I don’t love…
My wife, or ex, insightful woman that she is, doesn’t understand. I’m not sure I do myself. I never meant to cause her any pain, last thing I wanted, but she’d sensed that something wasn’t quite right with me for some time now. Ultimately, I owed her honesty. And, after all these years, I owed a little to myself.
It had always been there, years before the marriage and throughout previous relationships, percolating quietly beneath the surface—a silent river running deep, forever cutting. It got to the point where it became all encompassing and could no longer be ignored … or suppressed.
I don’t love…
After the divorce I gave up my practice and moved back to Duluth. I’d attended two years at the university there before transferring down to complete my degree in the Twin Cities. They’ve certainly given Duluth a makeover—modernized it—in the quarter century that I’ve been away.
***
I met her at the end of freshman year. She bounced down the hallway, back to the dorms from the cafeteria, all girl-next-door-ish, full of life and playfulness. She had the carefree energy of a tomboy, unafraid to climb trees, or jump bikes, or tire swing with the rest of the guys. A vibrancy indicating she’d been accustomed to leading the pack in an impromptu game of kick-the-can or hide-and-seek. She sprang into my life with a mane of silky black hair, an arched smile, and a devilish twinkle in her eye. Then she paused, as though sensing my voyeurism, turned, and peeked straight at me, a direct inquiry in her eyes that captured my soul. That’s how it all began.
Terribly shy to begin with and practically shaking, I walked over and introduced myself. Her name was Lisa-Marie, and she was a psych major. Somehow, as we approached the elevator, an introverted mutt like me got up the nerve.
“So, hey, psych major named Lisa-Marie.” Not sure exactly what to do with my hands, I stuffed them in my pockets. “If I promise to be on my best behavior, would you want to grab a bite to eat sometime?”
“Well,” she smiled, “if you’re on your best behavior—sure.”
All in all we ran around together only a month before the school year ended. A couple of movies, some pizza, long walks about the campus. One evening we spent at the lift bridge, pinkies entwined, leisurely shooting the breeze as we watched the barges come in. Meals in the cafeteria found me quizzing her, needing to know everything, wanting to get lost in all her minutiae—falling deep into those brown eyes and never wanting to surface.
At a retrograde Lawrence Welk champagne party she threw with her friends, Lisa Marie snuck me into the women’s bathroom to show me something she’d been dying to share. She dragged me right in front of the mirror above the sink and then pointed to the full-length mirror aligned on the opposite wall.
“Watch this.” She stood sideways between the two mirrors and brought her hands up and down in front of her. Her reflection ping-ponged back and forth, mirrors within mirrors, and I watched as Lisa-Marie’s hands fluttered and waved across an infinity of identical images. I grabbed her hands in mine and pulled her toward me, stared into the mirror sets, and saw images of us together for as far as the eye could see.
Unexpected emotions are always the hardest. And the purest and rawest and deepest and scariest and sweetest. Chewing on a dried yellow leaf in the fall. Having mom work that sliver out of your pint-sized finger with a needle. Your first Halloween. Your first snow. Your first kiss. I first kissed Lisa-Marie right then and there, standing between the mirrors. I felt her breath in my mouth.
I’d been embarrassed to show her my dorm room. I’d swept maybe once all year, but at least I’d kicked the dirty laundry into the closet. Lisa-Marie came in, glanced around, from the clock radio to the silly wall posters to the textbooks stacked haphazardly on my desk to the un-vacuumed floor.
“Sorry about the mess. My check to the cleaning service must have bounced.”
“Don’t worry.” Lisa-Marie scooped up a dust bunny that had been hovering in a far corner and brought it over to me. “Besides, dust bunnies are magic. Everyone knows that. They capture memories.” She handed me the dust ball. “Hang on to this and you’ll remember me forever.”
I called her L.M. And L.M. transferred down to the main U in Minneapolis while I did sophomore year in Duluth. We became pen pals. She’d write me pages in multi-felt-tip colors, telling me how she spent her birthday; post chickenpox, lurking about the campus in big sunglasses and a straw hat to hide the scars. She sent me goofy-looking postcards she’d picked up here and there. She sent me one note completely made up of letters she’d cut out from magazines—must have taken her hours.
I moved down to Minneapolis to be with her. I’d just turned twenty; everything was at my fingertips—youth, ambition, excellent grades. One might assume that a four-point-o would indicate a certain amount of emotional maturity. Or that it might be a sign of someone not governed by his or her insecurities. Sadly, in my case, nothing could be further from the truth.
Never terribly comfortable in my own skin, I’d spent most of my life away from the crowd. Too terrified to open up, much less talk to girls, I was just another introvert whiling away the hours, lost in a daydream. I was twenty going on ten and attempting to have a normal relationship with this enchanting young woman.
I was never sure how to act or react around Lisa-Marie. God knows I said things I didn’t mean. And I truly meant things that I could never quite find a way to put into words. In the end, I was a little lost boy, flailing the wrecking ball back and forth in the darkness.
And, after a couple of second chances, I drove Lisa-Marie away.
At the start of junior year, in late September, I tried to set the world right. I met L.M. at a pub and let her know that I thought the world of her, and how some of the stuff that I said and did wasn’t me at all, that she needed to know that. I mentioned how I thought she was genuinely a class act. Lisa-Marie looked down at her coffee and said I was embarrassing her. I apologized, but told her that it was how I felt. She then subtly slipped in something about her having a boyfriend.
I felt carved up inside, couldn’t eat or sleep for days, but I forced myself into the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back mode of the old romantic comedies, because, if there was one certainty in life, one thing on which I’d hung my hat … Lisa-Marie and I were meant to be, just like the images in the mirrors: together as far as the eye could see. I orbited her periphery, popping into L.M.’s little office in the Psych building where she’d gotten a job as a teacher’s assistant, calling her now and again under the pretense of requesting class advice, and generally perpetrating the farce that we could exist together as friends.
I last saw Lisa-Marie on a not-so-good Good Friday, when we sat on the steps of Northrop auditorium in the late afternoon sun. I forced some jokes, we talked about school, and she finally got around to doing what she knew had to be done. Lisa-Marie showed me her left hand, which now sported an engagement ring. And Lisa-Marie told me, very gently, that she was getting married.
I held it together long enough to feign three minutes of happiness for her, all bent smiles and dumbstruck congratulations. I finally mumbled an awkward goodbye and walked from Lisa-Marie’s life. Perhaps I made it as far as Coffman Union before the tears began to spill down my face. The realization sunk in with hurricane-like force: boy loses girl, and boy will never ever get girl back.
Lisa-Marie had mentioned that they might get a house near Lake of the Isles unless his company transferred them. I guess the transfer came through. It took me another year and a half to complete my undergrad, and then another three for law school, but I never saw L.M. again. Not even one last time.
***
I live now in an efficiency apartment on the hill overlooking Lake Superior. Lisa-Marie’s cards and letters, yellowed with age, are stuck to my refrigerator and taped on otherwise bare walls. I haunt the old restaurants, theaters and walking paths, taking endless strolls about the campus. I go down to the lift bridge and sit where once we’d sat together. And whenever I stare in the mirror, a little lost boy with graying hair stares back.
Yes, I live in Duluth and trail ghosts, trying desperately to find that long ago place where once upon a time … I loved.
