Fluffy’s Remorse

My name is Dirk. I don’t remember when I fell in love with Maribeth, but it was sometime during my senior year in high school. I was 17. We spent endless days together, driving aimlessly with the windows down in the old Buick, ballroom dancing, laughing at private jokes, going to the drive-in movies they still had back then, and sharing dreams as vast as the horizon. 

Maribeth had a way of making the world brighter. Her laughter was infectious. She was a dancer, and her energy was boundless. The girl was beautiful in an effortless way, with her brownish-auburn hair and sparkling yet intense eyes that transmitted an indescribable something unique and impeccable. No one had ever looked at me with eyes that spoke love as loudly and directly. No one has since. Her eyes were unique. Maribeth, my first true love, was the ultimate sixteen-year-old temptress. She was the object of every fantasy I ever had, a helium love balloon that lifted my soul.

I was in awe of her, and she intimidated me. I feared I was not good enough for her. It wasn’t just her beauty. Although that had a lot to do with it. The five-foot-four, hundred-ten pound Maribeth had the hard body active dancer. Her perfectly sculpted smooth muscles reminded me of the Greek Goddess Hera. Maribeth thought her tits were too small. A common issue with dancers. I thought they were beautiful and told her beauty is in the mouth of the beholder. A joke she didn’t find funny.

When she spoke about life, it was with passion and clarity, making everything else dull. She was articulate, witty, and had an uncanny ability to make me special. I was incredibly fortunate to be the one she chose to be her fiancé. 

To protect her was among my masculine jobs. She trusted me not to hurt her, physically or psychologically. I was happy that someone beyond my dog felt that way about me.

Maribeth had such radiance it was like being touched by the sun. When I could make her smile, I commanded the world. 

But as the third winter moved to spring, a nagging doubt began to creep into my mind. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something felt off. We were at college and went home for Christmas Break. The future, which had been so clear, certain, and full of promise for three years, became uncertain after New Year’s Day. 

Maribeth had changed during the break. Perhaps not changed. Maybe she woke up from some kind of dream, and what we had wasn’t enough. I was not good enough for her. Was that the problem? I wasn’t a good student. She was honor roll. Sitting alone, I began questioning our relationship, wondering if we were really meant to be together or if the magic of my first true love made everything perfect. 

I knew most high school relationships don’t last. Most first loves don’t work out. Few people in my high school class who had married were still married three years later. But since the first of the year, she ignored me, saying that her change of majors required a lot more study. She was choosing school over me. Or was my glow fading in her eyes? I had chosen her over everything. 

One afternoon, I told her I’d been thinking a lot and thought we needed some time apart. Maribeth turned to me, her expression a mixture of surprise and hurt, and asked: Are you breaking up with me? I hesitated, hating the pain that filled my soul, and said, “I think we need to take a break. I need to figure things out.”

The days that followed were a blur of regret and second-guessing. I missed Maribeth terribly. I was not convinced I had made the right decision. But no matter how hard I tried to move on, thoughts of Maribeth kept intruding. Her laughter haunted me. Her smile and the absence of those penetrating, loving eyes possessed by no other woman in the world were constant reminders of what I had lost.

A month later, in a moment of clarity, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I’d lost the person I worried about, cared about, and loved. I loved Maribeth, and I wanted her back. I went to her dorm with a heart full of hope and a plan to win her. She wasn’t in — out on a date, I was told. I had not dated, but Maribeth had already moved on. She was dating someone else. She had time for a date with somebody else but no time for me. I was devastated.

I called her. She refused my calls. I sent her notes. No response. Finally, in complete desperation, I placed a display ad in the university newspaper that said: “Dirk Loves Maribeth.” Everyone saw it. The city newspaper gossip column mentioned it. 

Surely, she had to respond. She had to call me. She must, and I was confident she would. The trumpets would blare, and she would run to me with open arms. We belonged together in every sense. But reality isn’t a romantic movie. She never called. No more “us.”

Every day, I woke up with this stupid flicker of hope in my chest. The hope that today she might come back. I didn’t know I could be this sad, this unhappy — or for so long. I had squandered my opportunity. Replacing her was not possible. She was in an irreplaceable class by herself.

I read Kahlil Gibran. “Think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.” Love had found me unworthy. My heart wasn’t merely broken. I believed it was irreversibly silenced. Love was too cruel to ever succumb again. Somehow, I had to leave Maribeth behind. 

I graduated, and so did she. I married a woman I didn’t love to avoid the military draft. Yes, the Maribeth wound tragically remained open. I couldn’t shake her memory. She was my first true love, and I always imagined what might have been if I hadn’t let my fears and doubts get the better of me. I finally gave up trying to make my loveless, miserable marriage work and got a divorce. I call them my tragic years. Three years later, I re-married, this time for love. My second true love. 

Decades later, I attended a high school reunion of all graduates who had graduated at least 50 years before. Graduates only, no guests. I mingled with old friends, exchanging stories about those who had passed, and catching up on lost time. I overheard a familiar voice. Different yet familiar. Turning around, I was stunned to see Maribeth — in a wheelchair. A painful reawakening of the void she’d left rushed through my head. My breath vanished as an unseen fist squeezed my heart, making my blood pressure drop twenty points. I couldn’t breathe and became light-headed.

Yes, I was the one who broke up. It wasn’t because I didn’t love her. Loving her consumed me, and I needed affirmative proof of her love. To hear simple words such as “I love you.” Words to overcome the sense that I ceased to exist to her. I instigated the break, but she was the one who never answered my pleas. 

Here she was at the reunion. Indeed, it was Maribeth, but not the same Maribeth. Gone was the stylish, vibrant young woman who lived in a leotard. The one who had captured my heart and soul all those years ago. In her place was a woman with twice the weight, a round full face replaced the sculptured classic Greek profile I remembered, complete with soft, plump cheeks that generously curved outward and joined a well-filled drooping chin. The skin, though smooth, bore the redness of excessive rose blush makeup frumpy old women too often use. It did not hide the tired, worn-out expression she tried to cover with a forced smile as she spoke with classmates.

I was speechless as I took her in. Maribeth’s neck-length hair was now brushed up with a wig stacked on her head in a 1960s beehive-type style. She wore a moo moo-type tent dress with generous sleeves to cover arms the size of what her thighs used to be. It was a god-awful flower print to complete the picture of a drab, old-fashioned, nicknack-collecting great-grandmother. A frump.

Her once sparkling eyes, unique eyes, the eyes she used to look at me like no eyes ever did before or since. Eyes capable of turning stone into lava. Eyes I had dreamed about for hundreds of nights. Eyes now half closed from the weight of their puffy lids.

Our eyes met, and she motored toward me. As she approached, I caught a whiff of something pungent, acrid, and sour. Body odor. Was it Maribeth? No, never. She had been meticulously clean. It was a scent I encountered only around the obese who were too indifferent to get soap and water between their folds of flab. She stopped the wheelchair at my side. She was the source. 

“Hi, Dirk,” she said, her high-pitched voice friendly and warm, but without the love and enthusiasm I remembered and a smile I could not interpret.

“Maribeth,” I replied, forcing a smile. “It’s been a long time.”

We exchanged pleasantries. Silence settled lightly around us, as if the din from the group was turned down. Maribeth spoke of her life and complained about her health. She suffered every disease, condition, and organ failure contained in a medical encyclopedia of illnesses. Almost all traceable to obesity and, oddly, to dancing. 

I ran my eyes over her again. She tracked my gaze and jokingly volunteered that her husband is supportive and says she’s not fat. She’s fluffy. I frowned. Doubling her weight did not happen overnight. A husband who did not acknowledge doubling her weight was harmful was not supportive. He was an enabler. 

I listened politely but with a mixture of empathy, disappointment, and relief. Empathy and disappointment for how she turned out and has lived since our split. Relief that I was not her husband. Fluffy, the woman sitting in a wheelchair with an oxygen bottle strapped to it and breathing through a nasal cannula, had no resemblance to the Maribeth I had loved. What the hell happened?

Yes, I had loved her. It wasn’t a fling, it wasn’t a teenage crush, it lasted three years. And it wasn’t because she was the first woman I ever made love to. My love was real, and she threw it away because I meant nothing to her, or she would have answered my calls and notes. For sure, at least my ad. I suspect my voice may have contained some bitterness. 

I had spent three years with Maribeth as a couple, her fiancé, and untold time pining for her afterward, idealizing her in my mind beyond the ideal she actually was, and regretting the decision to break up. With me, she would have had tough love. If we had remained a couple, I doubt she have come to this. Or would she?

Maribeth looked up at me from her wheelchair, her face sad, a tear flooding one eye, and softly said, “I hoped you would be here because I want to tell you something.” 

I saw words were already on her tongue, prying her lips apart.

“First, I know I would not be in the physical and mental condition I am now if we had married. Look at you. You’re the same weight as in high school. I would be, too. You were my strong protector and you loved me too much to let me deteriorate the way I have. You are the only one I ever met who consistently did and said what you thought was right, not just popular or acceptable. It was one of the many features about you I loved.”

I was perplexed. If this is what she thinks, then why did she give me the silent treatment those decades ago when I bared my soul to the world and would do anything to regain her love?

“Fluffy, Maribeth, …” I started, and she held up a hand, softly stopping me.

“The second, and last thing I want to tell you is I was wrong. I loved you and thought our love so strong there was no need for words. In that sense, I was taking you for granted. You did need words and I didn’t recognize that.” 

Maribeth drew in a deep breath, and her eyes looked at her feet, then raised her head to make eye contact. “When you tried to make amends, I was angry. Enraged. I saw your notes, and the ad. I cut it out for my scrapbook and still have it. I gave you the silent treatment to get even. To teach you a lesson for breaking up.” She paused and shook her head. “Letting you go was the worst decision I ever made. It was revenge. Revenge cost me you. Cost us, us.”

My mind went to the classic movie “Gone with the Wind,” where Rhett Butler gave up on Scarlett after doing all he could to attract her. She treated him like dirt, with no respect or love. Finally, too late, she tells him she truly loves him. “Maribeth,” I said in as quiet and somber voice as I could muster, “it’s a pity I did not hear this back then.” 

I had loved her so much, and she had shattered my heart so severely it took more than 10 years to heal. Different words came to mind, words of Rhett Butler, and I silently said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

But I did.