For the life of me, I can’t remember what the fight was about.
Needing space on one side, needing affirmation on the other. A push and pull until someone ran and someone else gave chase. The things I remember – the gut punch feeling in the morning when she said it was over. The attempts at reason and the almost begging to not be so rash. Spending the day in the park, walking, looking at how the light filtered through the trees, sitting on a park bench listening to songs of loss and longing. I remember the text from the airport saying none of this felt right, we should be taking the trip together. While she visited family and friends in San Diego, I redid my bathroom. I tore off the old seashell wallpaper, hung sleek black floating shelves, painted the vanity black and the walls a cool gray. New green plants added a splash of color. She sent selfies of her laughing with friends. I was jealous that I couldn’t be there. She sent selfies with sorrowful eyes that said I’m sorry, I miss you. You never forget when eyes connect on that level. While she was gone, I spent nights digging through deep memories of my childhood. I was looking for clues as to why I was the way I was – doing the hard work of self-examination. I thought about how my brother often enters into a conversation by asking “what’s wrong?” As children we didn’t want to upset our father. We didn’t want to be late, we didn’t want to disappoint, we didn’t want to mess up. We learned, or tried, to read his mood. We were probably on edge more than we needed to be. What’s wrong? An assumption of instability, an attempt to uncover problems before they become problems. While she was gone, I wrote in my journal about these things. I read about attachment theory. I wanted to understand my conditioning and why I needed reassurances. She shared pictures of her with her family in a park, her holding her infant niece, her in her brother’s house looking at the camera, looking at me. Those were some of my favorite photos. I remember planning to pick her up at the airport. I had flowers in the car. The note with the flowers, lines from a Stephen Dunn poem:
I’ll say I love you,
-Stephen Dunn “Mon Semblable”
Which will lead, of course,
to disappointment,
but those words unsaid
poison every next moment.
I will try to disappoint you
better than anyone else has.
We loved each other which meant we would disappoint each other. I wanted to disappoint better than anyone else. I printed a collage of five or six photos of us and wrote the phrase best couple ever (an inside joke). It was meant to look like one of those signs chauffeurs hold at the airport waiting for their guest. We went to Jerry’s Bar for dinner. I can’t remember if the place was crowded – I think it was mostly empty. They sat us near a window. We talked. We ate. We laughed and cried. How could two people who cared so much about each other hurt each other this way? In the end, we promised never to do that again. In the end, we didn’t keep our promise.
This morning, after breakfast and on an unprecedented third cup of coffee, I sat on the sofa under a blanket and opened a book of poetry. I came to a poem called “The Starlite Bar.” In it are a few good and unique phrases. Looking at a picture of a farm family from the 1890s, the narrator describes “the father’s forced smile could have walked right off his face / and started a fight, the mother stared past the camera,” and “a girl, maybe twelve, lace collar, ribbon / around her hair – looked tired and beaten down / by troubles a century gone now. The heart winces” The narrator talks of driving back country roads somewhere south of Nashville, “Abandoned farms slid by.” I’ve driven similar roads in Mississippi, sun-drenched countryside and shacks sliding by. He ends,
…Around nightfall we found
-David Tucker “The Starlite Bar”
a honky-tonk high on a hill and sat a few hours
and had a few, and had some more. We talked
about weather, about money, about love. And by midnight
most of the trouble between us was forgotten and
some of it forgiven in a fine old bar called the Starlite.
I’ve been meaning to write a poem about Jerry’s Bar – a dimly-lit restaurant that makes you feel as though your life is playing out in black and white. A place where you expect the slow jazz of a piano and the bartender to have New York or Chicago gangster accent. Talk peppered with “hey ya, Mack” or “and then I says…” If I remember it was Sinatra in the background. It might have been misting out and if the streetlamps didn’t glisten off the black macadam and crooked sidewalk, they should have. That was the mood of evening, autumn cool reconciliations in an empty bar – two souls pushing against the loneliness of the world. Reading about the Starlight, I loved the ending and where I had been delivered – not quite home and part way to redemption.
I sometimes wonder if I’m alone in my reverie and remembrances. Do other people hear a song, read line in a book, or catch a scent that sends them places maybe not so long forgotten? I read poetry and fiction to catch vaguely familiar glimpses of myself (or my experiences of others) in language far better than I could construct. I read hoping to recognize myself in others, hoping to make sense of my experiences – to find some familiar truth full of life’s uncertain wobble.
I don’t remember what the fight was about. It was everything after that stuck. Most of the trouble forgotten, some of it forgiven – promises kept and broken, always moving on and sometimes looking back.