Waking from another dream: this time: upstate New York: a life-long haunting that began around my twentieth year...
When a love-affair begins with the subject of one's declaration leaving one at the mall, in the middle of a raging blizzard on Thanksgiving Eve, one should take this as a Portent of Doom--or at least as the first chapter in a cautionary tale. (No wonder I still have this dream--especially in Spring, where it all began to unwind...) However, when one has just turned twenty and is head-over-Adidas in limerance and longing, one rarely reads portents of any kind.
I got out of the brown Rabbit and headed into the mall, dumbstruck that my declaration had caused such consternation. (It was shell-shock: our twenty-year age difference just the beginning of the problem...) Walking alone through the mall like a zombie, replaying the last six months in time to the loop of "mall muzak", I didn't realize the enormity of the sleet-storm raging outside. It was the public service announcement over the loud speakers, informing all late shoppers that the stores were closing early due to the storm, that brought me out of my funk.
Having avoided the subject of my heartbreak all afternoon, allowing "space to consider my declaration of affection", I now needed to suck it up and find my ride back to school. (We were thirty-five miles up the side of the lake, and the buses, like the mall, were no longer running.) I headed for the exit, encountering a wall of white: freezing rain mixed with chunks of hard snow, coming down in slanted gusts, coating everything. I pulled my down vest closer, ducked my curly head, and looked outside for the parked brown Rabbit.
The lot was almost empty!
All the cars that had surrounded us as we peeled into the parking space under the lamppost were long since gone. Adios! The chocolate V.W. Rabbit along with the herd...vamoosed!
My contacts began to freeze to my eyeballs. Little icy ringlets clung to my afro-ed head (Hey, it was the 70's!) My down-vest soaked through in seconds and clung, useless, to my turtleneck. My jeans were dripping into my hiking boots, even as I tried to push my way back into the mall.
Abandoned! By the one human being I most wanted to spend Thanksgiving with--my first adult "affair"--my first heart-rush of the most human kind! I was marooned at a closing mall on the outskirts of Ithaca--some ridiculous cartoon "kid"--with no one near enough to bail me out. I had like five bucks in my soaking pocket and that was it. Not even i.d.! ("Come to help me get Thanksgiving dinner stuff--it will be fun! You don't need anything--we'll only be gone for half an hour! Our first dinner party, come on!") I believed it...OUR first dinner party...
Course, that was before I declared my undying affection and the serious turn-around of a two year friendship with a faculty member...sigh. But, unexpected as that burst of honest emotion may have been (today I doubt it was that "unexpected", frankly...) for my "friend", it didn't warrant being abandoned at the mall in an ice-storm on Thanksgiving Eve. Hell, it didn't even warrant being told that "I need time to process this" and running off in the opposite direction. The point was moot: I was stuck here and I needed to seek cover!
Back inside, even the "muzak" had been curtailed. I made it past the pushing throng, to the pay phones in the middle of the mall. I had enough change for one call. I knew all my friends in Ithaca were long gone for the holiday. I knew even the school buses back to my campus had left town. No cabby would take me thirty-five miles back without showing cash...I was truly stuck. And why? What had I done that was so heinous? One does not argue with the heart--not if one expects to win. Who better to fall in love with, anyway, than a friend? Especially a friend who has spent every day and every challenge (on both sides) being close? Sharing personal histories? Telling truths and allowing one "in"?
Gritting my teeth, I made the call.
One of the "guests" who was invited for dinner the next day, answered.
I asked for the host.
I was told the,"the host can't come to the phone--"
I heard real music in the background. I heard many voices laughing.
(Evidently, the Host had recovered enough to drive back to campus and open the house for the group dinner prep we had planned...So much for being honest...)
I demanded to speak to my friend. Then, this goose-egg of terror that only my Mother had ever caused to rise in my throat (oh Childhood--how thou lingers!), rose. The blinding tears followed.
My nose began to run. (I had no Kleenex.)
The security guard was eying me suspiciously, just beyond the phone-booth.
"Please!" I begged, hating my tears, my plugged sinuses, the quaver in my voice, "Everyone I know has left town and I don't have money for a cab--you said I didn't need my wallet, when you asked me to come--"
Silence on the phone. (Louder laughter in the background: Joni Mitchell is replaced by Bee Gees...) Then, an audible sigh.
"Okay, I'll send Georgie to pick you up--"
It felt like every time I'd been slapped as a little girl: all the injustice of being punished, when all I was trying to do was to make a logical argument...
"I don't want George!"
(What to say to George for thirty-five miles of icy, back- road silence? How to explain even my absence, as the party unfolds this night before Thanksgiving, and everyone, BUT me, is there?)
"I need YOU...to come and get me..." My voice is the voice of a child in trouble.
(My heart is the heart of an adult abandoned...cracked and freezing as the asphalt outside...asking, only: why?)
"Look, I can't abandon all these guests--the house is full! I'll send someone else, then, if not Georgie, maybe...Carolyn? She can drive my car--"
"I want YOU!"
The tears are now full force enough that the mall cop comes over, about to ask me what's wrong.
"Okay, Okay--I'm on my way..." Click.
I move away from the pay phones. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. The mall cop hands me a surprising Kleenex.
"Kid, you all right?" he asks, suddenly friendly.
"Yeah...I just...needed to get a ride....home..." I blow my nose, try to smile. Stop shaking.
"Bad roads tonight, " he says, walking me to the exit.
Behind us, the lights are shutting down. Bars have already been slid into place, on the fronts of all the stores. Employees are leaving by the last door unlocked--the one the cop is escorting me to.
"When's your ride supposed to show?" he asks.
"Coming from down the lake...Aurora?" I shrug, praying he won't expect me to wait outside.
"Might take a while...look, I'll let you stand in this doorway, okay? I have to do another round and check all the store fronts before I leave. Maybe your ride will be here by then..." He pats my back and walks away before I can thank him.
I can't even thank him.
I am stunned. This has never happened to me before--being left somewhere I couldn't escape--a prisoner of Fate; the weather; of my own clamoring heart: everything that was (still is) Bigger-Than-Me. (For what?) For admitting the Truth. For allowing someone a choice and a chance to talk through these new feelings, with me; if not as lover, than as the friend I believed us to be...not using someone for cheap thrills, material gain, nor even for prestige on campus--but for believing that honesty was the only way to continue...
To continue.
Who expects abandonment? Or humiliation? Being forced to plead for my life, in the middle of an ice-storm, miles and miles and miles away from where I was supposed to be...
(In a mall!)
More than hurt, there was embarrassment...even if no one knew what had occurred...just us...who had ever prepared me for such a situation?
Finally, even as I heard the "click click click" of the mall cop's boots, the rabbit's "eyes" burned through the widening white.
I jumped into the running car. The cigarette smoke and cologne were an umistakable mix. Before my seatbelt was fastened, we peeled out into the murky dark.
Silence, except for the sound of the tires and the squish of slush.
The wind lessened.
I rolled the window down an inch, inhaling the frigid air, praying to die on the road.
Hugging the door handle, trying to make myself invisible in the greenish light of the dash, I prayed to be done with this life, if all that the future held was more pain. Deeper silence. Blue smoke.
No music. No conversation. (Nothing but the tire thump and thrum and my own broken heart.)
As we pulled up to my dorm, I opened the car door before we even stopped.
My friend grabbed my still-soaking vest, holding me in my seat.
"Look, I'm sorry...you just...surprised me..." The tip of the cigarette glowed in the dark.
"Let me go...please...I can't..." I wrenched free, almost tearing the yellow vest in half, spraying goose feathers over both of us, adding to the wretched situation.
"Come back to the house...everyone's helping cook for tomorrow...they'll be expecting...us...you..."
"I can't..."
I bolted for the dorm door, the statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom, snow-capped and silent, greeting me at the bottom of the stairs.
(I should have known.)
When a love-affair begins with the subject of one's declaration leaving one at the mall, in the middle of a raging blizzard on Thanksgiving Eve, one should take this as a Portent of Doom--or at least as the first chapter in a cautionary tale. (No wonder I still have this dream--especially in Spring, where it all began to unwind...) However, when one has just turned twenty and is head-over-Adidas in limerance and longing, one rarely reads portents of any kind.
I got out of the brown Rabbit and headed into the mall, dumbstruck that my declaration had caused such consternation. (It was shell-shock: our twenty-year age difference just the beginning of the problem...) Walking alone through the mall like a zombie, replaying the last six months in time to the loop of "mall muzak", I didn't realize the enormity of the sleet-storm raging outside. It was the public service announcement over the loud speakers, informing all late shoppers that the stores were closing early due to the storm, that brought me out of my funk.
Having avoided the subject of my heartbreak all afternoon, allowing "space to consider my declaration of affection", I now needed to suck it up and find my ride back to school. (We were thirty-five miles up the side of the lake, and the buses, like the mall, were no longer running.) I headed for the exit, encountering a wall of white: freezing rain mixed with chunks of hard snow, coming down in slanted gusts, coating everything. I pulled my down vest closer, ducked my curly head, and looked outside for the parked brown Rabbit.
The lot was almost empty!
All the cars that had surrounded us as we peeled into the parking space under the lamppost were long since gone. Adios! The chocolate V.W. Rabbit along with the herd...vamoosed!
My contacts began to freeze to my eyeballs. Little icy ringlets clung to my afro-ed head (Hey, it was the 70's!) My down-vest soaked through in seconds and clung, useless, to my turtleneck. My jeans were dripping into my hiking boots, even as I tried to push my way back into the mall.
Abandoned! By the one human being I most wanted to spend Thanksgiving with--my first adult "affair"--my first heart-rush of the most human kind! I was marooned at a closing mall on the outskirts of Ithaca--some ridiculous cartoon "kid"--with no one near enough to bail me out. I had like five bucks in my soaking pocket and that was it. Not even i.d.! ("Come to help me get Thanksgiving dinner stuff--it will be fun! You don't need anything--we'll only be gone for half an hour! Our first dinner party, come on!") I believed it...OUR first dinner party...
Course, that was before I declared my undying affection and the serious turn-around of a two year friendship with a faculty member...sigh. But, unexpected as that burst of honest emotion may have been (today I doubt it was that "unexpected", frankly...) for my "friend", it didn't warrant being abandoned at the mall in an ice-storm on Thanksgiving Eve. Hell, it didn't even warrant being told that "I need time to process this" and running off in the opposite direction. The point was moot: I was stuck here and I needed to seek cover!
Back inside, even the "muzak" had been curtailed. I made it past the pushing throng, to the pay phones in the middle of the mall. I had enough change for one call. I knew all my friends in Ithaca were long gone for the holiday. I knew even the school buses back to my campus had left town. No cabby would take me thirty-five miles back without showing cash...I was truly stuck. And why? What had I done that was so heinous? One does not argue with the heart--not if one expects to win. Who better to fall in love with, anyway, than a friend? Especially a friend who has spent every day and every challenge (on both sides) being close? Sharing personal histories? Telling truths and allowing one "in"?
Gritting my teeth, I made the call.
One of the "guests" who was invited for dinner the next day, answered.
I asked for the host.
I was told the,"the host can't come to the phone--"
I heard real music in the background. I heard many voices laughing.
(Evidently, the Host had recovered enough to drive back to campus and open the house for the group dinner prep we had planned...So much for being honest...)
I demanded to speak to my friend. Then, this goose-egg of terror that only my Mother had ever caused to rise in my throat (oh Childhood--how thou lingers!), rose. The blinding tears followed.
My nose began to run. (I had no Kleenex.)
The security guard was eying me suspiciously, just beyond the phone-booth.
"Please!" I begged, hating my tears, my plugged sinuses, the quaver in my voice, "Everyone I know has left town and I don't have money for a cab--you said I didn't need my wallet, when you asked me to come--"
Silence on the phone. (Louder laughter in the background: Joni Mitchell is replaced by Bee Gees...) Then, an audible sigh.
"Okay, I'll send Georgie to pick you up--"
It felt like every time I'd been slapped as a little girl: all the injustice of being punished, when all I was trying to do was to make a logical argument...
"I don't want George!"
(What to say to George for thirty-five miles of icy, back- road silence? How to explain even my absence, as the party unfolds this night before Thanksgiving, and everyone, BUT me, is there?)
"I need YOU...to come and get me..." My voice is the voice of a child in trouble.
(My heart is the heart of an adult abandoned...cracked and freezing as the asphalt outside...asking, only: why?)
"Look, I can't abandon all these guests--the house is full! I'll send someone else, then, if not Georgie, maybe...Carolyn? She can drive my car--"
"I want YOU!"
The tears are now full force enough that the mall cop comes over, about to ask me what's wrong.
"Okay, Okay--I'm on my way..." Click.
I move away from the pay phones. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. The mall cop hands me a surprising Kleenex.
"Kid, you all right?" he asks, suddenly friendly.
"Yeah...I just...needed to get a ride....home..." I blow my nose, try to smile. Stop shaking.
"Bad roads tonight, " he says, walking me to the exit.
Behind us, the lights are shutting down. Bars have already been slid into place, on the fronts of all the stores. Employees are leaving by the last door unlocked--the one the cop is escorting me to.
"When's your ride supposed to show?" he asks.
"Coming from down the lake...Aurora?" I shrug, praying he won't expect me to wait outside.
"Might take a while...look, I'll let you stand in this doorway, okay? I have to do another round and check all the store fronts before I leave. Maybe your ride will be here by then..." He pats my back and walks away before I can thank him.
I can't even thank him.
I am stunned. This has never happened to me before--being left somewhere I couldn't escape--a prisoner of Fate; the weather; of my own clamoring heart: everything that was (still is) Bigger-Than-Me. (For what?) For admitting the Truth. For allowing someone a choice and a chance to talk through these new feelings, with me; if not as lover, than as the friend I believed us to be...not using someone for cheap thrills, material gain, nor even for prestige on campus--but for believing that honesty was the only way to continue...
To continue.
Who expects abandonment? Or humiliation? Being forced to plead for my life, in the middle of an ice-storm, miles and miles and miles away from where I was supposed to be...
(In a mall!)
More than hurt, there was embarrassment...even if no one knew what had occurred...just us...who had ever prepared me for such a situation?
Finally, even as I heard the "click click click" of the mall cop's boots, the rabbit's "eyes" burned through the widening white.
I jumped into the running car. The cigarette smoke and cologne were an umistakable mix. Before my seatbelt was fastened, we peeled out into the murky dark.
Silence, except for the sound of the tires and the squish of slush.
The wind lessened.
I rolled the window down an inch, inhaling the frigid air, praying to die on the road.
Hugging the door handle, trying to make myself invisible in the greenish light of the dash, I prayed to be done with this life, if all that the future held was more pain. Deeper silence. Blue smoke.
No music. No conversation. (Nothing but the tire thump and thrum and my own broken heart.)
As we pulled up to my dorm, I opened the car door before we even stopped.
My friend grabbed my still-soaking vest, holding me in my seat.
"Look, I'm sorry...you just...surprised me..." The tip of the cigarette glowed in the dark.
"Let me go...please...I can't..." I wrenched free, almost tearing the yellow vest in half, spraying goose feathers over both of us, adding to the wretched situation.
"Come back to the house...everyone's helping cook for tomorrow...they'll be expecting...us...you..."
"I can't..."
I bolted for the dorm door, the statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom, snow-capped and silent, greeting me at the bottom of the stairs.
(I should have known.)
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