Yesterday, while you worked in Venice, I drove down the coast following a white Porsche through Big Sur and then inland, past oil derricks, rows of almond trees, and more than one winery with a new building designed to look like a castle, with crenels and, I kid you not, drawbridges. I felt that the little car leading me toward Los Angeles was driven by a ghost or that you were at the wheel. I know you don’t own a car; the green Corolla you parked on my street belongs to your friend, who, perhaps you have heard by now, I spoke to this morning as I dragged the garbage cans back onto the sidewalk after pickup.
I returned from a weekend in Oakland with my sister to what is turning out to be the end of all things electronic in my life. One by one everything is dying: my camera, the telephone, the transmission in my car. Finitude, in all its guises, haunts me tonight.
During the hundred miles behind the Porsche – an old one, perhaps from the sixties, with dulled paint, elegant on the quiet road – my mind returned to a story I recently read about a couple. She is terminally ill; they have been married for several decades; he will give her a lethal injection after they eat their final meal, which they share with a friend, a woman significantly younger than they are. You can guess what happens: conversation is halting, the wine is perfect, the moment of the injection is still and grave. Once downstairs the man immediately beds the younger woman, whom we learn has been his lover all along. In the morning the woman awakens and discovers them. The injection failed, their marriage is over. The Porsche disappeared before I reached the 5 Freeway and I could not enjoy any of the drive once the ghost, or you, had gone.
Your friend told me your e-mail address, that your name is Francisco, that since December you have been framing a house on the canal, that you would remember me. Soon I will know if that is true. But already I feel free.
We exchanged only occasional hellos during the year you worked across the street. Once you asked me either if I had the time or if I had time – I don’t know which, or why you would ask either. I had not expected you to speak to me and I got flustered and walked away. I never apologized for my rudeness but I am sorry. We only shared glances, yet I think I know you, which is, of course, unso.
Needless to say it is the middle of the night, the hour when those who don’t sleep write ill-considered letters to people they are not married to.
Someone upstairs stirs.
The freeway was crowded and bright with bullying drivers in shiny cars. I worried about the future, the distant future, and what I will tell my children. What will they ask me? What do children need to know? Mom’s previous marriage, dad’s infidelities, the sad driving, the sleeplessness? What happens to the boxes of cards and letters in the garage? Who sorts through all that stuff at the end?
I write to you against the advice of two friends (both women.) “You don’t want him crossing the street and knocking on your door,” one of them told me. If I was a man she wouldn’t have said that, nor would I have asked her opinion. My other friend so shamed me when I described the staring that I did not finish the story.
Where will you read this, and when? At your home, or a friend’s, or the library? Can I reach you at all? I know the answer to no question about you, yet it seems I am seeing everything more clearly. The house is quiet again. Write to me.
© 2007 Samantha Peale
