Grey's Journal:
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I was left uncomfortable with the situation, but that was nine months ago and a visit with Darby, whether I wanted it or not, was overdue. I compromised with myself by playing a semantic game: I told Darby I wasn't inviting her, but that if she wanted to come, I wouldn't stop her. She did. Semantic game or not, I still had to plan my other friends around her visit date. This was not an easy task as Darby was returning from a counter-clockwise road trip around America with a friend and her arrival date was fuzzy. I like my times and dates to be precise; uncertainty etches away at my mind like acid. As Darby incrementally pushed back her arrival date, I kept trying to rearrange the schedules of my other friends. When I finally had everything settled, I found a note next to the phone from my father reading: DARBY
CALLED
CAR TROUBLE She told an elaborate tale involving switching cars, missing license plates and a location three states away. ``Please,'' I asked in a defeated voice, ``Just tell me when you'll be here.'' ``Soon. Tonight about 3AM?'' I stayed up waiting for her -- growing worried about how our encounter would go and how she would fare driving late at night. I tried to distract myself with an X-Files marathon, watching stories of aliens, time travel and religious cults late into the night. I irrationally expect that when people say they will be somewhere at a given time, that the statement is accurate to the second. I recognize that the fault is mine, but I still can't help it. 2:59:58 AM 2:59:59 AM 3:00:00 AM I'm standing at the front door looking for headlights. 3:00:58 AM 3:00:59 AM 3:01:00 AM I'm wondering where she is. Never mind she gave me the 3:00 AM estimate 14 hours ago and she drove hundreds of miles since then, I'm still expecting her. By 3:05 AM I'm annoyed and by 3:30 AM I'm worried -- something must have happened. By 4:00 AM when she finally called my cell phone with an update, I was very nervous. ``You OK?'' She told me she was, but that the drive took longer than expected and she was still only in New Jersey. Her revised ETA was 7:00 AM. I tried to convince her to find a place to stay the night and finish the drive tomorrow, as I thought driving across two states at night was madness, but she wouldn't have it. I agreed to leave the door unlocked and went to bed. All I wanted from sleep that night was X-files-style time travel: I wanted to close my eyes and, in a few subjective seconds, open them when Darby arrived, thus saving myself the agony of waiting. I closed my eyes and, in a few subjective seconds, opened them. 7:00 AM. No Darby. Uh-oh. I did my best not to worry and failed immediately. She could be lost or in an accident. A deer could have jumped in front of her car or a crazy serial killer could have gotten her. This last idea loomed in my mind as it had nearly happened to Jill and I a few days earlier. I paced down the hallway between my bedroom and the guest bedroom, looking out the second floor windows for a car coming down the street. Back and forth. Back and forth. Soon my parents were going to wake and I was going to have to explain that it was my fault Darby was lying on the side of the road somewhere because I had let her drive though the night. I quicken my pace and added the bathroom to my route, where I paused to see if I needed to vomit out my tension. I looked into that toilet bowl so many times that I decided to try and put my nervous energy to good use by cleaning it. My bedroom. Toilet. scrub scrub scrub Guest bathroom. Toilet. scrub scrub scrub My bedroom. Toilet. scrub scrub scrub Guest bedroom. Toilet. scrub scrub scrub I heard shuffling noises in the kitchen that must have been my father getting ready for work. He would soon notice the absence of Darby's car and ask what happened. I couldn't take the stress anymore. To try and pretend to myself that it was a normal day, I went into my room and turned on my computer. Moments later motion in the hallway distracted me. It was Darby. ``Hi,'' she said. ``I am very glad to see you,'' I said, nearly collapsing with relief. ``Were you worried?'' ``Who me? No, not at all.'' *
* *
``I think you're just a glutton for punishment, that's the problem.'' Darby and I were talking what she dubbed `An American-sized walk' (a very small one) down a street in Mattituck. I had mentioned to her that, despite my anticipatory worries, we were getting along quite well. She continued her thought ``I didn't have any problems coming to see you. I think you wanted there to be problems.'' ``I did not.'' ``Did too. You're such a drama queen sometimes.'' ``I am not!'' ``Are too. Oh! And by the way--'' she hit me on the arm. ``I can't believe you told your parents I'm going to live on an Indian Reservation in New Mexico and carve Kachina dolls!'' ``You aren't?'' While on her trip around America, Darby found a place in New Mexico she wanted to live in. She arranged for an apartment and, as I understood it, an apprenticeship learning to carve. The New Mexico I remember from my vacations is a rundown gas station on an Indian reservation with a dirty general store, a souvenir shop and lonely highway stretching for hundreds of miles in either direction with nothing to see but desert, cacti and cattle skulls. On the street in front of the general store is a battered-looking pickup truck. Some Native Americans lean against it, smoking and drinking while a thin dog sleeps nearby. Driving through these places the car would be low on gasoline but my parents, knowing fully that we might not make it to the next town and would die of dehydration on the road, would drive on anyway, deterred by the hungry look in the Indians' eyes. So, naturally, when Darby told me the words `apartment in New Mexico' and `carving' I heard `room above the general store' and `tourist crap'. ``No,'' said Darby. ``I'm learning a craft -- I'll be making furniture -- and it's not on an Indian Reservation! It's in a real town, Espanola.'' ``Are you sure you're not going to be on an Indian reservation carving Kachina dolls? I like my version better.'' Another hit on the arm. *
* *
While Darby was on Long Island, we went out to dinner most nights dressing up and, I felt, pretending to be adults. Darby has unique ideas about what dressing up and fashion are. She would spend a lot of time picking out her outfit, but would then intentionally sabotage the look with a carefully chosen item -- pink flip-flops with an elegant black dress for example. We talked a lot about us and the directions of our lives over these dinners and finally settled matters between us. We still loved each other but, once again, it was not the time to be together. We set a tentative date of two years for re-evaluating our situation, mostly because by that time I will have finished my teacher training and my first year of work. Of course, we acknowledge that being apart for such a long span of time greatly increases the odds that we ultimately won't be together, but both of us can live with that. As Darby said, ``I don't want to find someone else, but it will probably happen.'' Then, one Sunday afternoon it was time to go. I helped pack her car and when there was nothing left to do she turned to me saying ``I'll see you in two years'' and drove away. |
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Copyright © 2004 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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