What I Loved

into the room. The sunshine, the breeze, the fact that the semester was almost over all contributed to an atmosphere of languor and fatigue. As I sat down to begin the discussion, I yawned and covered my mouth. On the table in front of me I had my notes and a reproduction of Chardin 's Glass of Water and a Coffee Pot. My students had read Diderot and Proust and the Goncourt brothers on Chardin. They had been to the Frick to study the still lifes in that collection. We had already discussed several paintings. I began by pointing out how simple the painting was, two objects, three heads of garlic, and the sprig of an herb. I mentioned the light on the pot's rim and handle, the whiteness of the garlic, and the silver hues of the water. And then I found myself staring down at the glass of water in the picture. I moved very close to it. The strokes were visible. I could see them plainly. A precise quiver of the brush had made light. I swallowed, breathed heavily, and choked.
    I think it was Maria Livingston who said, "Are you all right, Professor Herzberg?"
    I cleared my throat, removed my glasses, and wiped my eyes. "The water," I said in a low voice. "The glass of water is very moving to me." I looked up and saw the surprised faces of my students. "The water is a sign of..." I paused. "The water seems to be a sign of absence."
    I remained silent, but I could feel warm tears running down my cheeks. My students continued to look at me. "I believe that's all for today," I told them in a tremulous voice. "Go outside and enjoy the weather."
    I watched my twelve students leave the room in silence, and I noticed with some surprise that Letitia Reeves had beautiful legs, which must have been hidden under trousers until that day. I listened to the door close. In the hallway, I heard the students break into low conversations. The sun lit the empty classroom and a wind rose up and blew through the windows and across my face. I tried not to make any noise, but I know that I did. I gulped for air and I gagged and deep ugly sounds came from my throat as I sobbed for what seemed to be a very long time.
    Weeks later, I came across my calendar from 1989, the little agenda in which I had marked down appointments and events. I paged through it, pausing at Matt's baseball games, his teacher conferences, an art show at his school. When I turned to April, I noticed that I had written METS GAME in large letters on the fourteenth. Exactly one year to the day, I had broken down in class over the Chardin painting. I remembered my conversation with Matt that night. I remembered exactly where I had been sitting on his bed. I remembered his face as he talked to me and how for part of the time he had addressed the ceiling. I remembered his room, his socks on the floor, the plaid cotton blanket he had pulled up to his chest, the Mets T-shirt he had been wearing instead of pajamas. I remembered his lamp with the base designed to look like a pencil, the light it shed on the night table, and the glass of water that stood underneath it—flanked on the left by his wristwatch. I had brought hundreds of glasses of water to Matt's bedside, and after his death I had drunk many more, since I always kept a glass beside me at night. A real glass of water had not once reminded me of my son, but the image of a glass of water rendered 230 years earlier had catapulted me suddenly and irrevocably into the painful awareness that I was still alive.
    After that day in the classroom, my grief took a new turn. For months I had lived in a state of self-enforced rigor mortis, interrupted only by the playacting of my work, which didn't disturb the entombment I had chosen for myself, but a part of me had known that a crack was inevitable. Chardin became the instrument of the break, because the little painting took me by surprise. I hadn't girded myself for its attack on my senses, and I went to pieces. The truth is, I had avoided resurrection because I must have known that it would be excruciating. That summer, light, noise, color, smells, the slightest motion of the air rubbed me raw with their stimuli. I wore sunglasses all the time. Every shift in brightness hurt me. Car horns ripped at my eardrums. The conversations of pedestrians, their laughter, their hoots, even the lone person singing in the street felt like an assault. I couldn't bear shades of red. Crimson sweaters and shirts, the red mouth of a pretty girl hailing a cab forced me to turn my head. Ordinary jostling