The Best Possible Answer(19)

We make our way to school. Our teachers are frantic about cramming everything in before finals week, while we’re all feeling exhausted and done. I’m especially ready for the year to be over, for all the silent, judgmental stares and snickers to stop.

Sammie and I arrive at the pool for our afternoon shift, to find Evan sitting behind the front desk in our usual place, the most serious expression on his face. Professor Cox’s there, too, sitting on the counter, next to him. They’re so deep in conversation, they don’t even notice us.

“I don’t know, Professor Cox,” Evan’s saying. “I have to disagree with you. True love is absolutely possible. It happens every day.” It’s as though they’ve been here since yesterday, waxing philosophical about the meaning of life.

“Well, sure, if you want to call infatuation and disappointment ‘love.’ You can give it any name you like,” Professor Cox says. “But it’s an arbitrary word for an artificial experience that’s temporary, at best. As Fromm says, love ‘is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone. One cannot fall in love. One has to be in love.’ With oneself. With others. With life. But that kind of love is nearly impossible.”

Evan stands up to give us our seats at the desk and then jumps over the front of the counter, where they continue their conversation without acknowledging our arrival.

“You really believe that, Professor Cox? That it’s arbitrary? That it’s impossible? You don’t believe that there’s some kind of universal feeling or knowing or whatever you want to call it—one that becomes embodied in our individual experiences—and then, when it’s shared by two people, it’s understood by both beings as a remembrance of what is true about this world?”

“Shared by two people. Ha! You are limiting yourself, Mr. Whitlock!” Professor Cox laughs and then continues: “But I admire that you’re a true romantic, Mr. Whitlock. A visionary of the highest Victorian ideals.”

“Why are you so disillusioned, Professor Cox?”

“I’ve lived a very full life, Evan. That’s why.” And then he says, more quietly, “It’s been a very full and very long life.”

Evan disregards this last, depressing comment and finally looks at us to back him up. “What do you guys think?”

“About the possibility of love?” Sammie asks.

“True love,” Evan says. “Not just like love as a real force in the world but the love between two human beings, a love that is both romantic and eternal, something more than just an empty promise.”

If swooning was still a thing that happened, if women really still fainted when overcome with emotion, if it could be heard and seen like a burning candle, Sammie would be a hot puddle of wax on the floor.

Except that then Evan leans back over the counter, so that he’s hovering over me. I’m not sure if Sammie notices this, but I sure do.

“Of course,” Sammie says. “I completely believe it. My mom and dad loved each other—I mean, until he died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Evan says. “I didn’t know.”

“No, it’s fine.” Her voice cracks a little. “I mean, it’s been a year since he died, but I know my mom still loves him, and I know he still loves her, wherever he is. It’s eternal. No question.” I reach out and wrap my pinkie around hers, squeeze it tight. She squeezes back.

We were at the end of sophomore year when Mr. Salazar died. He first became sick the same time as my mom, when Sammie and I were in the ninth grade. For a while, my mom was worse than Sammie’s dad. My mom had cancer, whereas her dad had some heart problems that were supposed to be easily fixed with a simple procedure and a change in diet. And then, right after my mom went in for her last round of iodine treatment, Mr. Salazar was dead.

Sammie likes to say that her parents shared a love that is as close to true love as will ever be seen on this earth. Her dad was such a good man. I remember how he would play dolls with us and then let us dress him in bows and makeup. I remember him teasing my mom, trying to convince her that her homemade kugel tasted better than Filipino banana sauce. I remember how much he and my dad liked each other; he’d try to talk to my dad about the NFL draft, but when he realized my dad had nothing to offer, he’d easily change the topic to the redevelopment of the West Side industrial neighborhoods and urban congestion, and they’d end up talking for hours. Most of all, I remember how good he was to Sammie’s mom, how he’d always tell Sammie’s mom to lie down instead of do the dishes because she’d been up all night with her patients. I remember how he recited Shakespearean sonnets to Sammie’s mom on her birthday. I remember how he’d massage her shoulders and tell her he loved her.

Sammie doesn’t say it because he’s dead. She’s not just sentimental. They really did love each other.

“My parents have been together for forty-seven years, since they were seventeen,” Evan says. “And they’re still in love with each other.”

“Wow, is that even possible?” I ask. “How old are they?”

“They’re sixty-four. My mom was forty-five when she had me. I was a ‘miracle baby,’ they said.”

“That’s amazing,” Sammie says. “That your parents are so much older, I mean.”