Good Buy, Love

“So… this is for you. She said you could take it or leave it.”

Jonah, who I hadn’t seen in person for years, was matter of fact. They cracked a half smile, looking oddly luminous in their grief. They pulled a small journal out of their bag- found a clearing on the table- a space between our plates, mugs, water glasses, the sundry condiments native to breakfast diners.

The journal was... something.

Delicate. Inventive. Inviting. She’d taken a powder blue pocket journal, collaged paper and fabric to make the cover look like a boxy, yet bespoke tuxedo. An elegantly tacky tuxedo: deckle-edged paper in layers to create ruffles on the shirtfront, dark velvety paper for the lapels and bow tie- a dainty yet detailed boutonniere popping out hot pink and pretty against the blue. I could see the book’s back pocket bulge a bit, and noticed she’d tucked oversized items between the last page and the cover, where they were bound in place by the gentle pressure of the elastic closure.

I just stared at it.

Jonah went on- “Yeah, her directives about her journals said to “Play the least satisfying game of ‘Which One Doesn’t Belong’ ever” and give you the odd one out- but only if you wanted it. There were shelves of finished journals, the little black book on her nightstand- and then there was this.”

I think Jonah expected me to pick it up, thumb through. It was such a tactile, curious little thing- begging to be opened, explored. But I just looked at it. Didn’t want to touch it.

So much for respecting my silence with an indefinite silence of her own. Bequeathing me this, she broke her perfect record.

I wasn’t sure I could bear to look at what she’d left me.

I’m not sure I could have borne it if she’d left me nothing but the endless cold I’d given her.

The book was determinedly cheerful. Cheeky. A challenge. If I opened it, I would know what I missed. If I opened it, she would flood back into my life.

“She also instructed that if you lost color, I should just take it back. And dude, you are looking peaky.” Jonah went to remove it, but my left hand reached out and grabbed their much braceleted wrist before they could drop it in their messenger bag.

I didn’t take the book out of their hand, but they placed it on the table top again, and settled back into their bench.

Now I could see the spine was titled: “AREN’T YOU GLAD YOU DIDN’T TAKE ME TO PROM?”

Which handwriting style was between the covers? Ersatz draftsman like the spine? Her fluid print, or her actual cursive? Already, I thought in terms of intimacy… the way she’d scrawled herself across stylish stationery- confident, casual- trusting her audience could figure it out: spikes, loops, “r” vs. “v”, footnotes prone to climbing up the margins like ivy; the odd doodle; and yes- cursive when she wanted a challenge.

Cursive until-

Until I responded it had nearly given me an aneurysm to decipher… after which she’d typed- only the lines and loops of her first initial were hand-inked, after a dash, at the close. And the addresses, of course. My name, in her hand, looked heroic- bold, stylish. Daring.

Most of my life is typed, texted. She saw my handwriting sparingly, but saw more of it than most people. My handwriting is plain. Careful. I wrote addresses to get letters where they were going. Not that I was writing letters to any one but her, because- who actually writes letters?

More to the point, who writes letters like hers?

She wrote to a lot of people. To Jonah, for example. I was one of the few who actually responded in kind, trying to match her page for page- except god, she was impossibly voluble. One time I resorted to a 128 point font for a bit to get the right page count. She always pleaded with me not to try to match her “Legitimate case of graphomania.”

I know too well why I gave her my address. Why I wrote back. It went on a few years before she noted that perhaps we’d been writing to each other for the most classic of reasons? The attraction wasn’t conventional, the circumstances might not be convenient- but if I wanted more, I could have more.

So I put an end to it.

But not before I took “more” for a euphoric in-person spin a few weeks before I left for college again. Eventually, when she clocked my silence as more than being busy, I texted her she should have remained a fantasy. She took it in stride, apologized, wished me well, and disappeared per my request. As she’d already promised she would.

A few months later I was abruptly sent home- a minor global pandemic. When I did go out, I’d pass by her house and think “Jesus, how is she doing?” I was lonely for friends. I’m not always good at friends. I missed her. I emailed. In an instant she was back, good natured, like a golden retriever- looping me back into her mindstream of everyday miracles and wonders, all perfectly, perfectly platonic.

Dropped her again, eight months later, without a word. Just before the holidays. I’d decided it was best to refrain from any sort of friendship with her. Even when she pared back, she was too much. I decided to focus on what was realistic. Normal. A proper girlfriend had found me, and I needed to make the outlier an outcast.

She obligingly never sought to lighten or complicate my life again. Except for one email.

Except for this coda. Oh, god- when had she created this coda?

It would be churlish to not accept this token- after so many years, after such distance. But what would she have packed into this compact little book? She was always like the goddamned TARDIS- exhaustively bigger on the inside, and good god, did I have the energy for wherever it was she’d take me? I’d figured out my life. More or less.

Jonah broke into my thoughts: “You could decide later. It was clear she didn’t want it pressed on you.”

I don’t know if Jonah knew about... us- or that I’d killed her off as a player in my life. Jonah and I were like siblings- even if they didn’t know facts, they knew me. And they’d been able to love her. Easily, which is how she’d loved them, even at their most manic. She and Jonah had been like spit and pop rocks, too, I knew- heads full of divine nonsense. Except Jonah would never have felt inadequate. Or attracted.

“Have you looked at it?” I asked.

“Not the contents. Based on the cover- maybe it’s a short story? A long-form pep talk? She pre-wrote a ton of last letters. She left me her writing, with permission to publish- and the teapot for her ashes, so we could keep hanging out. Said she’d burned just enough of her papers to be mysterious.”

I trusted she’d turned the evidence of our short false starts to smoke. We’d shared a common sense of discretion. Once or twice during the ill-fated test flight, when I’d asked, she’d been brave enough to send along a poem or two she’d written about me. They had turned my stomach. How she delighted in my pedantics, smiled to hear my voice in her head, how she’d quietly lived for the moment I’d write or enter a room.

How could she be so goddamned nice about me? How could she so effortlessly find words? How could I respond to them or reciprocate? It was awful, to always be the dumb-struck one. Besides, our circumstances were impossible. With those first poems, my system started to reject her. The journal in front of me was proof that the impulse to write to or about me had continued after I’d shut her out.

Refusing it would be too telling. I wasn’t obliged to read it.

I hadn’t read the email she’d sent, when she realized I’d blocked her on social media, when I decided I didn’t want to see into her life. At all. Why look at property you can’t afford? She never used social media to contact me, but she’d notice my absence, and know to stop sending mail. I deleted her email on receipt, then emptied the trash folder, so I wouldn’t be tempted. She’d never tried to contact me again.

Except, now, from beyond the grave.

Jackass.

My head rang with the one term of endearment we’d allowed.

My hand reached for the book.

“Give it back to me for safekeeping, when you decide you don’t want it.” Jonah’s voice was quiet, but sharp. They had smelled the smoke of a burnt bridge, and were furious with me for the arson. It was like old times, so I knew they’d also forgive me.

I picked up the book. Put down the cash to cover our tab. I still had some old fashioned quirks of my own.

“I've got to head out. Thank you for this.”

*

It had been a decade and then some since I’d last been with her; I thrummed with anticipation. Dread. Finding time and space alone took no effort. It was Saturday, still morning. I walked into my apartment, went straight to the armchair by the window, rearranging my cat so that I could soak up the sunlight, as well. Took a breath. Held the book that she had held. Opened it.

A postcard mapping the path of the 1963 solar eclipse over Maine slipped out. On the flip side, her hand: “I am trying to stop saving my favorites to send to you- clearly I am failing. I’ll get better at this, I promise.”

It was a journal, a letterbook. She wrote the entirety in under two months, immediately after I’d excised her from my life. It was full of books she was reading; wondering what I would think of this or that; things she’d noticed on walks, or at work; gratitude for ever letting her kiss the corner of my jaw, or place her hand over my heart. She’d cut a poem by Alberto Rios from an anthology, annotated it, tucked it into the pocket, which also held a shattered clover head, a sprig of dried heather- picked when we’d been together and apart.

She wrote that she didn’t know who she was keeping the journal for.

It took me a long time to stop crying. And I didn’t know who I was crying for.

The sort of crying that brings on a migraine led to a fairly fragmented read- which is why I originally missed a small paragraph appearing toward the end:

I know I’m unwelcome, and any gesture would be- but I’m going to make you one of my life insurance beneficiaries. Not the primary- nothing embarrassing, you won’t get the lion’s share, but most of us end up in debt we’d rather not have, and this might be a very practical way to ease some of your future stress- I hate that I ever made your life more difficult. $20,000 seems decidedly useful but not excessive, or too comment-worthy as a fraction of a larger policy. Everyone knows I am fond of you, though not the chronic-heart-condition extent of it. And who knows what 20K will be worth by the time you get it? Perhaps just enough for a cup of coffee, while you visit an old friend.

In the next line she was back to waxing ecstatic over mathematical thinking in small children. It was a long night, reading a short journal. Thinking about the end and beginning of possibilities. The uses of money.

*

Finally, I made a call:

“Jonah, she mentioned making me an insurance beneficiary? She did that?”

“Yeah.”

“You need to let me buy her other journals.”