What I Loved

they were made of plaster. At first I saw only the murky reflection of my own gray, beaky face staring up at me, but then I noticed that there was a hole in the plaster. I put my cheek to the mirror and looked into it. A splintered image of a child had been painted onto the underside of the plaster, which was then reflected onto the mirror. The little boy seemed to float in the mirror—his arms and legs detached from his torso. It wasn't a picture of violence or war, but something dreamlike and weirdly familiar—an image I couldn't look at without also seeing my own muzzy face. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the mirror looked watery, uterine, the boy more distant, and I realized that I didn't want to see it anymore. I felt a little dizzy and then nauseated. I stood up too quickly, hit my head on the ceiling, and grabbed the doorknob. It stuck. Suddenly, I desperately needed to get out of that place. After I gave it a fierce tug, the door opened and I nearly fell onto Bill.
    "Are you okay?" he said. "You're sweating."
    Bill had to help me to a chair. I stammered out my embarrassment and apology as I breathed deeply and wondered what had happened to me behind the door. We were silent for at least a minute while I recovered from my bout of faintness. I thought again about the reflection under that clump of plaster. Maybe it had been more like a pile of bandages. The boy had seemed to float in an oily, heavy liquid, his body in pieces. He would never emerge intact.
    I spoke breathlessly. "Matt. Drowning. I didn't understand it until now."
    When I looked up at Bill, he looked startled. "I had no intention..."
    I interrupted him. "I know that. It just hit me that way."
    Bill placed his hands on both my shoulders and squeezed them for a moment. Then he walked over to the one clear space near the window and looked out. He was silent for several seconds before he said, "I loved Matthew, you know." He spoke very quietly. "That year before he died, I understood what he was and what was in him." Bill moved his hand to the pane.
    I rose from the chair and walked toward him.
    "I envied you," he said. "I wished..." He paused and breathed through his nose. "I still wish that Mark were more like him, and I feel bad for wishing it. Matt was open to everything. He didn't always agree with me." Bill smiled at the memory. "He argued with me. I wish Mark..."
    I said nothing. After another short pause, he continued talking. "It would've been so much better for Mark if Matthew had lived. For all of us, of course, but Matt felt the ground under his feet." Bill looked down at the Bowery. I saw gray in his hair. He's aging fast now, I thought. "Matt wanted to grow up. He would've become an artist. I believe that. He had the talent. He had the need. He had the lust for work." Bill rubbed his hair. "Mark's still a baby. He has great gifts, but somehow he's not equipped to use them. I'm afraid for him, Leo. He's like Peter Pan in exile from Never-Never-Land." Bill was silent for several seconds. "My memories of being a teenager don't help me. I never liked crowds. Fads didn't interest me. If everybody loved it, I wasn't interested. Drugs, flower power, rock 'n' roll. It wasn't for me. I was looking at icons, copying Caravaggio and seventeenth-century drawings. I wasn't even a good rebel. I was against the war. I marched in protests, but the truth was, a lot of the rhetoric grated on me. All I really wanted to do was paint." Bill turned toward me and lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around the match as though he were outside in a wind. He pressed his lips together and said, "He lies, Leo. Mark lies."
    I looked at Bill's pained face. "Yes," I said. "I've sometimes wondered about that."
    "I catch him in little lies, lies that don't make any sense. I sometimes think he lies just to lie."
    "It might be a phase," I said.
    Bill looked away from me. "He's been lying for a long time. Ever since he was a little boy."
    Bill's frank statement jarred me. I hadn't been aware of a history of lying. He had lied about eating the doughnuts and he had probably lied to me the morning after he slept in Matt's room, but I knew nothing of more lies.
    "At the same time," Bill said, "he has a good heart. He's a gentle soul, my son." He waved the cigarette at me. "He likes you, Leo. He told me that he feels free with you, that he can talk to you."
    I went to stand by Bill at the window. "I like seeing him. These last few months, we've talked quite a bit."