Mais, Il Est Trop Tard Maintenant in The Alex Era

A letter I wrote to my estranged husband before he was killed....

A.,

Even after all this time, whenever I’m at a book sale, I still always look for the Fante. It’s my thing. Actually, it was your thing that became our thing, &, like so many other things, is now mine to carry alone. I’m not looking for just any Fante, no. I’m looking for a copy of that Fante you stole from that bookstore on St. Mark’s, then later lost once-upon-a-time-in-NYC (maybe karmically) and were always looking to replace. Ask the Dust would’ve been easy to replace, but no, you lost Dago Red…a rarer one of his books, one that never appeared on any of the shelves or tables we scoured at the many used book sales we searched.

One of the last memories I have of you is us on a final quest for that book. It was after we had broken up, after I had left you. Even then, I kept my foot in the door. I hadn’t really wanted to walk out it in the first place. I just couldn’t take the reality that the worst part of my day every day was the twenty seconds spent opening the door to your apartment. I knew one of the times I was going to open that door and I was going to find you dead, overdosed. Every time I went in the bedroom to find you alive and nodding out from heroin, I was the happiest, angry person alive. I didn’t want to leave someone who was so clearly hurting…but I just couldn’t do it anymore, Alex, I couldn’t do it.

After a month, I returned to pack my belongings. In truth, it was just an excuse that allowed me to make sure you were ok. You had no one else but other reckless junkies to look in on you…. We divided up our cds, I remember I didn’t have the heart to take Elliott Smith back, so I left it. You had already pawned most of the rest of mine that I had left behind to get money for drugs… Then we divided up our book collection. You kept the Bukowskis, they were yours…they belonged with you. I took Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath. None of us cared about John Dos Passos or William Carlos Williams. We each took one. We split the collection of all the e.e. cummings. I took the Celine you had gifted me. I took the other Celine that was in French that I would try to translate and read to you, page by torturous page. (In hindsight, I should have left it…I haven’t opened it since. Mais, il est trop tard maintenant.) There was a book sale at Kirkland Art Center the following weekend, we decided to go together & replace what we were each losing.

At the book sale, I remember just watching you. You wore your knit cap, pulled down low over your dark curls & a heavy leather jacket…I watched your green eyes pour over titles, while you drummed on your lips with your stocky fingers. Every once in a while, your quicksilver, shoplifter’s skilled hand would dart down and pluck a book out, like you were fishing by hand. I realized in that moment with no small amount of despair–I didn’t hate you. Not even one little bit. No, instead I loved you but just couldn’t be with you because I couldn’t stand watching you kill yourself every goddamned day. We stood near each other, not talking, every so often you passed me titles you knew I would want. We replaced many of the titles we were looking for that day. For some reason I had a feeling we would find the Fante that day, simply because it was our last chance to do so together…but God doesn’t grant closure in the name of neat convenience.

As I dropped you off that day, you asked me if I would help you clean your apartment, as you had been evicted & had a month to get out. I felt I had stayed there with you for the majority of the time, it was only right I help you. I showed up the next weekend & we cleaned the apartment. You were in a goofy mood & you made me laugh like you used to when we first started dating. We reminisced about all the things that had happened during the time period we lived in that apartment…our trips to Buffalo to visit Bernhard & Jeff, meeting Edgar Oliver after a poetry reading, that trip to Albany to see Rufus Wainwright in a car with barely any brakes left, our wedding. I imagined us erasing the worst parts of ourselves from each room, as we laughed & cleaned. The spot where you told me you didn’t see me the same since I had the abortion….rubbed out. The place where I drunkenly & nastily told you that you couldn’t get anything right because you were always fucking high…obliterated. The space I stood when I opened the drawer to find out you had stolen all our honeymoon money & blown it on drugs…baptized with soap and water. All those moments of damage, I imagined completely expunged from the apartment, from the record of our life there together…But the love, the love I left behind in the corners and closets & cabinets. Despite it all, there was still so much of it. At the end of the day, you asked me if I would come back the next day and help you to pick out curtains for your new place. I drove home in a hopeful twilight…wanting to be back with you, seeing the possibility.

I showed up the next day & knocked tentatively. You opened the door, disheveled & confused.
“Bunny!? Did we have plans today?”
“Yes, remember? We were cleaning your apartment & you asked me to come take you to Big Lots to buy some curtains.”
“When?” Oh, no.
“Yesterday.”
“You were here yesterday?” Oh, Alex, no. Please tell me you remember yesterday.
“Yeah, don’t you remember?”
“No. Sorry.”

I knew then. There was no point. I was a book you had wanted enough to pilfer, but were too careless to keep. And just like with the Fante, your hands never touched me again.

Today, I made the annual pilgrimage to the Berry Hill Book Sale with K. & R…You should know there were no Fantes there whatsoever, Ask the Dust or otherwise. Instead, I bought a book by Mordecai Richler, the favorite author of the man I’ve been sleeping with. J.’s made his way into my music selection, he’s moving onto my bookshelves now…We all have to move on, Al, you know that. I’m trying. It’s not easy, but I swear to god, I’m trying. You know, sometimes, I wonder if you are somewhere, looking in the F section at the very same moment as I am…you fingering dusty, cracked spines like you’re reading braille, my hands trying to ferret out that elusive title on a dust jacket. I keep imagining us on Gemini missions in split-screen…both of us reaching for the long sought after book at the exact same moment and, impossibly, our hands touch & conduct lightning through our bodies. Maybe you’re having better luck than me finding the Fante. In fact, I hope you are. I figure it is better you find it then me, because even if I held that book in these hands that are rheumatic with the memory of cradling your beautiful face, I have no address for you to even send it to…and it would only make me sad to see the holy grail sit on my shelf…we both know it belongs with the Fisher King whose wounds I could not heal…

–your Bunny

Last updated January 27, 2024