History

It was a simple gesture. A delicate hand extended as she passed by the table where he sat gripping a plastic cup. He met her outstretched hand—just for a moment and then let go—this husband of almost fifty years. He sits in the booth in a black wind breaker and gold chain, reacting as if he expected this gesture, when of course he did not. But these chance moments are things they are prepared for, have both come to expect. There is not the slightest hesitation as she passes by and extends her hand—and he reaches out to touch it—making her way among the decorated tables, the unleashed children and the lilting balloons. This grandmother, this mother, this wife. Her hips undulate under a long purple sweater as she navigates the chaotic terrain—and he watches her for a moment, and turns his attention back to us.

And suddenly I am choked with tears. Do I want pizza? Cake? I shake my head, look toward the window, toward a sunny day and the promise of new things. How can I say—in the middle of this children’s party—that the gesture I just witnessed rings like a death knell in my ears, thrums on my newly put-together life. My own history ushered out in cardboard boxes, in things tossed to the curb, in papers signed—just before the door pressed shut behind me. I carried many of those storied possessions to my new life, but they became mute and unholy things when I lifted them from the box and unwrapped them. They resist the new landscape, sit stiff and uncompromising. They will not belong here…

Later, Karen and I will sit on lawn chairs just where a sudden afternoon sun bullies the flagstone path in front of her house. It is too early for this kind of muscle—it is only March after all—but we are grateful for the brute strength of it. Behind us, up the steps, the kids play behind a glass front door. We are two Holden Caulfields here on the warm stones, gone underground for a few quiet minutes on a Sunday afternoon. We stretch our legs in plain sight of the neighbors, lean back in our chairs, and yet there is a sense of isolation, of aloneness on this suburban street, each house cradling its own family story, its own developing history.

Closing my eyes, I lift my face to the sun and remember my mother lying in a scant patch of sunlight on the crippled porch of a rented house all those years ago, blankets pinned to the posts to block a cutting April wind. We were hungry for so many things back then...

You cannot recreate history, I say.

After a moment, Karen agrees, and lifts a wine glass to thin pressed lips. We are characters in this new story together; we wait to be narrated, move as the plot begins to unfold. So many years erased... And even through our raucous stories, our whispers--shared on a day like this when spring has come early and the sun warms an exposed breastbone--we know only that we were this back then, we were that. But we are something very different now…

We turn and look at each other for a moment and laugh. Behind us, in the house, are the playful cries of children who have not yet discovered us here: two women in jeans and boots, legs crossed at the ankles, living our unexpected lives. Sipping wine from two filmy glasses when we should be doing other things.

Later when he calls, we have moved inside—the sun vanished, the children nipping at our two-inch heels. Karen and I sit for a moment at her table, the Sunday night chores undone. Dinner, baths, lunches for tomorrow. Such an unrecognizable life sometimes… She yells to her son to turn down the TV; I tell my boy to put on his shoes. And the man on the phone says he is back now, back to his current life after a weekend lumbering around the quondam one. I do not know where to put that history, he says, trying to explain how he feels. I recognize the disquiet in his voice and ache to tell him that I am looking for that place, too—that I witnessed a simple gesture at a children’s party that snatched my history from the place I’d stored it, and left it dangling just beyond the grasp of my outstretched hand.

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