Words, Bound in Paper, first half
Apr 15 '04
The Bottom Line Copyright 2004 David MacDonald
Hopefully, this little story will be clear to readers -- I've been going back and forth, checking and correcting things for the past few days.... enjoy!
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Your foot lurched downward on the brake pedal, too abruptly as you repeatedly encountered stop signs throughout the downtown. Man, you never realized how many three-way and four-way stops there were in Charlottetown.
You haven’t driven any model of car in the past handful of months. One of your friends loaned you her car this afternoon, when you showed up at her workplace to ask if you could borrow it for a few hours. You told your friend that you needed a haircut; that you wanted to get rid of some of the hair’s length, get rid of the bangs. You said that you looked too much like a young girl instead of the woman of the early twenties that you were. She smiled at you, and said ‘sure’ as she passed you the keys.
How she’d trust you, the inexperienced driver, with her only means of transportation, you couldn’t figure out. But, hey, it beat paying five bucks for a cab.........
The haircut turned out fine. But you still had something else to do downtown this afternoon........
Downtown at this time of day was like a maze. You stalked the pavement like a cautious feline, searching for a place to park. You’d only pounce if you knew with absolute certainty that you would not be denied.
And then, there it was. An empty zone, amid dozens of stationary cars. You quickly entered the open gap, between the corroded white lines.
You shut off the rumbling of the car’s engine, and slid the keys into your jacket pocket. You grabbed the bulky kit bag from the passenger seat and pulled it closer to you. You unzipped the pouch, clarifying that you had brought the letter with you. You closed the pouch again, before sliding your arm underneath the strap, and awkwardly moving your body into the springtime air.
He wrote that letter, before folding the paper carelessly into a red envelope, before walking against the chilly February wind to your house, sliding it underneath your door while you were not home. His words were rambling, yet focused in its emotions, in his secret torment for you. He had asked you so many questions, given you so many reasons for his motivations, made guesses as to yours. It was only fair that you gave him a response, verbal or written.......
...... but you didn’t. You kept your silence.
But today was different. You needed to talk to him.
You paced toward the parking meter, your heart beating with a twinge of nervousness. A nagging itch bristled within your armpit, biting into the skin, insulated by your bra strap, your flannel shirt, your sweater. Awkwardly, you used your free arm to move your hand, and dig at the itch with your fingernails.
One quarter. Two quarters. And another one. The old-fashioned meter hand pointed in the general area of ninety minutes. Your eyes glazed over at the black strokes on the white panel of the meter. This could very well need more than ninety minutes.
So you fed the machine with a fourth quarter..........
It was two blocks to his apartment. But at least it was a nice day, a warm southern breeze to give the air a long-missed comfort. Your scarves and stocking caps would be hibernating in the secret corners of the closet for another year.
The last time you visited him, it was the first weeks of winter. He pointed out the redness of your cheeks, the crystals of frozen water that clung to your tender skin. Your face seemed so cute, so sensitive to his eyes. He would have placed his hands on your cheeks, hoping that his palms were warm enough to neutralize the chill on your skin.
There were a few days in which he did not merely desire to touch your face. He actually did. And you allowed him to.
It was nearly seven months ago when you two met. One of those utterly chance meetings, where if either one of you had decided to situate oneself in another location instead, you two may never have been aware of the other’s existence. But some capricious twist of fate meant for you and him to almost literally bump into each other -- and one of those inexplicable sparks ignited between the two of you.
And for a few days following, you had some nice times together with him. Nothing that would send earthquakes across the landscape of romance -- but nice all the same. Sitting together on the sofa, either at his place or yours, cuddling with each other while watching a movie. Walking around the city, hanging out at different shops. Eating at fast-food joints. Just minor events, granted. But, for that small, isolated span of time, it was.....nice.
You had said some things that, at the time, you really meant in your heart. And so did he. It seemed as if he was reaching out to you, and, in turn, you responded.
..... but now, you were standing by his front window, and your inner core of feelings had grandly changed. You spent a handful of time, just standing there, silently. You doubted yourself with absurd thoughts. Would he answer if you knocked? Would he care if you walked away instead?
But of course he would. That was kind of the point of this meeting. He cared too much about you, about the extent of your participation in his life. Perhaps secretly, you would hope that he’d go deaf for just that one brief moment when your knuckles struck the glass. Then you wouldn’t have to face him, and snap him out of his delusions.
Hey, you can’t be thinking about me all the time now........
It was nice what happened.... but that was an isolated event.......
Hey, I have a boyfriend. So that means you and I are never going to be together. We were never suited to each other........
But you felt like a fool moping by the front door. So you knocked on it despite everything. It was the polite thing to do, wasn’t it?
And he didn’t go deaf. His face was animated as he opened the door to meet you. He always looked that way when he was within your presence. The animators of his life drew him in a slightly different fashion whenever you were a guest in one of his particular episodes.
“Hell-o”, you sing-songed, stretching out the sound slightly, in a soft but gentle cadence.
“Hey!”, he exclaimed inspiringly. “You’ve got your hair cut!”
“Yea, I did -- I think it turned out good.”, your fingers playing with a few deep brown strands of hair. “I don’t look like a little girl anymore!”, you giggled.
“Anyway.... come in, you.”, he teased jovially.
You walked into his apartment, instantly recognizing it as unchanged from the last time you visited, so many months ago. The clutter was still there. The furniture hadn’t moved. His basic design sense had not been embellished.
For him, time stood still. While you, on the other hand, could never stand still for any slither of time.
“So how are you doing?”, your voice still palpitating with the song of your natural speech. Your voice was always bright. True sadness or moroseness never found a home close to you. You had the sort of voice, the kind of personality, that unexplainably drew others to you. You always projected a strong, cheerful, self-assurance, that was rarely broken.
“Oh, I’m doing okay -- I’m just doing the same old thing. Laundry, dishes, cleaning up the house......”
You casually rocked your head from left to right, observing the evidence of his words. He may need a little work on that same old thing, there.....
“Sounds like fun.”, you tease.
“Sit down , and visit for a while.”, he teased you, affecting the overdone stiffness of a mall greeter. But why else would you be here? Of course you were going to visit......
You sat down on the small chair, next to the dinner table, overlooking the front window. You were not able to pull your concentration away from the thoughts that overflowed your memory. The things that you wanted to say to him. You did not dare to botch this up, and go to war with him with broken emotions and words. This would be a peaceful dialogue. No carnage needed in either country.
“So.....have you been working?”, he continued, referring to your new job at the supermarket. You noticed that his face grew more haunted by an unseen distraction, like a fly buzzing around his ear that he could not shake off.
“Yes, I have.....”, you say. “Quite a lot, actually. But today I had the day off. A good chance for me to sort out all of my errands...... so I can brush them aside for another week or so.”
If you could call this an errand.
“Oh, man.”, he grins, smugly. “You’ve always been a busy girl. I don’t know how you do it.....
He taps his fingers upon the wood of the flat table surface. You want to stop his digital motion with your own hand, but you withhold the urge. You realize that he’s unconsciously edgy. It wasn’t anything directed towards you.
And, to touch him would be to succumb to his secret wishes.......
“It doesn’t bother me. All I need is a day.... to collect myself.”, you say, accepting of your own self-prescribed fate. “That’s just what I do.”
He examined your face. He seemed to be pluming the intricacies of your expression, of the bends and curves of your face, wanting to know what made you as lovely as you were, and how he could share in your spiritual nectar.
You glanced toward the window, noticing the cars maneuvering around the maze of the streets. “Parking is so terrible down here -- I never really thought of that until now. I’m not used to driving, you know!”, laughing. “You don’t know but I borrowed my friend’s car to get down here. Didn’t feel like tiring myself out by walking forty-five minutes from my house today......”
Because your emotions were already depleting your energy.
“Geez, tell me about it!”, he sardonically groaned. “It’s bad enough just living down here. The parking lots behind this strip of houses are so miniscule that half of the time all you can do is park out on the street overnight. And try to get your car into a safe place before the cops ticket it the next morning.......”
Good. Just slide organically into the necessary subject at hand. Simple words about cars and parking were at least stitching together a gauze of bland normalcy, delaying the thrust of rawness from striking the hearts of both of the players in this room.
You spoke to him, casually, about many things. The subjects soon grew deeper, and, as your words flowed with his, and vice versa, you regained, at least, a carbon copy of how you felt upon meeting him. You found that he was serious about certain topics. If a subject came up, he would say a bit more than its mere surface. He would challenge you, persuade you to give expression to what roamed within your head.
He was serious about you. You liked that. That’s what you liked about him.
He didn’t appear to dismiss you, or treat you frivolously like other guys may have done. He was engaged to your very existence.
At least that was your first impression.
Weeks later, you realized that there was more to his nature that you realized......
.... and by this time, you had to admit such to him. The kit bag rested against your leg.
“...... hey.....”, your mouth abruptly spilled. “I....I’ve got the letter that you wrote to me.” You watched him nod. The conversation was about to become a slight more intense at this point, you understood. But you were a brave soul. You rarely backtracked from anything.
You unzipped the pouch of your kit bag, to pull out the papers. His private thoughts were drawn out to you in intriguing, reasonably formulated phrases. His penmanship, however, left something to be desired. Jagged and blotchy, his ideas appeared as inky outbursts, belying his convincing statements.
“.... oh.....”, he muttered, after seeing the reality of his own donated property for himself. The slight distraction on his face grew into something more concrete.
“..... did you want to talk about this? Or forget like it ever happened......?” You asked the question like a proposal. You expected one answer, but secretly hoped for another.
“....n-no....”, he broke off. “You brought it up just now......we might as well talk about it......”
“Yea, sure.”, you agreed. “I never did respond to what you wrote to me......”
Here you were, sitting across from him. In his table, in his living room. Holding in your hands the words that he wrote to you. Words that came from the saddest portions of his soul. The portions that longed for her. The portions that hurt for her.
But he wasn’t one to be able to just spontaneously converse on this subject, even one that consumed his every day. Perhaps because it consumed him so. This subject was fragile and personal, not the detached and generalized topics that he and you would normally speak of.
But you were visiting him on his own turf, in the safety of his own home. Maybe that would make the necessity of speaking on this subject a bit easier on him.
“I think that this letter is just amazing -- even as a piece of writing.“ You regard the front side of the paper with a friendly awe -- perhaps your awe was too clearly manufactured. Or maybe it was pure and true. At this point, you yourself weren’t sure.
But even your manufacturing was done with the most sincere of motivations.
“..... sure.”, he said acerbically. “Maybe I should take this away from you and get it published......”
You glared worrisomely at him. You feel like you need to stop yourself from any pleasingly funny comments, anything that made light of this situation.
“...... anyway.....”, you sigh. “..... I think we have to talk about this, since you seem so keen on wanting to know how I feel.”
“Yes.... yes, I do......”
“.....there were a few things that I didn’t quite understand.”, you said, hesitatingly. Your eyes scan the messiness of the text, not quite trusting your own memory to recall all of the specific details in that jumble, in that crowd of complication. “..... you.... said that you didn’t know why I didn’t give you any indication of why we didn’t start a relationship......”
You glared calmly into his squirming face. He looked afraid, afraid of your words.
“.... but,”, your soft voice maintained, “.... I told you that I didn’t want a relationship......”
The lines fingering away from his eyelids darkened like pencil shades against paper. At the same time, the wounds inside his eyes yawned further, until they seemed irreversibly aching.
“.... I know..... I know what you told me. I know that you said that we’d never date.”, he sighed. “But.... I don’t understand why. You and I were in the midst of something. And then suddenly, I felt like I was talking to myself..... I never got it. I never did......”
You had to explain yourself to him. Why? It would have been so much easier to just keep driving down that street. Just keep driving down that street and go somewhere else. Like your best friend’s house. Like your new boyfriend’s house. Like a fast food joint. Any place that did not remind you of him.
But, if you didn’t tell him, he was always going to be asking you questions.........
“Well...... I gotta say that.... it just didn’t work out......”, you began.
The small memories returned to you. They were tucked away in the recesses of your mind, where other trivial things were kept: “...... when I first met you,”, you admitted, “,that night at the art gallery, we.... we had a great talk!”
He was recalling those very same hours of that evening. The night that this unique girl walked up to him, and asked him what he was thinking about when he gazed at the wonderfully angled smears of the canvas in front of him.
“...... you’re right.”, he said. “And I never would have met you if I hadn’t have just felt like stepping out of the house to stretch my legs!”
That was what he said that night too. He turned out not be as sophisticatedly cultured as he seemed at first.
“..... I just thought that was funny.”, you smiled. Suddenly, for a flash, your memories filled your body with warmth. “...... you seemed so unconcerned about what people thought. I’m sure that most of the art snobs would have went out of their way to give a “proper” reason to step into an art gallery.”
“Well, why did you show up there that night?”, he smiled.
“Ah..... “, you slurred. “.... because I was going to pick up my friend at the library. But she was late......so I thought I’d check out the paintings in the gallery.”
You chuckled affectionately along with him.
“And..... remember what you told me that night?”, he sighed. “The night that we first went out?”
You remained silent.
“You said that you thought that we met for a reason.......”, he confirmed.
You knew that he was going to say that. He was holding awful evidence against you.
“...... yes, I did say that......”, you mumbled, the voice bubbling from the shy and naive half of your personality.
You had embraced him that night, you had touched his face. Why you did that, you don’t really know now. But that touch, against his cheek, coaxed him to kiss you.
There were many things that he said to you that night. He told you that you came into his life at the right time. You had your own emotional statements to say -- you said that you thought you and him met each other “for a reason”. You couldn’t distinguish a specific reason. But there had to be one. Why would you say such a thing otherwise.....?
“..... so why did you say that?”, he asked, his voice sobbing with genuine confusion.
“.... I .... I still believe that.”, you sighed. “I... don’t know why. I still don’t know why I feel that way. But I wouldn’t say something like that, if I didn’t mean it. You know that....”
“.... yes, I know.”, uprooting your speech. “I know that.... you don’t say things that you don’t mean.......” His words were kind, but his face was jaded. He’s clearly been on this side of the argument more than once.
You saw in him a resentment. It sparked a frustration, an inexplicable one.
“...... this isn’t ...... you’ve got to understand my feelings.”, you stated, firmly. “You... you know what drew me to you? I thought that you listened to me. I... thought that you respected my feelings..... you seemed so together. But ... I didn’t see all the specific details about you....... you weren’t exactly who I thought you were........”
You could see his heart splintering in to pieces. But the pieces were going to fall to the floor. You were not going to reach your hand out to catch them.
“..... the thing is, I need someone who’s strong.... maybe even stronger than me. “, you admitted. “Someone who is sure of himself. Someone who’s emotionally strong. Confident, you know. Someone who is a hard worker, not just with the obvious.... but someone who works hard with himself. You know what I mean......?”
I’m not so sure that you were ever like that, you conclude silently.
“..... hey, now you’re talking as if I’m lazy or something.”, he said, trying to dilute his accusation with a flippant tone. “I.... I can’t be perfect! Nobody can be! And ...you have no idea what I’m doing when you don’t see me.....”
You were going to have to tell him the truth.
“.... the thing is, too.....”, your head fell downcast. “.... that I’ve been dating someone... for a while now ......”
You almost feared looking up to his face again. That one statement would be critical enough to break his subjective view of reality. The shock of witnessing reality as it really was may have been too much for him to bear.
“Yea......?”, he asked flatly. He seemed to attempt a calm. But you were sure that inside, he was smashing his fists against the table. Feeling like a complete failure.
“Yea.....”, you sang again, a soft cracking in your voice. “He’s a nice guy. We’ve known each other for a very long time...... he’s been pretty keen on me, but,”, you chuckle. “, I was too dumb to catch on until recently.”
You see his face, as he tries to warmly absorb your revelation. But he wasn’t going to fully accept this, not now, at least.
“..... I see.”, he spoke. “That’s.... that’s nice.”
“Yea.....”
“I.... it’s great that you’re happy.......” He taps the table again with his fingers. “But... I just don’t understand...... “
You knew that he was going to have a rough time of this.
“...... what... went wrong between us?”, he asked.
Your smile to him was a sad, mournful curl of the lips. You suddenly had your own painful experience. You felt a weight, a weight that he cruelly passed over to you......
“Ummm.... it just didn’t work out.....”, you sighed. “I mean..... you were going too fast for me, I think......”
He remained silent, absorbing your words.
“..... you didn’t really respect my feelings.....”, you said, truthfully. Didn’t respect my feelings. A harsh phrase, but you banished upset from your voice. You did not want to create any unnecessary tension.
“I told you.... that I wanted to move slowly. But you didn’t seem to pay attention to what I wanted. You seemed to want to mold me, to label me into the position of me being your girlfriend...........”
He silently felt sorry for himself. He thought that he was a monster. Selfishly abusing you, and making you, poor girl, submit to his bidding.
“Wow..... “, he rasped. “I never really saw it in that way before........”
“I’m sorry.....”, you spoke mournfully. You really felt that way. “.... but that’s how I feel. Almost right away.... you said that you needed me right now. You seemed to expect me to be yours....... don’t you see, you kind of were a taker...... you expected me to give, and you expected me to let you take...... but that’s not the way it should be.”
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last half
http://www.epinions.com/content_3869548676
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Member: David Macdonald
Location: Prince Edward Island
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About Me:
Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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