for lsz, who has decided to teach me a lesson, and has succeeded

a few weeks ago lsz, my most attentive listener and the cattle prod to my ever-lapsing humanitarianism, told her readers that she was going away and gave us an assignment to complete in her absence: write about the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, felt or heard. and then she didn't go away, and so i don't think any of us wrote for her. of course, she didn't want us to write it for her, really; she wanted us to remember it for ourselves. she's sneaky, that lsz. wonderful, but sneaky.

well, today i woke up and she was gone. and i thought, what a brat, until i remembered that i told her i was going to vanish in exactly the same manner when i left on my vacation, and i didn't think i was being mean, but you just never know, do you? sometimes people count on your presence more than you realize. lsz has been missing for close to six hours . . . and i'm terribly sad. lesson learned, love: i'm leaving the evening of the 23rd, i'll be home on the 28th, i'll have presents for all of you and you'll have them in your hands by the end of the month. anyhow, coupling my sudden turned-tables revelation with the momentousness of last night's episode of my name is earl, which was about remembering not to neglect our loved ones or take them for granted, i was finally driven to make the time to do this small perfect thing i was asked to do by this small perfect girl.

you would think—wouldn't you?—that the most beautiful experience of your life would be eternally center-stage in your mind, like a spoiled lap dog waiting for you at your front door, frantic to be lifted up and caressed. but it isn't; it gets trampled and muddied and elbowed to the back of the room by all manner of stuff and nonsense, like sunrise from a hilltop or hellenistic sculpture or that song that made you cry that time you heard it live, or the time that person you were afraid to let yourself trust reached for you in the middle of the night, or the lightning storm over the ocean that you watched all alone from the beach . . . rubbish. iridescent baubles. they could have belonged to anyone. i had something better, something simpler, something right, if i could just reach it; so i thought, and i thought, and i thought and i thought and i thought

and then i remembered.

kismet was a little black cat who became a giant black cat. i told you how we met here and how we parted here, and after that i never really mentioned him. but he's the one true love of my life, and there was a moment when i became sure that he always would be, because no one else would ever earn it the way he did right then and there, and nothing's been so beautiful, before or since. if you'd like to listen, i'll tell you a story.

six months after i left him, eight days after my twenty-first birthday and eight months to the day after his first, i was at my parents' house for a visit. it was the middle of the afternoon and no one else was home, and i was in the kitchen reading a book that had been making me laugh but that suddenly made me very, very sad. it made me so sad that i had to put it down and move away from it, so i got up and walked to the back of the house, where the sliding doors let you look down over the back yard and the woods that stretch out of sight beyond it. i was crying, just a little. i wasn't entirely sure why. kismet, who was getting to be a very big boy, a much bigger boy than i had imagined he'd be, was taking up a fair amount of space on the floor in front of the left-hand door; when i reached him he opened one dozy bronze eye, yawned, stretched out his leg to grab the tip of my sneaker with his claws, went back to sleep.

something inside me imploded.

i started sobbing and couldn't stop and sat down to keep from keeling over, and as i did kismet looked up at me with a most unnatural degree of alarm and i was hysterical, could not catch my breath, and he was all at once on his feet and panic-stricken, his eyes so wide i could see the whites and my little cat, whom i had abandoned with no warning or explanation and who in the six months since had not shown any interest in any human member of his new household, did something he had never before done.

he climbed into my lap. when he lived with me he was everywhere i went; he followed me from room to room, sat in the chair next to me when i was at the kitchen table, sat on the couch beside me when i watched tv, spent the entire night curled beside my head like a furry pillow—but he never once tried to settle on me. now that he had done it we were both surprised, and he made some tiny, hesitant half-steps, not sure whether to sit or stand, confused on altogether too many levels for a young cat with an innocent walnut brain. but he didn't leave, and finally he stretched his small saucer-eyed face up to mine and pressed the top of his head against my wet wobbling chin. and i cried all over him, made sticky salty spots all up and down his back, and he never moved or even blinked, only leaned in closer to me and every few seconds offered a quiet, chirping non-meow. my little baby, kissing my face, saying, "don't be sad, mommy; i love you."

it was the first time i could remember being a part of something so clean, so even and honest and entirely above-board. it's the only time, and i can't imagine there ever being anyone in my life whom i could share a similar moment with. you can't cry in front of your parents because it breaks their hearts, can't cry in front of your children because it frightens them, can't cry in front of your friends because it's embarrassing for everyone in the room, can't cry in front of anyone, just because. because it's a futile exercise in guilt management; no one ever knows what to do. you know that no one knows what to do and feel guilty for making them feel like they should, and they feel guilty for not being able to amaze you by magically knowing what to do. or you think they should know, and they know that's unfair, and everyone is curdled by irrational resentment. a person who catches you crying asks you if you are okay and then hopes that you will say yes, which you most likely will do, and then you will quickly go about meaning it as the other person gears up to ask you if you are sure, even though you both would have liked for him or her to have left the room already. maybe not every time, but the majority of the time, comfort is either offered or received, or both, out of obligation, not sincerity. something is always off, and no one walks away without a little shame. that's not how it ought to be, and i don't think it's how it has to be, but i believe, when you're dealing with adult human beings, it's how it inevitably is.

only, not that time. that time i ran my hand over a soggy shedding body and knew what it was to be sure of something, and i didn't need to cry anymore. i tried to dry my tears off his head but he wouldn't hold still, he kept trying to look at me, to nuzzle my face. so i laughed and wiped the tears off myself instead, told him it was okay, i was fine, i didn't know what had happened but i was all right now; he didn't believe me. he stepped out of my lap, walked over to one knee, rubbed up against it, looked up at me quickly to make sure i hadn't started crying again, walked over to the other knee, repeated, did this until i had stopped sniffling, sprawled out in front of me on his side and yawned, stretched out his leg to grab the tip of my sneaker with his claws. everything as it was, only now he was purring, and until it became dark we sat there looking at each other, kismet with his foot on my foot as he purred and purred.

there it is, lsz; my one flawless instant. i'm sorry it took me so long.

now will you come home?