ALL WENT QUIET. His identity had been so disputed, so overthrown, he was unsure of almost everything. It was like dispossession. He no longer felt like singing. He no longer felt the need to project himself outward, to be the first voice or the first hand raised, all the former neediness lost in the undertow of that last wave.He made it to work on time, did his job, usually in the seclusion of his thoughts. He attached his energies to the labor. To the detail. To the regularity. To the murmur and hum of the presses. Luciano, with his wise old Tuscan heart, his sage Italian, could only watch, partly in sorrow for his friend, and partly rejoicing in the adult emerging before his eyes. Molto Bello.
February passed. As did March. And as much as Daniel tried or didn't try, as clear as it all was or as confused as it had become, and as much as he thought it dead in him, thoughts of her came back. He hadn't lost the hope or the desire to see her again, but the fever had passed. The glooms. The adolescence.
It was all so ordinary the day it happened. Perhaps only in looking back, as he would one day, could he ever see the large justice of it. It didn't happen in any of the usual places you might expect. It didn't happen in church, or anywhere near a stage. They were miles removed from such places, unsuspecting, drifting, as they were, into a little history of their own, following all the requirements, all the curves, bends, and angles of their own maps, totally unaware of the precision by which these elements were laboring to bring them together.
It was the plainest of days, an unhurried day that moved at the beat of life, what Luciano might have called tempo ordinario, or tempo giusto, the normal pace of the human heart.
One afternoon, around two o'clock, all the jobs were finished for the day. Inks were drying. The presses were quiet. Luciano gave Daniel the option to leave early if he wanted. Many days were like this, and Luciano always allowed Daniel to busy himself constructively with something, anything, to help add hours.
The sky was clear and unclouded. April was everywhere, playing among the ruins of winter, claiming the earth for herself again. A good time for beginnings, or do-overs. He took the option to leave early. He still had ink on his hands. Being a writer, he liked the look of it sometimes, the smudgy black stain of his art. Reminded him of things. The image of labor, of physically wrangling with words. He took off his apron, hung it on a rack by the door, said goodbye to Luciano, and departed.
The day was too rich with invitation, too overlaid with gold, with lazy drifts of pollen and sunlight to be anywhere but outside. When he left the building, instead of getting in his car, he stood with his back against it. He lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes, letting the wind beat shyly about him and contentment fill him to some excess.
A mild delirium led him downtown. He parked his car somewhere near Brookwood Station, got out and just started walking. No plan. Happy to go wherever his feet and his restlessness took him. The emptiness actually felt good to him, as if he understood what it meant.
He had no idea how far he'd gone when he found himself near one of his favorite places, Cambridge Books, a large, new and used book emporium at Peachtree Battle, a few blocks north of Piedmont Hospital. Peaches, a record store of comparable size was on the other side the street. He had seen it from a distance. The entire wall facing the parking lot was overlaid with an immense replica of a Rolling Stones album, Black and Blue, released a year earlier. Mick Jagger, all lips and thrills, staring provocatively down Peachtree Street. Beside it, with the same dimensions, was a new release by Fleetwood Mac, Rumours. As tempting as it might have been on any other day, he preferred the quiet ramble of a book over more music, and so directed his feet right instead of left.
He was in a loitering, looking only, drowsy, Sunday afternoon state of mind, though it was only Tuesday. There might be many reasons why the bookstore would be so thinly populated. It was that kind of day outside. He was infected with April.
After roaming a few aisles and skipping a few stones, he idled in front of the poetry section. He noticed a thin clothbound book isolated among larger, lumpier books, books with old bearded names. He was sure it was as big as a book of poetry needed to be.He was acquainted with the poet, at least by name, a Chilean poet, a Nobel laureate whose recent death had aroused a new interest in his work. It seemed like the appropriate read too, for his condition. Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda. The resonance was immediate. As was the feeling of intimacy he shared with the poet. After a few passages, some stupor set in. He sat down at a table nearby and buried himself in the soft graze of lyrical text.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon
To survive myselfHe was glad he had never read this before now, for the fresh welcome it had in it. As if the poet had bequeathed these lines to him alone. As if suffering had a twin. The words summoned her ghost again and he did not fight it back.
In you the rivers sing and my soul flees with them
In you the rivers sing
In youHe continued to steal quietly among the leaves of the lonely little book, thoughts of her returning, stronger with each consecutive line.
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
Like her voice had been the first time he heard it, the lines seemed familiar, bound to her, by that touchable sweet magic poetry can make.
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the seaHe repeated the lines in his head again and again. He loved each one of them. He loved them so much, he stole the suffering from them, made it his own. There was comfort in it.
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Without thinking, he had already begun to speak the lines audibly. His voice low, pensive. He spoke with a poet's severity and canter, quite monotone. No one could have told him how long he'd been speaking. And no one could have told him how long she had been standing there, listening.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
“You should hear it in its original tongue.”
He lifted his eyes from the book and there she stood, smiling, radiant, as if conjured by the words before him, as if materialized out of the shared longing between the poet and himself. He could do nothing for a suspension of time, only look at her. It was like the sun on his face again.
All eyes brightened in a soft blast of recognition. Awareness and shock, misbelief and wonder began to spin together in warm spirals between them. Saying nothing, he slid the book toward her, smiling, perhaps with a small playful dare in it. She picked it up and in the turn of a few pages, like one familiar with the terrain, began to read.
Voz de pájaro y corazón de casa
hacia donde emigraban mis profundos anhelos
y caían mis besos alegres como brasas.
He wanted to close his eyes but didn't, remembering a hard lesson learned once as a writer. The flawless execution of the language, the whisper of a voice from which it came, and the impatience of the afternoon sun worked on him harder and with more complete sense than the poetry he had understood just moments earlier. When she finished, he asked, “What does it mean?”
She put the book down. Looked at him and from memory, said, “Voice of a bird, heart like a house, toward which my deep longings migrated and my kisses fell, happy as embers.”
And the elements took their place—the stars, the planets, the day, the hour. He then took the book, opened it to a page he had already marked.
“Would you read this?”
She took the book from his hand and her smile seemed to sweeten as her eyes moved over the words.
Por qué se me vendrá todo el amor de golpe
cuando me siento triste, y te siento lejana?
He spoke the words before she had a chance to say anything more. “Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?”
She had on scrubs, an Eggleston Children's Hospital logo on one of the back pockets. She was thin, or almost thin, maybe with work, maybe, like him, with solitude. A difficult judgment to make through the hospital cotton that could hardly disguise the beauty of her form. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail. The fine gold mane bouncing slightly with her movement, catching the light, as if that's what the sun was there for. The large black glasses. A wave of fire rippled through his chest. It had been quiet there for so long.
“You left that night before I could really gather a thought. I had no idea how to . . . ”
His words, now that he had them, declined into a soft silence.
“You remember me?” she asked.
With a small laugh, filling with words and belief again, he continued, “I looked for you.” He had never felt so shy and so at ease in the same moment. “I had no reference. I didn't even know if you lived here. But I did, I looked for you anyway. I started going to church every Sunday. You might have been the best thing that happened to my spiritual life. Some sermons I sat through twice.”
Her smile animated slightly. It was bigger, but quieter, deeper than laughter. Little assaults of him making inroads toward her center, as if all barriers between them—including time, distance, and absence had suddenly been lifted.
“I think I watched for you everywhere.” He suddenly remembered himself. It made little difference. “I never got to thank you. I think I wondered if you were even real.”
She couldn't take her eyes off him. The rapidity of his thoughts, the total lack of restraints, the harmless rush of his speech, touched her in secret places. She had no response and she also had no fear. He continued, slowing his pace, a little. “I'm sorry. I get this way. I'm not letting you speak, am I? I've never been any good at not making an idiot of myself. Only I used to get paid for it.”
“I know. I mean . . . ” Was all she could manage, in small words, as if not finishing what she had begun to say. He laughed, surprised, playful, enjoying every delicious moment.
“You mean the idiot part? Or the other?”
Her blush had the power to maim or at least injure for life.
She quickly said, “No. No. I was working weekends then. I'm a nurse, at Eggleston. But I used to work down the street, at Piedmont.”
“I was born there,” he said. Thud. It was like word association, only dumber. “Would you like to sit down? Talk?” Trying to redeem himself.
“I'd like that.”
As she settled in the seat in front of him, he said, “There is something I need to know.” His face wrinkled with gravity.
“What's that?”
“Your name.”
She laughed a laugh so small, so warm, and so genuine he could feel it on his neck, just below and behind his ear.
“I'm Addie Waites.” She held out her hand across the table. He took it.
“Addie.“ Not to her, but just to say it. “I'm Daniel McCabe.” He released her hand.
They spoke to each other with the ease of years. The memory of her voice was immediate and brought back all the first moments. He didn't want it to stop. The day was hers to do as she wished. The day was his as well. April outside, busying herself with trifles. They sat at a table near the coffee bar and just talked. Made little discoveries. Lit little lamps. Kindled little fires. Inching toward some knowledge of each other. An aureole of light seemed to settle around them, natural, unnoticed.
They talked of Pablo Neruda. And James Taylor played in the background. In a pause, for there were only a few, she asked, “How has it been for you since that night?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I remember what I said to you. It must have echoed in my head a thousand times. It was strange. I felt awkward, but I wasn't afraid. I felt . . . protective. Angry even, for you, for something, I couldn't say what it was. I was probably as confused as I imagine you were. But there was a fight in me too. I didn't know you. I had no idea of anything happening in your life at that moment. I couldn't help myself. I didn't have a choice really.” He thinks he heard everything she said. Her voice got in the way. A poetic distraction. He said nothing. “You were sweet. Here I come charging in on my white horse. And you let me. You made it easy. I felt like I knew you somehow.” Her pace slowed. They were both eager with the desire to say something, anything, and comfortable, as well, saying nothing at all. There were no strategies at work and the interstitial silences held no threat for either of them. Just to enjoy the currents, the gentle sweep of the charm. Just to let it work. “It's funny,” she said.
“What?”
“How wordy I am. As if whatever happened, happened last night, not five months ago.”
Five months ago. He grinned to himself as the words repeated in his mind.
“I hit a wall, or something like it,” he said. “Maybe the wall stepped up and hit me. That's what it felt like, just hard places all around me. No explanations, just this desire to run, and fast, to get as far away from that place as I could, to vanish, maybe even find my old life, to get it back if possible, to salvage as much of it as I could. Then this girl comes along, this . . . ”
She was moved by his shyness, by the lost and impossible look in his eyes, by the storm of joy and confusion she created in them. He was moved by the professional plainness of her clothes, clothes that could not muzzle her beauty, that could hide nothing, that made her even more lovely to him by its very negations. She was moved by his modesty, by the lack of male ritual. He was moved by the small impression in her chin that seemed to punctuate beauty. He was moved by her soft aggression on his behalf. There was so much movement in fact, anyone watching close enough might have noticed the dance they were making, the slow steps, filled with first rites, old as April, as new as Eden.
He took a breath, as if he would continue, but said nothing, suspending everything for a moment, as if checking himself, or silencing a renegade thought, then said, “There is one thing I've left out.” Her head tilted slightly, in a question. “Something even more important about that night, more important to me than any other thing.” Hesitation, like the interval before a first kiss. “I met you.”
A blush as quiet as sleep, pink with life.
“That was so unwise,” he said in a fall of breath.
She touched him on the arm but said nothing. And from those simple gestures-the spare movement of her head, the small arc of her smile, the lightness of her touch, the warm riddle in her eyes-came the confirmation that put to rest the clamor of his search and the unquiet in his heart.
“My short life as a believer had not only lost its wind, it was beginning to turn on me. Your words stopped me from doing something really stupid. It's funny, looking back, even though I decided to stay, something changed in me that won't be the same again. Things just clarified, I think, became . . . simpler. I don't quite know. But it wasn't hard to understand how right you were. And I did understand. I needed a voice to say something to me that night. I'm just grateful it was yours. I needed God to step out of a cloud. I've had these months to think about it. To recover. I've thought of little else. There was some unanswered thing in my heart and you bolted right in and gave it words, like, like poets do. Like this poor guy.” He held up the book. He continued, “I appreciate your courage. I don't mean to scare you or to obligate you at all. I'm just not sure what would have happened next. It was all so unattractive. And small. Like being too sober, and the world gone ugly. After that night, I was unable to be what I had been just days before, or believe what I had believed.” Hardly breaking stride, but with a slight change of passion, softer, lower, he said, “And it was wonderful. God did step out of that cloud. Or at least from the shadows of that room. And became real to me, sweet . . . ” He hesitated, caught her eyes, not meaning to, maybe, “and beautiful.”
He was so overcome, he would have fled, but didn't. There was no recoil. In either of them. The authenticity in his voice had the power to cut the old strings, to challenge and rout the old rule. He heard it too. He had been broken. She knew the signs. His humility touched something deep in her, a thing that, till him, had always been untouched. How attractive it was to her. How comforting. Her throat was a little dry. The room seemed suddenly warm. And that little ache returned.
She could not help but feel the good fortune of finding him again, listening to him speak, his voice moving over her with secret hands. Soft and shy. After all, he had been reading her favorite poet, she thought to herself. He was allowed a few exaggerations on her behalf.
“This is boring you, right?” he asked.
“No. I've thought about it myself.”
“No kidding? About me?” He animated.
His smile could keep no secrets. Nor could the fresh bloom on her face. It was the only answer she had for his question.
© David Teems. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited by law.