Be Straight with Me

by Emily Dalton

  new.

  FIELD NOTES

  It’s one of those freakishly warm days

  in the middle of February

  when you have to pause for a moment

  to process what you’re feeling against your skin.

  All winter long, when chunks of icy snow

  scraped from frozen windshields

  melted in my boots

  or the air was so brutally cold

  that it was impossible to think straight,

  I pined for a day like this—

  bright sun and warm air,

  stepping outdoors

  and hardly noticing

  a change in temperature.

  In a flannel shirt, jeans, and a winter hat,

  I feel heavily overdressed

  and sweaty after fifteen minutes of

  walking through the woods.

  I cross the brook behind the house

  on dark, slick stones,

  then head up the leaf-covered hill

  to where the woods open up

  into a huge field.

  As I stand at its edge,

  I can feel my body remembering how to function

  in the warmth.

  As I walk the perimeter of the field,

  I wonder what Max is doing—

  where he is, whom he’s with,

  whether he’s happy.

  Words from the letter he wrote to me

  a year ago come to mind.

  I never want to lose touch

  or not know what’s going on

  in each other’s lives.

  Yet here we are.

  Here I am.

  REFLECTIONS: THE LAST TIME I SAW MAX

  I’m sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park.

  It’s the end of September,

  but it’s warm, and a bunch of young guys

  are splashing around in the big fountain near the Arch;

  little kids are blowing bubbles

  and dancing around with their nannies;

  college students are sprawled across colorful blankets

  in the patches of grass,

  holding books above their faces

  or napping on each other.

  Max is quiet as he sits down next to me.

  He seems to understand that I’m having a moment.

  We watch as an old man and an old lady

  take their time standing up from a bench across from us,

  gathering their hats and canes

  and situating themselves to continue walking.

  We watch as a young muscular man rollerblades by,

  wearing nothing but a bikini top and ripped jean shorts,

  blasting techno music from speakers in his backpack.

  Without turning to me, Max breaks the silence.

  “So . . . what are you going to be for Halloween?”

  The old icebreaker sits between us for a moment.

  “Don’t think I’ll be dressing up this year,” I reply.

  He knows I’m leaving the city to write

  and brings up Shane’s writing,

  telling me again

  how much I would like it.

  I ask him what Shane thinks

  of our past together.

  “I don’t know. I think he sees it as

  part of my extended coming-out story.”

  His words feel painfully dismissive,

  as though he’s saying our entire relationship

  was a mistake.

  I finally turn to look at him.

  “Is that what you think we were?”

  He swallows and breathes in,

  and when he finally speaks,

  I can hear the pain in his voice.

  “Shane just doesn’t understand, Em.

  He doesn’t know what it was like

  for me to be in love

  with a woman

  for so long.”

  Even though Max is wearing sunglasses,

  I can see that tears are forming in his eyes.

  And at last, I can see that

  I don’t need him

  to tell me what we were

  because I already know.

  We were the joke

  that made us laugh until we cried.

  Valentine’s Day diapers,

  black bean burgers,

  and turnips thrown at freshmen;

  Halloween dares, late night spliffs,

  and poorly planned threesomes;

  a fair fight with Ponyboy,

  a journal entry to God,

  and a little black fly

  buzzing in my ear.

  We were slamming doors

  and breaking promises;

  we were experimenting and dreaming

  and trusting the unknown.

  We were in Max and Emily World

  learning about life and love and

  teaching each other

  how to become ourselves.

  We were a mistake.

  And some of the most beautiful

  things in life come

  from mistakes.

  FIELD NOTES, CONTINUED

  At the far corner of the field,

  near the foundation of a house that burned down years ago,

  I pause for a moment to face the February sky

  and soak in the sunlight.

  I sit on a pile of crumbling brick

  that was once a hearth.

  As the shadows grow longer

  in the late-afternoon sun,

  more words from Max’s letter

  blaze through my mind.

  If we don’t end up together,

  I am always going to imagine

  what my life would have been like with you.

  I know it would be amazing;

  I know you would make me happy.

  I don’t know where Max is,

  or whom he is with,

  or whether he’s happy.

  I have no idea what our life would be like

  if we were together; maybe it would be amazing

  and we’d make each other happy,

  but it’s just as likely that it would be disastrous

  and we’d make each other miserable.

  I suppose finding a soul mate really can go either way.

  Before rising again to carry on

  through the dead grass and melting snow,

  I shed a layer of flannel and pull off my hat.

  Then I stand up and turn around

  to take in the full panoramic view.

  Alone in this field

  I’m struck by the notion that this is my place

  in time and space.

  It’s as though I’ve been here all along

  waiting for myself.

  Hey, what you doing here?

  SURPRISE BEGINNING

  As spring arrives to thaw the ground

  and awaken dormant roots,

  my aimless drafting

  starts to feel less aimless.

  I think back to my last days on the campus

  where this story began

  and watch an archived YouTube video

  of the commencement address Diana Nyad gave

  at my graduation from Middlebury.

  Much to my surprise, she ends her speech

  by quoting the final lines of “The Summer Day”

  by Mary Oliver:

  Tell me,

  Oliver begins,

  And what follows is a question that,

  in its directness,

 
begs a vulnerability

  and a self-confidence

  that, until now,

  have eluded me.

  Like an echo through the darkness,

  the question lingers,

  waiting . . .

  And for the first time,

  I’m not looking to someone else

  for the answer.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Jay Parini, for teaching me why poetry matters and how to write about what I care about; to Connor Eck, for believing in my story, even in its roughest of drafts, and for guiding me through it when I couldn’t find my way alone; and to Melissa Rhodes Zahorsky, for reading, understanding, and then expertly refining Be Straight with Me.

  Thank you to my family, for loving me even when I am hard to love: to Dad, for gifting me with my first and most magical memories of storytelling; to Mom, for allowing me the space and freedom to turn my mistakes into something beautiful; to Dooey, for pushing me to be realistic and challenging me to succeed; to Amy, for being my first real reader and my most valuable critic; to Auds and Ev, for reminding me to look for the beauty and excitement in everyday life; and to Gee, for seeing me, hearing me, protecting me, and inspiring me since page one.

  And

  thank you

  to you,

  who I called “Max”

  in this book,

  for being

  straight with me

  when I couldn’t

  be straight with myself.

  Enjoy Be Straight with Me as an audiobook, wherever audiobooks are sold.

  Emily E. Dalton

  grew up in rural northern Connecticut and studied writing at Middlebury College in Vermont. At the age of 25, after three years of living in New York City, she quit her job, moved home, and turned her focus back to writing. While working part time as a blacksmith’s apprentice, she slowly transformed her senior thesis into the first draft of Be Straight with Me.

  CHECK OUT THESE OTHER GREAT TITLES FROM ANDREWS MCMEEL PUBLISHING!