The Story We Love

            Although you were the nicest, most beautiful woman I ever met, you were simply too good to be true. This is the last you will ever hear from me. I loved you.

            R.T.

            Stella found this note on her bedside table, tucked beneath a candle and a mangled copy of the New Testament. She read it over and over again, as she prepared her morning coffee and let her dog out into the backyard. She sat on her sofa and continued to stare at the note, hoping that it would make sense the more she tried to decipher it. Was there a hidden code? Was it a metaphorical verse? Stella was most hurt by the constant use of past tense in the short paragraph (I loved you) with the –d so undisguised, so brash, and so horrid, she was almost afraid to read it as “loved” instead of “love.” Richard still loved her, or so she thought. She recalled a pleasant night that she shared with him. She forced the dialogue to play over and over again in her mind. Even when she grew weary of it, she pressed her thumb to her forehead and recycled this one scene, letting it tumble, afraid of letting it loose.

“Have you ever read Baldwin?” she asked him

“No, I have not”

“Well it’s a story about these gay lovers, David and Giovanni who…fall in love”

He looked at her with a look of puzzlement, wondering why she was telling him this now, as she was half-undressed and there was jazz music playing in the background

“David was afraid of his emotions. He was afraid of intimacy. And Giovanni knew this. And there’s this great line in the book… when Giovanni gets angry with David, he says something like, ‘you never loved me. When we made love, you made love to everyone! Everybody but me’”

She lowered her gaze at the man who was in front of her. He was there in the flesh, but his eyes were absent. He was drifting into a state of otherworldliness. She was enthused over the realm of literature. He was focused on the strenuous act of forgetting.

She continued, “This is how I feel now. Committing this act of loving without really loving. The motion of loving without emotion. Everything contrary to nature. All I am doing is gathering my shame, grief, and confusion and spilling it onto you. This is how I remain cold and alienated. This is how I separate the yolk from the egg whites, the intimacy from the intimate. I am just like David—afraid of reality”

He was afraid of reality, too. There is nothing more terrifying than the idea of life itself. To accept life is to accept consequences. And there is no motion and no emotion that isn’t tangled with remorse or embarrassment.

Everyone. Everybody but me. And who was it that she was making love to? An unborn lover? A submersed appetite? She felt that her life was a cliché that could be easily summarized in vague sentence fragments: lone woman; No education; Slightly clever; Averagely pretty; Flimsy and petite; Lost and guilty. There was no singular reason for her struggle, no heart wrenching back-story to solidify her anxiety. She called her best friend in tears. The phone rang once.

“Stella?”

“Lucy! My dear Lucy!” Stella cried on her side of the line, “Richard has left me again!”

“Oh, that bastard! You really should stop seeing him. Would you like me to come over with some coffee?”

Stella did not respond, hoping that she would be offered further condolence.

“Or some magazines? A good movie? Dear, answer me!”

“No, no. I’ll be all right, Lucy. I just need some time alone.”

“Did he leave you a note this time?”

“Like he always does.”

And with that, Stella hung up the phone, still savoring her friend’s empathy. She rolled Lucy’s words around in her mouth. Magazines. Movies.  That bastard. With Lucy, it was always a one-sided conversation, heaving heavily on Stella’s and her latest delusions. She let her dog back inside and rested with him on the carpet.

“Oh, my precious pet. Why is Richard always leaving me so alone?” Tears swelled up in her eyes as the dog came up to her and licked her face.

Stella then stood and took the note from her bedside table and threw it into a pile filled with other notes. All from Richard.

Deciding not to mope around, she gathered herself together and decided to go to town for some drinks. She put on some sheer pantyhose and a flowing red dress. She tied her brown hair behind her ears. She sprayed herself with lilac and honey perfume, which seemed to attract men and bumble bees alike.

***

At the bar, a sweet young man confronted her. He asked her what she wanted to drink and she replied straight scotch. He nodded and his eyes softened at her incessant, innocent gaze. Her red lips were pouted like a child’s. She blinked her mascara-coated lashes repeatedly, as if fanning away some unwanted memory. Stella knew, in the gentle way that he passed her the scotch, and in the overly cautious way that he avoided looking at her legs when he spoke to her, that it would not take much convincing to take the sweet young man home.

In the dead of the night, when the playground outside was eerily vacant and the clouds framed the half crescent moon, an intimate conversation was taking place in Stella’s bed.

“Have you ever read Baldwin?” she asked the sweet young man.

“Yes. It was actually one of the best books I ever read!” he responded, beaming at his delight to have gotten together with such a lady, who was not only elegant, but well-read as well. But his answer was not what Stella wanted.

“I have a request of you. It will be awkward. But I ask you, that when I open my eyes, you will not be here.”

Then she rolled around on her side of the bed and imitated sleep. The young man was uncertain when she would open her eyes. In the morning? In a few minutes? He was unsure about when he was expected to leave, but in order to avoid any risks, he reluctantly gathered his clothing and walked out the door.

The next morning, Stella took a piece of paper from her nightstand and wrote:

The times I spent with you were the most romantic and memorable moments of my life and I shall never forget your beautiful face, as it shows up in all my dreams.

            R.T.

Oh, Richard! Richard, who is everyone and no one. Richard who is a promise of a heart of fulfillment. Richard who exists in the story she tells her friends. Richard is the story we tell ourselves to relieve the heart of its selfishness.