Paul Carter looked across the driveways separating his - well, his parent's - house from Brooke MacDonald's house. He looked across a gulf as wide as his imagination, a chasm that had divided him from his impossible-to-endure one and only very-first-true-love. He had fallen in love with Brooke MacDonald the very first time he had laid eyes on her; which was, unfortunately, in third grade. Paul Carter could not remember one single day in grade school, junior high, or high school that he hadn't thought of her. Hell, lusted for her. He had tried every trick in the book, too, in order to get Brooke MacDonald to pay even the slightest bit of attention to him. And he had failed. He was sure it had been a conspiracy. Had to be!
He had graduated from high school without ever knowing the pleasure of lying in Brooke MacDonald's arms, of making love to her, of just loving her in the most complete way. The thought of here would always remain within a walled-off fantasy land; not exactly a tortured dreamscape, but a pain in the ass nonetheless.
Paul Carter had gone off to college, all the way across the country to California. It was a million miles away from New England in every way. The way kids did things in the Bay Area was spontaneous, original, and often outrageous. His Yankee world view had collided with new-age-hippidom, and the results had been predictable. He had shed his alter-identity in a heartbeat - well, more like a semester - and had met the first of many California Girls. Somewhere along the way, all thought of Brooke MacDonald had simply - vanished.
Paul had remained in California for medical school, and he quickly lost his attachment to undergraduate forays into the search for the ultimate sexual experience, or the ultimate drunkathon, or the ultimate weekend at Mammoth on the slopes (or the hot tub). Medical school had - so far - been the toughest experience of his life, until one afternoon in the closing days of his forth year when the telephone rang. His kid sister Melody was on the phone in hysterics. Between sobs and gulps for air he heard her squeezing out 'plane crash' and 'mom and dad are gone'.
He had - in a state of suspended dysanimation - called the student affairs office and advised them of events, made a reservation to take the red-eye across the country to Boston, and gone to the airport as night fell. He sat in an aisle seat and thought of what life might have in store for his now suddenly diminished family, how his role would change in his sisters' eyes now that their parents were gone. He felt the loss of his father with an acute ache that penetrated his soul, leaving an empty autumn feeling of leaden skies and barren trees in its hollow wake. He sipped a bumpy Coke and thought of his mother wafting around the kitchen in heels and apron, the perfect housewife, brownies in the oven out in time for the little boy and the covey of girls to devour before dinner. From thousands of miles away, he could smell the kitchen in his waking dream, smell his mother walking through the shadow of a heartbeat, hear the oven door open, the click of her heels on the slate floor, the early twilight of New England winters, dinner on the table, help with homework only a whisper away. He cried then for the first time in a long, long time.
As he walked off the plane and up the Jetway his little sister Melody hove into view, her face a wreck of red puffy tear-soaked eyes. He looked around for his other sister, Edith, and he saw her standing next to - ohmygosh - Brooke MacDonald. He made his way through the jumble of passenger greetings and plane changes to his sisters and flew into their open arms. They latched on to Paul Carter with all of the fear and uncertainty the events of yesterday could impart, their tears combined in spontaneous grief more poignant than any eulogy.
Paul looked across to Brooke who nodded her unspoken sympathy, squeezed his arm for a show of support. Her face was somehow the same - but different. Less attractive than he remembered, but the unmistakable pangs of the familiar. Something in the eyes, he thought, troubled, sad, dealing with her own grief in her own way, but still lovely. He felt connected to her in a way he couldn't understand, let alone express, by memory and fantasy. She said she had driven the girls in on the Mass Pike, that she and her mother were going to be helping out at home until Paul could get things settled. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek she offered, and they headed for the parking garage.
Thirty miles westbound out the Pike and they were at the house of a thousand dreams. Winter had held on longer than usual; the maples and oaks were just now filling out in the pale sun-dappled greens of spring. The house looked as it always had; white clapboard siding, black trim on the shutters and gutters, the front door blazing red. Almost an acre of trees, a muddy-rocky creek running across the back of the property. Heather MacDonald, Brooke's mother, stood in front of her house as Brooke pulled the old Mercury Sable up the long gravel drive, and came up quickly to hug Paul as he got out of the car. She held on a long time; he could feel her crying softly, gently on his chest, feel the warmth of her tears as they bled through his shirt.
Heather MacDonald had been her mother's closest friend for as long as Paul could remember; they had gone to the same high school; though they were not in the same graduating class. While Paul's dad had not been that close to Rod MacDonald, from what he knew, the two families had on many occasions spent time together at the Cape, sailed on dad's boat together, even spent Christmas eve's together. And as such, here the dreams of a young man had been born. For Paul Carter, the intertwined images of his mother and Heather MacDonald, of Brooke and his journeyman's eternal love for her smile and her sinfully blue eyes, all emotions seemed to collide in memories of homework and football and cookies and a million sounds and smells that were the echos of growing up in a happy house.
As Paul Carter held Heather MacDonald in his arms he felt buffeted by gales of conflict; he was overwhelmed by the sudden loss of his parents, by the rush of unbroken memories that were flooding in, and by the sudden love he felt for Heather MacDonald, for the un-thanked role she had played in his life as a child. His tears came in sudden release; he held on to Heather just as surely as if he was holding onto the memories of his mother and father.
As Paul's grip on his feelings returned, he held onto Heather for a moment longer, rubbed her shoulders with affection, and pushed himself away to look at her face. She stood perhaps a head shorter than he and looked up at him with concern and a warmth born of holding him in her lap when he had been an very small boy. She cupped her hand on his cheek, made a comment about him being all grown up, and turning, she put her arm around him and walked with him toward his parent's house.
As he walked into the house wave after wave of memories flooded in, persistent echoes of a young boy's footsteps running down the hall and up the stairs crashed into his consciousness, perhaps chased by a sister, a mother's concerned scolding following in close pursuit. He sat in a breakfast room chair, took in his sisters as they busied themselves in the kitchen, there taking comfort in the opium of habit.
Food. All he could remember about funerals and families and friends was food.
Comfort food. Cakes. Roasts. Cookies.
All the better to embalm the living, smother their grief in nice round pie-shaped comfort.
He smiled and walked down to his parent's room. Their smells still hung in the air; his father's Old Spice, his mother's Chanel No 5, all drifted in the parallel dimensions of the living and the dead. He walked to their closet; here the smells were more intense, more personal. They were in the room with him, consoling him. He closed his eyes and could hear their voices, the tinkling of her jewelry as she dressed up for a dinner party. He looked out the window of their bedroom, out onto the view they shared with one another for oh so many years. He wondered what they had thought about as they looked out on the simple pastoral elegance of New England, on their shared hopes and dreams.
He was suddenly consumed with the fear they must have felt in their final moments, as the earth rushed up at them. Were they content with what they had accomplished, whom they had brought into this world. Would their lives have passed before their eyes in grief or terror, or in a loving embrace, with respect for one another and the moment of their passing. Aware he would never know, he let the thought die, afraid of where it might take him.
He was aware of another presence in the room, and turned to see Heather MacDonald. She shut the door to his parent's bedroom and walked over to him, walked into his arms. She looked up at him with open eyes, took his face in her hands and kissed him. Not the kiss of sympathy and condolence he expected; she kissed him with a sudden passion that caught him off guard. She took off his tie, his coat, and laid him down on his parent's bed. She took off his shoes, then her own, and lay next to him, her chest to his back, and she held him, stroked his head gently through her soft fingers.
The connection he felt to his memories and his childhood was instantaneous and direct, and was just as suddenly overwhelming. He felt exhausted and confused. He felt the world spinning out of control. He felt her arms around his body, and he moved to hold her arms in his as he felt the world drop off into sleep.
Paul woke up an hour or so later, alone in his parent's bed, the noonday sun streaming in. He was being assaulted with the smells of honey-baked ham and brownies, with maybe a whiff of mac & cheese thrown in for good measure. He got up and took a leak in the familiar but off-limits bathroom, looked at his parent's toiletries spread out on the counter-top in mild disarray. 'So, this is the way it'll be...everywhere I go, everyone I see...will remind me of them.' He ran his father's old sterling silver brush through his hair, tried to sort through his thoughts as he contemplated whether or not to dare use the Listerene by the sink to kill off the dragon-breath his nap had brought on.
Just as suddenly he thought of Heather MacDonald. Of her kiss. He felt somewhat at odds with himself...what was going on with her? These thoughts walked with him down the stairs, down by the whispering memories on the walls and in the very air of the house. He made his way through the combat zone the kitchen had turned into until he found Brooke, and he motioned her outside.
He told her he was sorry for not asking how she was when he had first arrived at Logan, that he had noticed she seemed sad in a way he had not expected. She seemed nervous and hesitant, unsure of Paul in some unsteady way; presently she seemed to shift gears, and she became talkative. She told Paul that her father had been acting a little middle-aged-crazy for some time, and had suddenly - a few months ago - left his office one afternoon and flown to Cancun, and that his very young and very attractive secretary had gone with him. When he had returned from Mexico, he had announced to one and all that he was going to divorce his wife of 27 years, that he had found love again, connected to his youth again, had felt old and stale and decaying in his life with Heather.
