Answer To A Not-So-General Question
Love is when Mom got out of bed at 3 a.m. and unlocked her apartment door after my sobbing phone call. I wanted to take a cab there and just not be alone for what was left of that night. That was all I needed, just to open her door to the dark and quiet, fall down on her cold, un-touched-by-my-liquored-broken-heart couch, and curl up, uncovered, in a room that reeked of humanity. I pushed open the heavy door, slowly, keeping it from releasing its usual squeak, and then I held it back from closing too abruptly. The lamp on the end table had been turned on, but Mom was nowhere to be seen. I crept down the darkened hallway to find her bedroom door tightly closed, the faint sound of a fan blowing full force on the other side, and no sign of any light peeking through the crack underneath the door. She was awake on the other side and knew I had arrived, I was sure; the woman hadn�t had a good night�s sleep in 15 years. I tiptoed back to the living room and examined my surroundings. She had unexpectedly laid out the �guest� blankets, not leaving me with only the thin, tattered afghan that lived on the couch and was most unwelcoming. She had brought me her favorite pillow from her own bed, and even tucked a fitted sheet over and into the couch cushions. A note on the coffee table read: Leftover cake in the fridge. Love you, Mom. She had constructed the scene in nine minutes, all between my phone call and my arrival, while she pretended to be asleep again as if that night had been uninterrupted. I had only expected her to just unlock the door� I cried myself to sleep that night on her couch, under a soft blanket that smelled like a mix of the hall closet and her perfume. I dozed off into a tear-and-snot-drenched blanket�not just because someone else had stopped loving me, but also because Mom loved enough for them both, and in all the right ways. A few weeks earlier, Brett had come to my place to pick up the rest of his things. There were a few CDs, some clothes, a hammer and a magazine. He had ended our almost-year-long relationship three days before, and had given me just enough time to plan the speech I hoped would change his mind. I would go all �Jerry Maguire� on him and give him the �I�m not letting you get rid of me� line, but in the end he�d walk out the door for good and I�d be allowed to keep my two favorite t-shirts of his�the one his cousin bought him in Guatemala, and the one from some dive bar in Oklahoma. I�d wear one of them to bed every night and wouldn�t wash either of them for about six months, which is how long it took for me to no longer find his scent in them. I met Brett when I was 12, during the summer of 1988. We both spent the summers at our grandparents� cabins on the river, and that was the first summer I had noticed him, or any boy for that matter. Turned out we only lived about thirty minutes from one another during the rest of the year. He had dark hair and strong, masculine features, was a total �boy�s boy.� He was always fishing or swimming or doing something I thought of as rugged, daring and outdoorsy. He was always shirtless. I fell in love. We spent that entire summer together, along with his younger sister Kasey and my cousin John who had Down Syndrome. Brett was patient with John and understood him in a way that was endearing�more so than one would expect of a typical mischievous 12-year-old boy. The four of us were inseparable then, always into something fun and innocent, always laughing, running and goofing off, unknowingly developing the very reason for he and I to find each other again as adults and become a permanent fixture in each other�s lives and memories�. I would lay awake at night during the fall and winter of �88 and �89, and I�d listen to �The Flame� by Cheap Trick and think of him. I didn�t even really know the meaning of that song, but it sure did make me think of Brett. He was my first crush, and little did I know he would break my heart ten years later. It wouldn�t be my last broken heart, but in many ways it would be the worst. Seeing Brett faded out over the next few summers. I guess we both grew up and began spending our summers elsewhere. I thought about him much less, or not at all, but I never forgot about him. And on that rare occasion when �The Flame� would come on the radio, he would, of course, cross my mind and force a smile. On a fall evening when I was 21 years old, I went out for dancing and cocktails with my best friend at a popular club. I hadn�t seen Brett for eight or nine years, but when I saw him that night, it was as if we were 12 years old again and only a winter had passed since our eyes had last met. We knew each other instantly. He had been in the Army and all over the world, and was finally home again. I had never left home and was still discovering who I was. He wore a baseball cap, a tongue piercing, muscular arms and a cheesy grin. I had a new dress, an open mind, a courageous heart, and butterflies� Hours later, my friend and I left the club and went home. I had given Brett a few minor details about where I lived. No phone numbers were exchanged. No future plans were made. I didn�t know if I�d ever even see him again, and yet somehow I knew he would be a part of my future. The next day there was a knock on my door; he had found me. And so began the marvel that was so�us. With Brett, I was carefree and free spirited and everything free. We took road trips every week and sang at the tops of our lungs to the passing cars and trees while the wind blew our minds dizzy. We took clich�d pictures of each other in front of landmarks and funny signs while trying not to laugh. We camped out under the planets in the middle of the big world and drank exotic beers and screwdrivers around a giant campfire. We went dancing and got silly all night with people who knew us and people who wanted to know us while we couldn�t take our eyes off each other. We discovered new music, new friends and new places, and made love in the park on the swing set and sliding board, and on the hood of his car on top a mountain in the rain. When I moved into my new apartment, Brett found me a couch, chair and coffee table for my living room, along with my first very own microwave for my new kitchen. He moved all my stuff in his pickup truck by himself and stayed with me whenever I wanted him to. He brought me crates full of free stuff from the dairy where he worked, like milk, orange juice, yogurt, and cottage cheese. He put his hand on the small of my back when we walked into a room and was proud to let everyone know I was with him. He read my poetry without my asking and looked at me like I had changed his life. When I ruined the cake I made to take to his parents� house for Thanksgiving�and I cried�he laughed and laughed until we were both laughing, delirious with love and unable to breathe. We fell in love with each other�s families, each other�s lives, and with each other. I loved who I was when I was with him; I wanted to be that girl forever. Not quite a year later, after enough beautiful memories to satisfy a young girl�s lifetime, Brett needed to talk. He would say to me something I thought I would never hear from anyone�especially not him�something people only say in movies, something I never thought could possibly be spoken aloud or even thought. Brett didn�t love me anymore. There was no one else. There was nothing I had done wrong. He just didn�t love me anymore. It was as simple as that. He wanted to be on his own again and be single and move forward�because he didn�t love me anymore. Is there anything worse a person can do to you than truly love you, and then just stop? A month later I had only felt worse. I really couldn�t honestly believe that this person, and the story we shared, was gone. I spent those weeks in denial, drinking too much, smoking too much, and feeling sorry for myself. I spent much of my time with friends and didn�t talk about him too often, because that�s how I always chose to deal with loss. But one night I called him late, waking him up, and through breathless sobs I told him I just had to be there with him that night. He seemed concerned and said ok, so I cabbed it there. Quiet, hot tears slowly streamed down my cheeks as I lay on my back and we had strange, meaningless sex, for the last time. For the first time since our break-up I felt the actual presence of Goodbye looming over me. Goodbye was almost like a physical being. I left his home almost immediately after and never returned, never called him again. I didn�t know it at the time, but he would return a year later, full of regret�and it would be too late. The next day, I woke up on the couch at Mom�s sunny place to laughter. The comforting voices of her and my younger sister resonated from the kitchen and reached my eager, shattered soul. She never asked any questions. She never made me talk about it that time. We went to lunch at a nearby diner and made plans for a shopping trip and gossiped about people we knew. Then she dropped me off at my lonely apartment and drove away. But I didn�t feel alone. Love followed me up the creaky steps and through the door. It was as if Love was a physical being that, then, cradled me and took a nap with me for the rest of the afternoon.
Copyright © 2009 Jennifer Hendershot |