Dennis Costello – on a broken heart.

New York City
September 20, 2000

Hey Clarissa,

I’m writing you this letter because: a.) everyone likes to get mail; and b.) it’s 2 A.M. and I don’t have any blank tapes to make you a “gettin’-over-a-broken-heart” tape. I’ve never been much good at losing anyone for almost any reason (I’m still trying to get over the cancellation of “My So-Called Life”). I don’t know how anybody gets over anyone, really. I remember after our friend Tara was murdered and Michael came to live with us – Kim and I would be sitting at the kitchen table having dinner and Michael would come home from work and we’d say, Hey, Michael, how’s it going? and he’d say, fine, and then we’d hear his feet dragging across the wooden treads as he went upstairs to his room and then WHOOMP! There would be this most awful noise which sounded like a big bag of wet laundry being dropped from the top of the Empire State Building, but it was just Michael throwing himself to the floor. By the time we’d get to the bottom of the staircase we could already hear him sobbing. You know, you’d be racing up the stairs with this sick feeling in your gut because there was nothing you could say that would be of any use or comfort.

All around it was a bad year that made no sense. At Tara’s service I heard Kim talking with Linda and crying and telling her how she couldn’t stand the thought of ever losing me, and then, five weeks later, I’m holding the phone receiver to my ear and she’s telling me she’s not coming home that night; she won’t be coming home at all anymore. Then it was my turn to take the long trip up the stairs and that short trip to the floor.

I remember one time, when everything was at its bleakest and Kim was dating that guy and my life was like some leaking boat that I was trying to keep afloat by carrying it on my back and Kim was living on Mott Street and it was a beautiful cherry-blossom spring night and I should have been with someone sweet and fabulous getting ice cream from the bodega. But I wasn’t. I was standing on the sidewalk five stories beneath Kim’s window calling out her name. Kim didn’t seem very happy sticking her head out the window; I guess that guy suddenly wasn’t too happy either – so that made three of us. This was four months into the most painful thing in my life, and I wanted it to end, but didn’t know how to do that except by walking away from it. But I didn’t want to walk away from what I wanted.

Anyway, Kim came down, pissed-off and sad, telling me to go home, and I was telling her how intent I was on telling her dude how unhappy I was with him, and how I didn’t think he was treating her with care and respect – not that I necessarily was, but I was trying. Back then I thought a lot about the day we got married, and standing before everyone in the backyard exchanging our wedding vows. How many vows does anyone really make in their lifetime? For better or worse, those were the only ones I’ve ever made in my mine. It’s strange to think that these words you uttered are actually holy, and to feel like they mean all the world to you. I mean, I was coming apart, but I had made this vow, to her and to me, and it had something to do with keeping us together – or, at the very least, not letting her be used by some gutless fop. So I’m in tears, standing on Mott Street, calling up to her, and this isn’t the fabulous hip new life Kim was hoping for. Up five flights of stairs Kim is telling me how I need to go home and I’m saying how I need to face that guy. When we met at her door she was still saying how I couldn’t talk to him and that it wouldn’t accomplish anything. But I didn’t want to accomplish anything – I just wanted for a few minutes to be his bird of karma come home to roost.

Kim went inside for a couple of minutes and then came out and reiterated how much her guy did not care to speak with me at the present time. So for the next hour she and I sat in the hall on the staircase and talked like two people who liked and cared for each other. It was strange: in one way it was like when a fever finally breaks; but in another way it was just as awful as anything else to sit with this human person I was married to and to hear her voice and my voice and, through the steel apartment door, him playing some sensitive, pretty songs on his guitar. In my head all I could see was the whiteness of his hands.

Eventually it was time to go, so I left and she went inside to go to sleep. And then it’s two in the morning and I’m back on the sidewalk and Kim is sticking her head out the window calling down to me. She signals me to wait and ducks back in and then a few seconds later leans back out and throws down a paper bag. Inside the bag is this sweet, retro, French cardboard-drum container of “Baby Bee” baby powder.

One minute she was mad at me, the next she is showering presents down upon me. It wasn’t a natural thing to stand in the night and see her pretty face and to see her drop the bag and also to know what was on the other side of those windows. Sometimes in my head I’m standing there and the bag sails down and I catch it. Sometimes in my head I’m standing there and it hits the sidewalk at my feet and shatters and explodes.

I wish I could think of some funny story to tell you right now. Some little sitcom episode about getting dumped by someone and doing something pathetic yet hilarious, and how at the end of the half-hour everything was all better again, and next week there’s an even prettier guest star. But I can’t think of one, so maybe you should stop reading right here before you get to the part where I tell you about how I ran into Kim a couple of weeks ago.

I was riding my bike up Lafayette near Prince Street. Kim was in the crosswalk with a friend of hers and she called out my name, so I stopped, and when we hugged hello she burst into tears – like if you took a good solid swing at a pinata full of tears. I mean, it’s been four or five years, and we talk pretty frequently and see each other occasionally, and all those bridges back have long since burned – but life can be so hard. After she cried, she laughed that way people laugh after they’ve cried and we had a nice few minutes in the sun on the street on a Saturday morning. The girl she was with has this big friendly face like a birthday balloon. Anyway, we said goodbye and I started pedaling back up Lafayette. It was just so sad to turn around and see her walking away and to picture her being trailed behind by some funny little kid we never had.

Sometimes it feels like relationships are these movies I somehow manage to sneak into, but two-thirds of the way into the show the usher comes around with his flashlight and I get busted and tossed out. The worst part is that before the management heaves me through the fire exit, they empty my pockets of every last penny I have. And maybe here is the only good part of any of this: and that is, dear Clarissa, the realization that whether I pay up front or on the way out, or even if I have to ante up both entering and exiting the theater lobby; even with the tax and surcharge and sticky floor and lousy seats; whatever the price, I keep doing it, you know, because I really would like to see one of these things all the way through to one of those happy endings I’ve heard so much about.

Okay, now are you feeling better?

What about now?

Dennis