What I Loved

I recognized that the truth is often muddled, a tangle of mishaps and blunders that converge to appear unlikely, and when I looked at Mark as he stood before me with his large steady blue eyes, I was absolutely convinced that he was telling the truth.
    "I know I mess up," he said. "But I really don't mean to."
    "We all mess up," I said.
    The image of Violet late that Saturday morning colored my memory like a deep stain I couldn't rub out, and when I remembered her, I always remembered Bill, too, standing behind her with a cigarette, his eyes fixed on mine and his large body heavy with spent pleasure. That picture of the two of them kept me awake at night. I would lie on my bed with speeding nerves and a body that hovered over the sheets rather than settled into them. Sometimes I would get up, go to my desk, and check my drawer, emptying its contents slowly and methodically. I touched Erica's socks and studied Matt's picture of Dave and Durango. I examined my aunt and uncle's wedding picture. One night I counted the roses among the other flowers in Marta's bouquet. There were seven roses. The number made me think of Bill's cube for seven and the thick layer of dirt that covered its bottom. If you held up the cube, you could see the white number from below, not whole but in pieces, like a disintegrating body. I fingered the waxy bit of cardboard that I had saved from the fire on the roof, and then I stared down at my hands and the blue veins that stood out from the bones below my knuckles. Lucille had once called them psychic's hands, and I wondered what it would be like to penetrate the minds of others. I knew little enough about myself. I continued to examine my hands, and the longer I looked at them the more foreign they seemed, as if they belonged to another person. I felt guilty. At least that was the name I gave to the lowering ache beneath my ribs. I was guilty of greed—a rapacious longing that I fought every day—but its object wasn't clear. Violet was only a single strand in the thick knot of my desires. My guilt was bound up in the whole story. I turned to look at my painting of Violet I walked over to it and stood in front of her image and reached out to touch the shadow of a man that Bill had painted into the canvas— his shadow. I remembered that when I first saw it, I had mistaken it for my own.
    Erica wrote that she was worried about Violet. "She's plagued by irrational fears about Mark. I think the fact that she couldn't have a child has finally caught up with her. She hates sharing Mark with Lucille. On the telephone the other day she kept saying, 'I wish he were mine. I'm afraid.' But when I asked her what frightened her, she said she didn't know. When Bill is gone on his trips to Japan and Germany, I think you should check on her. You know how much I care about her, and think of what she did for us after Matt died."
    Two nights later, Bill and Violet invited me for dinner upstairs. Mark was at his mother's, and the three of us stayed up late. The conversation moved from Goya to Violet's ongoing analysis of popular culture to Bill's new project—making a hundred and one doors that opened onto rooms—to Mark. Mark was flunking chemistry. He had pierced his lip. He lived for raves. None of this was extraordinary, but during the evening I noticed that whenever Violet talked about Mark, she couldn't finish her sentences. On every other topic, she spoke as she always did, easily and fluently, rounding off her statements with periods, but Mark made her hesitant, and her words were left hanging without ends.
    Bill drank a lot that night. By midnight, he had his arms around Violet on the sofa and was declaring her the most wonderfiil and beautiful woman that had ever lived. Violet untangled herself from Bill's embrace and said, "That's it. When you start in on your undying love for me, I know you've had too much. It's time to call it a night."
    "I'm fine," Bill said. His voice was thick and grumpy.
    Violet turned to him. "You are fine," she said, trailing her finger along his unshaven cheek. "Nobody is finer than you." I watched the motion of her hand as she smiled at him. Her eyes were as steady and clear as I had ever seen them.
    Bill softened under her touch. "A last toast," he said.
    We lifted our glasses.
    "To the people dearest to my heart. To Violet, my beloved and indomitable wife, to Leo, my closest and most loyal friend, and to Mark, my son. May he weather the harrowing years of