Glenna Rising, MD

Location:

289 W. 51st St

New York, NY 10019

Office Phone:

212-555-0422

Residency Training:

NY AND PRESBY HOSP

Primary Specialty:

PEDIATRICS

Medical School:

COLUMBIA UNIV COLL OF

PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS

NEW YORK, NY 10032

I doubt the cold warriors who initially funded the Internet suspected it would become a popular method for tracking down ex-girlfriends. I hadn’t seen Glenna in over thirty years, and given my career collecting and analyzing intel on foreign armies and paramilitary groups, I could have used my skills to uncover far more about her. But I didn’t want to ruin my vision of Glenna: beautiful, available, and willing to concede that she, too, was subject to this strange power that had kept us connected across so many years.

Reaching into my daypack, I took out a photograph of her. Long ago, I had sealed it between laminated sheets: the edges were curled with age, but the image had remained as detailed as an etching. Glenna is standing in the golden autumn light outside a hotel in Bennington, Vermont, with leaves falling all around her. Her long hair is the color of maple syrup with sun shining through it. A breeze blows it off the shoulders of her sweater, swirling it around her face, but you can still see the cameo perfection of her features. She is smiling, and yet doesn’t seem happy, appears suspicious instead, and to this day I don’t know if it was happiness she didn’t trust or me.

Perhaps it was both.

Someone once said a photograph is a far cry from a memory. I’m not so sure this is true because I remember looking through the viewfinder of the Minolta on that breezy, sunlit Saturday, smelling the woodsmoke rising from the white-brick chimney of the hotel, and thinking that no matter what became of us, I would love Glenna—and be haunted by her—forever.

I put away the photo, then picked up my iPhone and went through the saved voice mails until I heard the last one from Alex: “Hey, Dad. Thanks for dinner and the advice about Julie. Things’re up and down, but I’m trying. I’ll be in touch. Love you.” Alex started laughing. “And, Dad. Stay out of Dorkville!”

I loved hearing my son laugh—in part, because his mother and I had split up when he was in fifth grade, and I’d taken away an enduring guilt-curdled image of him on his bed sobbing into his pillow. When Alex was fourteen, my ex remarried and left DC for Potomac, Maryland, and Alex decided to live with me in Georgetown. From the day he moved into my town house, Alex had been trying to fix me up—with a few of his teachers, some divorced soccer moms, and once with a woman who struck up a conversation with him in the cereal aisle at Safeway. Eleven years later and living in his own apartment in Baltimore, he was still playing matchmaker, but I wouldn’t cooperate, which, according to Alex, made me a distinguished resident of Dorkville.