I had heard that she had been involved in a rough marriage some years ago. She was divorced now, living in an apartment on the top floor of a house in an old Victorian neighborhood in Syracuse, New York. How long had it been since I last saw her, 30 years?
I climbed a long and narrow stairwell in the middle of the house. The angled ceiling was dark, high above. Halfway up, I passed beneath a dim lightbulb dangling from two twisted wires and an old porcelain socket, just enough light to cast vague shadows on the walls.
At the top landing, I faced a single door. My heart wasn’t pounding from the climb—it was the suspense. This might be her. Then again, it might not. Either way, I was going to find out. If it was her, I didn’t know what I would do. God, how I hoped it was.
I watched my hand reach out and knock. I heard movement inside, and the door opened.
It was her!
She seemed confused, greyer, which was to be expected. Her hair was cut shorter. It was her. I felt relief and fear all at once. I wanted to grin, but to tell the truth, I was probably gawking like a young kid at a carnival.
“Sam,” she said softly, as if I might blow away.
But memories don’t blow away. They never do.
“Hey, Josie,” I said. I shivered with anticipation and didn’t care if she saw it.
I reached out with both arms, and to my relief, she moved closer. It was a tentative hug, a few inches still between us. I didn’t dare push it further. As we pulled back, we looked at each other carefully.
Her smile, the one I remembered, wasn’t there. Her eyes seemed dull, sad, maybe a little afraid. I figured that after the years of loneliness, smiles and bright eyes might be hard to come by. I wasn’t smiling myself.
I began to say something, my voice almost breaking. “Could we talk for a while?” I said.
She thought for a moment. “Let me get my jacket,” she said.
Downstairs, we opened the front door to a brilliant autumn day. Ancient trees lined both sides of the street. Their limbs leaning in the cold wind, leaves rustling so loudly I thought we might have to shout just to be heard.
The street was empty, except for a lone cyclist in skintight racing clothes who slipped quietly by.
“Still ride a bike?” I asked.
“Been a long time,” she said.
Other than that, we walked in silence.
We reached a little inner-city park and sat on a picnic table with our feet on the bench. Shivering (now from cold as well), I looked around, green grass long enough to tremble in the breeze, in need of a final season’s trim, a playground slide, a jungle gym, swings. Josie was bent forward against the cold, her hands folded in her lap. She was staring out into the empty street as if she were alone.
“You found me,” she said.
I took this as a possible rebuke, as in: Why don’t you leave me alone?
I nodded, alarm creeping up my throat, and my heart ready to drop. Still, I resolved to stand my ground.
“Yeah,” I said. “I should’ve looked you up a long time ago.”
It was just an answer, nothing more. I don’t know where it came from. Self-defense, perhaps. It sounded harsher than I meant, and it wasn’t true. But here we were, she and I, after all these years. Good Lord, I needed to make my feelings clear to her.
“So,” she said. “Here we are.”
“I’m glad, Josie. I really want to talk to you.”
She turned to me. I had to look away – I was pretty sure I could keep my voice steady, but I didn’t want her to see the tears.
“Fact is,” I told the empty street, “I never got used to being without you.” There it was. The truth.
Out the corner of my eye, I saw her watching me.
I remembered us as young teens in Massachusetts, walking home from Braintree High in our little group of six—three boys and three girls. Josie, her two friends, and me with my pals. We kidded and teased each other, using raunchy language that suited 15-year-old boys. The girls were particularly good at this. The boys never carried the girls’ books. That’s how it was. We walked along Washington Street, cackling with glee.
I occupied a special niche in the group that the rest knew nothing about. Let’s just say I noticed Josie more than any other girl in the school. That’s not telling it right. No other girl mattered in the world. If I hadn’t been such a lip-tied, idiotically shy schmuck, she would have known how I felt long before our walks home.
As our group walked along, I often looked all around us, as if I were watching for traffic, which was really of no concern. I did it to get brief glimpses of Josie. If she ever caught me, she kept it to herself.
All three girls left the group a few blocks from my house. Since my two friends were with me, I’d steal a final look as Josie and her friends walked away.
In winter, Sunset Lake was frozen, and I was out on the ice trying to skate. I never did skate well. My best effort was charging straight ahead as fast as I could go, out over the lake until I came to a clumsy, arm-wheeling stop.
I’d be way out there, listening to grating, groaning, whale-like calls beneath my feet. These eerie sounds shot right by me and went clear across the lake as the foot-thick ice cracked and buckled. Back near the shore, a little swarm of skaters glided about like tiny stick figures circling the frozen swimming docks.
I loved the feeling of being out there, alone. I savored the cold. I unzipped my coat and let the cold get right into me, shivering, but staying right there as long as I could stand it.
(I realize now, looking back over too many years I want to count, that at times such as those, I loved the feeling of being me.)
After my ungainly dash back to the dock, I was tired. I threaded my way through the other skaters and lay down on my stomach on one of the docks and looked between the freezing boards at the ice twelve inches below.
Josie appeared out of the crowd. She skated up and promptly sat down on my upturned bottom. I will never forget it. She had on bright, blue corduroy trousers, the style that smaller kids wore. She was bundled in a cheap coat with artificial fur trim, no hat, her hair tied behind her head and hanging in a ponytail down her back.
No matter how cold the dock boards were, or how cold I was, now I had her warmth bottom-to-bottom, a pleasant form of artificial resuscitation. I was prepared to lie there forever. Josie, the girl I felt so strongly for, had picked me out. I knew it was probably just because we were friends. But there we were, together.
By the time she got up and lightly said “Bye”, the damage was done. She left with my heart in both of her hands.
Several months later, well into spring, I decided that I was going to tell her something. I would do it on a Friday. If things didn’t go right, I would have two whole days before we met again, for me to try to become someone else.
As we approached the point where the girls turned off, I was no more than a floating cloud of nerves. For the last 10 minutes, I had said nothing to any of them. What if I let the moment slide just to prove to myself that I was an absolute idiot?
At the last possible minute, I heard myself clumsily ask the girls if I could carry on walking with them. Giggles and grins. As for the other two boys… Suddenly, I felt strong. Anyone could say what they wanted. No one was going to stop me.
The girls said: “Sure.”
Josie lived the farthest from the others. This was my plan; I knew we would wind up alone. When the other two were gone she and I slowed a bit. We walked in silence. I got up my nerve, stopped, and turned to her. She was smiling like an angel with the sun in her eyes.
“Listen,” I sort of said. Nothing else came out.
I tried to clear my mind. All I could do was admire her smiling face.
I tried again. “I…”
Then she spoke. “Sam. Do you know that I like you very much?”
“Well… I…”
“Very much,” she said.
Then, quite businesslike, she put her books down on the ground, reached up and pulled me down to her and kissed me full on the lips. She was ferocious, making it abundantly clear how she felt.
When she pulled back, I was blinking, my mouth hung open.
“Me too, me too,” I stammered, my head bobbing like a puppet’s, a brand new man.
I reached around her and pulled her in close, and she molded her young body tightly against mine. I nuzzled her and repeatedly kissed the top of her hair. I thought that now I should die. I wanted nothing else. Holding her in my arms, her soft little arms tight around me, I could never hope for more. I prayed it wasn’t a dream.
Looking back, I now know my feelings for her never wavered. She and I weren’t typical 15-year-olds. We had already known each other for a long time, and this wasn’t a frivolous crush. There would never be a sobbing teenage breakup. I never doubted her sincerity. I never doubted my own.
When we were together, her eyes sparkled. She could find a pleasant side to anything. She effervesced joy, filled the space around us with happiness — little happy atoms floating in the air. That was my take on it.
The next two summers, we rode our bikes miles out into the Blue Hills, outside Boston. We walked trails up the slopes of a little mountain called Big Blue, through open pine forests with clearings of rock and scrub, where wild blueberries grew. She wore lightweight sun dresses. We made love on beds of pine needles, sunlight through the open treetops sparkling warmly down onto our naked skin. These woods became our favorite spot. We went there often.
In winter, it was difficult to find someplace indoors where we could be alone. We found a few. Otherwise, it was fine simply to visit with our friends or parents, a tight, private couple inspired by the awareness of the gap between us and the others. In a way, it produced the same binding effect as having sex.
Our physical love life was a secret. We told none of our friends. I knew a lot of boys who bragged. I never, ever would do that!
Still, something must have been obvious to the others. They kidded us, made remarks about two high school students graduating as husband and wife.
We always took precautions against her getting pregnant. But I guess one time it didn’t work. Later that second summer, she told me that she had missed her period. My head swirled. I didn’t want her to worry.
An adult might have said, “But you’re both only 17. What do you know?”
I knew that our relationship was solid. Josie and I had known each other intimately for over two years. Regular kids our age would have quit or cheated after a few months, always looking for new conquests. I knew we weren’t going to look for anyone else.
I was prepared to do whatever it took to stand by her, protect our child. I knew that I was strong, full of energy, about to graduate the next spring, ready even before that to begin any kind of work that would be necessary. I wanted to be nowhere else but with her. I remember her calm and straightforward as we planned our future together.
We should have run off to another state where we could live in peace and wait out the few months till we were 18.
Times were different; pregnancies out of wedlock were not the norm. Society considered it a disgrace to a girl and her family. Parents would go to great lengths to protect their reputation.
Josie disappeared. She no longer lived in her home. Her parents wouldn’t speak to me. No one knew where she had gone, and I had no way to find out. Our baby would be put up for adoption, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
I said nothing about it to our friends. Still, rumors fluttered around like little butterflies caught in a dust devil. But then it all died down. You didn’t hear much about her after that.
It was as if she had died. But I knew she was out there, somewhere. I ached for her. But I never saw her again.
Life carried on around me as if none of this ever happened. I graduated from high school and got a job at the shipyard in Quincy, the next town over — oily, dirty work out in the steel yard. I grew into the working man’s world, aged 19, 20, 20s… At the end of each shift, we were regulars in the bars, having a few beers before going home.
This is where I met the woman I would eventually marry, Michelle, a pretty young barmaid whom I flirted with. I suppose I was looking for companionship when I proposed. Our marriage was a huge mistake. She was quite smart. Within six months, she figured out that I was not happy, that we didn’t belong together. As friends, we agreed to a divorce. Thank heavens there were never any kids.
I continued working at the shipyard, and the years slipped by. I never met another woman who interested me. I still wondered about Josie. I searched for her, again and again. No luck. Kept trying. Began to grow old.
In Syracuse, the wind had calmed, and it got colder. Huge flat snowflakes floated about like pure white ashes from a distant fire. When one landed on you, they melted and pierced your skin with a needle of cold.
I bent my head back and looked up. A flake hit my eye and caused a tear. In some odd way, this seemed like a reminder. On the one hand, I was hugely relieved to have found Josie. But on the other hand, doomed hope, things I never expected, that I might never get back. Again, I could feel tears welling in both eyes.
“Damn,” I muttered, more to myself than to her, blinking, wiping my face.
Then a delicate hand patted my thigh. “Let’s go back to the apartment,” she said. “It’s cold as hell out here.”
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