AN OPEN PLAN

Vivian

Sophie occupied my intensive care unit for nearly a week before I heard from Theo. Not much had changed. Her body stretched too still for a five-year-old in a room not meant for children, even a sleeping one. For five days I’ve brushed my hand over the uneven black stubble budding across her scalp and listened for her breath drowned out by the drone of machines built to simulate life, each beep and mechanical sigh a substitute for the husky voice trapped deep inside the child’s comatose body.

Today it was Theo’s voice, quiet and staccato, that pulled me back to the nurses’ station. “Vivian, I don’t know where to start.”

I held the phone that amplified my nasal sigh. “You can start by telling me where you’ve been. Just running off like that once we got to the hospital…”

“I left a note.”

“I don’t know what to do is hardly a note Theo, it’s an excuse.”

“What if excuses are all I have?”

I shifted my weight and passed the phone to my other ear.

Theo’s shaky voice continued, “I keep seeing her lying on the ground…there…like that.”

I thought back to last Saturday and how Theo had been the first adult to find Sophie.

“It’s too much, Viv, too much.”

Part of me waited for him to rally his usual response, an optimistic No problemo! to settle our spirits. Of all the ways I imagined Theo to react to something so surprising for us both, this was not it. But even I knew when I came home last weekend to find his fixie hanging in its usual place from the living room ceiling and no sign of him by midnight, something more was wrong.

Theo, the prepared one. The man with a solution in his bag for every occasion. The one whose pockets bulged with emergency supplies even on the shortest rides to the store, just in case.

“Theo, where are you?”

A pause. “Carmel.”

“Do you planning on coming back?”

“Viv, I just need a few days.”

I stood motionless, weighing his silence for proof of promise as I leaned farther away from the curious stares of the other nurses.

“Stay then. Pull yourself together. By Friday I need you home. This can’t go on forever, it was an accident. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be.”

“Easy for who?”

“No one is asking anything of you Theo. All you have to do is show up. Really, that’s all any of us can do right now.”

“Vivian, you’re used to things like this. When I saw her lying there on the floor… How could I not feel responsible? I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know…” Theo trailed off, words light as fog.

I looked at the oversized dry erase board on the wall that we used as a weekly calendar at the hospital. Black tape boxed it into sections like tic-tac-toe. Instead of X’s and O’s, patients’ names descended along the left hand column and days of the week ran across the top. Drawn in primary colors were lists of medications, nurses, doctors and other patient information collaged into a map designed to transform order into wellness. My eyes wandered to the right side of the chart where Friday was still a blank.

“Friday, Theo.”

He waited as though I had more to say then added, “Have you thought at all about what I asked you…before…?”

“I still need to think,” I said trying to untangle my own uncertainty from the pleading in his voice.

“Fair enough.”

My stomach lurched when I heard the dryness in his voice. I let my free hand rest on my stomach then slide around to cup my waist in a one-handed hug. I strangled the cry that lodged in my throat.

“I need you here before I can answer that. Two days Theo. We can talk when you get home.” I hung up before I could say what I thought even on the day of the party before we found Sophie sprawled at the bottom of the stairs like we did: that I still didn’t think we were ready for marriage.

I stared at Sophie’s face to try pulling her back into a reality where children play and dance and ask questions that have rainbow answers. I’ve seen hundreds of critical care patients and charted their histories through medications and procedures to determine a consistency I could recognize: a pattern for survival that stands out from the numbers and graphs of people able to be coaxed back to life with machines and prayers. I would have welcomed any proof that my waiting would be rewarded. More than that, I looked into Sophie’s face and encouraged a sign that my own history with Theo, given this motionless body between us, would allow us to survive intact.

Our unit housed fourteen patients: fourteen uncertain possibilities crouched between life and death. Like Mrs. Baker with her gnarled hands and recurrent respiratory infections. Her husband sat each day during visiting hours with a Bible in his lap and his hand on hers, prayer the only divining line for hope.

Sally, our head nurse, sat in her usual place behind the desk at the main station with her brown hair a curly mass of electrical current surrounding her. A fluorescent desk lamp glowed almost as bright as her optimism but cast dark shadows around her glasses making her appear owl-like and haunted. Her neck twisted back and forth as she thumbed through the medical records that wedged her into place. She worked with a constant motion as I approached and leaned over to grab another chart.

“Vivian, you need to get some sleep.” She slapped her hand over Mr. Bonifacio’s paperwork.

I pulled my hand back and rubbed my eyes. “That sounds easier than it actually is.”

“Look, that child over there is not going anywhere. I need you rested. These patients need you here.”

“I’ve been here all week.”

“You know what I mean.” Sally pulled her glasses off and stood leaning over her piles. “I need you focused. Go home. Joy just started for the week. She’ll watch Sophie. If anything happens I will contact you myself.”

Joy smiled behind me as she made her rounds, calling to patients in Tagalog-accented English, her oversized scrubs erasing years from her age.

“Go home Vivian.”

“Okay, but let me just finish this shift. Three more hours.”

“Vivian…” No use arguing. I could tell from Sally’s tone, no matter how soft, that this was an order.

I walked away from the ward seeing it through different eyes. Sterile, Theo said the first time he visited my hospital. White walls with plastic pastel flourishes and fluorescent lights. There should be more plants, and more real colors. Something to mimic the life you want people to hold onto.

At the time I thought he was being dramatic, trying to impose his philosophies onto another world that he barely knew. Mine is a curative world where colors have more deliberate purposes.

*

The first red flashes that moved me came in high school. My brother Devon collided with a deer on Interstate 280 after a bonfire on the beach roasting marshmallows with his girlfriend Michelle and other seniors. Though both survived the trauma of crawling bloody and disoriented from dad’s old Volvo mangled with glass and animal innards, the experience left them terribly shaken.

I answered the late night phone call listening to the breath on the line as though translating air came naturally. When Devon began to cry, raw emotion jumbled his words and I calmed him enough to get his location. I walked into our mother and stepfather’s room, stroked my mother’s arm and whispered to her, “We have to go get Devon.”

When we arrived at the scene Devon was still not talking in complete sentences. He clasped his hands around his box fade and stared at Michelle who was being treated by the EMT for superficial lacerations to her neck and face. My younger sisters Iris and Michelle were both sophomores at school. Iris, the one who introduced Michelle to our brother, refused to ride to the accident scene with us. Devon’s minor nosebleeds on cold mornings curdled her stomach enough to send her into nauseous fits. Instead, I was the one who held Michelle’s hand as she stared into her scratched palms, pulled her microbraids back from her face, and stroked her back until the girl’s own mother arrived.

The damage caused by a lone wild animal – two other cars also skidded out of control after encountering the accident – and the memory of the EMT workers stayed with me. One was stocky white guy with a stubbly beard and gentle brown eyes. He touched my shoulder before addressing me, careful to keep his voice low. His hand looked shockingly pale against my brown skin. His partner, a decisive Latina with short spiky hair who told us to call her Des, gave Devon water and spoke to my parents in a steady tone. When she was finished, she unfolded a wool blanket and wrapped it around Michelle and me. In the midst of all the chaos, the calm that engulfed me on the side of that highway with the intermittent red lights circling the scene felt more peaceful than my quietest days spent at home.

*

Walking away from the hospital I tried to remember the peace I felt before Saturday. The quiet halls carried hurried looks from nurses and doctors full of common purpose. I felt less sure of myself in hallways where worried visitors searched the faces of those of us identifiable by our scrubs or our charts looking for a sign that order and life would be restored, as if their loved one’s fate hovered across our fingertips and needed only a new imprint for revival.

On the street, the wind quickened my pace as I continued up Valencia Street and crossed over Cesar Chavez Boulevard. I thought of Sophie’s red dress, the one they cut from her body. The one replaced by a colorless gown that only made her look more ghostlike against her pale skin. I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets, bracing myself against the wind and looked up at the patchy blue sky as I kept walking.

 

Theo

Theo wanted to give Vivian time to answer. Instead, he worried that more questions swirled in her head. He did not take her silence as rejection. Not at first. Silence always began any serious thought on her part. She took her time answering questions, dropping her eyes during a moment when you would hear your own question repeated back, or maybe just the one word that stood out the most to her.

“Married?” she’d said, slowly like she had to taste for the correct flavor on her tongue.

He let her swish his proposal around in her mouth to see if the concoction tasted palatable.

Patience came easily to Theo but the last week had been unbearable. His former certainty about her answer had been swallowed up by the weekend tragedy. After they arrived at Travis and Christen’s house Saturday, he imagined her answering him during their descent from Dolores Heights. But that is not what happened at all. There was no descent, no answers, only a plateau of questions and shouting and confusion and now, absence.

In the distance, sand whipped against the few cars scattered around the Seaside State Beach parking lot. Monterey Bay swelled and crashed a few feet from where Theo sat with his knees pulled up, nestled in the dunes between the parking lot and the waves. He tightened the hood of his jacket so that only his eyes and nose peeked out. Leaving Vivian alone had not been his plan. Still, he felt that he could not stay. He could not look in her eyes after seeing Sophie’s body on the floor between them. Not with his proposal still unanswered. And definitely not without any sense of the security he initially felt he could offer to Vivian when the question first entered his chest, reared up, and poured forth in four powerful words that now settled like a confining tar over his body.

As the cold wind stiffened his joints, he walked back to his brother Eddie’s Jeep. He climbed into the driver’s seat and watched as the door slid open on an old VW van nearby. Two dark-skinned little girls shot out giggling and racing each other to the beach. Each had a jacket balled up under a slender arm. At the top of the first dune they tumbled down the other side and fought against feeling the cold. The wind battled their childish obliviousness and sent their jackets twisting across the sand. They disappeared into the sandy horizon as Theo started the engine and headed south.

 

Back at Eddie’s cabin, Theo was confronted with the photograph taken two years ago of he and Vivian. In the photo Eddie had taken, Theo reached for Vivian who stood with her back to him looking down at Fooz, Eddie’s Jack Russell terrier. Eddie cropped the photo to show only Theo’s raised hand suspended behind Vivan’s profile in a soft light that made both his gesture and her face remarkably phantom-like. Vivian, oblivious to the camera with her eyes so downcast they appeared closed, looked asleep. No doubt Fooz chewed to shreds some object that had delighted him only moments before and left him unaware of Vivian’s gaze. Eddie sent Vivian the 12” x 12” print for Christmas that year surrounded by a vintage wooden frame. He kept a smaller print along with the many other family photos densely spread throughout the 900 square foot home.

Theo stopped to look at the way Vivian seemed to be swaying away from him in the photograph. How could I have not noticed that before? he thought. He pulled the hood from his head as he removed the jacket from his thin frame. When Eddie first met Vivian, her brown eyes met his briefly then searched for Theo the way shy people often look away so as not to be noticed. From time to time, Eddie monitored Vivian’s quietness and apparent distance and mistook it for disinterest even though, in the past, he balked when others assumed it of him. Theo and Eddie spoke of art and politics, of movies and celebrity. Vivian watched as they lobbed arguments and stories back and forth to each other over drinks in the Hotel Vitale lounge. As brothers, they were taken with each other’s voices and their ease with each other. Vivian offered her opinions here and there but mostly listened to learn more about her new boyfriend.

At the end of their evening together Vivian turned to Eddie and hugged him. He could feel the heat from her cheek as she whispered, Thank you into his ear. Theo and Vivian then made their way across the lobby. Before walking through the carousel doors, she hugged Theo closer, her hand slid across his shoulder as she adjusted the crooked collar on his polo shirt. It was a simple gesture, both intimate and mindful. Something Eddie told Theo he remembered their mother doing for him before she had grown too distracted by grief to notice the little things. What Eddie had found more interesting though was the way Vivian’s hands moved counter to the normal way one pulls out of a hug. A fluid rounded thing that hug had been, full of grace and care. It was not what Eddie expected from her. People so rarely surprised him. As he watched them walk out into the warm night, the pair, both so different in their interests, did not seem like an obvious match. But, Eddie asked Theo later that night if he thought maybe she could be The One.

Theo looked around Eddie’s vacation home. It was a simple cottage, cozy enough for one although the three of them had spent plenty of long holidays lounging in the den. He was reminded of the things he thought essential for living should he and Vivian ever be able to afford to buy or build a proper place: two bedrooms, a spa bathroom, chef’s kitchen, an extra bathroom with a shower for guests, a study. Theo shared with Vivian what he could of his dream house, the one he longed to build for them both of when the time came. She told him that their rental on Dorland Street worked just fine. One day he would convince her, but for now her answer remained consistent.

“Vivian, I love design and I love you. Why can’t you just let me dream a little about designing for you?”

“I happen to be rather infatuated with our bathroom skylight and the affordable rent.”

“Worthy rivals, I admit, but not nearly as enjoyable or personal.”

“What about your mom, Theo? She could use a remodel at the very least.”

“It’s not the same.”

“I’m sure you could convince her.”

“I’m through trying to convince her to want something she doesn’t want.”

“Maybe it’s not that she doesn’t want it. Maybe she’s just not ready to let go of what she’s been holding onto for all this time.”

“She hasn’t had anything to hold onto for a long time. That house is nothing but memories dragging her down.”

“You make it sound like a zombie movie.”

“That house feels like a graveyard to me sometimes.”

“I’m sure to your mother it just feels like home. Where else should all of her memories live?”

Theo lay on Eddie’s weathered leather couch. Vivian’s quietness took people for a surprise. Even Theo sometimes thought she looked louder than she was. It was her confidence Iris had told him. Quiet and confident make mystifying bedfellows.

 

Vivian

            Theo would tell me I’m traveling with my troubles. I was taking the long way home as though physical exertion alone could expel the troubles from my mind, avoiding the hills in favor of the colorful Valencia corridor. I squeezed between two baby carriages and a whining yellow Lab collared around a parking meter on 18^th Street. As I passed, I gently tapped the dog’s head. He nosed my wrist and licked me back but continued to whine all the same. Outside Bi-Rite a swirling mass of flowers caught my attention. We make fun of it now, how overpriced it is and chock full of hipsters, but every time I pass I can’t help but think of the day we met.

 

Bi-Rite Market functions as neighborhood hub, urban status symbol, and, for people like me, pure convenience after an afternoon spent lounging in Dolores Park. Packed-to-the-brim, its shelves teeter with vibrant labels in tiny aisles arranged into a maze for urban foodies. This set-up guaranteed, at a minimum, three to four instances where repartee with an absolute stranger was necessary to get through the shopping experience. The interaction could be a courteous, Excuse me, as another shopper navigates past with a basket in hand, forcing us both to lean into either rows of organic teas or precariously stacked tomatoes until the other passed, or conspiratorial in the way we noticed each other shaking our heads in front of the freezer moments before reaching in for the overpriced, but oh so good organic ice cream.

At the deli counter I side-stepped around a middle-aged woman in Lululemon spandex tights who, despite the small space, did not seem to notice or care that every time she turned, the yoga mat strapped across her back threatened to topple entire displays. I stopped in front of the freezer display where the Ben and Jerry’s beckoned but got distracted by the Bi-Rite private label ice cream as a guilty feeling rushed through me. Back and forth I looked at the price difference between the two. Before I opened the freezer door that showcased the Bi-Rite ice cream, I heard a low voice beside me.

“It’s a damn shame that it costs that much.”

“I know. It’s also damn good.” I couldn’t help but respond to the good-looking guy shaking his head to my own rhythm. He wore skinny blue jeans rolled up over his sockless ankles and an over-washed loose-fit Ramone’s t-shirt that settled over a strong but rangy body.

“You know, there are some countries where I could probably buy a whole cow for $15 and here I only get a quart of ice cream.” He held the door open for me long enough to reach for the double chocolate. His skin color matched the ice cream that oozed down the side of the first container I pushed aside.

“Wouldn’t you have a hard time getting your cow into the freezer?”

“Ha! Would it be harder than getting you to call me if I gave you my number?”

I smiled, grateful that my dark skin could hide my blushing as he let the door slam shut.

He put out his hand. “Theo.”

I looked at his square palm and tapered brown fingers. “Vivian. Nice to meet you. So, do you always try to pick up women in places where the aisles are too narrow for them to run away?”

“Maybe. You should see me work the N-Judah,” he said referring to the bus line that ran through San Francisco all the way out to the ocean and stayed more crowded than a half price sale at Macy’s. He dipped his chin and smiled. I noticed a slight flush come to his face as he rotated his messenger bag around to his chest. He pulled a business card from the front pocket. “My cell.”

And then he surprised me again. Instead of pressing me for an answer or waiting until I had the good sense to be the least bit embarrassed by our exchange that was surely witnessed by other patrons – one of whom was the yoga mat lady who clutched a bottle of water to her chest swiveled to watch us – he simply smiled, half waved from the waist, and backed away. I grabbed my Bi-Rite ice cream and made my way through the perishables.

Getting picked up in a market was hardly an occasional experience for me. When I told Iris about it later she asked me what he had in his basket. That before I called a man I met in a grocery store I needed to make sure he had basket that was full, but not too full. Too much might have indicated his wife or girlfriend had sent him out to pick up some food. Too little, or all frozen foods and no perishables would have meant he did not know how to cook. She told me a man who doesn’t know how to look after himself could not be expected to know how to look after me. I told her I didn’t remember him holding a basket, and I was not interested in being looked after.

I did remember standing in line waiting for the cashier to ring me up. Theo had already made his way through checkout by the time I stood with my full basket in hand watching him unchain his bicycle from the parking meter out front and maneuver into 18^th Street traffic.

Against the black grid of my shopping basket lay the card he gave me. I reached in and held it up. In silver type against a white linen background it read: Theo Teague, Architect.

 

Theo

Theo dreamed in lines – curved and straight – that painted his existence. When he was growing up in Berkeley it was the water that fascinated him. He’d ride his bike to the marina to watch the bridge in the distance. On bright, windy days the brown water hosted a fleet of sailboats and windsurfers, each one following an invisible course across the Bay shores. It wasn’t that he wanted to be in that frigid cold water. His oldest brother Ray had thrown him into the waves once at China Beach when he was 12. Theo still felt the prickling sensation whenever he smelled saltwater. In actuality, his fascination with water came from another place. A place that found comfort in being able to watch an element so truly itself that could dance and rage and sit still so long and bring peace by its mere presence. It could carry him away if he wanted it to. Or pull him down the way it did even to expert swimmers whose arrogance took them past the break at Ocean Beach.

What does one do with water? Theo could not quite forge a desire out of water itself. Especially since he could not fathom spending his life on a boat or in an aquarium or any other place where water took over with absolute authority. It had the meditative pull of inertia contrasted with an unexpected force that propelled him across the country to New York City for school.

He loved sharing with Vivian the story of how he became fascinated with his life’s work. During an art history elective two years into an undeclared major, he had been drawn to architecture during a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater with his older brother Eddie. They rented a car in midtown and drove out to Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands to photograph the house for an Esquire shoot. He never imagined a house could be so exciting. Its integration with the landscape reminded him of the way Superman’s Fortress of Solitude rose up from the Arctic, a keeper of secrets. The house weaved back and forth between outdoor and indoors, playing with his perception and drawing him deeper in, something totally remarkable to someone who had grown up in a common ranch home.

Pragmatic fantasy was what Eddie called Theo’s enchantment. Eddie’s pursuit of photography, not college, was seen as anything but pragmatic by the rest of the family. The lens let him create worlds that no one else could see until the developed film revealed them. When Eddie’s talent turned out to be all too real with photo essays first ending up in music magazines, then in fashion spreads, then design books, it was Theo who followed Eddie’s successful trail to New York by enrolling at NYU while feeling as though he had none of the artistic talent with which his brother excelled. Or so he thought.

After graduating with an architecture degree, Theo returned to his mother’s house in Berkeley while he looked for work in the city. She remained in the house where he and his three brothers were raised. Theo looked around and saw possibilities in the walls, open space where for years clutter had free reign. He redesigned the house a million times in his mind, playing with the walls and raising the ceiling. He imagined his mother standing under skylights streaming sunlight on her as she cooked. One Saturday over brunch as his mother cleaned Theo’s coffee mug he announced, “I can design a house for you. Make it any way you like.”

“I have a house,” she said as she continued to turn the mug in her hands under the hot water. “Your father bought this house for me. You grew up in this house. Please don’t ask me to leave what little of your father I have left.”

Theo did not bring it up again even though in his mind the rooms continued to evolve. They were quiet around each other during those years. She had gotten used to the silence once all the boys moved out and found it difficult to swing back to an uneven cadence brought by another body in the house. Theo found comfort in the bike rides he took along the Berkeley waterfront and, as he became more confident, all the way into the Oakland hills.

He settled for painting his childhood room from the dirty eggshell color of his youth to a bluish-grey, hung gauzy white fabric over the windows to replace the ailing blinds that looked as twisted as his grandmother’s hands, and continued sending resumes to design firms in San Francisco. Six months after moving home he landed his first professional job as a junior designer.

To design and oversee construction of a home was like being a kid and an adult at the same time. Architecture was serious playtime: experimentation, inspiration, innovation, and plain old trust. Every day was different and every problem had a unique solution. The fascination started with houses. It was a scale Theo felt comfortable sculpting. He labeled precious the moments when he could enter a newly inhabited residence for the first time. Walking across the threshold reminded him of his purpose, so clear now as it never was when he was younger. Appreciation came later for grand structures: monuments, museums, commercial buildings, everything except cathedrals. All the empty space in cathedrals reminded him of corners at home too full of memories to be empty, too empty to be comfortable.

The home he grew up in was too small for his family even before he appeared five years after his oldest brother was born and only two months after his father died. In his mother’s house absence was a room with no doors and no corners and yet consumed every square foot of available space.

 

Vivian

Theo’s romantic streak ran longer than his bike rides. At twenty-seven my list of requirements for suitable lovers was short and not very precise. I had been through a few brief affairs in my 20s that left me heartbroken and confused. Despite my growing cynicism, a few longings remained: romance, a sense of humor, the ability to join me on walks through the city without complaining about being tired or winded, and a useful stint at university. Theo had them all in spades. Spontaneity was his specialty. We had been dating for eight months when he passed the orals on his final architecture-licensing exam. He celebrated by cycling from his Cole Valley apartment 20 miles across the Golden Gate Bridge to Tiburon and back. When he returned, chestnut face reddened by the wind, he knocked at my door and asked me to move in with him. Although I felt deeply for him, loved him even, I could not understand the urgency. Theo and I were compatible but I had the hospital and he had his clients. There were things to be done. And me with a rent controlled apartment in Noe Valley that was too small for two…

Romantic or not, nothing prepares us for the realities of love. Not our parents, not our observations, and certainly not our expectations.

“Every marriage is a history,” my mother once remarked. She was middle-aged and four years into her second marriage. At thirteen, the world looked so absolute around me. History was something to study in school, not the todays and yesterdays that fused together in craftsman homes beneath the Berkeley hills, or the smells and sounds of the family surrounding you, or the man you once loved who was no longer there.

 

As each day goes by with Sophie’s eyes still closed, I wonder if my hesitancy when Theo first asked me to move in was a valid concern that things might not work out for the best. Trying to understand myself is sometimes harder than trying to understand him. The man has a sensitive side that runs a mile deep but he seemed pretty unambiguous until now. Perhaps sensitive is the wrong word. In San Francisco there are too many other things for young men to be sensitive about. Only Theo kept my attention day in, day out. Theo and his passions:

1. modern architecture
2. road bicycles
3. me

Although I could not be entirely sure what order Theo’s list took on from day to day, confidence came from knowing that despite heavy rotation I always slotted into the top three. I could understand his bicycles. Every man needs a sport, something to keep active. A quiet one like biking ensured movement on major holidays would never be dictated by championship tournaments. Cycling kept his body lean and firm in places most men our age had already begun to soften. It was only the architecture that I did not immediately embrace. Jealousy perhaps? I have an inquisitive mind and am open to learning but I often wondered just what it was about architecture that made him so devoted.

Like many professions, his allegiance to design informed the way he saw the world. But there was something deeper. Something I could never quite grasp. Theo’s innocence – a quality that had escaped most men I had dated until then – as with all his deep enthusiasms, seemed to spring directly from his beliefs about architecture.

One morning Theo tried to describe his fascinations to me as we jockeyed for an available table at Tartine Bakery. Coffee and pastries were always a welcome distraction on mornings neither of us had to work early. Once seated, I slipped a sugar cube into my coffee.

Theo sipped his coffee and explained how designers like Bucky Fuller and Le Corbusier truly believed that properly placed angles and windows could conjure utopia: as though paradise were an open plan.

“And what happened when they failed?”

“Disenchantment isn’t failure. They transformed the way we think about our houses and our cities. For such a small group they had a major impact.” Theo broke apart his morning bun and slipped a sticky piece into his mouth. He motioned for me to taste.

“If they didn’t fail our cities wouldn’t have so many problems today. An architect would have fixed everything. People wouldn’t still be crowding the projects or the jails for that matter. I would probably be out of a job, or at least wouldn’t have to work so much overtime.”

Theo smiled as he spoke, chewing softly. “Pride of place…it’s a foundation, you know?”

“Bad things still happen in pretty places Theo.”

For Theo, design did not only explain the world at large, it created the foundation on which he stood; as though only design could offer order and beauty for a proper existence – for happiness.

The skin around his brown eyes wrinkled when he laughed. His voice did not get louder as his sentences went on as most men who got wrapped their egos around their voices. When I spoke Theo would often pause, prop one arm across his chest to support the other while he stroked his chin with his thumb and digested each word. Or he would grasp his hands behind his head and absentmindedly rub them against the dark stubble. Either way, he would not start talking again until he was certain that I had finished. I found myself fumbling my words just from looking at him, counting the minutes until I would be able to run my tongue around his mouth.

Physically I had never wanted anyone more.

Until then I had listened to men speak about music, their passion for hip-hop undaunted by its coarse popularity. I had been dragged to stores by grown men in search of video games – the same games I would later have to shout over to be heard – unashamed of the violent escapism. And there were the men who had little passion for anything but tried to make up for it with jokes. Yet here was a man rooted with a singular desire that clearly wanted me and I thought him odd. I kept him at a distance for reasons that had nothing to do with him. It took me three months to respond to Theo’s invitation to move in together. Theo’s patience was replaced by delight.

 

When we first moved in it scared me that my days would be different but I came to enjoy the sharing. Theo brought stories of innovation and interesting anecdotes that we shared over stir fry meals and walks around Dolores Park, our favorite spot. On a clear day, from the top you could see downtown all the way across the Bay. He loved to point out the dogs on the lawn below and make up stories for them.

“You see that one?” Theo pointed at a group of dogs barking by the playground.

“Which one? The beagle?”

“Yeah, the one with the cape. That’s Alistair. He’s sore because Milly, that speckled Dachshund, thinks he’s gay.”

“Milly might be on to something there.” I laughed.

“He’s a bit of a dandy but the cape is his signature garment. That sartorial flare is what sets him apart from Chester over there who’s busy eating his own leash. You know Frank Lloyd Wright had a cape and he was quite the ladies man in his day.”

“I thought you said Wright was a megalomaniac.”

“All architects are megalomaniacs.”

“Well if that’s what I have to look forward to….”

“Yes babe. When you were young I’m sure you dreamed of the day you’d find yourself madly in love with a man in a cape harboring delusions of grandeur. Don’t get all Milly on me now. You know you want this.”

 

My profession never enthralled me the way architecture did for Theo. People think about nursing in the same way they think about basic sanitation: no one wants to talk about the specifics but everyone wants to know it is there when they need it. As a critical care nurse, I use definitive words to describe a day’s work. Words not found in magazines with smiling couples on the cover are my words of trade: catheter, advance directive, do-not resuscitate. They are not fancy words that get lobbed around at parties but they are the words that plenty of people have heard and know well.

Theo asked me once why architecture, no matter how many fancy, new buildings he took me to, never excited me the way it did him.

“All these new building technologies, eco-design…anything?”

I shrugged.

“Doesn’t do anything for you, huh?

“I didn’t say it that.”

“Yeah, but I know that look. The one where your eyes look like they’re about to roll back in your head.”

“Uh-uh, that’s not true.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yes it is. It’s the same look you get when we’re trapped on Muni and the driver announces something that sounds like it’s supposed to be important but all we can hear is static.”

I laughed at his accusation. “What are you saying? You think I think of you like a broken radio announcement?”

“Well, I hope it’s not that bad. I’m just saying.”

“Okay, sometimes you just get all worked up and I can’t really follow what you’re talking about. It’s not that it’s not interesting, it’s just, well, for you, you’re already in the middle of the story I’ve never even thought about. I’ve never really had to. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to, it’s just that you’ve got to ease me in a little.”

Theo’s eyes danced with an expressiveness unparalleled by other topics in his life.

“But the creativity, the discovery!’ Theo exclaimed as he wrapped his arms around me. “Design is so essential and here you are going about your days never thinking about it.”

Theo’s expressiveness seduced me. Our dates showed me how the city was like one big amusement park for him. At the DeYoung Museum I held his hand as we climbed the stairs to the top of the twisting tower that overlooks the city from Golden Gate Park. I shot goofy photos of him with my camera as I skipped along the concrete pads on the plaza in front of Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum and marveled at its angles as he described deconstructivist theories. I ran my hands along the beaux art walls of the Asian Art museum on Thursdays while he sipped wine and chatted with friends while music played. Every walk in the city was a lesson, every angle was love.

 

I wish it could last. What I witnessed over the last week strengthened my sentiment that buildings are buildings. No more, no less. Beautiful, perhaps, in their efficiency and décor but unable to do much more than map the time that makes the lives that make a city.

A building cannot heal a broken heart.

In the intensive care unit I have seen patients come, broken and bloody, their pained bodies medicated into numbness and I’ve watched them die piece by piece. Some days difficulty lay in telling the living from the dead. Machines become the archivists. We learn to label death in differing degrees in the hospitals where I’ve worked. In quiet corners under fluorescent lights people are known to die in sections, a remarkable feat considering the noisy lengths we go through to keep them alive as a recognizable whole. For me, the body remains the most intricate architecture. I learned early on that I could not cry for all the bodies in my unit.

“Can’t they both be cared for: the body and the building? Where would one be without the other?” Theo asked me, always amazed at how I could touch these bodies, handle them, record vitals, and map exactly where the most delicate points lay without expressing the intimacy that one would think accompanies such actions. I could speak of a body’s secretions and decay matter-of-factly. He stared in amazement.

“But this is what the body does,” I said to him over Thai take-out. “I care for each patient as much as I can when they’re in my ward.”

“Doesn’t it make you upset?” Theo searched my face for emotion.

“Death is inevitable.” I sipped from a giant bowl filled with tom kha soup. I pushed back the braids that fell around my ears.

“Death is inevitable but that doesn’t make it any less unsettling. Everything dies so differently.” Theo had never known anyone who died except his father who did not count seeing as how the man was never flesh and blood during any part of Theo’s conscious life. Interestingly, figuring what to feel while watching someone drift away interested him.

Pain was not part of the association he felt when he imagined his father’s apparition, only curiosity. His mother, on the other hand, remained haunted by having watched her husband waste away in such a short period of time to lung cancer. She refused to remarry, swearing to keep his name to her grave. Theo did not always think it healthy the way people longed to hold onto a piece of the missing person – their homes, filled with memories, became both shrine and shroud – but he did recognize the need.

“It’s hard if you fight against it,” I told him. “Hanging on to a body that no longer has the will to heal and grow and sustain itself is not true living. It really boils down to quality of life.” I slurped my soup and let my eyes fall to the table as he stared at me.

 

And now all of this. Was it sadness? Or anger? A kind of fear? Perhaps a form of humiliation erupted within Theo in places that had been silent for years. Whatever it was that kept him away when I needed him to be here washed over. Before this week, the intensive care unit never gotten under my skin the way I could feel it now.

Last Saturday we walked along the Church Street side of Dolores Park. I squeezed the stuffed bear in my hand and concentrated on getting to the top of the hill. The cool ocean breeze hit weaker than the sun for once. A nice day indeed, nice enough to take my mind off the sadness I worried Theo’s newly designed house might elicit. I had no idea how deep that sadness could reach.

“It’s just up the hill. We can take the tracks and cut through to Liberty.” Theo’s excitement carried him up the steep incline with little effort.

Travis and Christen’s house introduced his first stint as project manager at his firm. Theo spent his days at Werner/Story Architects, a firm where his experience allowed for design participation. Not many architects his age could claim design credit on such a structure these days.

I worried all week that I would have to feign excitement.

“How old did you say their kid is?” I pressed the bear against my thigh. Though I thought about getting a more traditional house-warming gift, I opted for the bear at the last minute when Theo reiterated that Christen and Travis, his clients, were minimalists.

“Sophie’s five. Not much of a talker at first, then again who could get a word in with Christen and Travis. They talked my ear off last week about school applications like I have a kid trying to get into Rooftop Elementary or something.”

New houses left me feeling melancholy in a way hospitals never did. Trying to put it into words why only left me feeling that there was a large part of Theo I still did not understand, or worse yet, support. To explain to an architect that new spaces were not a source of comfort but uneasiness would have come across as a betrayal. To me, old houses on these city blocks were secured in time, a definite place. Even without prompting, if a picture were taken of a street here I am almost certain that anyone familiar with U.S. cities would be able to locate this place as San Francisco. Yesterday, today, or tomorrow, the picture would be clear.

Theo’s house emerged to etch a new corner in time. Light streamed through skylights and clerestory windows that peeked above horizontal wood cladding. No obvious, clear view to the street outside would reveal its place in the world. It could have belonged anywhere, called any city home. It was a home for the future, but what future exactly? That was the part that felt odd about the modern aspect. Comfort came from knowledge and experience. This house had no experience and it knew nothing yet of those who inhabited it. Not enough to keep them safe.

Despite the old, new house sadness that swirled, ready to overtake me at any moment, it could not disrupt the absolute pride that emerged from knowing what Theo accomplished. Over a hectic two-year period the house had grown from an idea into a home. Until now it had failed to solidify in my mind into something other than a massive disruption. Picturing the home’s potential while wrapped in scaffolding and littered with construction debris reached beyond my imagination.

Those times when we did drove by I thought about the families that owned it before Theo’s clients bought it and ripped it apart. The new house rose before me looking much less bothersome than it had whenever we passed it in the car. Contrary to my expectations, I rather liked it. Maybe it was because I knew this one sprang from Theo’s imagination that I thought I could trust it more. I felt the impending sadness fall away as I turned from the front door to look back at him inspecting the ironwork on the entry stairs.

“I’m still not totally convinced an ornate design was the way to go with this railing,” Theo explained as he poked at the metal that curved in on itself to form plant-like tendrils.

“Christen’s idea?”

“She thinks all stairways should reflect a certain grandness. What could I do, she’s from the South. I may be the designer but sometimes that just means I’m a glorified technician.”

I laughed, “Say it once more with meaning.”

“Seriously. You have to pick the battles and the best thing at some junctures is to merely suggest a difference of opinion.”

“Theo, I’m teasing you. It’s lovely.”

“You don’t think it’s a bit out of place here?” He ran a hand along the contours.

I could not figure out how to answer that because, in a way, his ultra contemporary house with its horizontal wood cladding partially covering a grey stucco finish and oversized windows was out of place with the rest of the Victorian and Edwardian buildings on the block.

“Just enjoy the fact that it’s over and done and what’s really important is that Travis and Christen love it. You said Christen cried when they moved in.” I rang the tendril-shaped doorbell as I looked up to the roof garden where people were already mingling.

Theo, preoccupied with details much too small to generate proper respect for the structure as a whole, continued snooping around the front porch. He had told me months ago that Christen was prone to tears in general.

“Two of her neighbors wrote letters protesting the roof addition.” Theo mockingly ran his fingers down his face. “Tears.”

“Why?” I thought I heard footsteps.

“Because they thought it would obstruct their view.”

“No, I mean why would she cry about that?”

“Believe it or not but some people take their houses very personally.”

“I guess.”

“She also got teary-eyed when I told her how long we’ve been living together. She thinks I’m depriving you of a big wedding.”

“Tell her no need to shed tears for me. I’m a big girl.”

“I don’t think anyone has any control over Christen’s tears, least of all Christen herself.”

Whether it was bad news about her neighbors initiating a letter campaign against their proposed third storey addition, or good news that the building department finally approved their plans, crying occurred. The road to completion had been pebbled with objections: neighbors terrified of losing their views and the building department’s squeamishness about the over-modernization of San Francisco that required them to submit the façade design three times before they granted final approval. Christen’s indecision fueled Travis’s anxiousness about the house being completed in time for the birth of their second child.

As the project manager, each minor frustration demanded Theo’s attention and expertise. With Travis and Christen he often felt like a psychologist rather than an architect, so caught up was he with the minor intricacies of their life together. Add the quirky whims of his boss, Margaret Werner, and the growing of a house became an episode of Dr. Phil with Theo playing the part of the attentive, yet weary, doctor.

 

Muffled laughter and children’s playful screams came from the other side of the door. It sounded like a playground at the end of a tunnel, then close to the door, then far away again. When my second knock went unanswered I reached for the door handle and opened it myself.

“So much for security,” I said as we walked into the foyer.

“Well, it’s not exactly SOMA.” Theo pinched my waist.

“It’s a city. They should be careful.”

As I turned to kiss Theo on the neck a skinny boy with red hair whizzed by narrowly missing us both, and slammed against the front door.

“Whoa!” Theo shouted. “Cody?” Theo recognized the oldest son of Adam, a senior architect at his firm.

“Hi Theo, everybody’s upstairs.” Cody shouted over his giggles as he ran back to the other side of the hallway where a group of six kids huddled, each bouncing up and down in their socks. About halfway down the hallway Cody stopped abruptly. His scrawny frame slid across the floor, arms up, body shifted slightly backwards and glided along as though riding an invisible surfboard.

“Well, that Moroccan tile you couldn’t stop talking about seems to be a hit. I’m guessing Christen might want to throw down a rug or two. Keep the circus tricks to a minimum.”

“My turn!” A towheaded kid in plaid shorts screamed.

“Be careful,” I said to no one in particular as we headed up the stairs.

The giggling and screaming continued. The towheaded boy careened towards the front door. He slid forward then, losing his balance, dipped backwards and fell against the hard floor.

“Man down!” Cody yelled out. “Micah, you have to go like this.” Cody started to run again but stopped after a short run when a little girl shouted out.

“I wanna do it!”

“That’s Sophie,” Theo whispered.

She had straight black hair. When I think about her that’s the first thing I recall, her hair. Most of it is shaved off now but when I first saw her I thought the way that bob framed her face gave her a wise look even as her sleeveless red dress hung crooked over her matching red tights. As we stood watching her, Sophie’s face scrunched up as she ran with balled up fists that pumped side to side, elbows upturned the way children do before their bodies can grasp an entirely forward motion, and hurled herself across the tile floor. What could Cody do? He stepped aside just a moment before she would have barreled into him and then suddenly, like the others, she stopped abruptly, letting the slick floor carry her softly into the foyer. Sophie’s tiny body, however, did not possess the requisite mass to get her very far. She slid a few feet then stopped just below the staircase where we stood watching.

“Hi Sophie.” Theo waved. Sophie, already lost in laughter, looked up at us as though we were the surprise. With a smile frozen on her face, her eyes searched Theo before they shifted to me. For a second I actually felt guilty as though we were the ones who had stopped her ground from moving.

“Sophie, move! Stefan’s turn.” Cody screamed, clearly reveling in his role as leader. “Sophie!”

Sophie turned to look back at Stefan, a solidly built boy at least twice her size already sliding towards her. The heft of his pre-teen body kept him going until – Vivian winced – he plowed into Sophie. Both kids hit the floor, Stefan laughing and Sophie silent. When he rolled off her she brought both hands to her face.

I rushed back down the stairs.

“Sophie, you okay’? Stefan laughed. He pulled at her arm as he stood. Sophie yanked her arm back.

“Let her get up on her own.” I said softly as I looked at Sophie, inspecting her for injuries. I brushed her dress as she pushed herself up off the floor. The little girl’s hands smoothed the hair away from her face.

“You’ll be just fine. This guy can look after you if you have any doubts.” I wrapped the stuffed bear’s stumpy arms around Sophie who stared at it, then stared at me before taking him into her arms. “He’s all yours.” I winked as Sophie’s eyes lit up and a broad smile revealed a missing incisor.

 

I could feel Theo’s protectiveness as he palmed my lower back. I looked down at my feet as we worked our way towards the roof. Theo knows I’m not the most coordinated individual.

The stair treads hovered preternaturally beneath us, each step anchored only to the wall and not to the rest of the ascent. Connectionless. Suspended. Like this house, I thought.

“They insisted on a floating staircase. I told them it’d probably be more practical to go more traditional but this is where the modernist in Travis took control.”

“I’m guessing the jury is still out on whether modernism and children go together.”

“I think you’re confusing modernism with minimalism.”

“Maybe, but I’m not confused about the fact that I’m going to have to keep my beverage consumption to a minimum.”

Our past conversations about children revealed a vulnerability neither of us was eager to embrace. Theo, not having grown up with a father, felt ill-equipped to handle parenthood. “What do we know that needs to passed to another generation? I have no good answers to tough questions. I haven’t even gotten things figured out for myself yet.”

“I have my good looks.”

“Ah, if only that were enough.” He shook his finger at me playfully.

“If it’s good enough for the Housewives of Atlanta…”

“The last thing I want to do is add to that wayward train of procreation. What’s the point really?”

His own struggles to find a way without solid direction had been uneven at best. We were only 29 years old. Nothing was certain. In high school Theo’s best friend Douglas had once asked him if he was angry with his father for dying before he was born.

“Does it feel like he left you? Is it the same feeling?” Then, before Theo could answer, Douglas shrugged it off by adding, “Nevermind, it doesn’t matter. He’s not here either, is he?”

But Theo turned the question over in his head. Douglas’s father left his family just before they started high school. It left his friend with a chip on his shoulder. Theo’s father’s death invaded everything but he could find no real anger because the loss wasn’t an actual, tangible thing. It was only an absence. Like missing one spoke on a bicycle wheel Theo’s life continued to move forward even with the noticeable void.

What a responsibility for Theo to know that every action he took would ripple through a new life in ways unimaginable. After three years together we still could not be sure how we rippled through each other’s life. I believe the reason why architecture fascinated him so was because structures, no matter what their life span, were built to be steady. I wish I could have assured him the same held true for people.

 

Along the cedar deck, the usual Werner/Story clients and colleagues gathered with Travis and Christen’s friends admiring the photo book Theo shared that showed the roof deck in various stages of completion. It was much smaller than it looked from downstairs.

Travis leaned with one hand against the glass and cable railing, the other clutching a clear plastic cup. He bounded over, full of energy circling an arm around Theo’s shoulder. “We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day.”

“Enjoy it while you can. Once that fog sets in it’s back inside.”

“Are you kidding me, we are going to get a season’s worth of use on this roof today, fog or no fog because trust me, we didn’t work this long to be huddled up inside like a bunch of suburbanites.” Travis spoke rapidly in long sentences, his pink dress shirt unbuttoned to his chest.

“Travis, I don’t think you’ve met Vivian.”

He held out a strong, meaty hand with the look of a man more comfortable at parties than at work. “Christen is the barefoot one topping off Margaret’s wine. The woman can’t very well drink in her condition but making sure everyone has a drink in hand is her goal for the day. C’mon you two, let’s get you some, introduce you to a few people and keep this party going for as long as we can.”

Travis reached into the cooler at his feet and handed Theo a frigid bottle of Sierra Nevada. “Christen, an extra glass for Vivian over here!”

Christen waved with one hand holding the bottle of red wine then pushed her wavy black hair away from her face. She leaned back as she walked but refrained from the waddle I’m used to seeing on women that far into their third trimester. Margaret followed with an easy smile that carved two shallow parentheses around her mouth.

“We were starting to wonder if you two would make it.” Margaret sighed in a smoky, German drawl.

As I was about the respond, Christen breathed out in one long exclamatory sentence, “I knew you guys would make it Theo has told us so much about you and I told him that he just had to bring you because we really wanted you to see exactly what he’s been able to do here we’re so happy with the way it turned out, and just in time because this baby is going to drop any minute now and I don’t know what we would have done if we were still stuck in the other house although I know Travis was worried that we wouldn’t make it but look, here we are.”

“Yes, here you are.” I was beginning to feel as though I had walked onto a movie set from the 1930s where everyone spoke a little faster than in the real world. Just then Theo took my hand as he gave it a squeeze. That was our secret signal that we should keep the drinks to a minimum, and sneak out as soon as we got the chance.

“Come my dear. Let’s help Christen refill the till,” Margaret purred in a German legato. With her greenish-grey eyes, freckled nose and wavy dark brown hair cropped just below her chin, Margaret’s beauty belied her young, 53 years of age.

Regardless of my own architectural ignorance, I felt drawn to the woman, the way a musician felt drawn to an instrument not his own. I loved the opportunities when a new Werner/Story home would provide the chance to hear Margaret’s perspective.

“Architecture is such a useful profession full of precise questions about society. Ultimately though, it is at the mercy of the human ego,” she had once sighed to me outside the office, her cigarette smoke fanning out above her. “Even the smallest structure becomes a monument its internal life cannot possibly live up to. I do believe that it is important work but I also realize that we have come to value the complications more than the purpose. I am certain that one day I shall just walk away.”

I agreed with Margaret that architecture, no matter how simple it appeared, would always be valued for its complex solutions to the most basic need for shelter. “Space is space. It’s there whether you put a wall around it or not, and it will be there once all the architects have vanished,” I replied, impressed by my own ability to form an opinion at all about architecture.

Margaret, with one sentence clarified the discord I felt when speaking to Theo about design. Although its rules and regulations ensured prestige among its practitioners, it was a flimsy excuse for greatness. Theo had endured extensive schooling, internships, and licensing exams before being allowed to refer to himself as an architect. Margaret’s acknowledgement found fault with the entire profession and at the same time, she could not conceal her admiration.

“Of course how we place that wall, that is the measure of a true architect. Anyone can place a wall. An architect has more intention than division. A true architect knows how to bind space to space.”

A profession built on making the simple, more complex. It wasn’t just architecture though that made life more difficult than it needed to be. Human nature contributed plenty. I could tell by looking into the faces at my hospital. I’ve done my best to ease bodies with medications to numb pain. For some there is no relief. Pain is a public affair for some, while most stuff it down where it sprouts into illness and decay.

Amidst Christen’s persistent voice and Travis’s increasing volume, co-workers and friends milled about engaging in conversation so that none of us noticed the silence that had broken out downstairs where we had left the kids. I was sipping from a can of berry flavored Hanson soda when I heard the first scream. Cody ran onto the deck looking younger than he had just moments ago when we passed him playing on the tiles.

“It’s Sophie!! She fell.”

Theo was closest to the stairs ran down before the others. The rest of us were trying to get information out of Cody who just kept pointing.

“Call an ambulance!” Theo shouted from below. “Somebody call an ambulance!”

Christen, her face confused and her pregnant body not used to moving so quickly, worked her arms back and forth using every piece of furniture she passed to propel her faster to the source of panic.

Sophie lay at the bottom of the stairs, the pool of blood nearly indistinguishable from the dress that fanned out around her twisted body.

“She fell…we were jumping…and she fell…the stairs…she wasn’t big enough…” Cody stammered and pointed at the malevolent treads and spiteful tile floor. The other boys stood quiet, holding their arms or looking for their parents who were crowding down the stairs.

I rushed past the guests who stood, mouths covered and staring Sophie’s unresponsiveness. A large hematoma continued to spread across her forehead along with the blood that trailed from her hairline past her split lip.

Travis dropped to his knees beside me with glassy eyes. “Sophie? Sophie loaf?!” His panic held him crouched like a question mark above his daughter with hovering hands that did not know whether his touch would break her body more.

“Get me a towel,” I ordered, sure that action would keep Travis’s mind from spiraling out of control.

Theo stood with his back to the wall, just watching.

“What’s happening? Is she alright?” Christen cried from beside Margaret. “Somebody tell me she’s okay. Sophie? Sophie?!”

I whispered to Sophie until the ambulance arrived. “You’re going to be alright. Mommy and Daddy are right here with you.” I had to say it enough times to encourage my own belief and her parents. She showed no signs of consciousness as the bump on her forehead spread. On such a small body, the damage could be substantial but there was no way to tell until we could get her to the hospital.

I went to find Theo when the ambulance arrived. Travis decided to ride with his daughter while I assured him I would drive Christen to meet them.

“I warned them about the stairs,” Theo said when I found him sitting on the bathroom floor.

“It’s okay. She’s on her way to the hospital.” I rubbed his arm and slid down across from him.

He stared past me, his eyes distant.

“I’m going to drive Christen to the hospital. Her car is in the garage. I’ll call to let you know what’s happening. You can meet us there.” I backed out of the bathroom.

When I came home that night, Theo was gone.

*

Sophie opened her eyes on Friday morning. Christen and Travis were with her. Sally texted to let me know: Your girl is gonna be alright. She has some angels looking over her for sure.

I could feel Sally’s smile through the phone.

From beneath the door, steam forced its way from my tiny bathroom carrying a lavender scent through the hallway. I wrapped my towel around my chest and opened the door to Theo squatting low against the wall. As he stood, I looked at the caramel architecture of his body: the collection of pain and shame that dropped his head so his eyes met mine from an angle, the tense jaw that housed his worry, and the bottom lip he held between his teeth. I also felt the hope lodged in his straight back and his innocence when he reached out to hug me.

“I’m so sorry Vivian,” he breathed into my neck.

I understood at that moment that what he loved about his profession was the same thing he feared about life: that no foundation was perfect, that the unpredictable anatomy of a structure could compel one’s whole life to change, and if done properly, take the world with it. It’s a brave path to take when most people wish only for enough paint to cover up what stains us. What emerged from my thoughts was the decision to be with someone who actually believed in utopia when the world worked hard to break it apart.

I held him close enough to feel his heart, the center of him that felt so solid and real to me, and whispered back into his ear, “Yes, Theo, I will marry you.”