Page 89
“Greenwich first. My mother must be worried. Then Boston, I suppose.” She didn’t have to say more; her meaning was plain. Jonas would be home soon.
“I understand,” I said.
We took a cab to Grand Central. Few words had been spoken since her announcement. I felt like I was being taken to face a firing squad. Be brave, I told myself. Be the sort of man who stands tall with his eyes open, waiting for the guns’ report.
Her train was called. We walked to the platform where it awaited. She put her arms around me and began to cry. “I don’t want to do this,” she said.
“Then don’t. Don’t get on the train.”
I felt her hesitancy. Not just the words; I felt it in her body. She couldn’t make herself let go.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
People were hurrying past. The customary announcement crackled overhead: All aboard for New Haven, Bridgeport, Westport, New Canaan, Greenwich…A door was closing; soon it would be sealed.
“Then come back. Do what you have to do, and then come back. We can go someplace.”
“Where?”
“Italy, Greece. An island in the Pacific. It doesn’t matter. Somewhere nobody can find us.”
“I want to.”
“Say yes.”
A frozen moment; then she nodded against me. “Yes.”
My heart soared. “How long do you need to tie things up?”
“A week. No, two.”
“Make it ten days. Meet me here, under the clock. I’ll have everything ready.”
“I love you,” she said. “I think I did from the start.”
“I loved you even before that.”
A last kiss, she stepped toward the train, then turned and embraced me again.
“Ten days,” she said.
—
I made ready. There were things I needed to do. I composed a hasty email to my dean, requesting a leave of absence. I wouldn’t be around to know if it had been accepted, but I hardly cared. I could imagine no life beyond the next six months.
I called a friend who was an oncologist. I explained the situation, and he told me what would happen. Yes, there would be pain, but mostly a slow receding.
“It’s not something you should manage on your own,” he said. When I didn’t reply, he sighed. “I’ll phone in a prescription.”
“For what?”
“Morphine. It will help.” He paused. “At the end, you know, a lot of people take more than they should, strictly speaking.”
I said I understood and thanked him. Where should we go? I had read an article in the Times about an island in the Aegean where half the population lived to be a hundred. There was no valid scientific explanation; the residents, most of whom were goat herders, took it as a fact of life. A man was quoted in the article as saying, “Time is different here.” I bought two first-class tickets to Athens and found a ferry schedule online. A boat traveled to the island only once a week. We would have to wait two days in Athens, but there were worse places. We would visit the temples, the great, indestructible monuments of a lost world, then vanish.
The day arrived. I packed my bags; we would be going straight from the station to the airport for a ten P.M. flight. I could barely think straight; my emotions were an indescribable jumble. Joy and sadness had fused together in my heart. Foolishly, I had planned nothing else for the day and was forced to sit idly in my apartment until late afternoon. I had no food on hand, having cleaned out the refrigerator, but doubted I could have eaten anyway.
I took a cab to the station. Five o’clock was, once again, the appointed hour. Liz would be taking an Amtrak train to Stamford, to see her mother, in Greenwich, one last time, then a local to Grand Central. With each passing block my feelings annealed into a pure sense of purpose. I knew, as few men did, why I had been born in the first place; everything in my life had called me forward to this moment. I paid the cabbie and went inside to wait. It was a Saturday, the crowds light. The opalescent clock faces read 4:36. Liz’s train was due in twenty minutes.
My pulse quickened as the announcement came over the speakers: Now arriving at track 16…I considered going to the platform to head her off, but we might lose each other in the crowd. Passengers surged into the main hall. Soon it became clear that Liz was not among them. Perhaps she had taken a later train; the New Haven line ran every thirty minutes. I checked my phone, but there were no messages. The next train came, and still no Liz. I began to worry that something had happened. It did not occur to me yet that she had changed her mind, though the idea was waiting in the wings. At six o’clock I called her cell, but it went straight to voicemail. Had she shut it off?
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89 (Reading here)
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 223
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 230
- Page 231
- Page 232
- Page 233
- Page 234
- Page 235
- Page 236
- Page 237
- Page 238
- Page 239
- Page 240
- Page 241
- Page 242
- Page 243
- Page 244
- Page 245
- Page 246
- Page 247
- Page 248
- Page 249
- Page 250
- Page 251
- Page 252
- Page 253
- Page 254
- Page 255
- Page 256
- Page 257
- Page 258
- Page 259
- Page 260
- Page 261
- Page 262
- Page 263
- Page 264
- Page 265
- Page 266
- Page 267
- Page 268
- Page 269
- Page 270
- Page 271
- Page 272
- Page 273
- Page 274
- Page 275
- Page 276
- Page 277
- Page 278
- Page 279
- Page 280
- Page 281
- Page 282
- Page 283
- Page 284
- Page 285
- Page 286