فصل 45

FINCH

Day 80 (a muthaf#@*ing world record)

In his poem “Epilogue,” Robert Lowell asked, “Yet why not say what happened?”

To answer your question, Mr. Lowell, I’m not sure. Maybe no one can say. All I know is what I wonder: Which of my feelings are real? Which of the mes is me? There is only one me I’ve ever really liked, and he was good and awake as long as he could be.

I couldn’t stop the cardinal’s death, and this made me feel responsible. In a way, I was—we were, my family and I—because it was our house that was built where his tree used to be, the one he was trying to get back to. But maybe no one could have stopped it.

“You have been in every way all that anyone could be.… If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.”

Before he died, Cesare Pavese, believer in the Great Manifesto, wrote, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

I remember running down a road on my way to a nursery of flowers.

I remember her smile and her laugh when I was my best self and she looked at me like I could do no wrong and was whole.

I remember how she looked at me the same way even when I wasn’t.

I remember her hand in mine and how that felt, as if something and someone belonged to me.