Fiction

The City of Sadness

No one can stop the tears. And no one knows why.

Photo:
Artur Debat/Getty Images

No one recognized what was happening at first. With the state of the world, no one was particularly surprised or alarmed. People had begun to burst into tears on the sidewalk, dissolve into sobs in the midst of a sales meeting, a first date, a ride on the subway. And who could blame them, really? Even my relentlessly cheerful neighbor — the kindergarten teacher — had been openly weeping in front of the mailboxes in the lobby of our building, and I barely noticed.

It took a while before authorities recognized that quite a lot of people were crying, quite a lot of the time. Supermarkets were restocking tissues twice as often. Boxes of Kleenex began appearing at checkout counters and on restaurant tables. The practice of carrying handkerchiefs was suddenly back in vogue. The world was responding and adapting long before anyone understood what was going on.

I was skeptical myself. I’d be having a perfectly normal lunch with a client, and they’d just… start crying. It was unnerving, to be honest, and not at all professional.

“Oh, it’s fine,” I’d say reassuringly, but inside I was wondering what was wrong with people. Why could no one seem to hold it together? I’d dealt with plenty of crises over the years but had never found myself sobbing into my consommé at a business lunch.

At least, that’s what I thought until I caught it.

I don’t know who I contracted it from. The man I sat next to on the subway whose shoulders shook while he buried his head in his hands? The security guard at my office, who had taken to waving me on with one hand, the heel of the other pressed against her eyelashes? Or perhaps it was my mother, who had gone from looking morose over brunch to actively weeping into her cloth napkin as I signaled frantically for the check.

But one morning, I woke up, brushed my teeth, and began to cry.

It caught me entirely by surprise. I wasn’t aware of anything particularly amiss in my life. I had climbed into bed at precisely 9:30 the previous night in a perfectly pleasant mood. But now the tears were flowing unendingly. Getting ready for work was an ordeal. After two disastrous attempts, I had…