The Man I Love (34 page)

She took his hand, led him back into the bedroom. They kissed, hungry, peeling each other’s clothes off with shaking hands. The night sat up and begged, ravenous. He was alive. He hadn’t died. Sons and daughters had died today but he was alive, down on his knees, naked, running his mouth over Melanie’s stomach, curling his fingertips into the waistband of her underwear.

She stilled his hands.

“I’m at the tail end of my period,” she said. “There might be some blood.”

He gazed up at her, grateful, so grateful. Her hand played in his hair.

“Don’t be afraid of it,” she whispered. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

She was beautiful. Passionate and compassionate. He didn’t shy away from her blood. He let himself move into it, seeing it as a life force, full of vitality and strength. It was baptismal.

Under him, Melanie was beautiful.

“Come here,” she said. Her voice a song in the dark. “Show me everything.”

His body was strong. He was young and alive. He could go all night.

“God, you’re good,” she said, gasping in his arms.

“You’re so good,” he whispered, his fingers seeking her out again, finding where she was still wide open and wet for him. Wet with desire. Wet with blood. He wasn’t afraid.

“Your body is amazing,” he whispered, a good lover again, thinking of her first and himself second.

Later, he lay drowsily against the velvet skin of her back. Her perfume wafted rich and golden into his nose and throat. Not a sugar scent but spice. Old world and exotic. He breathed her in and murmured, “I never thought it would be this way again.”

She kissed his fingers, twined with hers. “Baby, I often find as soon as you say ‘never,’ life throws ‘always’ at you.”

He ran his smiling mouth along her head. “I never want to make love with you again,” he whispered.

“Smartass.” She turned in his arms, giggling and wicked. “I’m gonna need an extra fly swatter under the bed to keep you in line…”

They dated two years. Then they found a beautiful apartment in the historic district—the sunny half of an old Victorian home with a back porch and a small yard—and moved in together.

It wasn’t quite seamless. After the best-behavior novelty of moving in together wore off, they settled back into their ways and found they were an imperfect couple. Melanie was dramatic when it wasn’t necessary—making mere inconveniences into dire issues. Her energy levels were unwavering, especially on Sunday mornings when Erik wanted to sleep. And her inquisitive curiosity, so charming in the beginning of the relationship, could quickly turn to pestering.

Not that he was such a prize: he had his anxious episodes, his dark, seasonal moods—especially in November and April. The intensely painful and private moments from his past were only discussed in general terms. He gave her what he could but she wanted all of him in detail. He knew it frustrated her that he had dehydrated parts of his heart so thoroughly, no amount of drenching love and affection could revive them. It made for misunderstandings and a lot of bruised feelings.

Domestically they did all right—they squabbled about money and bickered over chores. Yet despite the clashes over stupid little things, they lived well together. He grounded her. She gave him a much-needed jolt. She marveled at how he could fix anything. He loved the clever, creative ways she made their home beautiful. They got an upright piano. And a dog—a mixed mutt they named Harry. Naturally, Melanie called him Baby.

Most nights, Erik slept well, curled on Melanie’s back, their hands twined between her breasts. Harry snored in the corner and all was right with the world. But some nights Erik lay awake, not anxious, but feeling he was acting a part in some existential play.

What am I doing?

Who am I?

And he’d look at Melanie sleeping in his arms.
Who are you?

Those nights he worried at the relationship, even as his mind chided him to stop tinkering with a non-existent problem. Their relationship was solid. They talked, they laughed, they made a lot of love and, thank God, after sex Erik was peaceful. The lovemaking alone filled him with a gratitude for Melanie he would never be able to fully articulate.

The students loved them, and in turn Erik and Melanie were mentors, involved in the kids’ lives and helping them build dreams. Most of all, they had fun. Pure, careless amusement. They had a wide social circle, went out all the time with the Kellys. They gave parties. They went away on romantic weekends. They did everything a couple was supposed to do, laughing their asses off.

“You’re so good,” Melanie said to him. Not just in bed but in passing. She whispered it while running her hand over his head or along his face. Growled it playfully while grabbing his ass.

“Your heart is huge. Your love is amazing.”

She loved him. Why wasn’t it enough?

What more do you want?
Erik asked the ceiling, his fingers reaching up to toy with invisible charms on his long-lost necklace. He was happy, yet he felt strangely stagnant. Everything was right, yet something in his soul moped. Not every wire was connected. Some essential part of him still felt missing. Something felt unfinished.

You’re looking for what you had with Daisy.

It was an old thought. In the dark in his new home with Melanie, a new thought gradually emerged:

Maybe Daisy was the dream.

He had loved her in the enclosed and insulated universe of college. Sure, they moved off campus and had to start paying rent, the electric bill, buying groceries. It felt like being an adult, but were they just kids playing house?

He tried to picture living with Daisy but couldn’t seem to get out of her mother’s kitchen at La Tarasque. He was stuck there with her in a perpetual tableau of holiday joy, making gnocchi and decorating the Christmas tree, surrounded by their circle of friends and Nat King Cole songs. He didn’t envision taking her car in to get the oil changed, cleaning the oven, defrosting the refrigerator and plunging the toilet—things he’d done while cohabitating with Melanie.

Would she and I have survived in the real world?

Maybe she was the dream the whole time.

Maybe it would have ended anyway. On its own. We would have grown different ways or pursued dreams in different places and it would have ended. We still wouldn’t be in touch. There just wouldn’t be all this bad feeling about it.

This was the real world: standing in the lounge of the performing arts complex, clustered with students and faculty. They clung to each other, horrified as they watched the events of 9/11 unfold on TV.

This was real: Erik holding Melanie tight in his arms, turning her face to his chest and not letting her look when the towers fell. He watched in disbelief, but he did not fall. He stood strong, his arms crossed over Melanie’s back, protecting her. She had saved him once. Now he would be her hero. He was good. His heart was huge and his love was amazing.

Melanie deserved both.

* * *

“I’d like to get married,” Melanie said.

Erik looked at her a long moment.

“To you, smartass,” she said.

“You’re not even kneeling,” he said, with his most affronted expression.

She laughed.

“No ring? Seriously?” He gestured around them to the bedroom. “This is how you propose?”

She seized a pillow and smashed it on his head. “You know I can’t stand contrived, sugary, romantic crap. We’re naked in bed, this is as genuine as it gets.”

His fingers trailed over her collarbones, down her chest, cupped her breasts in his palms and put his face to them. “You want to get married,” he whispered.

“I do. Let’s just do it. I don’t want a big wedding. I don’t want any wedding. Let’s just drive to city hall. I’ll call my sister and you call your mother and brother. We’ll go somewhere nice for lunch then we’ll fly to Jamaica…”

Her voice trailed off as they both silently rejected the idea. It was two weeks after the terrorist attacks. With the smoke still billowing over lower Manhattan, who could fly anywhere, or would even want to?

“We’ll go to Vermont,” Melanie said. “Or the Berkshires or Saint Lawrence. We’ll take a nice trip somewhere. I haven’t had a vacation in years.”

He pushed up on his elbow, his other hand still running over her body. “I’d like to get you a ring,” he said. “Would a ring just be unbearably contrived? Sickeningly romantic?”

She kissed him. “You’re adorable. You know that?”

“So you tell me.”

She turned into him, burrowed her head against his chest. “I would love to have a ring.”

They got licenses, made an appointment at city hall and reservations for lunch afterward. They bought matching platinum bands. Erik owned one suit, and it was an embarrassment, so they went to get him a new one. Melanie bought a lovely sheath dress in ivory wool.

Erik’s mother would come, but his brother was participating in clinical trials for a new kind of cochlear implant and would be under the knife in Chicago. He and his wife sent their best wishes and a beautiful set of cast-iron skillets which Melanie all but took to bed with her.

“If you ever
touch
these with soap, I will beat you senseless.”

So it was Christine Fiskare and Melanie’s sister, Julia, who would stand up with them. The only other guests were Miles and Janey Kelly. The night before, Erik approached Melanie as she strode from closet to dresser to suitcase, packing for the trip they had booked to the Thousand Islands.

“You proposed in bed, so I can give you this in the closet.” He took her left hand, slid on the ring he had secretly bought under Miles’s guidance. A small square diamond in a simple platinum setting. Straightforward. Just like Melanie.

She gazed at it a moment, her lips quivering. She looked sideways at him with bright, brimming eyes. “You’re not even kneeling.”

Smiling, he put a knee down. Then he put the other knee down and the smile faded. He sat back on his heels, palms open and empty in his lap, gripped by the moment. He looked up at her. Couldn’t think of anything not contrived or sugary, so he tried to let his eyes say it all.

This is me. This is all I am. It’s damaged and flawed and parts of it are buried and secret and frustrating to you. I’m not a dream or a prize.

Will you have me?

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you.”

Her hand caressed his hair. “While you’re down there…”

“The Man I Love”

Transcript from the National Public Radio series,
Moments in Time

April 27, 2002

Karen Stark:
You’re listening to
Moments in Time.
I’m Karen Stark, thanks for joining us.

April brings a tragic pair of anniversaries to the country. Last Saturday, the twentieth, marked the three-year anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, an ordeal still fresh in our minds. And the day before, April 19th, was the anniversary of the shootings at Lancaster University in Pennsylvania. It has now been ten years since the massacre left seven dead and fifteen wounded, stunning the nation with its chilling randomness.

NPR correspondent Camberley Jones covered the Lancaster shootings in 1992 for our sister station WHPA. She went back to the university last weekend, where a memorial ceremony took place, attended by students, survivors, and victims’ loved ones. The event culminated with the re-dedication of the theater, in the name of a beloved professor who was killed that fateful day.

[Sound: interior of theater, construction, voices]

Camberley Jones:
It seems a cool, serene April evening at Lancaster University outside Philadelphia, but the auditorium of the Mallory Performing Arts Complex is emotionally charged. It’s Friday, April 19th, the anniversary of deadly shootings in this theater ten years ago. All day flowers have been left in the building’s courtyard. A candlelight vigil is scheduled for tonight. And tomorrow, the auditorium will be re-dedicated to Professor Marie Del'Amici, who was the director of the conservatory’s ballet division. She was shot dead by James Dow, one of her students. He came into theater during a rehearsal, opening fire on the dancers, faculty and other students present.

Dow killed six people before taking his own life. Over a dozen were wounded in his attack. Many of the survivors have come to Lancaster for tomorrow’s ceremony, along with family and friends of the victims. Memorial plaques will be hung backstage, along with a larger plaque in the building’s lobby, naming the new Marie Del'Amici Auditorium.

Unidentified male voice:
We should be set in ten minutes. Start clearing the stage, please. Will and Daisy, ten minutes.

Jones:
William Kaeger and Daisy Bianco were two of Professor Del’Amici’s students, exclusive partners during their years at Lancaster’s conservatory. Both were injured in the shootings. Will was shot once in the side and another bullet took off two of his fingers. He was able to come back to dance the following semester. Daisy Bianco, however, was shot through the leg. It took her nearly a year to recover. Both she and Will graduated Lancaster and went on to build successful careers. The piece they are rehearsing for tomorrow’s ceremony—in tribute to their teacher—is the same piece they were working on when James Dow came into the theater.

Unidentified male voice:
Off the stage, everyone. We need those ladders off.

Second male voice:
Hold on, hold on, we got people on the catwalk. Off the catwalk.

Jones:
Although Dow’s motive is still not entirely clear, he was dropped from the spring concert for failing to meet his minimum GPA. He attempted suicide ten days before the shooting and was taken out of school by his parents, back to his hometown of Greensburg. None of the conservatory members saw Dow again until he appeared in the theater on the afternoon of April 19th.

Dow entered the theater through a side hallway which led to the backstage area. Armed with a semi-automatic Glock pistol, he shot and killed five students and wounded six others. He then stepped onto the stage where Will and Daisy were dancing.

William Kaeger:
My memory is full of holes. Some parts are clear, others are blank. He came onstage at the part of the pas de deux where Daisy does this really difficult lift on my back. It takes a lot of concentration and maybe it’s why I didn’t hear the commotion backstage or even see James come out. He was behind me. Vaguely—I don’t know if I’m making up this memory or if it’s real—I think I heard screaming when Daisy was running to me. But the music was loud and I was in the zone. I had to catch her. Then she was up on my back and…then it gets surreal in my head. I don’t remember pain exactly. First my side felt like it was on fire. Then my left arm kind of jerked up. I reared back and I threw Daisy right off my shoulders.

Jones:
Daisy Bianco comes to sit by Will. She remembers little of the day.

Daisy Bianco:
I remember nothing of the shooting. My last clear memory is walking down the aisle. Right over there. I had been in the lighting booth with my boyfriend, then I walked down the aisle to go to the stage and… It just splinters apart after that. I don’t even remember starting the dance.

Kaeger:
He didn’t come in until three-quarters of the way through.

Bianco:
I know but I have no memory of it. Everything literally stops there. Right over there in the aisle, when I turned around to wave at my boyfriend. And then it’s just a black hole, until I woke up in the hospital and I still didn’t know what happened.

Jones:
After shooting Daisy and Will, Dow jumped from the stage and began firing at people, wounding Marie Del’Amici and another five students. Cornelis Justi, the director of the conservatory’s contemporary dance division, was sitting near the rear of the theater.

Cornelis
Justi:
It was like watching a movie. Cliché, I know. But there’s truth in it. I just stood there and watched. With my cup of coffee in my hand, can you imagine? For five seconds I thought it was a joke. I thought the theater department was pulling a prank. Someone with a gun, seriously? Come on, this is my theater. People don’t get shot in the middle of rehearsal.

Jones:
Panicked, screaming students flooded the aisles, fleeing for the lobby doors and emergency exits. Justi herded as many as he could out, but when he saw James Dow jump off the stage and fire into the orchestra, Justi dove to the floor between two rows of seats.

Justi:
Sheer adrenaline. I never felt anything like it in my life. Shots were coming closer up the aisle and then this awful shattering of glass. James shot out the windows of the lighting booth. A boy named Erik Fiskare was in there, he was running lights for the concert. I thought he was killed. It was madness. Then everything went quiet. I peeked up and James was standing still in the aisle. Then I saw Erik. He had come out of the booth and was crouched down in the aisle. I was so relieved to see him, but then he started moving down the aisle. Toward James. And I remember thinking,
Dear Lord, what is this kid doing?
Then I realized he was probably trying to get to Daisy.

Jones:
Erik Fiskare was Daisy Bianco’s boyfriend and Will Kaeger’s roommate. From where he sat in the lighting booth, he had seen the both of them shot. He managed to hit the floor before James blew out the glass of the booth.

Justi:
Erik spoke to him then. He called his name. He said, “James.” And James turned his head. I’ll never forget this. Not his whole body, just his head. And he looked at Erik. And Erik said, “James. Come talk to me.” I remember thinking, and I still think it today… Excuse me… Thinking it was the most courageous thing I had seen in my life.

Jones:
Here’s David Alto, who was the set and lighting designer for the concert.

David Alto:
I was behind the set the whole time. I should’ve been in the orchestra with Marie but I had to fix something. So I was behind the set and I stuck my head up when James fired at Will and Daisy. I hit the floor with one of the other stagehands. It felt like I didn’t breathe for an hour, but how long could it have been? Five minutes? Not even. Things got really quiet so I slowly put my head around the set. And I saw Erik, sitting in the aisle, up against the sides of the seats. And James…had the gun pointed straight at Erik’s face. I was frozen. Thinking
I can’t watch this. But I have to.

Erik was one of my best friends and he was alone in the aisle staring down the muzzle of a gun. If I made a move, he’d be dead. If I didn’t make a move…

Jones:
He’s not here today?

Alto:
… No, he couldn’t be here. Anyway, the gun went off. I didn’t even have time to shut my eyes. James went down in the aisle. He was dead. And it was over. That part of it, anyway. A lot of other things were just getting started.

Jones:
Five students were dead in the theater. Professor Marie Del'Amici had been mortally wounded and would die three days later at Philadelphia Trauma Center. Onstage, the situation was grave. Daisy and Will were both bleeding heavily.

Lucia Dare, Will Kaeger’s wife, was also in the theater the day of the shootings. She majored in sports medicine at Lancaster and is now a physical therapist.

Lucia Dare:
It’s interesting. The semester before, I had been in Boston, taking an EMT training course. I thought it was something I wanted to pursue. But turns out I didn’t have the psyche for it. And yet the day of the shooting, I was in the thick of it, applying what I learned in the course to my best friend who’d been shot. With my boyfriend over there who’d also been shot. This was happening in my school, to people I love. I should have been a basket case. But I was numb. I was just…

Alto:
You were incredible, Luck. Come on. People would have died if you hadn’t been there.

Jones:
David Alto, now 32, is in remission from kidney cancer. He’s watching today’s rehearsal from the auditorium, wearing a black wool cap over his bald head. Lucky Dare sits next to him, holding his hand as they relive those difficult memories

Alto:
I was trying to help Daisy but Lucky pushed me aside. “Get out of the way.” And she was just yelling things at Fish. I mean, Erik Fiskare. We called him Fish.

Dare:
I was calm with Will but I nearly broke down when I saw Daisy’s wound. And Erik [laughter]—oh my God—he was leaning on her femoral pressure point and with his other elbow he just whacks me in the side. You know, like you’d slap a hysterical person. “Get it together.” Or something. It worked. My hands just took over and then I was a robot. Like I could feel my brain severing the emotional connections I had to these people. Crazy what happens to you in a crisis.

Alto:
The blood was everywhere. Jesus. For a long time afterward I had a really, really hard time with blood. Like if I was flossing my teeth and spit blood in the sink?

Dare:
You flossed? I didn’t floss for a year.

Alto:
Post Traumatic Floss Disorder … [Laughter]

Jones:
Despite their joking, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, was no laughing matter. For many of those in the theater on April 19th, the psychological wounds of the ordeal took longer to heal than the physical ones.

Bianco:
Oh, I was a mess.

Jones:
Wrapped in a black shawl, Daisy Bianco sits in one of the orchestra seats. She’s joined by John Quillis, who is also performing at tomorrow’s ceremony. He was a sophomore in 1992, and watched the shootings from the stage right wing. He and Daisy were good friends at school, and then started dating a few years after graduation.

John Quillis:
I ran into her randomly in New York. We were both going to a master class or something. I didn’t recognize her at first.

Bianco:
I looked like crap. I think I weighed 90 pounds.

Quillis:
If that. I knew right away she was still haunted by it all. I think I knew because… Well, look, I’m the son of two psychologists. They had me immediately in therapy after the shooting. I think I was one of the few who went to counseling.

Bianco:
You were.

Quillis:
But even so, it was a long process. When I met up with Daisy I was coming out the other side. She looked like she was just heading into the tunnel.