On Monday after work, I pulled over and stopped at the junction of Highway 13 and Pike's Creek to admire the effects of spring run-off.  The ditches, running with melted glass, smelled like childhood and captured sunlight.  Heat poked at my neck and bare ankles.  The soil unearthed at the side of the road sprawled like women caught sun-bathing naked on the beach.  At the bottom of Salmo Hill, the creek was pooling, rising up and flooding the marshland so it looked like a swamp straight out of the Everglades.  I sympathized with the trees that were being choked by the water.  I wanted to wade in and wrap my arms around a stout oak, feel the swirl of water graze my legs as it rushed by, curious about the tangibility of what it felt like to be left behind.
    I kissed Tony.  On Saturday, after I left Harvey during dinner, I went over to Tony's house and practically threw myself at him as if he were a glove and I were a fastball.  He let me grope his body clumsily.  I suppose he knew that I would need to feel for myself the impossibility of us.  His muscles were carved and motionless, and kissing him was as futile as waiting for a stone bird to take off into the air. 

When I asked Harvey, part of me actually wanted him to say it was because of money.  Then his justification would be in concrete terms, which could easily be argued.  He would be making a lot of money--I heard him mention to some neighbors once that in four years his student loans would be taken care of.  I can't hope to taste the sweetness of leveled debt for several decades, at the rate I'm going.  He didn't directly blame finances, however, when I cornered him.  He laughed and whipped out something abstract: "I didn't really feel like I had a lot of options."   He sounded regretful, and I wondered why that surprised me.  I had never asked him to explain his decision before.  Maybe it was to protect him from having to defend himself against my accusing tongue.  How could I blame him when I hadn't been in his life at the time he'd enlisted?  It seemed beyond our control, as if fate had cast her spell and was piloting us around.  We were two kids on a playdate, dreading the moment when his parents would come and take him away. 
    We were eating spaghetti when I set down my fork and said, "I can't do this."
    Harvey looked up at me, his normally sanguine face turning grave. 
    "If you're really leaving," I said.  "Then I'm leaving first."  I walked to the door in a fury, and when I opened it, the birds scattered from their feeding spots as if they had been caught doing something bad.  There was no sound of movement behind me, and without looking back I got in my car and drove to Tony's.

It's spring and everywhere there's wetness.  To equip myself for a hike in the woods I find myself stripping down, preparing to swim.  The earth is soft and treacherous--a terrain rigged with spongey organs of humus ans slippery chutes down steep ravine banks.  Buds have appeared on the tips of branches, as sudden and overwhelming as my first acne attack.  Birches are shedding tubes of bark like pale ladies loosening their corsets.  Snow is shrinking away from the base of trees, as if the flora, remembering its eminent place in the woods, has reclaimed the land by manifest destiny:  "We were here first.  And here we will remain, long after you dissolve."
   
    I went for a walk, on this Saturday afternoon, to clear my head.  I'm trying to remind myself that there will be life after Harvey.  He is leaving, and there are no alternatives.  The thing is, though, that he reads to me.  When it's late and we're too excited about life to watch a movie, we crawl into bed and he removes the bookmark, which holds our place in the story while we are at work and dealing with the things that we purport to care about.  His voice caters to the characters while his hand combs my hair, and his cracked heels, peeping out from the holes in his socks, blink at me like a voyeur trying to find out what love is.

"Please draw me another caterpillar."
    Christopher jerked his head left and then right.  He is as stubborn and particular as a fragile car that refuses to start.  All he had to do was draw six caterpillars, but he was ostensibly getting more pleasure out of denying me what I was asking than he ever could from actually accomplishing the task.
    "Please," I said.  My day started off poor before I even got to the school and found out that I would be subbing in the special education room.  Harvey checked his email on his phone and found a message from his commanding officer, asking if he had the gumption to leave a few days early, on Friday, so he could be in Florida for a weekend of training and preparation, before the flight out of the States on Monday.  Friday was exactly one week away.
    "Please," I said again.  "We need five more caterpillars, and then we'll be done with the assignment.  Five more and you can pick out a puzzle."
    Christopher picked up his pencil and, pretending it was a plane, flipped it through the air with accompanying zoom zoom noises.  "I drew one already!  And he's sad.  He couldn't find any food."
    "Can you draw me a happy one that found food?" I asked.
    He turned to me and nodded.  Putting his pencil to the paper, he drew me a sloppy but beautiful caterpillar complete with a smile.  
    "Gorgeous.  How about another sad one?"
    He drew a sad caterpillar and then two more happy ones.
    "Can you draw me one last caterpillar?"  I asked, crossing my fingers behind my back, hoping the spell would not be broken.  "Don't tell me what he's feeling.  I'm going to close my eyes and when I open them I will guess what his emotion is."
    Christopher delighted at the game, and motioned me to come close so he could whisper in my ear.  When I was near enough, he cupped his little hand around his mouth and said, "It's going to be nervous.  And don't forget it."
  

The morning sun was laying chiaroscuro puzzle work on the remaining spring snow.  Folds of gray and black knocked against the shafts of brilliant yellow breaking light.  I was stretching, looking out the window.  It was early and I'd  checked my phone, wishing for a missed call from the school that would tell me there was work for me.  There was no call, and I was not needed.
    I looked over at Harvey, sleeping soundly in bed, his head cocked to the side, like a lifeless bird.  I smiled and went downstairs to boil water and heat the frying pan for some eggs.  The smell of aged butter being re-heated would waken Harvey and lead him to the kitchen. 
    Sure enough, as I was lifting the lid from the eggs, Harvey appeared.  He put his arms around my waist and sniffed the air emphatically.
    "Ready for breakfast?"  I asked.
    "Am I ready to eat?  That must be a rhetorical question.  But I have to pee first, since you wouldn't let me last night."  He laughed and, letting go, made his way to the bathroom.
    When we were eating the eggs and bacon, I asked what he had meant about me not letting him use the bathroom.
    "I sat up and tried leaving the bed and you grabbed me.  Your grip was vicelike.  You don't remember?  I thought you were going to snap my ribs into splinters."
   "I did not."
   "Yes.  And you said, 'If you leave you're not allowed back in bed.'"
    "You're making this up," I said, incredulous.
   He shook his head and smiled.  He looked very sincere.  "You did."
    "You feel pretty good about yourself, don't you?  Loved and needed.  I hope it boosted your already bloated ego."
   He laughed and shook his head, as if he were being wrongfully accused. 
   "Eat your eggs," I said.  I was embarrassed, but mostly hurt. 
    Harvey put his hand on my arm.  "It was cute," he said.
    "That makes it so much worse," I said.  What I meant was that there were times when it felt appropriate to yell at Harvey, to tell him that he was causing me pain, and that we needed to talk about things.  But instead, I found myself acting like some sort of helpless toy, trying to make myself appear impossible to forget and leave behind.
  

There was an hour left to the school day, and as anxious as I was to get home, part of me was aching for some bite of triumph, a wash of success that would make me feel as if I had accomplished something that day.  I was feeling defeated, trampeled over, as mangled as a body trodden on by a thousand hooves.  When Harvey is around, my need to feel productive disappears as quietly as a deep shadow being cleared by a pass of clouds.  The darkness of worry that pulls at me while I work in the school is pardoned and cast away immediately in his presence.  At the same time, I am thrilled by the feeling of stress; it is my motivation, my impetus for feeling like I matter in the world.  If I spent all my days in bed with Harvey, I fear that I would wake up one day and wonder if I was important.  Of course, Harvey thinks so.  But would I think so?  And is it vain to want to feel as if you make a difference, or is that desire an evolved trait which encourages us to help others?
    "I don't care," Lisa said.  She had her head down on the table and was staring off at the wall.  She looked as if she was about to go in for some kind of surgery--placid from an over secretion of nerves, helpless, and defenseless.  "It doesn't even matter.  Mr. S. doesn't care if I fail or not."
    I sighed.  We had been working on the same worksheet for over an hour.  And so far, we had only managed to solve two of the forty-six problems.  And the assignment was due the next day.
   "It does matter," I said.  "Math is important."
    She snorted.  "No, it's not."
    "Your education is important.  And we all want to see you succeed."
    "Yeah right.  Nobody cares."
    I picked up her worksheet and walked over to the scanner.  I made a copy and brought it over to the table.  Then I found another pencil and sharpened it.  I sat back down.  She was still facing the wall, with her head on the table, but her eyes had followed me around the room.  "You don't care,"  I said.  "But the rest of us do.  Most of all, me.  And since you have to do the homework, I'm going to do it too."
  She lifted her head from the table.  "Can we just do this tomorrow?"
  "It's due tomorrow.  And we're going to do it now.  I'm supposed to be leaving at four, in an hour, but if we make it through five more problems by then, I'm going to stay and work on this with you until we finish it.  Okay?"
   "Why?"
   "Because that's what I want to do." 
   She rolled her eyes.  I picked up my pencil and pointed at the problem we had stalled at.  "Read this for me."
   And Lo and Behold, she read it.  We got through seven problems in the hour, but even if we had only gotten through one I would have stayed.  I had made up my mind to stay late, and that's what I was going to do, even if she walked out and left me to work on the assignment without her.  I don't feel that kind of tenacity everyday, but at school I take advantage of it when I feel the obstinacy overwhelm me.  We only got through twenty-five problems of the forty, but it was more work than Lisa had done in the last month.  And when I got home and collapsed on the bed, I felt needed and pleased.

Within two weeks my license for substitute teaching came in the mail.  I immediately notified the school district, and they put my name on the list of people to call.  It had been Harvey's idea that I try substitute teaching.  He took me up to the school to apply.  When we walked out of the building, the sun was out and little streams of melted snow were racing down the pavement.  At the bottom of the stairs was a deep puddle that I didn't see, and I stepped into it, soaking my tennis shoes and socks.  I laughed.  Harvey apologized for not alerting me to the obstacle.  I shook my head.  "It feels good," I said.  "Spring is wet.  Now I can literally feel that it's on its way."
    "Yeah, time goes by fast."  Harvey looked away.  We hadn't been talking about his leaving, although I did admit that I wasn't going to be heading out of the area any time soon. 
    I touched him on the arm and smiled.  "This temporary gig at the school is perfect for me.  I'm really grateful that you thought of it and helped me follow through."
   He smiled halfheartedly.  We got into his car and went back to my house.  We made dinner and turned on a Quentin Tarantino movie.  We held each other on the couch, paying about as much attention to Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece as a student absorbed in thoughts does to a teacher.