Member-only story
Shatter
Adieu over soggy tempura
I arrived a few minutes past the appointed time at the jazz conservatory in downtown Berkeley. This was to be the first time I would see him sing publicly, although he invited me dozens of times over three years to various functions. Somehow I found a way to decline every invitation.
I agreed to this one because he was moving on. I felt hurt, scared, grasping.
He’d found someone who might actually give him a little attention. How could I fault him for that.
I couldn’t.
So even though it stung when I encountered him and his new friend on an Oakland street last weekend, I can’t blame him. I can’t blame him for taking the hand of a long-haired, long-legged new friend and striding purposefully down the block with her, his hat at a rakish angle, her hair billowing on the breeze of their wake.
And no wonder they were so fleet. It turns out he spotted us — me, my daughter, and my friend’s nine-year-old son whom we were hosting overnight.
He did the calculation. Here I am, I am sure he thought, holding hands with this new woman. There she is, the person I pursued for three years, with her 17-year-old daughter and their young friend, the young friend I played chess with in the early days of our courtship.
