The Vacation
In a few months, she'll be gone. Just like the others. Except this time, I won't know the reasons, I won't know to where, I won't know the paump and the circumstance of her departure. I know she'll clean out her room, he dolls in boxes perhaps, her art neatly tucked away to carry off with her to the school of her choice. May haps in all the sorting and organizing she'll run across a picture of me and think to call me. But will she? Does she even have a number with which she may reach me. It's all trivial. Sometimes I think about calling her, but then I draw myself back into reality and question whether I even want to maintain that connection. Is she THAT important to me? What does she have to offer me? The questions keep the phone call from happening. I can't call. I won't call. She made her choice. And somewhere in all the questions in my head, I think that I'll never see her again, unless we have some chance meeting at a vacation spot in the distant future. We'll say the proper things, "Hello, how are you?" We'll have families of our own then. Children to play with each other while we lounge at the bar. Neither of us wanting to be in the situation, but feeling obligated. Wondering the appropriate questions, the whos, the whats, the wheres, the what-ifs... of course, it's all just kept in our heads, neither of us are able to bring those questions to the surface, we don't want to be in each other's lives. So we keep sipping our drinks and casually speaking of the past and then I ask, "Did you ever think to call me?" Silence. Of course she didn't, she was wrapped up in her life; That's fine by me, I was wrapped up in mine. But everyonce in a while, I wondered. And then we'd feel obligated to meet each other's families. Both of us wondering what 'our family' would have been like. And our daughters play with each other, they don't understand that we had history, that under different circumstances, they might have been sisters. And that's fine by us, so long as we don't have to stand in silence. We introduce each other as an old friend, not as an ex, that's too far history, too deep, too long ago, just old friends. And perhaps we'd feel obligated to eat dinner with each other, our families in attendence. And we'd sip our wines and devour the fine breads of the establishment, all the while, feeling out of place. So much so that I decide to go outside for my after dinner smoke. Her husband would join me to talk about manly things, things men discuss while our wives discuss womanly things in their own environment. Our daughters run off to play somewhere, we're unconcerned, this place is safe. And while her husband and I speak, I watch the waves crashing on the beach and I think of what might have been as I am prone to do. "Stop it" I think to myself. It's not right to think of such things. They're just questions and so long as they are just questions, everything will be fine. We bid our goodnights and head off to bed with our own families. The next day, the children want to play again. Fine by us, we'll deal with the situation for their happiness. And we lounge by the pool not really speaking, I've gone off into my own world, detached myself from reality. Only so that I might get by without reopening an old wound. And I remembered what seemed to be her favorite line, "Kick me harder, in the head this time." She used to say that everytime I'd ask a question of her that I already knew the answer, but asked anyway, just to spite her, to make her say something she didn't want to say. And I wanted to ask again, just for kicks, but I refrain, I'm older than that now, I don't do such things. So we all make it through the week, feeling less like old friends and more like a burden. I'm glad I saw her, but even more glad we didn't keep in touch. Perhaps that's the best thing I could ever have done was not calling her. May haps it was also the worst. And as we bid our final goodbyes, we realize something unique. We realize that our daughters have fallen in love with each other. But no...that would be entirely too poetic.
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