Wish You Were Here: Chapter 9

Henry watched me silently from the chair in our bedroom that night as I washed my face and got ready for bed.

            “You look different to me,” I said to him as I toweled off the water on my face. 

            “What do you mean?”

            “I don’t know.  A little lighter I guess or something.  When you first got here, I could see you just as plain as anyone else walking the street.  Now I can see a little bit of the chair behind you.”

            “That’s creepy.  Can we change the subject?  Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m still whole enough to be human and take someone on in a bar fight, should the need arise.”

            “Yes, something that you did so often when you were alive.”

            “It was on my bucket list.”

            I walked over to the bed and sat on the end so that I was facing him.

 “Henry?  What was on your bucket list?”

            “Oh, I don’t know.  I didn’t really have one, I guess.  I would say that I wanted to find someone I enjoyed hanging out with.  Going to Europe.  Just living a good life.”

            I thought about that for a minute and said, “Do you find it strange at all that we went to Europe when we did, given the fact that it was always something you wanted to do but, until right before you died, we thought we couldn’t afford it?”

            Henry considered that.  “It was good timing, I suppose.”

            “I mean, it’s kind of weird, now that I think about it.  We’d talked about it for years and then right before Christmas last year, you said, ‘Let’s not get presents for each other this year.  Let’s go to Europe instead.’  I wonder if a part of you knew that it was then or never.”

            “Well, I wouldn’t say never.  I could go now for a hell of a lot less than what we spent on that trip.”

            “You know what I mean.”

            Henry thought about that for a moment and said, “Yeah.  I can see your point.  But I don’t think I knew.  I think it just worked out that way.”

            “Well, still,” I said, moving around to pull down the covers on my side of the bed and get in.  “I’m glad we went.  I would have been sad knowing that you had always wanted to go and we never did.”

            Henry got up from the chair and sat down on his side of the bed on top of the covers.  “Does it bother you to have me back and lying down on my side of the bed?” He asked.

            “What do you mean?” I said surprised.

            “I just noticed a few weeks ago that you’d started sleeping in the middle of the bed.”

            “Oh.  That.  Well, sleeping on my side of the bed really sucks because I don’t have you to roll over and look at.  So at one point, I started sleeping on your side of the bed, but then I thought that was a little creepy.  And just when I was about to get out my sleeping bag from the closet, I watched a Diane Keaton movie and got a great tip.”

            “Which was?”

            “That you have to sleep in the middle of the bed because it makes no sense to have a side when someone else doesn’t have the other one.”

            Henry thought about that for a minute.  “Well, I guess that makes sense.  You sure you don’t mind giving up all of that space?”

            “No.  Besides, if I roll into you, how will that really affect you anyway?”

            “Someone should write a song about that: ‘I’d kick you out of bed, but what good would that do?  You’re dead.’”

            “Lovely sentiment.”

            Just then the phone started ringing and I leaned over to pick it up from the nightstand next to the bed.

            “Hello?”

            “Jane?” I heard Emily’s voice say sharply.  “Are you okay?”

            “Of course.  What’s wrong?”

            “What’s wrong?  What’s wrong?  Oh, I don’t know.  You call in sick to work today with some strange malady that Michelle can’t pronounce and instantly sends her into a panic.  And then I call and call you all day and you don’t answer.”

            “That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong."

            There was a silence on the other end of the phone.

" What have you been doing?”

            “Going through some of Henry’s things and getting them ready to donate.”

            “Really?  What made you decide to do that all of a sudden?”

            I looked at Henry who was watching me with interest.  “I just got a sign that it was time.”

            “Well, good for you.  Do you need any help?  I could come over tomorrow and give you a hand.”

            “No!  I mean, no thank you.  I’ve got it covered.  Just one of those things I should probably do myself, you know?”

            “Oh.  Okay.  Not to change the subject, but did Jeff call you?”

            “Jeff?” At the mention of his name, I could see Henry tense.  “I don’t think so, but I haven’t checked my messages.  Why?”

            “Well, he sent Izzy an email today saying that he was sorry things didn’t work out with them but could he get your number.  And Izzy was all too happy to give it to him.”

            “Dammit Izzy!  Why can’t she just leave it alone?”

            “I don’t know,” Emily said, sighing.  “I think Izzy is thinking about starting a match-making service with all of her castoffs.  This year alone should supply her with dozens of clients.  But if you’re not interested in him, all you have to do is tell him you’re not ready.  Do what you do best.  Pull the widow card.”

            “What do you mean, that’s what I do best?  When do I ever do that?”

            “Oh, just about every weekend when we invite you to do something or suggest that you get out more and do things.  I didn’t mean to offend you.”

            “Well, you did,” I said, suddenly angry.  “I’m sorry if I’m not doing things the way you all think I should be doing them.  I’m sorry that I’m not over this fast enough or moving forward fast enough or getting remarried fast enough for all of you.  I’m sorry if having a bad day at work because I’m sitting there dreading going home to an empty house is something you don’t understand.  I’m sorry if my stories about going to the grocery store and crying about the things I don’t have to buy because Henry isn’t here to eat them have gotten so monotonous.”

            “Jane, I didn’t mean –“

            “I’m sorry that I don’t want to come over to your house every fucking weekend for dinner so that you can jolly me along and we can all pretend like Henry’s death is no longer a big deal,” I said in a rush, tears streaming down my face.  “I’m sorry that I took a day off from work to go through and get rid of what seems like junk to everyone else but was a life to me.  I’m sorry that you don’t understand one moment of my life since Henry’s been gone.  Okay?   I’m sorry!”

            “Wait, Jane – “

            “And if you don’t mind, I’m going to pull my widow card and hang up!” I said, pressing the button to disconnect, and throwing the phone against the wall with a satisfactory crack.  I picked it up and threw it one more time, feeling the adrenaline rush that comes from unleashing months of pent up anger.  I sat back down on the bed and buried my face in my hands, ignoring the phone that started immediately ringing again in the kitchen.  And when I looked up, Henry was looking at me with his disapproving expression.

            “Don’t!” I said, as he started to open his mouth to speak.  “Don’t say anything.  Don’t say I was a bad friend.  Don’t say I could have handled that better.  What the hell do you know?  You’re dead.  You’re not here to deal with this.  You don’t know how this feels.  People are sorry that you’re gone, but do you think for one minute they have a clue what this is like for me?  Do you think they even try?”

            I stood up and before I left the room, I turned back to Henry, his face morphing from disapproving to shocked.

            “You left me,” I said, tears rolling down my face.  “You left me in a world I don’t understand anymore.  It’s like I’ve suddenly been dropped in a foreign country where no one understands what I’m trying to say.  When I cry, people get uncomfortable.  When I don’t, they assume everything is okay.  Well, everything is not okay,” I sniffled miserably.  “It’s not okay.”

I turned from Henry and walked toward the living room.  I lay down on the couch, looking around at the changed room and then buried my face in the cushion, sobbing and sure I would never stop.  Even though I could no longer hear Henry’s footsteps, I could sense when he was in the room.  And without looking, I knew he sat down on the chair across from me, his unsaid words of pity and pain hanging in the air above us both. 

But he kept silent as I sobbed.

~

            Even with my useless degree in Communications and my equally useless background in event planning, I knew the next morning when I woke up, cried out and my whole body feeling puffy, that the activities from the day before had been the prime motivator for my epic breakdown.  But the strange thing was, even though I was sorry that Emily had been the recipient of my tirade, my body felt like it had freed an inner beast that I thought was dormant but, as it turned out, had actually been internally eating me away from the inside out.

            I looked up and saw Henry sitting in the chair across from the couch, just as he had been sitting in the bedroom the morning I first saw him.  It was strange to see him day after day, in the same clothes when, given what we had been through the night before, he should have looked rumpled and disheveled.  But he looked as he always had, ready to head off to a normal day of work.

            “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

            “Don’t be,” he said quickly.  “Do you think you did something wrong?”

            “You mean screaming needlessly at my best friend, hanging up on her, and then breaking a defenseless phone that has always treated me well?  Yeah.  I kind of do.”

            “I don’t.  The only thing I think you did wrong was not doing it months ago.”

            “What?”  I said in surprise.  “But that’s so not me.  I don’t do things like that.  I don’t yell at people.”

            “I know,” he said. “But you should.”

            “You must be joking,” I said, feeling myself tear up again and surprised that my body still contained any water at all.  “For God’s sake, I even yelled at you.  Like getting mowed down by a Fed Ex truck was in any way your fault.”

            “I know,” he said. “And I know that you don’t think my death was my fault.  And Emily will know that she’s not really at fault for anything that you yelled at her about.  We love you enough to know that what you’re mad at is the situation.”

Henry took a deep breath before he went on.  “I know that you’ve felt abandoned by me and you know what?  You were.  Sure it wasn’t on purpose, but you were suddenly left alone.  And that would make anyone angry – angry at me, at life, at the world.  The problem, up until now, is that you haven’t admitted it.

And I know that you’ve felt like your friends don’t understand what you’re going through, but sometimes I don’t think that you let them.  You put on a brave face and then you’re surprised when they do things that you don’t like.  You know it’s not on purpose so you don’t point it out to them.  But how are they supposed to know what to say or how to help you if you don’t tell them?”

            I thought about that for a minute.  Who would have thought that moving through widowhood bravely was actually the wrong thing to do?  I thought I had been making everything better by just going with the flow and not showing any emotion about what was going on.  But Henry was right.  It was like I had been lying to my closest friends, becoming almost a split personality.  There was the “Work Jane” who went about her day as any normal 30-year-old would.  And then there was “Widow Jane” who came home to an empty house and cried into her Blue Bell ice cream.

              “Besides,” said Henry.  “If you can’t lose it in front of the people you love, who can you lose it in front of?”

            I gave a little watery smile, glad to be forgiven by Henry and hopeful that Emily felt the same way.

            “Now, how you deal with making amends with that phone is a whole other story.”

~

            “You’ve reached Emily and Dan.  We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we’ll call you back.”

            “Emily?  It’s Jane.  I just wanted to say how sorry I am for taking everything out on you last night.  I guess that going through Henry’s stuff was harder than I thought it would be and I think I’d just had it.  Give me a call back when you get a minute.  And I’d like to invite myself over for dinner next Friday night, if that’s okay.”

            I hung up the kitchen phone and wrapped my hands around my hot cup of coffee.  I sat at the kitchen table in my robe, my hair still wrapped in a towel from the hot shower I had taken a few minutes earlier.  Between the coffee and the shower, I was starting to feel a little more human.  Henry stood at the kitchen counter, chewing on his bottom lip like he did when he was trying to decide something important.

            “What’s up with you?”  I asked.

            “I want you to check your messages.”

            “What?”

            “Check your messages.  On your cell phone.”

            “But why – “

            “Just do it, would you?”

            I didn’t take my eyes off of him as I slowly reached over and picked up my cell phone.  Message after message from Emily and Izzy from the day before, one from my mother making sure I’d picked up milk at the grocery store that week, and, finally, one from Jeff.

            “Hey, Jane.  This is Jeff.  I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Izzy for your phone number.  I don’t know if she told you – who am I kidding?  I’m sure she did, women talk about everything – but things didn’t work out with us.  I was, um, hoping that you might want to meet for coffee or something.  Maybe go to the park.  Or bowling.  Okay, now I’m babbling.  Just call me back if you can.  Thanks.”

            I hung up the phone and looked over at Henry, a thoughtful look crossing his face.

            “What?” I asked.

            “Call him.”

            “What?  What do you mean ‘Call him’?”

            “Call him back.”

            “I don’t want to call him back.”

            “Why not?” 

            “Because that’s just weird.  I’m not taking dating advice from my own husband.”

            “We have a deal,” Henry said seriously.  “And this is part of it.  Just call him back and tell him you’ll meet him at the park this afternoon or something.  I’m not asking you to marry him.  I’m asking you to meet up with him.”

            At that point, I wanted to tell Henry the deal was off.  A date?  I wasn’t ready to date!  And even though Henry made it sound so innocent and like I had his permission to do it, it still didn’t make me feel any better.  I wanted to rewind my life and go back to that first slice of pizza with him the night we talked for hours and I started seeing a new life stretch out before me – a life I wasn’t ready to give up on yet.  I wanted to be back in all of those years when I was wrapped in the comfort of my relationship with Henry like an old blanket I knew was waiting for me every night when I came home from work.  That Henry was thrusting me into even more uncertainty and discomfort was something I really didn’t know if I could handle - to get to know someone new, from scratch, just seemed exhausting to me.  And it felt like if I allowed myself to do it…I was in some ways giving up on us.

            “Come on, Jane,” Henry said, quietly.  “I know this is hard.  It’s hard for me, too.  But you need to know that new things are possible.  Otherwise, I’m scared you will cling so tightly to the old, you’ll never find happiness in the now.”

            “I don’t like this part of our deal,” I finally said.

            “I know you don’t.  I’m not crazy about it either.”

~

            At 10 AM I started walking to the park, my footsteps emulating those of a petulant child.  I had put on a little make-up before I left, but the south Texas late-summer-turning-into-fall heat was already beginning to wear it down.  I could feel sweat stains peeking through my shirt, but those I attributed to the nervousness I felt about meeting up with Jeff.

            “I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” I mumbled under my breath to Henry, who was walking silently beside me.

            “Let it go,” he said irritably.  “We’re going.”

            “But why?” I said.  “You don’t want me to do this.  I don’t want me to do this.  What’s the point?”

            “The point is that we both just need to take this first step,” Henry said.  “If after this you don’t want to talk to another male for 6 months, that’s fine with me.  But I think we both need to know that you can.  You need to get over your fear of dating and I need to get over my fear of having you date.  It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid.  And I think Jeff is a good person to help us pull it off.”

            I looked sideways at Henry as we kept walking, suddenly suspicious.  “What makes you so sure?”

            “What?  About dating?”

            “No.  That Jeff is the right person for me to meet for my first time out.”

            A sheepish look crossed Henry’s face and he didn’t answer right away.

            “Because I’ve been following him,” he finally said.

            “You’ve been…what?”

            “I’ve been following him.  I didn’t have a whole lot going on while you were at work last week.  So I’ve been checking up on him.”

            “Do dead people lose their sense of privacy as soon as they take their last breath?  You go from watching me shave my armpits in the shower to stalking some guy you don’t even know in just a matter of months?  Any other secret information I should know about?”[1] 

            Henry looked slightly uncomfortable for a minute.  “Everyone has their secrets.”

            I stopped walking and looked at him.  “Okay, what’s that supposed to mean?”

            “It means that everyone has their own shit to deal with.  We never know everything that goes on in other people’s lives.”

            We began walking again.  “Well, are you going to tell me?”

            “I don’t really know if it’s my business to tell you.”

            I couldn’t help but laugh.  “This coming from the man who has been secretly following potential dates for me?”

            “I just think that once you know…you can’t unknow.  You know?”

            “What in the hell are you talking about and why are you suddenly talking like a demented psychic?  Just tell me already.”

            Henry started to fidget.

“Izzy’s gay.”

            “What?” I said, stopping in my tracks. “You’ve been following Izzy?  Why?”

            “I haven’t been following her,” Henry said, trying to defend himself.  “But one day I was bored and I decided to hang out with her for a bit.  She left work early one afternoon and met up with this other girl for drinks.  Cute blond, works in the IT department.  They’ve been meeting for a while, it looks like, but Izzy’s scared.”

            “I can’t believe you’re telling me this,” I said in disbelief.  “Wait.  Scared of what?”

            “Of what you all will think.  What her family will think.  What all of this means.”

            “Well, that’s ridiculous,” I said.  “I’d love her no matter what.  I just want her to be happy.”

            We walked in silence for a minute while I tried to digest this new information and what it meant for my friendship with Izzy.  What I said was true – I loved her like family and nothing could possibly change that.  But having gone through what I had – the loss of Henry and a complete overhaul of my life as I knew it – I had learned that how we deal with change is so completely individual.  And how others react to it can truly make or break a friendship.

But further contemplation about Izzy and her new situation had to stop as I saw Jeff walking toward us from the other side of the park.  My hands began to shake and I could feel beads of perspiration collect on my upper lip.  “I still can’t believe that you spied on Jeff.  I mean, you don’t even know him.”

            “Oh, what’s the big deal?”  Henry said.  “Think of it as your own personal background-checking service.  You should feel better knowing that I’ve checked him out and I still think he’s worthy of getting a cup of coffee with.”

            “What made you decide that?”

            Henry thought for a minute.  “He’s a hard worker.  He’s social and has a lot of friends, but not in an obnoxious way.  He’s relatively neat, but not OCD.  And he likes Pabst Blue Ribbon.”

            “Ah, yes, A crowning achievement, liking cheap beer.”

            “It’s really what won him my respect.”

            At this point, we were getting close enough to Jeff that our conversation needed to stop, unless I wanted to flash him my Crazy Badge before we even said hello.  Jeff was dressed in basketball shorts and a t-shirt from a blues club up in Austin that Henry and I had always talked about going to but never had time to make it there.  He had on tennis shoes that looked well-worn with a few grass stains that implied that he’d rather be outside than in a gym.  His baseball cap covered his brown hair and shielded his eyes from me until he got closer and, when I could finally see them, they looked like they were smiling.

            “Hey,” he said, the smile from his eyes working its way down to his mouth until it produced a boyish grin.

            “Hi,” I said, unable to keep my own mouth from smiling back a little.  “Where’s Bandit?”

 “He’s back home.  He gave me a dirty look when I left, but I wanted to make sure that you wanted to hang out with me and weren’t just using me to get to him.”

“Very wise,” I said.  “I often do that.  Use men for their pets.  I just had to break up with someone last week because his goldfish told me it wasn’t going to work out.”

“That’s rough,” he said.  “Nothing worse than when a relationship gets fishy.”

Oh, dear.  A pun.  I hope that’s just because he’s nervous and it’s not a personality trait.

“Thanks for calling me back,” Jeff said as he turned so that he would be walking beside me on the sidewalk.

            “Sure,” I said.  “Thanks for calling.  As a matter of fact, you may be the only person calling me for a while.”

            “Really?  Why’s that?”

            “I kind of lost it on Emily last night,” I admitted.  “Like lost it.  I wouldn’t be surprised if when I get home, she’s there waiting at my door with a priest so they can perform an exorcism.”

            “Oh, I bet you’ll be okay,” Jeff said easily.  “After all, if you can’t lose it with your best friend, who can you lose it with?”

            I looked at him sharply after he repeated the words that Henry had said to me just that morning.  Henry was walking beside me through the park with Jeff on the other side, and he remained quiet, almost like he just wanted to be a fly on the wall.  It was a strange feeling, having a date walking on one side of me and my husband walking on the other - like being physically sandwiched between two stages of my life.

            “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I would hear from you,” Jeff went on.  “I mean, I was hoping that I would, but Izzy made it sound like you might not be ready to call me back.”

            “I almost didn’t,” I confessed. 

            “What changed your mind?”  He said.

            “Oh, a friend encouraged me and said that I might want to give you a chance.  So, here we are.”

            “Well, I’ll have to be sure and thank that friend someday.”

            “Well, he’s right there,” I almost blurted out, but caught myself before I sounded certifiable.  Henry continued to walk silently next to me and for a moment, a flash of anger pulsated through my body.  This was his fault.  He was the reason why I had to do this.  He had left me.  He was forcing me to take a step I wasn’t sure I was ready for.  If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.  I shocked myself with the thought that if I hadn’t ever met Henry, I wouldn’t be in this much pain.

            But then again, if I hadn’t had Henry, I wouldn’t have been happy all the years before either. 

            In that moment, I decided to ride this out.  After all, everything in life is a risk – from falling in love to checking your mail.  You just never know how things are going to turn out.  Although I was dealing with a life that I never thought I would be in, that didn’t mean I would trade the one I had – even if it meant sparing myself all of this pain.  And as long as I still had Henry with me, in whatever form he came in, I felt a little more confident about dealing with what was going to be thrown my way.  I knew he was on my side, no matter what.  He would help me through it. 

            My silence must have been a little disconcerting to Jeff, who suddenly stopped and said, “Listen. I know that you’ve been through a lot.  And I know that you might not be ready to take the next step.  But I really enjoyed hanging out with you the other night.  So if this just develops into a friendship, I’m okay with that.  I just think I would have regretted not trying.”

            And with only a few words, Jeff dissolved some of the fear I’d had about meeting him that day.  The pressure was off.  Friendship I could do.  At least I think I could, if we weren’t counting the night before.  I gave him a little smile and we started walking again in companionable silence.

            “I want to tell you something and I hope that I say this right,” Jeff said after a few minutes.

            Oh, God.  He was going to tell me he had once been a woman.  Or that he was giving up his job as a software developer to become a professional arm wrestler.  Or that I’ve had something stuck in my teeth all morning.

            “Go ahead,” I said slowly.

            “When I was 12-years-old, my dad died of a heart attack,” he began.  “And I know that that’s not the same as losing a husband.  But I know what it’s like to have your life change overnight into something you don’t recognize anymore.  And my mom and I went through a lot together.  We both watched each other struggle to move forward and it was extremely painful.  So, if you ever want to talk about anything, just know that I kind of understand a little of what you’ve been through.”

            “God, that must have been so hard,” I said, looking at him a little differently.  “I can’t imagine losing one of my parents at that age.”

            “I think that’s got to be one of the worst ages to lose a parent,” he said.  “I mean, you’re kind of a mess anyway, trying to make that transition from kid to teenager.  Your hormones are crazy and the relationship you have with your parents is hanging by a thread. But my dad and I were so close.  I was pissed off at the world for a good year.  I don’t know how my mom did it.”

            “Are you still close with her?” I asked.

            “Well, not to sound like a mama’s boy, but yeah.  We’re incredibly close.  I think after we got through the initial transition of losing him, we realized that all we had was each other.  We were kind of like war buddies.  I think going into high school, my mom and I had one of the best relationships of anyone I know.  My friends used to tease me about it, but I didn’t care.  I knew she had my back and she knew I’d do anything for her.  I still talk to her at least twice a week.”

            “Sounds like she handled everything right,” I said.  “I wish I could say the same.”

            “I don’t know if she handled everything ‘right’,” he said.  “She did the best she could.  I know she had her bad days and when I was younger, she tried to hide them from me.  But I think as time went on, she realized I was better off knowing that she was having a rough time.  I mean, she wouldn’t break down and sob all over me, but when the holidays would roll around or something else affected her, she would be honest.  And in some ways, I think that let me know that I could be honest with her, too.”

            “Where does she live now?” I asked.

            “She bought a place over in Chappell Hill,” he said.  “She’s remarried and she and my stepdad decided to retire out there, out of the rat race.  It’s perfect for me because I have my life here, but I love going to see them on the weekends.”

            “Do you get along with your stepfather?”

            “Yeah, I do.  It took her a long time to find him.  To be honest, I’m not entirely sure when she really started dating.  I think that she probably went out here and there when I was in high school, but she kept that to herself.  Gary was the first guy I met and I didn’t meet him until I was in college.”

            “I’d like to meet her some time,” I said, before I could stop myself.

            Jeff looked at me thoughtfully and said, “I’m sure she’d like to meet you, too.”

            It suddenly occurred to me that during that entire conversation, even though we had been talking about losing Henry, I hadn’t really been thinking about Henry.  I had inadvertently been ignoring him as he walked silently next to us.  And when I finally looked at him, he gave me a slow, silent nod of encouragement and I noticed that, although I could still see him well, the sunlight was starting to shine through him, almost making his shape look filmy.

            “I have a really strange question to ask you,” I said.

            “Shoot.”

            “Did you ever…feel like your dad was around?”

            “You mean like a ghost or something?”

            I looked at his face to see if he was being sarcastic or if he was about to make fun of me.  And I was surprised to see how serious he looked, like he was really considering the question.  “I know that must sound crazy.”

            “I don’t think it sounds crazy at all,” he said.  “When I was younger, I thought I could see him every once in a while out of the corner of my eye or sometimes I would walk into a room and just get the feeling that I wasn’t alone.  I never really said anything to anyone about it because the one time I did, my friends took it as a joke and made fun of me for it.  The funny thing was, I never felt like it was creepy.  It was really comforting.  Like he was still looking out for me or something.”

            “Do you still feel like he’s around now?”

            “Not as much.   But every once in a while I get the feeling that he’s with me.”

            “I see Henry,” I said.  “I…I haven’t told anyone that and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it under your hat.  But I do.  I see him.  And we talk.”  I stopped for a minute.  “Is this the part where you run away screaming?”

            Jeff laughed.  “No.  It would make sense to me.  I think there are people in our lives that we have a really strong connection to.  And that connection can’t be severed by a pesky little thing like death.”

            I let go of a breath that I’d been holding in the entire conversation and felt my shoulders relax a little.  I peeked over at Henry who looked like he had relaxed a little bit, too.  He was watching Jeff and the expression on his face had changed from one of apprehension to the beginning stages of respect.  Jeff and I continued walking, every once in a while pointing out some worthy people-watching material or a home bordering the park that we either found beautiful or so ugly it made the landscape more interesting.  But for the most part, we walked quietly, both comfortable enough with each other that we didn’t feel the need to fill every moment of silence.

            After about an hour, I looked at Henry who, even though he couldn’t possibly be physically tired, looked weary in some way.  The mid-day sun was rising to its peak making the heat borderline uncomfortable.  By then, Jeff and I had circled around the park several times and I was beginning to long for my air-conditioning.

            “I had a great – “I began.

            “Want to go to -” He started at the same time.

            We both stopped for a minute.  “Go ahead,” I said.

            “I just wanted to see if maybe you might want to go to lunch,” He said, suddenly looking a little shy.
            I looked at Henry who slowly shook his head.  “We have things to do at home,” he whispered, as if Jeff could hear him.

            “I…I can’t today,” I said.  “I’m in the middle of a big project at home.”

            “Oh.  Anything I could help you with?” He asked, visibly disappointed.

            I smiled a little.  “That’s really sweet,” I said.  “But it’s something I need to do on my own.”

            “Okay.”

            “I know that sounds like a lame excuse,” I said.  “But really…I would love to meet up with you another time.”

            His face broke into that boyish grin I was really beginning to enjoy.  “Okay.  I’ll call you?”

            “Sounds good.”

            We had an awkward moment as we both tried to figure out how we wanted to end the outing.  As he reached to give me a friendly hug, I offered up my hand for a shake, so we ended up with some weird combination of both.

            “I’ll talk to you this week,” he said as he walked away.

            Henry and I watched his loping shape cut through the grass to his side of the park.  Then we turned and started walking back to the house, both of us not speaking at first.

            “Well?”  Henry broke the silence.

            “Well, what?” I said.

            “What did you think?”

            “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

            We were both quiet as we kept walking until finally Henry said, “I like him.”

            I didn’t reply at first and then I said, “I like him, too.”

            “So what’s the problem?”

            “I still like you, too.”

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