Susan

"Hi. How many?"
"No one else. Just me."
"Sure, right this way." The hostess leads me to the back corner of the quiet little restaurant.
"Would you like coffee?"
"That would be good. Thanks." I pull off my coat and slide into the booth facing the floor. The hostess brings me a coffee and tells me the waitress will be right there. "That's ok. Ask her to give me a few minutes. Ok?"
"Sure. take your time."
I say thanks and scan the rest of the restaurant. There are booths lining the walls. Tables with chairs in the center. The kitchen is off to the left. The rest rooms are next to the kitchen.
"Ready to order yet, hon?"
"Not yet. Can I have another coffee?"
"Sure. I'll be right back." The waitress smiles warmly and glides away. She is younger than the other two waitresses, probably 30 or 35. Her dark brown hair is pulled into a pony tail that moves as she walks. Her breasts bounce ever so slightly. Her perfectly shaped hips sway with a shy innocence. She is dressed in black pants, black blouse, black apron. She moves effortlessly across the floor toward the coffee machine. I wonder what she is thinking. Maybe nothing. Maybe she is just moving through the day, her mind merely processing her job. I turn my head toward the window.
It''s winter in Rochester. Not a normal winter; there is no snow. Last year at this time, between Christmas and New years, we had over fifty inches of snow already. This year, only a couple. Yet it is dark and grey out side. The window pane has fake slats, three horizontal, four vertical. They make the window look like twenty small panes linked together. To me they look like bars in a jail cell; like I am a prisoner who cannot be outside. I wonder if those bars are in my eyes; like I am a prisoner in my head, alone with my thoughts, alone in the world.
It's getting darker out. There is a winter storm settling in. Sea gulls have been coming in from Lake Ontario all morning. The air is still, not a breath out of place. The trees, bare of leaves, look like long grotesque arms shooting up from graves, branches like thousands of fingers bent and twisted, stiff with arthritic rigor mortise. The lake is still warm. I've seen this happen before; the storm system brings moisture deep from the Gull of Mexico, then passes over Lake Erie, picking up more moisture and dumps it on Western New York. The back side of the system pulls bitter cold air from the arctic across the warm Lake Ontario, freezes the rain, then turns it into snow. I think, we could get a foot or two, maybe more.
"Here you go. Ready yet?"
"Not yet. Thanks. A few more minutes."
"Sure. No problem. Take your time." She glides off again. She reminds me of my ex-wife when I met her. She was younger, but a waitress who floated when she walked. Her voice was soft too, like the waitress here. I turn back to the window, to the bars. I remember long ago when I met her. I remember the years after, the hard years, the not so hard ones. Like the time the transmission went out of the rusted old pickup. The only gear that worked was reverse. It was winter. I was laid off from the farm. She worked at a local grocery and had to get to work. We backed up all the way to town. I backed up to a friends garage and we swapped transmissions. I picked her up going forward.
Then there was racing. We both loved racing. It was expensive and took all of our time, but we did it together; won some, lost some, crashed some. That all went away when we split up. Everything went away when we split up. It was like I died that day; the day I left my home, my family. I was to leave, or she would. She couldn't have rebuilt. I had done so before and felt I could again. I never dreamed that I could never rebuild what lived inside me.
The reasons don't really matter. I drove her away, into the arms of someone's husband. When I found out, I died a little inside. It was decided that I would move. We lived in North Carolina then. We bought a ranch house on the north side of Charlotte; a quiet development with a long circular street, trees, a pond, a small woods, a fenced yard for our beagle, and a big garage with a workshop. We both had jobs that paid well. Mine took all my time and energy. Hers, not as much. We rarely saw each other. When we did, either I slept, or she did. I suppose that was the beginning of the end...money, jobs, erosion of the family structure. First our cat died in January. He was 17. A year later, in February, the other cat, the oldest, died. The next year, in March, we split. The next year, the third cat died. Then the dog and my family was gone. I was alone.
I remember the day I left. It was March 30th. The day started off cold. I worked part of the day. A friend got me a couple of weeks of work before I left. Supposedly I was to work all day, go home, put my few bags of clothes into the truck, say good-bye, and leave. I couldn't even imagine that. So I left work at noon while she worked. I walked around in a fog, mechanical, no emotion, I was numb...cold, mind-chilling numbness. I was about to do what I had thought would never happen again...I was leaving another home.I pulled into the concrete driveway, unlocked the door, carried three garbage bags of clothes out, placed them into the back seat, petted my dog, left the keys on the counter with a letter, and closed the door to my home for the last time.
I stopped at the street, before backing all the way out of the driveway. I looked at the front of the house with windows like sunken eyes and the porch looking like it was sagging to one side, like a sloping face after a stroke. Salty cold sweat dripped into my eyes, distorting the image. It looked like the entire house was swaying, ready to crumble into a pile of rubble...it was me who was crumbling. As I backed out, I could feel my heart being pulled from my chest, attached to my recliner where her and I sat last night. She sat curled on my lap, head tucked into my chest, arms around my shoulders. I ran my fingers slowly through her long blonde hair, the scent of it implanting a lasting memory into my brain. We said nothing for hours. We cried, and wondered silently how we ever let this happen. We both knew it was too late. I slept in my chair, she on my lap. By morning, she had gone to bed. I walked in silently, took a shower, dressed, and for the last time, kissed her forehead, said I love you, and walked out.
As I finished backing out of the driveway, as emotions flooded through every fiber of my being, as blood poured from the open hole in my chest, I died there. When I dried my eyes, I put the truck into drive, and slowly drove away from her house, for the last time.
"Excuse me, I'd like to order."
"Sure hon. What can I get you?"
"How about a heart..."
"Excuse me?"
"Never mind, can I just have the check, please? I have to go."

Rambling thoughts

The semester is over at Brockport and I'm wondering if anyone is still out there. I wonder if these blogs will remain active or if they will merely fizzle, fade away into the world of dashes and dots, pluses and minuses, memories held within the neural pathways of cyber-space. For me, the entire experience, the Creative Non-Fiction Workshop was good. I would say that the class in and of itself was worthy of a memoir. Aside from some great discussions about a variety of creative writing, there was emotion. There was laughter and anger, feelings of bonding and separation, acceptance and rejection, elation and sadness. Some essays were side-splitting funny. Others, we fought tears. I think the last project, the "unwritten essay" which we each read in class was the most revealing. The entire semester, I thought we all were being honest and revealing about ourselves until that last essay. What a stark contrast. It was the difference between a formal ball-room dance and running naked in the rain; between sipping french wine in a posh Hollywood restaurant and staggering into a parked car, hurling on the passengers door handle. I have to say, Ellen's piece was the hardest hitting for me. I can't get "the last time" out of my head. There have been too many "last times" in my life. The hardest was the last time I held my ex-wife. It was the night before I left. I suppose if I am to continue writing here, it is time to venture into that memory
So, with Black Friday behind us and Christmas in front of us (I wonder about those two contrasts being juxtaposed), and the soccer-moms scurrying around the malls like squirrels raiding my bulbs, fighting amongst themselves for that last x-box, I stand in the cold outside my house, peering into the living room, the room with four windows, searching for the guy inside who looks for an escape...maybe I can help him open the Fourth Window, now that I know how.