“Gotta go. Someone’s screaming up on Skidmore Street.” He popped the rest of the cruller into his mouth and took the milk with him when he got into the car.

He drove off before I could tell him. It was a Japanese woman. A Mrs. Hayashi. I had never seen her before. She had taken too many pills and the hallucinations were driving her mad. Her children stood on windowsills in a high building waving happily to her down below. Bye-bye Mama. Then one by one they jumped. She watched as they dropped through space and hit the ground directly in front of her. I saw her face, the wide open mouth screaming to her sanity to help.

Outside her small house on Skidmore Street, neighbors stood worriedly at the window watching her on the floor, pulling her hair and screaming in a language none of them understood.

I saw it.

Five hours later Hugh came in looking pale and very drawn. He went into the living room and sat down in his new chair and let out a low groan. I got him a drink and asked if there was anything I could do. Unsmiling, he kissed my hand and said no. Sweet man that he was, he looked up with weary eyes and apologized for not being able to make lunch earlier. He’d had an awful day. An important deal for a rare Guadagnini violin fell through. He had argued with his assistants. Charlotte called and accused him of terrible things.

I sat on the floor next to him and leaned my head against his leg. I had wonderful news to tell him but didn’t. After dinner. I would cook and it would be wonderful, the most delicious meal I’d ever made. After dinner, when we both felt better and the day was ours again and the moment was right for such a surprise. Then.

We sat in silence. It started to rain again. When he spoke, Hugh’s voice was flat and toneless, as if it had been washed of all color.

“Know what I love? In the summer when you leave the windows open in the bedroom and go to sleep. There’s a breeze blowing you can just feel on your face. As you’re drifting off, the wind picks up, but you’re too sleepy to do anything about it.

“Then in the middle of the night, a big bang wakes you up in a second. A storm’s raging outside and all your windows are flapping back and forth. Like they’re applauding. Like they’re applauding the storm.

“So you get up, sleepy as hell but wired from the shock, and go around closing them. Everything’s wet, the windowsills, the floor.… While you were sleeping this thing blew in and drenched everything.

“The best part is standing at the open window and getting wet. I put my hands on the sill and stick my head out into it. The wind’s whipping, things are tremendous out there. It’s three in the morning and no one’s around to see it. Only you. The whole show’s just for you.”

I put an arm around his leg and squeezed tightly. His hand was on my head, ruffling my hair. Neither of us moved for minutes. The only things that changed were the sounds of the wind outside. Hugh’s hand stopped moving. The rain gradually slowed and stopped too. Everything stopped. The silence was thick as fur. Despite all the surprises and excitement of that bizarre day, the next minutes were the most peaceful and fulfilling I ever knew.

When I finally moved to get up, because my back was beginning to hurt, because it was time to cook our dinner, because afterward I could tell Hugh about our baby, his hand slipped from my head. I saw that he was asleep.

He was dead.

Three days after his funeral I saw Hugh again.

Standing at the kitchen sink, I looked out the window at the small yard behind the house. I could not feel my body. I could not feel anything. Since his death, I had moved through the days in a walking stupor and felt best there.

What had surprised me was not the horror of the loss, but the gain of so many terrible things. The gain of time: if he were here now, we would be doing this together. Now there was nothing to do. If he were here now, I would be doing this for him. Now there was nothing to do. If he were here now I would touch him, talk to him, know he was in the next room… the variety was dreadful, endless.

As was the space around me. The space in our new double bed, the house, the life we had just begun together. Hugh’s empty easy chair, the empty shoes lined up carefully in his closet, the table with only one place setting.

The silence grew palpably larger, the days longer, the nights indescribable. And there was a sudden, almost religious importance to objects—his coffee cup, his razor, his favorite recipe, television show, color, tree. I stared at his moving boxes with the funny names on them. Tarzan Hotel. Sometimes I reached in and touched an object. Some things were sharp. Some smooth. Always Hugh’s. A silver penknife with a broken blade inscribed Sarajevo on the side. A cranberry baseball cap with Earlham across the top. A volume of poetry titled The Unknown Rilke. Horribly, I turned two pages into it and read this before it registered:

Another box contained some of the sticks he had collected. When I saw them I immediately left the room.

I scoured my mind for things he had said, his opinions, beliefs, jokes, anything mentioned off the cuff, in passing, in earnest. Anything. I wrote it all down because I wanted every trace of Hugh Oakley for me and our son. I sat in his chair for hours and hours trying to remember everything. But it was like picking up rice grain by grain after spilling an entire bag on a white floor full of cracks. It went all over and so much of it was invisible.

Holding a glass of water in my hands, I stood at the kitchen window staring out at the yard. Before I realized it, I was smiling. I had remembered something new: Hugh saying we should plant pumpkins and sunflowers out there because they were the clowns of the flower kingdom. How could you not laugh at a pumpkin? How could sunflowers not make you smile? I drank some water and felt it cool down my throat. I put the glass against my forehead and rubbed it back and forth. The telephone rang and I closed my eyes. Who would it be this time? What on earth could I say to them? Leave me alone. Can’t you all just leave me alone now? I opened my eyes again.

Standing twenty feet away across the yard were Hugh and the little boy I had seen the first time we visited the house. The phone rang again. Hugh looked exactly as he had the day he died. He was dressed in the same clothes—dark slacks, white shirt, the blue tweed sport jacket from Ireland he liked so much. The phone kept ringing.

Over that noise, I heard something tapping. I didn’t recognize what until I looked down and saw my shaking hand. The water glass rat-a-tatted against the metal sink.

The little boy turned around and knelt down. The answering machine clicked on. I heard my calm voice say the old message: “We’re out now, but please leave a message…”

Barely able to control my shaking hands, I slid the window up and called Hugh’s name. Called it, cried it, whispered—I don’t know how it came out. He looked at me and gave a small breezy wave, as if I were calling him for lunch and he’d come in a minute. But he had heard me! And he was really there! But he was dead. But there he was.

I was so amazed, so riveted, that I didn’t notice what the boy was doing. Didn’t see him pick up the stone and throw it.

It hit me in the face. I grunted and staggered back. Hands over my eyes, warm blood already gushing over my fingers. Stepping on something, I twisted my ankle hard and fell down. I tried to put out a hand to stop the fall. But it was so slick with blood that as soon as it touched the floor, it skidded sideways. My head hit with a loud thud.