DJ
Sometimes, things work out. The more my Wednesday, in-the-confession-booth visits with Chris continued, the more comfortable they became. Summer turned into fall, and the leaves turned red and gold. With the crisp, perfect weather, came a feeling that everything could be the backdrop for a Disney movie. I took long walks every morning in a park near my house and noticed every cardinal, and robin, and blue jay, every tiny frog, or hurrying squirrel. The all seemed ready to turn to cartoon characters who would sew your dress out of curtains and ice your cake.
I was filled with gratitude. One day I found myself skipping, actually skipping down the path.
I know that I had a lot to be grateful for. The weather was great, and the stores were beginning to stock Halloween decorations. It was one of those falls, that because things were going so well, the entire world was colored by my rose-colored glasses.
I began to view Chris like a writing partner, a first listener to test stories out on, as well as a muse. He also had become a real friend, the Wednesday's in the booth taking on a surreal quality of being alone and together, like sitting in a dark pub with a large ale and talking to, but not being able to see, the person sitting next to you.
So on quite a few days, I let myself skip, and swing my arms, even though that's silly. But it made sense. I had a great boyfriend, who had been healthier for months, and now a good friend who was very supportive, a job that was relatively low stress.
I even started jogging some mornings, something hadn't done since high school.
Considering I was in such a perpetual good mood, it surprised me when I got so pissy on the Saturday before Halloween, after doing a ton of errands, when I came home to find my boyfriend's car in the same place he'd left it earlier, on the street, instead of where it would have been if he'd gone out and come back: in the driveway.
I stomped into the house. I asked him to do one thing. One! Get asparagus. So I could make a nice lobster dinner for us. And he couldn't even be bothered to go out and do that one thing. Jeez.
"Hey, Lazy!" I said as I put all my bags down on the kitchen counter. "What's your excuse?"
My boyfriend didn't answer. I started un-packing some of the things I bought. I put the lobster tails that I'd gotten from the fish market in the fridge, and put away the new package of fancy napkins, and I had the roll of tin foil in my hand when I went down the hall to check on him.
He was lying on the bed, absolutely grey.
I ran to him, dropping the tinfoil. It fell to the ground with an odd thunk noise. I tilted his head back, put my mouth to his and breathed out, started chest compressions, administering CPR before realizing that my lips had touched only cold.
My knees buckled, and I landed on the floor by the side of the bed. Didn't he have a do not resuscitate, anyway? By how cold he was, he might have been dead for hours. Still I felt I should feel for a pulse, because even though I could sense he was long gone, what if I were wrong?
There was no pulse. I put my forehead down on the bed near his hip. "No," I said. He was doing so well. "Why couldn't you just get asparagus?" It was a ridiculous thing to say, as if, if he had been able to go to the store to get a vegetable everything would have been fine.
I took out my phone and dialed 911.
"What's the nature of your emergency?" a female operator said.
It took me a few tries to speak. I guess it wasn't an emergency anymore, was it. But weren't you supposed to call 911 when someone died?
"My boyfriend died and I don't know what to do," I said.
"I'll talk you through it," she said gently. "I'll talk you through it."
---
In a blink of an eye, my life changed. The Halloween decorations looked sinister. I walked through my days as if I were surrounded in a grey cotton cloud, or wading in a murky stream.
I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't answer check my personal email. I wrote the articles I needed to for work, but I felt like I was phoning in the answers from some remote part of my brain, composing blog posts lauding fake Christmas trees with "authentic" tree scents, and finding ten synonyms for high-speed for a new internet company that claimed they would "revolutionize" the world.
There was a word for what I was doing. Sleepwalking.
I was very hungry, but the idea of eating anything was appalling. I found the only thing I could eat was ice cream.
So for months, I ate only ice cream.
It was a diet of Breyers ice cream, chocolate, chocolate chip, and vanilla, and water. My body began to look thinner and more hallow and hollow, except for my stomach, which pouched out, like a soft, distended basketball.
I noticed, but I barely noticed.
I could only wear my loosest clothes.
This went on, until Christmas Day. I wouldn't even have realized that it was Christmas, except I went to the grocery store to get ice cream, and the store was closed.
I realized that my plans for Christmas dinner, was ice cream by myself.
Again, it was my knees that first had a problem supporting me and I crouched down, right there in front of the closed glass doors, on the pavement, and started bawling and couldn't stop.
What the hell was happening to me?
After I had cried myself out, I decided that I needed to pick myself up. Not just from the huddled, blubbering, tissue-holding mass I was in at the moment, but from my pattern.
This had gone on long enough.
Oddly, my first thought was of Chris. Oh, God. My boyfriend had died on a Tuesday. I had missed my standing Wednesday appointment with Chris, but had forgotten to call and cancel.
Fuck.
And I hadn't checked my emails since.
Oh boy.
I went home, washed my face, and logged on to my computer. Nine emails from Chris. I read them, in reverse order of the pile-up, so I was reading the first one that he sent, first.
*From Chris1970*
I missed you at the cathedral today. I'm hoping you just forgot? I could change some things in my schedule, and make another trip up tomorrow, or we could skip it and just meet next week, as usual.
I hope you're okay.
Of course, at first I figured you were just late. I waited. I had no idea how disappointed I'd be when I realized you weren't coming.
Now I know what the word crestfallen means.
Looking forward to your email. Hope you're all right.
–¬C.
The next emails varied in tone, conveying a wide range from jocular needling to get me to write him back, to overt worry. He speculated on the cause of the silence, siting everything from problems with my boyfriend to being abducted by aliens.
The ninth email had a heading in the subject, 'A Rose in Winter'.
*From Chris1970*
Dear DJ,
I can only guess from the silence that I've done something to upset you. I've gone over every email from you, every conversation, every moment from that first post, to the moment of listening you breathe during our first meaning, to everything we said that last day. I've wracked my brain. I can't think of anything.
Although I know in the way of women, they are mysterious, and I am dumb, so who knows? Maybe I said something and didn't realize it. If so, I apologize.
If I thought begging you to reply would help, I'd beg. Hell, I am begging. Groveling. You wouldn't think that something so little could mean so much, but to me, it did.
I have to assume, by your lack of response, over and over, that you don't want to hear from me ever again. And if you don't write back, I won't write you again after this one, I promise.
I wanted to give you something. Something half, a quarter, a tenth as precious as you gave me. But what? I don't have an address or even a last name for you.
I'm not like you. I'm not a writer. But I looked up every poem I could find on the internet, and took all the ones that made me feel something, anything, a string pulling my insides in ten different directions, like what's happening now, and I took phrases and lines from them and mushed them together, to write a poem for you.
So I could at least give you something, no matter how short of any mark, anything I would write would possibly be.
So here it is, my one and only attempt at writing ever.
A ROSE IN WINTER
When I think of you, a see a huge, untouched field,
Buried under deep snow,
That sparkles like thousands of small, sharp diamonds,
Reflecting light.
And in the middle of all that brilliance,
I see one thing and nothing else.
Strong.
