Dancing

You have never left me.

I was standing at the counter,
I was waiting for the change,
When I heard that old familiar music start.
It was like a lighted match
Had been tossed into my soul.
It was like a dam had broken in my heart.

It wasn’t so long ago. I mean, of course it was, it was a thousand years ago, it was yesterday, it was, it is – like me – somewhere tumbling in time. I was sixteen and on the phone with a girl from school. She was at her boyfriend’s house. I heard a voice in the background, and interrupted her mid-sentence. “Who is that?”

“Who is who?”

“That guy I just heard in the background.”

“That’s just William. Why?”

“Because I’m going to marry him.”

And like that, I knew. That probably sounds crazy. It probably is a little crazy. But we do that in my family. My grandmother saw my grandfather on a street corner one day in high school, and pointed him out to her friends. “I’m going to marry that boy,” she said. She didn’t even know his name. They had been married for 48 years when he died.  My grandmother always claimed to be something of a witch. I inherited some of that from her.

Somehow, I don’t remember how, we met. Maybe even that day. And somehow, I don’t remember how, we became lovers. And somehow, and this I do remember, I fell in love with you. The first man I ever loved. No, not that. Not exactly. The first man I ever fell in love with. And I fell hard. Didn’t even extend my hands to break the fall. The kind of hard you can only fall at sixteen. When you’re heart is young and un-bruised, when you still believe.

You were older than me (not much) and from the wrong side of town (very much). You had quit school and were working construction. I kept it from my parents that we were dating, knowing they wouldn’t approve. I kept a lot from my parents in those days. It never occurred to me not to keep things from my parents.

We dated all that spring and that summer, and then in autumn, we broke up. I don’t remember why anymore. I doubt you do either. Just one of those silly, teenage things.  

I guess something must have happened,
And we must have said goodbye.
My heart must have been broken,
Though I can’t recall just why.

So that’s how it ended.  

Except, it hadn’t ended.

I dated another guy for a while. And you dated my best friend, Marla (though I wouldn’t know that for years). I tried to convince myself I loved this other guy. I failed. And finally, in failing, I broke up with him.

And the next day, I mean actually, the very next day, you called. I remember my breath catching at the sound of your voice on the other end of the phone. Was I busy Saturday night? No. I was not busy. Yes. We could go out.

You were working 12 – 14 hour days. I was in school, and working as a waitress as night. Somehow we squeezed each other in. We would go to drive-in movies (“flicks”), and you would hold me in your arms, and I would sleep through half of them.

We spent a lot of time in your car on back country roads.

You used to hold me down and wrestle with me, and I would laugh and laugh. You and your friends taught me to play poker. You tried to teach me to dance in crowded bars. I was too shy and self conscious to let you.  We went on walks some nights in the moonlight.  One night, I stretched out on the top of your car and looked up at the stars and thought, “I will remember this moment for the rest of my life.” And I did.

On rainy days, I would skip school to spend the day with you. God, how I loved a rainy day.

And there was a God in Heaven.
And the world made perfect sense.
We were young and were in love –
We were easy to convince.
We were headed straight for Eden
It was just around the bend.
And though I had forgotten all about it
The song remembers when.

By the time I was ready to graduate and move on to college, we were engaged. I had finally let my parents know about you.  They were… skeptical. You spent most of that summer trying to get me to run off to Vegas with you. I’m still not sure why I didn’t. God knows, I loved you beyond reason.

But I think somehow I suspected you weren’t ready for marriage. And maybe somehow I suspected that neither was I.

My freshman year of college, your phone calls started coming less and less often. I tried to call you one night about 3 a.m. and when you didn’t answer, I knew. I had been replaced.

One of your friends started to call me. And I liked that he was calling me.

So that’s how it ended.

Except it hadn’t ended.

Years later, both fresh from a divorce, we found each other again. I was living somewhere else. You sent me a plane ticket, and I spent a week with you, lounging about and reading while you worked. Ironing a shirt you so shyly asked me to iron. You wanted me to move back. And I still don’t know why I said no, except that I suspected you still weren’t ready. And maybe I suspected I wasn’t ready either.

You ended up at my sleepy little town on business, and tried to call me, but I was at a friend’s house and missed you. By the time I got home, the hotel switchboard had closed down. And we missed each other. You called a couple of times after that, and then you didn’t call any more.

And that’s how it ended.

Except it hadn’t ended.

For all the miles between us
And all the time that’s passed,
You’d think I haven’t gotten very far.
And I hope my hasty heart
Will forgive me just this once,
If I stop to wonder how on earth you are.

A week ago last Friday you called me. Your voice was the last thing on earth I expected to hear. But there you were. In the area on business. You would think less than a week had passed since we were starry-eyed kids. We picked up right where we left off, all those years ago. Not where we left off after our first divorces, when we were both bruised and a little wary. Where we left off way at the beginning. I fell back into your arms like I had never left. I fell back into your arms like a sixteen year old.

And my parents?  The ones who had never quite approved of this high school drop-out from the wrong side of town?  They now remember you as “the nicest guy” I ever dated.  Well, they’ve seen me through two bad marriages. They have some perspective. So do I.

We had dinner and while sitting on the couch talking,  I turned to you suddenly, and asked, a little shyly,  “Will you do me a favor?  Will you teach me to dance?” And after all these years, in our bare feet on my living room floor, we danced. We danced and danced, and by the end, I wasn’t half bad. There I was! In my forties, figuring out what to do with my feet!

I had the time of my life.

And William, somehow, no matter all the loves that have passed between then and now, I still love you. Every bit as much as I loved you at sixteen. Though less blindly. With eyes wide open. I like that we’ve both set our feet a little deeper in the ground. I like that we’re older. I like that we’re beyond the need to impress each other or be something that we’re not. I like who we both grew up to be. You grew up to be the man I always knew you would be. I’m enormously proud of you. Proud for you. You are still the man I fell in love with all those years ago. You’re more the man I fell in love with all those years ago.

I know, you’re still not ready. Different reasons this time. Your business takes too much of your time. And you know what? That’s okay. Because – in my way – I’m still not ready either. I have all these ghosts. I need to figure some things out. Your business is going to require everything of you for a few years. My ghosts, my mountain of ghosts, may require everything of me for a few years.

I don’t know how this story ends. Maybe in a few years, it picks back up. Maybe it just ends with us dancing in my living room. If it does, that’s okay.

In fact, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

But I do know this one thing: true love never dies.

And my heart dances.



Musical interludes by Trisha Yearwood from “The Song Remembers When”

Slipping Through My Fingers: Epilogue

Writing Slipping through My Fingers opened doors in my mind that I’ve kept resolutely shut for years and years. It’s been more painful than I could have begun to anticipate.

It may be a while before I can write again.

Or not. Perhaps my mind will turn to other things, and more memories will come spilling out of the box.

Regardless, I’d like to thank each of you for bearing witness. For seeing the whole story through. For affirming me and hearing me.

Thank you,

Lily

Slipping Through My Fingers Part 3

Not long after that party, The Hotel closed down. Jeremy, Jay and Erica had all graduated. One by one they got jobs and moved away. Perry moved on. (Much to my grief. I adored Perry.) And you got a little house a block or so away.

Oh! We were all so in each others’ laps in those days! Living in this tiny set of city blocks we all called “The Ghetto.” A single tornado could have wiped us all out! When my car died, and I was walking to class every day, I remember that I knew everything about everyone. I knew whose cars were parked at the wrong houses at 6 A.M. I knew who stayed home alone. I knew who was happily in their lovers’ arms.

And still you wonder
Who’s cheating who?
And who’s being true?
And whose car is parked next door?

Remember? We laughed about that, you and I.

But I’m digressing again. Getting lost in all these tangled threads…

I was with Lena. We were constant, but not exclusive. I still went out with Jessica. Jessica with her lovely Nordic features, and her breasts like over-ripe melons. Jessica who would sit on my lap and kiss me in the University Center in that conservative town in those conservative days. And if I remember correctly, you found Jessica to be rather a fine bit of eye candy too. She’s a doctor now, you know? I lost track of her sometime after her divorce (He was a jackass). Another loose end. Another piece of my heart.

I also dated a friend of Jay’s from back east. Always drunkenly, but never seriously. At least not for me. But I suspect it was quite serious for him. He was waiting for me to recover, to get over what Jeremy had done to me. He was patient and sweet and – I think – quite in love with me. That makes me sad now. He was a good man. I hope wherever he is, that he met someone wonderful, made beautiful babies, and is ridiculously happy. Please let it be so.

I kept seeing Tom now and again. Sometimes he saw Lena. And Lena had another man, Jake, in New York.

And you were mostly, but not always, with Melody. It was always somewhat scandalous when you weren’t with Melody. Fodder for gossip and speculation.

I remember DeAnna telling me one night that she had gotten drunk and made a pass at you. A rather blatant pass. What might once have been considered throwing herself at your feet. She told me she took off all her clothes and offered herself up to you. She also told me you were a gentleman about it. That you refused “to take advantage of her condition.” You can’t imagine what I felt hearing that story. It took every ounce of control to not let the sheer jolt of jealousy and then the relief, show on my face. I actually screamed once I got out of her apartment and into my car. A long, gut retching scream.

I remember sharing ice-cream with you at the University Center. It was obscene, the way we ate that ice-cream together, feeding each other. Dancing our tongues across the spoons we held out to each other. It was passionate and young and hungry. It was everything we never said out loud. Perhaps even to ourselves.

I remember countless meals at that Mexican food restaurant eating machicado and spicy chicharrones. Chicarrones so hot they’d make your eyes water and your nose run. Chicarrones hot enough to kill even the worst of our hang-overs.

I remember walking up to Our Table at the UC one morning wearing a black mini skirt with a slit up the side. You slid your hand along the outside of my thigh, reached the top of the slit, and whispered to me, “You aren’t wearing anything under that? Are you?” I just smiled. I was wearing something under it. But you were so much enjoying the thought of me not wearing something under it, that I couldn’t bring myself to steal that from you. So I smiled. And enjoyed the thought of you enjoying that thought so much.

We danced a paso doble’ that never reached a conclusion. A volcano bubbled under a calm surface. The passion between us could have melted the walls. Yet there was a careful, studied distance between us. A distance I was too afraid to try to cross.

Then one night, inevitably, I found myself at your house. I’m not sure how I ended up there that night. If there was a gathering of courage and a jump, or if you led me there.

I should remember, I really should. But I don’t.

There was, of course, a crowd there. And we were all, of course, drinking. A lot. In the middle of it all, it began to pour rain, and Jonathan saw that his car windows were unrolled. All you guys – you tough, radical guys in your leather jackets and steel toed boots – stood on the porch and did nothing! So I did the only sensible thing: I dashed out into the rain and rolled up his windows. I came back soaked to the bone, with my black dress clinging to me like second skin.

Gradually, much too gradually, people drifted off. Then it finally was just you and me. And when you took me in your arms that night, I wanted the world to stop. I wanted the whole universe to slip away and leave you and me there in that moment.

Our first night together was stolen from Jeremy. This one, almost 18 months later, was stolen from Melody.

And that night, like the first night, as we made love, you asked me over and over, “Will this happen again?”

And over and over – like a damned fool – I said, “I can’t be the one to answer that.”

Why the hell not? You were asking!

What a fool I was! Why, oh why, didn’t I just say, “Yes”?

For twenty years now, I’ve lived with wondering what my life could have been like if I had just summonsed the courage to just say, “Yes.” Yes to you. Yes to all the possibilities of love. Yes to the risk of having something that important to lose. Because Lli, even though I never said it, I was all “yes” to you.

And when you fell asleep near dawn, I stayed awake with you for a few hours, and then quietly dressed and went home. When I saw you the next day at Our Table, I kissed you on the cheek and whispered, “Still friends?”

You answered, “Of course.”

Then you graduated and moved. Left Mel. Left me. And I began to wait.

The telephone became my enemy. It would ring, and it wouldn’t be you. And then one night, I was very ill. So ill, they wanted to put me in the hospital, and when I wouldn’t go, they insisted that I find someone to stay with me that night. I called DeAnne and she came. And that night, you called.

I was too sick to talk to you long, and she talked to you for over an hour. Never knowing that I was hating her each moment she spent on the phone with you. Hating her for stealing what should have been my conversation with you.

And you never called again.

*          *          *

Years later, I was talking to Wanda one night and she asked me who had been the great love of my life. Wanda and I were close. She knew all my stories, all my lovers, even our story. When I answered, I told her it was you. A man I had spent two nights with. The love of my life.

My best friend now, a friend who has been close to me for 17 years, a friend who is one of the few people who can even keep track of my old lovers, asked me something similar once. I told him it was someone I didn’t speak of.

And I don’t. I can’t even talk about you. I can barely speak your name.

Every since this world began
There is nothing sadder than
A one man woman
Looking for the man that got
away…

*          *          *

You are married now. You have two daughters. It pleases me enormously that you have daughters. I’ve never known a man who loved women more than you. How lucky these girls are to have you for their father. How lucky your wife is. And I hope, oh god, I hope, you are lucky too. I wish you all joy. I wish you every precious thing my heart can dream.

And me, I look at my empty hands and remember. Remember all that slipped through my fingers.

And my heart – twenty years too late – whispers into the darkness, “Yes.”