| She came to stand on my porch, where I was sitting.
It felt like I could read all the days of the past year in her eyes. Two
hundred and fifty days of classes, two weeks of vacation, seven new friends,
one new roommate two old ones, and a broken heart. She smiled a little and
sat down next to me. No need for pleasantries. I didn’t turn my head when
I told her, “he didn’t come this year.” “He didn’t?” she tried not to let on how disappointed she was. It seemed to me that we had a new tradition between us. Perhaps she felt the same way. I saw a sorrow pass over her countenance, like a storm cloud passing over a green field that is usually vibrant with flora and sunlight. “Maybe he’ll come back next year,” she said. “I don’t think he’s ever coming back,” I said. “He never missed a year before…” She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on her forearms. Her eyes were looking out where the old man used to sit, full of hope and sorrow and clouds and light and brighter things without names that only the young carry with them. The wind was in her hair again, the way it was last year. The way it always seemed to be when she was here and we were together. I watched her and I knew in that moment that no matter how long I knew her, or how often we met I would always remember her that way. In dreams and in waking life, even if we met again after many years and we were old and gray ourselves, I would see her looking out at the sand and the surf, the light in her eyes and the wind in her hair just as she was then, in that moment. Neither of us said anything for a long time. It seemed like there was nothing else to say. The sounds of the beach filled my ears, and once I thought I heard her sigh. It was almost dusk when she opened her mouth, perhaps still holding out hope that he would arrive. “It’s a shame,” she said, “that he isn’t coming back. Now we’ll never know the truth…” I see him again sometimes, though I haven’t seen her in years. He comes to the beach on odd days and sits, not alone but with a woman whom I dislike for no other reason than that she is not part of the mythos. I find that the questions no longer linger in my mind of why he came so religiously to this place, or what it might have once meant to him. He is like a ghost to me now, the ghost of what might have been. I often think about what she said on that last day, “It’s a shame that he isn't coming back. Now we’ll never know the truth.” And I wonder what she meant all these years later. I wonder if she was talking about the old man at all. I wonder if she wasn't talking about us. |
