Distant Love—FINALLY!

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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