#21: Beginning Again
"The happiness deserved a chance. It was time to take it."
(Last time, Charlie went for a walk—and came to a decision.)
Everyone was still asleep when I returned.
I padded over to Ralph’s laptop. The sign-on information for the Internet was on an index card next to the desk, so I entered the password.
The modem began to warble its vacuum-soprano song. It sounded like a distorted alarm—like the convulsions of the heart.
I signed into my Yahoo account. Then I started to type.
Gina,
I spent months and months missing you. It’s amazing how much missing there can be in a heart.
I got your letter. And I have to be honest. I didn’t at first know what to make of it. It’s funny. You wanted to write me a letter to get the words right, and I’m writing to you to try to figure out what to say.
We grew up together. And I owe you so much for that. And I’m sorry for, well, everything. I’m sorry for the fights and the tears. I’m sorry for the mean things I said. I’m sorry that this wasn’t a happily-ever-after ending.
But I understand now why you had to move out to Seattle. You knew that it wasn’t working. You knew that we both had to change.
And now we’ve changed.
I thought about coming out to see you. I really did.
But I can’t now. We’ve changed. And we both need to start anew.
I don’t say this with bitterness or anger or anything like that. I say this because I care about you. I think we both deserve a new start.
I was so angry at you for so long, Gina. (Anger, self-pity, depression—I had it all.) But I’m not angry anymore.
We had a lot of great times. And I still care so much about you.
Your friend,
Charlie
It was all true, I realized as I sat back in the chair. It was like I had gained a new perspective. I still did care for her, but that care no longer stabbed my heart like a white-hot poker. And the anger was gone and so was the regret that I had both fed and fed upon for so many months.
We did have to start anew.
So I unfolded the small piece of paper next to me and typed in another e-mail address. For some reason, my fingers didn’t quiver too much.
Bonnie,
It’s me, Charlie. Remember me—I’m that guy you met on the road and danced with at a wedding in Kentucky? The guy who then burned everything down? Who earned a place in the Biggest Jerk Hall of Fame? Who flinched when he saw the first ray of light in a really long time?
First of all, I’m sorry. I’m getting used to saying that these days. But I really am.
This is to explain—not to excuse: You know how sometimes you fantasize about something for so long and then it becomes true and then you realize you don’t want it anymore? Well, for a year, I had cast my whole self into this wish that somehow my ex and I could get back together. So when I heard that she did maybe want to—it was like a stab in the dark.
But now I see I never could go back.
This is the real first of all—first in what I feel inside. I really like you. I sometimes feel like you and I have found some secret door in the universe—the one that makes a dead end into a wide-open horizon.
You have such a light inside. It comes out when you’re on the violin—or when you’re tucking a strand of hair behind your left ear. You know how to improvise with life. That’s one of the reasons why your smile is so great—it lets some of that light shine through.
I want to see you again. I want to hear you play the violin again. And I’d love to hear your laughter.
So maybe we can begin again?
In hope,
Charlie
And that was all true, too, I saw. The happiness deserved a chance. It was time to take it.
Happy Days II
My mother’s cool hand reached up to touch my cheek. “Disappointment? No. Never. Charlie, I want you to be happy. I want you to be free.”
Ralph wanted to drive back with us. “Maybe I’ll come back for a week or so. Take a break from the cabin.”
“Driving to Montana doesn’t count as a break from the cabin?” Pat asked.
Ralph shrugged. “It’s lonely out here, but not in a good way. I can catch a bus back here later. It might be inspirational to go to the beach. I’ve been meaning to write some poems about piping plovers.”
So the wheels went around again. The odometer went around, mile by mile. We rode on the serpentine, solid road. It touched ocean to ocean. It cut through mountain and lake and prairie and city.
As we crossed the border of Western Massachusetts, we drove through the silhouettes of the Berkshire Mountains—not like the mountains of the West, slicing the sky with ragged reach, but great green undulating waves. The sights grew familiar. The billboards advertised companies and chains that were no longer strangers to us.
Pat craved “one last adventure,” so we drove to a beach near my house. The waves hissed against the amber sand. Most of the tourists were gone, but a few tried to squeeze a little more out of the dusk’s waning hour: scattered figures bobbed in the ocean or slouched in beach chairs. Two children ran through the surf, splashing amidst the white foam at the water’s edge. Down by a jetty, someone was fishing, the long rod suspended like a broken mast in the air.
Heavy with salt and the scent of seaweed, the air clung to my nostrils and tongue. Pat kicked off his sneakers and waded into the ocean until the water licked the hem of his shorts. He was smiling. Even Danny took off his shoes as he went inspecting shells on the shore. With a grin, Pat splashed him. Danny kicked back, and then they went chasing after each other. Their footprints swept in and out of the water’s edge, the waves tossing over them. Ralph stretched out in the sand and ran his fingers through it.
As I walked toward the water, I rubbed my arms through the wrinkled wool of the old coat from Kentucky. The sand ate my steps; my feet sunk into hills. The waves crashed. The saudade echoed with the wind and the waves.
I had spent so many hours at this beach. I had stood there in the winter, amidst the lone and level sands. I had watched the relentless, restless waves devour inch by inch. With an arctic edge, the wind had flailed my face and left scabs of numbness.
Now, the heat from the long day seemed to radiate from the sand. The breeze blew with the promise of further shores—the vastness of the ocean—the hope of new horizons.
I wandered over to Pat and Danny. Grains of sand had piled up in a lump beneath the arch of my foot. Pat had perched himself atop an empty lifeguard’s chair, watching the sea. I sat down at the base of the chair and emptied my sneaker. The sand fell like rain.
His hair tousled by the wind, Pat laughed. “It’s at a time like this that I almost feel like howling at the moon. Look, there it is!”
The moon bobbed amidst the dueling pinks.
Ralph had risen from the sand. He said, “Despite all the tourists, the beach can be rather beautiful.”
“We have returned,” Pat said.
We had returned. And I had a date with those wrinkled pages in my desk drawer—to finish that thesis and move on. And grow up.
“It was worth it,” Pat said, “totally. For all the craziness—for something different.”
“The rave,” Ralph said.
“The Northern Lights,” Danny added.
“The wedding,” I breathed. “It’s good to be back.”
Pat grinned. “Glad to hear you say that, Charlie.”
“You come back to yourself, but you’re not what you used to be. And maybe that’s a good thing.”
“Hey!” Like lighting had struck him, Pat bolted upright in the chair. “We can still do Kentstock. Kentstock East. It must be on right now.”
“Why not?” Ralph said with a smile.
Danny shrugged. “I’ve never gone.”
“What do you say, Charlie?”
“You guys go. Just drop me off. I want to go home.”
Moving On
“We’re a long way from the Gardens.” She suddenly remembered that as she stepped away from the email window open on the computer. She had said those words to Charlie the night they had broken up, the night she had told them she would go to Seattle alone. He always had that way of provoking her, of making her so melodramatic. It was because he was so serious. Charlie could be a lot of fun, but he lived his whole life like he was looking for an epiphany around every corner.
One night a couple years ago, when they were getting ready to meet some of her friends from high school in Providence, she had been braiding her hair, and he had been lying on her bed. All of a sudden, he sat up and started talking about how this was such a perfect moment—with the rain and the smell of the fresh-cut grass or something. He seemed like such a child, and she had dismissed it. She knew that he had held it against her. And she held it against him for holding it against her.
“Maybe I could act like a child, too,” she said to Cleocatra, as she swept the rag-doll cat up off the floor and scratched her head. She walked over to the sliding door that opened onto her apartment’s tiny balcony. For some strange reason, Cleocatra didn’t mind being taken out to the open air that high up. Maybe her nine lives made her indifferent to danger.
She looked at the supermarket and coffee shop below her building. She looked across—to the skyscrapers rising against a gray backdrop. Cleocatra rubbed her soft white head against her shoulder. The cat’s claws kneaded her flesh through her t-shirt.
Maybe she had done something childish, too, by writing that letter.
“Boys are so weird,” she said to Cleocatra. She put her lips close to the cat’s ears and whispered (so softly she could hardly hear it herself), “But girls are weird, too.”