The Marriage of Sticks Read Online Free PDF

shorted out.
    “Aha! I knew you’d be here! I told Zoe when I saw her, I bet Miranda Romanac’s here. And I was right. I was right.”
    I was speechless. I looked at Zoe. She stared at him horrified, fascinated.
    “I came back to town just for the reunion. We live in Orange now. Know where that is? In New Jersey. We have ever since my dad died. But I forgot your telephone number, Zoe, so I couldn’t call to tell you I’d arrived. My sister said I shouldn’t call, but I said, ‘Look, we were going out for years.…’ ”
    He went on and on like that in a high-pitched, weirdly sonorous, disconnected ramble about himself, the reunion, Zoe, his “research.” I was glad because it allowed me to absorb the shock and watch him closely without seeming rude.
    Within seconds you knew he was mad, but what species of madness was hard to say. Although he spoke strangely, much of what he said was coherent, even intelligent. Seeing him this way, I had to keep reminding myself that Kevin Hamilton had been one of our class scholars. We were sure he would do great things. I had heard almost nothing about him except that he had graduated from Dartmouth and gone to Wharton School of Business, but that was expected. Even at eighteen, you knew you’d see him interviewed a decade later on TV or read about him in Time magazine.
    Apparently others at the reunion knew about Kevin, because no one got near us while we stood with him. A couple of times I saw others I recognized and smiled. They smiled back and started over, but on seeing him they quickly veered away. He kept talking.
    Gradually what had happened came out. He was the oldest of four children. His father, with whom he was very close, died suddenly when Kevin was in graduate school. Kevin had had to quit and come home to take care of the others. Somewhere along the line, the pressure sent cracks up and down his psyche and he simply fell apart. He was institutionalized and since then had been on heavy medication. He spent his days in the library researching things, but when I asked what, he looked at me suspiciously and changed the subject.
    I could not imagine how Zoe was feeling. Whatever she had brought with her to this night—dreams, expectations—had been met at the door by this human nightmare of everything gone wrong, all hope abandoned. Once again my poor friend had lost.
    “Excuse me, Kevin, but we have to go.” I didn’t care if I hurt his feelings. I took her by the arm and we fled into the ladies’ room. He was still talking when the door whooshed shut behind us.
    Luckily no one else was in there. Speechless, we stared at each other. It was as if a beautiful piece of crystal had dropped and shattered on the floor. Of course you sweep it up, but first you must accept the fact that it is gone forever.
    Zoe went to the sink and turned on both spigots. She lowered her head and cupping handful after handful, threw water on her face. Then she squirted out a handful of bright green hand soap from the dispenser and thoroughly washed her face clean of all the makeup she’d so carefully applied an hour before.
    I wanted to be so much smarter than I was, able to come up with something right to say that, even for a moment, might fill the black space I knew was in her heart and would be for a long time.
    “Where did I learn my clichés?” She was looking in the mirror. Her face was blank and shone from water.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Love never dies. Hope springs eternal. The one thing we should have learned by now is to put a seat belt around our heart. The road is dangerous but we never put the damned seat belt on.”
    “Zoe—”
    “He said something to me once I’ll never forget. He said, ‘We’ll start to reminisce when we’re a hundred and four because till then we’ll be too busy.’ I was going to bring Hector tonight. He could have come. But I thought about Kevin, you know, and maybe there was a chance that something might happen…so I