Angela

       I sat across from her, sliding smoothly into that groove where relationships can be deposited and then picked up again at one’s convenience. “So, what do you want to talk about?” Angela asked me after a moment’s silence, as if she hadn’t invited me over. I raised my eyebrows. “Well, conversation isn’t ‘about’ anything in particular, is it?” I perambulated, “It isn’t about accomplishing a goal or completing a mission. It’s more like a reaching, or a floating along an unnamed river.” I paused as Angela blew the steam from her coffee and sipped it cautiously. “I don’t want to follow the road, Angela,” I said, “I want to explore the corrosion.” I crossed my legs and sank back resolvedly into the plush patio chair. “So, just tell me how you are. Tell me a story…”

           Angela’s dark chocolate hair spun into a deflated bun on the back of her skull and sent tendrils out over her face. It was alive, octopine, swaying as if it were under an ocean. She looked critically at me for a moment and then stared—softening—past me, between the veranda’s white pillars, and into her garden, watching sparrows skim inches from the ground until, seemingly without reason, they curved exponentially into the air, met for a momentary kiss, and then dove, returning to their skim.

           For a moment she sat carved, eyes shale. The moment settled around us, creating a bubble, and I heard the sparrows from such a distance that they seemed ancient. Like remote echoes resounding around and around a long empty cave. I shook the urge to look behind me—to verify their existence—and pressed forward allowing the bubble to persist by refusing to acknowledge it. As I studied Angela she shut her eyes, looking ageless, amaranthine; but when she finally opened them I recognized her. And for the first time in years, Angela spoke to me.

.     .     .

           “Once upon a time there was a girl. This girl lived in a castle on a hill surrounded by a dark forest. The king, her father, rose to power through tradition, though in truth the girl’s mother ruled his kingdom. Under the Queen’s wary eye and the King’s nodding head, peace prospered in the region, leaving the girl to frolic in the meadow of her youth.

           One verdant spring day, the girl decided to find the most beautiful flower in the entire kingdom and weave it into a crown for her regal mother. The girl scoured her meadow, but found that none of its flowers had strong enough stalks nor delicate enough petals to befit her mother. Unwilling to capitulate, the girl fixed her eyes upon the ground and examined her meadow inch by inch until her neck ached. When the girl finally looked up and saw that the sun was a heavy tangerine hanging low in the ripe sky, she found herself on the edge of the dark forest.

           Before she saw it she smelled something sweet and earthy on the cool forest breeze. The very newness of this damp odor mesmerized the girl, causing her to stare hypnotically into the darkness. Not fifty paces within the shaded trunks stood a proud purple flower with six luxurious felt petals, illuminated by a dusty ray. It was larger than any flower she’d known to grow in the kingdom, and no thorns protruded protectively from its smooth green stalk. The girl never could abide thresholds, and the flower seemed to beckon her from its spot in the light.

           Powerless, the girl stole into the dark forest. With each step she took the sun retreated further, leaving only the illuminated petals to guide her way. By the time the girl had reached the purple flower, so purple it was almost black, she had completely lost sight of her meadow. She felt like a diver swimming towards a false surface on a cloudy day. With glassy determination the girl reached down, grasped the smooth stalk between her thumb and middle fingers, and plucked the flower from the earth. But in the instant she removed it from its nurturing soil, the sunlight closed in around her and she fell to the soft peat, unconscious.

           Awaking some time later in a wash of thin blue moonlight, fear threatened to invade the girl’s mild temperament. It crept into her stomach and rose up into her lungs, but before it could reach her head, the dinner bell resounded from the castle (muffled though it was) and drove terror back down into the muck. As she regained her feet the girl regained her composure, and strolled dutifully from the dark forest toward the accustomed sound.

           But when the girl broke from the dark forest she beheld a familiar scene through alien lenses. Moonlight defined the castle gravely, exposing damage from wars long past and cracks where the original builders had used unfit stone. She crossed the pale meadow, peering uncertainly at her childhood home and clutching the purple flower tightly to her breast, feeding her resolve.

           As was customary, the girl joined her mother and father for supper in a vast, finely adorned hall. The King and Queen inquired about her day, they asked the girl if she had seen anything, learned anything, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell them about her purple flower. For behind her mother’s wary eye the girl now saw contempt and cruelty, and inside her father’s nodding head she discovered only fear and cowardice.

           That night she retired early to gaze upon the purple flower as if in a mirror. For in it she saw herself apart from the frolicking youth she had so recently been. In it she found strength and solitude.

           Without blinking, the girl stood in front of her mirror and bent the smooth stalk into a woven crown, fixing the purple petals into a center-piece. Holding the flower-crown with delicate fingertips, she breathed deeply and then placed it atop her head. When the crown touched her hair, its stalk turned into woven gold and its petals became heavy with amethysts. With the weight of her invention sinking into her skull, the girl walked once more into the dark forest, intending never to return, lest her heart follow her crown and turn to stone.”

.     .     .

           I had lit a cigarette near the part where the princess had awoken in moonlight, and I used it to pause thoughtfully for a moment after Angela finished speaking. “Is that the end of the story?” I asked.

           “It’s the end of a story.” Angela replied airily as I passed her my cigarette. Sprinklers were tikk-tikking pleasantly behind me but I could no longer hear the sparrows. I could feel my unshaded neck burning in the sun, but I told myself I’d deal with that later and ignored it.  

           “Must’ve been a long stalk,” I mused after several seconds of smoke-filled reflection.

           “What?”

           “The flower,” I said, “It must have had a long stalk to be able to wrap around the princess’s head like that.”

           Angela took a long drag, watched the smoke seep from her open lips, and mumbled, “It’s only a story,” without looking up.

           “Hmmm,” I hummed in lieu of assent, “do you have any more?”

           And then, for the first time in years, Angela smiled at me—looking just like a memory.

.     .     .

           “Do you ever just remember things?” she began, “Do memories sometimes strike your consciousness as if they’d been held back by something? Sometimes my mind feels like a viscous swamp that traps pockets of gas and air in its miry bottom. The sludge down there is so thick that these pockets grow and grow for years before finally bursting, rising to the surface and exploding into the air. Releasing foul odors and causing the serene surface of my character to ripple uncomfortably.

           For the most part these revelations are negligible. I recall an embarrassing or uncomfortable moment, cringe briefly, swig dollar-store coffee, and continue with my conference calls. Sometimes however (twice to be exact) these disturbances have been violent and their ripples have become waves, crashing into and over the shore, spilling myself onto the rocks and sand:

           The first instance I will recall is the most recent. However, the memory that caused it is one of my earliest. It was really only a barrage of images and sounds—I must’ve been very young when it happened—but their meaning, if not their message, was quite clear: You don’t know yourself. So complexly woven are we that beginnings and ends, times and dates, matter very little when considering the tapestry.

            In the months leading up to this second incident it seemed that no amount of sleep could rejuvenate me. It was horrible. My post-work naps lasted so long that I’d wake up late for work the next morning. I was having trouble staying awake during commercials, let alone finishing movies. And sometimes I would wake up disoriented on a bus fifteen stops past my destination.

           It was the third Thursday of March, and I had overslept for the fifth time in four weeks. Ignoring missed calls and piles of texts, I ran to my car and raced to work wearing the same clothes I’d worn the previous day. When I arrived, Hank, my boss, was cramming my possessions angrily into a box without a lid. The whole office watched me with wide, but somehow bored eyes. I didn’t really care about my job, but…do you know that feeling of panic when you lose something that’s important to someone else? Like losing your sister’s dog? That’s how it felt to me. So I shambled into my office to face my punishment, but as I did Hank didn’t even look at me. I watched him finish stuffing my dismissal box, pointedly place a sealed envelope on top of the rubble, and step through my office door to address the room. He never even looked at me… and as he spoke I stared critically at the back of his suit, noticing the relatively threadbare quality of the fabric, the stitching stitched in such a way as to hide itself from appraising eyes.

           ‘Here,’ he proclaimed as I gazed at his balding pate from the threshold of my office, ‘is an example I want you all to take note of and learn from. Here is an impostor. One who pretended to be one of us, taking from us while we collaborate to reach a common goal. I ask you, what motivates this person behind me? Is it money? Influence? Respect? Obviously not. To be part of a community? No again. This person behind me doesn’t care about any of those things or any of you.’ He pointed back at me accusingly but kept his eyes on his audience. ‘How can we trust someone who doesn’t share these most tactile aspirations? Someone who doesn’t think in the same straight-lined, black-and-white, red-blooded terms that we all do?’ Blah, blah, blah…

           Hank carried on sermonizing for some time, but behind him I had sunk onto the hard patterned carpet. A sharp pain in my stomach caused me to wince, double over, and shut my eyes as if shutting them could transport me. And to my surprise, it did. Suddenly I no longer saw Hank’s shitty five-year-old Kenneth Cole suit, his badly hidden bald-spot, or his vainglorious gesticulations, but in his place stood my father. Yes…” Angela admitted resignedly, “I’m just another girl with ‘Daddy Issues’. But these ‘issues’ aren’t universal to me, they’re singular. They have widened and complicated my self to a degree that makes self-management more difficult. Suddenly, you see, there was more of me to contain within the same vessel.

            I saw my father’s face clearly for the first time in years. Its expression was ugly and contorted and not the face I would have chosen to remember had I been given the choice. The image was darkly lit and a red-painted wall framed his façade… it felt as if I were watching a play. His face looked stuck, mask-like, with lips curled in disgust and eyes wide with impotent rage. He was yelling something at my mother that just sounded like noise. Then, without looking he pointed at me, and the image tipped as if the entire world was my frame of vision, a little box that a curious giant had picked up and turned over to examine for signs of life. Using his free hand, my father struck my mother’s face into a position that made it visible to me. For a second her face filled the frame of my memory. She smiled at me, and a trickle of blood was allowed to escape as the corners of her mouth turned upwards.

            Then I opened my eyes and I was on the carpet in my office watching the back of Hank’s head yell nonsense into a room that, for all intents and purposes, was empty. With energy that had eluded me for months, I pushed past Hank and ran outside, leaving behind me a building full of things I would have gleefully watched burn.

            That was the second time one of my bubbles burst.”

            Angela pointed at my pack of cigarettes and thumbed flicking motions next to her mouth. I threw the pack over to her and she lit up with a practiced air, taking a healthy drag before continuing:

            “The second bubble harkened back to a more recent memory than the first, yet it burst prior to the office incident: During my junior year of college I began to struggle academically for reasons I couldn’t identify. My course load was strenuous, but no more so than it had been in previous years. I managed my time appropriately and my boyfriend and I were getting along, but I had this creeping feeling, like something was about to happen.

            I began looking over my shoulder more often, cinching my sweaters more tightly, finding ulterior meanings and motives in the words and actions of my peers. When someone would speak to me I would find myself asking, ‘What are they trying to say to me? What is it that they want from me? Why are they here?’ I felt I could uncover sinister intentions in the most benign circumstances.

            But the real trouble began when I applied those same questions to myself. ‘What am I trying to say? What do I want? Why am I here?’ Just as I had trouble determining the reasons behind other people’s actions, I began to lose sight of why I acted the way I did. I found that I no longer had anything to say and, consequently, I was unable to finish any of my assignments.

            It was January in East Lansing, Michigan and I was sitting at a single-desk in the student library drinking coffee straight from a pot I had brewed at home several hours ago. It was around two A.M. and the sun had been set for eleven hours. I hadn’t seen another person, or even looked away from my laptop in what felt like months.

            But I had done it! I had finished my essay. I had accomplished what had eluded me all semester. Yet as I stared down at the words I had created, heavy shame filled my organs and limbs with concrete, stung my shifting eyes, and curled my disgusted lips. Soon, seismic rage cracked the hardened shame and without thought I lashed out, punching my computer as if the impact could rearrange the words on-screen into meaningful explanations, reasons why, causal relationships that ended in me. And to my surprise it did.

            My fist left the screen mottled and stained with spilled colors. The only letters still visible on it read, ‘-why n-’ and suddenly I heard a voice in my head demanding that I ‘quit whining.’ Suddenly, I was on my back in damp grass and someone was above me, fiddling with his jeans. I resisted, but my arms felt weak and uncoordinated and the boy above me only laughed and told me again to quit my whining. Then, for a clear moment, I recognized where I was. I recognized myself as being a freshman and I recognized the boy above me as the man I’d been dating for two years. The whole time, he never looked up at me.”

            Angela sighed momentarily and then went on without blinking.

            “So complexly woven are we,” She said, “that aspects of our character can become trapped or hidden. Only visible from lofty or sunken perspectives. Our history stays with us into the present and through the future. Existing somewhere remote yet on the same vast plane, like an organ you didn’t know existed before it malfunctioned.

            That night I went home and slept for almost 16 hours. And at midday I visited my counselor about transferring. Two weeks later, without a word or a glance, I left behind a school full of things that I would gleefully watch burn.”

.     .     .

            I looked at the now dead octopus on Angela’s bowed head as she stared apathetically at the painted wooden deck beneath our feet. I drew my knees into my chest, rested my chin on them and waited, feeling that it would be inappropriate to interject with some half-baked comment or inquiry.

            The bubble around us had thickened, limiting sound from the outside world completely. I no longer heard the sprinklers behind me and the sparrows seemed like nothing more than misty memories. We were the only two people in this world.

            I watched Angela closely and waited.

            Then she looked up at me from a shaded forest grove, my neck still hot and red from the sun, and confessed, “I’ve never told anyone those stories. Sometimes I forget they’re mine.”

            “Thank you for telling me,” I whispered in response, “for confiding in me.”

            Her features were placid, like a smooth lake in fall, but the intensity of her eyes betrayed the roiling activity taking place beneath the water, in the rock and sediment. She stood somewhat hesitantly and said, “I have one more story to tell you,” and disappeared into the house.

            A few minutes later Angela returned to the veranda clutching stiff, yellowing parchment. “Of the letters I wrote to you before and during our separation,” she said, “these were…these are the unsendables. We were hiding during the day at this point, and arguing at night, struggling with emotions half-formed and lives half-lived. However, these words are just as true now as they were back then, and just as much a story as those that came before; that is to say, somewhat.”

            Curious (and admittedly apprehensive) I inhaled, and remained motionless as Angela took her seat across from me and began.

.     .     .

            “Dear ____,

           It’s always been especially difficult for me to say how I feel to the people who matter most in my life, and you’re one of those. Even more so, it’s hard for me to say thank you to the people who I owe the most to. You’re also one of those. I don’t even know where to begin with all of this because I just feel this overflow of gratefulness that you came into my life. You have been so much more than a boyfriend or a relationship to me because you’re also one of my closest friends. You have been so giving and forgiving with me, and I can’t thank you enough for having the faith to open up to me and let me do the same to you. I felt so closed off from everything here before I met you and I feel like you’ve helped me remember how lovely it is to open yourself up to people and experiences. The night I apologized to you at _____, you told me I was being a pussy because I was scared to say how I felt out loud, and you were right. I still give in to that fear sometimes, but you have opened me up again, and I haven’t felt this new in years. You are such a beautiful person, ______, and nearly everything you do makes me swoon because I feel hilariously lucky that I get to see you so candidly. I feel like you really see me too, and appreciate me for the reasons I appreciate myself instead of asking me to fulfill an idea of who I should be. You have no idea how unique that is. I’m going to miss you so much because, for all these reasons, seeing you is such a relief.

           I know this isn’t goodbye, not even close, because you’ll be in _______ and we will see each other soon… and so I don’t really feel ‘sad’ in the typical sense of the word. I thought that because I have been crying, that I must be sad. But these are tears of joy. Tears are an overflow; an outpouring that does not always signify sadness. And in this instance, it’s an overflow of thankfulness. It’s like a sudden realization of how lucky I am to wake up with you, and really learn your mannerisms, and hear any story you want to tell me. The short story I gave you, Break it Down, really perfectly expresses this feeling of looking back and appreciating banal-seeming moments we often remember from relationships. That story is sad, though, because it’s really about a goodbye. And the difference here is that I know I’m not saying goodbye to you, thank God. You aren’t moving away or moving on, you’re just moving, and I want to keep you in my life in any way I can because you are, simply put, an amazing human and I can’t write our relationship as anything less than a gift—I would be so foolish to let it pass.

           So what I really want to say is thank you. I don’t want to say goodbye or try to wrap all this up because it’s honestly really lovely that it’s open ended right now. ‘Only unfulfilled love can be romantic,’ right?  I’m so happy circumstances have brought us together and that they aren’t tearing us apart now that you’ve ________. Thank you so much, _____, for all that you’ve given me and for just being the lovely human that you are.

           Love, Angela.

           PS. Sharon Olds is my favorite poet and I just wanted to give you something of hers. Infinite Bliss seemed representative in a lot of ways. And read One Hundred Years of Solitude too... you’ll love it and you have no excuse not to now that I’ve given you the book. It’s beautifully told and has deep roots.”

            Cold confusion and hot anger mixed painfully in my stomach, creating an uncomfortable white warmness. I no longer heard anything other than my own breath. Angela must have noticed my agitation because she raised a placating hand and looked sympathetically into my eyes, pleading with me to let her continue. I folded my arms across my chest and nodded, feeling my heart beat where my forearms made contact with my chest.

            “Dear, ____,

           I feel like I’m falling in love for the first time and it’s confusing and scary and makes me happy all the time. I know that this is so different from whatever ‘love’ has meant for me in the past because I really love you as a friend, not just as an object of affection. It’s so frustrating to be apart, but I also believe that the nature of our relationship makes it much more bearable—we don’t need to be dependent to hold onto each other in our hearts. I realized this when you told me you’d been asked on a date and I was surprised to find that I wasn’t jealous… I just genuinely wanted to hear about it and how it made you feel. I was just curious to hear about any part of your day.

           It would be really easy to fall into the thought that this is all terrible timing and that we’re doomed to be star-crossed lovers. But I don’t think that that’s the case. Yes, we are in different cities, but how lucky to have a best friend in a city you’ll actually visit! If we HAVE to be apart, I can’t imagine a luckier twist than you living in my hometown.

           Letting go is one of the hardest things to do—letting go of your wall and your façade and really being yourself, and letting go of the idea of how things could be or how you wish they were. I already let go of my wall with you, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m having a harder time letting go of how I wish things were—maybe I only think it’s harder because it’s now, but still. It’s the little things that really kill me. I wish I could see the way your face moves when I tell you that I love you, and the way you look when you say it back to me. I wish I could crawl all over you and romp around with you and have sex and then fall asleep in the space between your shoulder blades. I really wish I could see your butt when you get out of bed to take your dad-sized morning-shits—your butt when you’re walking away, that is…

           Anyway, I miss you and every little thing you do that I can’t see when we’re not together, but I keep reminding myself of how lucky it is that we even crossed paths in the first place, and that we have the very real ability to stay in each other’s lives. There’s a _____-shaped hole in my heart and you’re the only one that can fill it!

           XO—Angela.”

           The warmth in my stomach had curdled and aged like only the past can. Afraid to move lest the rot escape, I turned my mind internally and wondered about how the past, so far gone and encrusted by time, can break open and spring forth freshly into the present. Time doesn’t heal wounds as much as it buries them. Conceals them and hardens them into sparkling little gems that adorn and define you, or else black stones that burn and fuel you. Perhaps time isn’t a line at all but a point, a little prick that constantly reveals your errors and shortcomings. I came back to reality when I heard Angela launch stoically into the third and final unsendable.

                        “_____,

           I want to start by saying I’m so sorry about our last conversation and I’m so happy you wrote me… because I was holding grudges and being immature and I didn’t even realize it until you reached out. Everything I was holding on to just melted away when I saw your handwriting and read your words because you’re right—it’s simply wasteful to obscure the memory of our time together by staying angry.

            I can’t imagine a more thoughtful gift than your own copy of Moby Dick. When I read it I’ll think of you reading it aloud to me that night I was sick. Even though I kept getting up to vomit, it really was one of my favorite nights with you. You’re such an amazing person and I hope we see each other over Thanksgiving or whenever I visit next so I can hear your stories of legally binding paperwork and ___________. I couldn’t make my love for you a distant memory if I tried (and wouldn’t want to, even if I could).

            I feel so thankful that I haven’t lost the privilege of being in your life or keeping you in mine. Thank you again, _____, I really loved getting your book in the mail.

            Love, Angela.”

.     .     .

            People say it isn’t healthy to dwell in the past, but that’s where we’re born and it’s as inescapable as hereditary disease. As inevitable as an earthquake. Sometimes the memory of an injury can induce as much pain as the original incident, and be just as injurious. I looked up at Angela, shaken, the muted sounds of the garden flooding back into my perception—the bubble burst—and shook my head. The silence around us, although broken again by kissing sparrows and ticking irrigation, somehow seemed larger and more invasive.

            Angela examined me, looking for something she’d once seen. I can’t say whether or not she found it, but when her eyes finally rested on mine she made a little ironic smile. An inexplicable expression of recognition that carried with it a lifetime. “Thanks for listening to me,” She said, and began gathering up the unsendables.

            I searched desperately for a response. Anything would do, just so long as it left things open-ended. For what is a relationship but a conversation spread over time? A shared world on which to clear space for one another and build platforms of understanding? “I could listen to you talk all day,” I said, hoping that I didn’t reveal too much, but also hoping that she understood me. She leaned in towards me, and for the first time in years, Angela kissed me. I looked at her and wondered—for a passing moment—if this had all happened before.