[This is the last time I'm moving my blog. I'm not going for a theme this time. This isn't a food blog, or an anti-cookie anything, or anything else. I just need to start writing again. So expect a whole bunch of what the crap is that? And probably a whole bunch of food, because, hello, it's me.]
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Why do you do it that way? he asks irritably.
We're standing in his kitchen, violist and violinist, and Schubert is kicking both of us around the room from the flimsy wire music stand in the corner. We are tired, grouchy, hungry, testy. He has strep and I have a migraine. We have been at each other all morning, and not in a good way. Midwest summer afternoon, post-rainstorm, and the steam shrouds the outside windowpane like mildewed white tuille. I arrived two days ago, leaving in three; we're rehearsing for a last-minute quartet gig and we are quickly deciding that the money just might not be worth the aggravation
when he utters this phrase for the eighteenth time. Why do you do it that way? and what he really means is, I'm not doing it that way,
I want us to do it this way, I prefer it that way,
why haven't you noticed this?
When the passive-aggression flows, I go crazy. I cannot stand it. He knows it, and I swear that's why he does it.
I lower my violin and fix him with an evil glare. I do it that way, I inform him huffily, because I am a grown woman and perfectly capable of deciding how to interpret a passage of Schubert. Frankly, I like my way better than yours. So there's that. Any more questions?
He snorts derisively. Yeah. Why the hell did you even come here? He turns his back to me and starts a passage of sixteenth-note runs. I'm seeing red and my head is pounding unpleasantly, but I still appreciate the broadness of his shoulders as he pulls threads of gorgeous vibrant sound from the crappy rental viola. He's one of the best musicians I've ever known, and a tiny bit of amused warmth flickers in my middle, aww,
look how cute he is when he's playing, and he's so sick, aww. Still,
I ball up my hand and slug him in the middle of his back; my fist resonates in his chest with a hollow thud as he howls and whirls to face me. He screams something at me. His eyes are instantly full of rage, serious rage. I actually wonder for a moment whether he's going to hit me back. I take a step forward and lean into his face. I smell the infection in his breath.
I'm here for the paycheck, honey, I hiss. Now quit ruining my damn vacation.
We glare for a minute, and he cracks first. Honey? His laughter explodes in spurts from behind pursed lips, spraying my face with a fine mist. Ugh, god, I groan as I run to wash my face, if you give me strep, so help me.
We play the gig. We get paid. The money is definitely worth it. We pay his rent, buy Southern Comfort and pizza. He gets a big bruise on his back. I smoosh it when he's distracted, he yells, we laugh. Later, I make him soup. He washes the dishes while I hip-rest against the kitchen counter and lazily pick through my favorite bits of Schubert's second movement. I look up to find his gaze softened and far-off as I play, his hands unmoving beneath the suds.
I don't get strep.
We reconnected briefly a few years ago; he, limping under the weight of everything he carries, and I, the same, maybe a bit lighter. We strained; we fought; we disconnected again.
I doubt we'll ever be close again. I think it's because we know that,
had brokenness and anger not intervened early and changed us so fundamentally and so young, we would have been a song together, he and I. But he cannot not resent me, and I find it hard to bend,
and we loved each other.
And so, here we are not.
It's one of those things: I don't miss him, but I miss the idea of him; I miss being a part of; I miss not being alone. He was
my best friend for a long time; we were family, and I miss drawing near to him, but I don't miss having him near to me. What I miss is those moments, sitting across from each other at a late breakfast, with the dust shimmering in a kitchen-window sunstream, when I'd glance up to find his eyes on me, as he chewed a small piece of something between his front teeth behind those lips, and I knew he reveled in who he saw. I'm a much different person now, and he couldn't look at me like that today. But someone. Someone. Maybe.
There aren't many remnants of us in my being, except music - string quartets, and good ol' Schubert - and cologne. Oh, that's a big one. There's cologne and there's cologne; he was always so particular about cologne, so he always ended up with good ones. I remember an evening grocery store trip a few years ago, during which I turned a corner and walked directly into someone's invisible swath of Kenneth Cole Reaction, and the world stopped for a fraction of a second, just a fraction, as I flashed back to frenzied midnight shopping trips for Wheat Thins,
sundried tomato pesto, cream cheese, juice. The carefree high
of being with someone you're giddy over,
the ridiculousness of grocery shopping at midnight because you're just so happy right now. Drinking inside the warm waft of cologne mingled with pheromone of skin, taking in the current of another person's warmth on your skin just before contact.
It used to feel so intense; it hasn't for years, and it won't again. Our relationship - or, more accurately, my presence in that relationship, the disaster of it all, the intensity, the damaged quality, the deep and abiding soul-breathed good of it - is ghostly present in all the relationships I've had since, in that, in my memory, it has taken on an impersonal, composite quality - a template up to which I hold others and measure, unit for unit, is this good? should this be? what path is this following? will this end in disaster? am I good in this? am I able to thrive?
is there death here?
So far, Schubert has served me well.
