This boat has caught its wind and brought me back to life.
-Kenny Chesney/Dave Matthews, I’m Alive
P: Sorry.S: For what?
P: Making you sad
S: You make me happy, too. Both.
P: Yeah
S: Do I make you sad?
P: Yes
S: Why?
P: Just want more than we can have
Think friends might be better
S: Oh.
So this is how it ends, then?
P: Kumquat
She recalled him mentioning how he hated the Dave Matthews band. She liked them okay back in college, and could probably still produce a CD or two from some dusty box in the attic. But she thought the band seemed harmless, undeserving of such a strong word. She couldn’t imagine why P would have such a negative reaction to a very vanilla sound.
It all changed that day, driving back up the highway toward home. Because, at the very moment she read the word Kumquat, a Dave Matthews song came on the radio. And so it happened that she came to hate Dave Matthews, too. Riding along in the car, unable to breathe, both because it hurt to inhale and because even if it didn’t, her breath had been taken away when P used their safe word. She understood why he hated that band.
Heading back home with her husband and her kids, seeing all the scenery in reverse, all the scenery that she was eagerly photographing and emailing to him just days earlier, now she felt mocked by it. Mocked by the giddiness and hope, by his attention, by that momentary feeling that she’d been noticed. And wanted.
It was as if he chose that moment to Kumquat her on purpose, because he knew she would be unable to react.
She sighed heavily and shifted position, staring out the window at the road buzzing by, thinking about a night so long ago that it is was as if in a previous life. She was sitting at a little cocktail table in the Blue Note across from a boy. They had been involved for several years, and knew they were no good for each other, but stayed together anyway, too afraid, she supposed, to break that bond permanently.
She let him take a lot of things away from her. Aside from acquiring material things during their many breakups; a Black and Decker toaster oven, many A Tribe Called Quest cds, and a fuzzy little Gund puppy named Trouble, once they were done forever, she realized that he also taken her confidence, her fearlessness, and her general belief that people are good until proven otherwise.
Her faceprint could also be found on his knuckles from time to time. But she retained the original face.
When they broke up the first time, she left him. Middle of the night, sneaking away with only the things she could fit in her gym bag, looking over her shoulder. Terrified.
But the second time they broke up, they were sitting across from each other at a little table at the Blue Note. This time he broke up with her. He’d decided, after all the years of him controlling their direction and calling all the shots, that she was too needy. Too clingy. That outside of being his girl she had no identity and was smothering him. He brought her to her favorite bar, sat her up on the stool, gave her a cocktail and lit her smoke. Then he smashed her heart into a million tiny pieces.
She was certain he did it this way because he knew that in public, in her favorite little bar, she wouldn’t react. Had they been alone she may have finally fought back, but here, he was safe. Protected from ever having to know what he’d just done to her.
Her brief time with P didn’t rob her of anything. Her brief time with P began to give it all back. It reminded her of who she used to be before life happened. Before that boy, before other boys, before this decision or that event. Somehow falling in love with him in this weird, remote way put her back in touch with the person she started saying goodbye to a million years ago. The girl who laughed hard, who would try anything once, who jumped in with both feet and didn’t look back.
She didn’t think P had any idea how special he was. Maybe he’d forgotten who he used to be, too.
That night at Blue Note ended with that boy leaving her sitting there alone at the little table with her drink and her cigarette and the cab fare he left beside her glass because he didn’t want to drive her home, but didn’t want to be perceived as a total asshole. He was gone, and she sat still, her back rail straight, hands folded in her lap, staring at the glow from the jukebox in front of her. All alone. She didn’t realize she was crying until a man from another table came over and offered her a bevnap to wipe her eyes, along with a polite apology for not being the kind of man who carried a handkerchief.
Just then, her husband noticed her tears, and he handed her a paper towel to wipe her eyes. Assuming she was crying from stress and exhaustion and pain and homesickness, he handed her that paper towel, and apologized for not having any Kleenex.
She didn’t really know what kind of guy P was, whether he’d hand her a handkerchief or a bevnap or a paper towel, or if he’d be the guy who smashed her heart but left her cab fare to get back home. She wanted to be mad at him for not allowing her to see this coming. For playing his cards so close to his chest that she was totally unprepared for his hand. She tried hard to fight through her cloudy head, to ask the right questions and say the right things, but each one was perceived as rude and mean. She couldn’t get the message across that she wasn’t trying to fight, she was just trying to play catch up. She thought she was opening up a conversation when she told him she didn’t know what to do, but he’d already jumped to the end.
She had prepared herself to go on with P for a long time. Having him there in the morning, waiting for her hello, made her excited to start her day. He softened the edges with her husband, quieted her voice with the kids, dulled the homesickness for her friends. And all of the envy and discontent and anger she wrote about that made him notice her a month ago lost some intensity. She was living her life in an almost comfortable way.
Now she would have to find a way to do that on her own.
They finally pulled off the highway and turned into their neighborhood. She remembered the feeling she had just a year ago, pulling in to the driveway for the first time. That feeling of starting over, clean slate. She had that feeling again. Back to the beginning, again calculating a way to land on her feet.
She had not been looking for him when he appeared in her life, but he carved out his place there anyway. And that place was still warm from his presence. She watched her husband come around the car and open her door, allowed him to help her stand and hold her arm as she walked, leading her back into the house. It looked like leading, anyway.
It felt like pulling.
