—I rested one night in bed, thoughts of the future racing in my mind. What would I do? Whom would I marry? Would I ever be happy? Outside, a terrifying storm shook the house. Winds wooshed and whistled around the corners. Rain pounded our copper shingles and pummeled our windowpanes. The din of the deluge woke everyone up. Thunder cracked and lightning ripped the sky, lit the night, and toppled several trees. The crops would be lost, and the little we had would be less.

“But while everyone else watched about themselves with wide worried eyes, I felt calm. A peace came over me. This storm, was it not the simple life of simple people every day? I fell asleep.

“The next morning—there has never been a sun more glorious, warm, or glad. These old eyes still remember the beautiful shafts of light from the early golden sun shining through the trees into the windows; even the blue sky rejoiced in that light. I had to go out.

“Mud covered my shoes as I sank into the ground, but I stepped quick and got out onto the grass, which, though wet, was somewhat firmer. I was looking at my feet to see just how muddy I’d gotten and scowling. Someone laughed. I looked up.

“He had a smile as generous as a creator. His laugh was the gurgle of a brook and the dance of falling leaves and I was embarrassed that he had caught me in a cross mood. His name was Nathan, as I soon found out. Ah, he gave his laugh as he would give everything else. This laugh took nothing from you, you did not pay anything for it. He did not laugh at me, but his laugh was an invitation: Laugh with me at our human fate—the glory we behold with our eyes and the mud on our feet.

“He held out his hand.

“His hand was too far away from me for me to take and besides, I was already out of the muck. His gesture puzzled me and I stood staring at his hand.

“’Do you see it?’ he asked.

“I saw nothing. Almost imperceptibly I shook my head, not willing to fully commit myself.

“He laughed again. ‘Of course not,’ he said. “You’re much too far away and the light has to be just right.’

“He stepped closer, looking me straight in the eyes as he did so, and smiling. He turned his hand. ‘There. It’s a spider’s web! See?’ His eyes glistened as he said it, and he looked down at his hand and stared in awe of the fragile thing he had stuck there.

“I looked too and involuntarily reached to touch it. But, when my fingers paused to make a more delicate motion, I thought, and decided not to. I looked at his face instead. His eyes were wide and his lips were slightly parted as he looked, lost in the mystery of those thin lines. His brow furrowed in bewilderment and amazement. He looked up at me.

“’It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked. He frowned. ‘But so evanescent! So short! I’ve destroyed it. Taking it in my hand, I’ve completely, utterly, ruined it.’ He gave me a look of genuine grief. But then he smiled, with teeth. Inexplicably, I shuddered.

“’Well,’ he said, ‘spider’s webs aren’t meant to last forever, anyway! There, that one’s gone.’ He wiped his hand on the wet grass. ‘Catch another one tomorrow. Never cry about beauty gone, because it only means more’s coming. Beautiful sunsets should teach us that, at least.

“’If you want, come walk with me over the hill,” he said, smiling again. ‘See what we can find.’ He turned and walked up the road.

“I paused, but only for a moment. I had already lost my heart. I cannot explain how I suddenly knew I might love him. I ran after him. He turned, grinning, waiting for me to catch up with him. When I did, he took off his shoes and threw them in the ditch and I did too. Then, we left the road and ran up a little hill that overlooks a great valley. Our toes were bare and our feet tingled and tickled in the wet grass as we ran over the chilly ground. I felt silly, as if I were acting out a part from a frivolous romance novel. But with him, it seemed right.

“We paused at the crest of the gentle slope on which grew several apple trees. Below us, beyond the valley, was a magnificent view of mountains, clear, alive with last night’s rain.

“He took my hand and made me run my palm over the wet grass, which sprang up like the ruffled edges of a feather. He made me feel the bark on one of the old apple trees, and feel one of the smooth cool leaves. He made me touch a thousand familiar images, and the touch seemed strange, like I was discovering a whole new world that needed to be touched, to be explored.

“He took one thick blade of grass and putting it between his thumbs, blew on it. A shrill ear-piercing whistle cut across the valley. Then, taking the same blade, he held it loosely between his thumb and forefinger, then jerked it out. He showed me his thumb. It bled.

“’Stop it,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t do that.’ It hurt to see him bleed.

“’Why?’ he asked. ‘I just wanted to show you some of the things I know about grass. Look—listen to me,’ he said. ‘We must pause. Take time. Feel and know the universe. Give away our greatest secrets. How else can we get more? Let life sink in on us.’ He looked toward the valley and called out, ‘I love you, world!’

“He looked toward me again, and smiled. ‘That’s the secret of touches. A blind man knows it and if he were given sight would go back to using his hands to see the world. You can’t know anything unless you touch it. Looking is so passive. But we must act and touch, and know.’

“He had grown very serious. Now he paused, shook his head, and continued, ‘What am I saying? I’m babbling on. Come, tell me about your family.’

“What do lovers talk about? Anything. But every word they taste is kissed by heaven, and flows golden into a hearing, knowing heart. We talked for hours, lost in each other’s words and sounds. I was giddy. We ran here to some beautiful flower and there to see another. I lost my breath a thousand times chasing them; there is so much beauty in the world when we are loving.

“He took some of those flowers from the side of the road and gave them to me. Why shouldn’t he? They were his as all flowers were his!

“The day disappeared. We had both forgotten to eat—or rather—had made ourselves forget. We went back to the apple trees, to watch the sunset there. We sighed. This day was almost done and never would come back to us again. That’s what sighs are for, you know, for things which can’t be gotten back again, like a breath.

“In one of the apple trees—Nathan spotted it first—a single red apple dangled among the green ones. That seems now to me to tell of emotion too great gotten too early, a life too full too young. And a miracle! It had stayed put through last night’s storm.

“He climbed the tree and shook it down to me. I polished it on my skirt. He paused before he jumped. Then, jumping, he landed, and rolled, and lay there in the grass, his eyes fixed on nothing but the great vast blue above us. It was a perfect evening.

“We tasted the apple together. We screwed our face with its tartness. He kissed me and we tasted it again. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘I know, I know it all! The secret of life! The secret of the universe!’ His eyes were bright and wide. He looked deep, deep into my eyes. I swear he saw my soul.

“’Ouch!’ he said, and slapped his hand against his leg. A bee had stung him. He had dropped the apple. The bee buzzed about it, and when Nathan kicked the apple away, the bee flew off, vanished.

“We forgot the bee and lost ourselves in kisses. Pain has little sting while love lives, I thought to myself.

“’What are you going to do with your life?’ I asked him. ‘Just be my only one true joy forever?’

“’I don’t know.’ He smiled. ‘If you’ll let me,’ he said. “We kissed again. His breathing deepened, and then became shallow. Red splotches began to break across his skin, as if his own body were angry at his soul for loving me so much. How jealous we are of even our own happiness.

“But something was wrong. He sat on the grass, heavily, as if he’d lost his balance. He looked at me, but half feverish, half blind, as though he hardly saw me, as if he were seeing only shadows.

“’The bee,’ he said, ‘I’m allergic. Never this bad before. Don’t know. Wh-What’s—What’s wrong with me?’ He lay back in the grass and could hardly breathe.

“’Nathan!’ I screamed. I covered my face in my hands. I ran back for help, only numbly noticing how the rocks cut my bare feet. My father, mother and my neighbors ran back and we all stood around him, helpless. And while we caught our breath, he lost his, eternally.”

The old woman stopped. Silently, she held in her sobs. Her feeble body jerked with her emotion. The young nurse stood over her and put her hand upon her forehead. The window was dark. She felt her own sadness mingling with the old woman’s story. She felt the hot brow, and realized her own face was flushed. Finally, the old woman regained her composure.

She continued her story. “His breathing stopped, but his eyes did not close; they still looked at me, still held all their emotion, what emotion I could never know! What horror! I could not believe he was dead. I did not know what to do, nor did my parents or neighbors, nor my brother who had now come and held his arm around me. Knowing him, I know Life! But young love neither understands death, nor believes in it.

“I cried out against the rocks and hills; my voice echoed back to me. What is an echo? It is a sound that’s lost its way to heaven. I was not heard. He was gone.

“So brief! So brief!

“Girl, my girl!” The old woman clutched the nurse’s hand with both of hers. “We do not know what improbabilities Fate has stored for us. And yet, dear girl, and yet, what knowledge we have, it comes from love. There—those fifteen minutes under the apple tree! That is my life! All these years—what are they?”

The old woman paused. From the darkness, almost surrealistically, her pulse beeped fast from the heart monitor in the corner, then slowed gradually. Finally the woman continued.

“No, no; that is not all my life. My cry was heard. Perhaps an echo is a promise of a second answer. That sunset was the most glorious I’ve ever seen.

“Do you know? I loved again. I loved deeper, much deeper. I went to college, eventually became a professor. I met and fell in love with another professor. I married and have children and many grandchildren. And I love them all. And I loved my husband more than any other man—much more than Nathan. Romance is short, but love is long.

“What is our life? Is it in the tedious routine actions which we do every day? Or is it only in those moments when we know and reflect upon what we have done and are doing?

“The smell of his collar, the taste of his breath, the twist of the curl of his hair to my fingertips, I have not lost them, I remember them still. These things I shall have forever. I shall forget the delight of snow, the joy of misty mornings, but I shall never forget these things.”

She paused once more, and looked heavenward. It was quiet.

At that moment the nurses’ supervisor—Gertrude—stepped in. She was an unmarried middle-aged woman who walked with a half-limp and whose makeup always seemed to be on crooked. Her face was tired and worn.

She looked in at the two of them crossly. “What are you doing, girl! Wasting time talking to a fool senile old woman. She hasn’t been able to think straight in years! Get to work. We don’t have time to try and figure out her every word. Keep busy, keep busy! How many times I gotta tell you? How do you expect to get anything done?”

The old woman pulled the nurse toward her once more.

“Remember,” she said. “This is what I’m trying to tell you. There are some who’ve never had even one day of love, never known love at all. Whatever we’ve lost, it is our gain, for knowing love we can recognize it when it comes to us again—and it will—and live our life and go about our simple tasks in the memory of it.

“But to those poor ones—who have never had love—the horror! What is our loss compared with theirs? They have lost everything!”

The end