Spade died in the winter of their junior year of college and they all returned home for the funeral. Mrs. Spade had been sick as long as Sam could remember, so her death shouldn’t have been that shocking, yet it hit him harder than he expected. He guessed that her illness, always unspecified, had tricked him into thinking you could be sick forever, almost as a way of life. When he considered that now, Sam realized what an idiot he was. Bella had called from Vassar to tell Sam. He’d picked up the phone and heard his name and then nothing, just a rush of air across the wires followed by what sounded like a faraway howling. Bella and Sam had continued, despite distance and any real commitment, to find their way back to each other. She surprised him first at school, showing up at his door, and they had fallen back onto his twin mattress as if they were starving. It felt exotic, somehow, to be in a place where no one knew them as a couple. To hold hands as they shared crummy food off Sam’s meal ticket at the dining hall, to drink dollar pitchers at the Rat, to wake up next to each other and have sex without talking, as if they had the map of what they liked inked indelibly in their brains.
