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.
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