That month of January I was always at church. I never had anything quite appropriate to wear or
was at least anxious enough that this was the case to always be wearing at least three layers
indoors. Lace over starch over ribbon. Scarf around cold knees like a second skirt which I would
smooth over in fits of nervous energy.
There was a surety in attachment. My whole life I had been bleeding; I was looking for a way to
fasten the spilling into place.
I wanted to go all the way. I wanted my world eternally complete. I wanted to think it through to
the end. I began developing opinions on the Novus Ordo. My hair fell out in clumps and I
thought of the horses running in the snow.
It’s impossible for me to spend much time recalling this time without thinking of my
conversations with Daniel. After service I would make my way down to the church basement
where parishioners visited one another over styrofoam cups of drip coffee and pastries.
He was a slight man, an Italian from Queens. When we spoke, he delivered every word, every
spacious vowel with a furtive gentleness, as if at any moment we could be in danger, all too
present danger. His addresses to me would descend from over the top gallantry, a bow, a miss, to
bursts of almost boyish laughter. I took it he was lonely, a loneliness which unspooled itself into
that same tenderness, devotion towards the whole refracted ever-perfectly.
I understood. I’d always wanted a family too.
The first time we were introduced I made an offhand comparison between my vest and the
creases in my skirt and Annie Hall and he said I can’t believe that, it’s too perfect, it’s too perfect
and I thought he was making fun of me until it became my calling card, enough to bring him too
overjoyed laughter. You come in here, he would say with complete sincerity, with your New York
way, your Annie Hall way. He said my necklace must unscrew somewhere along the sides, haha,
to keep Valium pills inside, just kidding, just kidding.
Sometimes I want to say to him that’s not what I said. But I don’t.
He likes to explain me to other people, there are the Annie Hall references again, and now he’s
miming a telephone in his hands, answering the phone as me to explain to a worried-sick
interlocutor that I’ve sold all my belongings and moved to California, I’m cartwheeling,
careening in air, careening everywhere.

I tell him we were reading ein landarzt, the country doctor. I tell him my reading of the story,
how in the end the evil is too much for him to bear. The doctor still wants to fix what was lost,
he does not want to think things through to the end. Yet his maid, Rosa, outside our notice, may
well have escaped through the night to paint her happiness on the wall. He’s quiet for a while
and asks how my Eric Fromm readings have been going.
It wasn’t long after that I went months without going back to church. The second to last time I
saw Daniel I got so awfully irritated. I let it all out, I couldn’t help it, we spoke on Easter sunday
but there was already a distance between us that has not been crossed since.