It’s a bakery now. Guys go there in the morning for breakfast and pretend they’re far more civilized than they are and the world isn’t falling down around our ears. In those days, when I was younger, it was probably the nicest bar in town.
I drank. Sometimes, I drank quite a lot. Drinking a lot made my feelings come to the surface, where I could pick them off like ticks and squeeze them between my thumb and forefinger until my own blood popped out of their little tick bellies.
I saw her on my way in. She sat with four other girls. Wrapped boxes were on the table like it was a birthday or a shower of some sort. She wore the flower-print dress I liked: the one that dropped off the shoulder and showed off her back and collar bones. “Don’t look!” she laughed the first time she wore it, and I looked away.
As I came through the door, her eyes saw mine, and I looked away. Since you couldn’t see their table from the bar, I made my way there, where she couldn’t see me. “What for ya, Hun?” Keogh said, placing a cranberry and vodka in front of me, one she made when she saw my car driving up. “How about one of these?” I said, taking a sip. Things work out when the bartender knows what you want before you say it.
“What did you do to Anna?”
I’d seen the girl from the party table maybe three times. When she popped up beside me, accusing me of doing something to her friend, I searched the index in my brain for her name.
“I just got here,” I said. “Why?”
“She saw you and went to the bathroom crying. What’s going on?”
“That’s my fault,” I said.
“Keogh, honey, ring me up, would you?” I said, standing up. “Um, put the girl in the flower dress on mine, would you?” Keogh knew Anna’s name. She knew me well enough to know she was part of why I drank. She also knew when to keep her mouth shut. She presented my bill, and I paid. I took a third sip of my vodka and walked out.
When I put my key in the car door in the dark parking lot, I heard a voice behind me.
“Hey! Don’t leave. You don’t have to leave. This is your place. Don’t leave.” Her eyes were still red, and she stood with the night air blowing on her bare shoulders. The light from the door behind her made her curls look like a halo.
“I…I, uh, have to meet some guys. We have plans.”
“You’re lying.”
“Does it matter?” I said, confessing to my lie.
“Every time you look at me, I think you hate me,” she said, her tiny hands shaking. She still had the fancy fake French manicure nails she had shown me weeks before.
“I don’t hate anybody.”
“That’s a lie!” She said, with surprising assertiveness.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “Nothing can make me hate you.”
“Then why don’t you ever talk to me? Why can’t we at least be friends? Why do you have to be like this?”
“Look,” I said, searching for what to say. “My part of this story is over. Soon, you’ll be moving to Starkville. Tom lives there. You guys can pick back up where you left off. I’m not a part of that.”
“I’m not going there to be with him!” She demanded.
“It doesn’t matter. I think he loves you. I think he makes you happy. I wasn’t supposed to make you happy. I was supposed to do something about what was making you unhappy. It’s not the same thing.”
“I never asked you to do anything.” Her tears wouldn’t stop.
“A gentleman wouldn’t make you ask,” I said. “I haven’t admitted to doing anything to help you, and I probably won’t.”
Sometimes, it’s hard to remember her when she wasn’t crying—when she wasn’t hurting. She never asked me to help her. She never asked me to care, but she cried; she let me know how much she honestly hurt, and the part of me that always does decided I couldn’t let that stand, even though I hadn’t even the slightest idea of how to help her. A woman’s tears can stop a freight train. I think they know that. It doesn’t make them responsible for what happens because of it, though.
I could tell from her eyes that my own were no longer inscrutable.
“You never said you loved me.” She said like I had broken some rule.
“I still haven’t said it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if I do. There isn’t a happily ever after story in this for me. It was never intended to be. You have no obligation toward me besides letting me go. My part in this story is over. Letting me go is probably the kindest thing you can do.”
Frustrated, Anna decided to change her tactic.
“Did you call that girl? The one you said you liked? You said you knew her sister and you liked her hair. Did you call her? You really should call her.”
“I’m probably not going to,” I said. “She’s a little too well-behaved for me.” That was supposed to be a joke, but Anna didn’t laugh.
“Look,” I said. “There will be other girls. It’s not like I’m going to die. I just need to let this thing wear itself out of my system. I did the best I could. I knew going in it was going to cause some wear and tear. It doesn’t matter. I did what I thought I should do, and, let’s be honest, it worked out pretty well and fairly close to what I intended all along.”
That part was true. What I wanted to happen did happen, even though there wasn’t a part of it for me.
The last thing I ever heard about her was that she was soon to be a mother for the second time. Despite a rough start, Tom was a good husband for her. Everything I wanted to happen did happen. There wasn’t a happy ending for me. That was never part of the plan.
“I wish you weren’t like this.” She said.
“A lot of people do. I wish I were different too.” I said.
“Hug my neck?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Realizing I wasn’t going to change anything, she resolved to say goodbye in a way I would remember.
Feeling her arms around me, her tiny body pressed against mine for the last time, the smell of her hair, and the stars shining behind her, I finally began to cry.
“Good night, Anna.” I kissed her forehead and held her tiny hand longer than I expected. Her eyes were the color of milk chocolate, even when they were swollen and red.
“Be happy.” She said.
I closed the door and drove into the night. I drove all night, waiting for the feeling of her tiny fingers to leave my senses.
The next time I saw her was three years later at my father’s funeral. I never saw her again after that.
My story with Anna was far from the worst thing that ever happened to me regarding painted eyes, painted lips, and tiny fingers. I think it was something about her purity, about how much she never wanted to hurt me, that made just the memory of it hurt so much and last so long.
Old men talk about their first love. I don’t know if that was mine. There were certainly nights of passion and furious abandon before then and quite a few after, but something about that story made it stick more than the others. A gentleman doesn’t ask for happiness at the end of the story, not for himself. That’s probably the point. It didn’t end happily for me, but it did feel very complete.
It’s a bakery now. Old men eat breakfast there and pretend they’re more civilized than they are. It’s been almost forty years, but there are still ghosts there for me. I hope she’s happy. I’ll never know if she is, but it would make it all worth what it cost.
Loved this.