Yes, she texted back. You?

Of course!

Marianne is nervous about seeing Janine, and she wouldn’t mind canceling their date at a coffee shop, well known for its eight-dollar hot cocoa, near her Midtown hotel. But she isn’t going to be the one to back out—not after Janine made the flight from Florida. She is here with her daughter—Beth has an interview with the local NBC affiliate—and wants to see Marianne in person.

They’d started talking again not long ago. Marianne heard that Janine had not returned to school, and she was worried. So she called, she emailed, she texted. Finally, in late October, Janine wrote back—there was a hurricane set to make landfall in New York; would Marianne take shelter, please? Marianne was struck by how reckless she still must seem, how careless of her own life, when that wasn’t how she felt at all. Not that there was much she could do about Sandy, other than wait in her fourth-floor apartment for the water to recede and the power to be restored. Things are fine, she texted after the worst was over. I’m safe.

Praise God! Janine replied, followed by a long email about how she thought, after their storm, that she’d give up poetry forever. It worked for a while—she was made department chair at school, and Beth was applying for jobs in faraway places; her husband’s job was busy, and her younger daughter was raising money for orphans. They turned the writing room her husband built for her into an entertainment room, with a big-screen TV and surround sound, and at night they watched reality programs: Ice Road Truckers, Pawn Stars, America’s Got Talent. But she said she just felt empty and unanchored, like a part of her was missing or dead.

Marianne wrote back to her right away. You are a poet, she told Janine, and that is something you just can’t help, like a disease or a birth defect, but if you accept it, it can make things better, can at least help you understand things. She sent a poem she’d written about Ruth and asked Janine if she wanted to exchange work—not a teacher-student relationship, nothing formal. Just an even exchange. Work for work, thoughts for thoughts.