Ghosts of Romances Past

by Laura Briggs

  “But I don’t like breaking our agreement this way.” His voice held a mixture of teasing and sincerity. “After all, it was your idea to take three days apart for reflection. Sure this won’t cloud your judgment?”

  “Trust me; it’ll have the opposite effect.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Warren said. “Take care of yourself. And try taking a little extra strength pain reliever for the aches, no?”

  “I know. Bye-bye.” She hung up the phone, her gaze returning to the curio cabinet’s display. In front of it, she turned the key and swung open the heavy glass door. She ran her finger along the spines of the volumes within, pausing when she came to a tall book in navy blue, the lettering long faded from its side.

  Aunt Phylis’s old college scrapbook.

  “Here Alice,” Aunt Phylis had said, handing the tattered volume to her teenage niece. “You’re still young enough to appreciate that your aunt wasn’t always old,” she said with a wink, as she watched Alice’s fingers turn through its pages. The collection of pasted-in mementoes that had fascinated Alice as a little girl.

  It had been years since Alice had thought of revisiting that volume. Now as she opened it a fine coat of dust drifted upwards in a cloud. School dances, homecoming parades, and football games appeared on its pages. A centerfold insert served as a frame for college photos of Aunt Phylis with her friends and study groups.

  She scanned the frozen memories one by one, searching for anything out of place. At last, her gaze spotted something on the bottom row. A photo of Phylis, her arm linked with that of a young man in a military uniform.

  Wesley? Alice wondered. She reached between the cardboard inserts and drew the photo out. It snagged on a folded sheet of notepaper. A yellowed letter in a man’s handwriting. Fingers trembling, she pulled out the letter and unfolded it.

  There was Aunt Phylis’s secret, on a sheet of faded stationary.

  Ghosts Of Romances Past

  8

  Alice dialed the Florida number, listening as the phone rang. She cradled the receiver against her shoulder, praying this wasn’t a big mistake.

  “Hello?” The voice was older. Beneath the cracks and smoke-infused rasp, Alice heard the same tones that had been haunting her mind for the past twenty-four hours.

  “Aunt Phil? It’s Alice.” She was seated on the floor, Wesley’s letter unfolded on her lap. She had read it twice before deciding to make the call.

  “Alice? What is it, Ali-girl?” Her aunt’s voice held a note of curiosity. “You haven’t phoned me in ages. You’re not branching into fabric instead of paint, are you?”

  “That’s not it.” She glanced at the scrapbook, where Wesley and her aunt smiled up from its pages. “I have to ask you a question, Aunt Phil. About Wesley.”

  Breath held, she waited for her aunt to respond. How long had it been since she heard his name? Or spoke it to anyone, for that matter.

  “Wesley.” Her aunt sounded confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the letter in your old scrapbook. The one he wrote you while in the army.” She rubbed her finger over the yellowed piece of paper. “Why didn’t you ever talk about him, Aunt Phil? You never mentioned him in what, thirty years?”

  Her aunt released a deep breath, a signal of surrender. “Longer than that, honey. It’s more complicated than you realize, much more. Not really something we need to discuss.”

  She could already detect Phylis pulling away from the subject; in another moment, they would be discussing gardening or the weather in Florida. Anything, but romance.

  “Tell me about it, Aunt Phil,” she pressed. “What happened between you two? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  “And just why would it be important to know about my old flame?” Phil’s voice had lost none of its sarcastic edge over the years.

  “Because I might be making the same mistake,” Alice said. An awkward pause followed as she struggled to explain herself. “I’m not sure. Either way, I’m scared that I’m making the wrong decision” She prayed silently that it would be enough to persuade her aunt.

  She heard a faint sigh on Phylis’s end of the phone. “It was so long ago. Even though, sometimes, it seems like just yesterday. You’ve seen the photos, I’m sure; we were quite young back then. But if you really want to know, then I’ll tell you about him.”

  ****

  “So you met at a dance?” Alice stared at the grainy image of Phylis and Wesley, holding hands beneath a string of paper snowflakes and metallic tinsel. Smiling as if they had been together for years instead of a few minutes.

  “We did.” Phylis’s voice took on an uncharacteristic dreamy tone as she reminisced. “A Christmas dance—'Snowflakes under the Stars,' or some such silliness. I hadn’t even planned on going, but my roommate more or less dared me.”

  “She thought you needed a boyfriend?”

  “It was her favorite subject, especially after she got engaged. But she thought I was sabotaging my chances. She said my hair was all wrong, and that my dress—which I made myself—looked more like something a doll would wear.”

  Alice could see how her aunt’s yellow pleated skirt might be out of place in the age of the double knit and bell bottomed pants. But then Phil always did exactly what she wanted, no matter what the era and its whims might dictate.

  “So I went just to prove I didn’t care. I walked straight to the back row of metal chairs, planted myself in one, and planned to stay there the rest of the evening.”

  She could see it now: Aunt Phil in her classic diva elegance, her chin resting on her hands as she watched a crowd of students dance to an Elvis Christmas cover. Not caring that she looked out of place in the midst of this hip crowd, or that she was lonely and shy. An image of indifference, one foot tapping along with the beat of the music as the other one swung free.

  “And Wes asked you to dance?” She tried to envision the kind of boldness it took to approach a cool girl like Phylis.

  “Not before he insulted my style, asking if my dress were a costume.” Phil’s gravelly laugh traveled across the line. “Oh, he didn’t mean to upset me; it was just his way of getting my attention. And I suppose I must have looked pretty strange in that sea of mini-skirts and peasant blouses.”

  Alice tilted the page towards the light, catching a gleam of Wesley’s humor in the frozen memory. Mischief-filled eyes surrounded by finely-chiseled features. Shaggy hair and a goatee to complete the look of a nonconformist in search of adventure and purpose.

  “He was one semester ahead of me,” Phylis recalled, “and planned on going into medicine, but mostly on seeing the world. You can imagine how that appealed to me, given the restless state I was in. Why, I must have changed majors at least three times.”

  “He swept you off your feet,” Alice murmured. She flipped to the cardboard insert in the middle of the book—photos of Phylis at the pool, standing only a few feet away from Wesley, her face slanted in his direction. Side by side at a school picnic, posed without touching each other, their stolen glances the only indication they shared a deeper connection.

  “Why keep it hidden?” Alice asked. “You look so good together.”

  Phylis let out a raspy sigh. “Wes said the same thing. He even gave me a class ring as a symbol of his promise. But I wasn’t ready to tie my life up with someone else. So I wore the ring on a chain. Fewer questions that way.”

  Alice scanned the rows of images ‘til she spotted the gleam of a metal chain encircling Phil’s neck at a school carnival and again at a Valentine’s dance. “But your friends knew, right?”

  “Oh, they knew we were dating, but it was all very discreet. Not even your grandparents knew, and certainly not your mom. Why, she was just eight or nine at that time.”

  “Right,” Alice said, flipping the page. And sure enough, the ring was absent from Christmas break photos, where the holidays found Phylis drinking hot chocolate and sledding with her “little sis” down the snow
y hill behind their home. In some of them, she kept a hand tucked protectively by neck, the ornament hidden from the camera’s lens by the fabric of her sweater.

  Alice turned the page again and saw the next two semesters pass as a blur of carefree dates and hanging out with mutual friends. The changing seasons showed Phil and Wesley maintaining their usual distance at sporting events and outdoor concerts, always a touch apart. Several snapshots included Wesley pouring over textbooks, preparing for medical school no doubt.

  How could she have seen these images so many times in the past and not ever wondered if there was something more between them than friendship? Was she so convinced of her aunt’s confirmed singlehood, that it never occurred to her that one of the boys in the photos might be more than a friend?

  “Try to understand how young I was,” Phyllis urged, her tone sad but defensive. “When you’re twenty, the future holds so many possibilities. And you always think you’ll have time to explore them all.”

  “But you don’t,” Alice murmured, a hollow feeling nestling inside her heart; a twinge of regret she didn’t often let herself indulge in.

  “No, you don’t,” Phylis agreed, her tone echoing Alice’s sadness. “For me, those possibilities came to an end when Wesley enrolled in the military. That’s when everything changed.”

  Ghosts Of Romances Past

  9

  Alice stared at the image of Wesley in a service uniform, his arm linked with Phylis’s. Strange the only picture in the album that showed them as a couple would be the final one they took together.

  “That was just three days before he shipped out for a MASH unit in Vietnam,” Phylis said, when she described the picture. “His best friend snapped the photo and then we walked into Hank’s Hamburger Joint. The community was throwing a farewell party for the enlisted soldiers.”

  Alice bit her lip, trying to envision what her aunt must have felt with her first love journeying overseas to certain danger. The somber expression in the photo told her very little about the emotions churning inside. Fear and a sense of loss, no doubt. And maybe regret, too, for the relationship she’d kept hidden away.

  “I suppose I should’ve seen it coming.” Her aunt’s voice dropped to a murmur, as if talking more to herself than her niece. “Wes always told me all he needed in life was a Bible in his bag and a plan in his head.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Oh, the kind of goodbye you expect from an enlisted soldier and his sweetheart. We should have been inside with the music, but instead we sat on the hood of his car. He asked me to write to him…and something more.”

  “To marry him?” Alice guessed, her breath catching at the thought of Aunt Phylis one question away from matrimony. The same sardonic woman who once told her that romance was a figment of Hollywood’s imagination.

  “He wanted a promise,” Phylis said. “A pledge to marry as soon as he returned. I…couldn’t give it to him.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “You know me, Ali-girl. How slow I am to trust. It was too much uncertainty.”

  The rest of the story unfolded quickly, as Phylis recalled how she wrote Wesley a letter once a month, sometimes twice, filled with campus stories and news from their mutual friends. His letters were more serious, sometimes focusing on the connection between them as if seeking her heart.

  Even though she wouldn’t tell him so on paper, her heart was safely his. She accepted an escort to a party or dance, but never made a serious connection. Her slow and steady relationship with Wesley remained a treasured secret, an attachment without strings that kept her from seeking anyone else.

  Until the letter arrived with air mail stamps a few weeks after the fall semester began. She shoved aside half-finished applications for a flight attendant training program and opened it in the cafeteria, expecting another complaint about army food, another question about his best friend’s new job.

  “But I don’t have to tell you what question he asked, instead,” Phyllis said.

  “No,” Alice whispered, her gaze dropping once again to the yellowed paper she’d found tucked inside the scrapbook:

  Dear Phil,

  I know it’s been awhile since my last letter. We sure shared a lot of good times when I was back at school. I heard you’ve been pretty busy this summer and that you’re thinking about starting a career soon.

  Back before I left, you remember when we talked about getting serious. I know you said you weren’t ready for a big commitment, but I was. I just can’t see myself being alone, especially when I get back from the war. It’ll be time for me to start a new life and I want to share it with someone else.

  Since you told me in your last letter that you still can’t say yes, I think it’s time for us to go our separate ways. I don’t want to stand in your way as you get ready to live your life, but I can’t wait any longer for you to make up your mind.

  If you’ve changed your mind, please write and say so. If not, then I guess this is goodbye.

  —Wesley.

  Her eyes fluttered closed as she imagined her aunt reading those same words in the crowded cafeteria, with Wesley’s ring dangling from the chain around her neck.

  On the phone, Phylis’s voice grew faint with remembrance. “And that was the end of it. I was just too hurt to answer him.”

  Alice’s finger stroked the letter. “So you let him go.”

  “I stuck the letter out of sight and tried not to think about it,” Phylis continued. “Since I didn’t write, he didn’t, either. I heard a few months later through one of his friends that another girl was wearing a big engagement ring he’d mailed her from somewhere in Vietnam.”

  “He was engaged that quickly? After everything you shared, how could he move on so fast?”

  Phylis let out a dry laugh. “Did you expect him to mope around forever? Of course he found somebody else. The girl he dated before he met me, I think it was. Anyway, when he got back, they got married and moved away so he could go to medical school.”

  Alice let the note from Wesley fall from her lap. She wondered if Phylis was picturing her life differently. A life in which she had said yes to the serious young boy in the uniform. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking.

  A moment of silence fell before Phylis spoke again. “Well, we can’t have everything, can we? I was happy in my own way, I suppose. And it was my own fault what happened. Letting him go like that.”

  “But do you…” Alice hesitated. “Do you regret it, Aunt Phil?” She hated to ask the question. If the memory was painful, she was only making it worse.

  “Alice, dear.” Phylis sounded tired. “Oh, Alice, some things can’t be changed. It doesn’t matter in the end what we want, we just move on with our lives.”

  Before Alice could respond, there was a faint beeping noise in the background. “That’s my doorbell, dearie. It’s my ride to the embroidery workshop, so I have to go, or I’ll be late.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Phil. For everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” her aunt said. “I just hope it helps you figure out your own life.”

  There was a faint click, followed by the dial tone. With a pang, Alice remembered her own doubts about love grow as she watched her vibrant, colorful aunt become older and careworn.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” she whispered. The faded images were silent, exchanging inscrutable glances on the pages. “Why didn’t you talk about it all those years ago, instead of hiding it?”

  “I think you can guess why.” Aunt Phylis was seated behind her on the sofa. “Pride. And bitterness. Two perfectly good reasons to forget anything in your life.”

  She slid from the sofa to crouch near Alice on the floor. “But you still have time, Alice. Time to make the right choice.”

  “Then all these hallucinations, this is about me fighting my urge to run away?” She heard Phylis laugh, as if her answer was somehow funny.

  “It’s about more than the commitment, sweetie. Don’t you realize that? You’re missing the chance
to spend your life with someone you love deeply.”

  Alice groaned and rested her head against the sofa. “So is all this a bump on the head, or some kind of Divine intervention?” Goose bumps crept across Alice’s skin. “I feel as if I’m being haunted by some kind of ghost.”

  Aunt Phylis laughed. “Maybe old romances have ghosts, too.”

  There was silence following these words. When Alice opened her eyes, she was alone in her apartment, with only the images of Aunt Phylis in the book on the floor and her smiling photo on the mantelpiece.

  Ghosts Of Romances Past

  10

  A shaft of morning sunlight woke Alice from a dreamless sleep. She brushed hair from her eyes. An old afghan from the sofa was pulled over her knees; she had a vague memory of feeling cold and reaching for it in the dark.

  How long had she been asleep? She glanced at the clock, its hands pointed to the number nine. Seventeen hours ago she had been arguing with a figment of her imagination, now it was morning, and she was alone in her living room with a clear head and conscience.

  Is it over now? Please, Lord, I need it to be over.

  She ran a hand across her head, examining the bump. The swelling had gone down, but pressure on the wound still produced a sharp pang, making her wish the doctor’s appointment was this morning instead of tomorrow.

  Tossing the afghan aside, she rose and moved towards the kitchen to make some coffee. Halfway there, a knock on the door sent her heart skipping and caused her to stop dead in her tracks.

  The return of Aunt Phylis? But no, illusions didn’t have to knock on the front door.

  Warren, then? She scrambled to reassemble her appearance using the reflection in the curio cabinet. Red curls frizzing in all directions, a smear of eye makeup beneath the faint lavender mark on her temple.

  “Coming,” she shouted, pulling her tennis sweater off and tossing it towards her bedroom. Beneath was a pink tank top embroidered with roses. Pink was Warren’s favorite color. She wanted him to see her looking her best after that tumble at the restaurant. Turning the knob, she pulled the door open and gave him her biggest smile.