“You’re ready to go home,” I say, an observation, not a question.
“Sometimes. And sometimes I feel rushed, like I’m hurtling toward August tenth, like there’s no way I’ll be ready to go when the time comes.”
August 10… God, just over a month from now. Five weeks—that’s how long we have to get to know each other before a country halfway around the world reclaims him.
I knew it—Iknewhe was too good to be true.
Afraid my disappointment might be transparent, I look down, swirling my coffee in its mug. Across from me, Mati shifts, stretching like he’s going to touch my arm. My heart trips over itself, but then he drops his hand to the table, letting his fingertips rest beside mine.
Their warmth reaches for me.
“Tell me something about you,” he says, a blatant attempt at a lighter topic. He lifts his mug, inhales steam, then waits—for me to share an enlightening tidbit, I guess. When I’ve been quiet too long, he prompts me. “I want to hear about the pictures you take.”
I break into an irrepressible grin—photography fills me with intangible joy. “I snap photos every chance I get. My dog and my niece are my most challenging subjects—they’reneverstill—but their pictures are usually my favorites. I’m working on a series of cemetery images, part of a portfolio I’ll use for college admissions down the road. It’s a life-among-death sort of thing. My mom doesn’t get it.”
“Is she a photographer, too?”
“No, she’s a writer. My older brother took a photography class in high school, though, and he was really into it. Back then, I wanted to do everything he did, so I’d sneak his camera out of his room and take pictures of the street in front of our condo: fire hydrants, power lines, stoops. When he figured out what I’d been doing—and that I had apretty good eye—he bought me a camera of my own. Not a very good one, but the best he could afford. I’ve been hooked ever since.”
“He sounds like a good brother.”
My throat swells with sorrow. “He was thebestbrother.”
We’re quiet for a pause, watching each other over the tops of our mugs.
Mati says, “I’m afraid to ask about him.”
“Because you don’t want me to walk away?”
“Because I don’t want you to be sad.”
I look out the window; my vision’s gone watery and I’ll die before I cry at this table. I blink, inhaling, wheedling a thread of composure from the warm, coffee-infused air. I meet his gaze and, monotone, say, “He was killed three years ago. He was in the army, he deployed, and… that was it.”
Mati’s face changes, constricts with conjecture, followed closely by comprehension.
“I am very sorry,” he says, so softly I wonder, for a moment, if I imagined his apology. But he’s looking at me with intensity that makes the sights and scents and sounds of the bakery fade away. I feel his stare, physically, in the depths of me. I feel it in the way my flesh tingles and my heart skips and my cheeks warm.
He knows, and I know he knows, and somehow—some miraculous way—we’ve made a complete circle.
MATI
Baba: strong, vigorous, indomitable.
Deteriorate: decline, worsen, fail.
A sight no son should witness:
the systematic wasting
of the man who gifted him life.
There is…
nothing
worse
… than watching Baba’s light fade.
