Passage from The Sixteen Pleasures

Robert Hellenga

Where was Margeaux, my second self, the traveler who'd followed the road not taken? She was climbing into one of the limousines with Jed, bending over provocatively, waiting for him to pat her fanny. And suddenly I realized something I should have known all along:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Mama alwasy maintained that anyone who'd heard Frost read "The Road not Taken," as she had, would know that the last line was ironic, a joke, but I'd never understood what she meant till now. There is no "road not taken," there's only this road. The road not taken is a fantasy. My mysterious double had never made love to Fabio Fabbriani on the beach in Sardegna; she'd never gone to Harvard; she'd never been near the Library of Congress; she'd never been profiled in a Dewar's ad: "Latest accomplishment: restoring the Book of Kells." She'd been right by my side all the time, filling my ear with might-have-beens and if-onlys, encouraging me to feel sorry for myself. And look where it landed me. In bed with - I didn't want to think about it. A man who wore Harvard underpants.

So when I saw the limousine drive off down the Lungarno I was glad. Glad to be rid of her.

I say I was glad. But it was hard, too. She was my oldest friend, my closest companion. She knew me better than anyone else, better than I knew myself.

(Blogkeeper's note: go buy The Sixteen Pleasures. Now.)