Hush Hush

from As It Were

It went back to the forest, at least.
And it was there in that old growth, beneath the majesty of the oak tree, that we shared the first kiss I can remember. Before this moment, I’d never thought much of past lives and all that. But beneath the oak with this girl, I felt something otherworldly and yet familiar, as if I was being reminded of something long forgotten, something both ephemeral and immortal. As our lips parted, she smiled and told me this was like a birthday gift, for today was her 11th birthday. And then summer camp ended, and we went back to our separate worlds. But in the late summer, each year of my adolescence, Walt took us up to the cabin on the river, and on August 17th I’d hike up to the old logging road and lay beneath the stars at night, listening to the river, and I’d wish Calliope Jones a happy birthday.

We went to different schools early on, in our respective parts of town, but I had a few friends from the hills, and I was always desperate to get my hands on their yearbooks to see her photo. When I was 13 I went with Lucas and Freddy to see Titanic, and as we entered the lobby I spotted her there with a gaggle of girlfriends. We saw and recognized each other instantly, and she whispered with her girlfriends as my friends and I headed into the theatre. We took our seats, and soon after the girls filed in and sat three rows in front of us. They whispered to each other and peeked over their shoulders, and then finally she turned to me and said:

Don’t you go to Blue Oak?

To which, smooth and suave, I replied:

Yeah.

Gina Rombus picked us up that night, and driving home we spotted Calli and the girls outside the ice cream parlor. I turned in my seat to watch her as we passed, and then announced confidently that this would be my girlfriend someday. Gina chuckled condescendingly and advised me not to get ahead of myself.

The summer before high school I learned from my friend Daniel that Calli would be going to Manzana High, and I remember that summer as one of unparalleled excitement and vivid dreams, down in Manzana and up at the cabin by the river. On the first day of our freshman year, she chose the desk beside mine in Honors English, and then after class we walked together to her locker. I told her I still remembered her birthday from summer camp. She stopped in her tracks beneath a drooping butcher paper pep rally banner, her eyes wide as the hallway, and then she asserted calmly that she didn’t know what I was talking about or how I’d found out but that we’d never been there in the forest together.

Was she fucking with me? I certainly have it coming. Did she not remember? I surely remembered it all too well. And while we quickly became close friends and then sweethearts (BOOYAH Gina), Calli maintained resolutely that we’d never seen each other before that night at the cinema. When I asked how she’d known that/why she’d inquired if I’d gone to Blue Oak, she told me that one of her friends thought she’d met me at a dance. I found all of this patently absurd, but Calli maintained it was true, and as the years passed I began to question my own memory of things.

One night during our senior year, her father was out of town and her mother was attending a benefit in the city. I rode my bicycle into the hills and then climbed the oak tree to hop over the garden wall. We swam in the pool beneath the autumn stars, and then we laid together wrapped in a large plaid blanket in the drawing room beside the piano, listening to Black Christ of the Andes. At some point I kissed her and her eyes welled up and with infinite wonder I found myself staring into two bottomless Walden Ponds. And then she sat up, wiped her eyes gamely, and got to her feet. Taking my hand, she led me behind her through the house, up the staircase, down the hall and into her bedroom. But instead of climbing into her antique fourposter, she sank to her knees and then rolled onto her back and slid beneath the bed, imploring me to follow, and despite my considerable confusion I complied. We lay flat on our backs, staring up at the wooden slats, and then her left arm slid up between our bodies to point to a marking on the pine just above our noses. In an early incarnation of her handwriting, it was written in indigo ink: I ♥ Oak Tree Boy.