Lenten roses

 

February 26, 2022

Jimmy Jackson died, a peripheral but enduring figure in my youth. His obit reads as though all his good humor and agreeableness rewarded him in life. 

Listening to Cecilia Bartoli. 

The box of The Ones with Difficult Names arrived. My intelligible but outsized fury over that subsided.

The card my Internet search prompted me to write to E hit pay dirt. The one I chose was the right one. He sends a card back today saying, “It’s been twenty-five years.” Felt it in my throat. I do not want him to send a photo. I do not want to link up on Facebook. I do not want to see his face, to know if he’s been a failure or a success. I remember that fatal night at the bar saying to the universe he is the one I will have. I did have him. The having of him must have supplied the universe with a great laugh, the greatest and bitterest of what I’m bold to call my love life. I thought at the end of it the catastrophe of all that would make love smooth sailing from then on. That must have been the loudest part of the laugh. Yet, I did want to hear from him, or I wouldn’t have sent the card. Maybe I assumed he just vanished when he didn’t have me to haunt.

Opened RG’s new novel randomly to the passage: “Do you know William Butler Yeats?” “Is he in our class?” Not promising.

The Lenten roses are in lovely bloom.