The start of a story...
On the morning she planned to leave, Lila woke from a dream: the same dream that had been plaguing her for months now—maybe even years, half memory and half a twist of dream world that never occurred. In the dream she was back in Mindy’s childhood bedroom. Mindy and her mom had painted the walls together when Mindy was a little girl. Lila remembered being jealous: her father, a man lost and drowning in his own grief, rarely had a kind word for her, let alone an entire weekend choosing paint colors from a rainbow of paper swatches, moving out furniture, taping trim, and rolling paint over the smooth walls—chatting and singing along to the radio. The room was bubble gum pink, a color that both girls, in their teen years in the dream, both agreed was atrocious. The memory of the dream was real: Mindy, crying and distraught, turned to her for comfort. Lila had been so close to her, their faces nearly touching. Her thumb had gone to Mindy’s cheek, brushing away a tear, the palm resting against Mindy’s peach soft face. They had leaned into each other, the air between them sweet with unspoken desire and candy breath. They had kissed, hesitantly at first but with growing intensity. But in the dream world of impossibility, Mindy’s mother had not come in to interrupt them, yet consciousness usually did. Somehow, waking in the moment did not seem as harsh as the interruption had in real life. Lila could imagine what had followed without the knock on the door, the friendly face wrinkled in concern. She had always wondered what it must have been like to have a guide through those messy teen years as Mindy had. Although Mindy’s mother was kind to Lila, she had never been her mother. In the blue morning hours Lila lay awake staring at the ceiling, Pete’s heavy body creating a gravitational pull toward his side of the bed, his soft breathing filling the room. She thought about the kiss, its warmth and passion, the fact that they had never spoken of it again: just days later Mindy’s family announced their move. She lamented that in her entire life, no kiss had ever compared to her first.
Later as Lila slammed the tailgate on the SUV, the dream was still on her mind. “Well, that about does it,” she said to no one in particular and even she wasn’t sure whether she was announcing that she had made some unspoken decision or whether she was saying that she was finished packing.
Her husband stared balefully from the porch. He didn’t approve of this adventure, she knew. Mostly he was sad that she was choosing to be away from him. He’ll be fine, she promised herself. He can take care of himself.
He shifted his weight like he wanted to walk down the stairs, like he thought there might be something to say, but he stayed where he was, looking mournfully down on the SUV full of packed odds and ends and random camping equipment.
She had been planning this trip for years—since tenth grade when Mindy had moved with her family, to some distant place that seemed imaginary in Lila’s mind at the time. The two had written letters, called, emailed, kept in touch. There had been weddings for both and heartfelt apologies that neither had had the travel money to attend. Both had married young before they’d had the benefit of bills paid up and pocket money to spare, food in the cupboards and vacation days to spend.
Lila had been looking at the outline of the Virginia coast on the map for fifteen years and it never seemed any more real to her than it did that day when she and Mindy had sat in the bubble gum pink bedroom crying that they would never forget each other. They had lain on the twin bed, starring up into the canopy strewn with glow-in-the-dark stars. Lila had felt that her soul was breaking; a part of her was being torn away, never to be returned. She had seen postcards and family photos, picture books and magazine articles. Still, she had no point of reference for the images; they might have been made up places, paintings like the one of the dancing bear she’d sent for the nursery of Mindy’s first born.
A middle of the night phone call from a broken and sobbing Mindy had made the outline sharpen on the map like a half-remembered dream that snaps suddenly into focus as details are recalled. Lou had died suddenly from a heart attack. Mindy’s son, Jared—once a cherub faced toddler drooling in the photographs and now a sullen eleven year old—had broken her heart further by taking it poorly: the boy had attempted suicide and had to be hospitalized. Mindy needed her: her and only her.
Lila thought about Lou’s image in the family photos that came a few times a year via email or on cutesy Christmas cards. He’d always seemed too perfect to Lila, too pressed and slick like a male model. His hair seemed plastic; his teeth, too white. She and Pete had laughed at him and called him Pretty Boy and Ken doll. She felt guilty about that now. She felt sorry for Mindy, sorry for her loss, but also sorry that Mindy had never had a more down to earth man in her life. How different he was from her Pete! Pete was…well, Pete.
She’d met him at a local craft fair the year after she’d moved north to Williamstown for the community college the next town over. Only the organizers hadn’t called it a craft fair, instead it was an Artisan Exposition. They’d laughed at that too, calling it pretentious and snooty. She’d laughed a lot with Pete in those days.
He was a grimy potter, his hands always chalky and his clothes always ruined with clay and glaze. She’d loved him right away, allowed him that very day to run his hands over her body, sculpting it, she’d always thought, ever so gently like one of this vases on the wheel. Throughout her marriage, though there had understandably been rough patches, she’d always felt safe when Pete’s face held a smile, and it almost always did. It unnerved her to see him standing there on the porch wearing such a forlorn expression. His forehead creased, eyes staring at the wet pavement inches in front of her feet. His forearms flexed almost involuntarily. A slight tightening of the skin that, like a ripple in a lake, betrayed the turmoil of his thoughts.
“Well, uh, be safe,” he finally managed, meeting her gaze.
“Come on, Pete. I’m coming back,” she promised.
“I know you plan to. But traveling changes you.” She rolled her eyes at his melodrama, felt her face flush. Hated it when he patronized her, making her, at thirty, feel like a little child. She hated the reminder that he was so much older, and that, besides being twelve years her senior, had lived a richer, fuller life than she had.
He’d left home after high school, joining the Navy and traveling the world. When he returned, he’d stayed in one place just long enough to realize that college wasn’t for him. Since then, and until he met her, he’d never been still. A year after they married he’d given up traveling and they’d bought a little cabin with some woods around. He’d opened a sleepy little shop with wall to wall shelves, clay dust on the floor, a wheel in the corner, and a kiln out back. Their life and work had been quietly successful. The quiet suited them. But she regretted that she never had the things he’d had. Marrying young meant she’d missed out on life experiences.
She’d been only twenty. Mindy was already married out in the imaginary world where she had disappeared, and little Jared’s birth announcement had lain unopened on the kitchen counter when she brought Pete back to her dark little apartment after the exposition. She’d left it unopened on purpose. She had known to be expecting it, yet its mystery of gold foil lining and tiny blue feet held no appeal for her. She had felt old, worn out. But the potter had touched her in ways that other men—groping teenagers—never could have. He’d made her body sing, her soul bloom like a flower. She hadn’t expected a great love, hadn’t thought that she might deserve it. Never placed much emphasis on how funny life can be. They had been married within months. He made her feel like the child that she was. But sometimes, like now, their unbalanced experience grated on her.
She resisted the urge to snap at him. Clearly, he was already worried. Fighting just before she left would only make things harder for him, make her miss him more. Regret for their parting would play over in her mind, chiding her for her selfishness and immaturity. She would see again and again how monstrously she’d acted, each time torturing herself a little more by remembering her behavior as that much worse. She knew that guilt would turn the car around, bringing her back earlier than expected. She didn’t want or need that.
What she needed was to get away. She wanted to test her wings beneath the wide sky, needed to feel sunshine through the green tint windshield. Needed to be away from an endless winter and his crowding love for a little while. He had suggested that she fly. There was money in the bank account. It was safer, he pointed out, and would cost about the same. Their car was old and not in shape for that kind of drive. But she had insisted that she was too terrified to even consider a plane, even though it was untrue. He had begged her to send a ticket to Mindy, allowing her to travel to their home instead, but she had insisted that Mindy would need help making decisions and arrangements. She had decided to move herself and her little daughter Amelia to a smaller place. In the end she had rented a car for the drive as a compromise. It was a smallish sporty SUV with impressive looking tires and comfortable seats. He had picked the vehicle. He’d insisted that a larger car was safer in the event of a crash. She had allowed him to choose the car, but she resented his need to be involved. Like so many other ways in her life, he wanted to place his own mark on her adventure. She creased her eyebrows, took a deep breath, making her voice even but firm.
“Look, I know you don’t want me to go, but Mindy really needs me, and I have wanted to do this for a long time. Please tell me you’re going to be okay,” she pleaded.
He smiled a slow gentle smile that seemed to warm the winter afternoon. Her shoulders relaxed; his posture loosened. “Come up here and kiss an old man goodbye,” he teased her.
Finally, the two parted. He’d walked her to the car and leaned in the window, saying nothing. Their breath steamed in the dry cold. His stubbled face was so impossibly close, smothering her. She started the car, patted his rough cheek. Their parting was, in the end, silent. Another quick kiss and he slipped away, patting her back window as he walked back toward the house.
In her rear view mirror, in the image that fixed in her mind, he stands on the steps hand raised. Afterward, whenever she thought of him there, she could never decide if his gesture was meant to bid her goodbye or to beckon her back.
