The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(21)

That’s the silver lining to disasters, natural or otherwise, Dorothy thought as she watched a group of young tech bros with job-stopper tattoos offer their seats to elderly passengers. It strips away pretension and brings out the better nature of people. Dorothy remembered reading about how Londoners missed the togetherness they felt during World War II, during the Blitz. That shared trauma revealed something that was already there, just below the surface.

“Excuse me, ma’am, is this seat taken?”

Dorothy stared out the window.

“Well then,” a man said. “You either need a double cappuccino or you’ve become an expert in Zen and the art of subway meditation. How have you been!?”

Dorothy looked up and smiled when she saw it was one of her favorite cohorts from Bellevue College. A fresh-faced English professor who had been the closest thing to a best friend on campus. She shook her head. “Did you just call me ma’am?”

“There she is! My long-lost poetess,” the man said as he gave her a hug and then sat down next to her. “It’s been forever. You left campus without saying goodbye. You didn’t respond to my texts or emails—and don’t be afraid to be a ma’am, by the way—it commands authority and respect. Plus, it rhymes with glam, and Sam, and… Spam.” The man smiled. “See, that’s why I’m not a poet.”

Dorothy laughed, then realized she hadn’t done so in a very long time. She grimaced and sighed. “I didn’t say goodbye to anyone because admin didn’t renew my contract, which was a polite way of firing me. I just wanted to disappear. I’m sorry, Graham, I know I told your husband I’d come over for dinner…”

“That’s okay,” he said. “Clarke’s cooking is still unspeakably dreadful, so you dodged a bullet there. But we did want to spend time with that sweet, talented daughter of yours. She needs some uncle love in her life. Though Clarke still thinks you missed an amazing opportunity by not naming her Toto.”

“Just one word?” Dorothy laughed again. “Like Beyoncé?”

“That’s all the great ones ever needed,” he said. “How are you, Dot? Still with that special man of yours? Still living in that wild, art deco palace atop that scary old building? Still getting paid to break your own heart for a living?”

“Yes. Yes. And it turns out breaking one’s heart doesn’t pay what it used to.”

He hugged her again. “Well, you have our sympathies for all three. If there’s anything we can do to ease that trifecta of crazy, don’t hesitate. Where you headed?”

Dorothy didn’t feel up to sharing that she was starting a new form of treatment. “Nowhere special.” She shrugged. “Just needed some me time, I guess.”

As Graham talked, Dorothy realized how much she missed being on campus. How much she missed human contact. How much she missed socializing with other academics. She also realized that the main reason she got along with Graham so well was that he had assessed the dysfunction in her relationship the first time he met Louis. When Louis gave her a backhanded compliment at a faculty gathering, Graham left a note in Dorothy’s office the following Monday that read: When in doubt, kick him out. I don’t care how gorgeous he is.

Graham took her to lunch every week even though Louis would get jealous like a hormonal seventh-grade boy whenever she spent time with male colleagues, even in public places, even when only discussing lesson plans and syllabi, and even when those male colleagues were married to other men. In retrospect Louis’s concerns seemed comical, utterly ridiculous, but at the time, no one was laughing and Dorothy was always too emotionally drained to argue. The one time she did try speaking to Louis about his concerns was after sex, the one love language they were still occasionally fluent in, yet in that relaxed, unguarded, afterglow moment, he merely said, “It’s fine,” as his phone lit up with messages from work, effectively putting an end to the conversation.

Dorothy missed her friend. Those lunches with Graham seemed a lifetime ago.

“Seriously,” Graham continued. “I mean it, this is my stop, but text me when you’re free and we’ll plan a little playdate for you and that little Toto too!”

Dorothy watched him leave, watched the doors close behind him. That brief moment of kindness and understanding leaving with him. She wished she’d told him where she was going, what she was doing. He’d always been like an open door. Made her feel less trapped, less confined. In contrast, the soft blanket of gray flannel that passed for a Pacific Northwest sky had always made her feel stuck, made the city feel like a padded cell. The perpetual rain was isolating, the gloom suffocating to the point that there had been days when she felt numb and couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed. As an angsty teen, her jokes about eating sadness for breakfast were fully appreciated only by her artsy peers, who teased that if she ever formed a heavy metal band, it would be called Melancholica. That if she ever had a perfume named after her it would be called Abandonment and come in a cracked bottle. Now, as an adult, her personal brand of perpetual disquiet was something she’d embraced as a poet. She danced to it on the page, but was wary that bad things might happen if and when the music ever stopped. That was the Faustian bargain she’d made regarding her mental health. That leaning into her sadness might give her work a certain vitality, but could also lead her down the one-way path traveled by Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, and Kurt Cobain. She rolled her eyes when Louis sarcastically pointed out that most of the books on her shelf were by people who had either been locked away, committed suicide, or both.