Farewell to the Girl

Her Roommate

She got home, and she was crying. She doesn’t cry very much. She went straight into her room, turned out the light and shut the door.

I walked over to her room and said, “Are you all right?”

Yeah. I’m just tired. It was a rough night, you know?”

“How’d he take it?”

“He didn’t say anything. He just messed around with this paperclip. He couldn’t talk to me.”

“How’re you doing?”

“I’m not sure…I don’t really want to talk about it. I just want to go to bed, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be here if you need to talk or anything.”

I couldn’t sleep that night, and later I heard someone on the porch.

A Friend

He walks up to my house with a book in his hand. It’s warm out for November and very humid, but he’s wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. And he’s got a book.

“Hey,” he says in a low voice. “I know you’re leaving soon, and I wanted to make sure I got this book to you.” He hands me the book. “I never really got around to reading it…”

“Too busy chasing girls,” I interrupt.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Something like that I guess.”

He picks up a picture off of my dresser. It’s of us from Halloween. I was a fairy princess and he was Hunter S. Thompson — a strangely natural pair.

“This is a good picture,” he says. “How come you never showed it to me before.”

“I don’t know. I guess I forgot about it or you weren’t around or something.”

“Oh…well, I’m going to get going. Here’s your book,” he says handing it to me while simultaneously putting the picture back where it had been, deliberately, too slowly, like it’s going to shatter to pieces, like there was something he needed to say to me, but he couldn’t. He isn’t ready, and things might be too awkward.

“So, I’ll see you around.”

I’m not too sure what to say because he’s acting a little strange, and he wants to talk but he won’t so I call to him “Wait! What are you up to tonight? Got a hot date?”

He sort of winces, and manages to say, “Not exactly” in a muffled clouded voice.

He walks down the steps and heads for the door, but I stop him before he walks out onto the porch.

“Hey here’s that picture. I’ve got another copy.” I hand it to him, but I really want to ask him how he’s doing? What is wrong? I want to tell him that he can tell me.

He looks at the picture for a minute and actually smiles. “You know, she was waiting for me that night. She had told me earlier that she was tired and she’d sleep at her own place since I was going out. So I was walking home and the television was flickering in my room, and I sort of laughed. She was watching CNN half asleep, when I walked into my room. That’s sort of how I remember her now, trying to stay up, watching CNN, waiting for me.” He pauses for a second, and I don’t know if I should say anything so I hug him. “Now every time I go home, I check my window to see if the TV is flickering.”

We talk for a while, and it makes me feel better, but I feel bad because I don’t like to see him hurt, and it reminds me of what it was like last week.

“I wrote her a letter,” he says.

And I feel this weird feeling in my stomach, like nerves or something. It made me think about all the letters I had written in the past weeks, how they weren’t that cathartic, how I stuffed them in my drawer, how I hid them from him because I didn’t want him to see them, about how I put every ounce, every fiber of my heart into them, about how I thought if I gave them to him, he might toss it aside or put it in his desk for later or for never again. And I imagine him reading it sometimes and crying or writing me a song. But the letter stays in my drawer not for him, only as a reminder, only for me.

“I walked it over to her house,” he says. “I said goodbye.”

A Pedestrian

I noticed him from a little ways away. I was walking my dog like I always do at 1:00 at night. It’s the only time I can and he needs to be walked so I walk him then.

He was heading towards me on the sidewalk so I kind of walk on the grass a little to give him room, you know to be polite. I was sweating a little on account of the mugginess. I can’t ever remember when it was this warm in November. It ain’t right, you know. We’ ve done some serious damage to the atmosphere. I ain’t no tree-hugger, never did care too much for those people, but we are destroying something, I think, and it ain’t no good…no damn good at all.

Like I was saying, I noticed him from far away and he was carrying this paper in his hand. I stopped and said hello, like I always do, but he just kept walking. At first I thought he was just being a no good, asshole because this here is a friendly town, but looking aback on it, I think he just didn’t hear me. I don’t know why he couldn’t hear me, but I guess he just didn’t. It was the darndest thing.

His Roomate

I was walking up the steps, and I saw the door of his room open. I sort of peeked in and he was writing in one of his notebooks so I walked in because we sort of joke each other, but he didn’t look up. It was like he didn’t see me or just didn’t want to acknowledge that I was there. We know when not to mess with each other. It’s sort of a policy in our house to leave each other be if you don’t want to deal with the other roommates. So I started to walk out.

“She broke up with me,” he said.

“What?”

“She broke up with me. It’s over.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I don’t think so, not now.”

“Okay.” And I left him alone because there is nothing I could say to him. Nothing can make a man feel better in that situation. She broke his heart. She did. There was nothing I could do. He needed to be alone. So I left him there. As I got to the door, I said, “We can talk later. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Just not now.”

So he started writing again. I guess he was trying to write it out, write it away. He told me once that he does that sometimes. I thought it was strange to do something like that, to record something you want to erase, but he said it works. I, myself, when I to things I want to forget, I go for a drive out in the prairies, away from town, out their where everything is still. There are no people, no one to get in the way. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

I went for a run, and when I got back he was putting on his coat.

“It’s kind of warm out.” I guess he didn’t hear me.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going for a walk,” he said. He had a piece of paper in his hand. I knew where he was going. I knew that he had to.

I watched him walk out to the street. Then I went back inside.

He

It was raining the night I met you. You were dressed in a short-sleeved white undershirt and it hugged your breasts as the water beaded and dripped from your hair. That was the night I met you, and it didn’t matter that it was raining because weather doesn’t matter when someone falls in love. It is arbitrary, like a winning lottery number — just dumb luck. I was wandering out of a party at my friend Chris’ house, who incidentally was your friend too. It’s funny, I’ve known Chris for four years and we never met, but then again these things happen — dumb luck I guess. I was walking out of his house with a little alcohol in my blood and the feeling of summer in my heart, encased by the night and possibilities. It was drizzling when I walked over to Chris’ for a little back to school party and as I walked home it was a veritable downpour. But that did not bother me. I don’t think it bothered you either.

I must have been walking slow or maybe you were in a rush, but about ten yards from his house you were at my side. Chris introduced us earlier tonight.

“Hi, Jack” you said. I couldn’t remember your name. I’m really bad with names.

“Uh, hey. How are you doing?”

“I’m all right. It was just getting a little too much in there.”

“Yeah, I know.” But I didn’t know. I was drunk and social. I enjoyed myself. It was good to see old friends after a summer off.

“So Jack where are you from?”

“I from the East. How about you? Where are you from?”

“You don’t remember my name, do you?”

“Uh…well, to tell you the truth I don’t. I mean I remember your face and meeting you and everything, but I can’t place the name. I’m terrible with names. But you…you graduated and you are going for your PhD,” I said saving at least a little face.

“I’m Jill, and it’s good to meet you again.”

You didn’t even bat an eye when I didn’t know you, as if it is a normal occurrence for someone not to remember your name or maybe it’s just no big deal, like you understand that we all have our little foibles and you’re okay with it. You took it in stride, and that was the first thing to impress me about you.

So I walked you home and we got acquainted a little better. You asked me about school and the future and clouds covered the stars. I remember looking at you and looking at them and thinking that they were there in the sky, in position for us somehow — like they were checking up on us, making sure everything was all right.

I walked you home and we sat on your porch, watching the rain until it stopped. Then we watched the clouds roll by and the yellow moon light them up. It was cold out, and you were barefoot and you kind of fidgeted with your feet to get them warm. I wanted to ask you if you needed socks or wanted to go inside, but I didn’t. I guess I was nervous or content. Sometimes I confuse the two.

Sometimes the only thing I remember is looking at the paper clip in my hand or the way you were twisting your hair. I remember looking at your hands — before — when they were clasped inside of mine. I remember the way it felt, the way my hands would get a little moist, the way you squeezed them a little too hard. That was before, before this moment and after another one. Before now — the present, living in memories, before the stories I created out of the past, out of moments.

‘I am in shock. Thousands of innocent people just died, all in the name of oil or capitalism. And I’m so angry right now. I don’t know what to think. I’m angry with the people around me. I’m angry with people that can have fun right now, when the world is crumbling around us. And the University, they allowed classes to go on. I understand that we can’t just stop living our lives, but it happened, you know, it happened and we have to have time to come to terms with it. I’m…I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear this. You’re trying to have fun.’

‘No it’s all right. It’s okay. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I understand where you’re coming from, and if we, we as a nation, don’t talk about this, then we will never know how to feel about it.’

And now, though I can hardly recollect the contours of your face, I remember the way you held your purse crossed over your shoulder. The image is etched into my mind, and sometimes I wake up at night thinking that you are standing in my doorway, and I try to touch you but you are just a ghost and I tremble back into reality. I try to sleep again, but it doesn’t come and I am alone, with moments, skewed by memory — moments.

I had been watching Full Metal Jacket. I had been thinking about you for half a week. Half a week, suspended in our conversation, suspended in a moment of time, suspended in the hazy memory of you and your hands and your lips and your confidence and the games we promised we would not play.

The phone was beside me, and I hesitated before pressing the button, before hearing the pulse. Do I really want to do this? She’s perfect right now; she’s like a dream. Do I want to wake up? But you cannot live in a dream because those dreams become memories. I realized that. So I called, and we talked.

Later that night, I walked into the bar, and I found you. I found you and I saw you and I was drunk, but you were clear. It was dark but you were clear. So I walked you home.

And sometimes, I walk down a street we were on together and I feel you beside me. I feel you in before, beside me, holding my hand like before. But now you are only an image, lost words, a lost time.

We pulled into the grocery store parking lot. We always ended up at the grocery store. You would go with me. And one day I asked you why you like going to the grocery store?

‘I think it goes back to this comfort complex we have as humans. We are lonely souls searching for comfort. And if we can’t find love, then we find food. There’s something about a full belly that is soothing. It’s like you know that part of you is fine. You know you can go on because the food part of your body/mind complex is sated. You are fine. Grocery stores give people, or me at least that feeling. Everything is okay in grocery stores. The comfort level is reached. Why do you think Hemingway always described eating in such great detail? It wasn’t because he thought belaboring over food was literary in the sense of someone like Fitzgerald. No, he knew that it was a basic necessity, that a full belly is comfortable. For Nick Adams eating, doing something basic took him away from awful war memories, from broken hearts, from death — from alienation. The simple act of sustaining himself, the simple act of eating took him away from the peril and the madness and the chaos of a war where nothing is definite, of a world where a bomb could blow up a city, of a world built upon greed, of the world. So that’s why I like grocery stores. That’s why people take such great pleasure in eating.’ You came back to the world. Your eyes lost that glaze. ‘Sorry about my little digression. Sometimes I get a little animated.’

And that was when I fall in love with you, right there in the grocery store beside the heads of lettuce. And I know I will love you until the day I die.

And sometimes I choke on words, words that disappeared at those moments, words I wrote in that letter, words that failed me, words that I write at this moment, words that described but didn’t describe feelings. I remember how I lost words, how words just couldn’t convey meaning. They were lost in semantics. Words were gone, but sometimes they take me back to the night I walked you home.

He just left us. He had gone up his street to go to his house. ‘So is it okay if you walk her home?’ he said giving me a nod, because he knows. He knows how much I am looking forward to being with you.

We walk back to your place. We talk for a while on your front porch and I keep asking myself if I should kiss you. I am listening to you, but my mind is preoccupied with this one thought. And you rub your hands together and are fidgeting with your feet. I can tell your feet are getting cold so I say it’s time for me to leave. And when I get up to go, I sort of stumble down your stairs, and I think about it again; I think about whether I should kiss you. But awkwardly decide against it because I’m too drunk, and you’re too perfect. And I would just mess things up. So I walk home at 6:30 in the morning with the sun rising at my back. I climb the porch roof because the doors are locked and I don’t have a key, so I climb the roof and stagger through my window and drift off to sleep

Other times, I’ll sing the lyrics to a song; it just sort of pops into my head, and it takes me back to you sitting beside me on my bed. It’s funny the way we frame the end of something, the images and the sounds and the smells, the way every time I hear that Dylan song, it makes me think of hands, our hands, of you, of you and me, of me when I was with you, of falling in love and letters — not the contents but the way my fingers held onto it — of moments — simple moments -of images, of rain and of autumn, of October and leaves when they change color, of you and me.

It’s your birthday and we are walking back to my house. You are pretty drunk, and very affectionate. You are holding my hand and we walk through downtown. You look at me and your eyes are glazed.

“You don’t understand, do you?’

“Understand what?’

‘You seriously don’t get it?’

‘Get what?’

‘This…us. How I always want to be with you. How I like watching you do your homework, how I just like to be with you, how happy I am when I’m with you… Let’s walk through the alley.’

‘I’m not sure why you want to. All there are back there are dumpsters. But it’s your special day.’

We walk back there and kiss with the putrid smell of garbage and the hum of machines crooning to us.

I remember the way my hand sort of shook as I wrote you that letter, the way I was trying to write it so you could really read it, so you could understand, so they weren’t just words on a page, but darting eyes and bitter smiles and purged tears — moments and memories, all wrapped up in a piece of paper, for you, for after.

I can’t even look at you. I can only twiddle this paperclip in my hand, like a child concentrating hard on the moon and how it moves with a car. I’m trying to understand this. I’m trying to understand you — you and me, the puzzle, how to put it together, trying to grasp how things fell apart.

‘Can’t you say anything? I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was just time. It’s not you. I don’t want you to think you did anything wrong. There’s just this tension that I feel now. Things aren’t normal, and I’m leaving. And you’re staying. I didn’t want to hurt you.’ And tears streak your cheeks.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘Because this is sad. Because I already miss you. Because I know that you are hurt, that I hurt you. And you can’t talk to me. Because I’m going to miss you and this room and watching you smile and waking up next to you.’

‘Then why are you doing this?’

‘Because it’s time. It’s time and I don’t want things to go downhill. I want to end it amicably. I want to remember you as you are. I want to remember the last two months as they were. I don’t want them to be colored by tension and fighting and being unsure. This is the hardest thing I have done. Do you know how hard this is, how hard it is to watch you and know that you are so hurt.’

But I can’t respond to this. I can’t tell you that this is impossible, that now the memories she is talking about are going to be colored by this night, that they’ll linger in my mind, that you can’t perfect the past, and that the past is always changing by our perceptions. I can’t tell you any of this. So I drive you home. And I sit down and write this letter:

You’ll remember the silence and I’ll remember the popcorn in my cupboard. You’ll remember the silence because it was so out of place; it was so foreign, a completely alien experience. The silence didn’t sound right; but it was. It was the only thing that was right. It was right for all the wrong reasons. You’ll remember how it seeped in through the poorly sealed windows of my car. It seeped in like the night and the tears and the emotions. You’ll remember the silence because it was eerie. Silence is a window to our hearts; the silence embodied every emotion, every twitch, every confusing twist and turn of our hearts much better than any words could, because words don’t translate these things, language doesn’t translate these things, only simple facial expressions, only bitter smiles and glassy eyes. These are where the feelings are, where the stories are. You’ll remember the silence because it was the end. And we always remember the end.

You’ll remember the beginning too. You’ll remember my not placing you, drinking weak gin and tonics. You’ll remember the smoke and the music, the feeling when you start something new. You’ll remember eating breakfast on Tuesdays and hanging out in the park, reading while I studied. But most of all, you’ll remember the end.

I’ll remember the popcorn. We bought it together. It’s the light stuff, because you can’t handle the buttery, slippery stuff. I’ll remember that. I’ll remember the popcorn because I won’t eat it, because there is nothing lonelier to me than watching movies by myself, that and watching an old man eat by himself, because he knows the silence all too well. I told you that. I’ll remember the popcorn and I’ll remember the end.

I guess I’ll remember the middle too because it’s hard to forget the good. But you kind of look at it through the funhouse mirror of hindsight, the mirror that distorts. I’ll remember bumbling to your house that first night, as I walked you home drunk and happy. I’ll remember waking up early because you were ready to get out of bed. I’ll remember our first kiss — ‘Oh, you’re chewing gum’ — cutting through the alley on your birthday. I’ll remember watching you read the paper at breakfast. I’ll remember walking home that morning with the sun rising at my back, climbing through my window because I was locked out, thinking, “You really want to kiss her, but don’t do it. You’re too drunk. ” I’ll remember the way your lips curled into a half smile, your big innocent eyes, playing with your hair. I’ll remember how you made me feel, how I was better when I was with you, how you made me better.

And I’ll also remember the silence, the uncomfortable, the unthinkable, the questions looming, the choking silence, and you crying — the first time I ever saw you cry, the way the tears framed your face, the emptiness that was creating a hole in my chest, the lump in my throat, the feeling that I couldn’t put into words, the blackness, the silence — ‘Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks on you while you’re trying to be so quiet?’ — and now those words resonate not with new meaning but new feeling. But it didn’t end like it does in a Bob Dylan song. There was no bitterness, no big fight. It just ended.

So here I am, and I don’t really want to do this. I’m going to walk this letter over to your house, leave it in your mailbox and walk home. And at the end it is going to say, Goodbye. Letters say that; they have to end.