How It All Started

My favorite niece tells tall tales, funny, amusing, uplifting lies. She has a way of spinning ordinary events into engaging yarns, finding fascination and humor in the things adults do, as only a fifteen year old could, poking us in the eye, her long black bangs shielding her questioning blue eyes. The only problem is that when she gets to what feels like the middle of the story, she abruptly stops, smiling, assessing our reaction. Occasionally at these gatherings where she's telling four or five quick stories in a row, someone will ask her, well, what happened next, but more often than not, when the last story is over, we will move on to a different topic. Natalie, I whisper to her, every good story has a beginning, middle and an end. Beginning, middle, end, I'll repeat. Typically she will grin, shrug and engage in another on-going conversation. On other occasions, among muffled laughter, she will make an excuse: that WAS the end, Uncle Sam; you don't KNOW how things end, silly; whatever, Uncle Smartie. But one time she turned sullen and said, "Sometimes you can't tell when things end."

Sometimes you can't tell when things end. Sometimes you can't tell when things begin. A look. A question. A comment from a moody teenager. An inexplicable moment. A hug, the hug. The one I can't forget.

(Hey, how are you.) (It was good to see you.)

Sometimes the truth comes bundled in mystery: in that innocent comment, that frustrated spousal stare, that incidental hug that means everything and nothing at all.

I dreamed of my ex again. We were at my boyhood home, Amber and I, in my childhood bedroom. She is lying on my bed, her head propped up against that old head board and I'm on the floor kneeling beside her, prepared to have an overdue conversation about our marriage. We will talk about how wrong I was to de-rail our lives. We will discuss my clumsy attempt at staying married to her. She opens her folded arms just a bit and I grab her face and try to kiss her. With unnatural dexterity, she moves her head back and away. She politely asks me in that condescending slow controlled voice of hers if I've lost my (whisper) fuck-king mind, cruel satisfaction dancing in her eyes. She's my wife now, rejecting and chastising me again as only she can. I'm a child, rebuked, on the verge of tears, turned down, rejected, on my knees. Embarrassed. Humiliated. Disappointed. Driven to confession. "I don't have a bed here anymore. Let me sleep next to you." She stares away from me and there the dream ends.

Thinking of it now, that hug, the hug, that “are you OK,”was nothing to her. A momentary lapse of hard-won hatred. A slip of judgment. A slip that meant everything to me.

She moved to another city years ago but we still have mutual friends here. Sometimes we are at the same event at the same time, invited by still-married friends who didn't get the “You Gotta Choose Sides” memo. This particular gathering was for someone's kid at a new park here in Sendera, the husband safely ensconced at the Hilton down the road. Barbeque and see-saws, cake and beer. Rich & Rare whisked from my back pocket, mixed in a green lemon-lime Sprite. I had been getting wired for this all morning, alleviating my anxiety with drink and other prescriptions, a few smokes with Rachel at the old place. Amber is at the edge of the pavilion with her grandson. There we were, my ex and I, the former couple, circling away from each other all afternoon, engaging in platitudes with the still intact while the sun slowly set.

Then, in the fourth quarter, they were in front of me, her and the curly-haired grandkid, Dex, on her hip.

“Hey, how are you,” Dex bouncing on her side, my heart stopping, the sun disappearing. She's grinning, the kid nipping at her sunglasses.

After five years of silence. After five years of an unrequited love story.

I can't remember what I said in answer to her question about how I was doing. I do remember laughing at my own answer. I do remember her stunned look, the “are you okay” in response, no grin. I think—but do not say—“Yea, I’m great; just having fun all by myself.”

Someone calls out "Amber" and her smile renews and she walks away, haphazardly waving bye. Great Jennifer Lopez ass. Still.

Eventually the party dies down and it gets to bye everyone bye I gotta go.

The gathering closes and we are together, sharing a close if pristine hug, my eyes closed. I’m muttering something and I cling too long because I have no bed and I can smell her and she can smell my breath, all vodka, pills and weed in her ear. As I pull away to look at her, my shoulders are in her controlling hands again.

She is amazingly dark and beautiful and she does not return my slightly dazed smile. Instead, I see concern welling in her squinted eyes, her sunglasses hanging off her right pants pocket (using the squint she used on me when she didn't believe me; the narrow eyes she used when I lied to her, the "you're cheating" squint). I feel every nerve ending and I'm sober and time slows down and she says: “it was good to see you”

(a year passed)

I stare at her lips (“it was good to see you “) and be safe driving home, whispered through her drying eyes, slipping on her tinted glasses, whiffed from her right pocket, even though it’s dark.

She leans close to me / Are You OK

(you've been drinking)

and I nod 'oh yeah’ and I turn and I walk away, bile in my stomach, sick of my own sickness, sick of my lies, resisting the urge to run to my car, my waiting escape.

Walking away, I haphazardly wave goodbye over my shoulder, nodding my head, yea I'm OK, I'm fine, I’m good. Not looking back, I do not care about anything but for the bag in the glove compartment. Missing her, two feet behind me. Wanting her, three feet behind me, her hug still shrouding me, her scent still on me. Four feet behind me. Exhale. It was easier when you hated me. Five, six, seven feet. I turn around and it’s just a park pavilion with people. Eight feet, ten feet, ten yards, twenty yards and I unlock my car remotely, the ziplock close. So close now.

My niece was right. You can't tell when things end. Five years since the divorce I wanted and she got. She's remarried. Beautiful house. Bucolic small town. The husband's a fucking idiot but as Meatloaf would say, two out of three ain't bad. I'm happy for them. Not at all. She's over us. Me? Not so much.

Natalie, I ask one day, a few months later, a little tipsy, near someone's kitchen island, when will this end? When will the dreams about her end? When will I stop wanting her? When will my life START again? The thin 15 year old listening to this old man prattle on about love lost, with her dark hung-over bangs sweeping below her furrowed brow: you don't know, Uncle; you don't know what that hug meant; just that you can't forget it; or that time with her and cousin Dex, her concern for you, all that happened in that moment, you don't know. You don't know, Smartie, what happens next. She looks at me, takes in a forkful of potato salad. You don't get to know. You don't know if you get what you want, if it's finally over for you. She looks at the Sprite can in my hand. Maybe it's in the middle, she suggests, shrugging, raising her eyebrows, looking up, meeting my eyes, as I take a gulp of my whiskey and Sprite, looking away.

Now her stories with those weird non-endings make sense. We’re always in the middle. My eye sockets fill as I look at her again, almost as tall as me, and she's not my teenage niece anymore; she's my mentor, a muse of sorts.

It was a good talk. Good advice, my skinny dark haired girl with those inquisitive blue eyes. Good advice. Who's to say if it's the beginning, middle or end? Not Amber. Not Natalie. No one knows when it ends.

Except for me. I know.

This will never end.

God damn it.