* * *
Part of being wise when you are old is detecting what stupidity younger people are up to, and making sure to avoid it. This isn’t hard to do. And yet so many old people embrace the stupidities of the younger generation because they think this will make them younger. How silly. Nothing makes you younger, nothing at all. But that is what they think — they will behave like their grandchildren and use the funny words that they are using and learn how to operate the computer and they will be younger, or appear younger, which they believe is the same. It is not the same.
What I’m trying to say is that younger people nowadays pay no attention to this important thing called compatibility, and that Ludvig and Henrietta, because they are the kind of people who are always trying to be younger, are doing the same thing. How else would you explain this haste? Judith was gone, and whoosh, right away, a new couple was born, Ludvig and Henrietta. I don’t mean to criticize him — Ludvig took care of Judith for many years. She was never a healthy woman, always some issue, even when we were all young. And the last few years — better not to think about it. I always knew he was a special one, but the way he took care of her — that was something you don’t see every day. But what does his dedication have to do with Henrietta, with being compatible or not? Nothing. When you move so fast, you don’t have time to think, look into things, other possibilities. Because for example, there might be plenty of women more suitable for Ludvig. Women who adore seashells. Women who don’t abandon men. That is all I’m trying to say. These women might be out there, waiting for him.
* * *
When you walk on the beach in the early-morning hours, your eyes are scouting the sand and your feet are waiting for the smoothness of that tiny piece of marble. When you stop to pick one up, the wind slows down. I am not a sentimental woman; this is a fact — the wind slows down. My years on this earth have taught me to notice the small ways in which people and nature collaborate. The wind slows down, and while you are almost eighty years old, you are also a newborn. This is a fact. You put the seashell to your ear, this telephone of the ocean. You listen to the sound of something both beyond and within your reach. And you hope. Because after a certain point, what’s between you and a casket except hope? So you hope.
* * *
What a silly invitation it was that I got from Henrietta. Some nonsense about an organization that sends knitted socks to children with bare feet in cold climates. She was apparently volunteering there now, and was hosting an event for them. Nonsense. I knew right away something was up — Henrietta never threw parties. And this whole sock business didn’t sound right. But I didn’t think it had anything to do with Ludvig — why would I? I didn’t even know they’d met. And for all I knew he was in mourning. I had reached out, of course, after I heard of Judith’s passing. I said Anything you need, Ludvig, you just let me know, anything at all.
I was thinking I would give him some time and then call again. He deserves all the support he can get, I thought. And he was always a good friend to my Saul, referring patients any chance he got. I imagined he’d be the kind of widower who’d hide in a dark room for a long time, perhaps until a woman came and showed him how to be outside again, taught him that you still breathe after something like that — just a little different, a little lower is all.
* * *
When the body doesn’t want you breathing deep anymore, you don’t argue. People who don’t understand this end up dead before their time. What you do is you say Thank you for the oxygen, and you breathe low. This is something I learned after Saul, and I was thinking on the phone with Ludvig I should teach him, because I could hear his effort. But I didn’t, I just said Anything you need, Ludvig, you let me know, because I thought, Yolanda, give him time. People need time to grieve their grief the wrong way first. Who would have thought he’d need so little of it?
* * *
A new relationship is nobody’s business, if you ask me. It needs the attention of the people who are in it, not the people around it. And one thing I have learned is when you look at other people looking at you, you end up seeing the wrong things. Young people today, they have it all wrong. They think you have to show your happiness all the time. And there they were, Ludvig and Henrietta, silly like young people, announcing their love to everyone. Not with words, of course, but you live as long as I have, you know words matter very little. Especially words like volunteer or orphans—those are words people say only when they mean something else. Henrietta and Ludvig were announcing their new love with their hands — they were holding hands. They were greeting everyone at the door, Ludvig in a suit and a bow tie — I had never seen him wear a bow tie — and they were holding hands.
I thought for a moment this must be some sort of mistake — how do they even know each other? And what would they possibly have in common? They are such different people. But of course it wasn’t a mistake.
Henrietta said Yolanda, would you consider joining us? I think you’d find it so gratifying. Gratifying, she said — I would find socks gratifying. I said I’m sure I would, but you know in all honesty since Saul I don’t get out of the house much. I looked at Ludvig when I said it, to make sure he heard. And of course Henrietta said Oh that’s not good Yolanda and all that nonsense — she’s a lovely woman, but if there’s any way to use a slogan you can be sure Henrietta will do it. She quoted something about grief — I can’t remember what and I didn’t quite listen, because I wanted to say What do you know about grief, Henrietta? You can’t abandon your husband and then teach other people about grief. But her abandoning, that was many years ago. No one cares about that anymore, I suppose. No one cares that not all grief is the same. So I said You’re right, Henrietta, you’re absolutely right. I looked at Ludvig again when I said it. He nodded. Henrietta always liked to hear she was right.
THAT NIGHT
1.
We have been indoors for many days and long nights now, due to fear of disappointment. Our fear is rational, fact-based. When we go outside — if we go outside — we will be devastated. We will want life to feel as it did that night, and life will fail us. After that night at Lamplight with Gary, life is bound to forever fail us.
2.
That night, we spoke with abandon. We drank in good rhythm. We befriended former lovers, tapped their left shoulder with only one finger, even though we were many. Do you go to the gym, we asked each other that night. Do you at least plan to go? But we never answered. We didn’t have to.
* * *
That night, we counted uncountable things — the advantages of dairy, the siblings we never had. There were moments when we twirled our hair coyly, and in those moments our hair was the kind that twirls well. When we hummed, everyone enjoyed it. Our smiles were the texture of ice cream, which is to say we could be cold and still perceived as sweet. It was our birthday that night, it was Gary’s book party, it was everyone’s Christmas. We didn’t know it walking in, but it was true, and we had the gifts to prove it. The more we gifted, the more we got, and Lamplight was getting wrapping-paper crowded. Isn’t there an old adage about that, someone asked. And there was. There was an old adage.