Abigail sees him coming across the crowded square, straight toward her. He is searching the throngs of tourists. He hasn’t seen her. Yet. She hastily scans the shopfronts, hesitates at the improbability of a New Age gift shop in the middle of Gettysburg, then, yanks open the door and dives into its cocoon of muted color. She skids into an aisle of books and flops to the ground. Her heart throbs so hard it feels like it is bursting out of her chest, like in the old cartoons — a perfect red cut-out on a spring. The door chimes clink. She clutches her shins and presses her face into her knees, trying to make herself smaller. Only seconds later, more clinks. Please God, he has walked back out, thinking he couldn’t possibly find her in a place like this. Or maybe customers have entered. Although why, she has no idea, as most of the travelers here seem mainly interested in souvenir shirts and Union or Confederate caps. When she cannot endure another moment, she pokes her head out of the tunnel of bookcases. Her husband is standing outside the glass doors looking utterly confounded by the place, as she knew he would be. He reaches for the door, appears to change his mind, pivots, and retreats.
She experiences a relief both exquisite and shocking. She envisions coiling up her cartoon heart and popping it back in her chest, snapping a little trap door shut. The wafts of patchouli drifting through the shop fluff at her brain. Heat billows up from her gut, and flushes her chest and her face. Apparently these New Age types don’t believe in air-conditioning. The air from a fan that looks as old as World War II barely whispers over her sweat-dampened clothes.
Then she thinks, What the fuck.
She is sitting on the floor, in a New Age shop, in Gettysburg, on vacation, hiding from her husband.
“May I help you?” The voice is serene and lilting, and slightly foreign, and for a few seconds, seems to be floating disembodied with the door chimes. Abigail looks up to see that the voice belongs to a salesclerk who has appeared at the end of the aisle. The woman is willowy, with skin the color of cool burnished copper. Her hair is straight, black, and shines like satin. Abigail wishes that the thought hadn’t popped into her head that, of course, the clerk would be Indian.
As Abigail lurches to her feet, she is conscious that her own hot and heavy hair — frizzed into its usual humidity-induced jungle — is coming out of its clumsy topknot and sticking to her neck and temples. Her khaki skirt is bunched up around her thighs. A sunburn blotches across her cheeks in spite of all the sunscreen she is religious about applying to her fair skin. And she sees bird poop on her athletic shoes. Her canvas tote falls to the floor and everything tumbles out of it. She feels as she frequently does — awkward, and out of place. And apologetic for being awkward. And annoyed at feeling apologetic. In spite of the patient expression arranged on the clerk’s face, Abigail can’t shake the impression that she is being appraised.
“No, thank you.” Abigail can’t think what to do next — she fears that she has catapulted herself onto the other side of some great divide. But all she can squeeze out are the inane words, “Just browsing.” As if she really is interested in the encyclopedias of witchcraft and faerie-lore and the field guides of demons on the shelves in front of her. As if she didn’t just, inexplicably, run away from the man she loves. She thinks of that last glimpse through the glass — of the dark curls that feel softer than they look, of the vein in his forehead that always pops out when he is worried.
The salesclerk hesitates for a beat. “Okay.” She glances at the floor where the contents of Abigail’s tote — maps, an audio guide to the battlefields, books about things like the folly of Pickett’s charge and civilian life in Gettysburg — have splayed, like dead bodies, across the blood red carpet. “Can I help you—” She tilts her head toward the mess.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll get it.” Abigail, for reasons she can’t quite fathom, cannot bear the thought of having this beautiful, serene woman anywhere near her.
“Well, if you need anything, come find me. My name is Savona.”
“Thanks a lot—” she says as she pulls out a volume entitled Majick, “—Savona.” The name feels uncomfortable as she says it — exotic, yet sticky somehow, a bit like honey. She flips through the prologue until she hears the tinkle of Savona’s armful of bangle bracelets recede.
As she replaces the book, Abigail can imagine that she has caught the shelves of New Age tomes gazing, with amused pity, at the death of intellectual folly strewn before their simple wisdom. Seeing her books and belongings lying on the floor fills Abigail with an unusually strong sense of déjà vu. How many times has she looked at a book cover staring up at her?
She has spent her life with books, but also with dropping things and picking them back up, with risking and falling and starting over. But she also understands that what has made up her interior life is not visible to those around her. She can guess how she appears on the outside. She is thirty-eight. She is a high school teacher. She wears sensible shoes. For the most part, she hasn’t minded. She is content with her age and with the knowledge of what she is capable of. Yet, lately, the experience of being evaluated has been bothering her more. At times, she has felt as if she is vanishing.
“Hey. How’s it going?” A sullen teenager with longish hair, an eyebrow ring, and an unlikely British accent is waiting for an answer. “You really need to get this sorted,” he says as he nudges her water bottle toward her with his Converse clad foot. He reminds Abigail of one of her students, Teddy Smedley, the freshman who sneers at her every day on his way out of homeroom. Does this boy work here? Is he old enough? Savona reappears and sends the boy away with a murmur about a guest at the register. He shoots a derisive look at Abigail and lopes off.
“Sorry about that. He’s new.” Savona’s stance is firmer now. She retrieves Abigail’s tote from the floor and hands it to her.
“No problem.” What an odd expression, Abigail thinks as she says it, realizing that she could be the one who is becoming a problem — for Savona, and that kid who is just trying to do his job. Did they see her run in here? She can’t tell from the bland neutrality that is fixed on Savona’s face.
Savona wordlessly passes Abigail her books and maps, and Abigail replaces them in her bag, which now seems to be too small to hold everything.
“I’m hiding from my husband.” It skitters out of her mouth with a mind of its own, almost as if Savona has somehow hypnotized it out of her. An odd slow motion, bubble-like sensation encases her in which she attempts to stand still and act normal. Savona’s face does not react. Abigail wonders how she manages it. Meditation? Yoga? Or maybe she is just used to crazy tourists. Abigail feels someone touch her arm and turns to see an elderly woman holding out the audio guide. Unlike Savona, glee twinkles playfully over this woman’s petite features — like the facial equivalent of a thumbs-up sign. As Abigail takes the guide, her fingers briefly brush the woman’s and an unexpected shock of yearning travels through her skin, as fierce as electricity. Then the woman slips away around the corner, like a sprite.
“Well, who knows,” Savona is saying, “maybe you’ll find something helpful.”
Abigail experiences that odd disconnect, again, with what she has done and said, and how she feels. They have misunderstood her. But, it seems that the elderly woman also harbors her own riddles. Part of Abigail is compelled to try to explain, to connect. Another part of her wants to build a barricade — as if she is hoarding a treasure someone wants to steal. She wishes she could reel her confession back in. She has announced fellowship when what she really needs is to be alone, to sort herself out.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Savona continues to hover.
“Really, thanks a lot,” Abigail says. Her sister would have shut down this exchange a long time ago, but Abigail has always lacked the nerve, or inclination, to be rude.
“Take your time.” Savona says and finally, mercifully, floats away.
She will do that. She will take her time.
It is dim in the shop. Abigail can’t decide if it is soothing or mildly menacing. An iridescent orange fabric drapes across most of the glass facing the square, and the light that seeps through is muffled and stained with color. She has the sense of trying to wade through a dream state, where meaning hovers just out of reach.
She and Patrick hadn’t even had an argument, about anything, today. She can’t even recall thinking about anything particularly important while she had been waiting for him. The sun had been white hot, baking the pavement and bleaching her vision, and she couldn’t find her sunglasses. While watching for Patrick, she noticed that every single window box on the street was filled with identical red geraniums and trailing ivy. Her mild annoyance about the glasses rapidly escalated into irrational burning irritation. At that exact moment, she saw Patrick — his black curls and serious face — advancing across the square. His large watch, that she always teases him about, glinted in the brutal sunlight.
And she had fled. The compulsion had been instantaneous and volcanic.
She has escaped into a cave, in a jungle. The shop’s merchandise doesn’t appear to be organized in any way, but unfurls organically, in some places from floor to ceiling. Nearly everything has fringe or tassels or beads growing out of it. She drifts through a labyrinth of Woodstock hippie and Arabian Nights secret treasure, and what seems to be a quest for immortality in the guise of wellness products. A small roundish, stone figure appears here and there, randomly, or as if it is journeying through the wilderness like she is, following her.
Time is stretching, like the viscous elasticity of taffy. It can’t have been that long since Patrick had left her to buy film, but it seems, now, like part of a distant world. She wonders what he is doing out there, if he is worried or angry.
She thinks about when she first brought him home to her family. Formidable women, all of them — her mother, her aunt, even her younger sister, only a school-girl then, but already a force to be reckoned with. Abigail had told Patrick that she had once owned a horse, from the age of eleven until she graduated high school. But, at the time of the family meeting, she still had not shared any more than the basic facts with him. She hadn’t been ready to surrender what had been such a significant influence on her life. When he casually asked her family how she had acquired her horse, knowing looks were exchanged and someone said, That is a story for another day. He had seemed disappointed, although probably more about them closing ranks. Because, she, of course, told him eventually.
She often wonders about story. What types of stories does he have — even now, as he is searching downtown Gettysburg for his errant wife? They used to play a game when they were first married — Tell me something I don’t know. He would say funny things like he once wished he could be David Bowie, not like David Bowie, but to actually be him. Or sad things like how, when he was twelve, he took the blame for breaking a neighbor’s window because the boy who actually did it just lost his mother to cancer. They don’t play the game anymore. She imagines that this happens when a couple has been married ten years.
The door chimes clink and Abigail hears a shrill voice say, Oh, it smells so good in here. The comment has a ring of falseness to it, uttered in a tone usually reserved for a flower garden or something baking, with cinnamon. Another voice mumbles a string of words that Abigail cannot make out but sound mostly hostile. The first voice says, Fine, let’s just go. And the chimes clink.
Abigail has always refused to banter with people when they get going about the prevalent myth that the longer one stays married the worse it gets. No, she and Patrick do not behave like newlyweds anymore, but their ten years have been happy ones. Their relationship, for the most part, is calm and respectful and devoid of drama. They share a fulfilling passion for their joint teaching careers. And yet, today on a hot day in Gettysburg, she suddenly can’t bear the possibility that her life with Patrick could look like a window box with red geraniums and trailing ivy — like everyone else’s.
Abigail becomes aware of music pouring through her wandering thoughts as if she has been tricked into leaving a door open. She had barely registered the generic instrumentals that had been playing when she first entered the shop, but now, a female voice — expansive, fluid — is flowing into every corner and crevice of the place. Like siren-song. Like the threat of a hurricane. The music could be Celtic. It could be jazz. It could be benign. Or it could be laced with peril. Like the prisms and crystals that glimmer on strings hung from the ceiling, it fractures and echoes. Abigail feels unnerved, yet unusually invigorated. She caresses one of the cool stones, and releases it, with a slight pull. It sways, and she watches the patterns of light fluctuate on the wall. It is one thing, then another. It is both things at once. She loves her husband. And wants to crawl in a cave and hide.
Savona walks by with her arms full of silk — scarves the color of the darkest, richest jewels. She smiles faintly at Abigail, as if she is keeping an eye on her. A magic witch. In a magic cave.
Underneath the swaying forest of prisms, Buddhas of every size nestle, in perfect harmony, next to Hindu gods and goddesses, the Virgin Mary, that little round stone figure. Wiccan altar supplies, menorahs, candles of every possible hue and size, incense in surprising scents like strawberry and pineapple. Abigail wonders if this display is truly meant to be inclusive, but can’t help thinking that the sales tactic seems to be more about building a private altar to complement home décor.
She gazes into the empty eyes of a brass Buddha and tries to imagine nirvana. Into her mind pops the face of her old mentor, Vera Schultz, wearing the familiar, and always alarming, expression that meant a challenge was forthcoming. Even now, as an adult, Abigail often wonders, what would Vera think, what would she do? All those hours spent as a teenager working for Vera in exchange for the board of her horse — the stench of the chickens, pulling weeds from the garden, being dragged to the soup kitchen Vera ran, listening to Vera’s never-ending stories, being shuttled back and forth by her journalist aunt and her overworked parents — have shaped her thinking, undoubtedly causing her to question what often seems like a fad, this trend called New Age.
She is not sure why Patrick has such an aversion to all things New Age. She has a feeling he enjoys poking fun at it — that it gives this quietly decent man, with the domineering father, a chance to be a smartass about something relatively safe. She, on the other hand, has absorbed tales of civil rights marches, of Vera’s work with the Peace Corps in a tiny Indonesian village. She, as a self-conscious teen and on into her adult years, has served countless bowls of soup to countless people who do not have anywhere to sleep let alone a place for a pretty altar. Consequently, what she sees, perhaps unfairly, is a cheap interpretation of religious belief displayed here by American commercialism, and it ignites a familiar flare of indignation.
An angry undercurrent in the singer’s voice perfectly, and eerily, mirrors Abigail’s thoughts, as if the music has become the soundtrack of her own mood. Usually not one to become enamored by music, Abigail is surprised at the intensity of her sudden desire to look into this singer’s eyes. Savona can at least tell her who she is.
As Abigail weaves through the shop looking for Savona or a service counter, she sees the prolific round stone figure several more times. It is reproducing, multiplying like rabbits or bugs. She imagines it to be a fertility symbol or spirit.
In spite of the very real joy she experiences teaching teens and her deep love for her sister’s child, Abigail has always been ambivalent about having children of her own. She has never been particularly bothered by this paradox. When she and Patrick were first dating, she suffered the first flare of what would become a chronic battle with endometriosis. She was told that she would be unable to conceive without surgery, and maybe not even then. She and Patrick briefly discussed adoption — for the future, for if and when they did want kids. And then life went on. And life has been fine. She takes issue with the patriarchal view that she must be disappointed — that a woman’s primary function is to reproduce. She doesn’t have unresolved issues. She has suffered greater regret that her career choices have forbidden owning horses, at least for now. And yet, she feels off-kilter, like she has all day — like she is in one box and trying to fit in another. Maybe, it is just the hot day, or this odd place that she can’t seem to make herself leave.
She emerges at a long dark counter, with wood so glossy she can see her disheveled reflection in it. The boy with the eyebrow ring is shuffling some paperwork with his back to her. Abigail thinks he is ignoring her on purpose. She can see Savona in a small room behind the counter, sipping from a purple mug. The counter is surprisingly close to the entrance. Funny she didn’t notice it when she hurtled herself in here like an actress in an action movie. At the end of the counter, she finds a CD case in a stand labeled: Now playing.
Afton Blake — sounds a little stagey to Abigail, quite probably not the singer’s given name. The CD shows Afton Blake arranged in what looks like it is meant to be a Renaissance garden, with a hint of Gothic wildness. The soft mist, velvet green vegetation, Afton’s abundant Pre-Raphaelite curls — all appear to be designed to convey the idea of romance, of tranquility. Something about the manner in which Afton is posed makes Abigail think of the Mona Lisa, as if the photographer was going for an intriguing stillness. But instead of amused mystery, Abigail thinks she can see a stony stubbornness on Afton’s face, and the set of her shoulders suggests defiance. Abigail closes her eyes and tries to listen to the person within the voice. She hears a woman forced behind an elaborate mask. She hears despair. And even though Abigail doesn’t understand Afton’s despair, it nevertheless punches her in the throat, taking her breath away. It’s as if it is her very own. Which makes no sense at all. Except that it does.
Throughout her life, Abigail has been haunted by a sense of wanting, often of something lurking in the wings, hidden from her conscious thought. She has discovered that hard dependable labor — caring for a horse, working toward a degree, teaching — has the power to quiet, and sometimes to vanquish, this specter. Yet, she remembers vividly, now, how it felt to be a child aching to be a heroine in her own story.
She opens her eyes and the first thing she sees is a spot of dried ketchup on her corpse-colored khaki skirt, and her brain immediately thinks, bullet hole. For a terrifying second, she is non-existent, erased. Afton Blake’s voice becomes saturated with red, screams red. The patchouli smells red. The harmless red geraniums repeat and flow like blood. Petals bleed, blossoming from the blood soaked into the earth. Souvenirs bloom and proliferate in a town memorialized for the quantity of its bloodshed. Why is everyone buying things? The celebratory mood sickens her. She needs Patrick. Now. If only she could make him appear immediately.
Abigail hears, as if from very far away, the words — Are you all right? She looks up to see the elderly woman, with a hand paused atop one of the fertility figurines on the counter, face etched with concern.
Strangely, the first thing Abigail finds herself thinking is how pretty the woman’s white hair is — styled into a neat pixie cut. But when Abigail glances into her dark brown eyes, she can see that a great loss lives in the woman’s heart. And Abigail feels it again, that jolt of yearning, and her own heart seizes. She drops the CD case and the stand clatters to the floor.
“Uh huh,” she mumbles as she retrieves the case and the stand, and tries to reassemble the display. Whatever connection Abigail has imagined evaporates.
Behind the counter, Savona and the eyebrow ring boy also watch her, with varying facial expressions.
Eyebrow ring boy says, “Yeah, Afton is totally cool. But, man, this new stuff is shit. You should seriously listen to her earlier stuff. Freakin’ awesome.” He glances at Savona. “What? Oh sorry,” he directs at the elderly woman, who looks amused. He turns back to Abigail, with a flicker of interest, then gives up, and makes his face go blank.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Savona eyeballs her. “You’re really pale.”
Pale definitely does not fit in here, Abigail thinks as she contemplates Afton’s CD photo — her ashen skin enveloped in color, a vision of loneliness. She looks up to find all three of them staring at her. Her tongue has tangled in knots.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” is all she can manage. They must think her incapable of carrying on even the simplest of conversations.
Eyebrow ring boy looks like he can barely contain his boredom or annoyance. He snatches the figurine from the woman and begins punching numbers into the computer.
Abigail hopes that her complicated thoughts about the little goddess, and the other merchandise in the store, are not visible on her face — it feels important, somehow, that she doesn’t offend this woman. The woman smiles — and in her smile, space opens up in which Abigail can breathe again.
“A gift for a friend,” the woman says, and turns back to the counter. “Someone who enjoys all of this.”
Savona begins wrapping the figurine in tissue and says, “Zach and I were just having a debate on whether all of this, the concept of New Age, is really all that new.”
The woman politely asks, “So what did you decide?”
Abigail feigns interest in the karma bracelets on the counter. She attempts nonchalance, runs her fingers along the beads, reads the tags. The pink stones deliver love. What a fanciful notion — that love can arrive with magic beads.
“Well, I was reminding Zach about the Victorians’ pre-occupation with the supernatural: séances, ghosts and the like. He is studying William Blake for a class, so he should know that Blake was a mystic and an alchemist, in addition to being a poet and artist.”
Zach slaps the credit card receipt and a pen on the counter and says, “William Blake was a nut job, and not a Victorian by the way, and I still don’t see what any of this has to do with girls buying karma beads to match their outfits.”
Abigail swiftly releases the bracelets. She wonders if Zach is one of those kids, whom she comes across so often in her classroom, who hides his intelligence. Hide and Seek — a child’s game. But, she thinks, it is everywhere, deeply embedded in human nature. She wonders at what Afton Blake is hiding from, at what this woman seeks with such desperation.
As Savona hands over the bag, the woman’s husband joins her at the counter. His lanky height towers over her. His messy shock of white hair contrasts with the trimness of hers. He places his hand on the small of his wife’s back with a tenderness that brings tears to Abigail’s eyes. As the couple is leaving, the woman peers back over her shoulder, and Abigail, once again, feels the longing radiate from the woman’s heart to her own.
Abigail quickly selects an unappetizing herbal energy bar — she figures she should buy something. Savona rings her up in silence. As she turns to go, she is pretty sure Zach swears at her under his breath. She can’t blame him, after the way she has behaved.
***
She can’t find Patrick.
She roams the sidewalks of Lincoln Square.
She returns several times to their original meeting place.
She looks in windows, making her fellow tourists nervous.
She goes back to their parked car twice — once to unload the contents of her tote into the back seat, the second time to sit sideways in the passenger seat with the door propped open. She hopes that he has the same idea — to check back at the car. She tries to breathe slowly, to will the heat and anxiety away. She needs to get a cell phone. Patrick has one. Her mother, of all people, constantly nags her about it, using the calendar year for exaggerated emphasis. It’s 2004, Abigail. For God’s sake, get with the twenty-first century. How easy it would be now to simply call him and find out where he is. And if they had a digital camera, he wouldn’t have had to buy film to begin with.
She scrawls a note that she will be at the ice cream parlor and pins it under the windshield wiper.
***
The ice cream parlor is a lovely vision of outdoor tables with pink gingham umbrellas surrounded by white floral wrought-iron bistro chairs. Abigail locates a vacant chair and collapses into it. She is suddenly tired of this trip. She wishes she was home. She misses her dogs, Gerty and Wilsy — impossibly mixed breed rescues, and their ever fluctuating clutter of stray and rejected cats. She wishes Patrick would find her. So they can eat ice cream. She inhales the intoxicating aroma of waffle cones and chocolate, and begins to, blissfully, relax.
She closes her eyes for a few seconds and almost wishes she could drift off. When she opens them, she sees that the ice cream parlor’s patio is flanked on one side by the outside brick wall of the building next door. A crazy quilt of posters for coming events and other advertisements blankets the wall. Some of these posters are faded and peeling, some brand new — an organic web where echoes of past events merge with the anticipation of those yet to come. After days of museums and monuments and books, this strikes Abigail as enchanting — another record of human life, another kind of history.
The wall and the chairs and the slant of the afternoon light make her think of France — and that summer in college when she packed a backpack, flew to Europe by herself, got sick in a French village, and only then called her mother to tell her that she had left the country. At the time she hadn’t bothered to consider how this had affected her mother, who has never been prone to displays of sentiment. Her mother’s beauty — delicate and formal, like porcelain — belies a disposition that can be unexpectedly stoic, sometimes stern, frequently tired, and often sarcastic. Abigail has always suspected her responsible workhorse mother of being a secret bad-ass.
In the collage on the wall, Abigail notices a poster for a concert by Afton Blake — dated the previous fall — and experiences a shivery resonance. One of those little coincidences of life. Only it doesn’t feel that way to Abigail. If she were to say it out loud, she knows it would sound like a cliché, like New Age nonsense, but she believes that she was meant to discover Afton. It would be easy for her to conjure up wicked parents for Afton — to create a tale to explain why she intuits that Afton is hiding, or lonely.
“What? You’re blaming me for the flowers now?” A young couple — likely college kids — at the next table, is arguing.
The girl says, “So. Do you think you know everything about me?” Abigail hears an agitated urgency in the girl’s tone and wonders if the boy truly can’t hear it, or is ignoring it, and which would be worse.
“Of course I do.”
“Seriously?”
“Jesus. What is wrong with you?”
“Don’t you even dare ask me if I am PMSing.”
Two older women at the table on the other side get up and make a point of replacing their chairs with forceful thumps.
Abigail needs ice cream, now. She cannot wait another minute for Patrick.
She decides to splurge with a hot fudge sundae, in a waffle bowl, loaded with nuts and whipped cream.
Just as she returns to her table with her sundae, she sees the boy reach over to rub the girl’s elbow.
“Don’t touch me.” The girl flings the boy’s arm off of hers and her plastic spoon goes flying, making a perfect arc of strawberry sauce in the sun.
“Are you going to eat that? Because if you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
“Do you love me?”
Abigail watches the boy struggle. She can hardly bear the pain on the girl’s face.
The eternal quest for answers. She believes, then, that her old friend Vera would have understood the New Age shop and its thirst for meaning, after all. Abigail imagines grief-stricken women in hoop skirts trying to contact their war dead in candle-lit rooms. She envisions the endless line of cars snaking around the beautiful fields of Gettysburg, their occupants emerging periodically to stare reverently into the past, looking for the inexplicable. She lets the richness and coolness of the ice cream bathe her mouth, tries to allow the chocolate to comfort her.
Memories of her history-buff father — who died long ago when she was only eighteen — have been constantly with her on this trip. The grief of his early death is monumental to her, but not to this world pulsing with life around her. Certainly, each soldier out on those battlefields experienced his single moment of agony as something unique and profound. And yet, the sun relentlessly shines, the grass relentlessly grows, animal life replaces animal life. A vision of Afton Blake assaults Abigail, then, with the force of an apocalyptic nightmare. The singer’s skull-like visage floats before her, eyes empty and shrunken, beautiful locks shorn. Abigail is on fire. The flames will consume her and some other life will displace her. Tears burn her eyes. Hot fudge sticks in her throat.
And, finally, here is Patrick — maneuvering through the tables and chairs toward her. Relief, irritation, fatigue, humor — all pass over his face, one after the other. She can tell that he is readying himself for asking questions, for teasing her about the ice cream. When he reaches her, he says, “Where did you go? So, do we have another dog? A horse? A llama?” Then his expression changes completely. “Hey. Are you okay?”
Her body is hot rubber and she can’t make it move. He helps her up and wraps his arms around her. He breathes into the hair at her neck.
“You don’t smell like you.”
“It’s patchouli,” she mumbles into his shoulder.
“What?”
She searches for words to describe her experience in the shop but knows she is not up for their usual New Age repartee. She is struggling with a powerful urge to retreat inward, to keep that little trap door shut on her cartoon heart. Until she can weep — for her father and for all those who died in Gettysburg, and for the loneliness of Afton Blake, and for the young couple and the elderly one, and all the tragedies large and small that we have to shoulder before our own deaths. But then she is gripped with terror. She lifts her head and searches his eyes. If only she could burrow inside of him until they are one beating heart. She says, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The vein in his forehead twitches rhythmically. A single bead of sweat trickles down the side of his face. The few strands of gray hair at his temples shine unnaturally bright in the sun. Many long seconds go by and she almost regrets asking it of him. They could be sitting, chatting and resting.
He finally says, “I am afraid you will disappear one day.”
It almost could be joke-y — where did you go, do we have another dog? But he is still clasping her tightly. In his eyes, she sees a storm where there is usually deep calm. And she realizes that she has, astonishingly, never guessed at his fear.
Then, he says, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
An ordinary moment on an ordinary day, one of countless. Yet, sometimes of more import than those days of formal ceremony. What she seeks is this — the continual effort of forging one heart from two. What she chooses is him.
“I will always choose you,” she says.
He takes a napkin from the table and wipes gently at her mouth. It comes away covered in hot fudge. They smile simultaneously. The thought that she could kiss him, passionately, standing in the middle of a crowd of people, is somehow as satisfying as actually doing it.
He gestures to her waffle bowl, a soggy melted mess. “Are you going to finish that? Because if you don’t want it, I’ll eat it.”
Tina Klimas’s stories can be found in Orca, Literally Stories, The First Line, RavensPerch, Querencia Press Anthology, and more. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is also a poet with poems published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, Missouri, where she lives with her husband and their dog.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 