Titanic Post

The voice on the answering machine was probing and determined. I knew who it was at the first word. We hadn’t spoken to each other since that summer of 1957. She said that there was a number I could call if I wanted. The old excitement returned reminding me of how much I missed her. We had parted without saying goodby.

I didn’t call her right away. Instead I sat on the deck, hoping the sun’s warmth would realign my erratic thoughts. I couldn’t say whether it was from the exertion of my morning bike ride, from which I had just returned, or the sudden reappearance of this girl from my past who had my pulse racing and my mind in disarray. I had believed that she was forever gone from my life.

It began when she came to New Mexico that summer for a visit. She was from a small town in Texas not far from where I grew up. Our parents had been very close at one time. My family had moved West some years before. I don’t remember why she came to visit us then or how she even got there. I only remember how beautiful and desirable she was and how words failed me in her presence.

As children we had been together on numerous occasions, usually ignoring each other. However, I recalled one summer day at my grandmother’s house, we were both there in the living room, which was mostly reserved for formal occasions. We couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve at the time. My aunt Eunice’s painting of Rembrandt’s The Man with the Golden Helmet stood watch over us as she played the old out-of-tune upright piano with the missing ivory near middle C. I think it was a boogie and her hands and fingers were flying everywhere and she had a voice like an angle. She tried to teach me “Chop Sticks,” which I butchered with my clumsy fingers. She showed me three chords, which I did retain. Even now, when I see a piano, I mentally form those chords with my fingers, and remember.

That summer of her visit, we drove around town evenings, circling the Red Rooster drive-in north of town, then south to the Hi-Di-Ho drive-in, then back again. This was the ritual in our small town that teenagers in the late 1950s followed religiously. One evening we actually went inside the Red Rooster. There we each ordered hamburger and a cherry coke and fed the juke-box from our booth. I still see us sitting across from each other in the red vinyl booth, me cautiously probing her with questions for answers that I hoped would indicate her interest in me. She, coyly looking up at me through lowered eyes. At the time I was too dumbfounded to realize that she was flirting with me.

On other days we drove to the mountains and walked for miles under the cool canopy of the Ponderosa Pines, talking and growing bolder with each step. I remembered the smell of her long auburn hair mingling with the cool musky fragrance of the air rising from the decaying pine needles.

With time we discovered a universe of things-in-common. Not that we were so alike, because we weren’t. We came from vastly different backgrounds. She was what, today, you would call a capricious child coming from a solid middle-class family and accustomed to the better things in life. My father was the black sheep of the family and didn’t fit into any of the usual little boxes. In spite of our backgrounds, we shared many dreams and some vague ideas of how we wanted our lives to be. We found that we had a certain comforting toleration for each othe’s quirks. We fell in love. When we were alone, we held each other tightly, not speaking, as if our souls were interchangeable with a knowing that was beyond the physical world. She was my first love. I don’t know if I was her first. I didn’t think so but it didn’t matter. We were destined to spend eternity together, or so I began to think. My parents, sworn to protect her virtue (I assumed), didn’t suspect us.

We sensed that time was slipping away. School would start soon and we would have to face the inevitable end of summer. Then the day came. A furtive kiss, a last embrace and she was gone.

For months after she left, we wrote almost daily and promised each other eternal love and truth. We tried desperately to hold on to each other and to think of ways to be together. It was her mother’s discovery of one of my letters to her that brought about the end.

Our parents conspired to make correspondence impossible and thoroughly embarrassed the both of us. I was devastated. I wanted to run away from home: run to her. For months I pushed myself through life, consumed with guilt and yearning. I was one love-sick puppy dog.

Later I understood that even had we not been outed, we could never have sustained the practical parts of our relationship. Our inexperience alone would have undermined any chance of success. After high school I did figuratively run away from home. I went to live in Europe and stayed for thirty years before returning to home to New Mexico. I suppose she also ran away from home. She became a rather prominent singer. Now she had called after all these years, as I had many times wanted to call her. She was now only a telephone call away.

Back then, after our separation, I was sad for a while. I began to feed off the memories as I went out into the world. The sense of loss faded and I began to use the memories like trail-mix, nourishing me on my path when I was alone and full of doubt. Now, the longing to be with her was unbearable. All it took was those few words of her voice on the answering machine.

What could we possibly say to each other after all those years? So much had changed. Did I want to risk another relationship? She was my first true love, if there is such a thing. It seemed that love, if it is romantic, could not, strictly speaking, be true. But, if it isn’t romantic, could it ever be true? I wondered if she even remembered that summer. Then what about my love of solitude? Of course that didn’t mean that I wanted to be alone, or did it? Why couldn’tTMt I hope to share the sunsets with someone? But that sweet bird lights only when least expected, and I was getting way ahead of myself.

As I returned inside to call her, I realized that I had loved her silently all these years. I tried to push aside that old and familiar fear of rejection, not all the way, but just far enough to the side to allow room for a ray of hope, should one be offered. As I dialed, I was deeply aware that her presence, but also her absence, had gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything in my past and everything in the future was stitched with her color.

April 2005

I’ve never written anything like this. In a way it reminds me of those romance novels with the heaving bosoms and ripped bodices. Not that I’ve read any. Part fiction, part flawed memory, it was an interesting experience trying to accurately describe falling in love without sounding like a teenager and without using vocabulary and syntax that are too masculine or too feminine. I feel that love is mostly feminine in the Taoist sense; however, it can never be entirely so from the male perspective. There are too many male traits (also in the Taoist sense) that should rightly be part of the process. I’m thinking of concepts such as truth, honor, responsibility, security, and providing, but also self-doubt, fear, and lots of confusion.

The memories are still fresh enough to write this, but the right words, as usual, are hard to come by. Like the first time I fell in love, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off with dignity. I hope I’ve succeeded in both. S., thanks again for the call. - kn