Sorrow

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  I’d consulted my old buddy Len, electrician extraordinaire, on the optimal way to ensure the sculpture would last for forty years, and he suggested I make the tiny lights out of hollow, colored glass, not filament. Sort of like an elaborate Lite-Brite, with a back panel that uses two separate light sources, one active and one as backup. When the active one burns out, the backup will kick in while the other is being replaced, and so on and so forth, enabling continuous illumination for the duration of my life.

  For over an hour that morning, Eli and I were the only two people in line, and we passed the time talking about a trip he’d taken to Sweden over the summer. He’d been on assignment in Fulufjället National Park and stopped to see a Norway spruce known as Old Tjikko, a tree that’s allegedly been growing since the Neolithic period.

  Eli showed me photos of the tree with the kind of dorky zeal I assume I exhibit when I’m talking about redwoods and guitars.

  “This guy was born around the time humans learned to cultivate wheat,” Eli said. “That makes him older than bread. Remarkable, huh?”

  It was. And at roughly sixteen feet tall, with skeletal branches that sag downward, Old Tjikko looks more like a sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree than the oldest known Picea abies on the planet.

  “It’s actually the root system that dates back ninety-five hundred years,” Eli explained. “The trunk and branches have died and been reborn multiple times.”

  I wondered aloud if I’d been identifying with the wrong tree all my life. And without thinking, I said, “You should tell October about Old Tjikko when you see her today. She likes trees too.”

  Eli had been nearby during my altercation with Rae the day before, but he’d refrained from asking me any questions. Now he knit his brow, spoke softly. “You two have some kind of history, I gather.”

  I liked Eli. He was interesting and thoughtful. We’d exchanged phone numbers, and he’d invited me to go sailing with him the following weekend, so I didn’t feel right about making anything up. But I also knew I would need a few beers in me before I could give him the real scoop.

  “October and I used to work together.” My body stiffened, a reminder that everything about that woman still lived inside of it. “We were close. It didn’t end well. I guess I’m trying to rectify that.”

  The sun rose at 7:24 a.m., and by then the line was around the block and past the parking garage. The crowd was feisty that morning, undoubtedly because it was the last day of the exhibit and everyone who hadn’t made it in yet had shown up expecting entry before it closed. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. People tried to cut the line. One guy offered Eli two grand for his spot. A girl in Birkenstocks and thick wool socks offered me sex for mine.

  About an hour before the doors opened, a museum representative named Tamisha came out, counted off the first one hundred people by marking them with little yellow stickers, and announced that anyone who didn’t have a sticker would be turned away. However, she assured those one hundred people that they would all get in to see October, even if it ran beyond the 5:00 p.m. cutoff time.

  The 103rd person in line was a man who claimed he’d come all the way from Croatia to participate in Sorrow, to which Tamisha replied, “You should have come sooner.”

  In protest, the man tore off his clothes, curled up in a ball on the sidewalk, and screamed like someone auditioning for a role in a horror film until Security came and took him away.

  All the commotion set a tone that Eli called “unbefitting for the last day of such a beautiful experience.” He asked me to hold his spot, wandered off for a bit, and came back with five big boxes of doughnuts that he passed out to everyone in line.

  At first I didn’t take one because I didn’t want my fingers to be sticky when I held October’s hands, but Eli had anticipated that problem and also had a bag of little, individually wrapped moist towelettes. He passed those out too.

  I was as nervous walking in on the second day as I had been on the first. Maybe even more so, because I was second in line behind Eli and had much less time to mentally prepare. In fact, I was already standing beside the computer screen rereading the rules when the massive shades fully disappeared into the ceiling.

  Eli was still in with October when I opened my voice memo app and once again pushed record. What can I say? I’m a rebel.

  I approached the door as soon as I saw Eli exit, then I waited for Security to wave me in, and I entered the room.

  October was wearing the same dress she’d had on the day before, except in a different color. This one was a light, shimmery blue, and the tint in the shattered panes seemed to match the dress, though I was fairly certain it had been a pinkish rose color twenty hours earlier. Her hair was down this time, and she had a tiny gold beetle on a chain around her neck.

  I slid quietly into the chair and took a mental photograph of October’s expression so I would be able to notice if anything changed once she realized I had returned.

  My hands were cold from standing outside, and I rubbed them together to warm them up before I touched her. Then I did what I’d done the day before. I slid my palms underneath her palms and closed my fingers around her fingers. And something did change. I saw it. The flash of a smirk, so scarcely perceptible, so minuscule a stranger would have never noticed it. But I wasn’t a stranger. I knew the subtle nuances of her face, and in that half an instant I saw it sneak up on her, and I saw her immediately pull it down.

  She opened her eyes right away, and while the imperturbable facade was still visible, there was something underneath it, something I strove to name, but the only word that came close to what I observed was “amusement,” and that might as well have been an emoji. I had no idea how to interpret it.

  I’d come with a pipedream plan: I was going to tell October about my art project, and she was going to think it was brilliant and want to work on it with me. But once I was in the chair, that topic didn’t seem right.

  “You wanna know something?” I said, adlibbing. “I still keep a list of words on my phone.” I readjusted my hands so that I had a better hold. “Whenever I stumble across a good one, I add it to my file. There’s over a hundred now. And every time I add one, I think, I wish I could share this with October.” It happened again. A subtle shift. This time in the grip she had on my fingers. Her skin was alive. It felt everything. “It’s true. Whenever I’m trying to decide how I feel about something, I think of you. I try to see it through your eyes. I do it with songs, with art, with coffee shops and cheeseburgers and current events. You’re my filter and compass for everything. Anyway, I added a word this morning when I was talking to Eli, and it seems relevant. “Heliotropism.” It’s the tendency of plants to turn or lean toward the light in order to grow. I’m convinced the concept applies to humans too.”

  I recalled something Cal had texted me the night before. A meme that said if you stare into someone’s eyes long enough, your heart rates will synch up, and I decided to test that. I wanted to sit with October, to be with her without talking, the way we used to do at work. I refocused my gaze and didn’t say another word, and October stayed with me, our twin eyes in sync, our chests aligned. I breathed when she breathed, and I imagined that her breath was filling my lungs and mine was filling hers. It was exciting. Intimate. And when the chime went off a few minutes later, I let go of her hands but didn’t let go of her eyes, not until I stood to leave.

  I exited the exhibit, walked up the maple steps and into the main lobby. Then I wandered out the front door and back to my truck, all the while thump thump thumping my hand against my chest, to keep the rhythm going, so as not to lose the beat of her heart.

  TWENTY-EIGHT.

  I’d stopped having conversations with Sam during my time in Montana. I can’t say why for certain, but I guessed it was because I had no references for him in that environment, no memories. I couldn’t feel him there at all. Likewise, I was a catastrophe when
I got to Whitefish, and it’s hard to look for, let alone see, magic in the world when you’re broken inside. Beyond that, I allowed for the possibility that Sam was so disappointed in my pusillanimity, he’d thrown in the towel.

  However, once I was back in Mill Valley, Sam returned. It was coming up on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, and I promised Ingrid I would do something special to honor his memory. Ingrid and I had observed the day annually for a while when I was young, but Bob had given us a hard time about it, chastising us for “celebrating” Sam’s death, accusing us of dwelling on the past, and eventually we stopped.

  Nevertheless, twenty-five years felt like a long time, and I decided to go to Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve in Guerneville to pay tribute to my brother. Bob, Ingrid, Sam, and I had spent Sam’s sixteenth and last birthday there, hiking and making hot dogs on the grill in the picnic area near Colonel Armstrong.

  Colonel Armstrong was the oldest redwood in the grove and Sam’s all-time favorite tree. Incidentally, Colonel Armstrong would have been my favorite as well, but when we were kids and I told Sam I liked Colonel the best too, he said, “I called it first, Joey.” That meant I had to come up with my own original answer or he’d deem me a copycat, and I went with Giant Tree.

  Guerneville is a little over sixty-five miles northwest of Mill Valley. Allowing for some traffic, it would take me about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there. My plan was to drive up that morning, hike around a bit, have my memorial for Sam, play a little guitar, and be home by dinnertime.

  Before I headed out, I wrote a list of all the things I missed about Sam on a Glacier National Park postcard I found in my backpack. I’d purchased the card before Bob died, thinking I might send it to him, but of course I never did.

  At first I imagined leaving the postcard at the foot of Colonel Armstrong, but for all intents and purposes, that was littering, and I resolved to burn it instead. I shoved it between the pages of the book I was reading and headed out to my truck, lugging my Martin, my backpack, and my coffee thermos, which I was going to fill up at Equator when I stopped to grab breakfast on my way out of town.

  Over a month had passed since Sorrow ended, and I had neither seen nor heard from October. And not for lack of trying. I wandered around Marin more than necessary, frequenting all the places I knew she visited. I went to the farmers’ market in San Rafael three Sundays in a row. I hiked the fire road behind Casa Diez a couple times a week. I even drove to YogaWorks one Monday night, right about the time the 6:00 class she used to go to was letting out, even though there was nothing around YogaWorks I could pretend I was doing if I did run into her.

  My last attempt at contact had been to mail her a manila envelope containing copies of the drawings I’d done of my light sculpture, with a short note explaining the piece.

  She didn’t respond.

  The weather app on my phone said the high temperature in Guerneville was fifty-three degrees, and before I left I threw on my fleece pullover, overkill in Mill Valley, which was unusually balmy that morning, but it would be necessary under the shade of the redwoods.

  When I got down to town, I parked in the lot behind Mill Valley Market and ran in to get matches, a newspaper, and some wood to start a proper fire at the picnic site. I had some incense too, and planned on burning it with the postcard as an offering to Sam.

  I took the bag of supplies back to my truck, dropped it on the seat, grabbed my thermos and the book I was reading—a weird memoir about a man who had moved from Manhattan to the Rocky Mountains to follow his lifelong dream of raising alpacas—and walked the two blocks to Equator.

  The notoriously slow-moving line was long, and I considered going to Peet’s Coffee across the street instead, but I wanted breakfast, and Peet’s didn’t serve good breakfast, so I stood there and read about alpacas while I waited. Besides, there was an old Pearl Jam song playing over the speakers in Equator. Pearl Jam had been Sam’s favorite band at the time of his death, and since it was a Sam-themed day, that felt like a sign for me to stay.

  I didn’t see her until I was about to place my order. She was sitting on the bench all the way to the right, against the wall of windows, drawing in a small sketchbook. A coffee cup sat beside her pencil case on the tiny round table in front of her. She was wearing flared jeans that looked like they were from the 1970s, a rainbow-striped sweater, and sandals that she’d kicked off onto the floor. Her legs were crisscrossed underneath her.

  My hand shook as I handed my thermos to the girl in the gothy purple lipstick behind the counter. I vaguely heard the girl ask me if I wanted the single origin or the Equator blend, and I’m pretty sure I said single origin. I wasn’t completely out of my head though, because I had intended to grab one of the prepackaged cups of yogurt for breakfast, but I asked for an egg sandwich instead; because that would be made to order, it would take a while, and I’d have to stand directly in front of October’s table to wait for it.

  I dropped my change into the tip jar, approached the table, and stood there hoping October would feel my presence and look up, but she was too engrossed in what she was doing. From upside down it looked like she was drawing a leopard, but it also could have been a skyscraper.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Her head rose quickly, her eyes wide, her look askance. I watched her closely, to catalog any emotions she might choose to reveal, but she went Switzerland on me again.

  “Hey yourself.”

  My throat felt dry and chalky. I took a sip from my thermos and the coffee in it was so hot it scalded my mouth.

  Silence swirled like smoke in the space between us, and I knew it was up to me to diffuse it.

  “How are things?” I said stupidly.

  She had been biting on the end of her pencil, but she took it out of her mouth and twirled it around in her fingers like a little baton. “Things are good.”

  I cocked my head to the side, to get a better look at what she was drawing. “What are you working on?”

  “Nothing.” She shut the sketchbook and set the pencil on top of it. “I’m literally not working on anything.”

  “It looks like you’re drawing.”

  “Doodling.” She wiped eraser crumbs from the table, and when she spoke again there was a restrained tone to her voice. “I was pretty worn out after Sorrow. I’m taking a few months off to recharge.”

  I couldn’t imagine October not working for that long, and I said, “What are you going to do all day? If you’re not working, I mean?”

  “We’ll see,” she said. “I’ve been traveling a lot. After the exhibit ended, I rented a cabin in Joshua Tree for a couple weeks. And I went to Rochester for Thanksgiving. I guess now I’ll just be doodling and drinking coffee.”

  That explained why I couldn’t find her in town. She hadn’t been there.

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Joshua Tree,” I said. I thought better of asking the next question, but I asked it anyway. “Did you go by yourself?”

  She made a face indicating that was none of my business. Nevertheless, she said, “No.” There was a pause, and I was certain it was for effect. “I drove down with Diego. And I didn’t talk to a single human for ten days. It was a dream.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She stretched out her legs and set her bare feet on the floor. Then she picked up her cup and held it in her palm. It was almost empty, and she stared into it as if it were full of secrets. She pulled her legs back up underneath her. Put the cup down. Ran her nail across a scratch in the table. Looked around the cafe. She seemed nervous too.

  I looked at the book in my hand and thought of something I’d just read. “Did you know that alpacas can die of loneliness?”

  She digested that fact and laughed. And it was a genuine October laugh. The one that used to be followed by her telling me I was funny or cute.

  “Good thing you’re not an alpaca,” she
said.

  I laughed too, though there was something tragic about the joke, something that hurt my heart. And when I met October’s eyes, I recognized the same nostalgic sentiment there, a desire to make all the tacit conversations explicit.

  “Did you get the envelope I sent you?”

  “The light sculpture,” she said. “I did.”

  “And?”

  “I like it.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “Very much.”

  “I’m going to build it.”

  “Good.”

  She readjusted her position on the bench so that only one foot was underneath her, the other on the floor. Then she looked me up and down and said, “Why are you dressed like it’s about to snow?”

  The fleece jacket. No wonder I was so warm. “I’m on my way to Guerneville. To visit Colonel Armstrong. It’s supposed to be chilly up there today.”

  “Who’s Colonel Armstrong?”

  “He’s a redwood. Over fourteen hundred years old. And 308 feet tall.”

  There it was again. That smile.

  A guy I recognized as someone I used to work with at FarmHouse called my name from behind the counter and handed me my breakfast sandwich. It was all wrapped up to go, and I had no reason to linger any longer.

  I turned back toward October’s table, and for another long, subtext-filled moment we looked at each other without saying anything.

  “Well. I guess I should get going.” I hoped she would ask me to stay, but she didn’t. “It was really nice to see you. To talk to you.”

  All of a sudden she looked profoundly sad. “You too, Joe.”