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long and terrible illness.

    He invites me to lunch on Sunday. He is an ear doctor who is still practicing a few days a week. He has just purchased a condominium in Sarasota and plans to spend ten days a month in Florida. I agree to meet him on Sunday. I begin to imagine myself in Florida reading a book by a pool. I think of the warm sun on my legs. I know about the malls and the golf games and the early-bird dinners but I am thinking of blue water and red f lowers and palm trees. I am thinking of a man’s razor in my bathroom. I think that maybe I could slip myself into another life. Maybe. Sunday comes and I dress carefully, my best sweater, my new skirt. I look in the mirror, not too long. I am about to put on my coat when the phone rings. It is my lunch date. The tunnel to Manhattan has been closed for repair and he cannot make it into Manhattan. He’ll call another time. I go for a walk on Broadway. I am not going to Florida after all.

    • • •

    I had not imagined all the legal forms that follow the death of a spouse. Death certificates—tax papers, conversations with lawyers and accountants. I wander in a deep wood and I am way past the middle of my life. Have I made a major costly mistake, here or there or everywhere? Money is just money and I have not paid as much attention to it as I should have. This is my error. I tend to wait for rescue by a shining knight. Not this time.

    I HAVE BEEN GOING TO CONCERTS WITH A M AN I ’LL CALL
    M. I had known him when he was the partner of a woman I knew. They stopped seeing each other a few years ago. A friend of mine who knew him said she would call him and find out if he had a new lady friend. “Thank you,” I said. She told M. that I was widowed. She told him I would be pleased if he called and he did. M. is a retired divorce lawyer. He is also a pianist. Music is now his main passion. He has tickets to opera and tickets to concerts and a gadget that lets him hear any opera he wants on the nearest radio: a sweet soul this. He is a tall man with a softness to his body, but he walks fast, holds my arm tight. Not only is he fond of divas but he is also a baseball fan. He takes me to the Yankees game. He has me meet him in front of the stadium. He tells me what subway to take to get there. I walk with the crowd to the gate where he will be waiting. The crowds f low past. If H. were with me I would hold his hand tightly. I would not want him to lose me in this river of fans. The sky is a light blue and the lights on the stadium cast a yellow color across the faces of those approaching the ticket-takers. No reason to be alarmed, I tell myself. I know how to find my way back to my home. M. appears with tickets in hand. On a folded piece of paper on his lap he keeps track of every action on the field and marks down errors, successes, scores. We take the subway back to Manhattan and he tells me what stop to get out to take a bus to reach my apartment. He stays on the subway.

    I wave good-bye to him through the window as the train pulls out of the station.
    Another night, after a Mets game, he takes me back to his apartment. It is small and cluttered with file boxes, old articles, notes, other people’s papers, the boxes rise toward the ceiling. Shelves are filled with CDs. The television is programmed so that the classical music channel plays all the time. The television is never turned off. To move to the kitchen one has to thread through the boxes around the piano. I see photos on his kitchen wall. He names his children for me. He tells me their occupations and what worried him about one of them and what pleases him about another. He asks me nothing at all. I ask him about his law partners. He answers directly. I ask him about his childhood and he tells me: the grief of losing a father, the shame of poverty, the pride of the school he attended on scholarship. He speaks of the religion of his childhood and why he left it. I ask more questions and still more questions. He