Vignettes of Ordinary Love: Part I

<Originally published 30 December 16, date changed to put it above Part II>

~Lost and Found Causes~

(noname noname noname)

**[Warning:  This narrative will reveal no great ideas or profound revelations.  If you're bored, don't say you weren't warned.]**

We lingered at under a dark-hued sunset on a brackish shore littered with rocks the unsettled-raspy-smooth texture of fresh eggshells rubbing across fresh skin.  On the horizon, the faint haze of the sun’s circumference alternately disappeared and reappeared as the thick clouds slid across the sky.  Because a powerful storm lurked out there, at the very limits of the ocean, the sunset colors were more black than purple, more blue than orange. 

It was storm season along that Georgia shore, or fairly close to it.  Summer’s end had passed almost without notice.  Autumn had begun to drift slowly across the world, an impenetrable sullen grey whispering of the winter to come. 

The air from the sea turned cold, filling me with an indistinct sort of ambient chill.  At the back of my mind, I could hear a listlessly dreary shoe-gazer tune in the rush of the wind.  

She shivered slightly in her two-piece, and untied the towel from around her hips, wrapping it about her shoulders.  Because she loved summer and summer fashion – sundresses and bikinis and sandals and draped in all manner of esoteric items that I never learned to name – she always waited too long to adjust her sartorial inclinations to a more tepid season.

What should be her name?  Erin?  Nina?  Becca?  Samantha?  Isla, the She-Wolf?  All sound equally right, and equally wrong.  They fill the necessary space imperfectly, like a child shrugging under the discomfort of appropriate but ill-fitting fashion.  I remember her proper name, of course, the one that she carried, that I held to, and yet it wouldn't fit even if I were willing to use it here.  It's not true, you see.  It doesn't describe her properly.

Ultimately, the truth of the matter is simple: 

she has no name, then.  neither of us do, because after enough time has passed and the world has swung around again and again, a name is merely a saddened reflection, a reflex mnemonic, an image that can be recollected, but will never be seen again, with all its infinite nuances and vagaries, in that exact form. 

My recollection of her murky eyes and the soft ridge of her cheekbones is stronger than any name could be.  Sounds that flutter and fade, the hand that twitches involuntarily as it reaches to caress the curve of her face – these are personal biometrics, like fingerprints or iris patterns.  Her eyes were dark, and no matter how many times I looked in them, I couldn’t quite describe their color.   But I remember them as perfectly as I recall the moment of the last breath I took, the last word I typed.

Besides, I know my name and yet it seems completely useless in this story.  I’m no longer the person associated with the name at that exact moment.  Her name?  A return address to a place that will never again house the sender.

There on that shore, the sand churned and streaked by off-road vehicles enjoying illegal romps on the beach, each step made precarious by the uneven array of stones and broken shells, we held hands and said very little.  Everything was still new, and yet somehow nothing was new.  The paths we walked had been walked a million times before, and will be walked endless until our race’s time draws to a close.  I imagined some nameless prehistoric hominid treading heavily on this beach, never dreaming of what would come to pass over the millennia between his time and mine, and then a thousand thousand more walking the same path over the uncounted years as all the world move twixt change and chaos. 

I wonder if a single one of those who wandered across the shore in all the years that passed before we were born had a name still remembered by anyone alive.  I doubt it.

Offering her my own towel, I wrapped it around her shoulders.  My cargo shorts, loafers and polo shirt provided far more protection than her attire, though they didn't provide much.  I, too, clung to the remnants of casual summer wear.  She accepted it with the grace I had not yet come to expect in the short time we’d been together, but would come to love as we grew close.  In the distance, as the land curved, we could see pier lights extending out into the ocean.   The sun was sinking quickly into the curve of the horizon, and it was difficult to make out exactly how far away the pier was.  Though we were headed there, we moved unhurriedly, knowing that we had no particular purpose at that place, so we could always turn back for our hotel and dinner at a nice seafood place across the street.  (They supposedly had great shrimp and grits.  This was back before TV food networks beat the entire idea of shrimp and grits to death).  Then a soak in the full-sized Jacuzzi bath in our room.  Somehow, that last goal seemed like the entire point of even coming to this place, at this hour, on this day, during this season.  We still knew little enough about each other that sharing a steaming bath in the dark on a cold shore seemed far more intimate than anything else we could imagine.

We walked on. 

There was nobody else out that at that hour, on that day, during that season.  They were at home, or at dinner, or enjoying an evening nightcap at some nautical-themed bar.  Some of them were likely on the ship we could make out near the pier, silhouetted by the last light slipping over the horizon.

In the dusk, she seemed somehow paler, as if darkness brought out all the contrast inherent in her form.  A day in the sun – albeit a cool sun whose bare warmth couldn’t pierce the ocean breezes – hadn’t darkened her skin to any meaningful degree, and I was struck by how ghostly she looked.  Beautiful but not entirely there.
          I'm not sure if that was prescience or just self-indulgent twaddle on my part.  I want to say both.

               

Months later, the ghosts came for her.  For me as well, I think, though only she could see or feel them.

One warm Sunday afternoon in late April, as the whole town scurried frantically about to find the most relaxing way to pass the day, I found her hiding behind a mighty roar.  

She was leaning against the wall of a building devoted to some science or another, hiding in the shadow of metal boxes encasing large fans to cool the building.  Thick condensation dripped from them, dark streams of water running down the pavement near her feet.  She appeared to be watching those trickles of water as they made their way down toward the gutter.  She held an unlit cigarette in her hand.  Though she rarely smoked except socially, she liked holding cigarettes, and would do so often when she had a few moments to herself.  The art of properly holding a cigarette allowed for a hundred different projections.  The insouciant downward tilt from a hand held crooked upwards at her side.  The angry spear of a cigarette held to snarling lips.  The blitheness of a cigarette dangling by the very tip of the filter from her carelessly swinging hand.  The profound cigarette in the V between forefinger and middle finger as she presses them sternly against her downtilted forehead.  The Yeah, what of it? of an unlit cigarette poking straight up from between her fingers as she laid her palm flat on a table in the non-smoking section.

A person could never be properly clothed without a cigarette to complete the ensemble.  She believed this fervently, even though she never actually expressed the sentiment out loud, and she lived by that code as much as possible.

I once had the temerity to suggest she just hold a pen instead of a cigarette rather than bum one of mine to accessorize her outfit.

The look she gave me suggested that I understood nothing about the ways of the world.

She somehow sensed me coming – I could never really surprise her any more than she could really surprise me – and looked up as I approached.  With a brief nod that could have been approval, grudging acceptance, or a spasming neck muscle, she waved for me to approach.  Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about the meaning of her nod, but by then the ghosts had already begun their relentless creep into her dreams.  Predicting her moods was no longer as simple as it had once been.

As if waiting for that exact moment, the fans suddenly shut down.

What’s going on? I asked after we shared a quick kiss.

She smiled.  Nothing much.

By then, I knew every smile she had in her.  This particular one – crooked and almost tentative, with her eye glancing momentarily up to the sky – meant she’d been inside herself, thinking happy thoughts, and wanted to share her contentment with someone without actually explaining it.

It was one of my favorite smiles.  I smiled back and she slipped her hand into mine, leading me out of the shadow of the metal boxes.

Though I’m pretty sure it’s in there somewhere, the metaphor of the scene escapes me.

But there are moments, and then there are momentae obscurum per obscurius, moments that call for badly declined Latin.

Just thinking, she said.

About?

She shook her head.  Nothing.

So…your usual?  Par for the course?

That earned a hard but somehow affectionate punch to the shoulder with her free hand.  Being punched affectionately stung a little.  I could live with that.

Want to do pizza tonight?  You, me, possibly *Angelita?

Subs?

If you want.  I was being magnanimous.  It felt like a pizza day.  I could live with subs, though. Subs sound good.

I don’t know.  She finally released my hand to draw a lighter out of her pocket.  She hesitated for a moment before lighting up her cigarette, examining the gold and silver lighter in her hand.  Why are we doing this?

What?

Thinking I hadn’t heard her clearly, she repeated herself.  This.

What this?

All of this.  It all.  Everything.

Sometimes, I fail to pick up on the nuances of mood because I am legally classified as a blithering idiot.  So anything that definitely isn’t nothing, is that what you’re asking?

Random…

We’re here to be here.  And drink and fornicate, seeing as we have nothing better to do.

That’s deep.  You should crochet that on a throw pillow.

I suspect she was being sarcastic.  I even suspected this at that exact time.

Just sayin’.

Random, she said again.  The way she said it made me pause.

What is it, sweetie?

Nothing.  And she smiled, just a bit.  It was painful to watch the effort.  

I knew this part of the conversation was finished.  Still:  Are you having a bad day?

Not particularly.  Let’s get pizza.

You mean subs.

I’m in the mood for pizza now.  I’ll call *Angelita.

Okay.

She took out her phone and pressed the necessary buttons.   Placing it to her ear, she glanced at me and offered another painful smile.  After a few seconds, she hung up.  No answer.  Bet she’s down in *Wilkins.

Silly girl.  What does *Wilkins have that she can’t find here?

Her boyfriend?

Well, there is that.  Though, between us, I rather think we could replace everything he has to offer  And then I stopped, realizing the way she spoke that word, boyfriend, sounded exactly like she’d said my name before.  

Sweetie? I asked.

She knew what I was thinking.  She always knew what I was thinking.  Except on rare occasions like this one, I always knew what she was thinking.  She took a drag off her cigarette.  Nothing.

Something.  Tell me.

It’s just…nothing.  Memories.  Ghosts, I guess, if that doesn't sound pretentious.  All the usual things that get to you when you’re alone.  Before you got here, I was accidentally thinking.

I left it at that, knowing that an explanation would come sooner or later and perhaps much later would be preferable.  Some things should only be shared at the end of things, and I half-suspected this was one of them.  I also declined to tease her about the ‘accidentally thinking’ part because I have always been, like, the mostest awesomest boyfriend ever.

That last spring we were together as a couple, we moved in unconscious, undeliberated sync with each other, as if in a long dream.  Nothing quite real but everything somehow meaningful even if we didn’t – and perhaps couldn’t – know what any one thing really meant.  Evening walks started taking us to strange places, parts of town we’d never lingered in before, houses belonging to friends we’d not yet decided to keep close, restaurants we’d never before been tempted to try.  As if settling into a whisper of a shared drowsing, our half-closed eyes looked slowly about and at each other.  And, far more so than earlier in our relationship, we shared brief unnecessary brushes of skin against skin as if to reassure each other that we were still tangible, that we weren’t somehow ghosts.

I even said that once, the evening after I found her in the shadows of the AC units.  She reached out to touch my arm as we navigated a darkened grove of trees near a lake a half-mile from her house the evening after we left the beach. 

Trying to make sure we’re not ghosts? I asked,  remembering what she'd said the day before.  I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring manner as we stepped into a patch of moonlight between the branches.  Without thinking, I echoed that word from our earlier conversation.  Ghost couples are an underexplored area of horror fiction.

And she didn’t smile as she replied, If we were, how could we tell? I’d think a ghost would feel real to another ghost. Maybe the whole world is dead and we just never noticed.  Would be the perfect metaphor for the human condition, you think?

She had to repeat the last part of the statement before I quite understood.  For once, she seemed vaguely annoyed at having to do so.

Was the statement profound?  I wanted to say so at the time.  It sounded as though it should have been.  Now, with years between me and her, I’m certain it is not.  Profane, perhaps, to a certain way of thinking, the nihilism trampling amongst the simple pleasures.  But profundity is incidental.  Timeless truths are constantly being rediscovered simply because nothing is really timeless.  Things need to die and to be reborn and die again. 

Every love is a new love, after all. 

This isn’t Buddhism.  This is an inevitability of physics.  Doubt understands, remembrance implies nothing. 

After all this time, our love still felt new.  But from the very beginning, it had also felt old and stubborn as rock, set in cycles we couldn’t change.  Perhaps couldn’t even imagine wanting to change.

Still, profound or not, her grappling gaze refused to leave mine.  For once, she wanted an answer to one of her flirtations with profundity.  I didn’t know what to say. 

Actually, I knew exactly what to say, but refused to reply, Til life do us part? because it was silly and in no way profound, just a juxtaposition that made no sense.  It would have been cheap and we both would have regretting learning that I was capable of thinking it clever.

She smiled, just a little, when I looked at her without responding.  How she interpreted my silence – as wise, or as dumbfounded, or as simple dread – I don’t know.  I’m pretty certain, with the assurance that comes from sincerely not wanting answers, that no matter how she choose to perceive my silence, it would make no actual difference.  Not really.  Not when it mattered.

As we emerged next to the lake, the wind picked up, as it does across bodies of water over a certain size.  A pale translucent layer of clouds flowed across the moon.  The lights of the nearby city seemed muted by the moonlight, though the lamps over the apartment parking lots nearby glowed over the top of the trees across the lake.  A perfect evening idyll, everybody either asleep in their beds or out at their night jobs; the world ending in a slow dream of sleep, the lights fading out one by one.

Or not ending at all.  Since I’m writing this at a much later date and the world has clearly chosen to stick around a bit longer, I’ll have to concede that the latter is more likely.

She huddled closer to me than the relatively mild temperate made necessary.  You know, earlier…?

Yes?

Sorry I was being weird.

Why, though?

For some reason, this was the why  that finally got something vaguely resembling a straight answer.  You know the story about my step-daddy, right?

I did, and nodded.  Yes.  There was nothing else to be said about such a terrible, brutal topic.

My momma called on Thursday and said he died two weeks ago.  Prison hospital.  Liver disease.

Cirrhosis?

She didn’t say.  Probably.

How do you feel?

She pulled away from my side a bit.  I don’t know.

Understandable.

Is it?

Being honest, I shrugged.  Dunno.  Just seems like the sort of sympathetic thing people say when they don’t know what to say.  Or when they don’t want to say something that accidentally changes the direction the other person wants to go.

Which one?

Both, I guess.  Why…and I stopped quickly.  How does your mom feel?

She’s okay.  And that wasn’t what you were going to ask.  You wanted to know why I waited until now to tell you.

Yeah.  But it’s not my place.  Seems kind of accusatory.

It is.  Your place, I mean.  I’d expect you to tell me.

It’s all good.  I’m sorry, sweetie.  Been a rough few days, I imagine.

Not as rough as I thought.  It feels like I already knew.  Like everything has already happened a long time ago and I’m just now hearing about it.

I caught what she was saying.  Like we’re dead and currently haunting the world.  Like ghosts are….

…just memories of people.  Yeah.  She actually smiled a little, a genuine little grin.  I want to write about that idea.  Pretty sure it’s been done before.  Or it’s a current theory for ghost-hunters or something.

Maybe, but you can write about it anyway.  It’s the style and substance, not the premise, that matter.

And the mood passed like clouds over the moon.  When I walked her home, she held my hand but didn’t move in to snuggle too close; strangely, that was a good thing.  She felt better, less in need.  She felt like she had felt before all of this, at least to a degree.

I couldn’t quite escape the sense we were living out a Hemingway story, all brief exchanges and staccato breathing and the occasional pissed-off bull.

She could never really surprise me, though, nor I her.  Even then, she was right – it felt like I also knew that revelation was coming and she’d just reminded me.

The periodicals constantly harp on the proposition that relationships survive through mystery, intrigue, discovery.  And perhaps they’re right. 

Mostly right, I mean.  Or mostly wrong.  It seems unwise to live one’s life by the expectation that a magazine writer has a firmer grasp on your situation than you do.

When I say we could never surprise each other, that didn’t mean we never learned anything new from each other.  After months, I still barely knew her, and she barely knew me, and that was how we wanted it, I think.  Each new piece of information was a delight, or sometimes a suddenly shared sadness.  We learned in fits and starts.  We made, however subconsciously, an effort to delve into each other.

We never stopped learning; yet, somehow, we never really started being surprised.

When she would slowly unfold some beauty within her that I had not yet learned to appreciate, I was always pleased, like opening a present wrapped in the exact shape of the present itself.  I always had this sensation…Oh, of course, that’s exactly what I would have thought about her had it occurred to me to think about it.  It was never an astonishment.  It was rarely even a moment that made me go Hmmm. Still, it didn’t nag at me the way routine and clockwork familiarity have always discomfited me to some degree.

The first time she talked about her stepfather, about the monstrous and malicious, about the damage that mere eyes and hands can do, I knew that story, that ancien régime of power and abuse, I could almost recite the words along with her.  Not from experience, mind you.  I never experienced it, and am far past the age where I even have to worry about it.  I just recognized it in the mirror of an instinctive understanding of the sad, sad history of our species.  And no matter how much I learned from that tentative stuttering discussion under an orange neon sign out back a packed bar, I didn’t feel like I knew her any better than I already had.  It was the mythos of our species, a vague replotting of stories we could have shared in a multitude of different ways and degrees from then until the ends of time.

Perhaps I loved her a bit more for her vulnerability, her willingness to share.  Perhaps.  And perhaps she loved me a little less for the same reason.  It can be hard to forgive people who know you the best, who could devastate you with a gesture if they chose.

Or perhaps we neither loved each other more or less, just differently.  I learned to hate her stepfather.  She learned that she was right – at least in one other person’s opinion – to do so as well.

What was her last name?  As I said, I recall her first, but I go back and forth and in mental wheeling gyres deciding on her surname.  I’m not certain how I forgot it.  I have a rough idea; I’m just missing a letter or two.  And this may sound odd, and possibly pretentious, but I’m starting to think I let it grow fuzzy in my memory because she doesn’t deserve to be remembered like this, a slightly-damaged woman still clutching for some reason for it all.  She was smart and kind and beautiful in ways that escape the fatuity of purple prose.  She isn’t the same person anymore, and she deserves better than what childhood did to her.

~Part II to come when I feel up to writing it~