Sorrow

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  “Yeah, well, it’s possible you might. And in this scenario, no harm, no foul if you do.”

  I was too tired to mull it any longer. I stretched out on the couch, pulled October down beside me, and for a while we were lost in our own thoughts. I ran my finger up and down her arm in a figure-eight pattern around the bandage that was still there, and she was quiet, but I could feel her ribcage moving in and out with her breath.

  After a few minutes she said, “OK.”

  “OK?”

  “We can wait until he gets home. But you need to give me your word, Joe. You need to promise me that immediately after the show, we’ll sit him down and tell him. I’m going to trust you on this.”

  Like I said, I had absolutely no intention of bailing on her.

  I lifted her hand, kissed her palm, and said, “I promise.”

  We fell asleep there. And hours later, as daylight was just starting to outline the trees and the sky to the east looked like it had been tie-dyed, a deep tangerine fading to apricot, I awoke in a fog and imagined a scenario in which Cal was in the house, looming over us on the couch. Only, in my imagination he was a giant, as tall as a redwood, his body stretched so that it appeared to narrow as it rose up three hundred feet high.

  From above, Cal surveyed us, livid and bereft. And I tried to experience his reaction to finding his girlfriend in my arms, pictured him pulling me to the floor, beating me to a pulp, and telling me what a shit I was.

  Then I thought, no. That’s not what he would do at all. And I imagined him glaring at me with pity, laughing. Crazy madman laughter like a mental patient as he knelt down beside October and tapped her on the shoulder until she opened her eyes. Once she did, he leaned in toward her face and said, “Just so you know, Harp doesn’t keep his promises.”

  TWENTY.

  “Aristotle’s notion of happiness,” Sid said. “Go.”

  We were sitting at the little round table in his office, on the second floor of Moses Hall, near the Campanile on the Berkeley campus, a pot of Folgers on a trivet between us, discussing my thesis.

  “Well, first of all,” I said, “Aristotle’s notion of happiness isn’t what most people think of when they ponder what it means to be happy. Most people confuse happiness with pleasure, but for Aristotle, happiness was the supreme value and goal of one’s life and couldn’t be divorced from whether or not one had reached his or her full human potential.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Given those parameters, it’s impossible to assess if one has lived a happy life until one’s life is over.”

  “And?”

  “And, I strongly disagree with Aristotle on this point.”

  It was one of the central arguments of my thesis. My position, essentially, was: What’s the point of assessing happiness after the fact, when it’s too late to do anything about it? Postscript happiness wasn’t happiness at all. Maybe it was contentment. Maybe it was proof of a well-lived life. But it was not the fundamental definition of the concept.

  Back then, when Sid and I were formulating my outline, he suggested that I first define happiness; consider how that definition was relevant to one’s choices, values, and pursuits; and then compare that to what Aristotle had laid out in Nicomachean Ethics.

  The questions I’d wanted to explore were: What is real happiness? “Real happiness” being the term I used to distinguish the concept from pleasure. And once I had that figured out: Is a human being obligated to pursue real happiness? If so, is he or she obligated to pursue it under any circumstance?

  I thought long and hard about these questions and concluded that there were a handful of obstacles to real happiness, the two worth mentioning now being fear and a lack of freedom.

  And while Sid supported my assessment, he also suggested, in his gentle Sid manner, that if I wanted my work to mean anything beyond a piece of paper, I was going to have to learn how to encode what I was writing somewhere inside of me and use it as a GPS.

  “The truth is,” Sid sighed, “you’re very good at burying your head in your books and having intellectual conversations about all this stuff until you’re blue in the face, but you don’t practice what you know to be true.”

  He was right, but it still hurt to hear him say it. Or, rather, it hurt that he could so easily recognize this defect in me. He saw the hurt on my face too, saw me begin to retreat inside myself, but he didn’t back down. He knew me too well to let me get away with that.

  “You need to hear this, Joe. You happen to be unusually self-aware, and that means you have an obligation to live truthfully, specifically because you’re cognizant of what the truth is. It’s not too late for you, you know. Because what’s the alternative? To continue like you have been and suffer the consequences? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? Suffering the consequences?”

  There was a small stack of papers on the table, and Sid set his palm down on top of it, as if he were trying to keep it from blowing away in a breeze. He looked at me with his kind, sleepy eyes and said, “There’s no such thing as inaction, Joe. There’s only choice and consequence. Do I need to remind you of what you so interestingly outlined in your conclusion?”

  I shrugged, hoping he would get the hint and drop it.

  Pointing his finger in the direction of my heart, he said, “You concluded that happiness is a consequence of choice.”

  I mention that conversation because it speaks to where my head and heart were the morning I woke up beside October on the couch.

  She was still asleep. Diego was following me around the kitchen, so I fed him and took him for a short walk on the trail behind the house. After we got back I stopped at my apartment; the dog stayed on my heels, dropping with a thud to the floor outside my bathroom, where he waited while I took a shower.

  By the time Diego and I returned to the house, October had moved from the couch to the bed, and I crept into her room to see if she was awake.

  She heard me come in, rolled over, and, through half-closed eyes, smiled and said, “Yay. You’re back.”

  My chest swelled with it then. Real happiness. And it feels important to make this distinction: I’m not talking about pleasure or desire, or romantic love disguised as happiness. Though I felt those things too. But there was something bigger, deeper, and truer swathing everything that morning, that day, and for the majority of the weeks preceding Cal’s return. A state of grace often foreign to me. Happiness as a consequence of choice.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was still scared shitless. But the fear wasn’t holding me back. I wasn’t dwelling on the past, I was worried only moderately about the future, and most of all I wasn’t numbly trudging half-awake through some mediocre semblance of a life. I was present, and not just as a bystander but as a passionate participant.

  “Joe,” October said groggily. “I need me some Joe.”

  I straddled her on the bed but she pushed and slapped at my chest. “No. I need a cup of Joe, not a cup of Joe.” She laughed at her joke and playfully demanded I go make her a cappuccino.

  I leaned down close to her face and said, “You’re not the boss of me.” Then I laughed at my joke, adding, “Oh, wait. You are.”

  I drifted back into the kitchen to make the cappuccinos. This was a process, and I took my time with it. I had to fill the fancy Italian machine with water and wait for it to heat up. I had to grind the beans. And once the machine was hot enough, I had to pull the espresso shots individually, emptying and refilling the portafilter each time and waiting in between each shot for the machine to heat up again.

  I pulled four shots, poured two into one mug and two into another. Next I steamed the milk, poured that into the mugs, and carefully spooned the foam on top like I used to do at Caffe Strada.

  The whole time I was making the cappuccinos, I could feel myself grinning, and I remember thinking: This is art. This is love. It’s simple and I get it. I can
do this. And way back in a usually quiescent part of my mind, I heard a voice say: You gave up so much for so long. You’re not going to do that anymore.

  Not even the guilt I had over what I was doing behind Cal’s back daunted me then. I had reasoned it all out in my head to justify the situation. Cal will be fine, I decided. He has women at his beck and call. He doesn’t need a life here with October, because he has everything he’s ever wanted.

  Let me have this one thing, I thought.

  The rest of that day remains lodged in my mind like an indelible song. Each moment is a note, and if I conjure up the first one, the whole tune comes back to me: what the day looked like, what it tasted like, what it smelled like, what it felt like. My skin was alive, and it transcribed every feeling in a way that went deeper than memory. Memories are fragments. Unreliable. This was an experience that seemed to exist inside of me before it happened, and it remained inside of me when it was over. In my heart and behind my eyes I can still see it, not as bits and pieces, but as a whole composition.

  Here’s another important distinction: I felt entirely myself that day. And I don’t mean my best self. I don’t mean I was pretending to be some ideal version of Joe Harper so that October wouldn’t change her mind. I was the same awkward, insecure, overly sensitive Joe Harper that I’ve been for as long as I can remember. But the other Joe showed up too. The man who can be thoughtful, witty, and charming when he gets his head out of his ass.

  I kicked off my sneakers, and October and I sat against the headboard drinking our cappuccinos. The window was open, and a light breeze was blowing into the room. Our legs were parallel, my right one touching October’s left as we watched a gray warbler foraging on a branch outside. The bird’s little head moved in quick, jerky tics like the second hand on an old watch, its beak a tiny jackhammer.

  “Do you think he’s looking for breakfast?” October whispered, as if her voice might scare the creature off.

  “He is a she,” I told her. “The males have black throats. See how hers is a whitish gray?”

  October dipped her head toward me and smirked. “It turns me on when you talk like the Audubon Society.”

  I smiled. Bob Harper was good for something.

  The late-morning sun was starting to flood the room, and even though the breeze was cool, I felt warm and content, the scene calling to mind an old Johnny Cash quote I’d read somewhere online. Johnny had been asked to describe his idea of paradise. He’d pointed to his wife, June, and said, “This morning. With her. Having coffee.”

  This is simple, and I get it, I thought again. Then I put my hand on October’s thigh and left it there for as long as it took for her to get it too.

  Eventually she set her mug on the bedside table, spun her body sideways, and rested her head in my lap.

  “I want to tell you something,” she said quietly. There was a pause, like she was searching for the words. “I want you to know why I’m so drawn to you. And why I think this is important enough to go through what we’re going to have to go through to be together.”

  I slid my hand into hers and said, “OK.”

  “It’s something I feel when I’m with you, that I don’t feel with anyone else. Chris says I’m always so busy noticing everyone else’s feelings that I ignore my own, and maybe he’s right. I don’t have a lot of friends that I confide in, and it’s never been easy for me to get close to people. But I wanted to be close to you the moment we met. I feel all this deep, creative energy when I’m with you, and it makes me want to explore things and express things that I’ve never had the courage to explore or express. Am I making sense?”

  As usual, her words at once softened and baffled me. “Yes.”

  “In a way, I guess what I’m saying is that you inspire me. And you feel like home.”

  I let go of her hand, stroked her hair, and she whispered, “Cafuné.”

  She picked at the frayed hem of my cargo shorts. The warbler outside the window was singing now, her song full of sweet, buzzy “Z” notes.

  “There’s a magnitude to all of this,” October said. “That’s what you’re feeling. The magnitude of moving through life without any idea how or when this is going to end but embracing it anyway.”

  I let her words sink in. “Are you saying you think this is going to end?”

  She flipped onto her back and looked up at me. “I’m saying that I’m scared too. But we’re here now, and that’s all that matters. And I’ll tell you something else.” She put her index finger to my chest and drew what I’m pretty sure was a heart. “I think that love lives in a space inside of us that never ends. That’s why it’s the ultimate art project. Because while a book, a painting, a song, a piece of pottery, a tree can outlive us, none of those things will exist forever. But love is an energy. It’s infinite. So, no. Regardless of where you and I end up, I don’t think this is ever going to end.”

  We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary that day. After we finished our coffee we made love, and it was slow and intense. I melted into October, she clung to me, we whispered and laughed, and it was as if our closeness, not the act itself, was where our pleasure came from. I almost never had sex like that. So out of my head. So present.

  When we got out of bed we were hungry, and October wanted to have a picnic, but the contents of her fridge were meager. She had milk, bread, cheese, anchovies, and Luxardo cherries. All I had was beer, chocolate milk, and tequila.

  We went to the farmers’ market in San Rafael and got two big bags of groceries. Predictably, once we got home, October wouldn’t let me help her cook. But she did give me the task of scrubbing a bag of red potatoes and washing the lettuce. Though when she saw me rinsing the heads under the faucet, she laughed and said that wasn’t the best way to wash lettuce; she showed me how to break the leaves apart and swish them around in big bowls of water until all the bugs and grit sank to the bottom.

  I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and we drank it over the course of the afternoon while October poached the potatoes, sous-vided chicken thighs, and made a salad.

  At some point I found a Truth or Dare game in the junk drawer in the kitchen. The game looked like a deck of cards, but one side of each card had a truth question on it and the other side a dare. I told October that if she wasn’t going to let me cook, she had to play the game with me. I shuffled the cards, picked one, and said, “Truth or dare?”

  “Truth.” She was working on the salad dressing, using a marble mortar and pestle to mash garlic and anchovies.

  I flipped to the truth side of the card. “Name a memory from childhood that you’re ashamed of.”

  “Ugh. Sissy Brown,” she said instantly. “Sissy lived on my street in eighth grade. We were the same age and rode the bus to school together. And when I tell you Sissy was mean, I mean she bullied everyone. There was a handicapped boy in our class named Ricardo whom she called Retardo. She made fun of my best friend Delia’s mom for being overweight. And she’d dubbed me Demon Girl, for obvious reasons. Anyway, she always sat in the back of the bus, and Delia and I sat a few rows in front. One day after school, Delia and I are sharing a Kit-Kat just as the bus is approaching Sissy’s stop. Sissy walks up the aisle, sees the Kit-Kat in Delia’s hand, and says, ‘You’re going to be as fat as your mom.’ Then she leans over me and makes an oink-oink sound in Delia’s face.” October paused to crack an egg, separate the yolk, and toss the eggshell into the compost bin on her counter. “Something in me snapped, and as Sissy was walking by I put my leg out and tripped her. She went down with a thud, and all the stuff in her book bag spilled all over the floor—pens, papers, notebooks, and gum went everywhere. The entire bus cheered while Sissy scrambled to pick up her things. And at first I felt cool and justified. But then Sissy stood up and looked back at me. She was crying, her face was all red and wet, and her hair was sticking to the tears on her cheeks. We made eye contact and I felt—I don’t know—her in
sides, I guess—the part of her life I didn’t know anything about. A barrage of sadness, loneliness, and neglect; I immediately understood why she wasn’t nice to anyone. Because nobody was nice to her.”

  “Don’t tell me you befriended her and turned her life around.”

  She shook her head. “She moved away a couple of months later and I never saw her again. But that was over twenty years ago, and I still feel horrible about tripping her, and for never telling her I was sorry.”

  I ate a strawberry from one of the cartons we bought at the market. “If it makes you feel better, I was a lonely, neglected kid, and I wasn’t mean.”

  October wiped her hands on a dishtowel, took a sip of her wine, and pecked me on the nose. “You have a good heart, Joe. I know you don’t always think so, but you do.”

  She whisked olive oil into the egg yolk, and I picked another card. “Truth or dare?”

  “Truth,” she said again.

  “Excluding your current occupation, what’s the longest you’ve ever held a job?”

  “For three years I worked as a massage therapist in college. But it’s my turn to ask you.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. If I can’t cook, you can’t ask questions. Hold on, though. You were a massage therapist? How?”

  She gave me a look. “What do you mean? With my hands.”

  “No, I mean, how could you touch people all day, with, you know, your gift?”

  “That’s why I did it. To hone my gift. I used to ask my clients to fill out a questionnaire about their emotional state before I worked on them, and once I finished the massage I would read their responses, to see how close I was. That’s how I got good at it.”

  “This is very enlightening.” I picked another card, October once again chose truth, and I huffed. “The whole reason I’m playing is so I can make you eat a dog biscuit or force you to prank call Rae and ask her if her refrigerator is running. Come on. Pick ‘dare.’”