the wrong font

“This love of his is not something
he can do if you aren’t there…
Go back, you whisper,
but he wants to be fed again
by you. O handful of gauze, little
bandage, handful of cold
air, it is not through him
you will get your freedom.”
-Margaret Atwood, Eurydice

“Let me tell you a story.

This happened last summer, during one of my frequent trips back to Boston. I had just spent a few uneventful hours in Harvard Square and was taking the Red Line back across the river when I decided, on a whim, to get off at a stop called ‘Central Square.’ I spent a lot of time in Central Square back in the day, including two jobs and a lot of night life, and I wanted to check it out again.

As soon as I emerged from the subway, I knew I’d made the right decision. The Square was alive, electric, humming with energy, that blossoming of meaning that the philosopher William James termed the ‘blooming, buzzing confusion.’ My seneses heightened. I once more became aware of that certain Presence I sometimes feel hovering just behind the surface of things, waiting to reveal its face. A sacred danger was in the air. I felt at home and started walking.

She was on me before I knew what was happening, as if she had just risen up from the subway grate. ‘Do you have any money so I can feed my kids?’

She may have been in her mid-twenties, shoeless, emaciated, scruffy blond hair, her arms and face spotted with small red scabs. I pulled out the few dollar bills that I had in my wallet and put them into her outstretched hand, which quickly vanished. I walked further up the square and it occurred to me that she could probably use something to eat. I found a convenience store and bought a pre-wrapped sandwich, a bottle of water, and a small bag of potato chips.

After I delivered the food, she said, ‘Do you have any money so I can get a bus ticket back to Rhode Island?’

‘I just gave you all my cash a few minutes ago.’

‘Can you go to an ATM?’

‘No. I’m not going to an ATM.’

As I was walking away, I heard a call: ‘Hey! Wait a minute!’

Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around. You’ve done enough. Don’t turn around.

So I turned around, and she was closing on me with her arm outstretched. This time, though, her palm was facing down.

‘Hey there,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Michael.’

‘My name’s C______. It was very nice to have met you.’

I briefly took her hand. Then she turned away, sank down onto a bench, and started tearing open the bag of potato chips with her teeth.”

I don’t know why I decided to tell that story just then, in that bare room. I guess I thought that the students, in their dingy green uniforms and brand-new sneakers, would understand the situation and the circumstances. After a pause, a student—the one who always wrote “God bless!” at the end of his papers—asked, “What do think you learned from that?”

It was a startling question for a student to ask a teacher and I didn’t have an answer. Certainly, I knew how I felt about what happened, but it never occurred to me to think about what it meant. I was immediately reminded of a similar occurrence in the prison a number of years ago. In those early days, the college program was shaky and unsure, a thing of shreds and patches, held together by private donations and whatever materials we could scrounge up. It was never a sure thing.

There came a time, though, when it really seemed as if the money had dried up, and that this was going to be the last class. As I was walking up the hallway at the end of the night, I had heard a voice call out, “Have a nice night, professor. Drive safe.” Now, one of the things you learn very quickly is that college begins and ends at the classroom doorway. Once out of the room, you are not to interact with the students in any way. Under the circumstances, though, I had decided to turn around.

The students were standing motionless along the wall, in double column, guarded by two corrections officers brandishing nightsticks. I made eye contact with a student in the front and he gave me a quick wave, a mere flicker of the hand. Then I turned a corner and they had been swallowed up by the prison. The image is with me yet.

The Greeks told of the master singer, Orpheus, who, upon the death of his beloved Euridyce, traveled into the underworld and, through the power of his singing, was given permission to lead her back to the world of the living. At the last minute, though, he turned around, only to see her disappear back into the darkness. It’s a well-known story. Perhaps, though, we’ve been reading it wrong. Perhaps the turning did not cause Orpheus to lose Euridyce—as if he ever really had that kind of agency—but instead forced him to realize a heartbreaking truth: she may have been his song, but she was never his to save.  

“I’m not sure what I learned,” I said, coming back to my senses. “I guess the lesson would be, ‘Don’t turn around’.”

“Maybe she was just lonely,” the student replied.

“Yes. That must have been it.”