We'll Catch Mockingbirds

     "I know it's a little clichéd," he says, smiling, "but tell me about yourself."

    She feels like saying, My husband is dead. What more can I say? For three months now that's all I've been: one big cloud of realization that the only person in the world who mattered to me is not in it anymore and can never be in it again. That's what you're on a date with — the absence of a person.

    But that wouldn't be particularly socially acceptable and that's what she's here to be, at the insistences of her well-meaning but entirely too loving friends. Why couldn't they all be self-absorbed, shallow trophy BFFs like the ones on those soap operas she hates? But unluckily for her up till now her life has been pretty functional, and that includes having friends with soft hearts, so she takes a drink (larger than is strictly necessary) and shuffles through her mind for illustrations of the woman she used to be.

   "Well, you already know my name is Liana."

    He smiles like it was a joke, which she hadn't really meant it to be. "That's kind of an unusual name, isn't it?"

    She thinks, Can't I tell you about Andrew instead? Can't I list his favorite songs, or describe the way his hair used to flatten down when he slept? I remember him better than I remember my own high school graduation. But instead she stops spinning her glass and sets it down on the table. "I never liked it much. In fact, I usually go by Ana. Liana is a name for a much younger woman."

    "You don't count yourself as young? I would, if you don't mind me saying so."

    "Forty-five."

    He grins, apparently pleasantly surprised. "I wouldn't have guessed. But that's not much older than me."

    For the first time she looks up and studies him more closely. Straight black hair cut shortish, rectangular glasses, tanned skin. He has nice eyes: bright and gray, clear and alert. She wonders whether he sees the dullness in her own eyes, or just the dark brown color and the neat blonde pageboy haircut, the tidy sheath dress and the shiny pumps.

    "My own name's fairly unusual, I suppose," he goes on blithely, appearing not to notice her scrutiny. "Dorran, D-O-R-R-A-N. Means 'traveler', or so I've been told. It wasn't a fun name to have back in my college days when I was studying literature — got called Dorian Gray more times than I can count."

    "At least your last name isn't actually Gray." Or is it? Ana had hardly listened the other day as Marlene described the wonderful guy she'd met who sounded like he might just be interested in meeting her over the phone. His name could have been Rockefeller for all she'd taken away. She had been going through a box of Andrew's old clothes, and every sweater and pair of raggedy jeans she had pulled up had still smelled so much like him that she had almost hung up and just sat there until it got dark. She's a little ashamed; after all, the poor man is making a nice effort. The least she could do is remember his name.

   "No, it's O'Malley. Yet another thing I used to get teased about. Just like that old Disney movie with Thomas O'Malley the alley cat." Dorran laughs and slices off another corner of steak. "How's your salmon?"

---

    He talks for most of the night after that, which Ana is quietly grateful for: ordinary, noncontroversial things like books and essayists, school days and embarrassing first jobs. The movie they see after dinner is a heist comedy, silly and bittersweet in equal servings, and they come up with little to criticize about it as he drives her home in his like-new blue sedan.

    At her door, Dorran asks if he may see her again — in those exact words, like a gentleman in a classic film — and to her surprise, Ana has no reason to say no.

---

    "Let me tell you something."
   
    She looks up in surprise; he's taken her hand, not in a self-conscious or slick manner, but matter-of-factly, as if to emphasize what he is saying.

    "First, I don't know if you were aware, but Marlene told me about your husband." Ana flushes, but he doesn't make the situation more awkward by stopping to apologize, just soldiers on."I understand that his passing has been very difficult for you, and I didn't want you to think me insensitive for not acknowledging it." He pauses. "I've never lost a spouse or a close family member the way you did, but something did happen to me. And I'd like to tell you about it."

   She shrugs, knowing it's not quite the right gesture but unsure of what is. "All right."

   "Not long ago," he begins, "I was in a serious car accident—"

    "Like Andrew." Her voice is small.

    "Ah — yes.   That's right. Marlene told me that, too. At any rate, no one thought I was going to make it. I think I was actually declared dead at the scene—"

    Like Andrew, thinks Ana.

"—but on the way… well, it's complicated, but it turned out that the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. In fact I suppose you could say I was given a second chance."   He pauses, then, and smiles a little self-consciously. "It's not really the same, is it?"

    "No," says Ana, and suddenly feels like smiling. "But it's fine."

---

    They see each other every other week after that. And then every Friday night. And soon after that, whenever one of them calls up the other.

---

    "Well, that's a tangle," says Dorran one evening as he inspects the wreckage of his bumper; they'd come out of the theatre after A Streetcar Named Desire to find the wake of a hit-and-run. Ana gasps.

    "It's not that bad, is it?"

    "What? Oh — no, not the bumper. It's just — Andrew used to say that. All the time."

    "Is that right?" He glances up sharply. Dorran always becomes more alert whenever Ana mentions Andrew: not in an edgy way, more keen.

    "Every time he came across something he couldn't fix.   He'd say, 'Well, that's a tangle', and rub the back of his neck… just like you did,  just now."

    Dorran's under the bumper now, checking something mysterious and unseen. "Sorry?"

    Ana sighs. "Nothing." But the rest of the night, she finds herself looking at him with more than the usual quiet appreciation.

---

    Coincidences are coincidences.  Ana isn't paranoid or even given to overthinking very much. The last few months, she's avoided thinking much at all. But the more time she spends with Dorran, and the more she observes him, the more she sees that seems disturbingly familiar and not like coincidences at all. Little things like the way he adjusts his collar at the back when he's embarrassed; his tendency to get hiccups when he laughs hard; his habit of smoothing back his hair when he's pleased. Every time she's near him, she can't help thinking of Andrew. Not because Dorran isn't Andrew, but because he might as well be.

---

   When the summer is at its highest point, he calls for her. "Am I still invited for dinner?"

    "Of course." She almost laughs. "Just let me know when you're going to show up and I'll be ready."

    "What, like burst into song as I approach the door?"

     The startled lump in her throat is nothing new by now, but even so she chokes it down.

    "Should I not?" He sounds genuinely concerned.

    It doesn't take as long for her to decide how to answer as she would have expected. "Of course not. Actually… why don't you do that? I've missed having a little music around the place."

    And then that evening she's washing her hands after laying out the table when she hears his car door close behind the house. She turns just in time to see a tallish, dark figure stroll past the kitchen window. Dorran.

    And he's singing.

    " 'Lay your head where my heart used to be,' " carols Dorran, running a hand through his hair absently as he strides, swinging a bouquet of daffodils in the other.    Her favorites. Andrew's, too. " 'Hold the earth above me'…"

    Ana is frozen to the spot, hands wrapped in the towel, staring but not seeing through the window as he disappears from her viewpoint.

    The same tune she used to hear every evening for twenty-seven years.    Coming around the side of the house from the carport. Up the front walk.

    I never told him what song Andrew sang!

    Flash of memory: Andrew's stacks of CDs, scratched and one-hinged on the outside but discs pristine on the inside, spread out in the dust-mote-infected sunlight. Andrew setting the auto-repeat, eyes closed in contentment. Tom Waits' voice, sounding like gravel in a polisher as usual, rolling out of the speakers:

    Lay your head where my heart used to be
    Hold the earth above me
    Lay down in the green grass
    Remember when you loved me…

    The towel drops to the floor. Ana is running through the house, leaving her shoes behind her like Cinderella in the grips of an existential crisis as she goes.

    " 'Lay down in the green grass'—"

    With a strangled cry she throws open the door, almost knocking herself over.

    "Andrew!"

    Dorran stands framed in the doorway with the setting sun at his back, flowers dangling loosely at his side. He doesn't look shocked, just pleased, the same way he looked when she told him her age on that very first date. He's smiling, and as her eyes flood themselves he holds out a hand.

    "Remember when you loved me?"