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June 20, 2005
returning to mercy street
"are you gonna write about this in your blog?"
pause.
well, i sort of have to, don't i?
the dreams, unbidden during the day, unavoidable in sleep, have persisted over the years. we see each other again, and while history never repeats itself for anything more than a smile, a momentary return of the dave and mattie-like banter, or the briefest of memory-laden embraces, it's always ok, it's sort of enough, i know it's as right as things could ever be again. we say the things we should have said back when it all fell apart, we apologize for all the things said and done, unsaid and undone.
with the mutual best friends we have somehow still completing some circuit between us, some part of me believed or hoped, or maybe knew, that it was just a matter of time until mary and i had that moment, though i wondered how long it might take. i feared it might be 20 years from now, maybe at a wedding of a friend's kid, or maybe even further, 30, 40, 50 years on, the need spurred that much more as we passed each other at a funeral, or a gravesite.
the romantic in me, the lover of love, imagines the sorrow, the realization of possibilities and lives lost, like the song they play every year around new years about the old lovers who meet again in the grocery store, the "same old lang syne", drink a six pack in her car, talk about the past and present, and they laugh until they cry.
but romance for its own sake is selfish. the better me has wanted her to be happy, even if it dooms the fantasy, even if it means the past truly fades into time, becoming just something that happened long ago, its power and pull just a curious memory.
a week ago, i was at lunch at trudy's, the place near campus where we spent so many hours together, and with our friends back in college. my father was in town, and he and i talked of his relationship with my mother, how that power and pull is still there in some way for him, a wound, a loss still fresh and real these decades later. i talked about mary, and how i let that struggle and loss impact so much of my life, how long the process of letting go took, but how it all helped me understand a little better how this life works, i think.
my cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and i ignored it. it buzzed again, and i looked discreetly at it - it said "Private."
a third time, and i was concerned, so i answered.
only confusion and surprise clouded recognition. a voice i hadn't heard in almost seven years, and then just briefly, but still the same as it ever was, light and warm.
i told her to hold on, mouthed the name to my father, whose eyes grew wide. he told me to go.
for 45 minutes mary and i talked. she had found out about my website from our mutual friend, and she read the blog i wrote on my birthday, on her anniversary.
she felt the need to apologize, i told her she didn't need to, but that i did. she finally got me to stop talking so much, so she could say what she wanted to say, too.
we didn't speak of love or even friendship so much, but of what we felt we were responsible for, what we wished we had done to be right for everyone involved. i didn't and don't know what to feel about that, but some part of me thinks, maybe knows, that it didn't need to be spoken, that sometimes, as she had once written years ago, i should know better than she could possibly say.
we caught up a little. she insisted that i had to do something with my writing. she asked what was up with all the beer. i think she was happy with the answer, but i don't know that any questioning of the drinking has ever hit me quite as squarely. i heard her son in the background, we talked a little about her kids. i asked her about katy, her niece that really made me want to have kids, and i was shocked to realize that so much time had passed, and that little katy was about to enter the university, back to where mary and i began.
she asked if i understood, and i told her i did, that no, this was the one time, and that we couldn't communicate again.
and then the time came, though i kept trying to delay it just a little. but for now, there was nothing more we could really say. at least this time, we got to say goodbye.
i sat there in trudy's little rock garden for a few minutes, with the cell phone still radiating heat in my hands. in my heart, like in the song, the snow turned to rain, just a bit, but i was also ok, knowing that she was out there, that maybe even now she sees and knows something of my heart through these words, through my writing, which she deserves so much credit for.
that night, i slept on the couch. the cats roamed the apartment elsewhere, leaving me alone. the neighbor upstairs, a kid the age mary and i were when it all began, stomped around incessantly. i watched the lines of light and darkness on the wall shift softly as the blinds drifted in the air conditioning's breeze. i thought of her, and fell asleep, and when i dreamt, it wasn't of some fervently wished-for future moment of forgiveness and reconciliation, but, finally, of days and love past, and real.
Posted by Rob at June 20, 2005 12:12 PM