I gazed through the window of Piazza d’Angelo at the standing-room-only crowd of beautiful people, then with trepidation boldly entered the bar and inserted myself in their midst: Mill Valley affluent, fit, knew their wines, especially the California varietals. The chatter level was high and I tried to grasp the train of conversation so I could leap on. A lot of it was stocks. And tennis, renovations, best golf resorts on Maui, favorite Club Med spots. I was there fresh from a Book Passage reading on a Thursday at 8, too wired to go home and be alone. A soccer game played on three TVs behind the bar then the day’s news about sinkholes on the Richmond Bridge (over which I commuted), and the ongoing quest to capture Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.
The man standing to my right had a gorgeous profile. I liked the way he wore his collared shirts one over the other. He looked solid and comfortable, with the Chronicle folded and tucked under his arm. He ordered pinot grigio, that exotic name.
He asked what brought me here.
“To be around people,” I told him.
“Plenty of people here.”
“Don’t they have families?”
“Maybe not.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“You have a family!”
“I live with my son and daughter.”
“Not their mother?”
“We’re in the middle of a war.” (For a second I thought he was referring to Bin Laden, whose bearded face had appeared in multiple on the bar TVs.)
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s a nightmare.”
And so we commenced to tell war stories in the middle of the happy, crowded scene.
A seat opened up at the bar, I sat down, and the warrior moved closer. This side of his face appeared newly wrinkled, maybe in the last year or so. The eye I could see was green. His outer collar was turned up over his freckled neck; dark chest hairs curled through the unbuttoned opening of his denim shirt; the sleeve of the dark wool overshirt brushed my shoulder.
His wife wanted everything he had: house, car, children.
“She’s jobless.”
He believed she was suicidal.
He wanted to do the right thing.
But maintain his right to his share.
“All the money came from me: my inheritance bought the first house, my investments paid it off, I have worked my butt off, I love my kids and I want to be their father.”
“I’m sure she wants that, too.”
“No. She wants me to pay for everything and be invisible.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“I’ve been paying lawyers for three years.”
This was actually the first time he had “stepped out at night like this,” too defeated by the process to imagine he could have any kind of life apart from supporting children, his wife’s insanity, and attorneys. He’s been living in studio apartments but finally just put everything into this new house.
“Where?”
“Here.”
“So, you’re doing all right.”
“We’re working with a mediator now. I’m a little more hopeful.”
He couldn’t even face me, he was so mired in his situation, and then suddenly politeness compelled him to ask me about myself.
“Name’s Art, by the way. You are?”
“Jewel.”
“Pretty. So what’s your story?”
“We’re done with paperwork, no assets to fight over.”
“Kids?”
“One dead, one living, best kid ever.”
Compared to Art, my split with Lee was downright amicable. He dropped off and picked up Dale when he said he would, deposited a tiny sum each month into our old joint account for child support (thank you), was holding his job, not threatening me with anything. I only suffered from the withdrawal of his love. And even that, I was getting used to; it wasn’t like a knife anymore, more like a spoon, my body yielding to it like ice cream left standing on the counter.
#
More wine and in between new and old stories in the middle of all the noise, Art started describing an old family photograph that showed his childhood family still intact: his mother, father, and their two children. Their summer cabin was visible in the background. The family posed on the dock on the shore of the lake. The afternoon was sunny. Everyone was smiling, healthy, young, their futures ahead.
Art and his big brother Steve were four and five, their parents in their late twenties. That night at dinner the big brother got mad at the little brother, as he often did, and with no more intent to do permanent damage than ever before, Steve aimed, then threw his fork as hard as he could across the table. Everyone watched in slow motion as the object hurtled through the short distance and the sharp tines caught the little brother in the right eye. It was fast, even in slow motion, and the impulsive action inflicted damage that would never go away. The boy was blind in one eye for the rest of his life.
“Not long after that day my mother was diagnosed with polio and got increasingly disabled until she died when I was twelve. My father was devastated, and had to let the cabin go, which had been in my mother’s family for generations. My brother was eternally guilty and became self-destructive in all the usual ways: drinking, smoking, and driving too fast, and was killed in a car accident at age nineteen.”
Of them all, the blind boy fared best. Found music. Married, had a family. Did well financially. Learned to adjust his profile so his best side was seen.
Art turned to face me then and I could see his white, blind eye.
#
A week later we met for coffee, his son skateboarded around the Mill Valley plaza where we talked, the morning passed, and I fell in love with them both. We sat talking for hours while the boy came and went around us. Art wanted to hear about me, my turn to tell stories, he said, and he listened more attentively than most men, as if to compensate for the eye that couldn’t see. I told him I’d published a book, a memoir about my baby who died, called Silvie’s Life.
“I’d like to read it,” Art said.
With one eye? I thought, laughing, looking forward to a relationship unfolding, where we would tell each other all our stories, set ourselves free, make peace with the past. Bombs were falling all over the world, our enemies were invisible, among us; maybe there was no peace to be had. But they say love is blind: it can overlook the devastated past, crawl through half-seeing darkness, dare to peer into a hopeful future.
I never saw him again.
His good eye liked me but his blind eye couldn’t see beyond his wars.