AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Why was it so important to hide so deeply?Stacy asked me again and again, but I never could give her a satisfactory response. Why did you feel so intently that he would search for you? And why would it have mattered?Repeatedly I attempted to explain something for which I did not have words, only feelings, and feelings without names at that. All I knew was that it mattered tremendously. Dense. Because alone at night when I allowed myself to tentatively peel back the layers of the onion that was “denial,” I knew the answer. I had always known the answer. As the eel seeks the Sargasso Sea without knowing how or why, so, too, I needed to vanish completely into the shadows of time. The ways of the eel are still mysterious – a mature one has never been found in the spawning grounds, yet scientists are as certain as they can be without proof that the Sargasso is from whence they come. The universe retains secrets it will not give up.Fin.
Love is a funny thing. You marry someone, sleep beside them every night for years, think you know them, believe you love them, and then discover it is only a mirage. Or, you cross paths unexpectedly, two ships passing in great, wide waters, but each sending a wake rippling across the ocean, each changing the course of the other ever so slightly, the drops of the ocean leaving a trace of the seas they shared from the bow to the stern even if the ships never sail the same way again.
And so, deep into the pandemic when time and events conspired and conjoined to lead me into the books of my lives, I was seared but not surprised by the words I had written, these whispers from the past. Nor could I claim surprise that in the vows I wrote and then tucked away, more translucent papers in the sun, that in those one hundred little words that were to evoke to the world – or at least three hundred guests – the deep love and commitment we had for one another, I prioritized travel, made two mentions of sorrow, and was prepared to acknowledge for posterity that I chose Jake Larkin because he loved me.
I never said I love you.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
All through thespring, I felt like a yo-yo sliding up and down the string, my conversations with Nao Kao evocative of the national conversation: when would this all be over, the clarity waxing and waning with the moons. Regularly he sent pictures, but actual words were much rarer, like fairy dust to behold, until unexpectedly a message would appear. The YouTube link to a song whose lyrics were decidedly non-platonic, but for which he offered no context at all. A passage in a book that he wanted to share, or some note about travel he knew I would appreciate. He asked if I had gotten my bike back out, reminded me to be careful not to crash recklessly as I had done the year before. He asked if it was warm enough and light enough for my early morning runs.
And then he would disappear, the days between our conversations stretching across weeks. Occasionally I would see the shadows of him on Facebook proper, his name in the list of friends who had liked a new profile picture or some random link I shared. Always I would hear from him before we had a business meeting, a quick request for the Zoom link and the passcode.
“What do you do with the calendar invites I send?” I asked him once. “Outlook tells me you’ve accepted, but you clearly don’t save it in your calendar. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
I was not surprised when a sticker of laughter is all the reply I received in return.
When we would be on a call the banter would return and I would decide he was not quite so distant. Nor was he, I realized, annoyed by the stream of consciousness I sometimes directed his way. Rather, Nao Kao was tired and busy. He was but a man, and one with an exceedingly full life.
Up and down the string the disks danced.
I teased him that whenever we met over Zoom, that he was always waving a pen around, but I never saw him writing.
“You always did have the world’s best penmanship,” I complimented him sincerely, remembering that scrap of paper bearing the titleActs of Faith.
“Not anymore,” he lamented. “It’s gone all squiggly.”
“Send me a picture,” I replied, and he obliged.
If he was fishing for a compliment it worked. If this was an example of his handwriting gone all squiggly, my memory failed to properly recall the shape of his delicately formed writing years before, writing honed by years of practice inscribing the Lao script, that flowing, curvilinear writing that is murder on my western eyes, though beautiful to behold. Proper handwriting is no mere vanity when it comes to such writing systems.
“Send me one,” he asked, but I did not. Two could play at this game, whatever it was, whatever the rules were.
“I bet it’s gone all crooked, too,” he said. “I remember it used to be great. All loops and lines.”
“Has not,” I replied, but his goading did not work, and I kept my handwriting to myself.
Only later, when I looked at what he sent did I wonder what the fates had in store. Inked in that gorgeous hand of his were the opening lines of the Victor Hugo poem that adorned my office wall.
Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
Someone walked over my grave.
In my finest writing, those loops and lines still strong, I composed the next stanza, the one that ends, when translated, with “Sadly, and the day for me will be as the night,” and snapped a picture.
Toward the end of spring, when the crabapples and eastern redbuds were at their peak, the branches heavy with pink and white and fuchsia blooms, when the daffodils had nearly come and gone and the tulips had their turn in the sun, Nao Kao asked me for a favor.
“A tour of campus,” he requested. “I want to see it all again. Spring always was the most beautiful.”
I sent him a link to the university’s official video, drone footage of the Bell Tower and the Cube, South University and State streets and down to the stadium, blossoms galore. I added a few shots from the Law Quad that I took one sunny afternoon, and one of the profusion of peonies in the Arboretum.
“These aren’t as good as yours,” I wrote when I sent them, “but then, I’m no professional.”
