Window Seat (part two)
Sep 03 '02
The Bottom Line the conclusion to a short story that, for the record, all of 3 people requested to hear. still, even an audience of one is flattering. comments? critiques?
“I spent two years in prison,” he announced suddenly. My hand drew back from his arm, where it had gradually fallen, and I looked up at him. It felt like a joke but he wasn’t breaking face.
“I’m sorry to…it’s just that…I mean, you don’t exactly look the type, Alan.”
“What type is that?”
“I don’t know. The criminal type I guess.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said, smiling sadly over at me again.
“I don’t even know what to say. God, how long ago was it?”
“That I was in jail? Twenty years ago now. I was only twenty-two at the time.”
“You were just a kid.”
“Yep.” He let his cigarette drop to the ground, snuffing it out under his black leather shoes. I tended to smoke slower, especially since quitting, learning the fine art of enjoying each drag. I looked again, as if anew, at his features: his thin dark hair graying and receding, a patch of baldness poking through the back; his quietly bespectacled eyes framed defiantly by bushy salt and pepper eyebrows that squinted when he was trying to remember something; the casual stubble that lightly darkened the edges of his face. I couldn’t decide if I found it appealing or not, a confusion located somewhere between his lips and his chin.
“What did you do?”
“I killed somebody. A girl, a year younger than I was. In a car.”
“Alan, that’s not funny.”
“I know it’s not funny, it was involuntary manslaughter. I was drunk.” I watched as tears fought their way into and back out of his solid blue eyes. His vulnerability lessening my own. “Sh!t, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. Tonight I mean. I didn’t exactly intend to lay all this on you on the first date. It’s not really my “A” material, you know?”
“It’s okay, Alan, really. I want to know about it,” I admitted, “I mean, if you’re up to telling.”
He rubbed his forehead with a pained focus, moving within himself.
“You know those kinds of things that happen in your life, the big events or whatever , that you talk about or tell as a story so many times – for so long – that after awhile it almost seems like it never really happened? Or that it happened to someone else you knew, and not to you?”
“Sure. Everyone has those.”
“Well, this is one of mine. The only one, really. It’s the only big thing that has ever happened in my entire life. I mean there was the marriage, the divorce, the career, and all that. But nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to set my life apart from any one else’s, so to speak. So here I am 43 years old and I’m still talking about something that happened half a lifetime ago. Something that ruined my future and my marriage and cast a shadow over everything else. Everything. And it was 1980 for chrissakes!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“You should talk.”
“Listen, if you don’t wanna tell me about it, I’m fine with that. Believe me, there’s a whole lot of things that I won’t be talking about for quite some time. You can count on that.”
“But it’s not so much that I don’t want to talk about it. I just wish it wasn’t a part of my story, a part of the baggage I have to haul out every time I get serious about someone.”
“Whoa, hold on there cowboy. This is only our first date. One date. I haven’t even agreed to see you again,” I said, challenging him.
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night then?”
“I don’t know.”
“What can I do to convince you?” he asked with a slight upturn of his lips.
“Tell me your stories.”
* * * *
“I was just out of college – a B.A. in History – and was sort of just killing time that summer. I was working for my dad painting houses, but I knew I’d eventually have to go out and get a real job or try and get into graduate school. At that point in my life, neither really sounded all that appealing.”
We were seated on a cold bench in the middle of the cool night. We were mostly alone in the near deserted park, our voices – his voice mostly – filling up the space around us. It seemed like it would rain at any moment, but somehow, it never really did. A magic hour in the Emerald City. I listened to him intently, like I hadn’t listened to any one for so long now, as he chain-smoked cigarettes and spilled out his past.
“It was 1980 and I was bored, you know? I tried to outrun all the apathy by drinking all the time. Not partying though, more just killing time at bars, that sort of thing. Mostly because I could.”
“One night – June 23rd to be exact – I had had a bit too much to drink at a nearby pub on Capitol Hill. It kind of snuck up on me actually. The kind of drinking where you don’t realize just how drunk you are until you stand up and try to walk around. I mean, I wasn’t hammered or anything like that – and I’m actually a fairly quiet drunk most of the time.”
“So, like I could feel it when I got up - but I had to get to the airport to pick up this buddy of mine who was flying in from L.A. So I had to drive. I didn’t really have any choice. At least I didn’t think so at the time.”
“It ended up I was on this two way highway out near Sea-Tac and I wasn’t quite all there. It’s like you see on TV or in the movies – only without all the music. I mean, it didn’t feel dramatic at the time. But it was. I swerved over just a bit, moving out of my lane, and hit an oncoming car, a Honda, head on. It changed everything forever.” He looked over at me, saying all he was going to say and more tired from the telling.
“I…I don’t really know what to say, Alan.”
“There’s nothing to say. It happened. Nothing will ever change that. And besides, it’s over.
“Except something like that can’t ever really be over, can it?”
“Exactly.”
“So were you hurt at all?”
“Yeah, but only a little. Fractured collar bone, couple of bruises. Things that heal. I didn’t find out that the girl – Ellen was her name - had died until much later that night. She died on the way to the hospital. Her parents lived nearby; they were there almost as quick as the police.” He let out a sigh a long time coming. “Having to see her parents though – this cute little couple, all dressed to the nines to go out to some kind of banquet – that was the hardest part of the whole thing. The way they looked at me like I was some sort of monster, the devil himself. I’ve been trying to forget their eyes ever since. It was awfully hard not to see myself the same way for a long time after, to see me through them.”
“Oh my God, Alan. That’s absolutely awful.”
“You learn to live with it though. Like diabetes or something I guess. Your life changes and it just becomes a part of who you are. It sort of has to.”
I put my arm around him, unsure why but knowing that it felt right.
“I can understand that, I think. I mean, Michael’s a part of who I am too. But I don’t think I’ve learned to live with him gone, not yet anyway. Maybe that comes later, but I don’t know. It feels like it never will some days.”
“He must have been quite a guy.”
“He was.”
* * * *
I’m at the window again, alone. The light is hitting differently in the early morning, dulling my reflection, if only for a while. There is a book open in my lap, against my bare legs, but I can’t focus to read it. Soon the sun will be out for another morning. Even if it ends up cold again – like the TV predicts – you can always count on it at least coming up. I know Michael used to like watching the sunrise, when he could get himself up early enough. He used to tell me how it made writing easier. I haven’t been up this early – although I’ve yet to be asleep - since I was in college. It’s almost soothing in its loneliness.
I knew I’d have to call Marilyn in a few hours. I wondered what I’d tell her about Alan, about the night. I wondered how much she already knew about him. It felt strange to feel sorry for him, to feel sad about someone else’s life for a change. I just couldn’t stop picturing him though, how he’d be getting up in a few short hours, going to the coffee store he managed. Making people’s drinks, taking their money, smiling at them like he had every day, working through his life carefully, trying to make it work. Like everyone does.
Oh Michael, I don’t know any more. I wish you were here, honey. I wish we could hold each other like we used to, by this stupid window seat. Nothing makes sense any more. That’s what I always counted on you for. It gets lonely in this house, even with the kids here; everything around me just misses you so much. And now I’ve met a man who opens up to me and I’m not sure how I feel about him.
I can’t ever have you out of my heart, Michael. I don’t know if there’s room for someone else, now or ever. But sometimes I want there to be, or need it even. I can still feel your breath on me some nights when I sleep, on my neck, just like always. I wake up crying.
The sun moves its head slowly out around Mt. Rainer, pouring streams of light through the window and on to my pale face leaning against it. I give myself up to it in the moment, for reasons I can’t explain. I feel its warmth and the sadness in my heart all at once.
Oh honey.
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