My Oxford Year: A Novel

I am weary of days and hours,

Blown buds of barren flowers,

Desires and dreams and powers

And everything but sleep.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine,” 1866

We find an empty room and sit opposite each other on two twin hospital beds. William grips the edge of his mattress, head hanging, looking at the floor. I breathe in the stale, antiseptic air, bracing myself. “I’ve decided,” he begins, and my cell phone rings.

I dig it out of my pocket.

Gavin.

I side-button it.

I put it back in my pocket.

“Sorry,” I say. “Go ahead.”

William stares at me, clocking the fact that I didn’t answer my phone. I see it in his eyes. He takes a breath. He looks at me. He begins his sentence differently. “If they tell us that this is the end of the line, that he can’t come back from this . . . knowing him as we do, as you do . . . do we let him go?”

No! Of course not! He can fight this! How could you? We have to do everything we can!

I haven’t said good-bye yet.

“Yes.”

For twenty-five years I was a child. Now I’m an adult.

“Right, then.” William stands, clearing his throat. He moves for the door.

“William,” I croak.

His body turns a half click back to me, but he won’t meet my eye.

“Thank you. For asking me.”

He says, to the floor, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

Now he looks at me. “He wouldn’t have done the trial if not for you. If not for you, Ella.” He looks back down. “Thank you . . . for giving him a reason to fight.”

I stand and tread my way to him. I wrap my arms around his neck and rest my chin on his shoulder. Eventually, one of his hands finds the center of my spine. The other finds the back of my head, a paternal cupping.

We weep as one.

LATER, MUCH LATER, I drag my suitcase into a bathroom and change in the accessible stall, trying to feel, in some small way, fresh and clean again. I brought Jamie’s suitcase in here as well, wanting to find something of his to wear, something with his smell on it. I find a navy V-neck sweater that will do nicely and throw it on over my long-sleeved T-shirt. When I go to zip his suitcase, I notice a brown paper bag between the layers of clothing. Curiosity gets the best of me. I slip it out.

The bag is actually wrapping paper, covering a rectangular package about half an inch thick. The front, in Jamie’s scholarly scrawl, reads: To Ella from Ohio on the Occasion of Her Twenty-Fifth Birthday.

It’s the present he wanted to give me. The one he wouldn’t give me in front of people. The one he told me he’d give me later, in private.

I hesitate only a moment before slipping my finger under the tape at one end and sliding the item out of its wrapping.

It’s a journal.

I open the front cover. An inscription greets me:

You said I could do this. I had a go.

(See below)

In posh pratitude,

Yours,

eternally,

JD

I turn the page.

The journal is filled with poems. In Jamie’s handwriting.

The first poem is centered to the page, short and sweet, titled simply “E.D.”

Your gypsy soul did beckon

To my fetid heart and made

A fearful conflagration of

The meanest kind to tame.

The next page: “Thanksgiving.”

No other man

Can know a man

Such as this.

For a woman knows a man

In ways a man

Knows not exist.

Ay, she knows her man,

Such as he is.

The hairs on the back of my neck rise. My hand begins to shake. The title of the next one wrings a sob out of me and I do my best to catch my tears before they fall on the page.

Oxenford

A sickle for my friend, the weary,

A sickle quick and true,

A sickle, by God’s grace in heav’n,

A sickle waits for you.

I turn through at least a dozen more, “Slainte,” “Buttery,” “Don’t Think, Feel,” “Coq au Vin.” One makes me laugh out loud. It’s broken into numbered sections like an epic Victorian poem, except there are only three and the title is intentionally cumbersome:

On Philosophy, or the Eternal Debate, or Amongst Friends upon the Boards of the American Theater (1938), or Wisdom.

I

Who’s on first?

II

What’s on second?

III

I don’t know’s on third.

Laughing, I wipe my eyes and turn to the final page, reading through the blur:

Hot Chocolate

Will you let your bindings

Bind?

Blindly for eternity?

Or will you snip the

Rotted lines,

’Fore they be snipped for you?

I’m trembling by the time I turn the last, crisp page. As I do, I close my eyes for a moment, taking in his words, his life. Our life. This book is us. Jamie has immortalized us; a too brief encounter made eternal. I open my eyes and see what looks like an inscription, at the end of the book, carved into the hardness of the back cover. Two simple words:

Carry On

I close the cover and place the book, our book, back in his suitcase. As if this hasn’t been enough to process, I notice another item, an envelope tucked into the side of his bag. There’s no way I’m leaving it there. I’m ready to take his whole damn suitcase apart. I open it and find a thirty-day rail pass with my name on it, but no destination. And of course there’s a note. It’s not signed, or poetic, it just says:

Starting Tomorrow: Anywhere, Everywhere. Happy Birthday.

This was his gift. I imagine Jamie before me, handing over his book of poems, a shy grin, saying something self-deprecating. Then, after I’ve thanked him profusely, kissed him, he urges me to open the envelope. Oh. What have we here?

It’s the sweetest, most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for me. But it’s also infuriating. Why would he do this? Why would he send me away during the vacation, during his recovery, during our time to reconnect, our time to savor what we have left?

Because I’m leaving in June. Because he knows this is my last chance to travel like I’ve always wanted to. Because he knows that he can’t go and he won’t be responsible for holding me back. Because he loves me more than he wants to spend what remains of our time with me.

What do you do with that kind of love?