Working Against Éperdre

When I was a little girl, my mother never told me I could do anything I wanted to with my life.  She never showered me with cliché and empty phrases plucked straight from June Cleaver’s mouth.  Instead she told me that people often don’t get what they want, and you can always tell who the hardest workers are because they are the ones that have refused to give up.  Julie was like that for me.  She was my perseverance.  As long as her eyes were upon me and her hand was resting lightly on my back, I was strong enough to survive.  With her weight on my shoulders, I could fly forever and not get tired.  I was by nature a lazy child.  None of my mother’s attempts to make me go outside or do something productive sank in.  I was a C student.  College was almost a miracle.  Julie and I were so different.  To her, B’s were a sin.

I remember the first time I saw her.  I was standing in line to register for classes my sophomore year.  As usual, we were keeping up with the snails, but just barely.  The freshmen were bitching liberally, and most of the upperclassmen were sniggering at us from across the quad.  They’d already learned the advantages of on-line registration, and they had first pick besides.  She came barreling through on roller blades, arms wheeling like helicopter blades.  Flailing and shouting for people to get out of her way as she careened towards us, her dark blue eyes stared deep into mine.  I’m still not sure what happened, but the next thing I knew, I had 120 pounds of chestnut hair and sprawling limbs lying across my breasts, pinning me to the sidewalk.  I was in love before I hit the ground.

“Oh, I’m sooo sorry,” she said, trying desperately to stand up and only succeeding in falling on me for a second time as the skates flew out from under her.  “I…I don’t know what to say; I just…just…”  She paused and struggled into a sitting position as I slowly sat up.  “Hi, I’m Julie.”  Her pavement-scuffed hand came out and gripped mine.

“Beth,” I said, standing up gingerly and pulling her up to her feet with the hand I still grasped.  “New skates?” I deadpanned.  I barely kept from grinning as my dark eyebrow quirked playfully at her.

“Yeah, they are.”  She smiled, then looked us both up and down.  My eyes followed her example.  The knees were out of her jeans, one elbow had unraveled from my sweater, and both of our faces were dirty.  My hair had escaped the braid that my mother called severe and I called easy.  It was hanging in my face.  Then her blue eyes met my chocolate ones.  It started as a soft rumble in our stomachs, then a crinkling of our mouths, and then the peals of absurd laughter started oozing out of our pores.  We giggled, guffawed, shook, and snorted.  We fell down again.  By this point the line had moved on and people were starting to stare at us as though we’d lost our minds.  We just laughed harder.  When breathing again became an option, I helped her take off the skates and pulled her to her feet again.

“Now,” I said, drawing myself up into my best impression of Monty Python, “What is your name?”

“Julie Clemys.”

“What is your quest?”

“To register for classes and search for the Holy Grail.”

“What is…your favorite color and/or your sexual orientation?”

“Hmmm.”  She stared at me for a moment, her eyes crinkling at the corners and her mouth twitching.

“Tough question?” I asked, switching to the self-assured Spencer Tracy of The Desk Set.

“No, just trying to decide between the lesser of two sentences guaranteed to get me odd looks.  Um….”

“Yes?”

“Olive drab and lesbian.”

“EEEeeeewwww.”  I stare at her in shock for a moment, very melodramatic.  “I can’t believe it.  That’s just so wrong!  Do your parents know about this?  I mean, how can anyone possibly like…. olive drab.”  Our eyes met again, and the laughter erupted anew.  I pulled my hair out of my face.  “By the way, I may hate olive drab, but I know this great little café not too far from campus, and I was thinking that once we get registered, we could walk, emphasis on walk, over there for a latte or something.”

“Sounds great, but on one condition.”

“What?”

“You buy.”

And thus began what I will always refer to as the Julie Years.  Over lattes and the course of the next five years I spent with her, Julie and I became a single entity.  You know how when a couple has been together so long you stop referring to them as two people?  Their names are always connected by a slurred n sound.  The divide has become so small they no longer even get a full and in between their names.  That was us.  We were Julie’n’Beth, and sometimes Beth’n’Julie.   I loved it; she did too for a while, though I always knew that it made her feel as though I owned some part of her soul and she owned some part of mine.  Julie was always going on about how all flawed relationships are based on the misconception of ownership based on togetherness.  I agreed in principle.  My parents were proof enough of that.   But she said it all the time.  She even wrote her thesis on the mechanics of relationship equality correlated to its failure.  Let’s just say that she had a tendency to be rather dark.

Dark or not though, I loved her unredeemably.  Inordinate affection, they call it.  It’s supposed to be a sin, that whole “distance thyself from the material world to become closer to God” bit, but then again, everything that feels good is supposed to be a sin, and no one in my family’s been religious since my great grandmother died.  I don’t know why my mother still makes such a show of sending out Christmas cards covered in crucifixes.  Maybe she just likes the idea of pretending that someone is on her side after all.  Julie really did believe though, as much as a lesbian studying sociology from a gender perspective can be expected to.  Her work showed her the worst in people, but it also showed her their strength.  It gave her hope, and that hope just made me love her all the more.  I even followed her across the country when she transferred to Claremont for our senior year just to work with a professor she admired.

“Why do you want to go there?” I’d asked, staring up at her from the floor.  I was working on a project for my film class, and the stills from our last five screenings were spread out around me.  Garbo was next to Dietrich; the final shots of Emil Jannings from The Last Laugh and The Blue Angel were in a little group.  Chaplin peeked from around a corner as the little tramp in one shot and stood proudly at a podium as Hitler in another.

“Because that’s where Professor Suzanne Gregory teaches,” she’d replied, as though that explained everything.  At my quizzical look she continued, “The one I’ve been raving about for the past week, the one I’m writing my paper about…”

“Oh, the chick who did the child studies piece, right?”

“Yeah.  At the moment she’s giving a seminar on the effect of parental stability on child perception of equality in relationships.  I’ve talked to her already, and she’s agreed to guarantee me a place in her class next fall, if I decide to transfer in.”  She looked uneasy, her eyes staring at Garbo and her right foot scuffing at the floor.

“That’s great,” I said, standing up to hug her.  “This’ll be a wonderful chance for you.  Do you know what their film program is like?”

“Um, no…Why?”

“Where you go, I go,” I’d stated simply, leaning in to kiss her and play with an errant strand of her hair.  The decision had taken less than a second.

“But…but…you can’t do that,” she sputtered.

“Why not?”

“Because you’d only be doing it for me.  You’d be leaving everyone behind and abandoning a program you’ve been committed to for three years just to follow me.  I can’t let you make that kind of decision just because of me.  I love you, Beth, but I don’t want you to sacrifice your goals for mine.  I don’t have the right to ask that of you, and what’s more I don’t want it.  I…”

“Shh,” I said, petting her again.  “I’m not doing this just for you.  We’ll look at Claremont’s film program and see how it measures up to this one.  And then I’ll decide.  I promise, I won’t choose it just because you’ll be there.  I’m not sacrificing anything.  I’m with you and I stay with you because I love you, because I choose to be with you.  That won’t change no matter where we are.  And if I transfer, it will be because Claremont is better than here, not just because I love you.”

It was a lie of course.  A small one, but still a lie.  I would’ve transferred if the film program had consisted of a short, hairy guy in a basement who projected porn films onto his beer gut while commenting knowledgeably on the various “actors’” other roles.  It turned out that their program was actually slightly better than the one I had been in, but Julie wouldn’t have known the difference either way.  She knew that; it’s probably why she remained certain that I had done it for her all along.  She was right, but I couldn’t let her know it.

Julie never could stand the idea of being my first priority.  She seemed to think that it obligated her to make me her first priority too, and that meant relying on me to protect her from her own intensities.  As much as she loved me, the idea of mutual responsibility for one another was terrifying to her.  I always thought it rather poetic.  My little social analyst could commit herself to anything, abandon her soul to any endeavor, but she couldn’t stand the idea of focusing that intensity on just one person, much less having someone focus on her.  She always wanted to touch people, but she was so afraid of being touched herself.  In a way, the Julie Years were an exercise in my self-control.  I could be as obsessed and in love with her as I liked.  I could need her more than air.  I could even watch over her as she tried to watch over me.  But I always had to remember not to let her know that she owned me- mind, body, heart, and soul- whether she wanted to or not.  Our fights, though rare, always seemed to come back to that issue.

“Julie, Julie, why won’t you just let me love you?  Julie…” I’d half-shouted, half-wept on one of those occasions, banging against the locked bathroom door with my fist.  “Julie, please…” 

We had been lying in bed, coming slowly down from making love.  She was leaning across my naked chest, cheek pillowed on my breast.  I was running my hand up and down her back, stroking and soothing her, whispering to her.

“My beloved,” I’d said.  “My most darling one, my lover, my sweet, ma coeur, je t’emperd…”  I’m not sure what else I called her, all entreaties of devotion.  At “je t’éperd,” she’d stiffened slightly, growing more and more tense with each pronouncement.  I didn’t notice.  I wish I had, but I was too busy returning from the star-filled sweetness of our lovemaking.  I felt the first of her tears seep onto my skin just as she jerked upright and flew into the bathroom, barring the door behind her.   I scrambled after her, confused as I so often was.  “Julie, Julie love, what’s wrong, what happened?” I’d called through the door.  “Answer me.  Please, sweetheart, I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong.  Please, talk to me.  Come back to bed, and talk to me.”

“Tu m’éperd,” she’d finally whispered.  Then growing louder, she’d continued, “Tu m’emperd.  You love me desperately, utterly, obsessively, and passionately.  You love me submissively and eternally!”  Then I’d understood.  I’d let the mask slip; I’d shown my dependence on her.  She knew how far gone I was.

“I never should’ve told you what that meant…” I’d replied slowly.  “I’m sorry, my love, but I can’t help it.  Can’t you just accept that I need you, that I love you, without feeling pressured to return the emotion?  Julie, Julie, can’t you just let me love you, let me need you…  What are you so afraid of?”

When she finally came out, we had a long talk about the state of things between us.  That is to say, she talked and presented her views while I agreed and tried to calm her down.  Eventually she came back to bed and fell into a fitful sleep.  I spent the night curled around her body, hoping that she would one day be able to understand that she could possess me without being possessed by me, that she owned my soul because I had given it to her willingly.

It wasn’t always like that, though.  The good times outnumbered the bad.  There were afternoons spent at art exhibits, evenings passed at concerts, mornings greeted from the sanctuary of our bed as our tired eyes watched the sun rise before turning to embrace one another.  We even rented a rowboat and spent an afternoon floating idly across the lake in a local park.

“It’ll be fun,” I’d said.

“Beth, a rowboat?  What if it tips over?  You know I can’t swim.  Besides, I have that paper to do for my psychology class, and don’t you have a project due in film on Tuesday.”

“Yes, Mother,” I jibed with a giggle.

“Mother, am I?  Well, if I’m your mother now, then I guess that means I can’t sleep with you anymore, huh,” she said, her eyes starting to glisten.  “And let’s see, as your mother, I can make rules.  So rule number one is that Beth has a bedtime, and she can’t watch scary movies, and she has to brush her teeth twice a day, and she should do chores, and…” she continued, ticking off her edicts on her fingers.  I just stood there for a while, watching her fight the urge to grin, before I finally silenced her with a long, slow kiss.

“Alright, lover, so you’re not really my mother.  Besides, would you really want to give up kissing me?  I thought you rather enjoyed it.” I said wickedly.  She stayed silent, but her mouth twitched as she began to smirk.  “Seriously though, let’s go on a picnic.  The rowboat will be fun.  You’ll love it; I promise.  And if you fall in, I’ll rescue you.  Do you think I’d ever anything happen to you?  If you die, I’ll have to go to the trouble of breaking in a whole new girlfriend.  Then there’s the training period, and the lost time, and the years I’d have to spend getting it right, and she probably still wouldn’t be able to make coffee the way you do, and umph…”  This time I was the one swallowing syllables, not to mention her tongue, as she kissed me into half delirium.  I was about to abandon the idea entirely and opt for an afternoon in bed when she finally pulled away.

“Alright, I’ll go,” she conceded, poking the end of my nose with her finger.  “But you have to promise to behave yourself and to keep the afternoon short so I can finish my paper after we get back.”

“Yes!  Vic-tor-y,” I squealed, dancing around the room.  She just smiled indulgently and handed me my coat.

That really was a pleasant afternoon.  I don’t think she stopped smiling once, though she did get rather upset when I rowed us out to the middle of the lake and tossed the paddles in.  She made me jump in fully clothed and go after them, foiling my plans of an extended kidnapping.  After some splashing and other childish antics, we spent the rest of the time lounging in the boat, the sun glistening on our hair and warming our skin.  We fed each other bits of cheese, grapes, and slices of apples.  I had a turkey sandwich, carefully washing my mouth and hands afterwards, while she stuck to the fruit and yogurt.  Her severe gluten allergy always made it hard for us to plan meals, but we got around it.  She had picked the wine, and as usual, it was a good year.  Our habitual caresses increased as we drank, and by the time the wine was gone, we were ready to leave for a more private setting.  She wound up handing in that paper a day late, and my project was even later, but neither one of us cared.  It had been a perfect afternoon.

In many ways, it was like that final afternoon, when the Julie Years came to a screeching halt.  We had both finally graduated from Claremont with our Master’s degrees about three months earlier and were living together in an efficiency apartment in LA.  We even had an olive drab couch.  She had started a freelance therapy clinic for abused women; I was still looking for a job.  The afternoon had started out with me convincing her to watch movies with me instead of working.

“Ok, ok,” she’d said.  “But on one condition.  I get to pick the movies.”

“Hey, I’m the film buff.  Why can’t I pick the movies?”

“You always pick the movies.  Now it’s my turn.  Besides, all you ever want to watch are those old black and white films from the 20’s and 30’s.  I want a talkie, and I want color.  Come on, Beth.  Indulge me; I’m indulging you.”

“Deal,” I said after a moment’s consideration.  I couldn’t win anyway, and she’d probably pick out films that I’d like, or at least I hoped so.  I wasn’t surprised when she came back from Blockbuster with five definitively mushy chick flicks, though Two for the Road was unexpected.

“How’d you know I had a thing for Audrey Hepburn?” I asked.  She didn’t bother to answer as she slipped The Four Seasons into the machine.  She just glanced up at the framed picture of Audrey from Roman Holiday sitting on my desk.  “Right,” I nodded, putting the popcorn in the microwave.  “Have you ever seen this movie before?” I asked while we waited.

“Nope.  I haven’t seen any of them except Queen Christina, and I only got that one because it’s in black and white.  I’m not completely insensitive to your addiction to the silver screen,” she bantered, straightening up the room as she went.  “Besides,” she added, “Garbo is hot.”

The popcorn beeped, and we settled down on our olive drab couch to watch, sitting close together as much to touch one another as to share the bowl.  After a little while, we were drawn into the story.  We snuggled closer, fully intending to enjoy ourselves.  As the relationships between the couples became more and more developed though, Julie started to shift against me.  Eventually she sat up, watching them interact.  Her face was going through the series of contortions I had learned to associate with her analysis and evaluation of people, the one she wore when researching and in the aftermath of our occasional fights when she was hiding behind her academic theories.  About an hour into the story, she started snorting and commenting.  She stared incredulously at the screen, her distaste for the movie growing by the minute.  Finally she became exasperated, leaping up to turn it off.

“Those morons!” she exclaimed, seething. 

“Julie…” I said, surprised at the intensity of her reaction.

“What in the hell makes them think that they can have successful relationships with their spouses when they act like spoiled children.  My God, they want to be happy, yet they pull stunts like that.  How the hell do they expect to make their marriages work if they won’t approach their wives like equals.  Simply addressing their concerns and problems like adults instead of running around pretending and hiding from the truth would’ve avoided their entire conflict.  And those women!  Pretending to be liberated and self-contained, but all the while being either slaves or domineering bitches to their husbands.  Have they no grasp of a middle ground?  If only they didn’t have the idea of marriage being a form of ownership so firmly engrained in their heads, maybe there would be some hope for them.”  And then something snapped inside me.  I’d heard this song and dance one too many times.

“That’s the most awful piece of garbage I’ve ever-”

“Stop it!” I shouted, standing up too.  “Julie, just stop it.  It’s just a movie.  It’s just a fucking movie.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t affect our lives, and it most certainly doesn’t deserve to become another victim of your hypocritical attacks.  So just fucking stop it.  Shut up.”  I was angrier than I can ever remember being.  For the first time, I was actively lashing out at her during one of her scenes.  There was an unspoken rule between us that whenever one of us needed to rant about something, the other would let them, sitting silently until the moment had passed and then offering comfort to soothe the ruffled feathers.  Once passed, the moment would never, and should never, be discussed again.  I was violating that now.  She was shocked into silence as I continued.  “How dare you pass judgement on those people?  They’re make-believe, yet they have to be held accountable to a standard of honesty and communication that you violate every fucking day.  Don’t you dare criticized them when you’re unwilling to discuss our problems, when you hide behind your fucking degree and condescend to explain to me the emotional connotations of our interactions.  Don’t you fucking dare!”  She stared at me, opening and closing her mouth a few times before finally managing to speak again.

“Beth, I…” she started, trying to backpedal.  “I only meant that- ”

“Oh, no you don’t.  You don’t get to talk right now; you don’t get to explain.  For the past five years I’ve listened to you explain what you thought our problems were, what you thought everyone’s problems were.  Well, now it’s my turn to talk, and you’re damn well going to listen instead of retreating into yourself and hiding behind your text book answers like you always do when life gets messy.  I’ve got some news for you, Julie.  You may not have noticed, but life is messy.  That’s just the way it works, especially when you add love into the equation.  There’s no fucking way to avoid it.  I think our problems really boil down to your problems, to your frantic need to explain things away instead of having to take responsibility for feeling them, instead of having to feel anything at all.  You think the world will work so perfectly if only people will talk to one another and truly understand that being in a relationship simply means that you agree to stay together until you don’t want to be together anymore.  Well, as far as I know, neither one of us have problems recognizing the fact that ownership was never part of this deal, though frankly, you’ve owned my soul for years, not because of any trumped-up effort on your part at dominating me, but simply because I gave it to you, freely.  As for talking to one another, we do more of that than any other couple I know, but it doesn’t seem to have done a whole helluva lot for us.  We still have just as many scenes now as when we began five years ago, if not more.  And quite frankly, I’m sick of holding you when you freak out every time I mention loving you a bit more than you’re prepared to deal with.  I’m sick of watching every word I say and every gesture I make for fear that it will upset you.  I’m sick of not being allowed to need you even though you’re the one who insinuated yourself so far into the mechanics of my life that I can’t get out of bed in the morning anymore unless your smile pulls me into consciousness.  I’m sick of your mother henning, and your logical arguments, and your endless comparisons of our relationship to other people’s and to the ones in your books.  Most of all, I’m sick of being so desperately in love with you when I’m not even allowed to enjoy it.  And, you know what, I’m not even entirely sure I love you anymore.  I’m not sure it isn’t just a habit I got into and didn’t notice when the actual feeling stopped.  So just stop trying to fucking define everything and just let it fucking be.”

“Beth, I…You…” she stuttered, her voice thick with pain.  Then my words began sinking in, and her anger returned full force, except now it was focused on me.  “Bitch!  How dare I?  How dare you!?  How dare you accuse me of hypocrisy?  How dare you imply that I don’t love you?  I have done nothing for the past five years but try to take care of our relationship, to encourage you to get involved beyond it, to focus on yourself.  Instead the only thing you want to do is laze around, waiting for me to take care of you, to clean up after you, to tend to your every whim.  I’ll admit it, I’ve lived my own life too; I haven’t been blindly absorbed into the concept of “us,” unlike you.  Yet that’s supposed to make me a bad person, because I’m interested in making this stronger than other people’s relationships, because I want this to work?  I’ve been working hard to protect this, and you accuse me of keeping myself distant from our relationship, of hiding.  You have no idea what you’re talking about, no fucking idea, not that I’d really expect you to.  You can’t understand anything beyond those fucking movies you watch all day long while I’m out working to support us, while I’m out trying to make a difference in people’s lives.  Well, I may be a hypocrite, but at least I’m not a lazy, selfish wanna-be housewife like you.  You don’t even take out the garbage.”

“Trying to protect our relationship?  That’s a laugh; try it on someone who hasn’t heard this little speech before.  You don’t love me; I don’t think you even know what love is.  And I damn well don’t want to be a housewife, and you know it.  I’m looking for a job.  You think I like living on your charity?  You think I like knowing that I am dependent on you for everything from the bed I sleep in to the food I eat?  You think I enjoy waking up every morning, wondering if today will be the day when you finally decide I’m not worth the effort of lying to anymore?  You want me to take out the garbage, I’ll take out the garbage.”  I picked up the can from the kitchen and tossed it, contents and all, out the window and onto the fire escape, where it landed with a smack, scattering trash into the alley below.  “You want me to clean, I’ll clean.”  I picked up the breakfast dishes and hurled them into the dishwasher, grinning as they shattered against the wire racks.  “Will there be anything else, your Majesty?  Oh, I almost forgot.  I guess I’d better take my heart back, since you won’t be needing it anymore.  I’d return yours, but it’s too shriveled to matter anyway, not that you need one, you cold bitch.  I’ve had enough.  I’ll have my things out by morning.”

“Just see that you do!” she screamed, grabbing her purse and slamming out the door.

I heard her car start and pull away.  I picked up the remote and hurled it against the wall, savoring the crack of the plastic.  She’d have to pay to get the wall fixed, but I didn’t care.  I flew to the bedroom, flinging my clothes into a bag and half screaming to myself, both in rage and pain.  I rushed about the apartment, taking only my clothes, my work, a few of my favorite books and movies, and a picture of her.  I told myself it was because my mother had given me the frame, and I didn’t want to bother taking the picture out.  I figured I could burn it later.  I didn’t really believe myself even then.  Within an hour, I was tossing my few bags into my car, having left my apartment key on the coffee table.

I just started driving; I didn’t even know where I was going, I just drove.  Eventually I wound up at the lake we had visited months ago for our picnic.  My anger had long since faded, and the only thing I felt while looking across that blue expanse was a keening loss, an ache that started in my chest and wrapped its tendrils around my stomach and lungs so hard I could barely breathe.  I felt sick and choked, like I was dying.  Then the first tear fell onto my hands, and suddenly, I couldn’t stop crying.  I wept, shaking and wailing, pounding my fists against the steering wheel.  I don’t know how long I cried, but when I realized that I’d stopped, I noticed it had grown dark out.  Just four hours earlier, my life had been wonderful, not perfect, but happy.  Now it was a complete mess.  I’d lost her; there was nothing I could do to take it all back.  All I could do was wait and see.  Silently I begged for her to call my cell phone.  I willed it to ring.  Nothing happened.  I drove to a hotel and checked myself in.  I left a message with her service letting her know where I was.  I wasn’t about to try talking to her, not yet.  We both needed time to think about what had happened, time to heal.  I’d made the first move, now it was up to her.

Since I wasn’t working and I had no where else to be that wasn’t with Julie, I spent the next day in my hotel room, hoping she would call, hoping things could be fixed.  I ordered food in, deciding to worry about the credit card bills later.  Right now there were more important things to deal with.  I thought about the time we’d spent together, virtually all of which had been within the stressful but not-quite-real confines of college.  So much of the mechanics of our relationship had revolved around being in school.  With Julie working, her schedule was no longer flexible enough to allow for the late nights spent in one another’s arms or the languid afternoons when we’d had no classes.  Even the stress of deadlines wasn’t the same.  Before, I could soothe her, and she could motivate me.  Now I wasn’t with her while she worked, and her stress had to do with real people’s problems rather than remembering the details from a book.  I couldn’t help her share that stress because of the nature of her work, and without that outlet I felt useless to her.  Also, since I wasn’t working, there was nothing she could do but encourage me to keep looking.  Those things weren’t the real problems, though, just recent developments that brought the rest to a head.

The real conflict was in how we approached the relationship to begin with.  We were both trying so hard, but coming at it from completely different angles.  Julie wanted us to be self-sufficient people in love who happened to live together.  I wanted us to be two parts of a whole.  I wanted her to need me; I desperately needed that.  And she simply didn’t, at least not beyond the obvious role of lover and companion.  It may seem odd, but I wanted to be more to her than that.  She made me so completely happy that I felt I owed it to her to be of use, to become an integral cog in her life.  Julie couldn’t understand that, and if she did, she didn’t see that simply loving her wasn’t enough.  For her, my love was always enough to please her, just as her love was enough to please me.  For me however, there was more to it than that.  Love has never been something to be freely received to me.  I can give it, true enough, but I have always felt that people must be repaid for loving me, for taking the time to care about me.  Usually it’s enough for me to do the normal friend things like buying presents at Christmas and remembering birthdays.  With Julie though, everything was enlarged by several orders of magnitude.  I have never loved anyone as much as I loved Julie, no matter what I might’ve said during the fight; therefore my need to please her was exponentially larger.  I knew she needed me more than she’d willingly admit to, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough.  And I wasn’t sure anymore why it was so important that it be enough.  She loved me, that much I knew.  I loved her back.  Shouldn’t that be all that mattered?  I hoped that I’d get the chance to find out.

By the next day, I was certain she wasn’t going to call.  By lunchtime, I was too tired from my crying and my all-night vigil by the phone to care anymore.  I just crawled back into the empty, rented bed and collapsed into sleep.  I dreamt of a bed I wouldn’t get to share anymore, of a body I wouldn’t get to touch anymore, and of a smile I hoped I’d see again some day.  I made the evening check out and started driving for my mother’s house in Oregon.  I left the number and address with the hotel, just in case, and didn’t stop until I was home.  When I got out of the car, she took one look at me and ordered me to bed, making me promise to talk to her once I woke up.  She always knew the right thing to do to make me feel better.

I’d been there three days when a letter arrived from Julie, along with a package.  She had always said that letters were the best way to communicate, other than, and sometimes including, face to face.  You can’t argue with a letter; you can’t side-track it or make it lose it’s train of thought.  In the letter, she asked me to come back, not necessarily to stay, but to talk.  She said she’d been thinking about the things I had said, and had realized that even though I hadn’t meant to say them, I still felt them, that I was right.  She didn’t want to make me feel like a secondary part of her life.  She loved me, she wrote over and over again.  She needed me, more than she’d ever realized.  Wouldn’t I please come home?  The package contained her favorite book on building healthy relationships, a book of matches, and my favorite picture of her.  The note inside told me to burn the book and come home to talk without its principles to burden us or to burn the picture and move on without me.  She prayed that I’d choose the former.

I spent the rest of the night in my room, trying to decide what I wanted, what would be best for us, and if the two could coincide.  The next morning, I lit a fire in the wood stove we used for heat and told my mother I was leaving.  She didn’t have to ask where I was headed.  I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I had hope.  That was more than I’d had in a long while.  I was going home with the knowledge that we might fail, that the Julie years were over no matter what else was decided.  But I was also going home with the hope that the Julie-and-Beth years might begin.  And that made all the difference.