The Park Bench Where We Met

The night is resoundingly quiet, not a soul wanders the cool streets. So the clicking of my heels thunders like the clouds above me. I can’t even hold back the cliche melancholy washing over me anymore. 

I should be in the packed gymnasium, visiting my old best friends, my old teammates, my favorite teachers, but instead, I’m wandering the street like a lost puppy looking for its mom.

I tried to go, I really did. But as soon as I walked in the entrance, dressed in a casual dress I usually wear to work and my “attorney heels” as my husband calls them, I couldn’t go in. I couldn’t force my feet to pass the threshold, they shook and my toes curled in terror every time I tried to lift them off their station on the floor. So I stood there for 30 minutes until a man that looked strikingly familiar tapped my shoulder and I elbowed him out of the way and took off into the night. 

It’s really pathetic. I even told my husband, James, he didn’t have to come because I could do it alone just fine, but apparently I was lying through my teeth. I wanted to hear one of his cheesy jokes about my hoity-toity high school, with its Olympic sized pool and planetarium. I wanted his warmth close by my side instead of the biting cold of a solitary bench on the street corner I’m perched on. 

My legs had begun to ache in these heels, they aren’t usually for walking. They’re usually what I wear in court. I’ve found that 5’ 10” woman with confident resounding voices are more intimidating than 5’4” women who are just as loud. These heels come with me to every court case and meeting prior to the hearing, hence their coined name “attorney heels''. James loves them, he always smiles and says “There’s my spitfire goin’ to work!” when I get them out; I still blush every time, despite 10 years of marriage and 2 children. 

Thinking of my husband and our kids at home makes me wanna hop on a plane and fly back to New York this instant and leave this tiny town behind, but then James would know something is wrong. 

I look down at my watch, it’s 9:30, Sammy and Duke should be in bed right now but I know they aren’t, they’re probably up watching football with James who's likely saying “just another minute and then off to bed with you two!”.

I always find them sprawled out on the couch the next morning after waking up in a cold bed--I act angry and scold them every time but secretly, I’m smiling at the little family we’ve made. 

I had wanted to brag about my success at this foolish reunion, I wanted to say that despite all of their tyranny and bullying I came out alright. I know I came out better than alright. I live in a 3 story house with 2 beautiful children, a super hot and sweet husband, and a job I love. But I couldn’t do it! I was too much of a wimp! Perhaps I haven’t changed that much since high school. 

The thought makes me clench my fist and bang it against the damp metal I’m sitting on. The blow rings in the hand but I just grit my teeth and try to hold back the tears of pain that want to escape. 

“Allie?” A voice behind me makes me spin around. It’s my old friend Maya, the one who ditched me my Senior year when I was deemed too weird to be seen with. 

“Hello, Maya.” I must remain cordial and she will go away. I secretly cross my fingers and pray for the clacking of her heels to grow fainter and fainter but they do the opposite. 

She plops down beside me and looks over. 

“Smoke?” She asks, holding out a pink box of cigarettes. I decline with a shake of my head. I look back over at her, her face more visible in the light of the streetlamp.

I can’t help the shocked look on my face as I take in her sallow skin and sunk eyes, under her eyes are a heavy set purple and her face is the uncanny orange of discolored foundation, her mouth is shakily lined with cheap red lipstick and her hair is patchy and hanging out by chunks. 

Her previous beauty and the youthfulness that drew in every boy at our school is gone, long gone. Now she just looks sad and, strangely enough, used. 

I quickly look away.

“So, how’s life?” Her voice is scratching, with emotion or tobacco, I’m not sure.  

“Fine, I’ve got 2 kids. A daughter and a son Samantha and Duke.” I keep my answer short but try to give enough information to satisfy. 

“I got a few of those,” she takes a long drag from her cigarette. 

“Sons or daughters?”

“Eh, both?” She poses the words like a question, does she not know about her children? 

“How many?” I say the words slowly, suddenly curious. 

“Um, lost count ages ago. At least 7?” Her words take me aback. She doesn’t know how many children she has? What happened to my Valedictorian best friend from high school?

“Oh.” Is all I can bring myself to say. I want to ask her why she doesn’t know the number, but I don’t want this conversation to last much longer, her cigarette is giving me a headache.

“Seems you turned out better than most of us. Michael, Caleb, and Carra are dead, various things like cancer or whatever.” She takes a drag between each name. “Jackie is a drunk, got hammered just an hour into the reunion. Daniel, well we don’t know. We didn’t know about you either, you never talked to us anymore. Annie said she thought you’d died, but here ya are.”

“I went to college, and law school. I decided to stop being a screw-up.” My mouth is open and forming words before I can process what I’m saying. “I met my husband there, James Earl, he’s an absolute nerd and we argue all the time, but I love him. And he was by my side every day, when I was giving birth he held my hand and kept telling me I was beautiful and strong and perfect for him.” A smile creeps over my face as warmth fills my chest. 

“Eh, good for you.” She takes a drag and pauses, studying me the warmth quickly recedes. “Really Allie, I’m glad you’re doin’ good. I’m glad you got out and away from this little shart town. If you can’t tell, it chewed me up and spit me back out.” She looks at me, her cigarette hanging out of her two fingers like how we used to when we sang with Rizo during our Grease marathons. 

I don’t know what to reply so I don’t. I look down at my lap instead, picking at a loose string in my dress. She takes another drag and speaks again, “I got pregnant,” she pauses for a drag, “my first year of college, a guy named David.” Drag,” real bastard he was.” Drag,” After that, I got into sex work, I was a young woman and beautiful, made some good money for a bit.” Drag, “and then-” She starts lifting the cigarette to her mouth but I pluck it from her and stamp it into the bench, almost smothering it on her skin tight cheetah print dress.

She stares at me for a second as my ears flame red, but then she bursts into a resounding fit of laughter that ends in a violent series of coughs, each time her throat rattles I flinch. Finally, she gets herself under control and looks up at me from under her chunky eyelashes. 

“God Allie, I missed you.” She smiles at me sadly as unspoken words are exchanged. 

I realize now that the peak of her life was high school and when it ended, her life ended with it. 

Maybe that’s what drove me to wrap my arm around her slim shoulder despite the rancid smell emitting from her form, or maybe it was just the guilt I feel for leaving her behind here, or perhaps we both just need this little bit of warmth to thaw the bitter ice coating those 4 years. I may never know. 

But for now, I let her cling to me and cry as I hold back tears of my own, our roles reversed after all these years, on the park bench where we first met.