Frequency

We talk every day. Sometimes more than once. That's what I tell people who ask. But only them. Like it's not something to brag about, but almost something to hide, to be hidden. Each listener is perplexed in his or her own way, a raised eyebrow being the common denominator.

The weather is very John Cheever today: Lowering, coming in off the sea—normal for a hot, late spring afternoon, but not without a little malice. My heart seems to jump oddly in its cage, as if privy to some electromagnetic dance other than my own.

We are twinned, I want to tell them. If I am quiet and listen carefully, I can hear his inner workings all the way from here. These days I put my fingers in my ears and careen about, trying not to hear, but sometimes I still do.

Today I feel heavy and ferrous, and avoid making proclamations or significant decisions. I have sparkly blue toenails, which are the envy of several. Two ninety-nine, I say, and they sigh and nod. If only everything were that simple. The secret is, most things are. Fear whips the easy component parts of things into vortices and towers—we cower in their swirls of blinding dust—point to them accusingly, and, resigned, call them reasons. (To do the dishes, turn on the water; to move forward, push off.)

For years, it seems, I have gotten sangfroid and sanguine confused. I am, it turns out, mostly the former and remarkably seldom the latter. This is not a condemnation, it is merely the way things are.

But we talk every day. Sometimes more than once. They are bright spots. I don't often pine for them—at least not in any melodramatic, teenage fashion—but I almost patently refuse to live without them. I live with them. I couldn't not—at least not life in the manner to which I have become accustomed.

Outside, the trees toss. Do the seedlings brace themselves? I observe and coddle them, but sometimes have to look away: dill plants, grown from last year's seeds, saved from a potful I brought back on a plane during happier times; a morning spent gardening in a house I'd come to love—a house in which I thought I'd spend more time—admiring its stairs and slopes and candied woodwork—the pet turtle older, perhaps, than the both of us, his fat pinkish legs jolly as they swam him to greet me, his mossy face lit up in something like a smile.