Adeline and Cameron

Everything is laid out and set for dinner. Chicken with rice and a red bell pepper cut into halves, bell pepper being the only vegetable I can stomach, the same thing I have had for the previous four nights. Breaking the ear-ringing silence, the gentle sounds of “La Mer” float from the living room of my apartment to the kitchen where I sit, at my table, fit for one. I’ve been living in France for two years now and I still barely understand any of the lyrics, I just like the accent. Familiar enough to me that they make me feel like I belong here, and so foreign as to allow me to imagine they say sweet things to me, letting me know I’m alright, that I’m loved.

Scrolling through my phone, pictures of my coworkers at a local bar populate my news feed. It’s the third time this month I’ve declined the invitation to go out with them. “I probably should go sometime,” I think to myself, knowing well enough I never will. It’s not that I don’t like them as people, but the mask of social butterfly sits so heavy on my face that prolonged exposure risks the permanent disfigurement of my average look.

Countless numbers of the latest internet memes follow thereafter until I see her. She and her two children Adeline and Cameron, out for brunch at her late husband’s favorite restaurant, I’m sure celebrating what would have been his most recent birthday. He had died a few years back, cancer, and she had never remarried. Although it was, I’m sure, a solemn event, there she was, with her heartbreaking smile.

After cleaning up after dinner, I finish up my last-minute packing, it’s not terribly difficult, I would say I have two unique outfits. The rest of my clothes blend together in an assortment of greys, blacks, and burgundies. My flight back home to Calgary leaves early tomorrow morning, I stay up late anyway. I can’t quiet my thoughts. What will it feel like to return home? I haven’t been away from home this long before the move to France, and my communication skills since then have been, let’s just say, lacking. Lying in bed, I stare at the roof until my body shuts down on its own.

On the long plane ride home, my mind won’t quit, there’s nothing to keep me occupied except letting my thoughts run wild, or watching the same Dwayne Johnson movie again. Thoughts of her immediately fill me. Will fate push us together while I’m back home? We never really talked again after we broke up, even before I moved, so there’s really no reason to see each other now. But still, I dream. I always do.

In an instant, I’m taken back to my childhood.

“Will she be there tonight?” I ask my parents on the car ride over to our family friend's house. We always get invited whenever there’s a need to celebrate a birthday, wedding, or just the occasional get together. We pull up to the house, the lights from the living room window piercing the darkness outside, and the noise from inside is the only thing heard for blocks. Like a fighter to the octagon, the walk up to the door gives me some final prep time. I run through what I’ll say when I see her and make sure my clothes looked presentable, or at least presentable enough for what’s expected of a ten-year-old.

The doors open, and I see her standing next to her parents. The usual social angst that comes with being at a get together is replaced by an all-new form of anxiety. My cheeks turn as red as a stoplight telling me to stay where I am, my hands are sweaty, and my heart beats inside my throat.

We exchange our personal brands of awkward greetings and flee the company of the grown-ups for the solitude and intimacy of the colorful play tent our hosts kept in the basement for their kids. We spend the rest of the night carefully poking and prodding one another, trying to get the other to accidentally admit to their attraction. No admission is ever made in that tent and always results in more questions regarding the other’s feelings. A question that will not be answered until we’re adults.

The plane, violently shaking during its descent, snatches me from my daydream. I look out the window to see a thick layer of snow blanketing the city, enough to make people forget how to drive, I can only imagine what it does for pilots. My parents are here to meet me at the airport, along with my sister who arrived yesterday from her home in London. Despite living so close, we haven’t seen each other in 16 years. She moved away a year before me.

Once we arrive home, I return to my old bedroom. I had always been under the impression that my parents weren’t the sentimental type, but I’m proven wrong when I open the door to find my room has more or less remained untouched. My bedsheets had been recently washed and made in preparation for my arrival, my shelves are still filled with the dozens upon dozens of books I have never read. My desk still sits in the corner of my room with little chunks missing from where I took pieces out whenever I got bored or anxious while doing schoolwork. Everything still has my family's unique smell attached to it.

Under my desk, unmoved is a painting of a tarantula that my mother’s father had painted for me before he died, he too from cancer. As I pick it up to examine it closer, I rediscover a small cardboard box I had hidden behind it. Inside, little memories I kept from when we dated. Valentine’s Day cards, small gifts, letters we had sent to each other, things that I didn’t want to throw away, but that I also couldn’t bear to look at. I look through the small collection for a while and find a little slip of paper with stars drawn on it.

I think about bittersweet memories like this all the time.

We’re sitting on the roof of her house watching the stars, so excited to see a comet that we almost fall right off the roof onto her parents’ truck in the driveway below. The fall is the least of my worries, her parents were in the room next to hers and would not have liked to find me in her room at such a late hour. We sit close together as if in competition, going back and forth with tales of past traumas trying to figure out who is the most screwed up. We both won. We spend the rest of the night staring up at the sky, holding hands.

Once again, I’m jolted back to reality. Tonight, we have plans to visit my aunt’s house to reunite with my cousins and have Christmas dinner. I’m tasked with getting the desserts, pie for the traditionalists, and cake for the picky eaters, myself included. I keep moving further and further away from home as every store I visit has run out of pumpkin pie. I finally find a store that has a few left and snatches one up. On my way over to choose the cake, I realize the woman standing in my path, by some freak chance, is her. I freeze for a moment, considering whether or not I should just leave the store before she even notices I am there, but I can’t do it. This may be my one chance to talk to her. The worst that can happen is what I have been living with for the last 20 years. I make my way over and awkwardly stand near her, staring at cakes, hoping she might be the one to start. Then she looks up and suddenly recognizes me.

“Oh my god! Arthur? How are you?” She asks.

Everything I had ever planned to say to here had vanished, died, only to be resurrected when I was no longer with her.

“Elizabeth? I’m great! Wow, look at you. How have you been?” I asked, walking the thin line between joy and desperation with my words.

“I’ve been good, just picking up some dessert for Christmas dinner with the family.”

“Same here”, I say, running out of any more conversation.

“How has France been? It must be so amazing!”

“It’s been amazing like I’m always living in a dream.”

“Ugh, I’m super jealous. Are you just back for Christmas?”

“Yeah, I fly out in two weeks.”

“At least you get some time with your family which is nice, I bet they’ve missed you a lot”, she says, seemingly racing to end this uncomfortable interaction, eyeing her groceries, followed by the self-checkout.

“I have to get going,” she adds, “but it was nice seeing you.”

“Oh, yeah it was great seeing you too.”

She smiles as she walks away.

“Hey,” I involuntarily shout as I catch her before she’s completely gone, “before I leave, would you wanna maybe grab a coffee or something sometime and catch up?”

“Oh, um, that would be great, I just need to check my schedule. Give me your number and I can let you know when I’m free.”

She hands me her phone. A blank contact form staring me in the face. I fill out my info, give her phone back to her, and pick up a cake. I wander around the store for a while, so we don’t have to leave at the same time.

After our family dinner, we return home. I head straight to my room to lie down after eating so much. Facedown on my bed, I turn my head, only to see the painting of the tarantula again. The box behind it piqued my morbid curiosity. I take it from its hiding spot and riffle through its contents once more.

I find a picture taken at a party we went to together.

She has a hold of my arm, trying to lead me to the dance floor. I won’t go with her. I have never been a big party guy or a drinker to any extent. She dances as I can feel her resentment throughout the night grow stronger. The crowd around her, swallowing her up, taking her away from me. A guy comes up to her and asks to dance, she accepts, and they dance for a couple of songs. After they’re done, he goes off without a word other than, “Thank you,” and rejoins the people he came with. A simple dance throws me into such a spiraling frenzy of conspiracy and anxiety, that this guy would have stolen her heart if I weren’t there, and there was no doubt in my mind she would have left with him. However, I don’t respond with anger, but with sadness. I explain to her my thoughts of worthlessness and that she deserves someone better. I held her captive in my pity, like an injured animal she feels sorry for, and would hold up the world itself to remedy their ailment, even if it meant going against her true desires.

All throughout the week, I do the touristy things around Calgary, visiting Banff, going up the Calgary Tower, tobogganing. My parents and I walk around downtown. I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket.

“Hey Arthur, it’s Elizabeth. Do you wanna grab a coffee tomorrow around noon and catch up?”

We talk at the coffee shop for hours about our lives, mutually exclusive for the last 20 years. She shares more about her kids and her job, and I share more about France, my writing, and working as a funeral attendant to actually earn some money. The feeling of awkwardness just melts away with every sip of my boiling beverage, and it feels like I am talking to the same girl I knew back then; the same one I have been in love with ever since.

We continue seeing each other for the next few days. On our last date, we end up going to her house. I’ve missed holding and kissing her. Even though so much time had passed, and our age signifies that I didn’t see it. It feels as if things never ended. 

It’s the day before my flight back to France, and I just spent another night at Elizabeth’s. Downstairs, Adeline and Cameron are sitting in the living room watching TV, early risers, they would have gotten that from me. Their names conceived of while Elizabeth and I were originally together. Two children who I dreamed of having with her someday are now sitting before me, looking completely alien. They’ve experienced so much, and to them, there’s no one else their mother was meant to be with aside from their father. These weren’t my children, no matter how bad I want them to be.

My busy day ended back at her house, but as we lie here together, she tells me that she wants me to stay. She says she wants to give us another chance and that age has changed us, made us better, and now we know how to be what we need to be for each other. While I am browsing my social media on my phone, unable to sleep, she passes out on my chest. I try placing my phone on the bedside table, but miss it in the darkness, and it falls to the floor and goes under her bed.

I carefully move her off my chest and peer under the bed looking for my phone. I find it, alongside a small cardboard box. Inside, a collection of mementos of her time together with her husband. Moments they had shared over the years. My box and hers, one a treasure trove, the other a casket. As I look through it, jealousy, sadness, anger, and so much more I can’t even begin to understand floods my soul. I think about what she had said. Had time changed me? It didn’t feel right. I am finally where I have wanted to be for so long, but it isn’t the same. I keep thinking about her and what I caused her before, and what I could cause her again. The thought of her happy with someone else infuriated me, and I finally knew what that meant.

I kiss her forehead and leave.

She calls my phone for the fifth time today; I send it to voicemail. I move around my room and gather what I need to take back to France with me. Peeking out from under my desk is the tarantula. I move him and pick up my small cardboard box. I gave it a proper burial in the backyard.

During the long flight back, not a thought came to me, no memory important to me anymore. The past was gone, and a blank future lied ahead.

“It’s for the best,” I say to myself.

Back in my apartment, I drop my bags at the front door and move to the kitchen. I pull a chicken breast from the freezer and throw it into the hot bath in the sink to thaw.