I am haunting him. It isn’t my intention, but he just keeps summoning my presence during his daily commute on New Jersey Transit. As he stares through misty train windows, I’m the stuff male mid-life erotic dreams are made of. The beautiful naked woman I once was fills his mind as he departs a horse country McMansion early each morning. He’s a well-respected man in a gray flannel suit serving the ruling class inside a skyscraper. His perpetual calling forth of my spirit; this has got to stop. Honestly, I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve been a Muse to a Rock God and a Woman Writer. Artists, activists, poets, and screenwriters truly need me. The corporate bean counter, who thinks he once loved me, does not.

I’m flattered by his fond recollections of our youthful time together. I’m glad he’s decided that I’m the one who got away, a prize he threw away, way more than a booty call paired with Chinese food. I’m touched that he’s visited my suburban grave twice this year. It’s the kind of homage my best friend knows I’d revel in. But this must end. I was never his wife and, once he broke up with me, I went ahead and met my soulmate. That didn’t guarantee happiness or long life. However imperfect my marriage was, I found fulfillment in ways that he could never imagine or provide.

My former lover has aged reasonably well. He’s taller, slimmer, the bluish-green eyes still lovely even if his hair is mostly gone. I have covertly encouraged him to arrange this Manhattan rendezvous. They’ll be having Italian food because it was my favorite. My frugal best friend will consider ordering the shrimp cocktail (yes, it was my favorite appetizer) but then pass on it. She won’t realize, until it is too late, that he’s going to pay for her meal. My ex-boyfriend wants to know my life story and he thinks he’ll get it during this dinner. Luckily, my best friend knows what needs to be done; gently but firmly. I can’t have this guy reciting Mourner’s Kaddish for an entire year. He shouldn’t have even been doing it for the past three months. I was not his wife, would never have been his wife, and that’s that. His still pining for some future with me…it’s ridiculous. He’s married and has a teenage son. If he’s unhappy in his marriage, then he must find the courage to move on.

***

This is like a short story, only I can’t figure out if it is by Poe, O. Henry, or de Maupassant.

We’re having dinner at Il Bocconcino because she loved Italian food. We’re having dinner at Il Bocconcino because he and his older sister adore the place. Waiters in tuxedos minister to our every need. But what we really want, we cannot have. The woman we love cannot be brought back to life.

An ex-boyfriend has discovered the untimely death of my best friend. He’s visited her grave twice. I’m touched by his homage. I’m sure she is, too. He wants to know if she was happy without him. He feels guilty for breaking up with her, probably to have the experience of sleeping with other women. She was too easily available…if he could have her, surely there would be many others.

The heart-broken fifty-something man mourns her incredible beauty (inner and outer) and, by discreet extension, his younger days of sexual prowess. His older sister interrogates me to determine where I fit into the class structure and I respond with good humor. The more I choose to share about myself, the less I am compelled to say about my deceased friend. I don’t want to reveal too much. This ex-boyfriend has no right to a full accounting of her life. At the time of their romance, I had consigned him to the eventual dustbin of history, a person she’d outgrow, someone that was filling my friend’s life until better days would come. Now, I must behave with compassion. He’s suffering, racked with guilt, mourning the lovely girl he didn’t marry. He had a prize within his grasp and let her go. An American Jewish Prince, he thought himself more of a catch than he was. Oh, he’s turned out quite well, with a high-achieving child, large house, plenty of land, and a wife he fails to mention. He still has lovely eyes. But my friend would have lost her mind in the suburban boondocks. She was meant for “Urban Rock Gods from Foreign Lands.” She was meant for greatness herself.

***

How can I endure this dinner? Am I really spending three hours discussing the tragic death of my treasured sister from breast cancer? Why must these people remind me of how horrible her death was? Yes, I understand we are doing some time lapse form of shiva for their sake, but this is awful. I don’t know how we are surviving this conversation and the horrible memories that surface. It was very generous of my sister’s best friend to accompany me this evening.  She’s a genteel gladiator, deflecting interrogation with wit and charm, trying to protect the secrets of the friend she adored. They were like sisters.

***

Oh, we were much more than sisters and best friends. If one of us had been male, there would have been a marriage. But we were both straight, so being best friends sufficed.

***

I’m mortified that my sister arrives late. We keep putting off ordering our meals but, at the prompting of our waiter, crack open a bottle of California cabernet sauvignon. My former lover’s best friend seems very comfortable with assessing the quality of our wine.

“Have you been to many wine tastings?”

“I’ve been to Rutherford Hill in Napa and out on the North Fork.”

She doesn’t wear wedding rings but tells my sister that she’s married with a son in his twenties. She’s concerned about me, sees that I’m suffering. She tells me that our dinner is a delayed shiva call and tries to substantively answer our questions about the staging of the cancer during diagnosis, if my ex-girlfriend had been taking good care of herself. I’m told it is a failure of early detection…she went for all those annual mammograms.

***

I encourage him to read the book Mourning and Mitzvah and he tells me there’s a copy in his house. Do the exercises, I say, and read the chapter about the immortality of the soul.

***

The traffic was terrible and I’m late as usual. I quickly ordered broiled red snapper and a side of angel hair pasta. The pleasant dark-haired woman seated next to me seems so familiar; our paths must have crossed somewhere. She’s nowhere near as pretty as her best friend, the great beauty who would have been my sister-in-law if my brother hadn’t been so immature. She was bridesmaid at my wedding and would have fit seamlessly into our family life. We all loved her. It’s terrible that she’s died so young and such a horrible death. My baby brother is broken-hearted. He’s never had regrets before. I think he always imagined that, someday, they’d be reunited.

***

What they don’t know: this awkward conversation conjures roads not taken. I’m remembering the college boyfriend who taught me the finer points of wine and cheese but was repelled by my neediness. I wonder what might have happened if my best friend and I hadn’t been estranged. What if we had shared a Manhattan apartment, managed to earn living wages, and built our careers together? Would we have married the men we did, or made different choices? Are some things just meant to be while others are rendered impossible?

He wants to know:

“Did you marry your college boyfriend?”

“I didn’t marry either of them.”

***

I’d always checked on LinkedIn to see how she was doing. Suddenly, the promotions stopped. Nothing seemed to change in her life. I Googled and found, four years later, her New York Times obituary.

It was a terrible, terrible shock. I’ve been imagining being back with her for years and now…this is not going to happen.

***

I know what it is to have regrets. I know what it is to receive the horrific news that an old lover has died. One has to understand one’s moral obligations and act accordingly. But there’s no obligation here. She’s been out of his life for decades, she was married to someone else, and that was the reality on the ground. After he broke up with her all those years ago, she called me to share her anger and pain. I told her there were lots of good fish in the sea. My beautiful friend had tremendous pride. If you shut the door on her, she stalked away in her high-heeled black leather boots and never looked back.

***

I regarded them as pre-engaged. In an Eastern European “Anatevka,” they’d surely have been wed. But the “Schmuck,” as I used to call him, did not appreciate my sister or treat her particularly well. He has regrets, he has guilt, but he also probably never slept with, and never will sleep with, a woman even half as lovely or brilliant. Would she have had an easier life if they’d married? Yes. Would she have had a happier life? I don’t know. Maybe they would have had children? Could that have prevented her from developing cancer?

***

This marriage would have been a disaster. My cosmopolitan friend could never spend her life with a provincial accountant, regardless of how much money he made. She married for love. She married to be loved, not owned. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s arm candy. Her beauty was a perk that made life sweeter; she never used it to manipulate other people or make them feel inferior. During dinner, I was proud to tell about all her professional accomplishments and financial independence. To speak of how her colleagues adored her, her love of fine food and great theater, her Anglophile nature, her many trips to London, how it was her cherished city. Sadly, I’ll never have tea at Fortnum and Mason with her or savor Chelsea Flower Show pleasures in her company.

***

This dinner needs to end. The waiters are clearing tables and rearranging the chairs; surely he will pay the check and let them go? Mortal grief is hard to witness. Has my old boyfriend learned what he needs to know? Will he finally stop reciting Kaddish for me and focus on fixing his life? My wonderful brother and loyal best friend have already discharged the sacred duties of mourning and I’ve been elevated to an angelic citadel beyond imagining. My best friend wonders whether his obsession would end if he knew how my body had changed as the years passed. She thinks he never could have handled the impact of aging and cancer upon my appearance and I’m inclined to agree.

Please, please, let me go! I’ve truly ascended. You must stop praying for me as the young wife you didn’t have…

***

“She wanted desperately to get out of Queens.”

He’s shocked by my words.

“I didn’t know that.”

Oh Lover Boy, what you didn’t know…she also wanted to write for Rolling Stone.

“She wanted to go away to college.”

“Her mother always wanted me to take care of her. Her mother talked about her going to college where her boyfriend was going.”

***

That’s when my blood ran cold. What was her mother thinking? How could she want her daughter to marry so young, before becoming her full and finest self? Why did she consider this feckless young man capable of truly caring for her daughter? Driving a girlfriend to the Lemon Tree for haircuts is hardly a measure of devotion…

***

“Did you know she graduated cum laude?”

“No, I didn’t realize that. At one time, she wanted to be a lawyer. I told her that she could do whatever she wanted.”

Yeah, that’s nice. She didn’t need you to bolster her self-esteem. My sister never forgot how smart she was.

***

He paid the check. We hugged quickly and made our farewells. I know that, despite best efforts, I’ve failed in my mission. It’s going to take something from beyond the beyond to settle these matters decisively.

***

Blackbirds started crapping on my rear windshield in the dead of night. Flocks of seagulls screamed inland and began pooping on the windows of my commuter train. Windswept cardinals crashed into my newly installed Pella windows and doors, their bodies strewn across a freshly painted verandah. Bands of ravens perch atop my outdoor barbeque pit. Their wings flap ominously whenever my thoughts turn to her. I think these are signs.

***

His celestial entreaties have ceased.

***

In accordance with the Jewish calendar, I light a candle and recite the Kaddish on the anniversary of her death. There’s a quote from the Yizkor memorial service:

“In the wind that blows, we remember them.”

Every day, I listen for her in the wind.