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0.
They used to play a game in bed in Austria, tangled together, after Web declared that sex and German couldn’t be the only things they had in common. They’d take turns posing a question with two choices. City or country? Hot or cold? Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon? It’s how they learn they both prefer coffee, night, the west coast. They both hate math, November, and Lieutenant Peacock. Tiny things they use to build a bridge over the gulfs between them: seven years, the entire country, tens of thousands of dollars.
One night, Web is playing with a telescope Speirs gifted him, blathering on about constellations while Joe smokes in bed, leaning against the headboard.
“Space or sea?” Joe asks.
Web turns and looks at him fondly, so fondly it makes Joe a little anxious, like maybe he’s gotten Web in too deep. “The sea. Come on,” he chastises. “You know that.”
“Space,” Joe says, just to be contrarian, although it’s true. He likes the bay in Frisco and liked Lake Michigan when he was little but the ocean is too big. He doesn’t trust it. “It’s always above us. The sea can leave you,” he says. “But space can’t.”
Web abandons his telescope and comes to bed, laying on top of Joe, putting his chin on Joe’s chest and looking up at him. His eyes somehow look bluer in the lamp’s dim light, or maybe it’s just Joe’s rose-colored glasses. Web, annoyingly, describes them as ocean blue but Joe never thought of them that way. They remind him of a perfect California sky and he likes that, likes to think that for the rest of his life he can look up and recall Web’s eyes.
“I’ve always thought of the sea as life. I mean, it’s where we came from. There’s so much life under there. Space is… nothing. It’s the absence of life. And when I was a kid in church they always talked about heaven above so I imagined death whenever I looked up there. Space is where you go to die and the sea is where you go to live.”
Joe snorts. How had he ended up in love with someone who sits and ponders things like this?
“What?” Web asks.
Joe stares at him, hoping Web can’t see the love he feels must be streaming out of his eyes. He stubs out his cigarette. “Nothing. Kiss me already."
i.
After a long day at the barbershop, and maybe one too many drinks at the bar, Joe returns home.
The kids are all in bed already but Naomi, ever the faithful wife, sits in the living room. He kisses her cheek, the dutiful husband, and stretches out in his armchair. She hands him the paper and goes to get him a glass of water. He flips through it, mostly uninterested. Then he sees a familiar name. David Webster. It’s not unusual; he’s seen Web’s articles in the Daily News before, but this is the Times. Maybe he’d gotten a new job. Then he realizes Web’s name is in the text of the article and glances up at the headline. Local Journalist Missing At Sea.
He snorts. Getting lost at sea. Classic Web, always one to be dramatic. Joe’s gonna see him when he gets back and give him a lot of shit for this. He hasn’t seen him in—fuck, fifteen years—but he’ll visit when Web returns from this little jaunt. It’s a good reminder that he doesn’t actually have unlimited time to see him again. They’ve been living in the same city for years now, and Joe meant to call him up, but there were a thousand good reasons not to. Here’s one good reason to do it, and soon.
His week goes on. He brings the kids to school and cuts hair and he and Naomi pretend to have a functional relationship. He idly checks the paper every night to see news of Web’s miraculous rescue but it never comes.
On Friday he reads David’s obituary.
A sharp shock of pain echoes in his chest, reminding him of the time his neck caught that shrapnel in Holland. He scans the obituary, thirty-nine, talented writer, decorated veteran, beloved son, father, and husband. How the hell can they give up on him after one fucking week? Clearly he wasn’t such a beloved husband if his wife is racing to get the obituary printed.
He can’t be dead. He can’t. And he’s not.
Joe imagines that Web sailed all the way to one of those tiny islands they’d dreaded being sent to before the war ended. That he’s laying on a beach trying to figure out what to do with a coconut, blue eyes bemused. Or maybe he finally found a suitably rustic fishing ship, complete with a wise old captain, and he’s taking a trip around the world with them, dropping golden nets into the water and catching sharks. What if he fell overboard and at last found Atlantis, where the sea-people welcomed him as a king, and he’s staying to write the story of a lifetime? Perhaps pirates captured him and Web has to use his wiles to escape, dark hair falling into his sky eyes like one of the guys on the cover of Naomi’s romance novels as he wields a sword.
Joe feels ridiculous, delusional, like one of his children, but Web always liked stories, would’ve wanted Joe to keep telling them. He hasn’t believed in anything in so long but he believes this: David Webster survives.
He stares at the tiny black and white photo of Web, older, probably not wiser, more beautiful than ever. Of course he’d age into a distinguished, politician sort of handsome. This is who Kennedy believes he looks like, Joe thinks scornfully. He’ll tell Web that when he gets back. He’d probably get a kick out of that, loyal Democrat that he was. Is.
After Naomi goes to bed he carefully cuts the picture out, stowing it deep in his wallet, and throws the obituary in the trash.
Chuck shows up on his doorstep on Wednesday morning, clad in a black suit, looking somber. “Go get dressed,” he says. “I thought it would be easier if we went together.”
Joe is almost late to work and has no time for Chuck’s mind games. “Went where? You think the shop wants the likes of you cutting hair?”
“The funeral,” Chuck says patiently. “Webster’s.”
A chill runs through Joe. The funeral? Already? There wasn’t even a body to bury. Web had gone missing eleven days ago. So what that they’d found the boat without him on it? That didn’t mean anything. Web was— is, goddamn it—a good fucking swimmer. Used to swim endless laps in that lake in Austria while Joe read comics out on the deck. He’d probably swam and washed up on some beach somewhere, delirious, and is being fussed over in a hospital by some pretty nurse. Just like after Holland.
“I’m not going,” Joe scoffs. “That’s exactly what he’d want. Can you imagine when he gets back and finds out I was weeping at the funeral? I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I can’t imagine that. Because he’s dead, Joe. He’s not coming back.”
“Fuck you,” Joe says. “I’m not going. Pay my respects to the living.”
Chuck gives him a long look and sighs, raising his hands in surrender, and retreats down the steps. Joe slams the door and goes back inside his house. He has to go to work. Instead he walks into the kitchen and drinks whiskey from the bottle until he can barely see straight.
It takes him a second to realize the reason he can’t see straight is because tears are blurring his vision. He doesn’t understand why he’s crying.
Naomi gets home from work while he’s still drunk and puts him to bed so he doesn’t scare the kids. He sleeps fitfully, finally waking up with a terrible headache around nine. When he shuffles downstairs he thinks for a minute he’s time traveled, because how else to explain the members of Easy Company sitting in his living room? Chuck, Babe, Doc, Pat, Sergeant Lipton, even fucking Skinny.
“Who the hell is this old man? We’re looking for Joe Liebgott,” Babe says, bursting into that familiar—and how strange that it could still be familiar, after almost two decades—giggle.
“Huh?” he mumbles. “What are you—how are you–?”
“Chuck thought you could use a friend,” Lipton says, in that caring way he always did.
We’re not friends, Joe wants to snarl. Being in a war together doesn’t make us friends. And some friends all of them were to Web, going to the fucking funeral as if Web isn’t still out there. They should all be in boats looking for him, going out on a rescue mission like Web did for Bull.
“How are you holding up?” Pat asks.
“I’m fine. I mean, he’s probably still out there, so…no sense in assuming the worst,” Joe says. Judging by the way everyone’s face falls, he’s not convincing them of his fineness. “And why the hell are you all here anyway? We were friends—I guess—for a few months at the end of the war. We lost touch a year after. It would be sad if he were dead but life goes on. It’s gone on without him. For a long time.”
‘Lost touch’ is an interesting way to say stopped opening letters and moved so you couldn’t get any more, a voice that sounds a lot like Web, annoyed but amused, says in his head.
“Joe,” Babe says. “We all know he was very important to you.”
Alright, fine, Jesus, Babe and Eugene know what happened. Chuck probably does too, and maybe Pat, cause Joe remembers he and Web being close. But there is just no way that fucking Lipton and Skinny know he and Web were sleeping together the last six months of the war, that he’d fallen hopelessly in love with the annoying guy from Harvard.
“I’m fine,” Joe says. “How are you guys? We got fifteen years to catch up on.”
They let it go after that and they drink beers and shoot the shit until close to midnight. If Joe could forget about why they were here, it was almost nice. It doesn’t bring back all of his terrible war memories to see them again like he’d always assumed it would. He almost feels nostalgic, almost misses the days of their youth, screwing around in Austria with hardly any responsibilities. If only Web were here next to him, laughing along at Babe’s stories of the bayou.
Everyone trickles out besides Babe and Doc. Babe promptly dozes off on the couch, leaning into Eugene. Eugene strokes his hair fondly and it makes Joe’s breath catch, remembers doing that to David, remembers David doing it to him. His eyes sting again.
“How are you, really, Liebgott? I can’t imagine how this must feel. Not only to lose him but to not even have the closure…” Eugene trails off.
Joe’s throat gets tight. He lost Web years ago. He doesn’t need closure, doesn’t want it. Closure is the end of the line. He can’t have reached that.
“I hope they never find him,” Joe says, as if his hopes make any difference.
Maybe it’s a terrible hope to have, disrespectful to Web’s wife and children and his siblings. Maybe Joe doesn’t have any right to hope since he stopped returning Web’s letters fifteen years ago and never visited him at Harvard like he was supposed to.
“That’s awful,” Eugene scolds. “You’d rather believe that he abandoned his family? You want him to be the sort of man who’d do that?”
“You didn’t know him like I did,” he says, instead of hitting Eugene like he wants to. “It’s what he does. He tried to run away on a fishing boat in high school. He ran away from Harvard. From the paratroops. This is just that,” he insists, voice going raw.
“But he always came back,” Eugene says, gently.
“Exactly. He can still come back.”
If they never find him, he can still come back. He can stumble into the barber shop, skin bronzed by the sun and hair too long, and Joe can buy him a beer. He’ll tell Web that he’s sorry for not writing, for not coming to Harvard, for never trying to find him when he knew he was just miles away. He’ll tell Web they should just get back on that boat, damn their wives, sail off into the sunset together. If they never find him, that can all still happen. He can make it right.
“Liebgott. If I thought there was any chance in hell he was still alive I’d be right here hoping with you. But he’s gone. You know that.”
Babe chooses that moment to wake up and mumble about wanting to go back to the hotel. Joe calls them a cab. Eugene and Babe wish him goodbye and threaten to write. He watches them linger on the porch as they wait, sharing a quick kiss and brushing hands, and he wants to scream at them. It must be real fucking easy to make grand statements about Web never coming back when you got to be with the love of your life, would get to grow old together in the bayou where nobody cared what you did or who you did it with. Doc doesn’t know a damn thing about hope. He never did. Joe hates him.
ii.
That irritation at Eugene festers in him, threatening to explode at anybody who even glances at him the wrong way. Only his children are spared. He and Naomi get into the first real fights of their entire marriage. You’re so withdrawn, you’re angry, you’ve never been like this, is this about your friend who died? I’m not, I’m fine, fuck off, we weren’t even that close. And breaking news, Naomi, he’d been withdrawn their entire marriage. He just didn’t care enough to fake it anymore. She was a consolation prize. One he was fond of, sure, but when the person he loved most disappeared at sea it was hard to be content with his silver medal.
Chuck calls him up for their monthly talk and Joe lays into him for inviting the guys back to his house. “You know I don’t want to see any of those people. Now they’re going to write me and spread my address around and Guarnere is going to invite me to those stupid reunions you’re always going to.”
Everyone’s obsession with reliving the war makes no sense to him. Those were the worst days of his life—present time excluded—and he feels no sense of pride or honor or whatever the fuck. He did his job. He did terrible things as part of his job; he has to spend the rest of his life trying to forget.
“I know you’re having a hard time with Web dying,” Chuck says after a long moment. “But aren’t you tired of hiding from the past? Isn’t that part of the reason this is so hard? You shut Web out. And now you have to live with that.”
A cataclysmic bolt of anger strikes Joe’s heart. “Fuck you, Chuck. Go to hell. Don’t ever fucking call me again.”
He slams the phone down. Naomi purses her lips at the kitchen sink and gives him a sidelong glance.
“Maybe you should talk to the Rabbi,” she says.
He folds his hand over his eyes. “Don’t start, Nai. I’m fine.”
“You could talk to me,” she says. She puts a dish down and comes over to Joe, laying a hand on his arm. “I hate seeing you like this. Tell me about him.”
He can’t tell her anything about Web. It would be traitorous to Web, what they’d had, to tell her anything fake; too hard to tell her the truth. But he finds he wants to talk about Web so badly, can’t bear the idea of never speaking of him again, even though he went fifteen years without his name leaving Joe’s lips.
“He was an annoying guy who went to Harvard,” he says, seeing Harvard stickers on Web’s rucksack, the Greetings from Cambridge, Massachusetts! postcard after Web started fall semester, and the broad smile on his face when he’d talk about school. God, Web had loved that place. “Waste of his parent’s fucking money. Guess Harvard doesn’t teach you not to be an idiot out on the ocean.” He wrenches away from Naomi and goes upstairs.
Naomi and Chuck didn’t deserve his anger, he muses as he smokes out the window. They’re well-meaning, even if it’s annoying. It’s Web who deserves his ire. Web was the fool who went out and died. Honestly, who goes out on the sea alone? It’s dumb. Did he even have a life-preserver? Was he so arrogant that he assumed nothing could happen on his precious water? How could he do this?
He exhales deeply. Much better. Being annoyed at Web is familiar. This he can handle. Anger is comfortable and he knows it well. Don’t have to miss Web if Joe remembers how annoying he actually was. How pretentious, a know-it-all, stubborn, never shut up, prone to dramatics. Tried too hard. Cared about everything too much. What had Joe even liked about him? Maybe he was just a pretty face. No use mourning that. He goes to bed with an ugly sense of satisfaction.
At the beach the ocean roars, waves slamming into the shore. Joe shivers looking at it, the monstrous element that had stolen Web. He imagines Charybdis sinking Web’s ship, remembers Web’s letter about reading The Odyssey in his mythology class. Joe had gone to the San Francisco library and checked out a copy, struggled through it, wrote a letter back.
Maybe Web is just pulling an Odysseus, shacking up on an island with some goddess. He totally would. Selfish, inconsiderate—
Joe kicks off his shoes and wades into the ocean. “You’re a real fucking piece of work, Webster. Leaving everybody behind, for what? Fucking water? What the hell was out there that you couldn’t find here?”
“It’s not really me you’re angry at, Joe. You know that.”
Joe whirls around. In the sand, wearing PT gear, hair dark as night, eyes blue as day, is David Webster in the flesh. Joe runs to him without a thought and tackles him to the ground. Web is solid, warm, alive underneath him.
“You’re a jerk,” Joe huffs and runs a hand through Web’s hair.
Web smiles up at him. “So are you.”
“What do you mean it’s not you I’m mad at?” Joe demands. “I’m pissed at you.”
Web pushes Joe off him gently and turns on his side. Joe does too, close enough for their noses to brush.
“If it had been up to me I would’ve been part of your life. The last time we talked would’ve been a month ago. Not fifteen years. These were your choices,” Web says.
Joe looks up at the sky instead of answering. It’s grey now, like all the blue has seeped into Web’s eyes. He swallows around the lump in his throat. “I always meant to—”
“But you didn’t.” Web softens the blow by gently stroking his face. “And you can’t change it.”
Joe surges forward to kiss him but before their lips can meet, a wave crashes over them, and he’s on the beach alone. Web is gone, not even an imprint in the sand left of him.
He bolts up in bed breathing hard. Naomi doesn’t stir, used to it after all these years.
Oh, David. How could Joe have thought those things about him? Seeing him, even in a dream, makes everything rush back. He’d loved Web. He loved that Web cared too much about everything, loved that he never shut up, loved how Web could just pull knowledge out of thin air. He was brilliant; Joe loved the way his mind worked, how different from his own it was. Yes, Web was annoying, but so is Joe, and they loved each other anyway.
How could Joe have done what he did? He’s the piece of work who left someone behind, for what? What had been in California that he couldn’t have found in Cambridge? Joe’s a jerk, a traitor, a coward.
Oh, he realizes. It’s me I’m angry at.
iii.
On his lunch break at work he calls up the coast guard. He drums his fingers on the phone booth, blinking in the sunlight while he talks to various secretaries. They keep passing him around until finally he ends up talking to some captain.
“Do people who are lost at sea ever get found? Alive?” he asks.
“Who are you again?”
“Uh, Joe. Grant. I’m a journalist. Researching for a story.”
“The Webster story?”
Joe hums a yes.
“It’s possible. But it’s not likely. There was a case of a soldier during the war who crashed in the ocean and floated on wreckage for forty-seven days. So I would say only in cases like that. Out on the water with nothing? You wouldn’t make it more than a day or so.”
Joe sighs, bone-deep. It’s what he was afraid of. “Alright. Thank you, sir.”
“Damn shame. He was so young.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hangs up the phone and considers going to a bar or just heading home, drinking himself into oblivion. But he’s not so young anymore. This private grief feels like wartime. Face great loss and be forced to go on anyway. Hair to cut, children to take care of, bills to pay.
He spends his free moments idly considering fantastical ways that Web could return. Oppenheimer could probably invent a time machine, couldn’t he? Then he could head back and tell Web not to go sailing. Call Web up the first time he saw his article in the paper. Return his letters. Go visit him in Cambridge. Never return to California at all; follow him to Harvard like a puppy. Run away together the minute they got off the ship. Would that be enough? Maybe Joe should go all the way back to the beginning, to day three, to beg God not to create the ocean at all.
Maybe he just needs to live off his memories. But he’s spent so much time and energy on not remembering the war that it’s almost hard to recall now. Time has weathered his recollections, water eroding the shore. He can’t remember how Web’s voice sounded when he was excited or annoyed or thoughtful; only how he’d say Joe, soft and fond. How blue had Web’s eyes really been? He looks up at the sky and thinks they had to have been more striking than that. What had his handwriting looked like in all those long letters where he bitched and waxed poetic and told Joe how much he missed him?
He has nothing left of David, nothing to cling to, nothing to remember him by. The quick flashes of memory hurt more than the long stretches of blankness; real enough to hurt, too small to grasp onto.
He stops trying.
After that, he dreams of Web frequently but not in a satisfying way. They’re almost always back in Europe. Joe walks the dirty streets of Hagueanu and sees Web disappear into a shelled house, never able to catch up with him. Joe sits on the dock in Austria, under golden sunlight, and watches Web swim further into the lake until he fades away. Joe stares out at no man’s land in Bastogne and swears he can see Web there, staring back, but when he blinks, it’s just the forest. He chases Web up Currahee but Sobel stops him for not wearing regulation shorts before he can reach the top. Even in his subconscious he can’t get the closure he’s looking for.
Eventually he finds Web in the last place he’d expect him, at the synagogue where Joe and Naomi got married, sitting under the chuppah. Naomi had covered it in white and pink flowers; Web appears to have covered it in coral. Joe sits down next to him and looks up. The canopy looks like one of their silk parachutes and for a minute Joe is twenty-nine again, falling through the sky.
“Miss you,” he says.
David smiles warmly at him. “Took you long enough to say so.”
Joe grabs his face and pulls him into a kiss: sloppy, hungry, fifteen years worth. Web kisses him back fervently, one hand under Joe’s shirt. He tastes like salt water and Joe pulls back. Without realizing it, he’s started to cry. How embarrassing. He buries his face in Web’s chest and listens to the familiar beat of his heart, too strong, too steady to be anything other than alive, forever.
“Come back,” he begs. “Tell me you’re on an island somewhere. That you walked out on your family. That you’re still here. I’ll come get you. On a plane or a train. Hell, I’ll buy my own boat. Won’t even charge you fare.”
Web cradles Joe’s face, looking at him with love, so much love, love that Joe had left unopened and returned to sender.
“My lieb,” Web says, stroking his cheek. “You have to let me go. I left fifteen years ago. You can’t hold on to me.”
“Why not?” Joe asks, gripping Web’s shirt, as if to prove he can.
Web runs a thumb over Joe’s lips, parting them gently. “Because I’m already gone.”
Joe wakes up alone.
iv.
He’s never realized how empty life can feel. Unhappiness isn’t new to him; war was hell, he contemplated suicide for years after, and his marriage isn’t exactly always a source of joy. But he’s always been able to find happiness in something: a movie, a comic, his kids, his siblings.
Now everything is miserable. Everything reminds him of Web, of Web’s absence. His daughter, Nancy, brings home a project on the Pacific Ocean. His son, Richie, demands a shark stuffed animal from the toy store. Superman’s enemy turns out to be a friend he did wrong.
He goes to see the new Audrey Hepburn movie with Emilia and breaks down in tears when Audrey sings some song about a river on the moon. ‘Dream-maker, heart-breaker, off to see the world.’ It sure sounds like David. Is that where he is now? Sailing alone through pearly water with only a book and his own thoughts for company? He’d probably enjoy that, Joe thinks begrudgingly. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
Joe leaves the theater to smoke and pull himself together. He just manages to wipe his eyes before Emilia follows him out.
“Mom thinks you should come home for a bit,” she says, lighting her own cigarette. “And now I do too.”
He scoffs. “I’m forty fucking six, Mili. I’m not going to go home just because I’m—” and he halts, because I’m what? Grieving? Lost? Lonely? Drowning in regret?
“Naomi told her you’ve been having a hard time. They both think some time away would do you good.”
“Mom’s one to fucking talk.”
Emilia takes a drag. “Well, look what happened when she didn’t take time away intentionally. She lost it. Your kids love you, Joe. You’re a good father. They won’t think you’re abandoning them.”
Joe sighs. Maybe it would be good to get away from Los Angeles. To sleep in a twin-sized bed, let his mom fuss over him, sit down for loud family dinners. The grief makes him feel so very young again, not like the father of four that he is now. He can barely muster up the energy to parent them. Maybe he needs to go home and be parented.
“Alright, fuck. Call mom and tell her I’m coming tomorrow,” he says.
“I’m not your secretary. Do it yourself,” Emilia scoffs.
He laughs and finishes his cigarette. Maybe home would be good.
His room in San Francisco looks exactly like he left it. At least one thing hasn’t changed. His bed still has that scratchy blue quilt his grandmother made. The poster of Vivien Leigh smiles down at him. Old comics are stacked on his desk. A copy of A Farewell to Arms rests on his bedside table.
Wait a minute. His heart starts to beat faster. That was Web’s favorite book, Web had been the one to give it to him. He grabs it and rips it open. There, in the front cover, a note in neat cursive.
J,
“ My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren't with me I haven't a thing in the world.” Read this and thought of you. Can’t wait until you’re here with me. Happy birthday, mein liebe.
Yours,
David
He traces the words with his fingers. Fifteen years ago Web picked this out, held it in his hands, wrote him this message. A lifetime ago. He hugs it close to his chest like a child with a teddy bear and aches with loss.
At home he keeps long, strange hours. He sleeps till dinner and stays up all night, ignores his mother’s invitations to accompany her to lunch, blows off Naomi’s phone calls. The house is much quieter than it ever was, except for Saturdays when his family descends on the house for lunch and games which then inevitably leads to staying for dinner and television. It’s easy enough to claim a headache and stay in his dark room.
He goes out walking every night, slipping out the back door, usually heading to the bay. He throws rocks in sometimes, wonders if Web’s body could’ve floated down this way, considers throwing himself in. Around three a.m he heads back and stays up for a couple more hours reading A Farewell to Arms as if it’ll contains some hidden message from Web. Then he stares at his picture of Web until he falls asleep. And so on, until one day his father catches him as he arrives home.
“Joey,” Dad says.
He almost jumps, feeling like he’s sixteen again, sneaking in after going out with his friends. “Sorry if I woke you.”
His father beckons him into the living room, settling into his armchair. Joe sits on the couch, still feeling young, wondering if he’s about to get a lecture.
“Did you know that I was married before your mother?”
Joe shakes his head. His parents were always tight-lipped about Austria, as if their lives hadn’t really begun until they’d arrived in America.
“Louisa. We were eighteen. Her family disapproved of me but she loved me. We were very happy together,” he says. “She got sick after only two years. Just wasted away. Died on her twentieth birthday.”
Joe absorbs this silently, the idea that his father had a life before his mother, that he’d loved someone else. That if not for the hands of disease Joe might not even exist. “I’m sorry,” he says.
His father nods. “It was very difficult. That sort of loss is unendurable. I still think of her. But if I’d never gone on with my life I never would’ve met your mother or had you.”
“I have Naomi and the kids,” Joe mumbles, not sure what his father is getting at. He stares at the carpet. Web’s death was senseless. There’s no parable, no meaning he can derive from it, nothing that life could bring him that would make him find his peace with it.
“Losing someone you love is hard, Joey. But you have to keep living anyway.”
His head snaps up. Love? How did he know, did everyone know, did he mean some sort of brotherly love—he looks at his dad and sees only sympathy in his eyes.
“I wasn’t sure why I held onto this all these years,” his dad says, reaching over to the table next to him and producing an envelope. He hands it to Joe. “I guess I knew it might be important one day.”
Joe’s heart thuds at the return address. David Kenyon Webster. The son of a bitch had gone and written to Joe’s parents when Joe stopped returning his letters. He opens the envelope and finds a brief note from Web to his parents, apologizing and asking them to pass along the message to Joe if he was in the right place to receive it. There’s a smaller, sealed envelope addressed to him inside.
“We got it after you married Naomi. Your mother thought there was no use in disturbing you with the war when you’d finally settled. But it didn’t seem right to throw it out.”
Joe squeezes his father’s hand. “Thank you,” he says, the lump growing in his throat.
His father stands and pats his shoulder. “Go to bed soon. I’ll see you for breakfast.”
Joe stays in the living room, waiting until he hears his parents door creak shut and then carefully opens the letter. It’s surprisingly brief—Web had always written him novels.
Joe,
Harvard finally taught me that five unanswered letters is the point at which a rational man gives up. I don’t have any illusions about this letter changing your mind or getting a response. It would be difficult to change your mind when I don’t even know why you’ve left. Is it because we’re both men? Is it the war? Did you find a nice Jewish girl and forget about me? I guess I’ll never know. I won’t cling to the old adage of loving something and setting it free—you don’t need me to do that; you’ve cut the lines and set yourself adrift. But I love you, and maybe finally writing it down is a way to set myself free. I wish you all the best and hope that life lets our paths cross again someday.
Yours,
David
He reads it and reads it again and then one more time. If he’d imagined what a final letter from Web would’ve looked like it wouldn’t have been this. It would’ve been long and angry, full of theatrics and probably fucking Shakespeare quotes. This is surprisingly even-tempered, more mature than he would’ve guessed David could be. I love you. It’s nice to read it, makes his grief feel realer, more earned. They’d never been able to bring themselves to say it to each other but Web had written it down, one final gift for him. He presses his lips to the letter.
The next morning he joins his parents for breakfast. Calls Naomi back, tells her he’ll be home next week. He goes out for a walk in the sunshine, letting his feet lead him down side streets and through a park until he arrives at Chuck’s house. They’d repainted since the last time he’d been here; it’s now a cheery yellow. Chuck’s son’s bike is thrown haphazardly in the yard. He knocks on the door. It swings open after a minute.
Chuck smiles, a little cautiously. “Joe. I didn’t know you were in San Francisco.”
“Yeah,” Joe says. He shoves his hands in pockets, suddenly unsure what to say. Chuck’s been his friend for almost twenty years now and yet he can’t bring himself to apologize. “Listen, about what I said the last time we talked—”
“You were going through something,” Chuck interrupts. “It’s hard. Losing somebody. I thought the war would’ve hardened us to it. But I think in some ways it made us feel it even more.”
Joe nods. Web had been—somehow—his first loss since all of those wartime ones.
“You wanna come in?” Chuck says, stepping back.
He follows Chuck inside. They grab beers from the fridge and settle in on the couches in the living room. Joe asks about Chuck’s wife and his son—Susan got a promotion, Charlie joined a baseball team. He provides his own updates; Nancy thinks she’s old enough for a boyfriend now, Richie learned to read and can’t stop, Naomi wants a new car.
Chuck is in the middle of telling him a story about Pat Christenson when Joe notices a jar of dirt on the mantle behind him.
“What’s that?” he asks, gesturing vaguely.
Chuck turns around. “The dirt? Oh, it’s morbid. On the last Easy Company trip we went back to Austria. It’s dirt from the road I was shot on. Speirs said I should keep it as a reminder. I don’t know. Susan hates it.”
“Speirs goes to Easy Company trips?”
“Sometimes,” Chuck shrugs. “You know how he is. Skulking around.”
Joe stares at the dirt, thinking of Austria. The constant sunshine, a sparkling lake, rolling green hills, the mountaintop. Web scribbling in his journal, floating on his back, laying in his bed. How reckless he’d been in Austria; drinking constantly, kissing Web in places anybody could’ve seen them, killing a man on shady orders. He doesn’t regret any of it.
When he thinks of it now, it’s the last place he was young, even though he’d turned thirty there. It was the last place he’d really been with Web whole-heartedly, refusing to think about the fact that a future between them was as fictional as the books David read aloud to him.
He closes his eyes and thinks of the road, wonders if David had ever walked over that dirt, if it even matters. The symbol is enough. He smiles suddenly, thinking about how much Web would’ve loved that sentiment.
“Can I have some of it?”
v.
It’s nearly eight at night when he gets back to Los Angeles but he bypasses the road home, heading straight for Santa Monica. The house is in a nice neighborhood, a polished brick mansion with a manicured lawn. Probably the sort of place Web grew up in. Joe walks up the front path and rings the doorbell.
An old woman with greying hair opens the door. “Can I help you?”
“Sorry ma’am,” Joe says. “I must have the wrong house. I’m looking for Elizabeth Webster.”
“That’s my daughter. I’ll get her.”
A moment later a beautiful woman appears in the doorway. She’s tall and thin with angular features. Her eyes and hair match Web’s. What a narcissist he was, Joe chuckles to himself.
“You don’t know me,” he exhales, suddenly regretting this impulse. “But I’m Joe Liebgott and I—”
“I know all about you, Joe Liebgott.”
Joe blinks. “All?”
She grins, sharp, almost mean, but amused. “All.”
“I was wondering if you wanted to go to the beach with me. Now,” he says. He doesn’t realize the absurdity of the request until it’s out of his mouth. What woman in her right mind would go with a stranger to a beach at night?
“Sure,” she says. “Let me just grab my coat.”
Well, Web certainly never liked them normal.
He drives a touch more carefully with Elizabeth—Beth, she’d corrected him—in the car.
“So. Web told you about… us?” he asks, haltingly.
“David told me everything. I know you two had an affair during the war and you stopped writing him back after. I know it broke his heart. I know he loved you very much.”
She recites it all matter of fact, as if it doesn’t bother her at all. Joe can’t believe it. Joe can’t believe Web had talked about him to someone, that he’d lived in Web’s memory. He feels that familiar lump in his throat.
“And you were okay with that?”
“Sure,” she shrugs. “I loved someone else before him. Why shouldn’t he have?”
Joe shakes his head, mystified by this woman. “How’d you two meet? When’d you get married?”
“We met in New York. I was a friend of John’s. He got a job out here and I followed him—it was very scandalous because we weren’t married yet. We eloped in fifty-five. Our daughter was born the next year.”
Web had a daughter. A daughter the same age as Richie. Web had a whole life that Joe knew nothing about. Had he been excited to become a father? Terrified? Was he involved? Distant?
Beth continues as if she’d read his mind. “Her name is Jane. David adored her. He used to read to my stomach while I was pregnant,” she laughs, and Joe does too, because he can imagine it clearly. “And then he read to her constantly when she was a baby. He’d play dolls with her. Go to her little tea parties. He already taught her to swim,” she says, voice wobbling. “God, sorry. I just feel so awful about the fact that they’ll never get to know each other fully. He was so worried about being a dad. His father, you know, he was… not the warmest figure. But David was a natural.”
Joe nods. He remembers tales of Web’s father, who Web had described as a statue. Cold, unfeeling, unchanging. He also remembers Skinny telling him a story about Web giving some little Dutch kid a chocolate bar. How desperate he’d been in those frozen Bastogne days, not so casually searching out stories of Web, unable to admit to himself why he was so fascinated with the man. No, it doesn’t surprise him that Web had been a devoted father.
They pull into the parking lot by the beach. The moon hangs low in the sky, observing. Joe gets his jar of Austrian dirt, carefully portioned by Chuck, and they walk down to the beach. He kicks off his shoes, rolls up his pant legs, and wades into the water; Beth follows suit. Waves lap at his ankles and he suppresses a shiver. He dumps a bit of dirt into his hand.
“At Jewish funerals we fill the grave,” he says. “I guess I wasn’t around to do it at Web’s. But this is where he really is anyway.”
Beth runs a hand through her hair, pursing her lips. “He doesn’t have a grave. Didn’t seem right. Jane and I come here to be close to him.”
Joe closes his eyes and lets the dirt slip through his fingers into the water below. He thinks of Web’s kindness in those horrible days after Landsberg, a gentle presence at his side, listening when Joe wanted to talk, holding him when he didn’t.
He reaches in for another handful. Web’s brilliance. The books he lugged around Europe, how his eyes lit up when Joe would ask him questions about them. How his articles had always been the best ones in the paper; clever and informative but full of feeling. Web had only ever written what he believed in.
For the final handful he flips his hand around. He remembers Web’s life, the brief moment he’d been lucky enough to be a part of. His joy, his smiles, the gin and tea he’d drink, his mouth pressed against Joe’s. His melancholy, his anger, the scar on his leg, how sometimes it felt like he was somewhere else, a place Joe would never get to. A vivid flash of Web comes to him, cross-legged on the dock, laughing about the fact that liebling also meant favorite. Du bist mein lieblings Joe. I’m not calling you darling! I’m just saying you’re my favorite Joe. Sorry Toye. He drops the dirt into the sea.
“Lebe wohl, David,” he says, voice thick. “Bis zum nächsten Leben.”
He passes the jar to Beth. He watches her copy his gestures. “Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion,” she recites. “David always liked Dylan Thomas.”
They stand in the ocean together quietly, a moment of silence for Web. A breeze dances through the air. Peace floods his body, almost supernatural, as he watches the waves. For just a second, he understands why Web loved the water so much.
“I’d like to see you again, Joe. I feel like you might be the only person who really understands what I’m going through.”
Joe nods. He has all the precious memories of who Web had once been, a Web Beth had never known. Beth has all of the memories of Web now, who he turned out to be, the Web Joe had never known. He wants to know everything, wants to tell her everything.
“He was really extraordinary, wasn’t he?” she murmurs, eyes fixed on the horizon.
“Yeah,” he says. “He was.”
At home Naomi waits up for him. He surprises both of them by pulling her into a hug, much more tenderly than he has since—well, maybe since ever.
She rests her head on his chest. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“I love you,” he says.
He knows he doesn’t say it enough. And he does love her, maybe not in the universe snapping into being, god created light just for me to see your eyes, all consuming way he’d loved Web, but he does love her. She’s the mother of his children, the woman he created a pretty decent life with, all things considered. She’s always been good to him. He wants her to know about Web, thinks she should meet Beth. But that can all wait.
“Richie won’t go to bed without seeing you,” she says, pulling back from his arms. “Everyone else gave up on you.”
Joe sighs and heads to get his son to go to sleep. Richie sits in his bed, Goodnight Moon in hand, peering solemnly at it. Figures the kid he named after Major Winters would be so serious.
“It’s late, pal. I’ll read it to you in the morning.”
Richie looks up at him. “Will you tell me a story till I fall asleep?”
Joe sighs. He gets this request occasionally and usually tells him shitty versions of fairytales. But he’s been making stories up in his head for months now. He sits down on the edge of the bed and sets Goodnight Moon gently on the nightstand.
“Once upon a time,” he says, “there was a smart, brave man named David who always wanted to sail a boat into the sky.”
Richie asks for a David story every night and Web lives on above them, sailing through the stars, meeting figures of myth, finding new planets, picking up a band of friends with names like Janovec, Skip, Hoobler. The other kids start to crowd around for Richie’s bedtime stories and David becomes a legend of his own, the children casually referencing him during playtime and at meals.
It’s bittersweet to see Web transfigured into fiction. Someday, when they’re older, Joe will tell them the true stories, all the contradictions that made Web so compelling, how he was better than a hero because he was real.
But for now, if only in his heart, if only in a story, David Webster survives.