The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude by Howard Axelrod

Author:Howard Axelrod [Axelrod, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807075470
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2015-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

The week after the party, I found myself taking more walks than usual, examining faces more closely beneath the porticoes on Via Irnerio. Wherever I went, Milena’s presence felt close to me, as though I was perpetually on the verge of seeing her. Even inside the apartment, I found myself getting up from my desk at odd times, poking my head out into the stairwell, listening for footsteps or a voice. I wondered if I would recognize her voice—I couldn’t remember it exactly, only the smoothness of it, the way it seemed not to interrupt the moonlight. I told myself to calm down, not to be such a daydreamer, but the feeling I’d had when we were on the roof kept coming over me, stealing between me and whatever I was trying to write. It was like distant music, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, and it stole into every gap in my day—at breakfast over my cereal, on my walks down Via Zamboni, in the evening as I came out of the shower. It was always waiting, and I desperately hoped it would turn into more than just music. I’d never felt anything like it. It seemed too persistent, too beautiful not to come closer and take form.

Juan Ignacio told me she lived upstairs, but just coming out of our apartment and looking up the drafty stairs made my heart hammer in my chest. Besides, what had started between us had started in a way that didn’t follow any conventions, and I felt almost superstitious about letting it continue that way. Usually, if I liked a girl and there were signs she liked me, I was able to ask her out without hesitation. But this was entirely different. Nothing from my past seemed to apply. Since the eye accident, I hadn’t had a girlfriend. Senior year, I’d dated more than ever before, but that just meant staying one step ahead of intimacy, a kind of musical chairs, so I’d never have to face myself or a woman when the music stopped. But what I’d felt on the rooftop with Milena had connected with a longing that frightened me in its intensity. Perhaps it had always been there, but it had become palpable only since the accident. I didn’t know what it was made of exactly, but it had something to do with that gap between what was behind my eyes and what was outside them, and with the need to be with a woman who could make contact with both, who could make each realm as real as the other.

But as the March days wore on, and as I ate lunch with Juan Ignacio trying to pay attention to his rhapsodies about Italian women, my doubts began to grow. Had I misread our conversation? Had that softness in her eyes not been for me but just for something she was remembering about herself, that teenager in her grandmother’s garden? The possibility made it difficult to eat. I’d been so certain when we said good-bye that we’d see each other again.

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