Sparrow Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

she had gone to sleep and woken up speaking a foreign language, a language I had no access to.
    She came over that night. She came over a few times after. I wept. She wept for my weeping. And then she went home. She called it that, home, this bed in a friend’s apartment. She left our place and she went home.
    Morning after morning I woke up too early, the snow blowing sideways, the day stretching ahead of me. Stretching and stretching and stretching all the way to the horizon where, if you looked, you could make out a tiny, crooked tree. I taught my classes. I stared into the fireplace and waited for the phone to ring. Days went by, then weeks. Hollowed out by worry and a kind of relentless anxiousness that cut through everything, I lost weight. My pants hung from my hips. I stabbed a new hole in my belt buckle.
    One night, unable to last another second, I snatched up the phone and called her. “Where are you?” I cried. She hurried over; I proposed marriage; she diplomatically declined; offered sex instead, which I gratefully embraced. But she was so silent! Looking at her young body in the bed, I swear the notion of losing her forever made me feel as if I might go mad. And then she went home.
    For a while, as long as I could smell her on my hands, I felt better. But then it all started up again. I could feel the panic seize me around the ribs, slowly, like a snake, and I could hear that dreadful whisper in my ear, “She’s gone,” the last syllable like a poof when a candle is extinguished. She’s gone.
    I listened to opera. I listened to Bach. On Wednesdays I went to a Cajun bar; the music excited me. I’d have one, two, three mugs of beer, the accordion shrieked, the band reeled, and I could feel my shoulders coming down. The room softened; the lights glowed; I could breathe. Yes, she’d come back. She’d be back. Just be patient. Ah yes, be patient with her. But when I came outside, the winter bared its teeth at me; the wind slapped my face; giant icicles loomed like tusks overhead; and by the time I arrived home I was frightened and sober. And there was never, never, never a message from her.
    Spring came, and one fragrant afternoon I sat in the park watching a child whisper to a cat and waited for Emma to come. I sat on a picnic table, the same picnic table I had kissed her on four years before, and watched her pedal toward me on her bicycle.
    Upstairs in my house (God, she was beautiful), I leaned forward in my chair, she on the couch, my fingers steepled beneath my chin, and began a practised speech. I said that she had been gone for some three months now, and three months for someone who is waiting is a long time. She nodded in silent agreement. I went on to say that when we did see each other, it was always at my behest, as it had been again that day. More nodding. She too was prepared, you could see that. She’d been on the phone (that mother again) and from the way she listened, the measured patience, I had the feeling she had reached a final decision, had perhaps a long time ago but had only now consented to the language to describe it accordingly. I wound up by saying that I didn’t need kid gloves or kind treatment but simply the truth. I opened my mouth to say more, but nothing came out, which was good because there wasn’t any more to say.
    She took a moment, looked at the floor to assemble her thoughts, and said, “I am leaning in the direction of not being in love with you any more.”
    To this day I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of such a bizarre notice of termination, ever. Leaning in the direction of not being in love with you any more . But I had spent too many sweaty nights, smoked too many cigarettes, lost too many pounds to allow for any ambiguity. And so I said, slowly and deliberately, looking at her pale and beautiful face, “Does that mean you don’t love me any more?”
    “Yes,” she said crisply. She was prepared.
    “Does that mean you don’t want me any