Dear Mignon

Dear Mignon,

How could you grant a mere boy of fifteen a fantasy for two weeks at the end of summer, and then leave him for school in California? You were eighteen and had all of the big men on campus after you; the jock down the street, the man with a handlebar mustache at the club, and even my twenty-two year old brother who asked you to go away to a cabin with him for a weekend. But you picked me. I was so naïve I didn’t even consider that you were coming on to me; I thought you were just being nice. When did we first kiss? I remember it took a long time to get to that point, and you must have been wondering what I was waiting for, how I could be so dumb to miss all of the signals. You were house sitting for your uncle across the street from me, and invited me in when he was away on a trip. We sat on the large puffy sofa in the dark cool of his basement. You offered me a beer. I said yes. I had never drunk a beer before that, only sips of my Dad’s when I would get him another can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Then you gave me a massage. I laugh now, thinking about that. How did you maneuver us from sitting on the sofa to a massage? I wonder what you thought when I didn’t kiss you, or offer to return the massage, or anything beyond my thanking you for the beer, and the massage, and crossing back over the street to my house.

We played tennis. Some boys from a baseball tournament sat along the fence to watch you running for the ball and the way your breasts bounced when you ran. They asked if you were my girlfriend, and I said no. They started catcalling, but I didn’t know what to do about it. You glowered and turned red. They eventually went away.

I remember now the first time you finally broke through to me and left no doubt as to whether you were interested in me as more than a friend. We were at the movie “Fright Night”, and you leaned your leg against mine. You held my hand for a while, and pulled my hand closer to you so the back of my hand rested against your bare thigh. I wasn’t watching the movie at all anymore, only your thigh and my hand. Then there in the dark you let go of my hand and slid your palm across my leg, and felt me getting hard. I remember walking out of the movie theater with a raging erection and thinking everybody could see it, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

You taught me to always open a door for a girl, and to always be gentle. You used to press your nose against mine and look right into my eyes; you were just a blur except for your eyes and smile, and you would flutter your eyelids like butterflies. Your uncle’s red Camero and a church parking lot. I didn’t have a clue where kids went to park and that seemed as good a place as any.

That last night we were to spend together before you moved out to LA to chase your dreams of becoming an actress, you told me that a person never forgets their first. As you drove me home the radio was playing Phil Collins “Against All Odds,” a very fitting soundtrack to my night. I remember thinking how every time I would hear that song, I’d think of this night. Phil Collins. Jesus.

Then you were gone. I remember feeling how lucky I was to have spent those last two weeks of summer with you, and that’s what made me angriest later, after it hurt to read your letters about your part-time job in a shoe store while you waited for callbacks from your latest auditions, and then letters asking why I wasn’t writing you back. I had to convince myself that I didn’t feel anything at all. Another lesson you taught me.

A Night in Birmingham

photo by Trondelarius.

He was driving all night from North Dakota to someplace south, maybe the gulf. He wasn’t sure exactly where, but the main thing was to feel the thrum of the road passing beneath the wheels, an unraveling ribbon of tar with no end, no beginning. It was midnight by the time he crossed into Alabama, but he didn’t want to stop. He was in a zone, tired brilliant and half mesmerized by the highway. Trees loomed out of the dark into the headlights. He struck a deer just past Birmingham, and his clothes were splattered with blood because he had stopped the car, walked back, and dragged the carcass to the ditch.

Got to wash up at a motel or something, but none of them would take in a man at 2:00 am covered in blood. From a travel guide in his glove box, he started calling B&Bs. An old lady named Ms. Sandy answered on the third phone number, at a place called the Fox Trot. Said all of her rooms were open, and that she’d be happy to take in a boarder. She gave him directions, a ways off the highway, but he was desperate.

When he pulled up to her home, she was standing on the porch wrapped in a shawl. He grabbed his duffel bag from the trunk and asked why an old lady was answering her phone at 2:30 in the morning. Couldn’t sleep, she said. Seemed like the older she got, the less sleep she needed. Hardly knew what to do with all of that time on her hands, especially at night with nobody staying with her to talk to.

He started to explain the blood, but she waved it off. Doesn’t matter, come on in.

He remembered, later that night after having showered and had a cup of tea in her kitchen, what it was like staying at his grandmother’s. That feeling of being taken care of, being safe, and the odd way that time hung suspended in her kitchen in those purgatorial hours between night and morning. They talked of the kinds of things that, later on, he couldn’t remember. All he would be able to recall was that feeling of kindness, acceptance, of being made to feel completely at home. That’s how it felt being in Ms. Sandy’s presence, even more so than any particular thing she said or did.

Who was she? Maybe it was just her name, but he imagined her to be the Sandman’s widow, grown old now and abandoned, left to lord over this home in the Alabama woods, wiling away the insomniac nights with guests that needed a place to rest.

I wish I knew what they talked about, or what he was running from in North Dakota, or what he was running towards, but it seems that Ms. Sandy doesn’t gossip about her boarders. Your sins are safe with her.

Have You Seen My Tree?

photo by dick_pountain.

The tree was gone when I got up in the morning. For one hundred years it had stood to the left of my front step, and on the morning of July 28th I stuck my head out the door to pick up the paper from the front step and saw that the tree was gone. No jagged broken stump, no charred remains. The grass was smooth, as though a tree had never grown there. I drove around town, looking for it. I hung signs:

Have You Seen My Tree??
60 ft. black walnut
5 ft. trunk cir.
Last seen on the evening of the 27th
on the 3100 block of Manor Dr.
Call 612.366.1477 with information
$500 REWARD!

I got a few leads, but most were dead ends. Many were pranks. Some people called with real concern and compassion in their voices. Long after the signs came down and the calls stopped coming in, neighbors would mention to me that they might have seen it, on their last vacation out west, or the other day when they took their kids to a wildlife preserve in Washington County. It looked happy out there in the woods, they said. Maybe it was for the best.

I have picnics now and then on my lawn, right over the spot where it should be. Maybe I’ll plant something new over the spot next spring. It’s a shame. It really balanced the front yard.