What I Loved

me, he said, "Dad thought I should show you this."
    After sitting down on the sofa with me, Mark pulled out a large piece of cardboard, which had been folded in half and opened like a book. The two halves were covered with pictures cut from magazine ads, all of young people. He had also cut out a few words and letters from more ads and pasted them over the images: CRAVE, DANCE, GLAM, YOUR FACE, and SLAP. I found the images a little dull, to be honest, a confusing hodgepodge of the chic and beautiful, and then I noticed the same little photograph of a baby in the middle of both pages. I looked down at the infant's fat, drooping cheeks. "Is that you?" I said, and laughed.
    Mark didn't seem to share my humor. "There were two copies of that picture. Mom let me have them."
    To the right of one photo and to the left of the other, I noticed two more photographs, both of which had been blurred by several layers of Scotch tape. I looked more closely. "What are these?" I said. "Two of the same picture again, right?"
    Through the Scotch tape, I made out the vague outline of a head in a baseball cap and a long thin body. "Who is it?"
    "Nobody."
    "Why is he covered up in tape?"
    "I don't know. I just did it. I didn't think about it I thought it looked good."
    "But it's not from a magazine. You must have found it somewhere."
    "I did, but I don't know who it is."
    "This part of the picture is the same on both sides. The rest isn't. It takes a while to see it, though. There's so much going on around it, but the photos are eerie."
    "You think that's bad?"
    "No," I said. "I think that's good."
    Mark closed up the cardboard and put it back into the bag. He leaned back on the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table in front of us. His sneakers were enormous—size eleven or twelve. I noticed that he was wearing the oversized, clownish pants favored by boys his age. We were silent for a while, and then I asked him the question that abruptly came to my mind: "Mark, do you miss Matthew?"
    Mark turned to me. His eyes were wide and he pressed his lips together for a moment before he spoke. "All the time," he said. "Every day."
    I fumbled for his hand on the sofa and breathed in loudly. I heard myself grunt with emotion, and my vision blurred. When I had gotten hold of his hand, I felt him squeeze mine firmly.
    Mark Wechsler was a few months shy of fifteen. I was sixty-two. I had known him all his life, but until then, I hadn't considered him a friend. All at once, I understood that his future was also mine, that if I wanted a lasting rapport with this boy who would soon become a man, I could have it, and the thought became a promise to myself: Mark will have my attention and care. I've relived that moment many times since then, but in the last couple of years, as with other events of my own life, I've started to imagine it from a third point of view. I see myself reach for my handkerchief, remove my glasses, and wipe my eyes before I blow my nose loudly into the white fabric. Mark looks on at his father's old friend with sympathy. Any informed spectator would have understood that scene. He would know that the emptiness left in me by Matthew's death could never be filled by Mark. He would have understood clearly that it wasn't a matter of one boy replacing another but a bridge built between two people over an absence they both shared. And yet, that person would have been wrong, just as I was wrong. I misread both myself and Mark. The problem is that my scrutiny of the scene from every possible angle doesn't reveal a single clue. I haven't left out words or gestures or even those emotional intangibles that pass between people. I was wrong because, under the circumstances, I had to be wrong.
    The idea came to me the following week. I said nothing to Mark, but I wrote to Erica and asked her what she thought. I proposed that we allow Mark to take Matthew's room as a studio where he could work on his collages. His room upstairs was small, and he could use the extra space. The change would mean that the room where Matt had lived would not remain a mausoleum, an uninhabited, unused space for nobody. Mark, Matthew's best friend, would bring life back to it. I argued strenuously for the cause, told Erica that Mark missed Matt every day, and then said it would mean a lot to me if she gave me her permission. I told her frankly that I was often lonely and that having Mark around lifted my spirits. Erica answered me promptly. She wrote that a part of