The Ruminations of Eliza Loraine

I forget exactly how it went, but the song you sang for me down at the pier---where the lake met the shore of your old summer house---echoed once, briefly, in my mind when I heard it, and echoes still when I think about you. But now it has been distorted, and only fragments of the melody remain.

Recall that day: a warm evening in late July fifteen years ago. That day, long before our present became the past, and our future became irrecoverable. At the edge of the glade where your cabin resided, the tall cypresses marked the boundary of our love. The fields of green ran all the way up to me, their daisies and bloodroot braided loosely through my hair, the white dress my mother passed down to me splayed out around where I sat. The sky took on a burning red. I remember thinking to myself, How romantic. You strolled out to me, champagne in one hand, the other mysteriously hidden behind your back, and I truly believed I knew exactly what was going to happen.

When you proposed, it wasn’t elaborate or grand. Rather than an impressive ceremony, it was a warm, earnest gesture, a small pocket in time that only we would ever share. It was perfect. A euphoria washed over me, the sort that only occurs in the young and the ignorant, or the child who’s just received the toy he wanted on Christmas day. And you played your guitar, and you sang that song, the song you wrote for me yourself, and I cannot stress enough how I have tried---Heaven knows---so desperately to remember the first verse, and the second half of the chorus, and that part of the bridge that went Da, da da da, da…

Do you remember it? Do you lay awake at night thinking, piecing together melodies and lyrics, piecing together memories, trying to make it make sense? The night I left, did you understand why? Did you ever even wonder? These are the questions that haunt me. And yet, knowing what I know now, I don’t think it could ever have ended differently. Where I’d thought we stood on common ground, I soon learned was actually a trick of the eye, and in fact, you were a mile away, at the foot of a mountain I’d already deigned to climb.

Picture this: the face of an all-star athlete who has just been told he’s torn his ACL. I imagine that is much like the expression I must have worn the day you asked me to move from my home in St. Louis, Missouri, to follow you all the way to Montana. When I asked why, you said you were concerned about the crime rate.

Well, I conceded, I guess you aren’t wrong.

You smiled, so sure of yourself, as always. We’ll find a suburb that’s safe where we can settle down.

I was enamored with those words: “settle down.” However, that didn’t ease the pain of sorting through and tossing items I’d nurtured since childhood, or selling the house in which generations of my family had lived, or pulling up the roots I had grown all my life and planned to yet further grow until they died there. But I could do it. Yes, I could do it if it were for you, for I loved you---and love you still---and I believed love could get us through anything.

I carried that belief even when I said goodbye to my mother as she weeped and begged me to visit often. I promised I would. You beckoned me to the car, and we departed for the house you’d already bought. That was the last time I ever set foot in St. Louis.

It was only a year before you asked to move again.

The first leaves of autumn gathered on the porch as I swept, you with your newspaper in the rocking chair we found together, discarded on the side of the road, which we’d carried for a mile in order to bring it home. Our life in Belgrade was quiet, but peaceful. I learned there that routine was not equivalent to monotony; the recurring leisure which marked all our days was comforting, and I had grown to love them as I loved you.

So, you can imagine, I was surprised this time, too, but less so than horrified at the abruptness of the question. We had only just settled into the suburbs, per your suggestion, but you insisted the living was too slow in a mountain town and made plans for somewhere more urban.

I thought you wanted to settle down, I argued. Indeed, we argued a lot in those days.

Of course I do---but what about you? Don’t you miss living in a big city? This isn’t exactly St. Louis. You said all of these without looking up.

I couldn’t tell if you were truly concerned about me; but then again, I never asked. I suppose I could say that this was our downfall, that it all could have been avoided had I spoken up sooner. But I fear that would be too kind to you. Where were you when I cried to my mother over the phone, asking through tears, what can I do, what can I do? Though I hated starting over in Belgrade, I had also come to adore it, and the thought of leaving, of going through that whole process again, not only broke my heart, but terrified me. So why, when I begged you to reconsider, did you shrug and walk away?

The ground beneath us trembled. The foundation I had thought would uphold a fortress shook beneath the weight of a three-bed, two-bath sandcastle that just as easily could stand as be swept away by the waves.

I found a new passion for myself in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of my co-workers, a middle-aged woman named Evelyn, had asked me to accompany her to a local antique store, as she needed help moving the dresser she’d purchased. You asked why her husband didn’t help her, and I said, Well, he’s busy today. You said, What kind of a husband leaves his wife to move furniture herself? And I left before I could respond.

So, Evelyn and I ventured into this antique store, and by God, when I tell you my life changed right then and there! From the floor to the ceiling, across rows and rows of shelves, crammed into corners, hidden in layers beneath one another, artifacts of the past filled the whole room. I shook each snow globe and watched the foam fall; I shook the dust out of a magnificent tapestry that appeared to be hand-woven; I ran my hand across the rim of a beautiful, intricately detailed oak cradle. I was reminded of my possessions in St. Louis, specifically, those I was forced to discard in our first move. I wondered if those objects sitting before me were discarded in a similar manner, and decided that, surely, if they ended up there, they must have been loved enough, at least, that they weren’t sent to the landfill. I think the love those antiques received made them all the more valuable. And I think that, though they were departed from their origins, they were deserving of love still, perhaps even more so than if they were brand new, for they were enriched by their histories.

Well, Evelyn got her dresser, and I became seized by the need to visit that store once again. I remember how I begged you to come with me. At first, you declined, for you had work to complete.

You said to me, Dear, I’m not interested in antiques.

I said, What kind of a husband leaves his wife to move furniture herself?

You grumbled something like, I didn’t hear about any furniture… and begrudgingly grabbed your coat---for it was late autumn by then---before taking my hand and going out the door with me. As we walked, I pointed at the trees and noted the leaves colored like a bleeding heart. Your expression pinched, and you called my description grotesque. I laughed and swatted you playfully; you laughed and squeezed my hand tighter.

These were the moments I treasured the most: the warmth of your hand seeping into mine, filling me with a poignant tranquility and the assurance that you still believed we were soulmates. I must mention this to defend myself. Had you been any less charming, amiable, and perfectly content on small, specific occasions, I imagine our relationship would have ended much sooner.

But we were happy right then. And we were happy as we entered the antique store, my feet light as I fluttered around. You walked around with me, somewhat absentmindedly, and I got the oddest impression from you. It wasn't boredom, per se, and it certainly wasn’t excitement, but rather, it was this sense of detachment that I couldn’t quite place my finger on, as if you had seen that place a million times before, or as though you regarded the antiques as mere relics that ought to remain in the past. Nevertheless, I tried not to let your demeanor alter mine, which is why I thought your next words were quite cruel.

Dear, I’ve purchased a house in Colorado. The work will be better there. Let’s leave soon; the sooner the better.

I recall the feeling of suffocation. The air in my lungs, the words in my throat, all of them seemed to be trapped deep inside me, and for an instant, I thought they might stay there forever. As something heavy stirred within me, I stumbled backwards, just enough to knock a vase from the shelf where it’d rested. As I cried out in surprise, the store owner rushed up to us. She was a little old lady who smelled like peaches, and she immediately started trying to soothe me when she noticed the tears streaming down my cheeks. I admittedly felt a bit sorry for her, because the tears weren’t for her, or even for the vase. In fact, I’m still not sure who or what exactly they were. Were they for you, who had so briskly blindsided me? Or for Albuquerque, which had become yet another place I cherished? Or was it because, as I stood there sobbing before a stranger, you did not reach out to comfort me?

I couldn’t help but think of the summer house and that July evening, your proposal, that song. I wondered if our love was the same as it was back then, or if somehow, over the course of the years, it had been transformed, mangled, incapable of existing outside those cypress trees and the confines of that memory. When I think of how you loved me then, your mistreatment feels like a delusion. It is almost enough to convince myself that you did not betray me.

As you walked with me towards the exit---I, sniffling, trailing just behind you---I took one last glance back at the shattered vase. It was white, with angry red streaks of paint forming patterns that frankly sided on nonsensical. I watched the old lady stack the pieces on top of what looked like an end-table with a mirror covering the surface, and the most peculiar thought occurred to me as the door closed shut behind us:

The patterns on the vase, though shattered as it was, seemed more beautiful in the reflection.

We left Albuquerque after just over a year of living there, and moved our residence to Colorado Springs. There we stayed for another eight months, before moving again to Michigan, then again to Pennsylvania, and finally to Oregon, which would be the last of our moves. Sadly, this wasn’t because you kept your promise to “settle down”; rather, I ended the ongoing chain forcibly, for God knows I could only take so much.

I spent a lot of time wondering why you did what you did, why you were the way you were. Was it so hard to pick a place and just stay there? Were you so intent to keep me miserable that you just couldn’t stand allowing me a chance to breathe?

I found my answer to these musings near the end of our relationship, when we took a trip to California and journeyed down the Santa Monica coast. We made a stop to see the ocean. I was absolutely thrilled; having spent all my life in St. Louis, and later following you to places each miles away from the nearest coast, I had scarcely seen the expanse of the Pacific, the horizon that appeared to stretch on for forever. But when I looked over to you, who had grown up in Capitola, I got that same distinct, odd impression. It wasn’t boredom; it wasn’t excitement, and I would argue it was something far more lethal, for when I looked into your eyes, I saw neither light nor darkness, neither happiness nor despair. When I looked at you, I saw a man who stood the way a man would stand in a grocery store, or waiting in line for tickets to an okay-ish movie, or in the aisle of a local antique store. It was then---indeed, perhaps only then---that I realized the critical thing I’d been missing: that we could stand there, at the very same beach, on the very same shore, and yet, be entirely apart from each other. Your time in Capitola had weathered your perceptions until you could see one of the greatest spectacles of nature as a mundanity.

I thought to myself then, How do we fix it? What would be required for you to again find the joy in these beaches? What brings joy, anyhow? Is it solely the novelty of a new place, experience, or person? I don’t think so. I have loved many things for many, many years since I was with you. My friends, my job, my two-bedroom house that remains half-empty… the key is, one must choose to love the things they believe will make their life worthwhile, and they must do so while knowing these things will sometimes make them miserable, too. Still, they must choose, and choose, and choose again. They must all the while know that choosing means sacrifice, and I realized then, that that was more than you had to give.

My love, this is all that remains of our history: bygone vows, a broken song, a trail of empty houses. In the end, I can’t help but resent you. I hope that you think of me, that you think of all the things we were, all the things we could have been, and I hope that your time away from me tortures you as it does me, and I simultaneously hope that it’s kind to you, and that you might one day learn to long for permanence and love in an entirety that you could never show me.