Hour 07/05

1980 | Horologia, Collected Short Stories

Marla: A Recollection of Time Lost and Found

By Haywood Price

THIS IS HOW I remember it. The room was dark—or not really dark, more like gloomy. Maybe nobody had turned on the lights? There were a lot of people there—a party. Or no, a reception of some kind. A get-to-know-you thing of some sort. I think I had my coat on, so it must have been cold outside. Late fall? Or maybe I wasn’t intending to stay very long. I’m not big on crowds.

I should explain. I was just starting my sophomore year at McGraw University in upstate New York, and I had been accepted by a residential cooperative on campus. McGraw students usually spent their first year in the dorms, but then they either joined one of the Greek houses or found an apartment in town. I hadn’t given my future living situation much thought, but I knew I didn’t want to rush one of the fraternities. They were full of the kids I avoided in high school—“jocks” we called them then—and I wasn’t about to bunk in with them. It was my girlfriend who suggested Van Hoven, a student-run house on South Campus, and I followed her there one afternoon toward the end of our freshman year. Like with a frat or sorority, you had to meet the residents of Van Hoven and talk your way in. If they accepted you, you could live there on the cheap until you graduated. Even so, I had no interest in the place or its inhabitants—I just wanted to be with Rachel. So I feigned interest and chatted up the coop’s president, telling him how much I liked the dull Jerry Hahn record he played for me, and a few weeks later I heard that I’d been accepted. As it turned out, Van Hoven rejected my girlfriend.

So there I was, sharing a double with a Chinese exchange student named Charlie Yee, though his first name wasn’t really Charlie. He snored and sometimes mumbled in Mandarin in his sleep, but I didn’t much care because I was spending most of my nights at the apartment Rachel found in College Town. Van Hoven was mostly just a place to park my stuff. But I must have been there when the gathering in the common room took place that fall, because I had a reason to remember it.

It was there that I first met Marla.

At the time, I was a smoker. I’d started in my senior year of high school, occasionally lighting up because I liked the way inhaling gave me a little buzz. Not like dope, which left me out of it for hours—just a quick spell of mild dizziness that was pleasant enough but not disorienting. After a while, that stopped happening, and I soon found myself hooked, puffing through a pack of Salem menthols every day. Often I was out of smokes by mid-afternoon. That must have been the situation at Van Hoven.

Across the room, over by built-in shelves that held stacks of records and the house stereo, I spotted a girl with a lit cigarette. She was talking to a tall guy with a messy coif of black curls. He was laughing, his hair bouncing like a jumble of Slinkys, and she was gesturing rapidly, smoke in hand. Ah, I thought, a friendly touch.

I made my way through the gathering and stood for a moment while the girl finished what she was saying. Then she turned to me.

“Hi,” I said with a smile. “Sorry to interrupt, but I wonder, could I bum a cigarette?”

It was the tilt of her head that made an immediate impression. It made her appear as though she were about to ask a profound question. A slight incline, chin forward. Her eyes were light brown, large, looking at me with what? I thought maybe a secret sadness.

“Oh.” That was all she said. Putting the cigarette to her lips, she unzipped the brown leather purse slung over her shoulder. It looked like a deflated football. She passed a pack to me—Camel regulars. I shook one free.

“Well, you don’t want to live long, do you?” I said, holding up the cig. The filterless brand was the closest American butts came to Gauloises. Cancer sticks. I was being smart. She looked at me with concern as I handed the pack back. Her eyes went from sad to solicitous.

“That’s a very odd thing to say to someone you’ve just met.” Her tone was vaguely helpful, almost as though she were explaining an obvious truth to a small child.

I was expecting an equally flippant reply, and her words caught me off guard. They deflated whatever cool I was affecting. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to someone I didn’t know—especially someone I didn’t know who was giving me a cigarette.

“Uh, yes. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it,” was all I could manage. Then, “Thanks for the smoke.”

I retreated back across the room, lit up and regarded my benefactor. The curly-haired guy was going on about something, and she was listening, brow furrowed. The girl’s face was round, but not broad; her straight brown hair was parted on one side and drawn across her forehead, a large barrette holding it in place. She wasn’t picture pretty, but not plain either. Every so often she would take the cigarette from her lips and, with the same hand, pick a stray bit of tobacco from her tongue. Though she was small, she was not petite, and her figure, what I could see of it, was full. What really struck me was the way she carried herself—an inflection first conveyed by the simple tilt of her head. It had an earnestness, a seriousness that was new to me. The girls I knew were largely self-absorbed and superficial, concerned with their studies and little else. They were young, and I was just like them. But this young woman at the Van Hoven mixer—something about her hinted at a life more nuanced than anything I’d yet conceived. Mysterious depths, great passions, truth and meaning. Admittedly, that was a lot to convey by a simple inclination of the head. But that is how I remember it.

The rest I remember clearly. I didn’t see Marla Reznik again until my junior year. That was her name—Marla Reznik. At the time, I was working as the night manager at EconoDisc Records, the local music store. The girl from Van Hoven was hired in September to work the six-to-nine shift and I was tasked with teaching her how to clerk. She had no recollection of our encounter over a cigarette a year earlier, but I remembered her right away. Her earnest concern, the thoughtful intensity with which she dealt with customers—these were the same qualities that so affected me when she shared one of her Camels. The head tilt was the same, too. As we passed evenings together behind the check-out counter over the next few weeks, I found myself becoming captivated by Marla Reznik.

Then, after a midnight sale on Halloween, life changed. After closing up, Marla and I left the store together. We were in costume, dressed to amuse the customers, and we’d been flirting in character all night, me as Senator Wilbur Mills and she as Fannie Fox. The Capitol Hill sex scandal was big tabloid news at the time, and we were playing it up for laughs between writing up sales and taking surreptitious swigs from a bottle of wine stashed under the counter. We were both more than a little tipsy as we strolled along the darkened streets, heading nowhere in particular, still flirting but now no longer in character. Eventually we arrived at my apartment house and there, under the cool blue illumination of a streetlight, Marla kissed me.

Was I caught by surprise? Had I been expecting something more than a simple good night, see you tomorrow? I don’t know. But I felt her kiss right down to my toes. It made me dizzy, like a deep drag on a first cigarette. Before I could say anything, she silently turned and headed off down the street, disappearing into the darkness. I stood for a moment, dazed, not knowing what to do. But then I made my way up the steps and into the apartment. Rachel was asleep, and I quietly undressed in the bathroom and then climbed into bed beside her. She and I had been together for nearly two years, sharing an apartment for one of them, and we were seriously thinking about getting married.

Two weeks later I moved out.

* * *

MARLA REZNIK was 21 when I met her at Van Hoven, and I was just 19. She was an English major, though only a junior because she’d dropped out in her sophomore year and had just been readmitted to the university that fall. By the time she joined the staff at EconoDisc, she was in her final two semesters at McGraw. I really knew nothing about her studies—she never mentioned them—but I knew she liked to read. And I remember being vaguely aware that she liked to write. Though what she wrote was a mystery—I never saw any of it.

But that didn’t matter. I was smitten. I moved into a rooming house a few blocks down from the apartment Marla shared with another coed, and I spent as many days and nights there as I could. What she saw in me, I don’t know. Perhaps it was my seniority at the record store that made me attractive? Or the fact that I knew something about art and music? Or maybe it was my wry sense of humor and occasional know-it-all arrogance that made me seem more interesting than I was. Likely it was a combination of all those things, plus a few random qualities only Marla saw. She once described me as “placid,” a trait that seemed borderline banal to me, but one she apparently found appealing.

We talked about music—we were, after all, spending most of our evenings in a music store—and she, being a lover of the classics, introduced me to the artistry of Haydn, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel and—especially—Darius Milaud. I was a jazz fan, and I shared Ellington, Tatum, Mingus, Miles and Coltrane with her. We argued about the validity of composed music as opposed to improvisation, with me insisting that jazz had greater emotional integrity because its players expressed their feelings in the moment while classical musicians were restricted to interpreting a composer’s sensibilities, often from the distant past. It was a tenuous assertion at best, but I didn’t care because our verbal sparring was in itself an improvised romp, and keeping up with Marla was pure stimulation. I’d met many intelligent people at McGraw, but she was by far the brightest. Her brilliance, the range of her knowledge and her canny insights were a continual inspiration to me. When she mentioned that she’d scored perfect 800s on her SATs, I was suitably impressed but not at all surprised.

Through the winter months and into the spring, Marla and I were a couple. By then, I’d switched to Camels and had started drinking coffee—black, the way she liked it. So pervasive was her influence that I even took to reading in bed every night before turning out the lights, just as she did. “It’s a very good habit,” she said. “One you’ll probably keep for the rest of your life.” She was right.

When not at work, much of our time was spent in her kitchen. We’d sit around the table and talk. But not as ourselves. As we’d done at EconoDisc on Halloween, we role-played characters, odd personalities that we’d make up. We might adopt comic accents, explore different emotions or even switch genders, taking turns responding to one another and pulling the dialogue in whatever direction whimsy took us. Marla was extremely good at this game, one of the few persons I’ve met who could do it. Often we’d end our scenes in uproarious laughter, delighted by our cleverness. It got so that we fell into role-playing often enough that Marla eventually said, with that solicitous concern I had come to know so well, “You know, we never actually talk.”

It did seem that way. But there were times when we actually did talk. About music, as I said. But also about art and literature. She had read all the great authors and when the conversation turned to Melville or James or Wolff or—incroyable!—Proust in the original French, I would just listen. A true devotee of the written word, Marla was working her way through Finnegan’s Wake, and I would try to follow when she’d deconstruct one of Joyce’s more obscure puns. Ulysses was her Bible, and I was soon deep into Leopold Bloom’s Dublin odyssey myself. The Irish author was news to me, but his writing, as challenging as it was, was captivating. With Marla as my guide, I was soon buying up classic literature at library book sales and hunting for Dorothy Sayers mysteries in thrift shops. Dickens I found to be a master storyteller, and Zola was a superb chronicler of the human condition—she had insisted I read Germinal.

There were also occasional moments of profundity when we talked. Revelations that may have seemed little more than youthful clichés, dilettantish winks at the great philosophical questions, but which so affected me that I remember them to this day. We naturally talked of “truth”—or rather Marla did. What was it? Did it exist? She averred that “meaning” was a fungible concept; I had to look that word up. “If things mean different things to different people, what does it mean to say something is true?” she opined. “Truth is just a game we play with words.” It never occurred to me that words might have anything to do with how reality was structured. “Yeah, that’s true,” I said without thinking. She laughed.

Then there was religion. We were out on her stoop one afternoon, enjoying the warm May sun, when Marla lit a cigarette, exhaled, and turned to me. “Do you believe in God?” she asked. The question took me by surprise. “I’ve … never really thought about it,” I stammered. She was incredulous. “Really? Really? You’ve never wondered whether God exists?” I had grown up attending church every Sunday, had been baptized and confirmed, had even served as an altar boy—but religion in the end meant nothing to me. Once I turned eighteen, I never set foot in a church again. What did I care about God?

But Marla’s concern implied that I should care, and that I was deficient if I didn’t. The ontological question was clearly a central consideration for those pursuing a life of the mind. Or so I gathered. Not wanting to be left out, I began my own search for an answer. That effort continues today, but it started on an afternoon long ago with that question from my lover.

It wasn’t all contrived scenes, aesthetic debates and existential exercises, though. My months with Marla also included many everyday pleasures. We attended concerts, ate out in restaurants, visited art galleries, went to parties, took trips into town, scoured yard sales—all the ordinary things ordinary people do.

At night, we shared her single bed, a lumpy mattress on the floor in the middle room of Marla’s railroad-style apartment. Often we were joined by her calico cat, a stray tom with one blue eye that she had found on campus. He was referred to simply as “cat” because she was reluctant to impose ownership by giving him a name. The three of us made for cramped bedmates, but there were many nights when Marla and I indulged our passions, and cat did not seem to mind.

As a lover, Marla was intensely physical. She often seemed transported by the act, at once present but also far away, lost in a wash of sensations. Unlike our dayside confabs, we never spoke while making love, almost as if doing so would break the erotic spell. Still, I learned much from my silent partner, and though I was certainly no virgin, in a very real sense Marla was my first true lover. I soon found myself falling deeply in love with her.

But loving Marla was no simple thing, because she was also intensely private. As I said, I knew very little about her studies, the courses she was taking or whatever work they entailed. I don’t remember ever seeing her write a paper or flip through a textbook, and if she went to classes, I didn’t know about it. I was in my third year studying art at McGraw, and I occasionally shared my better paintings and drawings with Marla, and she was appreciative. But she never reciprocated with whatever she was working on—that part of herself she kept hidden.

Her past was also largely a mystery. I knew she’d grown up in Maryland and that she’d come to McGraw as part of a special program for exceptional students. But she never said much about her family or her childhood. She did mentioned that she’d dropped out after her sophomore year, and I gathered that she’d spent several years living in Varda, the town down the hill from the university. But I had no idea why she quit, or what she did downtown in the intervening years. I just assumed it was none of my business, which it really wasn’t.

But her reluctance to share her past may have had something to do with the sadness I first detected at Van Hoven. There were occasional moments that hinted at deeper troubles. Once when Jerry Kaplan, her curly-haired friend from the co-op, stopped by the apartment, the topic of abortion came up. He’d been working on an article for the campus newspaper about a Catholic pro-life group, and he said he could understand, even sympathize with their point of view. I could see Marla becoming upset as he talked, and suddenly she cut him off. “They have no right!” she shouted. Both Jerry and I were startled. “Women must be able to choose. It’s their lives, and it absolutely has to be their decision!” I’d never heard Marla raise her voice before, and it made me wonder if the issue wasn’t somehow a personal one for her.

There was another time when I sensed something was not right. We were getting into bed one evening and Marla, who had been unusually quiet, suddenly said, “Let’s eat candy.” Before I could reply to this strange request, she produced a shopping bag from the bottom drawer of the dresser and, upending it next to the bed, dumped out dozens of sweets—Hershey Bars, Tootsie Rolls, M&Ms, Kisses and more. I was surprised, but amenable, and we climbed into bed and feasted on a good portion of the treats, leaving a few brown streaks of chocolate on the sheets. It was just a lark to me—at twenty, what did I care about proper diet and tooth decay? But Marla seemed more than a little unhappy following the splurge. She stuffed the empty wrappers into the bag, and then, without a word, switched off the light, turned over and went to sleep.

Later I wondered about it. Was the bedtime indulgence simply a response to a moment’s craving, or was it something else? Something deeper, something unsettling? Whatever it was, I could see that eating all that candy had not satisfied Marla. More like the opposite. She never did it again, and we never talked about it, but I remember being confused by her behavior. Today, binge eating is its own category in psychology, but back then it would have been dismissed as nothing more than a childish impulse. Perhaps it was only that, but still, I remember being concerned.

* * *

AS SPRING TURNED to summer and the school year wound down, Marla and I began to drift. She quit her job at the music store and started working as a waitress in a downtown bar, a dive that featured local rock bands on weekends and was a hangout for McGraw grads who had never left Varda. As a result, we were seeing less of each other, and I was planning to spend the break in Boston interning at a gallery in Kenmore Square. That meant we would be separated for the entire summer. My feelings for Marla were as strong as ever, but I could sense that things between us were changing. At a party one evening, she largely ignored me and spent much of the time flirting with an older guy I suspected she knew from her years living in town. Seeing her gaze at him with the solicitous intensity, the coy tilt of the head that had previously been reserved for me, was too much. I made an excuse and left, walking down the hill to my rooming house. It was early morning before I could lull myself to sleep, so strong were my feelings of rejection, hurt and anger. When I woke the next morning, what I mostly felt was a deep sadness.

Not long afterward, Marla and I were doing our wash in the Laundromat up the street, and I decided it was time. I don’t know if I was protecting myself from what felt like an inevitable Dear John moment—I probably was—but there was also some solace in taking the initiative. We were sitting by the door, across from a big plate-glass window that made up the Laundromat’s storefront, and I leaned over to her. Raising my voice slightly so I could be heard over the hum of the washers, I said simply, “I’ve been thinking.” She looked at me, her brown eyes wide. I looked away—she knew what I was going to say. I felt my throat tighten as I told her how much I cared for her, how much she meant to me, but that I couldn’t really see a future for us because I would soon be leaving for Boston and she was going to graduate and probably move on. It was a terrible speech, halting and insincere, but Marla took my hand, as if to help me get the words out. It was that solicitous concern I’d first witnessed at Van Hoven. Poor boy! What can I do?

When I finished, I turned to look at her. She said nothing, but it was that slight inclination, the tilt of her head that brought home to me what I was losing. Suddenly, I stood up. “Do not move!” I commanded. Stepping over to the big window, I climbed up on its wide sill and, looking back over my shoulder, began to sketch with a finger on the upper portion of the fogged glass. With quick strokes, I roughed in the shape of Marla’s head, caught the sweep of her hair across her forehead, the slight upturn of her nose and the fullness of her lips. My finger left wet lines in the condensation, and in less than a minute, I had captured in moisture an image of my love as she had been when I first met her. I stepped down and looked back at the drawing, already fading in the Laundromat’s steamy air. Droplets streamed down from its eyes like tears. Marla was standing when I turned back, and we embraced one long last time.

In July, I flew out to Boston and started work as a preparator at the city’s Vose Gallery. I spent my days spackling walls and painting sculpture stands, uncrating and re-crating artworks, and hanging and taking down shows, all under the watchful eye of the gallery manager. A McGraw grad I knew had a one bedroom apartment in Somerville, and I slept on his couch, catching the T in Union Square each morning for the commute into the city. A few days after I arrived, my host told me I’d had a call and handed me a scrap of paper with a number. I dialed it and after a few rings, a familiar voice answered.

“Marla, it’s me.” Wondering why she called, I said, “How are you?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. Then, “Cat is dead.”

“What? What happened?” When she said nothing, I became concerned. “Are you all right?”

“The day after you left, I … I found him in the street,” she said. “Up by the Laundromat. He’s gone.”

“Oh, Marla, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.” I tried to think of something to say. “He … he was such a sweet cat. I really liked him.”

“I know. That’s why I called. I thought you should know.”

“It’s such sad news. But, how are you? Are you OK?” When she didn’t reply, I thought maybe she’d hung up. But after a moment, I heard her voice.

“Am I OK? Oh, I’m OK. I’m OK,” she said, sounding far away, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I have to go now. I just wanted you to know.”

Before I could reply, the line went dead.

IN SEPTEMBER, I returned to McGraw for my senior year. While in Boston, I found myself thinking often of Marla, missing her and wondering how she was. Her phone number had been disconnected not long after she called with the news about cat, and the few letters I sent went unanswered. But I was hoping to see her around campus, thinking that though we were no longer lovers, we might at least be friends. Then one afternoon I ran into her former housemate, and she told me that Marla had moved to New York City and was living with the guy from the party. She knew she was working for some book publisher, but that was all—she didn’t have Marla’s address or phone number.

I was surprised at how disappointed I felt, knowing that Marla was gone and that I was unlikely to ever see her again. But I was soon focused on producing work for my senior thesis show, and thoughts of the woman who had so affected my life eventually receded. Those fond memories, though, set the standard for whatever future relationship I might have. I decided I would settle for nothing less in a partner than what I’d shared with Marla Reznik.

The following year, after graduating from McGraw, I moved to Chicago to pursue a Masters degree at the Chicago Athenaeum. I found a place in Hyde Park and, when not working in the studio, spent much of my time exploring the city with a few fellow students who had become friends. It was my first experience living in an urban environment, and I thoroughly enjoyed Chicago’s diverse cultures, its vast network of streets and multiple neighborhoods, and its uniquely creative energy. But though I shared many interests and good times with my new friends, I remained single. A suitable replacement for Marla remained elusive.

Then, several months after I’d arrived in the city, I received a letter from her. I had no idea where Marla had gotten my address, but seeing her handwriting on the envelope brought a rush of excitement. Wanting to delay the pleasure of reading it, I waited until evening to open its envelope. In it was a single sheet of lined notebook paper, covered on both sides with Marla’s neat cursive. I propped myself up in bed and read.

She opened by saying that she had been living in New York City and working as a copy editor, but that things hadn’t worked out and she’d recently returned to Varda. There was no mention of the guy from the party, but she did say she was staying with Jerry Kaplan from Van Hoven while looking for work. That was followed by some uncharacteristic chit-chat about the weather and a brief description of a protest on campus, several paragraphs that were clearly filler. It was only on the backside of the page that Marla shared her reason for writing.

She began by acknowledging that our brief relationship had meant a lot to her at a time when she was struggling with “a few personal things.” My “even-tempered nature” had been a real comfort to her, and she had greatly appreciated our talks, improvised and otherwise. Her affection for me had been real, and for a time my obvious devotion to her had “meant everything.” She wished only the best for me, and had no doubt I would find happiness in my life. Her only regret, one that had troubled her for many months, was that she had never said these things to me in person and that we’d parted without really saying goodbye. That was why she was writing—to bid me farewell. “With much love,” was how she closed.

It was a strange letter and I was unsure what to make of it. I welcomed her warm words about our relationship and her appreciation of my part in it, but I also felt a twinge of disappointment at the finality with which she characterized it. Why? Was I secretly hoping that she would want to restart our affair? That she had realized I was the one and that we were destined to spend our lives together? I felt foolish even entertaining such thoughts, and yet they were there, inspired by my undiminished feelings. I couldn’t help myself.

I also couldn’t resist writing back, now that I had her address. Over the next few days, I worked on a letter that was both newsy and heartfelt. I began by describing the school and a few of the pieces I was working on, and then shared my impressions of Chicago. The remainder I devoted to her. It was an earnest paean of gratitude, nearly a whole page lauding her brilliance, wit and sincerity while expressing a deep appreciation for the affection she’d shown me and for the things I’d learned from her. I knew it was overly effusive, but I decided to be completely honest. In closing, I said there was no reason to say farewell. Why couldn’t we remain friends and maybe see each other again? I hoped we could. I enclosed a photo of myself with some of my artist friends and then took the letter to the corner mailbox.

A MONTH PASSED without a reply. Then one afternoon I returned from the studio to find a manila envelope in my mailbox. It was postmarked Varda and was apparently from Jerry. I opened it and shook out an unopened letter and a newspaper clipping.

The letter was the one I’d sent to Marla. On the back of the envelope Jerry had written, “I thought you would want to know.” The clipping was an obituary for former McGraw University student Marla Reznik.

In shock, I sat down. How … was this possible? She had just written me. I had her letter! It couldn’t be true. The clipping had a photo, a picture of a younger Marla, a yearbook portrait. I couldn’t look at it. Looking might make it true. Instead, I had to do something. I got up and left the apartment, leaving all thought behind. It was after dark before I returned. Walking the streets of Hyde Park hadn’t helped. The obituary was still there on the floor where I’d dropped it.

* * *

FOR THE YOUNG, death is an abstraction. One hears about it happening on the news, and it’s a constant dramatic presence in movies, books, music and art. But seldom does it directly affect the life of a twenty-three year old. That had been my experience, anyway. No one I knew had ever died. My parents were only in their late forties, and my grandparents still had their health. I never thought about them dying, and I certainly never expected to lose a close acquaintance, especially one so young. Especially one who meant so much to me. But death was no longer an abstraction.

The obituary, when I could finally bring myself to read it, said nothing about the circumstances of Marla’s passing. It did say she was twenty-five, which I knew, and that she had been a copy editor for the Oxford University Press after graduating. She had spent her childhood in Potomac, MD, and had been a National Merit Scholar before being admitted to McGraw. Her parents still lived in Potomac and, because their daughter loved animals, they requested that donations be made in her name to the ASPCA. Marla would be laid to rest, the article concluded, in the city’s St. Gabriel Cemetery. I noted with a sharp pang that she had died only a few days after writing to me.

That might have been the end of my involvement with Marla Reznik. Death has an unquestionable finality to it. But that was just it—her death left me wanting to know more. In the days and weeks that followed, I found myself wondering how she had died, and why. Perhaps it was only morbid curiosity, but I couldn’t make sense of someone with such promise, with so much to give, dying at twenty-five. The obituary said she had two siblings, a younger sister and an older brother. The brother was an assistant professor in economics at the University of Illinois. The UI campus was in Champaign, just a few hours south of Chicago. Hoping to learn more about his sister’s demise, I decided I’d pay the professor a visit.

I wrote to Peter Reznik care of the university, introducing myself and explaining that I had known his late sister at McGraw and that she was a close friend. I said we’d lost touch over the past year, but I’d recently received a letter from her, and then was deeply shocked to learn of her death soon afterward. Would he be willing to meet with me to help me understand what had happened? He must feel her loss greatly, and after offering condolences, I said I would be happy to bring her letter and would gladly share my memories of Marla with him. I included my phone number so that we could arrange a meeting if he were willing.

I wasn’t sure how my request would appear to Marla’s brother, since it was coming from a complete stranger and would undoubtedly touch on very personal matters. But a week later, I received a call from Prof. Reznik. He said he was surprised to get my letter, and he’d been hesitant at first to respond. But then he decided he would meet with me, since I’d clearly been close to his sister. He wasn’t sure how much he could tell me, though, because he hadn’t heard from her in several years.

I hung up feeling confused. What did Peter Reznik mean? Had Marla just been out of touch, or was it something else? Was she estranged from her older brother? She never mentioned her siblings to me, and Peter sounded very matter-of-fact on the phone, almost as if he were talking about the weather. Obviously, they hadn’t been close. Yet another mystery.

The following weekend, I caught a bus in the Loop and made the trip down to Champaign. On the UI campus, I found Kinley Hall, the university’s economics building, and rode the elevator up to Peter Reznik’s office. The professor was waiting for me, and after a terse greeting, he gestured toward a chair facing his desk. I sat and, unbuttoning my jacket, took out Marla’s letter.

“Thanks again for meeting with me, professor. I really do appreciate it.” When he said nothing, I continued. “Here’s the letter I mentioned. It’s kind of personal, but I think you’ll find it interesting.” Taking the envelope, he extracted the page, unfolded it and read. It was clear the professor was not interested in small talk.

As he read, I took him in. He was not a big man, but squarely built and probably just shy of thirty. He had his sister’s round face, but his eyes were small and not like hers at all, perhaps because they were partially hidden behind thick-framed glasses. His hair was darker than Marla’s and he had a neatly trimmed beard which made him look like an accountant, which in a way he was. Turning the letter over, he finished reading and then placed it on the desk.

“Yes, this is quite personal,” he said. “I gather Marla must have cared for you very much. Now, how can I help?”

I was startled by his abruptness. It seemed like he was meeting with an undergrad about an overdue paper, not discussing a last communication from his recently deceased sister. “Well … if it’s not too much to ask, would you mind telling me how Marla died? I don’t mean to pry, but her death was so unexpected, it’s been really hard for me to accept it. I think it would help if—” Peter Reznik held up his hand, stopping me.

“There isn’t much to tell. She was an unhappy person.” When I looked puzzled, he went on. “She apparently decided to put an end to it.” He shrugged.

I felt my face flush. “You mean she … she took her own life?”

“Committed suicide? Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“My god, that’s … that’s terrible! I had no idea,” I managed. “I’m so sorry for you.”

“It’s our mother you should be sorry for. Marla broke her heart.” He pushed the letter across the desk.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure. To lose a child like that must be devastating.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Prof. Reznik said dryly. “It wasn’t her suicide.”

My meeting with Marla’s brother lasted another ten minutes. He seemed eager to conclude it, but he also clearly wanted to disavow me of any misapprehensions I might have regarding his sister. I simply listened, and this is what he told me.

The Reznik family was, by any measure, quite traditional. Mr. Reznik’s parents had emigrated from Poland in the early 1900s, and he had grown up in a conservative Catholic household in West Virginia. After college, he’d gone to work for the CIA and had recently retired as one of the agency’s senior economic analysts. Mrs. Reznik’s family was Boston Brahmin, and she was a summa cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College. Though she had thoughts of pursuing a career in academia, after marrying she settled into the role of wife and mother, keeping house and raising her children. Of those children, Marla was by far the most gifted. She excelled in school, receiving glowing reports from her teachers, and in high school was repeatedly voted class president and twice had the lead in the school play. In her senior year, she was selected as Maryland’s “Homemaker of Tomorrow” and was a contestant on NBC’s “College Bowl” quiz program. Though she was only 17, she was accepted into an experimental plan of study being developed by McGraw University, a PhD program that would award its participants a Doctorate after just six years. Her parents were thrilled—it was a very big deal, a great honor. When she left home right after graduating to begin her studies at McGraw, Marla’s future seemed bright with promise.

Peter paused his narrative here and stared out the window. “But what happened?” I asked after a moment.

“What happened?” he replied, turning. “She got knocked up.”

“You mean … she got pregnant?”

“Yes, pregnant,” He sighed. “After that, everything went south. I don’t really know the details. I assume she had an abortion. All I know is that my father was furious, and my mother could not stop crying. After that, Marla never came home again.”

On the bus ride back to Chicago, I sorted through what I’d been told. Marla Reznik had obviously been an exceptional young woman with seemingly unlimited potential. Her parents undoubtedly had high hopes for her. Mrs. Reznik’s own academic ambitions had been sidelined, but her brilliant daughter seemed destined to have the career she had missed. When they learned of her pregnancy, Marla’s parents must have been devastated. Her obvious promiscuity undoubtedly felt like a betrayal, a clear rejection of moral decency. And then there were the consequences. Peter Reznik had described his family as conservative, and the only future they must have seen for their unfortunate daughter was an early marriage and concurrent motherhood. No PhD, no academic life, no career.

There was always an abortion, but that must have been out of the question. As a religious family, the Rezniks would have looked upon ending a pregnancy as a major sin. Though the procedure had become legal in New York several months before Marla dropped out of school, her parents would never have approved of an abortion and certainly would not have paid for one. The nineteen year old was left to decide her fate on her own—an impossible choice between dead-end domesticity and the death of an innocent child.

Was this assessment overly dramatic? Maybe. But Prof. Reznik’s unemotional recounting of his dead sister’s predicament struck me as cold, even cruelly judgmental. If the rest of the family viewed Marla as he did, she must have felt her fall from grace acutely. How could she not have internalized it? That would explain her reluctance to talk about her family, and would certainly have accounted for the sadness I noticed when we first met. When she dropped out that spring, she must have felt very much alone.

* * *

OVER THE NEXT two years, I concentrated on my art and made several important breakthroughs. I quit painting and began creating mixed media pieces that addressed some of the same issues Marla and I had discussed at McGraw. I soon found myself developing an interest in philosophy, and after auditing a few introductory courses, set myself a goal of reading as many classic texts as I could, from Plato to Wittgenstein. That was wildly ambitious, of course, but I wanted to expand on the things I’d learned from Marla, ideas that she’d exposed me to. I suppose it was my way of honoring her memory.

After I finished my degree at the Athenaeum, I moved to New York City and talked my way into a job as an “installation assistant” at the Museum of Modern Art. As I had done years earlier in Boston, I was again spackling and painting, crating and uncrating, and hanging and taking down shows, although now I performed those tasks wearing white cotton gloves. One of the benefits of working at MoMA, I quickly learned, was the ability to network. After several months, a friendly conservator hooked me up with the Franklin Furnace, an offbeat exhibition space and art archive downtown that was perfectly suited to the sort of esoteric work I was making. The Furnace included a few of my pieces in a group show of mixed media creations by other up-and-coming artists, and one afternoon while I was on duty behind the gallery’s reception desk, in walked the fellow from that party at Marla’s apartment—the person she had moved to New York City with after graduating. He didn’t recognize me, but I introduced myself, saying we’d met a few years ago at Marla Reznik’s apartment in Varda and that she had been a good friend. I explained that her death had come as a complete shock and though I knew a little about the circumstances leading up to it, I had long wondered about her final days. Would he be willing to share his memories of her with me? Maybe over beers at a bar down the street that was a hangout for Franklin Furnace’s volunteer staff? Marla’s friend regarded me with bemusement, and then smiled.

“OK, sure. Why not?” he said. “As long as you’re buying.”

We met at the bar after the gallery closed, and I ordered a couple of drafts. Marla’s friend was a tall man, rangy with long stringy hair the color of suet. Though his bearing was imposing, his eyes were kind and he spoke softly. He said his name was Brad Silver and that he had been a McGraw student but quit after a year. He first met Marla when she would come into the College Town deli where he was working. She was sweet and engaging, but he thought also a little sad. He didn’t see her for a while, and then she came in one afternoon and asked him if he knew of any apartments for rent or of anyone needing a roommate. She seemed kind of desperate, and he felt sorry for her.

“I told her there was space in my house,” Brad said, taking a sip of beer. “I was renting a place downtown with a friend, and the living room had an alcove with space for an extra bed. I said she was welcome to that until she could find something better. So she moved in with us.”

Silver soon learned that Marla had also dropped out and was having some kind of family trouble. It seemed like she couldn’t go home. She didn’t really talk about herself, but one evening after a bottle of wine, she shared a little of her story.

“She said she’d gotten pregnant. With some guy, an upperclassman in that elite program she was in. They’d been dating for a while, but I guess when he got the news, he split,” Brad said, shaking his head. “Left her on her own. Real classy guy.”

“Do you know what happened? Was there a child?”

“Child? Oh, no. She went to the city and had an abortion. Not long after that, she moved in with me.”

“I got the impression her parents weren’t too happy about that. The abortion, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah. You could say that.” Silver frowned. “I think they pretty much disowned her. I mean, what was the big deal? It was legal by then, and she was just nineteen, only a kid. But they were very religious, really conservative. They just crossed her off their list.”

But not completely. A month after she moved in, Silver said, Marla’s father drove to Varda, hoping to talk his daughter into returning to Potomac. “He came to the house, but she refused to go. She wouldn’t even look at him,” Brad said. “He seemed kind of sad, like he was sorry about the way they’d treated her. But I still thought he was a prick.”

When I asked what Marla did in the months before returning to school, Silver was somewhat circumspect. But I wanted to know—did she have a job? Was she working downtown? Noting his reticence, I signaled for another round and I waited until the beers arrived. Brad took a swig of his, and then quietly spoke.

“No, she didn’t have a job. She just took care of the house, and we took care of her,” he said. “After a while, I kind of had a thing for Marla. We both did.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? Well. After a while, Marla wasn’t sleeping on the cot in the alcove.” Silver paused, took another drink, and then looked squarely at me. “She probably wouldn’t want me to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

“That she was my lover. And that she was my roommate’s lover, too.” Seeing my reaction, he said, “Yeah, that’s right. One night she’d be in bed with me. The next she’d go to him. It was kind of like Jules and Jim, that French movie.”

“Wasn’t that awkward? Weren’t you … jealous?” I felt my face flush. Was I jealous?

“No, no, that’s the thing of it. We both loved her, and we were both good friends. So we … sort of shared.”

“But why would Marla do that? It must have been confusing. Especially after the trouble she’d gotten into with her boyfriend.”

Silver stared for a moment at the colorful bottles arrayed on the opposite side of the bar, and then turned to me. “I guess it must have been confusing. But I really don’t know what she was thinking. Like I said, she never talked much about herself. I just kind of fell in love with her, and I was happy to get whatever time with her I could.” He drew a line in the condensation on the side of his mug. “I think she was maybe acting out her family’s idea of a ‘bad girl.’ Which is what she thought she was, at least in their eyes. Only bad girls get pregnant, right?”

If those who loved her thought Marla was a slut, shouldn’t she behave like one? Sleep around? Give herself freely? That’s what Brad Silver concluded. “But I really don’t know what she was feeling, only that I think she was very unhappy. But I was happy, and we lived like that for a number of months. Then she moved up the hill and went back to school.”

“And later she moved to the city with you?”

“Yeah, yeah, a few years later. We kind of hooked up again, and I had a friend who was subletting his place in the East Village,” Silver said. “We moved in and she worked as a copy editor for a while.” He rubbed his chin and sighed. “But it wasn’t the same as before. Not like in Varda, when we were a threesome.” He caught my look and hastily added, “I don’t mean anything kinky. Nothing like that. Don’t get me wrong. It was just that she had kind of shut down. I couldn’t get through to her.”

They were together for about six months, and then Silver came home one evening to an empty apartment. “She was there one day, gone the next,” Brad said. “No goodbye, no note, no nothing. Just left everything and cleared out. I learned later that she’d gone back to Varda.”

“Did you try to find out what happened?”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “I even went up there to talk to her face to face. But it was like she didn’t care. She really had nothing to say to me. She was somewhere else completely.” Brad frowned, and after a moment added, “It really hurt me. And that was the last time I ever saw her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. He clearly still cared for Marla Reznik, and recalling their days together had brought up painful memories. In a way, it was the same for me. I drained my mug and looked at our reflections in the big mirror above the bottles. “Do you know how she died?”

“No—and I don’t want to know,” Silver said abruptly. “But if you’re that curious, you can ask Jerry. You know Jerry Kaplan? She was staying at his place at the time.”

AFTER WE PARTED, I thought about contacting Jerry. Did I really want to know the details of Marla’s death? Maybe Brad Silver was right—knowing was unnecessary. Still, I was curious. I couldn’t help wanting to know everything about the woman who had so influenced my life.

I had the letter Jerry Kaplan sent me in Chicago, and it turned out he was still living at its return address. A few weeks later, I drove up to Varda and met with him. He was living in a roomy apartment over the College Town bookstore, and he welcomed me with a friendly smile. I sat on the sofa in the living room while he went into the kitchen to make coffee. Looking around, I suddenly realized that here was where Marla spent her last days.

“You take cream and sugar?” Jerry said from the kitchen.

“No—black is good, thanks.”

Kaplan came into the room holding two mugs. His distinctive black curls had been shorn, giving him a conservative look better suited to the job he’d taken as a reporter for the Varda Journal, the town’s daily newspaper. Round tortoise shell glasses, newly acquired, made him look like a benevolent owl.

“I figured I’d see you one of these days,” Jerry said. “That you’d want to know more about what happened.”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe it’s a bit weird, but I can’t help wondering. She meant a lot to me.”

“Yeah, I know. I get it, so no worries.”

Jerry explained that Marla had appeared one evening at the apartment and asked if she could stay while she sorted things out. She said she’d quit her job in New York and had left the guy she was living with, and wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Knowing about her past troubles, Kaplan took her in and offered to get her work at the paper. But she spent her days shut up in her room, listening to music and only coming out for an occasional meal. She was as solicitous as ever, the familiar Marla, but was also clearly depressed. In what turned out to be her final days, she barely spoke to anyone.

“I really didn’t know what to do,” Jerry said. “I could see that she was in distress, but I didn’t want to intrude. Then when I knocked repeatedly on her door one evening and she didn’t answer, I kind of freaked out. She was there on the bed, really out of it, and there was an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the night table.”

Kaplan called 911, but the EMTs were unable to revive the twenty-five-year-old woman on the bed. Marla Reznik was taken by ambulance to Varda Medical Center where, a little after 10 p.m., she was officially pronounced dead. Later that evening Jerry called her parents.

“Mr. Reznik couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. I guess they were completely shocked, but it was like they didn’t want to know—or didn’t care,” Jerry said. “Later, when I was packing up her things to send to them, that’s when I found the note.”

“What note? She left a note?” I managed to say.

“Yes—or no, not really. Just a request. It was with a few handwritten pages. I guess she’d felt the need to get some thoughts on paper before doing what she did. The note just said, ‘Please burn these,’ and then, ‘I’m sorry’.”

“Do you still have those pages?” I tried to hide my excitement. “You didn’t burn them?”

“Sorry, but I did,” Jerry said apologetically. “I had to. Her dying request.”

“Do you remember what was in them?”

“No, I didn’t read them. I just burned them all in the sink.” Kaplan sighed and sat back. He looked at me for a moment, and then looked away. “Almost all of them, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I said eagerly. “Do you still have one?”

“Because it’s you, I guess it’s OK. Yeah, I did keep a page,” Jerry said quietly. “I shouldn’t have, but I just couldn’t destroy them all. It was like washing all of her down the sink. I just couldn’t do that. So I kept that one.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure, OK. In fact, why don’t you keep it? Then it’s out of my hands.” Kaplan shrugged and added, “I couldn’t really understand it anyway. But maybe it will mean something to you.”

* * *

IT WAS A single sheet. A piece of lined notebook paper just like Marla had used for her letter to me. One side was filled with the familiar script, and seeing her handwriting again filled me with sadness. I waited until I got back to the city before reading what she’d written, and that evening, when I did, I was just as confused as Jerry had been. What did these words have to do with Marla, with the brilliant woman I knew, or with her situation? Was this just some random story she’d made up for her own amusement, perhaps to distract herself from what she must have known was coming? From what I’d been told of her emotional state at the time, it didn’t seem possible that she could spend her last days on frivolities. And yet here was a page of simple text that was of such consequence, so meaningful, that it and the others with it had to be burned after her death. Her thoughts before swallowing a dozen Seconals weren’t of her family or her friends, those who loved and cared for her. They were of those notebook pages. I read the words again, trying to winnow some larger meaning from their odd narrative.

A Parable

A man was traveling alone along a country road. Around a bend he encountered a woman sitting by the roadside and selling pots. “Won’t you buy one of my pots?” she asked as the man passed. “No,” he replied. “I have a long way to go and don’t wish to be burdened.” Farther down the road, he passed another woman. She was selling fancy coats, and she asked the man to purchase one. “I have no need of a coat,” he replied. “I’ve been walking a great distance, and the effort has made me quite warm.” As he neared his destination, the man came upon a third woman at the side of the road. As he approached, she stood and loosened her garment, exposing herself. “Do you like what you see?” she asked. The man averted his eyes and hurried by. “I am a righteous man, and it is my home that I wish to see,” he said over his shoulder. He reached home just as the sun was setting, and his wife greeted him at the door. “Come in, husband. I have been waiting for you,” she said. “With my new cooking pot, I have prepared a delicious supper.” The man went to wash the dust of the road from his hands and face and when he returned, his wife was holding a coat of many colors. “Before you sit, husband, put on this new coat. It will keep you warm.” The man sat at the table in his finery and ate his fill of the meal his wife had prepared. As he was finishing, she came back into the room wearing only a chemise, her hair undone. “Now that you have dined and are comfortable, husband, won’t you come to the bed chamber? I will rub your back.” In bed, the man embraced his wife in passion and she willingly yielded to his ardor. When he was satisfied, he turned over, intending to sleep. But his wife suddenly straddled him and clasped her hands about his throat. “Did you not recognize me, husband? My pots, my coats, my body? You would not pay then, so I will take payment now.” With those words, she tightened her grasp until she had choked the life from her husband. The next day, as the sheriff led her away, the wife said to no one in particular, “This much is true: Nothing is as it seems.”

Nothing is as it seems. What could that mean? Was this strange allegory something other than a simple “parable”? Marla had been a lover of words, finding in their fungibility the capacity for symbolism that might allude to larger truths. Though those truths, she had said, were little more than personal constructs. Perhaps this story, a last testament from my deceased lover, was intended as a framework for personal revelation—for multiple truths? Maybe the man on the road represented the expectations that had been heaped on her. In the end, she had obliterated them. Or perhaps the traveler stood for her family, refusing to acknowledge her until she exacted a fatal reckoning. Or did the story allude to some other reality?

As I read through the text again, I suddenly felt the flush of a realization. I dropped the paper on the table and sat back. Wasn’t the man on the road my love for Marla?

That love—that obsession—that had caused me to reject other possible relationships in favor of finding my way “home”—a way back to her? I suddenly saw it clearly. With this page, I’d arrived at that place. I had found Marla with all the things she had given me. But in the end, she’d freed me from my obsession. I’d had to pay for my love of an illusion. So she killed it for me. It was her parting gift. That’s how it felt. It didn’t matter that another reader might find some other truth in the parable. That was actually the point. I felt the burden I hadn’t known I was carrying lift.

I folded the paper and slipped it along with Marla’s last letter into the manila envelope that held my unopened letter and her obituary. Later that evening, I went out to the bodega on the corner and bought a pack of Camel regulars. Walking home, I split open the pack’s cellophane, peeled back its foil and shook one cigarette loose. Dropping the butt into my shirt pocket, I tossed the rest of the pack into a curbside trash bin. Back in the apartment, I took the envelope, carefully placed the single Camel in it, and fastening its clasp, placed it on the topmost shelf underneath a stack of winter hats in the hallway coat closet. Then I went back into the living room and put Emil Gilels playing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 on the turntable, and as I listened, I no longer thought of Marla Reznik.