Over two years, Larry had watched me respond to everything with solutions.
Cold?
Find a shelter.
Hungry?
Buy food.
Shoes worn through?
Replace them.
No phone?
Find a charger.
Bad weather?
Call outreach programs until somebody answered.
I had spent so much time trying to improve Larry’s circumstances that I had never considered what he might have learned about me in return.
He knew exactly which version of his need I would understand.
A bureaucratic problem.
A legal problem.
A dying man afraid his body would be mishandled.
Those things could be solved.
Loneliness was harder.
At the bottom of the first page, Larry had written:
Before you decide what kind of fool I was, go back to the courthouse. Ask for Margaret. Tell her you were my wife.
I almost threw the letter away.
For an hour, I paced my apartment.
I was angry.
Embarrassed.
Heartbroken.
Part of me felt manipulated.
Another part needed to know what Larry had believed was important enough to send me back there after his death.
So I went.
The courthouse looked exactly the same as it had three weeks earlier.
Couples sat in rows of plastic chairs.
A bride in a white jumpsuit checked her lipstick while her fiancé held a bouquet.
A toddler crawled beneath chairs while his father tried to catch him.
Life was happening everywhere.
Weddings beginning.
Names being joined.
Promises being made.
And suddenly I remembered Larry sitting in that same waiting area rubbing his palms against his pants.
“You’re shaking,” I had said.
“I’m dying. I’m allowed.”
Standing there now, I wondered if illness had caused those nerves at all.
At the records desk, I asked for Margaret.
An older woman wearing bright red glasses looked up from her computer.
“Yes?”
“My name is Sarah.”
She waited.
“I was Larry’s wife.”
Everything about her changed.
Her hands stopped.
Her expression softened.
“Larry?”
I nodded.
“He died last week.”
Margaret pushed back her chair.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Before I understood what was happening, she had come around the desk and hugged me.
I stood stiffly inside her arms.
When she stepped away, her eyes were wet.
“I knew he was sick,” she said. “I didn’t realize he had so little time.”
I stared at her.
“You knew Larry?”
She frowned.
“Of course.”
“How?”
Margaret hesitated as though the answer should have been obvious.
Then she said, “He worked here.”
I actually laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because my mind refused to accept it.
“Larry?”
“For twenty-eight years.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
I thought of his old coat.
His cardboard sign.
The subway entrance.
The backpack that contained almost everything he owned.
