Andromache, O Sunlight Fair

I’ve been musing over the story of my high school crush, Andromache Myrsiades, a girl I never spoke to once. In reality, she wasn’t merely a crush, nor merely “mine”; she belonged to the hearts of everyone she met. She was the sun around which every student’s gaze revolved in that high school. You don’t just look past a girl like Andromache. You don’t forget about her easily. And that’s before you learn what she had to do with the shooting that occurred in our sophomore year.

It makes sense that the sun wouldn’t know what one of the asteroids beyond Pluto thinks of her. I was never brave enough to talk to her, never bold enough to get near. She was hard to look at, because we know the dangers of staring at that brilliance. When she passed me in the hallway, when she took the lunch table behind me, there was a radiant heat that melted me, fritzed my circuits, a gravity that raised my hairs. I’m a nobody, I would think; if the yellow ball on the solar model in science class is Andromache, then I must be the dust on someone’s sandal in Timbuktu. But, of course, even though she could never see all of the people who orbited her, to them, she was impossible to ignore.

She did speak my name once, our eyes locking for a moment; I remember it hitting my starved ego like lightning. The teacher had to leave at the start of class to address another teacher’s question, so he asked Andromache to take attendance––even the adults were utterly charmed by her. In alphabetical order of surnames, she checked off students one by one: “Lily? Check... Brandon?...” Everyone laughed when she said, “Andromache––present!” with a tiny hop. I can’t help but smile, just thinking back on it.

Then––“Tobias...?” She surveyed the room, my hand raised like a satellite hoping to receive a message from outer space, daily catching nothing but static, yet ever hopeful for a moment of connection, a sign of life from an impossible being, an expansion of meaning to my universe. She saw my hand, met my gaze, a minuscule eternity held between those stunning, wide brown eyes and mine––check.

“William? No William?... Greta? Check...”

I was truly infatuated. I couldn’t think about anything else; when I closed my eyes, they searched for the memory of hers, those dark, vibrant pools. I was a young writer then, sketching fantasy swordsmen and dagger-toothed beasts in my notebook, captivated by tales of winning glory, honour, and a kiss from a fair-haired maiden. From the day I set eyes on Andromache Myrsiades, every maiden became her, tall and dark, a Greek beauty to rival Helen. Poetry poured from the thought of her like morning coffee at sunbreak, same colour as her eyes. Some of those lines, I still have memorized, all this time later, as vivid as the image of her.

I may seem unduly obsessed with her––even writing this out, I know I’m veering dangerously close to reigniting some hope about her, which is never a good way to think of a married woman––but the truth is, though I flatter myself with all the strong language she drew out of my pen, that was how everyone saw her. She was a beacon of joy, a fount of selfless attention. She gave those eyes fully to everyone; they were not reserved. She gave compliments as easily as she breathed. Everything she said was in good nature, every affirmation and joke––she told the best jokes, clever and without a trace of vulgarity or belittlement. She didn’t get the best grades, and she was notably poor at complex math, but she never appeared the least upset by this, and if test marks came up in conversation, she wouldn’t ask for a number to judge her peers by, but rather: “Did you get the mark you wanted?” She was open about her faith, too; she would come back from the weekend and talk about the retreat she’d been on, a shine in her eyes, gazing toward an unseen horizon when she spoke of “living in the Spirit”. I would have found this language cloying from anyone else, but I, and so many others, could listen to her talk about anything. Her earnestness was as clear, as transparent and refreshing as a mountain stream.

Today, I don’t talk to people about Andromache. Her name surfaces a lot with people from those days, but I don’t trust myself to give input, because of two things that always come up.

The first: that girl was special, really special. Everyone who met her agreed easily, heartily. I agree too, obviously, but it’s more than that. I can freely write all of this for an audience of one, but it’s still too tender a subject for me to expose to others. I seem to be unique in having this problem––everyone else is more at ease when Andromache’s presence is invoked. They take distinct joy in talking about her, lauding her in passing conversation, a joy which I daren’t share.

But, secondly: what she did––what she was about to do––was a stupid, naïve thing.

It follows directly from the first thing: it was how special she was that made us all think she could do no wrong. When that was proven wrong, it wasn’t easy to swallow. That conception had been a comfortable place. We couldn’t fathom that such a beauty, such a virtuous young lady would lack, of all things, prudence and common sense, in the situation when it mattered most.

Perhaps it was our confidence in her that spoiled her judgment. Perhaps it was worship that made her believe she could bear such a weight on her own shoulders. Perhaps trusting that a girl could be perfect was wrong––perhaps that was the very moment we had failed. We should have known that, and now we do. All too well.

Notably, at that time, Andromache had never had a boyfriend. A legion of suitors vied for her attention, and she gave dates to a few of them, but nothing lasting ever emerged. Thus, reasonably, it sent ripples through the school, no corner left unperturbed, no hall left free of murmurs, when the sun came up one day, not to replace the moon, but arm-in-arm with him.

People stared. No one could account for it: Andromache walked the halls with distinct energy, her head held high, linking arms with a dishevelled, grave-looking boy, glancing about as though he were her hostage. She seemed unfazed, as bright as always, still bubbling over with conversation, still participating in class as she did, but it wasn’t the same at all.

This kid wasn’t like Andromache’s usual suitors. As I watched them, I clocked the most glaring oddity about it. I considered myself far out of Andromache’s league; it was some preservation instinct that kept me at a distance. I thought, only guys that were taller than her had a real chance; only if you attended the same church as her; only if you could match her charm and wit. Otherwise, some twist of fate would have to place you in her path. Some people would disagree with that, but the murmurs and stares that materialized were enough to prove I wasn’t alone.

She, in her power, had turned every expectation upside down. Now, all of a sudden, here was this twig-like boy, ostensibly even more of a nobody than I was, the type of kid who talked to no one, reclusively buried in a dark hoodie, who sat alone in every situation, who never raised his hand in class, who could only give one-word answers to any question that begged a personality, no wit or charm to his name.

This boy, Andromache lavished attention upon. She spoke to him and about him with utterly startling devotion: “Thomas is shy around people, but he’s such a gentleman... Thomas, you’ll come to the Sugar Bowl after school, won’t you?”

Even after a few days, no one could bring themselves to utter aloud the phrase, “Andromache’s boyfriend”. It was simply not believable. Not even Andromache used the word, some noticed. It was enough to say “Thomas”; everyone knew his name now. He was never seen apart from her. She walked him home after school, and they always showed up together in the morning.

Rumours of what the truth could possibly be lurked in every shadow where Andromache’s glow was not present. Not even her closest friends could glean anything besides the cheery, optimistic assurances she gave at school. No one’s opinions of Thomas improved over this period, he did nothing to assist in that, but the camp of people who distrusted Andromache only grew, bit by bit. For the rest of us, it was all we could do to say to ourselves, “That girl is an anomaly.” It was a pause on the passage of time: my adoration could neither grow nor shrink, only wait.

I didn’t have to wait long.

It took a week. Monday rolled around, and things changed yet again. Andromache didn’t show up to school. Neither did Thomas. The thick atmosphere was no longer just a freezing of time, but a breath being held.

The murmurs got a little louder. Open discussions took place: “Are they involved in something outside of school?... Are they playing hookey?... They can’t be sleeping together, can they?... That kid isn’t right in the head... She’s lying, she’s faking it, what’s her scheme...” I shrugged off the weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The next day, Andromache still didn’t show up. Thomas did. There was a semi-automatic weapon stashed in his backpack.

It marked, I can safely say now, a before-and-after point in my life, though not in the same way as most others. I was one of the fortunate: I never saw any of it, only heard the gunshots and the cries through several bends of the hallways. I don’t feel it as strongly as I used to, what I felt in the darkness of our unlit classroom, shrunk down in the shadows, away from the locked door’s tiny window, a ray of light which led to death.

That week passed as one long, tiresome day, police cars and news vans and candle-lit memorials and tear-streaked interviews. The dead were numbered: thirteen students and two teachers, dozens more wounded. Thomas was arrested. He got a long sentence.

It wasn’t just life before the shooting and after the shooting, in my mind; it was Andromache Before, and Andromache After. When classes resumed, she still didn’t appear for a few days, and when she did, there was no mistaking she was forever altered. She looked unhealthy. She was fatigued, she didn’t stand as tall. She almost never spoke, never with her old confidence. She cried in silence frequently. She was the walking representation of the school’s spirit in those after-days. She was no longer the sun around which everyone revolved. Her warmth had been put out. Her magnetism had reversed poles against her. Her dark eyes did not leap; they limped, like a wounded prey animal.

And it was all of this that brought my infatuation to an end––I never thought this consciously, but it lived under my skin and controlled me, this thought: that girl, Andromache, was no longer the goddess I had described in my musings, no longer the terrible, beautiful sun. That sorrowful, pitiable, human girl, Andromache.

I burned all the wishful poems and sketches in my notebook––except one, but I hid it from myself until I could bear to read it again.

After that year, I never laid eyes on Andromache Myrsiades again, but there’s more to her story. She told the full story herself, decades later, on a podcast, which I found when I learned her husband was doing a circuit of high school seminars, telling their story from his perspective.

Andromache missed school that Monday because of dangerous road conditions in the country; she’d gone to another spiritual retreat, but heavy rains caused flooding and turned the back roads into a mire surrounding the retreat house, delaying her return for several days. She was supposed to accompany Thomas to school again that day, but when she didn’t, and had no way to call him, he assumed the worst––about her and about himself––and so he proceeded with his original plan, the plan he was set on when he first left her a note saying, “Don’t come to school tomorrow.”

In the after-days, Andromache visited Thomas in prison, as frequently as she was allowed. She wept and prayed over him tirelessly. He was vicious to her. He was anything but quiet now; he insulted her, he called her a liar, a manipulator, a bitch, he said he hated her, he said he wished she had been there that day. She continued to weep and pray. Sometimes, she sat there shivering, enduring his screaming, spittle showering the plexiglass until the guards took him away. Eventually, she was forbidden from visiting him. She didn’t stop trying. She was in a vise-grip of guilt.

Thomas was on suicide watch. His parents never visited him; no one did, after Andromache was banned. He did receive gifts, however––books, probably charitable donations meted out to the prisoners. His eyes glazed skeptically over them all: Crime and Punishment, The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Rings, a Robert Frost collection, a pocket New Testament and Psalms. These were his only visitors, his only friends, his only escape.

Months passed, until one day he was told he had a visitor again, with a warning to mind his behaviour. It was Andromache.

They stared silently at each other across the plexiglass barrier, their eyes like two shards of broken pottery in a craftsman’s hand, the jagged edges interlocking perfectly.

And so began something new. When Andromache visited, they talked about his books, about the ideas he was discovering, about the words he’d never seen before, about the things Jesus did which he never learned growing up, about the long list of events that the Lord of the Rings films had left out, which he was experiencing for the first time. When he finished them all, he began each a second time. He confessed to crying at several points in every one of them.

Thomas and Andromache talked long hours, one session at a time. They talked about sin and justice, remorse and forgiveness, self-gift versus self-hoarding. They mused on first principles, beauty and truth, the unimaginable capacities of the citadel of the soul. They reflected on their naivety, their past mistakes both grave and minor; they confessed their ugliest thoughts, slowly surfacing with them the daylight they had each buried. Sitting in that restrictive visitors’ booth, they discovered how wide the world really is––they discovered the world within.

It wasn’t so long––not to them, anyway––before Thomas’s sentence had waned near the point of release. He was in shape, no longer the hunched, hoodie-wearing twig, who had committed that horrible crime out of impotence and self-loathing. Andromache had grown into womanhood, so much more beautiful than the girl I once worshipped, and she had adopted that sorrow of the after-days fully into her demeanor, reforged it into shimmering steel, a compass-point that would never again be shaken.

The jailed, nihilistic teen emerged from his iron chrysalis a free, Christian man. Thomas and Andromache dated and were married within the year. The Myrsiades family took Thomas in, securing him work and providing him a place to stay until he could support himself and Andromache––and the little bun in the oven.

Thomas, of his own volition, sought out meetings with each of the families he had affected, and if they allowed him, he begged forgiveness. Some would not grant it him; Andromache prayed in earnest that peace would enter their hearts. No smiles were seen at those meetings; but wherever tears flowed, he was embraced in a bitter hug by mothers, fathers, siblings. He was the ambassador of that lost son, daughter, brother, sister. He was the upright gravestone by which those fifteen bodies lay remembered. For the rest of his days, he remembered.

Thomas and Andromache were blessed with many children and had a stable, happy life. Thomas would go on to speak at high schools about his experiences with loneliness, suicidal ideation, violence, incarceration, and the miracle of kindness, by which his wife had redeemed him. Andromache was a faithful wife and a dauntless mother, ever a picture of shining selflessness, a power around which people orbited. They couldn’t help it. You don’t just look past a woman like Andromache. You don’t forget about her easily.

Those two things I mentioned earlier, the things that always come up in conversations about Andromache––these days, there’s a third thing that always follows: “At least it all ended well.”

It’s just as well that, in my shallow asininity, I let Andromache pass from my mind in those after-days. I never deserved her. I never will. She is a goddess, a heaven-send, a light to show the way of perfection to us, and only now do I see it clearly, the way I glimpsed it when I wrote this poem, the last one left unburned:

Andromache, O sunlight fair,

This earth with mortal men you share;

Long miles away, a shepherd stands

At dawn of day, his crook in hand,

To witness bear, your gleaming ray;

O’er sloping land, your sunlight fair

Falls light on crook and wool and hair,

A crowning by your golden shine,

A prince afire, invited there

Into the pantheon of stars,

Where you, in dark and vibrant gaze,

Follow paths not charted, where

No shepherd’s flock can stand to graze;

And thus he keeps long miles away,

But still to pray your sunlight fair

To always honour dawn of day

With golden fare; by nature made

Of bold dark eyes and gleaming hair,

Andromache, O sunlight fair.