“I can’t set foot in the place,” Milla said. “I don’t think I ever will again.”

I was only trying to make small talk when I had asked her about the Sunrise Cafe, the tawdry-looking diner across the street from where we sat sipping lattes at the Golden Spoon. I was waiting for the [...]]]> Breakfast at Sunrise

“I can’t set foot in the place,” Milla said. “I don’t think I ever will again.”

I was only trying to make small talk when I had asked her about the Sunrise Cafe, the tawdry-looking diner across the street from where we sat sipping lattes at the Golden Spoon. I was waiting for the waitress to bring me a cheese danish. Milla was avoiding carbs today, so she hadn’t ordered anything but the coffee.

“Everything in my entire life since that moment has been colored by what happened there,” she told me. She shifted in her seat and stared into the canopy of the live oak that shaded the patio. Her eyes looked tired.

“When I met Jack,” she said, “I was fresh out of a three-year marriage that was a mistake from the beginning. I had fallen for the first man who said he loved me before dragging me into bed. That one early moment of discretion turned out to be his finest hour. It was all downhill from there.

“So Jack and I were taking it slowly, and I was okay with that. We’d been dating for three months. He didn’t talk much about relationship stuff. I suspected that he didn’t have much of a history. He was a few years younger than me, and I saw innocent excitement in his eyes. They were dark brown, almost black, and always seemed to sparkle in any light.

“That Friday, we’d made plans for dinner and a movie. All week I’d been working up the nerve to ask him to stay over at the end of the evening. I was ready for the next phase. I liked the idea of waking up together on Saturday morning. And not just the thought of spending the night in a man’s arms again. I wanted that warm familiarity. You know that feeling of having breakfast together for the first time?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s nice.” I’m not sure she heard me.

“An hour before he was supposed to pick me up, he called to say that something had come up at work. I was disappointed. I said, ‘Okay, call me when you’re free tomorrow. Maybe we can get together.’ And he said, ‘Sure, let me see how things go with the project.’ I didn’t like the sound of that, but what can you do? I called my best friend, Shawna, but got the machine. I left her a message and called my other best friend, Carrie. When I hadn’t heard anything from Shawna in an hour or so, Carrie and I went for soup and salads, then popped into Jason’s for one drink. I was home in bed by midnight. I hadn’t heard back from Shawna, but I didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes she would fall of the planet for a couple of days, and later she would be back and eager to spend time with her ‘best girl.’”

“I was wide awake by seven on Saturday. So I sent a text-message to Carrie to see if she wanted to meet me for breakfast. She replied with an ‘o hell yes’ before I finished brushing my teeth. We made plans to rendezvous at eight at Sunrise. My girls and I had spent a lot of hung-over mornings at the diner in college, and I had met Jack there for brunch one Sunday a couple of weeks earlier. He made fun of what he called ‘a mixture of self-conscious faux-retro decoration and real urban decline.’ I had told him that I liked the food and the people were always nice. He said, ‘Sorry, sweetie,’ and flashed those eyes at me. I smiled and called him a fashionista snob, and I took a few bites from the plate of pancakes that he’d pushed away.”

“When I pulled into the parking lot, I was 10 minutes late. I pictured Carrie tapping an impatient toe on the grubby linoleum. So I was surprised to find her waiting for me by the cash register, just inside the glass front door. She held up a hand to stop me, but I was intent on getting that first cup of coffee in front of me as soon as possible. I kept right on walking toward an empty booth on the right wall near the back. And then I saw him.”

Milla took a long swallow from her latte. She set the empty cup on the table and picked up her water glass. She put it back down without taking a sip.

“I’m not sure what went through my head. There were a million thoughts in quick succession. First I saw Jack’s face, looking as if all the blood had been drained out of it. His eyes were as sparkly as ever. I saw his hand, and her hand in it, and I stared at her but couldn’t seem to register that she was Shawna. I saw the look on her face, and I was surprised that it looked like anger. And months later I couldn’t even hear her name without wondering again how she could possibly have been angry at me. Then in an instant that seemed to last forever, I took in the laughing couple who sat across the booth from them—a work friend of Jack’s, Tim something, I think, and his wife—and the face of the waitress, who stood by with a carafe of coffee, wondering what to make of my presence. I saw my own reflection in the mirror wall, and the reflection of Carrie standing by the register, tears streaming down her face. And somewhere in all of that, I saw the plate of pancakes in front of him.

“And then those three eternal seconds were over, and so was that whole part of my life. I ran out of there, jumped in my car, and tried to drive home. But my hands were shaking so bad that I had to pull over after a couple of blocks. I cried for 20 minutes. I never spoke to any of them again, not Jack, not Shawna, not even Carrie. It was too much. Just too much.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want to go back there.”

She didn’t show any sign of having heard me. She stared across the street. Her cheeks were flushed. She began fishing around in her purse and said, “I wonder if the number I have for Carrie is still any good.”

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick

I had a weird sensation, [...]]]> I think I was half asleep. You know how sometimes you’re lying there, and you think you’re still awake, and then all of a sudden, you feel like you’re falling? And then something brings you up to wide awake again. You think, Was that my own voice? You know that feeling?

I had a weird sensation, not exactly like that, but close, and then I sat up and looked over at her pillow. I might have even called her name before everything came rushing back at me. She’s gone, oh God, oh jeez, goddamn, she’s gone. Get a grip, Mike, get it together. How many more times will you be surprised to remember it?

What time is it? I have to be up at seven, as much as I don’t want to get out of this bed ever again. I have to sign papers at 8:30, and I don’t even know where to go.

Celia will know the address. She’s been great—nothing but business since she picked me up at the airport. She refuses to fall apart, and she won’t let me either. I’ll crash and burn without her consent.

I can’t see for shit. Where are my glasses? As soon as I put them on, all I want to see is something of Sarah’s. Anything. Rooting around in the drawer, but everything in here is mine. She didn’t live here very long, but you’d think there would be some artifact—a book, a hairbrush.

It’s only ten after five. What was I dreaming just now?

My feet are on the floor, on that ugly rug. That was her idea of a homey touch, not mine. It’s not what I’m looking for now, either.

I wash and dry my face. I look a thousand years older than when I left here last week. A thousand years, 7,000 miles, something like that. Then in a flash I’m doubled over the sink because I know she’s gone, and it might as well be the first time I’ve realized it, and, Oh no, oh God, why didn’t I see this coming? Maybe it was never in the cards for me to be happy.

What are the chances that I’ll sleep before the alarm goes off at 7:00? I’m hungry. What time is it in Italy? It doesn’t matter. No one is there to answer my call.

Where are my glasses?

Where is she now? Is she thinking about me?

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick

The plan was not to let down his guard. The plan was not to get sidetracked by a smile. The plan was not to be the [...]]]> The plan was to focus on his own dreams.
The plan was to learn to be happy alone.
The plan was to keep things light.
The plan was to have some fun with his friends.

The plan was not to let down his guard.
The plan was not to get sidetracked by a smile.
The plan was not to be the first to say “I love you.”
The plan was not to replace all his answers with fresh questions.

The plan was not foolproof.

I remember a time when I dreamed of what I could do with an extra hundred years, or two hundred, or three. I would become the world’s foremost authority on nineteenth-century French literature. I would develop the patience to cook a soufflé. [...]]]> It occurred to me today that I’m not as far along as I thought.

I remember a time when I dreamed of what I could do with an extra hundred years, or two hundred, or three. I would become the world’s foremost authority on nineteenth-century French literature. I would develop the patience to cook a soufflé. I would speak flawless Spanish with a perfect Castellaño accent…or with the accent of the aristocrats of Mexico City or Lima, or of the marketplace in San Juan.

I would learn to ski. I would win trophies at singles tennis—in my age bracket, of course, but that’s still a worthy accomplishment at 250.

I imagined that with so much time on my hands, I would develop a taste for poetry, but I have not. I’ve read all the masters in that art, and I can tell the good material from the bad, but I’ve had to concede that I just don’t have a poetic mind. Nor have I learned to paint beyond a passable competence in mimicking the work of the great Expressionists.

On the other hand, I finally worked through the topic that got the best of me in calculus when I first studied it as a small child. It took returning to school three more times—and two more failed tests—before something in my ever-evolving brain clicked into place and I understood not only how the mathematics of series and sequences works, but why I might want to know this stuff. It felt as if I had flown higher and higher until I could not only see over the wall that had stood between me and this obscure knowledge, but from my heightened perspective, I could see how small that wall really is compared to my soaring understanding.

And now I approach my millennial birthday, and I’m surprised to find how many walls remain, how many frontiers of understanding. I thought that by now I would have learned to forgive any offense. I believed that I would be unencumbered by envy, by lust, by anger—all the small-minded weaknesses that riddled my character in the seven decades I call childhood. But though I control these “vices,” understand them, tap their power and put it to good use, they are still here with me 900 years later. What vanity it was to think that we would perfect ourselves! We have only dug deeper toward the heart of our imperfection.

And what about love? What have I learned in all this time? Am I a master of that spectator sport, that science, that field of expertise, that cuisine, that art? From high in orbit, I look down and see one wall that still blocks my view. I read, I reflect, I write speculative essays, and most of all, I practice. I touch many other lives, and from time to time, I let them touch me. And call it love. (p. 379)

The first and last sentences of this text are taken from Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. They can be found on pages 319 and 379 of the Picador trade paperback edition.

I try to describe Rome to you without resorting [...]]]> There is an expression in the Roman language, genius loci, “the spirit of a place.” It has acquired a modern, figurative sense in the realm of landscape and architecture—a characteristic atmosphere. But its meaning is rooted in a literal, supernatural sense—the guardian spirit that protects a place.

I try to describe Rome to you without resorting to the clichés and hyperbole that pour from the reservoir of what I have read and heard and seen on television:

majesty • power • glory • history • grandeur • richness • pageantry • eternal • holy • baroque • legendary • magical • quality of light • gardens • pines • fountains • bridges • piazzas • obelisks • staircases • columns • ruins • basilicas • vistas • she-wolf • Romulus and Remus • shepherds • kings • Sabines • Etruscans • Latins • Horatii • republic • empire • consuls • tribunes • emperors • pontiffs • arches • aqueducts • government • law • language • alphabet • Caesars • czars • Kaisers • patricians • plebeians • cardinals • princes • popes • councils • treaties • wars • triumphs • slaves • barbarians • sacred • profane

Every word is the focus of a story I long to tell you. I have collected hundreds more. How shall I make you understand this place without resorting to landscapes drawn in words, full of these familiar features?

You peer into your cup. “Would you like another cappuccino? Or are you ready to get going?”

I begin again with an invocation: Animate me, genius loci Romae. Sanctify my words, split me open and read the truth written in my entrails.

I can see that you think I have lost my mind.

Here is my spring, the source of my delight, the moment in which I always fall in love with Rome again: You and I walk through a rabbit warren of narrow streets, the medieval city. We turn a corner; before us, a 700-year-old church. (Or perhaps we face a fountain, a temple, an arena. It is all the same.)

The look in your eyes says, “I never thought…I couldn’t have imagined….”

I do not possess the words to ask you, “Can you feel that this place has been waiting here for you your entire life, as it waited for me for a hundred lifetimes before I was born? Do you hear the echo of the millions of feet that have walked in every step you now take?”

The city is full of faces that hide behind cameras, faces that stare with boredom at the teeming, overwhelming multiplicity of wonders.

But in your eyes, love, a glimmer of spirit.

I’ll bet you thought you were never going to hear from your youngest grandson again. I wasn’t too regular about writing to you for the last decade or two of your life, so you certainly shouldn’t be surprised that you haven’t heard from me since you left us.

From your vantage point, I would think [...]]]> Dear Grandma,

I’ll bet you thought you were never going to hear from your youngest grandson again. I wasn’t too regular about writing to you for the last decade or two of your life, so you certainly shouldn’t be surprised that you haven’t heard from me since you left us.

From your vantage point, I would think it’s easy for you to see why I didn’t stay in closer contact. Not long after the last time I saw you, when we got together with Laura and Yvonne, Karl and Edith, little Karl, Linda and her kids, Jane, Dad, and all those others at your place in Middle River, my life started heading in a direction that I wasn’t ready to share with you. I hate the way that time and circumstances isolated me from you. It wasn’t that I thought you couldn’t handle the secret I was carrying around. It was just that I couldn’t handle it, and I didn’t have the first clue how to talk to anyone else about it. Looking back, I can only imagine that if I’d told you, you would have behaved true to the sweet, patient, loving, saintly Grandma you always were.

I hope you can see how much of you I carry inside me. I can’t scrape uneaten food into the garbage disposer without hearing your voice say, “It’s a sin to waste food.” I don’t hear it as a taunt, just a gentle reminder that abundance is a gift for which we should be profoundly grateful in this world of endless need. I’m glad you’re there reminding me. I’ve never known real hunger, so it’s easy to take what I have for granted.

And there’s a lot more than that. I would like to think that I took into my heart something of the lessons you taught us—about how a life with more than its share of pain, loneliness, grief, and deprivation could be lived with optimism, humor, generosity, and piety.

I wonder sometimes what you would think when I see pious people on TV spewing messages of intolerance. Your constant faith was never a weapon to use against people less faithful than you were. You sat by your radio praying the rosary hour after hour, you surrounded yourself with holy pictures, with prayer cards, with rosaries and statues—the Infant of Prague scared me a little—, with Crown-of-Thorns plants and crucifixes and every other sort of devotional object. But I never once heard you accuse anyone else of being un-Christian, or less Christian, or less worthy in any way of God’s love.

You were a model of faith and humility more real to me than any of your saints (dead or living). I hope you’re not disappointed that I haven’t held on to your kind of faith. I hope you know I try as hard as I can to cultivate your kind of humility.

I remember a story you told me once about Dad. It still fills me with pride for what it said about both of you. You told me of a day when some members of the local draft board came asking about him, wondering whether he planned to volunteer to serve in Korea. He was in college at the time, or maybe already in graduate school. You told the board members that your first three sons had all served in the military, and that you wanted your youngest son to stay in school.

One of the recruiters said, “You know, if he volunteers, he can become an officer. But if he gets drafted, he’ll be digging ditches.”

And you said, “And they’ll be the best danged ditches anyone ever dug!”

My memory might be a little shaky; I don’t think you ever used a word as strong as “danged” (unless you said it in Polish). But I’m sure of the sparkle in your clouded eyes when you delivered that punch line. “Danged” seems about right.

If you’re reading this letter somewhere out there, then I guess you already know I don’t believe in heaven any more. But I never lost my faith in your love.

When I hung up the phone, I tried to weigh those words against the measure of my own memories of Valentine’s Day. I thought of elementary school, of making valentines for our mothers. We crafted lopsided hearts of red construction paper [...]]]> This morning he told me, “I have never been in love on Valentine’s Day before.”

When I hung up the phone, I tried to weigh those words against the measure of my own memories of Valentine’s Day. I thought of elementary school, of making valentines for our mothers. We crafted lopsided hearts of red construction paper folded down the middle, outlined in number-two pencil, and cut out clumsily with blunt little scissors. (The green-handled lefty scissors never cut worth a damn.) For decoration: borders of white paper lace, globs of Elmer’s glue, magic markers, and stickers depicting bouquets of flowers and bow-and-arrow-wielding cherubs.

My thoughts wandered to the paper “mailboxes” that we made in class one year—manila folders glued shut at the ends to form a pocket, then decorated with mosaics of colored paper and personalized with our names scrawled in crayon. We hung them from the front edges of our desks with Scotch tape, and then wandered around the room filling each other’s mailboxes with prefab valentine cards. My mother bought boxes with hundreds of cheap cards to choose from, and I sat at the kitchen table selecting the perfect goofy pun or cute animal for each classmate, then signing my name and addressing the tiny white envelopes in my neat, uphill-slanty printing.

We were so young that all of us were expected to give cards to everyone else in the class, regardless of gender. I don’t remember anyone—children, parents, or teachers—thinking there was anything wrong with that arrangement. But I remember the care with which I picked out a card for my best friend, John W., a sports enthusiast with a sense of humor that was always a year ahead of mine. I recall the apprehension I felt in trying to find a card to please John M., the tall blond boy who years later would lead our class in the 50-yard-dash, the President’s Physical Fitness test, and every other measure of athletic prowess.

That “free love” attitude they allowed us in first or second grade must have contributed to the confusion I experienced later, when it started to become clear to me that girls were supposed to love boys and boys were supposed to love girls.

My mind drifted to junior-high school Valentine’s Days. Cards weren’t cool, and only girls went to the trouble to make romantic gestures—and mostly just the “in” girls, at that. Those girls all dated jocks. February 14 was a day shot through with arrows of envy and loneliness. I envied the boys all the attention they received from the girls, and I envied the girls the freedom to advertise their adolescent desire with red and white carnations on the lunch table and hand-made posters taped to locker doors. The rest of us kept our adolescent desire to ourselves.