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Christmas Cards
I know you don’t remember this, but you bought me carnations for our first date. It was a Christmas Ball for FHA our senior year in high school, and I invited you, instead of the other way around, the way I would have liked.
The scent of carnations have reminded me of you all these years; and when I think of you, I also think of carnations.
We sort of grew up together, seeing each other every day, at school.
Our mothers were friends, and it was a small town, with few people who were interested in the same things as our parents - books, music, the world outside our town.
Everybody knew I had a huge crush on you, from grade school on. I used to daydream about you, and build scenarios in my head that included you. Every night before I went to sleep, I thought of you and said good night to you in my head. I had a favorite fantasy, even. In my daydream, we met by accident in the woods where I walked to school, you wearing the coat I loved the most -- a beige trench -- and you took my hand, and walked with me and we talked, and you told me you loved me, and you looked into my eyes, and ..... that is where the fantasy always stopped.
I couldn’t go further.
In my mind I couldn’t even kiss you. It always stopped at the eyes.
Why did we wait until the Christmas Ball to date? Well, it wasn’t my fault.
You didn’t have a car. Your brother and your sister, both older, shared a car. You never got to use it. Our sophomore year, I hoped all year you would ask me to the prom - girls had to be asked back then. But you didn’t. You took another girl instead.
You told my best friend it was because your brother, who was driving, didn’t want me along. My friend told me this during PE class, as we jogged down the road. I remember feeling that the wind had been knocked from my lungs, and having to stop and catch my breath for five minutes, before coming back alone.I tried to act as if I didn’t care.
I was devastated. I remember walking home that afternoon through the woods, wearing a cherry-red dress my mother had made for me, and sinking down in agony on the ground with the dress spreading over the pine needles as I sobbed, finally able to let go now that I was alone.
Sadness turned to anger, and for more than a year I didn’t speak to you.
It’s my worst failing, really, this inability to forgive. And I never have, really; even now, nearly 40 years later, I still feel the fresh pain of it and hate you, just a little, for letting me down.
That summer I had my first romance, with a boy who was visiting over the summer with his grandmother. His mother and father were getting a divorce, and she had tried to kill herself with pills. Jason was sent to his grandmother’s while his mother recuperated in a sanitarium and hs father was able to get his affairs in order.
Jason and I met while attending a summer program at a local junior college. He was in electronics and I was in the secretarial program. He was sexy and alluring, but a year younger than I. We kissed and fooled around, but we were both too young to do much else. His grandmother, afraid that Jason and I were too close, had him sent back to Louisiana in July.
The last time I saw him, we walked on the beach of the creek across the street from your house. I was hoping you would see us together and be jealous. Jason had a cold, and his breath stank. It was a horrible end to a beautiful summer.
I spent the rest of that vacation wishing I had a job. I baby sat a lot for a couple who owned a bar and kept me out until 2 a.m.; their TV didn’t work, so I spent all summer reading and planning my junior year at the new high school we were being sent to in the fall.
Our county’s high schools had consolidated. It was exciting, because we were going have a very large class. Our little group of 14 pupils was about to become more than a hundred. I got my ears pierced in Anna Lee Jenkins’ kitchen, in anticipation.
In late August, we reconvened; two buses took students from our town to the high school and I tried to be on the bus you weren’t on. In the hallways, I avoided you. I was glad when we had different home rooms. And when I met up with you anyway, I barely acknowledged your presence. The first FHA ball, I invited a boy I hardly knew. We had a horrible time. I’m not even sure what I wore; and he didn’t bring me a corsage.
Our senior year was different. I was starting to mellow, and thaw. I decided I would be friendly, and when it came time to invite a guy to the FHA Winter Ball, I could tell you wanted me to ask you. You sat next to me on the bus.
“I wonder who I should ask to the Ball,” I said one afternoon, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Gee,” you said. “Whoever it is, he will be a lucky guy.”
I looked into your eyes and smiled.
“You want me to ask you?” I said.
“Well, do you want to ask me?” You answered.
“Sure,” I said, feigning a sigh. “You wore me down. Would you like to go to the ball with me?”
“What time do I pick you up?” You answered.
A few days before, you asked me the color of my dress. Briefly I remembered that the prom dress my mother was going to make for me our sophomore year was periwinkle blue.
“It’s kind of a silver, but kind of white, too,” I said. “Why?”
“My mother wanted to know what color of flowers to get,” you said.
“I love carnations,” I said. “Pink carnations.”
When you picked me up that night, you came to the door with white carnations with a silver bow. You were apologetic.
“Mom said they didn’t have pink ones,” you said.
“White are my second favorite,” I said, lowering my nose into the snowy petals.
I had bought you a gift, too. It was a gold-plated key ring with your initials. I had picked it out in Joplin several weeks before, and spent most of my allowance on it. You loved it, but looked worried.
“I didn’t bring you anything,” you said.
“Yes you did,” I said, and smiled.
That evening was magical. We danced every dance and we had a great time. I felt like a princess. About midnight, the air crisp and chilled with a hint of snow, you drove me home. We walked up to the door, and paused. I was a nervous wreck, anticipating our first real kiss. Just as you began to lower your face to mine, the door opened.
In the doorway stood your mother.
She had locked herself out of her house, and you had the only key on the ring with the car keys. She had spent the last five hours at my house. She had gone to a neighbor’s house and called my mother, who had gone to get her. I’ve always wondered why Mom didn’t just bring her to the dance to get the key, but there she was.
I often wonder how different our lives might have been, had we shared that kiss.
In the months leading to our graduation, you asked me out once or twice, and we drove around, but it never came up again. I finally realized that I had you on such a high pedestal that you could not be my lover, ever. The men I liked were more dark, mysterious with a hint of danger. You were like a god, an ideal I could not sully with carnal knowledge.
I went to the prom with a guy from another school, a friend I knew to be gay. He was beautiful and an excellent dancer. You were hurt and I gloated. You had asked me to go and I said I already had a date. You went to the prom with my best friend, who was engaged to marry a serviceman who was in Vietnam. I felt your eyes on me all evening, in my yellow gown.
I went away to college, while you stayed home and attended a local junior college. I flunked out and joined the Army, while you finished school at a state university and then went to another university for a masters degree. While you got degrees, I got a decree -- of divorce, that is, from my first husband, an abusive Vietnam veteran.
About the time you were settling into your first job, I was moving back in with Mom and Dad and going back to school at the junior college where you began.
You found the love of your life and married her, eventually having two lovely boys. Your life has moved in a perfect line, with no obvious detours.
After a few years, I married again, this time to a wonderful man who had been through his own set of troubles, and I gave him a daughter. I helped him raise his sons by a first marriage, and eventually got my degrees.
I was working on my first degree, again, when we met again at our 20-year reunion. Your wife and my husband watched us warily from the sidelines, but they need not have worried. I could tell you didn’t like my husband. You probably noticed that I thought your wife dull. You seemed shorter than I remembered, and your hair was suspiciously dark. I wondered if you were vain enough to color it.
Slowly, we began to rekindle our friendship. It started with Christmas cards. Then a few years ago when the Internet arrived, we started sending e-mails. For a short time, we rehashed the past, except for the painful moments in our relationship. We talked of our old town, our old school, our old friends. It was a tether to a life I had lost, and I embraced it with relish.
But you stopped it, saying that sending mails from work could be a problem. And there was no way you could send them from home. I could tell you felt our new connection was a breach of your relationship with your wife.
I respected your privacy. I’m so glad you love your wife like that.
My life is in stark contrast to yours. I have held several jobs, and had several career paths. Stability is not an issue. Today I teach full-time at a local University, and also sell real estate. Retirement is far away.
We keep in touch with occasional postcards from European vacations and your Christmas card that always arrives before I send mine, a week before Christmas. My husband watches for it, and announces it, as though a roach had arrived in the mail.
I always open it in front of him, smiling inwardly because I know there would never be anything unseemly inside. This year you tell me you could retire in three years from the job you have held for the past 30, and include a picture of you and your wife on a boat in Maine. Whoever took it should have used a flash; your faces are in shadows,
After reading it, I went out and bought a dozen pink carnations, tied them with silver bows, and let them ripen for a few days, breathing in their perfume. I will write you in a day or two, as usual, a late Christmas card that tries to fill in the space that separates us with anecdotes and news. I think I will tell you about the deer I saw from the dining room window last month as I was showing your mother’s house to a prospective buyer.
The deer walked the same path that Jason and I did that long ago summer, but he plodded along gamely down the creek, never looking up to see us looking out of the double paned windows, in the dark house.
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