Noel was leaving Seattle for most of August. He was headed to New York City to stay with his brother Claude and Claude’s boyfriend Booth on the Lower East Side. He had gone last year and the year before, too. He and Claude were really close.
Noel talked about his brother like he was golden. Smart and brave. Comfortable in school or in nightclubs or biking the dangerous streets of New York City. A sharp dresser. I think Claude treated Noel like a grown-up, even though they were almost four years apart. Made him feel like his opinion mattered.
Booth and Claude were a funny couple, Noel said. Booth was bitter and probably partied more than was good for anybody, while Claude was quieter: idealistic, a dreamer. Still, they had been each other’s real live boyfriend since the end of their freshman year of college. Now they were juniors and had a four-bedroom apartment with a bunch of fellow students in a converted factory, living in what Noel described as “domestic bliss and squalor.”
Noel was my real live boyfriend, so when he got to New York he called me on his cell from places like the Guggenheim, a cheap dumpling place in Chinatown, a flea market in Chelsea—leaving messages on our machine saying he was thinking of me.1 His e-mails were full of rhymes he made up, links to silliness on the Internet, descriptions of the city.
Number of languages heard on the street yesterday: 8. English, Spanish, Portuguese (I think), Russian, French, German, Japanese, Chinese.
Number of miles Booth and I biked yesterday, going to the Met and home again: probably 10.
Number of pizza slices consumed while walking, since arrivaclass="underline" 6.
Minutes spent staring at the water lily painting in the MoMA: 13.
Number of Spider-Man-shaped ice creams bought from the truck on the corner of Broadway and Prince: 1.
Number of guys actually dressed as Spider-Man I saw while eating the ice cream: 1.
(I love New York.)
(But I miss you.)
Noel
Then one day, a day like any other as far as I knew, he didn’t pick up when I called his cell.
Later that day, he still hadn’t replied to my last two e-mails.
Next day, he didn’t answer his cell or call me back.
And the day after that, still nothing.
The day after that was my seventeenth birthday, and I was sure Noel would call, or a present would arrive, or something. My parents gave me a stack of mystery novels and a new Speedo for swim team, but because of Mom’s raw food obsession, there wasn’t any cake. There were dehydrated banana-barley cookies with candles.
I couldn’t even laugh at them.
Hutch drove over in the evening and brought me a cupcake.
I cried because it wasn’t from Noel.
Why hadn’t he called?
He knew when my birthday was.
It was so strange, his sudden absence from my life.
The day after my birthday, a short e-mail made everything wonderful again, if only for a moment:I miss you
like a limb
like a leg I’ve lost
in a war, maybe
in an accident, maybe
in a tragedy.
But I can still feel my leg,
pumping with blood,
itching to move.
I can still feel it,
so that I think it is there,
still part of my body,
and when I wake up in the morning
I am surprised to remember it’s gone.
Then I am sad,
and disabled without it.
I limp through my day,
off balance,
needing it.
He’d sent me a love poem.
A weird and bloody love poem, but a love poem.
I tried to write him back a poem, but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel inspired, the way Noel must have: biking the streets of New York, seeing amazing paintings, going to the theater, eating hot pretzels on the street. So I wrote back, but I just wrote about regular stuff. I told him about my birthday presents, and joked about the foul barley cookies, and told about Hutch and the cupcake.
Actually: I’m not telling you the whole truth.
I was still mad he hadn’t called me back, I guess. And hadn’t answered my e-mails. I’d spent the last few days wondering if he’d call, wondering why he didn’t call.
So I was angry.
Even though I loved the poem.
Even though it had made me happy for a few minutes.
What I wrote back was meant to make him feel guilty. For my lonely birthday. The sadness of no cake. The fact that Hutch had shown up and done what Noel should have done. I wrote it all as if I were cheerful as could be—just “Let me tell you this funny story about yesterday”—but all the cheer was fake. Secretly, I wanted him to read the e-mail and notice he’d forgotten my birthday and feel horrible and make it up to me.
Later, I would wonder, over and over, what would have happened if I’d written Noel a poem back.
Or even an honestly angry note.
If, instead of being fake and cheerful to cover up how hurt I was, I had been raw and true and told him everything that was in my heart.
Anyway, he didn’t write back.
For one day. Two. Three.
I called.
He still wasn’t picking up his phone.
Then one day, another e-maiclass="underline" Sixteen days (I’ve been gone)
Plus eight more days (till I come back).
That’s twenty-four days,
A ridiculous number of hours,
an insane number of minutes,
when every minute lasts an hour
and every hour lasts a day.
The clocks have nearly stopped themselves.
No batteries will speed them up.
No power boost, no winding.
They hardly move, these clocks.
Watching the hands go round is like
watching someone’s blood drip onto the street
while you wait for an ambulance
and wait
and wait
and the blessed siren does not sound.
The clocks will hardly move
and hardly move
and hardly move
Until
I
am
home.
Maybe when I see you they will start again.