by Jack Twist
Chapter 32
Wood. A smell, a colour, a permeating sense of wood, in the man, his wife and children, not just the cabin. He was above average height, his hair curly like his father’s but darker, his face having some similarity with his sister’s around the nose, but larger featured, with the beginnings of two creases between the eyes. I felt that here was the more circumspect of the siblings, with less of his sister’s impetuousness.
But I relaxed in the warmth of his and his wife’s hospitality, the politeness in their questions, all the ‘you’re welcome’s to my thanks for things offered. It was partly for the lonely traveler abroad, and just the sort of people they were, but there was something beyond that, and in her as much as him, though at first he did most of the talking.
It was November, 1975, six months since the war ended, four years since Australia’s withdrawal.
They seemed willing, almost anxious to trust. I could have been someone they already knew and I felt the need to reciprocate, to make the story of who I was brief but honest, with careful and selective references to Vietnam. It was clear they knew plenty already.
“We want to thank you for the way you helped Abbie. And the baby.” I wondered if Abbie had told all, including my random preference for flight over fight in the face of danger, real or imagined. But Matthew went on calmly. “You didn’t get to know my father, did you? When we were kids he was often away, but it was good to have him home, when he was there.”
In that early part of the evening his wife hovered unobtrusively, attentive to children and cooking, but aware, I could sense, of everything I said.
We were waiting for Abbie to return his call. “Wesley didn’t seem sure where she was but said he’d tell her when she arrives home.” We moved from coffee to homemade wine. “You have to pour slowly. Leave the sediment in the bottom.” Then to dinner, deer he had killed himself, which his wife, Joanna, cooked on a wood stove, working flues and vents while she attended to the two small children, telling them about Australia in a quiet, respectful way that left me little to add.
From the wood came warmth and after dinner when the children were in their beds inone of the two small bedrooms, another bottle of home produce, and marijuana that I found unusually easy to smoke. I would sleep that night in a fold-out bunk in Matthew and Joanna Klein’s lounge/dining room.
“Abbie told us a lot, you see.” The three of us had settled in around the big, rough-hewn table. “She stayed for a few weeks when she first got back and then went back to Seattle. It was like she had talked it out and went back to start again. We were glad to be able to help her in that way, to leave it behind.”
“But she hasn’t really left it behind, not completely.” said Joanna. “How could she? Though she was encouraged to, but not by us.”
Matthew looked at her as she spoke. “Which is a good thing.” He turned to me. “She went back to Seattle to see Wesley. I don’t know if she told you about him. He’s a psychologist, very successful in his field. He’s helped her to move on.”
Joanna had a point to make. “She went back to finish her teaching diploma and living with him was … convenient. Which sounds more calculated than it was. She was mixed up. And she moved out when she started work. Not teaching. She didn’t feel up to that. She works in a library and she’s only been back with Wesley for a while.”
“Well, it must be nearly a year now.”
They respected that I had come so far to see Abbie, our mutual friend, her spirit as alive there as the fire in the fireplace beside us. That respect nurtured their openness, and the rough red did no harm to the geniality in the room either, nor did the weed, crisscrossing the table between Matthew and me like some symbolic ceremonial substance in a greeting ritual. It all had me explaining again why I hadn’t tried to write.
But Joanna wanted to share the blame around. “Wesley wouldn’t have encouraged her either. Oh, look. Abbie knows the way I feel. I can’t tell Wesley how I feel because he never comes up here. He’s career obsessed. Doesn’t like kids. Although I think he’s a kind of father figure to Abbie. And from what I know about the latest psychology thinking, talking about trauma is better than trying to shut it out, or lock it in.”
“Well,” said her husband, the gentle peacemaker, “he’s clever. He’s done well. And overall he’s been good for her.”
It was Joanna who suggested we call Seattle again, with concerns for the deteriorating states of our minds. Wesley gave Matthew a friend’s number where he said Abbie might be, and when she answered and we got talking, the warmth and bonhomie in the conversations came more from my hosts than from either Abbie or me.
“You haven’t seen the kids in ages,” her brother told her. “It’s time you did your duty as an aunt again. Listen. We have a visitor. A friend of yours, from a few years back. He’s from Australia. Yes. That’s right. Yes. I’ll put him on.”
Her voice was more measured than I remembered, and despite my excitement at the sound, and the effects of wine and dope, our conversation was restrained, under pressure from the presence of the others. “Sounds like my brother has gotten you a little stoned.”
“It’s great to hear your voice again. As I’ve been telling Matthew and Joanna, I should have written, or tried to call.” I explained the reason for my presence, the ostensible, obvious one. “Travelling with friends. In the neighbourhood,” and eventually, “Is there any chance we could meet up? Somehow? I’d like a look at Seattle. If you’ve got the time.”
Which drew a silence, on the phone, in the room around me. I apologised, in a light offhand way, acknowledging the suddenness, and told her I’d be staying in town for about a week. Her goodbye was nothing more than goodbye.
Matthew was a project supervisor with a construction company working on a dam and on his way to work next day he dropped me at my motel with requests that I visit again the following night. If his friendliness had suffered at all from the night before he showed little of it.
Rejection unspoken is perhaps the cruelest kind. Where there are words, ‘Get out of my life you selfish bastard,’ there is release. It’s all out there and you know exactly where you stand. I felt more stupid than hurt or angry. I had told myself so many times that to try to catch up with this girl on the other side of the world was foolish and delusional. Nobody at home need know of my stupidity, but I knew. Perhaps Matthew and Joanna knew. Their hospitality more out of sympathy than welcome for a new friend. I would see out the next couple of days. I felt I owed them that much, and my friends in New York were not expecting me yet.
At the end of the second day, when I arrived back at the motel from a tourist cruise on the lake, the motel manager handed me a message. Matthew would pick me up after work. I could never have avoided them, even were they not as hospitable as they were. But nor was I keen to see them again. In the end, I had come to this place to see someone else.
My mood that afternoon didn’t help. During the day, one of a dozen or so tourists on a comfortable little converted ferry, I had listened to stories of frontiersmen, silver fossickers and silver miners, boom towns now ghost towns, and the indigenous people there before them. The captain made jokes as he spoke into the microphone. But I only half-heard.
I should have been as impressed as everyone else with the scenery too. The white, pine-clad mountains that rose like battlements from the water looked overbearing, their beauty fierce and intractable with cold, the reflections in the deep blue/green rendering them all the more encompassing. What am I doing here? I’m from a sunburnt country. A land of, well, wide suburban streets at least, with houses on stilts to catch any cooling breeze.
I chatted with an American family at lunch. Their little girl stared, recognised my loneliness where her parents wouldn’t.
But I was lifted by the company of Matthew Klein, and the news he had for me. As the last of the day’s grey light faded from the roadside snow banks, we arrived at his cabin along the valley road some twenty kilometres from town, and Ab
bie was there. And on that evening a feeling of relaxed self-assurance would take longer for me to achieve than it had on my first night with the Kleins.
I saw a new reserve in her, a more discerning look. Her hair was longer, tied back in a pony tail and lighter in colour and she came to me, touched my arm as she kissed me on the cheek, then stood back, hands clasped across her waist, her smile more cordial than excited. Four years, I reminded myself again.
We engaged in desultory chitchat. I thanked her again for writing. “Only took the Army a week to find me.” Polite smiles all round. I apologised again for not writing back. She told me a couple of times that it was time she visited the kids, and, with more smiles, their parents too of course.
With dinner and wine things began to thaw. We talked of work and travel and Canada and Australia, and, eventually, living arrangements, and so, Wesley, ‘the guy she lived with’. He had three books published now and would soon be head of his university’s psychology department. And at around that time Joanna stepped deliberately in. “So, there’s no significant other waiting at home for you, Mark?”
I gave a dumb-sounding reply about no one wanting me, and they looked disappointed. “I’ve had a bit of trouble settling, actually. As I was saying before, the office job I went back to after the army was boring. Australia has a good repatriation system and I had started at uni years ago, so I was able to take a study allowance and got about a third of a degree done, then ran out of money, and interest I suppose, and went back to work in another insurance office Then some friends of mine were doing a group travel thing. I got busy saving, and here I am.”
Which left things out of course, and not just the mundane. The too much alcohol. The mood swings. One drunken performance had landed me in a police watch house until my father came to bail me out. Another, suspension of my membership from the cricket club. There were less dramatic but unfortunate decisions. Trying too hard at cricket without the proper fitness training until my shoulder broke down. My sporting career, modest as it was, was already behind me. I just didn’t know it. But it wasn’t all bad.
“I’m really glad I decided to come with them,” I said. “I’m hoping the travel will help, you know, help me to settle.”
They seemed to sense my reluctance with a sensitivity I was not accustomed to. At home a few friends and relations had let me talk it out, attempt to bridge a divide that was never quite bridgeable. They seemed happier when I stopped. My mother and sisters knew a doctor who was ‘easy to talk to’. Counseling wasn’t mentioned. You were meant to get on with it. The family encouraged my new interests.
“University? Okay, sure. Give it another go. But are you sure you’re ready?” They could see something I could not.
I’m sure some rellies were more appalled than they showed by my public outbursts, wanted the simple spectacle of war hero, or modest, venerable returned serviceman at least, talking about the war, if at all, with soft, laconic manliness. And with that youthful, carefree smile back on his face. Marching proudly then, once a year, head high, medals swinging. Please. Cry, if you must, but keep your embarrassing tantrums to yourself, indoors.
And jail would subdue me. About eight months after my return a friend from uni had introduced me to a fellow player from his football team, who was also a returned serviceman, having spent those final weeks in Nui Dat. It was a Friday afternoon and we went to one of those big suburban pubs that proliferated around that time and were joined by a few other returnees from his former unit.
My friend left almost unnoticed as the war stories became more esoteric. They were all proud to have served. Enjoyed the sense of service and experience that came with a knowledge of names and numbers, of weapons and vehicles and places and operations.
Increasingly aware of my ignorance of all that real, on-the-ground, soldier stuff, I was the least willing contributor. And the least able. But I made an attempt, and in my account of the death of Malcolm Jefferies, the young officer became a tragic casualty in an important operation, the rushed delivery of two civilian personnel, for reasons I left unclear. I didn’t mention the baby. Nothing military to be made out of that. Not even a proper name to throw up.
There was consensus that it had all been worth it in the end. I wasn’t so sure, and I sensed their discomfort with my wimpy equivocations, and qualified my disagreement. “Well. For me personally it was probably the kick in the bum I needed, really. I took one of those veterans’ grants and now I’m at uni.”
That didn’t help. A couple of them had been in Brisbane for the Springbok Rugby tour the year before. Uni students had led the protests and they all decried the demonstrators’ carry-on. That took them to protesters one had witnessed at a welcome home march the year before. More disgust.
I felt I understood their attitude. What did a bunch of spoilt, middle class brats, affecting a kind of downtrodden, unwashed poverty, know about the war, any war? The shift in the country’s mood, begun in the middle to late sixties, had gathered momentum during my time in the army and in the new zeitgeist the young were more outspoken, male and female. Feminism was scoffed at in conventional circles but not in the universities. The antiwar movement now felt justified and triumphant. I had felt a distance between other students and myself, and not only because I was older than the average. I made a conscious, and self-conscious effort to hide my immediate past.
And so it was with my drinking companions of that afternoon. They felt an alienation. They thought it was unfair and blamed the students. The world had moved on, and they had missed the peace train, which had arrived, young, brash and loud, while they were out of town, at war. It was all new and unabashed in bright psychedelic colours, full of hope and dreams and singing songs of universal love. And they had missed it, arrived home too late, left standing, huddled together, in a place that no one else could understand, a place grey with the fog of the past, with the fog of a war that had been lost, that no one wanted to know about. Still young men, they looked older than they were, and a little tired and bewildered by it all.
As the years passed most would bear the weight of their war, big, small or insignificant, and like everybody else, get on with their lives with varying degrees of success. The students and other demonstrators were, after all, a minority themselves, and largely despised. And their peace train was always doomed, last seen heading into dark clouds on the horizon, the love songs blown in the wind, as inconsequential as the laughter of children. For war never leaves us for long. And we all have jobs to do.
Like much of the population, my fellow ex-soldiers in that big suburban hotel on that hot afternoon, had little time for the peace movement, war or no war. I was irked by something a little too conclusive and self-assured in their unanimous view on the whole contentious business. The students were their enemy, and they knew not one of them.
And I was already quite drunk. “But what were the protesters saying?” I asked.
There were perplexed looks, which encouraged me.
“Did anyone actually listen to what they were saying? Apart from all the swearing and chanting. Maybe they knew what they were talking about. I mean, behind all the noise.”
Some stared. Some looked away. It was as if someone had sworn out loud in church. I was reminded of Greg Urquart, his swaggering contempt as he faced me that night in the transport compound. “You’re all talk. The talkers.” He was a doer. Talk usually meant you were full of shit. I’m sure this group would have agreed.
“They’re communists,” said one.
“They attacked some of our mates during a welcome home march,” said another. “Turned on their own troops.”
“They should shoot the bastards,” said one with a fierce glare. “That’s what I reckon.”
There were one or two amused almost embarrassed grins, but no one challenged him. He did the job on me too. I decided it was my shout.
They left soon after, all friendly enough except bullet-solution man, who ignored me.
So that I w
as left on my own to take solace in more alcohol, which would be my way for some years after that. And I wound up talking, or slurring, to complete strangers careless enough to accommodate a drunken fool rambling about a war in which we were no longer involved. They bought beer for the poor silly bugger. And then more, until he became a little too unhinged, moved beyond harmless, pissed ex-digger to a new and scarier mode, mumbling about some baby. “Do babies count? They don’t count, do they? Babies don’t count.”
Anger bubbling over then. Incoherent rambling turning to incoherent shouting. A mad man, flailing and striking out as he drowns, taken down in a vortex of froth and shit and guilt and hate that only he could feel. To blame, to punish, perpetrators of a crime he could never clearly see. And with no one listening. “Listen to me! Fuck you all! Listen to me!”
Down and down, ending as an unsightly blot on the shiny bar room floor, the excrement of his own inarticulate rage. Something to be removed. As quickly as possible.
Step aside, please. Make way for insanity, temporary or otherwise, never a good look in these rolling hills of relentless suburban tranquility. Thanks for getting here so quick, fellers.
Outside the sun was shining. A perfect Queensland winter’s day.
And so to jail, the watch house. It was a sobering experience. And frightening. Nothing like the clang of a cell door to make you sit up and take notice. Count your blessings.
Now wake up to yourself. What’s so special about you? You survived, unscathed, so get on with it. Head up, Private Ross. Eyes to the front. You’re only a victim if you choose to be.
But next day my mother would tell me I had changed, and it was clear she didn’t think for the better. And so I had to leave it. I had to move on. There were at least no more police arrests.
But I only lasted another year at uni. Then took leave of absence. To get work experience and save money. That was my story. Maybe a little travel.
And about three and half years beyond that, four years since I’d last seen Abbie, I was telling my new North American friends how good travel had been for me. “ … relaxing. Makes me feel more ready and willing to finish that uni degree, presuming they’ll have me back.”
Inevitably, I suppose, the conversation turned to the war. There were general observations on the fall-out, refugees, re-education, and then the two women were declaring their passionate support for Matthew’s decision to dodge the draft, back when.
My concurrence then, and regrets. At which Matthew came quickly to my aid. “It was a difficult situation for all of us.” And the women nodded so vigorously I almost expected someone to suggest a group hug. I would have agreed to that too.
So the war, our common bete noire, focus for our collective antipathy, helped loosen the mood further. There were early memories of Jake Klein, his fascination with the orient, and Matthew wondered if he should ever have gotten married. Conventions of the time and his youth, they said.
The baby, when mentioned at all, was more delicately handled, clearly sidestepped at times, too sacred for ordinary conversation, though she was there behind every word spoken on the war. Until Abbie seemed ready to break the silence policy. “I just wish we had had the chance to name her. Legally. Properly.” We waited to see if that was all and she looked at me. “You know what I mean? It’s as if she didn’t exist.”
I was pleased to take up her invitation. This was something I knew about, and something personal, that, for all the pain, brought back a little of the old Abbie. “She existed, Abbie. If proof of existence is in a name, you named her. It wasn’t your fault that piece of paper wasn’t legal. The country was in a mess but you did your best. You named her.”
“That’s right,” said Matthew. “And that’s how we should remember her.”
She nodded. “Thanks, Mark.” Joanna leaned across to put a hand on her shoulder.
“Cheer up,” Matthew told her as he filled her glass, though it hardly needed it. “She was a part of our family and we’ll never forget her.” He raised his glass. “To the memory of Thi Lin, our sister.”
And we all raised our glasses. “Thi Lin.”
Abbie smiled but the sadness sat defiant in her eyes and I changed the subject in what I thought was a considerate way. But I was soon regretting my choice of questions. “Did you ever hear from Julie Shields?”
At least she seemed to welcome the diversion. Julie was now in Washington. She had suffered some level of depression, a nervous breakdown it was called then, but had recovered and returned to work. Her new position would keep her at home in the States. I showed more interest than I felt.
There was less drinking that night, and no dope, but when it came time to drive me back to the motel Matthew was too far gone, and his wife had children to think of. “Blame his wine. If they wake he never hears them.”
Abbie, then, would drive me. “I can never get used to all this snow,” she said, full concentration, staying in the low gears, the car losing traction sometimes and heading off towards the banks at the side. I made a few grateful references to the kindness of her brother and his wife, she explained a few of their quirkier methods of living in the forest with two little kids and then we sat in silence watching the white road ahead until the snow-free streets at the edge of town took hold of the tyres.
The motel sign was the only light in its street. Abbie turned off the motor and with hands on the steering wheel looked ahead where the snow lay light yellow beneath the sign. Snow, I realised, had a way of silencing things.
“Well. It’s been great to see you again.”
She nodded. “Thank you. Good to see you again.”
I looked at her. She looked as pretty as ever in the yellowish light. “I like your hair like that.”
“Thanks again. Longer hair suits you too.” And then, as if sensing I was about to get onto something more serious, she asked how my cricket playing was going.
‘Very slowly, if at all. It’s finally dawning on me that I might do better out of education than sport. If I can ever get myself into gear and finish that degree.’
She turned to look at me. ‘What discipline is the degree?’
‘Law.’
‘Law. That’s pretty challenging, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. ’Specially for me. But I want to start back again next year and this time get serious, and finally get the thing done.’
‘Good for you.’
When I turned to look at her she was smiling at me. She looked genuinely pleased, if not with my plan itself then at least with my wish to move on, to achieve. I was simply pleased to see her smile, wanted to reach out and hold her, and kiss her. Instead I asked her how long she planned on staying here with her brother and his wife.
“Tomorrow. There’s a flight out tomorrow.”
“So soon? That brings back more memories. Look, I realise this is a long shot and excuse me if I have no right to ask, but … is there any way you could come to New York with me? Just for a couple of days maybe. You see, one of my friends, Tony Carmody, I don’t know if I ever mentioned him. He was in Vietnam with me. He’d like to meet you. He and his wife Chris haven’t said so, but I think maybe one of the reasons they chose this American holiday, and invited me along, was so that I might try to look you up. We could …”
But she was looking straight ahead, shaking her head. She turned, the smile all gone.“Thanks. But I have to be back. For work. I could only get two days off. But thanks.”
And there was that reserve again, of the woman, no longer the girl, who had been there. Once bitten, by a world with the awful power to put a shadow in the sunniest face.
I waited, but there seemed nothing more for it. “Well then. Take care. Mama san.” She flashed me a look, without reproach but giving me nothing, and turned away quickly. “And you can’t come in, for a minute? Since you’re going tomorrow.”
This time her look had softened but she turned away again, sighed, looked troubled and watched the empty street ahead. “I can’t, Mark.
It’s been four years. I have a new life. And it wasn’t as though we had a normal relationship, was it? Thrown together for a few days, in a crazy situation, like leaves in a storm. And … you didn’t write, at all.”
“I know. And I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. But, I didn’t think you wanted me to. I mean … well, I’m just a bad memory, aren’t I? Part of something you’re trying to forget. So I guess this was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.”
“No. It was never you I was trying to forget. And Wesley thought it best to … to leave it. Leave it behind. It’s just … too late. He’s been so good to me. You know? He’s helped me get my life, back on track.”
I considered this for so long that she turned to look and I asked her if she ever talked about the baby.
“We … I try not to. When they sent my father’s body home I wanted to try to find out what had happened to her body. But Wesley was adamant. And he was right. It’s best not to talk about it. To keep the nightmares at bay. The same old nightmares.”
I nodded. I knew about nightmares. Malcolm Jefferies, slumped on a roadside with half a head, Lyle O’Malley, doing his best to smile. A baby, dead, in the arms of an adult child. And the running, always running, in a futile search for escape.
I wondered if we should talk about those same old nightmares some time. Talk to me, Abbie, when you’re more able. We’re in this together. It’s not something we can just leave behind, as much as we’d like to, like some nightmare that didn’t really happen, dismissible with the breaking of a brand new day, the turning of a new page. Talk to me, and I’ll talk to you, the way we did. Mama san and papa san. Remember?
But when I looked at her I could see that should there ever be a time when we shared nightmares this was not it. “The other night. You didn’t call back? Were you going to?”
“I didn’t know Matthew had called. Wesley didn’t call me, where I was, to tell me. We’d had a disagreement. I’m not living with him at the moment. I haven’t told Matthew and Joanna because it’s … temporary. I … I’ll be going back.” She nodded slightly, in emphasis.
The cold, yellow silence crept into the car, sat between us. Until I said, “If only we could’ve met at some …” which sounded pathetic and I took a shot at my usual target. “Jesus, I hate that fucking war.” And that was just as trite, and pointless, but when I looked at her she was nodding. “So what now, Abbie? I ride off into the sunset, never to see you again?”
“No. We write each other. Of course.”
“We write. For how long, do we write?”
“It’s just that … I’ve put it all behind me. Why are you here, Mark? I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s great to see you again, but what is it you want?”
I turned to look through the window beside me as a few snowflakes landed on the road. They seemed to add to the cold, whisper the folly of my being where I was. Four years, and I had not written. Not once. So she had moved on, of course. Her question still seemed a little unfeeling, but I didn’t think it was something to rationalise over. There was no point in trying to be clever now.
“I just wanted to see you again, without really knowing it myself for sure, until now. I haven’t been able to get you out of my system. Not really. Even when I kept telling myself I had. And now I’ve seen you, I want to … go on seeing you. More than ever. I guess I must love you.”
She turned her head away. “That’s very flattering but … not very practical. Or real. I mean, haven’t you heard? Romantic love is bourgeois nonsense.”
“Well, something brought us here, Abbie. And something more than just encouragement from friends and relations.”
When she turned to look at me there was something almost submissive in her eyes, or sentimental, a memory rekindled. “You always could talk fast, when you had to.”
I remembered her telling me once that the baby had brought us together, indirectly, but of course that was unmentionable now. She looked away again and we both considered the falling snow, its silence mocking the futility of words. Had mine come out smart even when I tried for honest? Just how genuine was I after all? I had spoken my share of bullshit to girls in my time and despite the self-destructive element, I’d grown accustomed to my self-centred lifestyle, convinced myself, I thought, of my own need to move on. Even as the plane dropped through the clouds to leave me here in a snow-covered Canadian town, I wasn’t sure about what I was doing. And this girl had problems, was from a country far from mine. I had problems. Commitment shy, I’d been told by a girl I’d got to know at uni, with too many hang-ups. And I had almost no money.
But then Abbie was leaning across towards me, to kiss my cheek quickly, a kiss goodbye. “Thank you so much for coming all this way to see me. I really appreciate it.” Her face lingered long enough for me to put a hand on her arm, and then the other, to feel her relent, bodily, the significance in the slight drop of her shoulders, a softening in those eyes.
When she put a hand on my shoulder I took hold and it was some minutes before she was pulling away, her face all passion and lovely. I reached for her, wanted more, but she sat back, sighed, bit her lip as she looked ahead again. And I knew. Even if what I’d just said sounded like some of the same old lines, what I felt was genuine. I was glad I had come all this way to see this girl. It felt right to be with her again. “Come inside.”
She thought, then shook her head. “We shouldn’t have done that. That just complicates things. I have to go. We have to think about this. Write me. Please. But go away. For now at least.” She turned to me. “And think about this. And I will. And …” She sighed again, her breathing still audible. I just wanted to keep on kissing her. “I’ll give you my new address.”
“One more kiss.”
“No. Please. We have to think about this.” She was searching in the open compartment between the seats, urgent and shaky. “Goddamn hippies. Never any writing materials. Can you check the glove compartment?” The glove box seemed to have everything in it except pen and paper. “Look. I’m not sure where I’ll be anyway. You could write care of Matthew and Joanna. They’ll send it on. Would you?”
“Please, Abbie. Couldn’t we …”
But she was Abbie the determined, with tears in her eyes, and then I was standing in the cold street, snow falling steadily, watching the car move away, at first too quickly, the wheels spinning, then slowly, taking her away, inexorably, like the turning of warm day into cold night.
I heard the manager’s voice in the foyer as I stood looking out the motel room window at the falling snow and then he was knocking on my door, I presumed, to share a nightcap, take my breakfast order. “Go away,” I muttered.
But when I opened it there she was. “Can we talk … just talk … please? I don’t know, but I might be able to phone work, tell them I’m snowed in.”
“Will I have to push the bed up against the door?”
It was thoughtless, said in the joy of seeing her and out before I could stop it. Her smile was subdued, almost sad, mellowed by four years of memories, the memory. But when she sat on the bed and turned to me I saw nostalgia enough to rekindle other memories, the shine of younger eyes never quite confident enough to deny a vulnerability, a girl, naked, nothing but a beaded curtain between her and the night, the faint smell of incense and marijuana, and the sweet taste of kisses shared opportunistically in the darkness of strange places where we’d huddled out of the rain.
As I closed the door I heard the manager telling someone that the snow would clear in the night.
And so she talked. Of her life over the past four years, of her work, her family. And things beyond that. She still had plenty to say, though with less of the bright confidence I remembered, and without that breathless edginess, the impatience with a world that wouldn’t behave the way it was supposed to.
Eventually we slept. When I woke the curtain had lightened and I peeked outside to find the motel manager had been right. The snow had stopped. The sky was blue and the sun was shining on a
bright new morning.
– THE END –
