Eternal Glances

For a moment I can't look away and she smiles. I wave. I’m not choking but I can’t catch my breath. She returns my wave walking by, still smiling.

I dreamt I was awake, a long way from home, a long way from now in a time gone by. My clothes were a scratchy wool, the heat and sunlight were relentless.

I remember pieces. It wasn’t a love lost, but a tragedy that had torn us from each other. Once it wasn’t her gaze that held me, it was her soul, our souls, enmeshed, embracing, intertwined. The connection was as inseparable as the scent of pine on a crackling hearth.

In the dream, we had made a home in Chicago. I was a topographer and engineer in the war. Later, I found work as a cartographer. She taught at the University. We thought that surviving the war would mean surviving anything. I was strong, she was brilliant and talented. We knew we could endure.

I’ve been away a long time.

She glances my way again as she sits with her friends and lingers with a look.

It was another lifetime when we had loved each other. I’ve been here so long, so many years, it took this moment for me to remember. I don’t know what happened.

It was quick. I remember standing on the edge of a precipice above the Grand River with the great John Wesley Powell, mapping a new land full of mysterious people and exploring its canyons. He was gesticulating wildly with his one arm as we took in the horizon; and then, I was falling.

I’m certain she missed me, grieved for me, and persevered. She’s so young. Now I’m old.

I apparently have been waiting for her arrival. I didn’t know she was here to wait for.

I try not to stare. I can feel her looking at me, her gaze like gentle fingertips lightly touching my neck. My life had been shortened. I’m glad she had a long life, perhaps filled with opportunity, joy and love again.

Now, here we are, in this place, this time.

“Hi,” she says, and I turn. I’m smiling and fighting the urge to embrace her. “I know you, and I apologize because I can’t remember how.”

“I think it was a long time ago, maybe even a lifetime ago, but I feel the same. You were in a dream. I left you in Chicago, a professor, an artist, so that I could go work with Colonel Powell.”

“Well, awkward, but my friends call me Hettie,” and she extends her hand.

“A pleasure to meet you again Hettie,” and I shake, “I’m Devon. Hettie? Short for Mehetable?” Her eyes widen and she blushes slightly.

“Yes, I haven’t met anyone who knew that.”

“Not very clever when we’ve met before,” and I sip my whisky. She watches me.

“Oh, right, you left me in Chicago. Single malt? Simple, fine for sipping, a little warming when things are cold,” she says.

“Exactly.”

“It was a guess,” she says, “Join us. We need to round out our Trivia team. We’re just hanging by a thread.”

Tens of millions of threads woven into fabric, billowing in like waves, as the breeze, like time, flows past. I see her face for a moment on the other side and move to her, or where I thought she was, and she’s gone. The bright sunlight seems to be filtered in the gauze of a minor haze and the air clings and exposed skin glistens. For a moment I don’t know where we are.

“I’m not very good at trivia,” I say.

“Don’t do trivia? Like a wise old barn owl?”

“More like a bar owl, maybe not so wise.”

Hettie smiles, “Maybe I could sit with you for a bit?’

“Maybe, but I don’t want you to appear to be out for a night with your father.”

“My dad? How old do you think you are?”

“How old do you need me to be?”

“Hmm, I see, that old is fine.”

“That old it is,” and I smile.

“Buy me a drink bar owl.”

“Done, although I may be the mouse. Let’s see, Moscow Mule or Mojito? Mojito seems to be your most likely choice.”

“Mojito it is,” she says, “refreshing and not lonely like wine.”

I wave to our server. She politely saunters over. It’s hot. It’s humid. Moving quickly is out of place. I order her drink and an extra soda water for myself, twist of lime.

“We met in Ithaca,” I say, “both interviewing for school. You were considering attending Cornell but had gotten into Radcliff. I was looking to get a degree in the sciences or to become a minister and study at the new St. Steven’s College in Annandale. A lunch and an afternoon with you and I knew I wasn’t going to be a minister.

For a couple years we corresponded and met when we could, both hard at our studies. I enrolled in the Union Army with a muster in Elmira, New York. You went to Paris and studied with a new group of artists calling themselves "Impressionists." We continued to correspond, I stayed alive, and managed to improve my position and skills with topography and rank as a combat engineer. After the war, you and I married. I took a position with a land holding company in Chicago, you took a position at the University teaching art. We bought a house and began to think about children.”

She nods and bites her lip. When our drinks arrive, she pulls the sugar cane stalk from her glass and begins to chew on it. I give my lime a squeeze and drop it in my glass.

“I remember now,” she says. “You left me in Chicago.”

“In my dream.”

“Another life,” she says.

“I had to go.”

“Yes, you had to go, but not because of duress. It was a friend and your ego that took you away. The Colonel had made a name for himself after the war, surveying the Green River and its canyons. He had taken a position starting the first Department of Geological Survey for the United States. You had served together during the war, and he asked you to join him to help with his next expedition. You knew it would be dangerous. He had lost three men mysteriously on the first expedition. The opportunity though, what it could do for our future, for our one-day children, drew you in. I was reluctant despite Colonel Powell’s charisma but saw your enthusiasm and conceded, allowing you to forego what would have been a regret for which I would have of held the burden”

“I thought going was the right thing to do at the time. My dream,” I reply.

“Yes, your dream. It was exciting. Adventure, charisma, fame. Your dream. But we had Chicago. We were fine with you as a surveyor and my position at the University.”

“Your dream,” I say.

“I didn’t get my dream.”

“I didn’t really get my dream either. John and I had struggled up a canyon wall. Not easy with him only having one arm.”

“Indeed, not easy,” she says as she spun the mint in her drink with her sugar cane stalk.

“I fell. It must have been a thousand feet, it seemed forever. I purposely faced the sky as I fell. I didn’t want to see what I knew to be inevitable, and in each eternal moment as I fell, I thought of you. I plead with who I believed to be my God for your happiness...”

“Hmmm,” she swirls the ice in her glass. “I missed you. It hurt.”

“So you missed me, a day or two anyway?”

“Day was plenty really,” she says looking at me as if she were looking over glasses.

“Well, who knew?”

“Of course, I missed you. But I was there and had to go on. I didn’t know you would be back,” she says.

“I didn’t know you’d be back,” I say, “and now that you are, I feel that the timing is such that I am falling all over again.”

“But you’re not,” she says, “we won’t have what we had but we have each other again.”

“True, I can watch you succeed this time and take joy in your success.”

“And I can do the same. We just don’t have the house and won’t have the kids.”

“Okay. So I can be like an old side piece…”

“Ewww, no, no, that’s not in the mix. You just made it a little gross.”

“I felt that the moment it left my lips, sorry. Nary a word that way again.”

“Thank you. You can be a wise old friend though.”

“I’m already here.”

“Let’s go help the team make some trivia head way. It’s clear you’re better than you let on.”

“Right behind you this time.”