That night I read Anna Quindlen's novel, One True Thing, so I could be over and done with my feelings of loss, but even that overly sentimental combination of death, love, and family didn't bring the tears I craved. In February, a sharp pain arrived again. My brother explained that it was just the itch of the phantom limb. You don't even need to let him know you are doing it. Virginia and her boyfriend of seven years broke up two years ago and haven't spoken since.
Amputation seems unnatural.
If we had cheated on each another or the diagnosis were clearer, it might be a mercy killing. We were the annoying couple sharing the same side of the booth in the diner, holding hands on the subway, and I played with his hair at the movies. And I had a reason of the week, from his cigarette smoking to our not wanting to get married, for why this romance of almost a decade died in November. The symptoms had been there, but they were hard to explain and more difficult to understand. There were moments when David first arrived in New York and we shared a cramped room in a crappy little East Village apartment that we were farther from each other than when we were 2000 miles apart.