Tim Murphy - Christodora

Then he raised his head and looked straight up at Milly’s window.

She stood up and stepped back, her heart pounding, hand over her mouth. Was that him? Was she crazy? She turned, walked slowly back to the window, peeked out from the side. The young man was gone.

Then her buzzer buzzed.

She just stood there with her hand over her mouth. It buzzed again. She walked toward the door, pressed a button. “Who is this?” she asked.

“It’s Mateo,” a voice said. “I just saw you.”

She put her hand on the wall. Then, finally, a hand on the “talk” button. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Can I come up and talk to you?”

“Just give me a few minutes,” she said.

She walked away from the buzzer, sat down on the couch. Suddenly, the past bitter, lonely decade of her life broke over her like a giant wave. Lost years, lost years! she thought, balling her hands into fists. Why should she talk to him now?

Finally she managed to go to the window again. Mateo was sitting there on the bench again, his back to the Christodora.

Milly opened the window and stuck out her head. “I’ll be down in a minute,” she called to him. He turned around and held up a hand in recognition.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth, combed her hair and pulled it back in an elastic. She put on some jeans and a T-shirt and flats, took the elevator down the six flights, walked out the door of the building, across Avenue B, into the park and toward the bench Mateo was sitting on.

Mateo stared at her inscrutably as she approached. The first thing she thought was What a handsome man I raised. The second thing she noticed was that he had some gray flecks by his temples and furrows in his brow. And finally, she was just so relieved that he wasn’t a scarecrow anymore.

She sat down on the bench a few feet away from him. “You look just like you look in all the tablet photos,” she said. It was about all she could think of to say.

Mateo smiled dutifully and looked down again. Milly made idle patterns with her index finger on the leg of her jeans. Occasionally, she glanced at him. He was looking down in his lap, at his tablet screen, which had reverted to swirly sleep-mode patterns.

Milly noticed Ardit, the super, sweeping the sidewalk across the street in front of the building. He kept glancing their way, trying to be subtle. “Ardit’s watching us,” she finally said.

Mateo laughed a little, the way someone in an uncomfortable situation might allow a distracted laugh. Then the two of them continued to sit there in silence.

“Thanks for coming down,” Mateo finally said, his voice scratchy.

“For some reason it was easier for me to come down than to have you come up,” Milly said.

“That’s okay.” Mateo made another scratchy, scraping sound in his throat. “I wasn’t going to just buzz you by surprise,” he said. “I was getting ready to call you on this”—he pointed toward his tablet—“to see if you were okay with talking.”

“It’s okay.”

“But then I saw you in the window and I just got up and buzzed. That was kind of stupid.” He looked away again. He’s barely been able to make eye contact with me, Milly thought.

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said. “I mean, here we are now. It’s all fine.”

But Mateo just kept looking down, paining Milly. “You look good,” she continued, trying to brighten her tone. “You look healthy. You’re healthy, right?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty healthy,” he said, still looking away. “I’ve been clean ten years now.”

“I know,” she said. “Drew told me. That’s wonderful. And you’ve done really well for yourself.”

Finally, he looked at her with stricken eyes. “You look good, too,” he said.

“Oh, please!” She laughed. “I’m an old lady. Withered on the vine!”

“No,” he said. “You look good. Maybe like you need to eat a little more, though.”

Milly laughed again. “Well, now you know what I used to think every time I looked at you.”

At last Mateo laughed softly. “Okay,” he said. “Fair enough.” He flashed her an amused look, then turned away again.

They fell back into silence. “How’s the UnderPark going?” Milly finally asked.

That earned her another glance. “Pretty good,” he replied. “We had a setback with the rain. We had to vacate the site for four days while they remediated.”

“Remediated! Wow. Is that the word they used?”

“That’s the word they used.”

“Very high-tech,” she said.

He laughed again. “Yeah. It’s a very high-tech, high-grade, high-stakes operation, painting leaves on a wall.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s more than that. I’ve seen your work with your partner. It’s beautiful.”

“Char?” he asked. “Yeah, well, it all started with her. I mean with him. I’m always slipping on the pronouns.”

“That must be hard to keep straight,” Milly said, “after knowing someone for so long.”

“Just the pronoun thing, mostly,” he said. “Char was basically always a man, from the day I met her. Him.”

More silence. Ardit sure seemed to be taking his time sweeping the sidewalk today, Milly thought. It was a very funny thing to live in a doorman building. They didn’t need to see much to put things together.

“How about you?” Mateo finally asked. “You doing okay?”

Milly sighed. “The last few years haven’t been the best. Bubbe died.”

“Yeah, I know,” he muttered. He was ashamed, Milly could tell, because he hadn’t gotten in touch when it happened.

“That was an awful, drawn-out thing,” Milly continued. “And Zayde’s going senile now. He takes up a lot of time.”

He glanced at her, shook his head.

“So no, I can’t lie to you. The past few years haven’t been great. Past many years, actually. Life’s just kind of. . emptied out.” Milly didn’t mean to make him feel overly bad, but she didn’t feel like putting a fake smiley face on things, either.

Suddenly Mateo pivoted toward her, his eyes glassy. “Can you accept an apology from me?”

That came so suddenly to Milly! She caught her breath, then sighed and looked down. If only he realized it was about so much more than an apology, she thought. It was about everything; it was about all those years together and why the void that followed walloped her.

“You want me to just shut up and go?” he asked.

“No, no,” she said. “It’s just — I have been hurting for so long, Mateo. Really, really hurting.”

“I know, I know,” he said, all in a rush. “I know, and I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just — I never knew. I never really understood why you adopted me, why you wanted me, and why you kept taking me back. I fucked up so many times, it got to the point I couldn’t look you in the face. I didn’t know what to do but to be alone. Every time you looked at me, all I can remember is I saw disappointment, I saw pity.”

“Pity?” Milly interjected. “You saw pity? Is that why you think we adopted you?”

“Why else would you adopt a fucking AIDS orphan when you could have your own kid? Bubbe brought you to the boys’ home in Brooklyn one day and you saw me and you ended up taking me home out of pity.”

“I fell in love with you, Mateo,” Milly snapped back, quite peeved to have had her intentions mistaken. “I fell in love with a little boy with a big bushel of hair and a bunch of Crayolas and craft paper in front of him. And I didn’t want to give birth to a kid because I didn’t want to watch my kid go through what I went through and what my mother went through with mental illness . So you’re where I put that love instead, okay?” Milly took a breath, winded from the sheer volume of her revelation.