(H)our Glasses

It’s never enough and it’s never quite right, is it?

Between us, on the tiny table, our wine glasses sit at the awkward extreme possible distance. Staring at each other.

“What do you... do?”, she asked suddenly.

“Huh? What?”

“Gee. And this was going so well...”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I must have been a million years away,” was the best I could do at first.

An awkward silence.

“I can get absentminded,” I confessed.

“A professor, huh?” she said with a smirk.

“Yeah. Well, a teacher.” I admitted.

Oh, god the job. Nobody wants to talk about their job.

“Ah! And what do you give to the next generation?”

I laughed and just said, “bad grades with a side of frustration?”

“Oh, no! Don’t you ever think about those kids’ futures? All the weird little ripples you leave in their lives? All the wisdom you impart for them to squander? Or maybe actually get something out of? Sometimes?” she said laughing.

“They don’t want to hear pearls of wisdom from a thirty-something high school teacher. They’re barely listening to the physics I’m trying to teach. Incapable of worrying about their own futures.”

She leaned in, “I don’t know about you but teenagers have got one thing right. Live in the moment, no second chances. Life’s too short, you know?”

Was that my opening?

Finally, in a haze of Merlot-inspired courage, I took a step forward, closed my eyes, and felt her lips touch mine. A sudden rush of endorphins and I almost couldn’t taste the light hint of cigarettes.

Another date followed that one. More of her cigarette kisses, which I grew to love. Then another and another. I popped the question.

She said yes.

It wasn’t the biggest wedding ever held in our town but it was special. We were young and dumb and happy. I can still smell all those lilies she loved. As much as I could smell under the smell of her cigarettes. God, sometimes I miss them both! But while the memory of a scent can last a lifetime, we couldn’t carry that feeling a fraction of the length. Ten years passed. Increasingly empty. Together for too long.

One day, She looked down at the maroon carpet we’d picked-out together surrounded by the bedroom furniture we’d picked-out together and asked the relationship-ending question I dreaded. It involved a hypothetical about seeing other people. We knew it was over. I wasn’t enough. I never was.

What felt like a whole damn millenia passed right there in the moments after that question. I could see that first date so clearly in all that time and suddenly? I focused first on her fingers, her wine glass moved back down to the table. The same Merlot, the same color, the same night, everything just as it was ten years before. Again. I wondered what someone would do with a second chance? What about a fourth?

“What do you... do?”, she asked suddenly.

“Huh? What?”

“Gee. And this was going so well...”

“Well, it– It was, wasn’t it?”, I stammered.

I certainly thought it was. I guess one always does.

“This night has been nice. Don’t blow it,” she said as a condescending tone took hold of her voice. Followed by a long, long awkward silence.

“Are you jerking me around here?”, she shot out. The tiny smile that had accompanied the other awkward moments of the evening had vanished.

“I... I couldn’t really know you, but I can get the feeling you’re the type of person who won’t be very receptive to second chances,” I pretended to theorize out loud.

She laughed for a moment but didn’t ever really respond. She looked away and looked back as sudden as a phantom in a dream.

I squinted at her. Exactly as I remembered her, “You don’t feel like there’s a second date in the cards for you? You’ll never get another chance?”

She leaned in. I leaned in. And without stopping to see what's right in front of us we moved forward! I tried again. I tried everything.

The years made us into something different, as they always do. But one day we were at a doctor’s appointment. I heard those words we all wait to hear. Words we wait for, knowing some bad times come for us all. An accident. A mistake. An attack. A nightmare.

For us, it was cancer. Nobody gets to the end without a few scars, though you can be forgiven for your naiveté about just how many scars you'll accumulate before the end. Our lives slowed down to a boggy slowness. Strained, like walking through soup. Before I knew it she was gone. Twenty years past and I was alone again.

I remember the lilies and the tears. As the years increasingly swim past, I feel less and less like the fish and more like the sea. I closed my eyes to the pain. Yet, I should have seen it coming this time. Eyes closed, I couldn’t watch my own hand. At the side of the table, my wine glass tipped to the side a good fifteen degrees and a little of that vino spilled over the edge of the glass right onto the perfectly white tablecloth before I opened my eyes and righted the ship. She set hers down carefully.

“What do you... do?”, she asked suddenly.

“Huh? What?”

“Gee. And this was going so well...”

I stared blankly back at her. As I looked into her eyes, I wondered not only why this year, this day, this moment, but why me? Why such luck. Why so many chances? Who was I?

There's nothing special about me? Nothing at all...?

Finally, she broke the silence with, “You’re kind of giving me a deer-in-the-headlights moment here, dude.”

Disaffected, she reached for the cigarettes in her purse.

I looked up at her round young face and saw all the potential in the world staring back at me. So I reached for it with, “I’m thinking about how breathtakingly magic it will be when I kiss you.”

“Is that right?” she shot back, wide-eyed.

“That’s right. Trust me. I’m never wrong about this stuff. Also: You should really quit those things. Definitely.”

“Is that so?” she said, stepping back.

“It is.”

The years made me forget the taste of those cigarette kisses while they made me remember so many moments I'd forgotten. Memories, newly made twice over. It always should have been about her, I thought. I should have lived for those moments without waiting for anything. And so I did. Who gives a damn about the dishes if they know their wife could be dead within six months? Why fight when you’ve seen it all before? Who would play everything safe if they knew they could go back and try it all over again? Almost from the start. But all the serenity in the world isn’t enough either sometimes. Cracks widen with time.

“I feel trapped!” she yelled at me.

“Trapped and lonely,” she whispered to me.

We had made it so far, this time. We were so lucky! Forty years! One teacher’s pension, two beautiful children, but a lot of mistakes. Embarrassingly, I didn’t see it coming. I still didn’t know her mind, she was still a mystery. She had never wanted kids at all and I thought we were on the same page.

Forty years. I was still in love. Her spell long ago cast on me still held me in place. No possible way I could fight back against her. Like an undertow, between the seconds, her hands moved with such grace. Again, that night. The full glasses. The sunset. The white tablecloth. Again!

She asked suddenly:

“What do you... do?”

“I’m beginning to wonder, myself,” I replied coldly.

“What?”, she said as she cocked her head to the side.

“I mean, well, in the cosmic sense? The more time passes, the older I get, and the more mistakes I make? The more we realize– the more I realize nothing can happen that isn’t supposed to happen,” I told her as I began to see the patterns for the first time. To really see them.

“Hmmm. So deep. That sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to me, sir. That is a tautology,” she stated with the confidence of a charging bull and a tiny curl creeping halfway to a smile.

“Life is tautological. It’s cyclical. The world turns. Most endings are beginnings too,” I realized as the words passed my lips.

“Well, some opportunities don’t come twice. Sometimes the cigar is just a cigar,” and I knew that she meant it because she leaned in.

I told her, as much for her as for myself, “That has to be okay. That has to be enough. We just have to be enough sometimes.”

“You for real? I’ve never known a man to leave a romantic potentiality dangling.”

“Well, I’ll always have the scent of the lily to remember,” I said before catching myself.

“That’s my favorite--? How did you--?” she gasped out while reaching for a cigarette from her purse.

“A physics teacher’s intuition! For example: You should really quit those things. They’re no bed of roses, you know what I mean?”

I said goodbye that night because she was meant to be something different. We were both meant to be someone different. Not a lover and not a spouse but my best friend. Everyone wants something but sometimes it has to be enough as is. And now, I slowly realize I’m going to discover a completely new version of everything.

You can’t know the forever between the clinking of glasses and blinks of the eye. I don’t know what comes next but walking away friends feels right.

***

This guy. Jeez. The desperation. He’s cute enough.

Best advice I ever got was ‘Enough is never really enough.’ We’re not robots and relationships have to be more than the sum of its parts. If your reaction is maybe? Your answer should be no.

He thinks it’s the wine but I just know the truth. Living anywhere but in the moment is a waste. Maybe he’ll learn that someday. Maybe I could show him. He seems to genuinely care.

This might be the start of a beautiful friendship.