Rough patches

Rough patches you and I. Yet, it started up as it should have. That summer when I used to walk back, barefoot, to my uncle’s in the bluish hues of dawn, fingers hooked around the straps of my high heels, the soft breeze swaying my light strapless dress. A few yards beyond the wall of pines, the sea was lapping at the strand in a soft crashing sound. My long hair, cigarette-scented, straight as straight could be , cascading over honey-brown shoulders. A wistful smile on my lips , my green-brown eyes lost in the bliss of reminiscence. You took my palm and wrote your number on it. A kiss on the cheek so close to my lips. Goosebumps.

An older man. A firefighter. Me, a simple high school graduate who had recently crossed into adulthood, inexperienced, wondering, ingenuous. We danced together at this club in the blinding lights and the warm summer air. You hair was not thinning then. You were the same athletic , blue-eyed dreamboat of a guy. The type of guy I had not considered but as I was walking, every detail started to fall into place. A woman grown mature in the blink of a night. The rhythmic music of the club lingered in the back of my ears and the sea gradually drowned it out. I did not mind the creaking gate, the sound of the door closing or my footsteps in the stairs. My uncle could confront me , his niece had come of age that night.

You were not my first and I had my string of awkward boyfriends. The one who liked to have a fag after the shag. The one who hurt my feelings , my first love, who had gone haywire. He was learning too, unsure of what growing up meant. But you were the true teacher, a gentleman taking me to the restaurant, to week-ends in hotel, someone who introduced me to his family. And you were, a father. This son of yours, this little blond boy of three , was to be my final rite of passage. I wasn’t looking to be a surrogate; I was wanting to be something else. He had a mother all right, loving and caring. I had to become a new entity, show mother skills and yet not sharing the name. My man, my almost boy.

We moved in together. My parents thought it was so sudden. Yet I couldn’t clip the link so easily. Paradoxically ,by leaving them, I was just proving that their little girl had moved into their world. And yet, lil’ bro, Sunday lunches, sister talks, the comfort of a happy and warm household were somehow missing ,so I had to artificially recreate them by stopping by more than I should have, making the old Sunday lunches a new tradition where I would shop at the nearby market and help my mother at the kitchen. Coequals. My father and I smiled the same smile, and yet behind his jocularity, I could see him probing at his little girl’s heart to see if she was truly happy. The funny unusual lilting Irish name they gave me can be found in this phrase. Their goddess had darted away.

A first crack appeared. As we were packing before a ski trip,your phone buzzed, I took a look, you owned up to everything. I wasn’t looking for revenge but fault lines tend to expand into networks of hairline chinks breaking apart quasi-marital bliss. You worked for days in a row, day and night, night and day. Loneliness settled in when you were not there and all the more if the boy wasn’t around. I couldn’t be wifey, the recipes fetched from magazines looked dull on the kitchen counter as the steam flew away. I was a student. I became someone else when I crossed the green and rusted gate of campus, walking the slow-grading concrete slope to classes. I shed my skins, the almost-mother, the almost-wife, daddy’s little girl, mommy’s equal, the caring big sister. I entered a world away from you all.

There was this boy. Goofy, lonely. We watched him with my best friend, he was charming. But utterly hopeless, lost, awkward , craving for something I couldn’t give him. He gave me a new role, I felt worshipped as I did that summer. He offered me a cauliflower , I watched pictures at the park with him , my bare arm was grazing his. I never told you about the night we had at his parents'. How we kissed in the kitchen while everyone else was in the living-room. Only my best friend knew what was going on. Everyone left and I did too but he called me. I went back. He led me to his room. He was drunk, miserable, under my spell. I told him I couldn’t do this to you, I pretended not to hear his broken voice in my neck when he said I was not like the others. He took me to my car, we shared a last kiss and it all petered out. He called me once, told me it was over. But nothing had really started. Had it? I talked about him sometimes, you took your glass to him, you met him, you had me invite him to your birthday, it was a test, I knew it. He came, the fool. You did not feel threatened but jealousy gently distilled its poison. He and I became strangers, barely speaking to one another when we met. I did not know he felt sorry for it.

There was another one. My best friend chaperoned me through it all, offering advice, as always trying to tear me away from you, madly in love with me but platonically. He was this Iago, steering me away from happiness, telling others how you couldn’t get it up on drunken nights. This new one, was as far away from Goofy as could be. He was brilliant, soulful, talented. He gave me new insights, opened up new avenues and your sprawling jealousy was pushing me away closer to him. I called Iago, we met for a drink. I still don’t know why he took your side on that night.

And now this. I know it is bad luck for the bride and the groom to see each other before the ceremony. But I have been thinking about it all week, how I would surprise you in your hotel bedroom as your best man would be helping you with your coat, arranging your tie knot. The door is ajar and I don’t want to knock. I want to see joy stretching across your face, apart from the audience, away from all these onlookers prying into our happiness. I peep through the small chink and it all happens so fast. I can see you in the mirror, I can also see my mother. Is it a mere kiss? A peck on the lips, a dry, fleeting and feelingless inconsequence. Are you trying to probe back to the source? Feel the origins? Trying to read me through another? I don’t step in. In an hour or so, we will be smiling on the church stoop with fistfuls of rice showered upon us, its pristine white washing off our sins, a sure sign of a true new beginning. The bells will chime back to the past and mingle with the lapping sea, the breeze in the pines, to the ears of the woman you made of me.