One last gesture Dec. 23, 1985

 

I saw Fran today – well, technically yesterday this being 6 a.m. on the 24th and since I have yet to slip into serious sleep.

So, this is Monday even though it still feels like Sunday.

But then, I’m caught up in self judgement and the action/reaction of having once again possibly done something stupid.

Last week, I deliberately found her car, and from this, her mail box, into which I put in a copy of our latest zine, scrawling on it a simple cartoon and a balloon wishing her “Merry Christmas.”

I suppose fate played a hand in all this, pushing and pulling at me all day, timing my actions to coincide with hers.

My original plan was to buy her a plant and leave it on her doorstep. But lack of funds and time to cross seven towns to the plant store forced me to settle for buying a single pink rose and a box of butter cookies.

It was even the wrong time of day, traffic thinning after the 3:30 rush. She should not have been there. Neither should have I.

But it was all too familiar path to her doorstep fully scented with mixed memories. I snuck up them with my gifts and back down without them unscathed.

It should have ended like that.

I kept worrying she might not see the plant from her window and thought perhaps maybe she had moved since the last time.

But in the car and pulling away, I saw her walking along the sidewalk on the far side. She did not seem to be headed towards her apartment. I beeped and shouted and pull the car to the curb in a yellow zone.

I jumped out, waving both arms and a ran towards her (like some silly little kid) and stopped when I reached the place where she had stopped.

She was surprised, but not put out at seeing me, not pleased or displeased, yet not completely comfortable either.

I told her I had left a flower and cookies on her doorstep.

Her face showed some emotion I still hope was love, which she quickly packed away behind an uncertain smile.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around to…” she said.

I waved my hand, telling her I understood, a whole lot of other words welling up inside me and it took every bit of will power to hold them back.

She asked how I was and had been and I told her, fine, although I had a cold.

I wished her a Merry Christmas and then retreated back to my car before I said something very stupid, I knew I would later regret for a day or week or for the rest of my life.

She walked the other way into one of the stores.

I cried as I drove, feeling the whole year without her as a hollow space inside me, the skin stretched across the gap ready to shred or collapse.

I should have told her I loved her, I thought, but was glad I hadn’t, knowing during and after our encounter such things are always best left unsaid, a huge mistake if uttered, and how much worse I might have felt if having said it getting chilly silence as her response.

The flower spoke for itself.

But what did it really say?

The whole thing was a reaction to a fantasy I’d carried around inside me for weeks, the foolish belief she might take me back, when even I didn’t really want that in the end.

Maybe it was just the season, and this nostalgia would fade with the holiday cheer. But even as I drove home, I kept hoping I would find her waiting at my doorstep when I arrived, trying to twist that one accidental slip her mask into the belief she still loved me and I her, that love hadn’t died after all the way we both assumed it had, though I knew and she knew whatever embers of the old fire that remained would soon turn cold.

 

  1985 Menu


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