walking by the glow
I am standing on the street
the lamplights are a darkness
I’ve lost my sense of direction
I have nowhere to go
what do I know?
As I sing to Caleb, I know that this song is
no longer about us. Or if it’s about us,
it’s not about now. I turn to my mother
as I hit the refrain
when you hear me,
listen to what I’m saying
when you see me,
look me in the eye
when you know me,
try not be frightened
when you speak to me,
tell me everything
is going to be fine
and the most astonishing thing happens, which at first
I can’t believe—my mother, in her own quiet way,
is singing along.
Her mouth is moving with mine, she knows
all the words. I am almost thrown from
the second verse, because I am realizing how
deaf I have been. I have misinterpreted the
footsteps in the hallways. I have not seen or
listened or known. And I am near tears, looking
at Caleb, looking at my mother, because for a boy
who has been spending all his time on music,
it’s not until now that I know what a song can do.
The second refrain switches a little, but my mother
knows that. We are looking at each other right in the eye
and we are singing to the end
when you know me,
try not be frightened
when you see me,
look me in the eye
when you hear me,
listen to what I’m saying
when you speak to me,
tell me everything
is going to be fine
it’s going to be fine
the windows are closed
so we stumble to the doors
follow the sound of my voice
saying everything
is going to be fine
At first I don’t understand the applause, because
that’s not where I am. I am making a new song
out of my mother’s expression, the devotion
I’ve been too caught up to notice, and Caleb’s music,
the dancing that we’ll do.
This is what a song can do. Our moments are
music, and sometimes—just sometimes—
we can catch them and put them
into some lasting form. If I didn’t
have music, I don’t know if
I could ever be truly happy,
and if I didn’t have these moments,
I would never find music. It is everywhere,
in the air between us, waiting
to be sung.
WITHOUT SAYING
You are in her room, on her bed, as she paces angrily and tells you about Ridiculous Boyfriend #9 and their relationship, which (mercifully) has just ended. She is walking around the room as if she’s still in a race with him. She is telling you the story even though you’ve been hearing it all along.
In a few minutes, she’ll fall into the bed and laugh to the ceiling. She’ll wish you next to her, and you’ll comply. You’ll agree with her when she says that guys suck. She’ll say you don’t count. She’ll say you’re not like that.
You’re only half listening to her. Half listening and three-quarters watching. Ridiculous Boyfriend #9 was a snob, a jerk, too rich, too shallow, too straight, not enough of a pagan. Haven’t you said this all before? Hasn’t she?
You never say “I told you so,” because she knows that you did, and you know that she did it anyway.
“Arrrgh!” she yells in a mock fit of frustration. She’s the only person you know who says “arrrgh!” (Charlie Brown doesn’t count.) You calm her down. You offer her chocolate.
Does it go without saying that you love her?
Yes, of course it goes without saying.
Milo does not notice Ramona at first. She’s like the rest of Michelle’s friends. None of them can believe that Michelle is having a Sweet Sixteen. Milo was invited because they needed more boys. But he seems more interested in the centerpieces than in the girls.
Ramona sees him staring at the tulips. He senses he’s being watched and blushes.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” she says.
“Tulips,” he says. “In January.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that. Her eyes move to the dance floor, where Michelle is making out with Alex Park.
“She’ll end the night pregnant,” Ramona observes.
“Good thing I got her a stroller for a present,” Milo says.
She doesn’t even look at him.
“That’s an expensive gift,” she says.
“Only the best for my little girl.”
They both look back to Michelle, whose bra strap is showing. It’s bright pink.
“You don’t belong here, and neither do I,” Milo says.
They leave the ballroom and head to a couch in the hotel lobby. The conversation begins. It lasts for more than two weeks. Milo and Ramona can’t seem to keep their words off each other. Ramona especially. She is surprised—surprised and pleased—by the intensity of this new whatever-it-is. She enjoys their whatever-we’re-doing, although the is-this-or-isn’t-it nature sometimes confuses her. She waits for a sign. Then she looks harder. He calls her his “brand-new friend” and she can’t help but wonder, Is that it? Then she is ashamed of her ungratefulness. Because what she needs more than anything else is, in fact, a brand-new friend.
You wish you could undo your love for him. It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. You can’t tell anyone about it, because even the fact of it would alter things—perhaps irreparably.
You wonder if he knows. You pray that he doesn’t. You want him to read your mind. You send him messages. The telepathy never works.
You try to fall for other people, because maybe he’ll like you then.
He tries to set you up with one of his friends. Jim, you’re told, is interested in philosophy. Your philosophy, you tell him, is to not be interested in Jim. Because—it’s true—Jim blows his nose more often than normal people do. He laughs (his remarkable laugh) and jokes about your ridiculous standards. “There’s nothing standard about your standards,” he says, and you say that someday your prince will come. More than anything, you want him to reply, “But what if your prince is right under your nose?” Instead he says, “Well, as long as he’s not one of those deposed princes….”
You wish he’d get a clue. But you’re not about to give him one.
You wish he weren’t such a prince. You wish he were a frog.
Milo confesses his love to Ramona. (Ramona imagines this as she walks to the subway.) He proclaims, declaims, and just plain claims. He compares his love to oxygen and then describes her in terms of fire. He confesses that she mixes his metaphors and pervades his imagery. He has seen their future written in clouds, transcribed in dreams. His feelings are unanimous, and his friends are, too: He must be with Ramona. He says this—he says it all aloud. Then he turns off the shower and gets ready for dinner. (Note: she does not picture him explicitly in the shower. It’s steamy. She can’t really see anything.) Ramona will be coming over in twenty minutes.
He, who is rarely befuddled, cannot decide what to wear. (She goes through the options as she boards the train and it moves forward.) He puts on a tie, and figures that’s too formal. He puts on a T-shirt, and feels it’s not enough. Blue isn’t right and red makes his eyes look stoned. He puts on a turtleneck, rolls up the sleeves, puts them back down. He looks at his watch. He makes sure his phone is on, just in case she calls. (Ramona smiles as she steps out of the subway.) He continues to clean the kitchen, happy his parents won’t be home for hours. There is a single glass in the sink. He washes it, puts it in the dishwasher, looks at his watch. She is late. His heart feels trepidation. Then he remembers his watch is fast. He checks himself in the mirror again. He switches his shirt, and then changes out of jeans. “Ramona…,” he rehearses. He proofreads himself, again in the mirror. He doesn’t like the way his mouth looks when he speaks. (She loves his mouth, lingers on it for a second.) He tries to say “Ramona” with his mouth shut. He hears footsteps. He composes himself, opens the door. It is someone he’s never seen before, heading to another apartment. (Ramona rings the buzzer.) The buzzer rings. It startles him. His feet lift in the air. No, they just feel like they’re lifting in the air. “Ramona?” he asks as he presses the TALK button. And now LISTEN. It is her. (Ramona pictures him expectant.) He closes the dishwasher. He looks at his reflection. He repeats her name. There is so much he has to say. (She knocks. He opens the door.)
Carefully, very carefully, you begin to send signals. You ask her to make most of the decisions, with the hope (but not the expectation) that eventually she will make the right one. You imagine (ha!) that the usual rounds of “I-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do?” will end up with her leaning over and kissing you and saying, “There—that’s what I want to do.”
This does not happen.
Instead, your “signals”—which seem to you to be so obvious and fat, so loud and behemoth—are as remote to her as the shift of an atom. The conversation does not halt—it does not thin itself and become a conversion. You falter, fall back to asides, to jokes—she laughs, you are amusing. She doesn’t know. You wonder if it’s better that way. Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.
You could stop her laughter in a second. Force it.
You don’t want to.
You back away from an awkward pause.
These are some of the things you cannot say to her:
“When I am with you, there is nowhere else I’d rather be. And I am a person who always wants to be somewhere else.”
“I see you in my dreams. And not just in fourth-grade classrooms or underwater Tupperware parties or other nonsensical dream places. I see you in reality most.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t choose this. It just happened.”
Milo is distracted, struck, left without a center of gravity. His shoes don’t match, and neither do his socks. He doesn’t notice. He lights candles and forgets about them, only to find the wax and ashes the next day. He puts CDs in the washing machine and throws recyclables in the sink. He is haunted by a muffled ringing. (His cell phone is in the laundry basket. It will take him three days to find it.)
Ramona is on her way over. Milo regrets this, because really all he can think about is William.
Two hours ago, he almost said something. To William, not Ramona. He does not say as much as he should to Ramona, and he says even less to William. Or, rather, he says too much to William—everything except those three words, although at least he can use the I and the you in other contexts. He can avalanche William with words—stories, litanies, tangents, anyways—without letting the biggest boulder loose.
And yet, two hours ago. They were at a gallery, seeing the work of a Japanese photographer who has traveled the world to capture seascaped horizons—the ocean meeting the sky without any land or ship or human in sight. Night and day, calm and storm—gray, black, and white indivisible.
Milo could have looked at the photographs, but he looked at William instead. The glass on the frames was reflective; Milo could see William’s eyes move to find the border between sky and sea. Milo saw his own hand moving to William’s shoulder—but, no, that was just a daydream mapped on the glass that Milo was placing over reality. They moved from one photo to the next—William covered the placards with his palm and asked Milo to guess the place they were seeing. Milo was invariably wrong—he guessed Cape Horn for the Carolinas, Alaska for the south of Wales. He even guessed Switzerland. William didn’t point out that Switzerland doesn’t touch any oceans; Milo realized it himself. “Guess guess guess,” William asked, playfully tugging at Milo’s sleeve, patting his back tenderly after the third consecutive miss. Guess guess guess, Milo thought, patting William likewise, looking at his eyes in the next reflection. When William was quiet again, when he resumed his immersion in the photography and let out a sigh, Milo felt his heart lurch. It was a strange and heretofore unknown feeling—but it felt perfectly natural, as if Milo had nothing to do with it. It was tidal. Milo wanted to tell William about it—which would mean telling William about everything.