Yes. Finally. I’ve been revising, re-editing, re-writing, and re-organizing this little snippet for quite a while. And wallah! Here I am. I have “Distant Love” written by none other than moi.
This is the short story I was referring to from my previous post. So I thought, why don’t I tidy it up a bit for this blog? Not that many people will see it, but just to see it published.
Here it is. Prepare yourselves.
Distant Love
June
20, 1967
Ben
Eade
“I think I’m in love.”
Your face was pressed against the
window, your nose smearing the glass and your fingers drawing little lines of
maple syrup as you followed something moving outside.
“I think I’m in love.”
“What? You’re only fifteen,” I remember
saying while laying the slightly burned pancakes on your plate. “Fifteen is
when you go outside and play basketball. Fifteen is when you find your interests
and passions. Fifteen isn’t when you find true love.”
You didn’t reply. You just looked out
the window wistfully. Or so I imagined. I could only guess your expression.
“Besides,” I added. “Time for
breakfast!”
“We have new neighbors,” you were saying
in between cushioned chews as you stuffed your mouth with countless layers of
pancakes and syrup. “Neighbor, at
least. Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Remember? Their moving
van came yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to say hi yet.”
“Don’t.”
You said that so naturally, like it
wasn’t nothing, with an invisible shrug. Just a comment. Don’t. You continued
to stuff more pancakes into your mouth.
“What?” I said, pausing my fork in
mid-air. “Why?”
“Because,” you said like it was obvious.
“We need to keep a distance.”
“What?” I repeated. “What do you mean,
‘we need to keep a distance’? Shouldn’t we be going over to say ‘hi’ to them,
for courtesy? For manners? To welcome them into the neighborhood? There’s not
much people here, anyways.”
You stayed quiet and continued to eat,
leaving me slightly confused with your strange reply.
“Did you meet them already?”
You shrugged. “Well, if you’re going to
say hi, then don’t take me with you or don’t invite her over. And don’t tell me
anything about her. Not even her personality or what she looks like. I want to
keep it remote.”
I looked at you curiously when you said
that. “Huh? Remote?”
You shrugged and didn’t explain any
further. But I couldn’t argue. You were usually like that. You would probably
explain later. I just stared at you reaching for the last pancake and folding
it into a ball of bread. You dipped it into the remaining droplets of syrup so
that you could wrap your mouth around it, staring me back all the while. Then
you just left the table.
The next day, you went straight for the
window right after I woke you up. I had to go through all sorts of exercises
such as singing, pulling your blanket away, turning the lights on and off and
making siren noises. I even had to put ice on your eyelids once. You were a
deep sleeper. Maybe you still are.
I sighed and laughed at the same time,
seeing you with your confused hair sticking out in opposing directions,
dragging your feet to the window, rubbing your eyes like one of those lost
toddlers.
You were at the window again, leaning on
the couch, which was leaning against the wall right under the window. You
kneeled on the sofa, your chest leaning on the leather, your hands tucked under
your face, perched atop the windowsill, looking out.
You finally explained your strangeness
the following day, while we were eating lunch. It was my day off, because it
was Labor Day. I had decided to make a massive ham sandwich with avocadoes. You
loved avocadoes.
“You know our neighbor?” you asked me.
“Yes. I met her yesterday at—”
“No.” You said that urgently, slightly
lowering the sandwich from your face level, giving room for your eyes to glare
into mine. “Don’t tell me.”
I grinned. “What, you don’t want me to
tell you about her?”
“Yes.” You were dead solemn, face
straight and unbroken. “She is my distant love.”
I laughed out loud. “Distant love? Oh,
you’re so strange! You haven’t even met her? How do you know you love her?”
“Because.” You went back to taking a
chomp out of the sandwich.
I had plastered a half-amused smirk
across my face, but quite frankly, I was probably very confused.
“She is my distant love.”
“Does she know this?” I asked, still
amused. I was expecting you to burst into laughter and admit your lame act. You
didn’t.
“Nope. That’s why it’s distant.”
“What is distant love?” I asked, playing
along to a game I later realized only I was playing.
“Love is weird. One minute, you love
somebody, and as time passes, you get used to them. You might even hate them.”
You were staring at your sandwich
thoughtfully.
“Love… it can change. First, you love
somebody. You don’t know them that well. So you assume things. You assume good
things. But if you stay with somebody too long, you pick out the nooks and
crannies, the little bitty details of the person that you wouldn’t have noticed
at first sight. At first sight, you see the big things, like the good personality
and the nice face. So you fall in love. But then you start noticing the tiny
little spots, the little molds. And you think to yourself, maybe I don’t love
this person anymore. Maybe I love somebody else. This person bothers me.”
There was a rich silence as you took a
fierce bite out of your sandwich. You took your time. After a slow swallow, you
resumed your little monologue.
“Or you have to accept the person. You
have to accept and swallow the entire person. The good things and the bad
things. And sometimes it’s hard to accept. Sometimes you can’t do it. Sometimes
you’re annoyed.”
You were immersed in staring at the
piece of ham on the plate. You were talking to the ham, your eyes unfocused and
in a trance.
“So if I kept seeing her at a distance,
I’ll love her mildly, I’ll love her for who I think she is, and I’ll come up
with a nice background for her, a nice name, a good age, and a befitting
personality. A be-fit-ing personality. I’ll assume things like people do at
first impressions. But it’ll always stay that way.”
You took a deep breath.
“It’s not love, really. Not the sort of
love that everybody else talks about, what everybody else thinks it is. It’s
not the love where you want to marry somebody, or you want to kiss them, or any
sort of affection like that. It’s a different sort of love. It’s the beauty of
the daily routine, that it passes by every day, no matter how angry you are, no
matter what you’re wearing, whether you’ve woken up to see it or not. It’s
something you admiringly observe. It kind of shows how the earth keeps spinning
and life goes on, whether you like it or not, whether you’re dressed up or
happy or ready or not. I could have looked outside the window to see a bird
perch on the tree every single day and say the same thing, that I’m in love. But
I’m not, because there is no bird
that perches on our tree every day. But that
person walks past every morning. The same person, in the same car, with the
same expression, to the same place.”
It took me a while to realize that you
had stopped talking. You were finishing your sandwich, letting the silence hang
in the air. It gave me a strange feeling.
You looked up and stared at me, proudly,
swallowing the last bit of lunch.
I didn’t understand you then. I couldn’t
understand your motive, why you were doing this, what you meant, or what you
were even saying. I realize now that you were much more thoughtful than I was,
though at the time I thought I was more mature and wise. I thought you were a
little adolescent, whining and coming up with stories.
Every day after that, you were at the
window. It even came to the point that I didn’t have to wake you up anymore. You
would be right at your designated spot every morning as I walked out of the
kitchen with breakfast in hand. You always sat there, at that same spot on the
sofa, leaning against that same square of leather, hands on sill, chin on
hands, looking out the window to the woman whom you did not know. Every day
through that spotted, old window of ours. Like she meant something important,
something you had to make sure was there, every day. It was very peculiar to
me, and I began to worry that I should stop you from looking outside, dreaming
and wondering unlike other restless fifteen year olds who were often in fights
or playing basketball or playing war games.
“Her name is Jennifer,” you said one
morning. I remember that morning, I made French toast for breakfast. I was
getting the brown sugar out.
I guess the promise still holds now,
even though it might not mean much to you at this point. I still can’t tell you
her real name or what her real job is. It still makes me laugh, comparing your
idea of the woman and the truth.
“Jennifer Chadden. She is twenty seven
years old. She’s engaged to another man, but he’s a busy worker in New York.
She used to live with him, but she got sick of the noise and chaos in the city,
so she came here, to the perfect place. The middle of nowhere.”
I laughed. “How are you in love with
somebody who’s engaged?”
“I said, it’s not that kind of love.”
I still didn’t understand you.
“She’s a lawyer’s assistant. Do they
exist? Lawyer’s assistants?”
I shrugged. “Probably.”
“She lives alone in that house, and
every day she takes her car and drives out to the city to work. She likes doing
that. She listens to classical music on the way. Beethoven. Bay-toe-ven. And
Mozart. Moht-sart.
“She’s a kind and smart person. She’s
eager and lively, and she can be charismatic when she has passion in what she
does. She smiles often. And when she’s with her friends, she laughs a lot.” You
closed your eyes to pray before the meal, and then opened them again, smiling,
reaching for a French toast lying limp and soggy on your plate.
You didn’t say a word after that. Days
and days afterwards, you would look out the window, with a pensive cloud upon
your face, not a word uttered upon the subject.
It was like that, two minutes every day,
before I went to work at Joyce’s Groceries. Do you remember that? Joyce’s
Groceries. I brought you home gummy bears every month, and you’d suck on one
for hours, savoring each flavor and conserving those “saccharine pieces of
heaven,” you called them. Saccharine. My goodness, you were a unique brother.
Since then, you grew taller and
stronger, from a lanky, skinny, dreamy boy of fifteen to a towering, lean young
man of nineteen. You were full of ambition, charisma, and will, and you were
long past your boyhood dreams or ponderings. But you were still thoughtful in a
way not many were.
When you came up to me that day and told
me about your decision, I knew it’d be the last time I’d see you. It broke my
heart to hear you say it.
You were growing older, and you had
dreams and ambitions, you told me. You wanted to do something worth it, you
wanted to make a difference. You wanted to join the military. Fight for our
country.
I had no idea what to say, then. I felt
horrible, and I didn’t want you to go. I was getting older, too, and I wasn’t
ready for loneliness. But I couldn’t say anything. You were so avid for change,
for action. I had to let you go.
You left the following week, off to the
war. War was a vile word for me. It took our father away and broke our mother.
It breaks my heart to lose another to a war.
That was three years ago. I have been
waiting, dreaming, killing nightmares, and writing letters. At this point, I
don’t know who you are, just a faded memory of a smiling mass of pimples, just
as the camera caught you in the frames that still collect dust on top of the
piano. I only think of that young Ben who smiled so often, who joked around
with me, fixed the car for me. I presume you must be tall and muscular, rough
and stiff. A soldier.
I often sat by the window right after
you left, where you used to sit, sinking into the couch that so often had made
way for your weight. I sat there, looking out to the other side, looking at the
woman walk to her car, every morning. It was my way of remembering you.
She moved out a month later.
Another man moved in, but I never went
to greet him. I decided that I would follow your motive, whatever it was and
whatever it meant. I still didn’t understand you, but I felt I had to honor
your mystic wisdom. I had no idea what I was doing.
But as I began to grow lonely and days
passed since you last closed the door, my heart began to wrap its wisps of
fingers around your concept, your meaning. I finally understood what you meant.
Sitting at that corner of the couch soon became a small part of the day that I
looked forward to, seeing the man wave good-bye to his wife at the door,
entering his car, and driving away. It gave me a nice, warm feeling.
I began to understand your concept of
distant love. It wasn’t love as I often thought love was—not the passionate
love between a couple, nor the unconditional love stringing a family together.
It wasn’t any sort of love I had ever heard of, but for some reason, it felt
like the right word. Love.
It was just that little piece of the day
that was constant, that was routine, that I’d look out the window just to see
him leave, and then continue on with eating my breakfast. Two minutes.
I never knew his name, his background,
his family, nor his profession. I could only wonder, and it amused me greatly
to just think of the possible jobs he could hold, at a farm, at a company, at a
construction site. It wasn’t something I forced myself to do, but rather, out
of natural curiosity that I began to speculate and create his name or his
background.
I saw the ups and downs, the smiles and
waves, sometimes a quiet shut of the door and solitary leaving of the house,
and sometimes the family outing. It didn’t strike me as particularly strange as
I thought you were back then when you sat at the window every day. It was a
mild sort of amusement, thinking about how strange it would be to meet him
after having assumed his name and personality for weeks, and later on, months.
I am your sister, Ben. Your only living
relative. It may be strange to hear of this, but you will be coming home. I
will greet you. You might not know me, and perhaps I might not know you, but
your heart is still the same, and I believe that nothing else should matter.
Ben, you were nearly killed in a
bombing. You were one of many soldiers who were injured, and you lost your left
arm. I know you know this much so far, because you have been in the hospital
for so long. But there is one thing that nobody there could have told you. You
also lost me. Your memories back at home. You might not remember them, but I
will bring them back to you. I have been holding those snippets of emotion and
remembrance in a locked chest. I’ll get ready to pull them back out again.
You may not be able to rush into my arms
and tell me everything you’ve been through, but your past life is not dead and
certainly not forgotten. I have cherished and enjoyed those nineteen years you
were my sweet little brother, Ben. When I see you again, I’ll talk to you, and I’ll
tell you more stories about your wit and your silliness and your aloof
personality. I can tell you about the new neighbor, and how I realized the
distant love.
I may be a stranger to you now, and you
to me, but I still remember who you were, and I will stick to the small things
you’ve taught me.
http://thewritingdatabase.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/distant-love-v7.pdf
Happy writing!
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