Last night in the junction between evening and night she pulled up into the driveway and let the engine run for a few seconds, pausing to enjoy the air conditioning. She took a deep breath and let her hand linger on the car door not wanting to leave the stillness it provided. As the door swung open, the escapable heat of the past few weeks swept in to meet her. She hurried out, ducking her head against the whipping wind that was already carrying raindrops.
Somewhere not very far away lightning struck and thunder cracked instantaneously against the sky. She quickened her steps up the stairs, feeling a familiar panic begin to build.
Her hand, unfamiliar with the need to unlock the door fumbled uncertainly as it slid the key into the lock. The stale air of the living room was easy to breath and she paused in the light of the overhead lamp as it flickered with another peal of thunder.
For longer then necessary she turned on no other lights. She walked slowly and deliberately to the kitchen and stared out of the sliding glass doors. The storm was coming with intensity and it was welcome though inconveniently timed. She stared passed her reflection in the glass and watched the trees bend and sway.
Another crackle of lightning struck behind a far off hill.
Absentmindedly she ran her hand through her hair. It was longer then she usually kept it and she could feel it land against her elbows when she hitched her hands on her hips. It felt dry and dead from the sun and chlorine, as it would until September when summer would end.
As she watched the storm approach she felt the fear she normally worked so hard to control rise up in her chest, but it was more of an impulse then anything. Usually in the summer she could ignore the fear a bit better then this, she could focus on the sunlight and the way it danced on the water. She could fill the in between moments with laughter and push the fear away until it stopped trying to get her attention.
As she watched the storm turn the sky different colors, she thought of the lights that were not turned on behind her. She thought of the things that could be hiding in the shadows. She thought of the way the light had probably slanted throughout the afternoon and then the walls had dimmed as night fell. She thought there might be something important there, but she was at a loss for learning lessons while she was alone.
The sky finally broke and she turned away from the door. She missed the lightning but heard the thunder that made the light flicker in the living room. She grabbed the flashlight from the pantry just in case.
For the first time in a long time, she wished for autumn. This summer was hot and unfamiliar and she wished for the stillness that the passing of the trees would bring.
It was a lazy hazy day, and music felt insufficient. Instead of letting my eyes droop I attempted to construct verse But those things that I so often turn to
(the majesty of God, the song of the bird, the lonely far off bark of a dog, the delicate strings of love)
felt out of my reach.
So, perhaps it shall suffice to say that one thought orbiting my mind at present is this:
I wish that I could live in between, and simultaneously I wish I could stay exactly where I am eternally because safe is something I covet.
I will here attempt to connect what I am reading and what I know.
Winston Smith struggles to remember anything (At least in the scenes I have read). He looks to the future but can barely remember the past. To him, it is like looking down into a hole. The bottom is fuzzy and makes little sense.
My present and my immediate past are really one thing. But it is all so precious. This weekend I celebrated love and I danced a lot. I tried to forget temporarily that now there are always goodbyes that come much too quickly.
I don't want to forget like Winston Smith. But sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to not remember quite so intensely.
In retrospect, Catherine thought, four slices of cake might not have been the best idea. It had helped for a few seconds, but now she just felt sick.
There were so many things arranged on the table that were meant to make the guests at this joyous event happy. Like the cake, sliced evenly and distributed to the guests or the beautifully delicate lacy details that surrounded her plate. The whole setting of the occasion was romantic and soft and yet there wasn’t any place in the world she would like to be less. The sugary nauseas feeling that was weighing down her stomach only enhanced this fact.
“Would you like more coffee, miss?”
The coffee in her hands had gone cold and the porcelain wasn’t even warm to the touch anymore. She tilted the cup to the left and to the right, watching as the inky black liquid inside crept closer to the rim each time. The chatter from the people around her had faded to white noise, and she only realized this as the waiter’s voice brought everything into sharper focus. She had a peculiar kind of empty feeling in her chest which was making her feel very small.
“No thank you,” she said to the uniformed man at her left elbow, “I’ll just finish what I have.”
The wedding itself, Catherine heard some people around her say, was too beautiful to describe. She supposed they were right, and it would be a fairy tale wedding if viewed through any eyes but her own. Sandy’s dress had dragged elegantly along on the ground as she walked down the aisle. She had flashed the perfect coquette-ish smile at the camera after their first kiss. The cake had been a towering beauty, until it was shoved into the couple’s glowing faces.
All of the details which made the wedding beautiful were vibrant reminders of what she had come here to witness - the love between two people which she had no right to ruin.
Catherine shook her head and looked around her at the celebration. Her table was far away from the wedding party, in a corner closer to the bar then the exit. In some ways, she was grateful because she could stay out of the center of the festivities. But now, as she thought about leaving, she inwardly groaned at the idea of walking through so many guests.
She also wanted to avoid catching the eye of the bride or the groom.
The previous inhabitants of her table had left long ago to dance and that was exactly how she had become so full of cake. Sitting there, with nothing but her lonely thoughts to keep her company, she had eaten the slices she knew that no one would ever miss. They were all friends of Sandy’s from college, mostly men. She remembered that Mark had explained Sandy thought Catherine would appreciate the opportunity to meet someone. He’d shrugged his shoulders and glanced to the ground with a sheepish look in his eye. It was the way he described everything about his relationship with Sandy, with embarrassment. That embarrassment had once given her hope.
The thought made her stomach churn. She had to get out of here.
She stood and gathered her things from the table and wondered if anyone would care that she hadn’t said goodbye. The table was empty, and she hadn’t learned the boy’s names anyway. Mark’s mother would probably wonder where she had been, but she would excuse it as an over sight, or a product of her obvious grumpy mood. She’d been everyone’s least favorite wedding guest from the beginning, refusing the dance and complaining about the salmon.
Standing above the table she allowed herself a selfish wish, for one second, that she could just be a typical guest, refusing coffee because she didn’t like it and acting grumpy because her feet hurt.
She started to pull on her jacket and glanced up at the dance floor. There, in the middle, danced Sandy She was surrounded by a gaggle of girls who were all touching her dress as much as possible. There was a smile spread wide across her face that never lowered its shine. Sandy was still one of the most beautiful people she had ever seen, which made it all worse.
While Sandy danced, she noticed that Mark was nowhere in sight. He wasn’t twirling his grandmother or fist pumping with his friends. He wasn’t caught in a conversation anywhere around the dance floor or sneaking a few extra bites of food at the dais.
Catherine had gotten nothing more than a quick hand shake at the church and a thank you for coming and had no reason to know where he was now, but she looked for him anyway. Old habits, she thought, die hard. After a few sweeping inspections she spotted him.
He was across the dance floor from where she stood, leaning gracefully against the wall. His hands were pushed into his pockets and his posture looked relaxed and calm. His blonde hair, which was pushed away from his forehead, had curled slightly since the ceremony. He was watching the center of the dance floor and she kept catching glances of him through the bodies. The look on his face confused her because she had never seen it before, and she felt like there weren’t any expressions she hadn’t seen.
That’s a face he makes for Sandy, a voice hidden somewhere in the back of her head said.
Suddenly the music was too loud and her head spun from the constant beats. The lights were too bright and pierced past her eyes deep into her cranium. A wave of complete exhaustion crashed over her and she wanted more than anything to be at home in her bed, out of her tights and restricting dress. She didn’t even bother to put her shoes on, just heading for the exit, needing to be away from so many smiling people.
The only way out was through the dance floor. The people there were not conscious of her effort to pass through them. She tried to excuse herself but the music was too loud for anyone to hear her. She dodged a few dangerously flailing limbs and then gave up hope of slipping through easily. She started pushing back against the people that got in her way.
When she reached the middle of the dance floor, the music was overwhelming and she couldn’t see the edges in the dim lighting. The heat from so many bodies was pushing down on her oppressively. Her stomach gave another dangerous lurch and her head spun. She placed a hand to her forehead momentarily stilled in her attempt at escape. Someone to her left stepped on her barefoot and she bent forward with a cry of pain.
Let me go, the voice in the back of her head whispered, just let me go.
In this moment of confusion a hand grabbed her elbow from behind. She spun quickly, clutching at the arch of her foot, expecting to see one of Mark’s groomsmen standing there with a sneer. She had a snide comment ready to go, but paused when she saw it was someone she hadn’t expected.
Mark stood beside her, hand still on her elbow, acting as a shield between her and the other dancers. She was taken aback for a moment by the sheer size of him, magnified by her reduced angle. She noticed, though she tried not to, that the lights were shimmering off a layer of fine stubble that had grown on his cheeks since this morning.
They stared at each other for a moment and then she saw his mouth move but couldn’t hear any of the words he spoke. The pounding music drowned them out and she shook her head with a confused look on her face. He leaned down, grabbing the tops of her arms to steady her, and placed his mouth next to her ear.
“You okay?”
She nodded in return, trying to step back, regain her balance, and put some distance in between them. This was the closest they had been in months, since he had announced the engagement, and she didn’t think a crowded dance floor was the place to lose control of her emotions. He wouldn’t let go of her arms as she tried to step away.
“Were you leaving?” he shouted again into her ear.
She pulled back slightly so he could see her shake her head, trying to arrange her face into an adequate lie.
“Smoke!” she yelled back, keeping it short.
He nodded and she tried one last time to pull away but he leaned down again, with a different look on his face. He was closer than before and his voice, when he spoke, was softer.
“Can I join you?” he asked and then raised an eyebrow. She thought about this, and then nodded slowly, knowing she would say yes even though it was bad for her. She never denied him anything, whether that meant smoking together or attending his God forsaken wedding to Sandy Charleston.
She didn’t know why he wanted a smoke break from the most important day of his life, but she let him lead the way off the dance floor anyway, walking in the wake he created toward the door.
The sound in the hallway was a greatly diminished from the inside and she shook out her head to clear her ears, laughing to herself and exhaling in relief. Mark walked ahead of her with a purpose toward the door and the cold air felt good on her flushed skin.
A few party guests were congregated outside, but were scattered enough that she couldn’t hear any of their conversation. She snapped open her clutch and dug vigorously for the pack of cigarettes she had stored there just in case she would need them.
“I thought you quit?” Mark asked, with a tilt of his head. His posture was the same as inside, relaxed and waiting. This annoyed her for some reason and her fingers fumbled.
“I did,” she answered, finally finding the smashed and long ignored pack, “but you know how I feel about weddings.”
He nodded, with a knowing laugh half formed on his lips, but not letting it out like he usually would. She pulled one out for herself and held out the pack for him. She was surprised that he actually took one, sliding a lighter out of his own pocket. The flame illuminated his face for a brilliant second while he lit up.
She leaned forward as he extended the lighter and blinked in the sudden flash of fire and inhalation of nicotine. She held her breath and closed her eyes, letting the calming effect invade her thoughts.
Smoking with Mark felt like something out of a story she could barely remember anymore. It reminded her of nights on the beach when she had fought vicious battles with her mother and he had come to help her escape her house. It reminded her of skipped classes in high school. It reminded her of the one time in December when his hands had settled on her waist in a way that felt like something more than ever before.
In the last two months she had pushed down all of these memories, boxing up pictures and hiding journals from those times. Her preparation had proved futile though. It wasn’t so much the memories, but the emotions that went along with them and those weren’t so willing to be boxed up and hidden.
For a few minutes they both took long drags on their cigarettes. She might have tried to be more careful, but she watched the way his hands were gripped and how they batted the smoke away from his face. She watched the puffs of smoke mingle in the air with his crystallized breath and tried to calculate how long it had been since they had been alone together.
While she was lost in those thoughts, he looked over and saw her watching him. She should have averted her eyes and stared at the ground, but she realized in one crushing moment that it didn’t matter. As of five hours ago the vows had been said.
So she stared back at him, not really trying to hide anything. Perhaps this would be the great gift she received today, the ability to finally tell him to truth.
She continued to look at him, and noticed that he didn’t look away either. There were no more hopeful thoughts in her head, and this surprised her. Even as she thought of telling him, she realized that she couldn’t. Her whole life she had done whatever he asked of her, and he had never asked her that question. She would only be painting a portrait of what if’s for him.
She was happy, she realized in that moment, for this last reminder of what had once been her whole world.
“I expected more out of you, Montgomery,” he said looking away, and she felt like a balloon that had unexpectedly deflated, “you were always the life of the party.”
She sucked at the final remains of her cigarette and nodded, “Well, wedding. Not a fan.”
He nodded and tossed his cigarette on the ground, stamping out its light on the pavement, “Right the music. The sentimentality. Not your thing.”
She crammed the crumbled and near empty pack back into her clutch, “You better get back inside.”
Neither of them moved toward the door, and she started counting her breaths as they stood in the cold.
After several seconds he turned toward her and stepped within inches of her body. Still caught up in her previous revelations she was taken off guard. She tried to step back and away from him, to look to the ground, but his face look like she hadn’t seen it in years and he had his hand on her arm again.
“Cathy, you know,” he ran his other hand through his hair and his curls bounced down into his eyes, “Sandy doesn’t like you.”
He paused and she waited, not knowing what he wanted her to say.
“I can’t help that,” he said with something that sounded like apology in his voice, “but I need you to know… I mean you have to know that I was always going to marry her. You were my best friend, but Sandy… I needed to marry Sandy.”
He stopped there, looking at her again with the eyes that she didn’t understand.
“Of course you were, Mark,” she said, but the words sounded hollow, even to her.
His eyes widened and suddenly, she did understand. She understood that everything she had once placed value on had been rendered meaningless the day that Mark went back to the car to grab her wallet and Sandy Charleston had dropped her shopping bags in front of him. Sandy was always what he wanted. Sandy was always the wife and she was always the friend.
She saw the words coming before he said them. One of Mark’s classic lines, I don’t love you any less, he would say, possibly followed by something more serious like, I just needed to choose.
It was never a choice. She could see it all now.
“I know,” she used as much force as she could to pull her arm away from his without seeming rude. She inhaled a lungful of the cold night air and then raised her voice so the surrounding people could hear, “Let’s go back inside. Sandy is probably looking for you, wondering why you ran away.”
Then she turned her back on him and walked inside. Doing, for the first time, what was good for her and not good for him.
The music had slowed down when they returned, and Mark walked ahead of her toward his new wife. He brought Sandy close in his arms. She smiled up at him and his smile reflected her own. He wouldn’t think about their conversation again, and Catherine slipped her shoes on her feet and suddenly realized that she was crying.
I’m fine, she thought, and kept her eyes away from both Mark and Sandy as she turned to go.
