"...tonight I'll be out on that hill
'cause I can't stop
I'll be out on that hill
with everything I got
with lives on the line
where dreams are found and lost
I'll be there on time
and I'll pay the cost
for wanting things
that can only be found
in the darkness on the edge of town..."
Bruce Springsteen, "Darkness on the Edge of Town"
I sat up in bed and read and tried to get past it for just a minute, or a part of a minute, but then my mind drifted back to another Friday night, long ago, a Friday night, late September, 1998, a memory from nowhere, a night I hadn't thought of in years, me working part-time, Lauren still working for the insurance company, we had no car, the little old gray Sentra had died the week before, as Lauren drove to work, six months pregnant with the boy we would name Bailey.
And I shudder as I think back to that night, I shudder as I think about how much of the person I used to know as myself lies buried with her now, and I can only wait and wonder and hope that enough of that self will someday rise up from that grave. I know that not all of that self will rise, but I know that some that self already has, and I can only hope now that enough of me will rise up, enough to build a new self strong enough to carry on and raise our children and make something like a new and good-enough life for us.
&&&&
A Friday night, disappeared from view until tonight, when it appeared out of nowhere, a Friday night, Lauren due to arrive back home after a week away on a business trip. I left work that afternoon and hooked up with my boy The Big Cat over at the local betting emporium. We'd spent close to two and a half years living thousands of miles apart, first during courtship and then, for almost nine months, during the first months of our marriage, and after all that time apart we swore we'd never spend another night apart, but we did: first she went away for a month to work on a special project, and then, in that September, of 1998, we spent another week away from each other.
When she left on that week-long trip, on a Sunday afternoon, I felt sick to my stomach, sick with worry; she was six months pregnant and tired and she had to fly from Albany to Chicago and then, upon landing, she had to drive a rental car a few more hours, to Bloomington, Illinois, I think it was, and the prospect of her making that drive frightened me more than the thought of her making that flight.
&&&&
The flight and the drive wound up unfolding uneventfully and I lived through the week without her, and then Friday came, her return date, and I felt light on my feet as I met The Big Cat that afternoon. Excited at her return, and excited, intrigued, and, I'll admit, somewhat frightened at the thought of impending fatherhood.
Me and The Big Cat had a couple of beers and maybe a cigarette or two as we perused the Racing Form, just trying to kill some time until her flight arrived that evening. The last race of the day from Belmont looked interesting and we talked it over and came to a decision and thought, why not, and we put some bets in and sat down to watch the race.
Sure enough, we hit the race, but good. I won over eight hundred dollars. We went to the windows and collected our money and then I asked my friend to do me a favor: I wanted him to drive me down to the florists on Lark Street. Lauren had a thing for white roses and seeing as I'd greet her at the airport in a couple of hours, after a week apart, I thought I'd spend some of my gambling winnings on a nice dozen of those roses, and bring them to her when I met her at the airport.
&&&&
A few months ago, I got an email from an old friend of mine. In it, he said, "maybe a few less trips down Memory Lane might make things easier on yourself."
You want to go back.
You know that you cannot go back, but all you want is to go back.
Time moves in only one direction, away from the past, in our realm, at least, and you know you cannot go back.
Memories cannot bring you back, they only bring you halfway, they only bring you to that tortured netherworld, neither here nor there, where the unpleasant present and the perfect past collide violently to produce storms that rain down smiles and tears at the same time: they cannot bring you back to a place where you can see and hear and smell and taste and touch her again.
&&&&
I veritably bounced from the parking lot to the waiting area of the airport on that Friday night way back when; I borrowed The Big Cat's car to get over there, I gently laid those white roses down on the passenger
seat as I drove there, and then I parked and I picked up the roses and walked in and stood there with them behind my back as I waited for her, and then she came through and we walked toward each other and then I pulled the roses from behind my back and she smiled, deep and wide, and I let her eyes pierce me, as they so often did, and I thought, she made, safe and sound, we are whole again, we are together, again.
&&&&
There will not be a few less trips down Memory Lane, not anytime soon.
The memories will come to me, seemingly from nowhere, as the memory of the white roses and the airport came to me out of thin air tonight.
I feel the force of the present and the future pull me, violently, ceaselessly, trying to sell me on the idea of moving on and letting go, but I am not buying, not now, anyway.
I fight back fiercely against those forces, against the present and the future; I know, of course, that I cannot go back, I know that she has gone for good, I know we are no more, I feel the inexorable and oppressive resistance of the doors of our yesterdays, I know those doors are shut forever, but I still refuse to give in, I kick and scream and pound against those doors with all my might, I refuse to give in, I cannot and will not let go, no matter the futility of it, I refuse to let go now.