In this neighborhood, she could make inquiries about “Joseph Mattia”—if she dared, she could go to one of the Mattia addresses and introduce herself.
Do you know Joseph Mattia? Is he a relative of yours?
Joseph was a former student of mine who’d been very promising.
Hello! My name is—
Hello! I am a former teacher of Joseph Mattia.
Her heart began pounding quickly, in this fantasy.
Getting high was a dream. Waking was the fear.
* * *
In the cavernous house the phone rang frequently. She pressed her hands over her ears.
“Nobody’s home! Leave me alone.”
She had no obligation to pick up a ringing phone. She had no obligation to return e-mail messages marked CONCERNED—or even to read them.
Since getting high she was avoiding relatives, friends. They were dull “straight” people—getting high to them meant alcohol, if anything.
Of course they would disapprove of her behavior. Her husband would disapprove. She could not bear them talking about her.
Sometimes the doorbell rang. Upstairs she went to see who it might be, noting the car in the driveway.
These visitors, importunate and “concerned”—she knew she must deflect them, to prevent them calling 911. She would make a telephone call and hurriedly leave a message saying that she was fine but wanted to be alone for a while; or, she would send a flurry of e-mails saying the same thing.
Alone alone alone, she wanted to be alone. Except for Joseph Mattia.
Another time making a purchase from her musician-friend Zeke. And another time. And each time the price was escalating.
The third time, Agnes asked Zeke about this: the price of a Ziploc bag of “joints.” And with a shrug Zeke said, “It’s the market, Agnes. Supply and demand.”
The reply was indifferent, even rude. Zeke did not seem to care about her.
She was hurt. She was offended. Didn’t he respect Professor Krauss any longer? The way Agnes had rolled off his tongue, and not Professor Krauss.
She would find someone else to supply her! Nonetheless, on this occasion, she paid.
* * *
Her first drive to Trumbel Street, Trenton. Five months, three weeks, and two days after the call had come from the hospital summoning her, belatedly.
Getting high gave her the courage. Strength flowing through her veins!
In her expansive floating mood she knew to drive slowly—carefully. She smiled to think how embarrassing it would be, to be arrested by police for a DUI—at her age.
In the car she laughed aloud, thinking of this.
The car radio was tuned now to the Trenton AM station. Blasting rap music, rock, high-decibel advertisements. Fat Joe. Young Jeezy. Ne-Yo. Tyga. Cash Out. She understood how such sound assailing her ears was an infusion of strength, courage.
Such deafening sound, and little room for fear, caution. Little room for thought.
It was thought that was the enemy, Agnes understood. Getting high meant rising above thought.
She exited Route 1 for the state capitol buildings. Through a circuitous route involving a number of one-way streets and streets barricaded for no evident reason, she made her way to Trumbel Street which was only two blocks from State Street and from the Delaware River. This was a neighborhood of decaying row houses and brownstones—boarded-up and abandoned stores. It was tricky—treacherous!—to drive here, for the narrow streets were made narrower by parked vehicles.
Very few “white” faces here. Agnes was feeling washed-out, anemic.
It was a neighborhood of very dark-skinned African Americans and others who were light-skinned, possibly African American and/or Hispanic. Eagerly she looked for him.
Turning onto 7th Street and State Street, which was a major thoroughfare in Trenton, she saw more “white” faces—and many pedestrians, waiting for buses.
Why did race matter so much? The color of skin.
She could love anyone, Agnes thought. Skin color did not mean anything to her, only the soul within.
Mattia’s liquid-dark eyes. Fixed upon her.
Ms. Agnes, I feel like—more hopeful now.
A half-hour, forty minutes Agnes drove slowly along the streets of downtown Trenton. Trumbel to West State Street and West State Street to Portage; Portage to Hammond, and Grinnell Park; right turn, and back to Trumbel which was, for a number of blocks, a commercial street of small stores—Korean food market, beauty salon, nail salon, wig shop, diner, tavern. And a number of boarded-up, graffiti-marked stores. Trenton was not an easy city to navigate since most of the streets were one-way. And some were barricaded—under repair. (Except there appeared to be no workers repairing the streets, just abandoned-looking heavy equipment.) She saw men on the street who might have been Joseph Mattia but were not. Yet she felt that she was drawing closer to him.
She told herself, I have nothing else to do. This is my only hope.
Her husband would be dismayed! She could hardly bring herself to think of him, how he would feel about her behavior now; how concerned he would be. He’d promised to “protect” her—as a young husband he’d promised many things—but of course he had not been able to protect her from his own mortality. She’d been a girl when he’d met her at the University of Michigan. Her hair dark brown, glossy-brown, and her eyes bright and alert. Now, her hair had turned silver. It was really a remarkable hue, she had only to park her car, to walk along the sidewalk—here, on Trumbel Street—to draw eyes to her, startled and admiring.
Ma’am, you are beautiful!
Whatever age you are, ma’am—you lookin’ good.
Ma’am—you someone I know, is you?
These were women mostly. Smiling African American women.
For this walk in Trenton she wore her good clothes. A widow’s tasteful clothes, black cashmere. And the cloche hat on her silvery hair. And good shoes—expensive Italian shoes she’d purchased in Rome, the previous summer traveling with her historian-husband.
They’d also gone to Florence, Venice, Milano, Delphi. Her husband had brought along one of his numberless guidebooks—this one titled Mysteries of Delphi. She’d been astonished to see, superimposed upon photographs of the great ruined sites, transparencies indicating the richness of color of the original sites—primary colors of red and blue—and extraordinary ornamental detail that suggested human specificity instead of “classic” simplicity. Of course, Agnes should have known, but had never thought until her husband explained to her, that the ancient temples weren’t classics of austerity—pearl-colored, luminous, stark—but varicolored, even garish. Ruins had not always been ruins. Like most tourists she’d assumed that the ancient sites had always been, in essence, what they were at the present time. Like most tourists she hadn’t given much thought to what she was seeing and her ideas were naïve and uninformed. Her husband had said, The way people actually live is known only to them. They take their daily lives with them, they leave just remnants for historians to decode.
He had opened that world of the past to her. And now, he himself had become past.
She thought, He took everything with him. No one will remember who he was—or who I was.
She was beginning to feel very strange. A lowering of blood pressure—she knew the sensation. Several times during the hospital vigil and after his death she’d come close to fainting, and twice she had found herself on the floor, dazed and uncomprehending. The sensation began with a darkening of vision, as color bleached out of the world; there came then a roaring in her ears, a feeling of utter sorrow, lostness, futility …