When they finally found the cat, after an hour of running all over the neighborhood, shouting its name (which was a rather pointless exercise since the cat had never once responded to someone calling its name, and was also a rather stupid sounding one since the cat’s name was Major Dickinson, but what else could you call out when you’re out searching for a lost animal?), it was in response to an identifying meow from the backyard of a quaint two story cottage belonging to a woman in her late sixties or early seventies, who had been sitting there, in a patio chair, reading a Kindle and having a glass of wine. She said the cat had climbed up and over the fence about twenty minutes ago, and that she had mistaken it for one of her neighbor’s outdoor cats, which had a daily habit of climbing up over the fence and sunning itself on her patio.
“I’m so terribly sorry not to have been of help!” she offered in that sweet and polite and genuinely sympathetic white-woman-in-her-sixties-with-a-glass-of-wine kind of way. “I’m so glad you were able to find her. Him?”
“Him,” Amanda answered, taking the nonplussed cat into her hands. “Major Dickinson.”
“What’s that?”
“The cat’s name is Major Dickinson.”
“Oh well how about that! I love it. Major Dickinson. Very official sounding.” And she clasped her hands and smiled and her cheekbones were wonderful. “How long have you been looking for him?”
“About an hour,” Jose answered, unsure if this sounded like a short or a long amount of time. “He snuck out the door when we were bringing in the groceries.” Amanda shot him a look as he said this, but he missed it.
“In this heat? You must be exhausted! Here, let me at least get you a glass of iced tea. I just made some earlier this afternoon.” And before anyone could protest she had slipped inside the sliding patio door. Jose, ever interested in the interiors of the homes of real adults, the homes he biked past daily wondering who lived inside and how they decorated, pressed his forehead to the glass and looked into the kitchen, which was full of hanging pots and pans and other doodads but immaculate, uncluttered, all light brown cedar and white and blue Spanish tile.
“What are you doing?” Amanda grabbed his shoulder.
“Just checking out her spot. I mean she invited us to stay, right?”
“You’re being creepy.”
“She offered us an iced tea!”
“She didn’t invite you in.”
“Come off it, she’s probably proud as hell of that kitchen. I would be.” Nonetheless, he stepped away from his inspection, taking a seat in one of the expensive looking patio chairs. There were four, and they clearly came in a set along with a stained glass topped coffee table and a little ottoman. A giant standing umbrella shaded them from nearby. Jose recalled once checking the price tag of a nice chair/table/umbrella set at Home Depot and recoiling in an unsettling mixture of disgust and awe.
“Here you are,” she said as she returned, the glasses perched on a rectangular ceramic tray. Setting the tray down on the coffee table, it revealed itself to possess also a small wooden cutting board piled high with crackers and two types of cheeses. “Thought I might as well bring out some snacks as well. A little cheese and crackers never hurt anyone.”
“Thank you,” Amanda said, cradling Major Dickinson in one hand and taking the iced tea in the other. “This is all too nice of you, uhh…”
“Rebecca. And you are?”
“Amanda.”
“Jose.”
“Very nice to meet you.” Handshakes all around. Rebecca also shook one of Major Dickinson’s paws affectionately. “And are you students here?”
“Yep, we’re both grad students.”
“Oh, very impressive! What are you studying?”
“I’m architecture,” Jose said. “And she’s in the vet school.”
“Now isn’t that something. And you live together?”
“Yeah, us and a couple other students, right around the corner on Cambridge St. Though Major Dickinson’s mostly hers,” Jose answered.
“We were treating stray cats in school, it’s part of the first year program,” Amanda explained. “You’re allowed to adopt them afterward if you want, so I picked up this guy.” She gave Major Dickinson’s head a rub. He looked bored but not restless, glancing idly at a passing cardinal.
“I used to have a couple of little kitties myself,” Rebecca said. “They used to love this patio.”
A soft silence descended upon the party. Jose munched on some cheese and crackers. Rebecca took a sip of her wine. Amanda observed the surrounding yard. It wasn’t large, but it was exquisitely gardened, with beds lining all three sides and potted plants and bird feeders hanging from trees and decorative iron pikes stuck into the ground. It was the perfect place for a cat to spend the afternoon. Jose noticed that while Amanda had finished over half of her tea, he’d barely touched his. He took a big sip.
“Have you lived here your whole life?” Amanda asked.
“Not quite. I’m from Milwaukee originally. I came out here with my sweetheart. He was a professor in mathematics, at the school here. But he passed ten years ago this summer, and now it’s just me.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Amanda quickly offered.
“Oh, that’s quite alright,” Rebecca said, waving away the apology. “He was old. Well I’m old, but he was much older than me. To tell you the truth, he had been my professor, back in Milwaukee I mean.” She took an iPhone out from a pocket of her beige skirt, which came down past her knees and had exactly one pocket, and, squinting as if reading a book under dim light and swiping with a single extended index finger, made her way to a picture and handed the phone to Amanda. The picture was a photo of another picture, from like the 60s or something, colored but vaguely sepia toned, and showed a mustachioed man in a white sweater and tweed jacket before a blackboard that was cluttered with equations, smiling proudly. One leg was up on a stool and he was perched upon his knee. It looked very much like an official faculty photo.
“Wow, he looks so smart!” Amanda said, not really knowing what else to say. She passed the phone to Jose, who zoomed in on the blackboard, finding a harmonic series up in the corner.
“Oh you should have seen him in the classroom! He had so much energy, so much passion for math. He had me from day one. I didn’t know what in hell he was talking about half the time, but I was sure to never miss a lecture!” Jose tried to picture what Rebecca would have looked like as a college student as he handed the phone back. His mind’s eye was all in faded pastels and grey scale. Everyone’s face had that rouge effect they used to apply to old photos.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Rebecca asked after replacing the phone in her pocket.
“By all means; it’s your house,” Jose said. Amanda nodded and finished her tea. But rather than produce a pack of cigarettes (or, as Jose had imagined in those few seconds, one of those really long cigarettes with the holder that women smoked in like the 20s), she produced a thin black vape pen, put it to her lips, closed her eyes and inhaled. The smell of marijuana was subtle but unmistakable. What a strange afternoon this has been, Amanda thought to herself.
“Would either of you like some? It’s from that new shop that opened just down on 4th street. ‘Obama Kush,’ I believe it was called. The plant, not the store.”
“No no, that’s alright, actually we’d probably better get-” Amanda started.
“Sure,” Jose said simultaneously. Amanda shot him a look which Jose correctly surmised to mean ‘wtf’. He apologized with his eyes, but took the pen from Rebecca’s outstretched hand. It’s only one hit, he tried to mouth to her. Besides, it was Saturday. They’d probably both be crossfaded within a few hours anyway. Rebecca watched him smoke, her glass of wine held out between two fingers, elegantly. Dramatically. She had grey hair, short, but frizzy and thick, kind of like the Bride of Frankenstein, Jose mentally commented. She was watching him intently. Curiously, even. He placed the pen back on the table between them, nodding his appreciation. Amanda surveyed the scene awkwardly. Major Dickinson yawned and closed his eyes.
“Thanks very much,” Jose said finally.
“Of course. I’m so glad it’s legal now. It used to be such a pain to get a hold of, especially after Stan died. Now I can just order it on the phone and it comes in twenty minutes.”
Jose nodded in agreement. “Like a pizza.”
“Right! Just like a pizza!” Rebecca exclaimed, leaning forward and laughing. Jose, encouraged by her laughter, began laughing too. “Just like ordering a pizza,” Rebecca said again, quite literally slapping her knee. Jose couldn’t keep himself from chuckling. Amanda looked back and forth between the two of them and then ate a cracker. It seemed like the only thing to do. She eyed Jose’s iced tea. Still half full, she thought. Oh be optimistic; it’s also half empty. Pleasantly delighted by her own cleverness, she popped a piece of cheese into her mouth and relaxed a half step.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Jose began again as the laughter finally subsided, “how did you used to get it back in the day? I mean, it’s been legal since before I started smoking, so I never knew any other way.”
“Well, as I told you, Stan was a professor. And professors love to-” and here she made a smoking motion. “Helps them think. About the deep wonders of reality, and that kind of thing,” she said, guestering with her hands.
“Naturally.”
“Well, the ones who really have to ponder the nature of existence the most, you could say, are those philosophy professors. Now Stan got on good with them right away once we moved out here, and they always had all sorts of wondrous things. We used to spend the day walking in the Arboretum, looking at the ducks and the birds and the turtles, or we’d just stay in and have dinner and talk about life, and love, and death, or just laugh ourselves silly all night.”
“That sounds like the same stuff we do now,” Jose said. “Love, life, death. They all come up pretty frequently. Especially when you’re baked.”
“The three pillars of existence.”
“Although both death and love feel like subsets of life. ‘Death is a part of life’ and all that.”
“Unless you think of life as everything outside of death and love.”
“This,” Jose said, pointing finger guns back at Rebecca, “is very true.”
Satisfied with this conclusion, Rebecca sat back in her chair, closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She let her arms fall off the sides of her chairs, palms up. Basking in the late spring, late afternoon sun. Life is a part of life.
“You ever like to listen to music at those parties?” Jose asked.
Rebecca popped awake in an instant. “Of course! Always, all kinds of records. Oh Stan loved The Doors. I mean we all did, but Stan used to put on L.A. Woman on repeat. We had to pry it off the record player with a crowbar. Some of our friends liked Brian Eno, he was a little far out for me, but sometimes I could enjoy it. Oh and David Bowie, he was my favorite, I thought he was so cute, those eyes. Oh who else? The Police, and Paul Simon, the Talking Heads-”
“Talking Heads!” Jose cried, pointing at Rebecca. “I love the Talking Heads!”
“You know who the Talking Heads are?” Rebecca asked, clapping her hands. “Oh how lovely!”
“I swear, ‘This Must Be the Place’ is like my favorite song of all time. Top five song. Just ask Amanda, I play it all the time.” They both looked at Amanda, who had been stroking the cat and looking at the stones that comprised the patio. They were rectangles with slightly rounded corners of a soft crimson color. Each row had either twenty-seven bricks or twenty-six with two half bricks on either side, depending on if it was an even or odd row, Amanda had discovered.
“Huh?”
“Talking Heads. ‘This Must Be The Place’. Isn’t that my favorite song?”
“Oh yeah, he plays it all the time,” Amanda said somewhat sarcastically, though the statement couldn’t have been more true.
“And what kind of music do you like, Amanda?” Rebecca asked, turning her attention on the vet student.
“Me? Oh, you know, all sorts of stuff. Mostly rap.”
“She likes that Soundcloud rap,” Jose said. “She likes that Lil Yachty.”
“Little who?” Rebecca asked.
“Lil Yachty. Like a yacht. Like a boat.”
“Never heard of him, but he sounds like a fascinating character,” she mused, sinking back into her chair, feeling just about all of that expensive cushioned patio furniture. Amanda was somehow embarrassed. She didn’t really even like Lil Yachty, she just threw him on when she was studying or cleaning her room or something, because it blended into the background. How had this come up? Why were they sitting in some old lady’s backyard talking about Lil Yachty? She found herself uncomfortably furious at Jose, first letting the cat escape, then knowing how stressed she was, with an exam coming up, and how much she wanted to get the cat home, and still here he was, yapping it up. And getting baked in the process. How classic.
Feeling the iced tea, she suddenly had a wonderful idea. She’d ask to use the bathroom. Then on returning, she’d suggest they head out, because they had to make dinner. It was only 4:30, but she figured that was alright since old people ate early. Didn’t Rebecca have to make dinner?
“Excuse me, may I use your bathroom?”
“Certainly, it’s just through the kitchen and on the left. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.” She got up, placed Major Dickinson in Jose’s lap and slid through the glass door.
“You know,” Rebecca said a few moments after the door shut, in between chirps from the pair of cardinals darting around the yard, “You remind me of Stan.”
“He was Mexican?” Jose asked, remembering a second afterward that he’d just seen a picture of the guy, who definitely was not Mexican.
“Oh heavens no, Stan was as white as milk toast. I just mean, the way you sit. Or the way you sip your tea. Something small like that. I watched him in a chair on this patio many times over the years, and if I squint I can just about see him sitting right where you are. The same pose, the hand on the chin like that.” She mimicked the pose.
“How long were you married?” Jose asked, interested.
“Well, as a matter of fact, we were never actually married. We lived together, and we certainly loved each other, but we just never quite saw the point. My parents were none too pleased about it, but they got over it eventually.”
“Makes sense to me. Did you ever have kids?”
“We did not. It wasn’t in the cards for us, I’m afraid.”
“I see.” Jose took a hit of the pen. “I kinda feel the same way, actually. About marriage.”
“Which way?”
“Oh, that it’s just kinda pointless. It sorta feels like weddings are just a waste of money, and like, why do you need a piece of paper to say that you love each other? Or something like that.”
“So you think you won’t ever marry, then?”
“Man, I don’t even know if she’s the one for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s great, and we’re great together, but I’m like twenty-four over here. I don’t know what I’m gonna be like in five years, let alone fifty. What if I change and I’m not into her anymore? What if she changes on me? I guess I like the idea of being together with one person and kids and all, but locking it down for the rest of your life seems so… stressful, ya know? Like why should I trust myself to make that big of a decision?”
“It’s true. Commitment can be overwhelming.”
“I mean, how old were you when you met Stan?”
“Oh jeez, I wasn’t more than nineteen.”
“And you knew he was the one?”
“Well, not at first. I liked him, I thought he was smart, and funny, and fun to be around. And we had great conversations. But I was the same as you; I didn’t know if it would be five semesters or five decades. But then he got a faculty position out here, and I couldn’t think of a great reason not to go with him, so I went.”
“Just like that? You left your whole life in Milwaukee and just upped to California and felt fine about it?”
“I didn’t feel 100% confident, but I didn’t feel bad, either. That was a choice life offered me and I took it. It could have worked out quite poorly. Lucky for me it didn’t. But even if it had, it would have still been the right choice. I didn’t need to analyze anything; life seemed simple. Two doors were there. I took one that looked good to me at the time, and here I am.”
“Here you are. Just smoking weed with me and Major Dickinson.”
“Like it was meant to be. Don’t you think so?”
This caught Jose somewhat off guard. “Think what?”
“That this, your Major Dickinson, climbing into my yard, and you coming to find him and sitting here with me, don’t you think this was somehow meant to be?”
Jose glanced at the pen on the table. He was high, no doubt about it. But not too bad, just a little bit, and it was pleasant. So was this meant to be? Maybe. Probably. There was no other way it could have gone, he supposed, because this is the way it went.
“I guess so.”
“And if this was meant to be, then certainly, either Amanda is the one for you, or she isn’t, one of those two fates is meant to be, is it not?”
“Yes…” Jose eating a piece of cheese, unsure of where Rebecca was going with this.
“So the answer will present itself. Your journey, your, ‘trip’, it will resolve, whether you spend time hemming and hawing about it or not.”
“Well, I mean, you’re right. You are right. I just wish, man, I just wish it didn’t keep me up at night, you know, stressed out, thinking about it and all. I wanna not think about it, I do, but Amanda seems to think that thinking about it is important. Does that make sense?”
“It does. She’s worried about the future, about commitment, the same as you. All you can do is be yourself and see where things land. Make choices that are authentic to you and don’t look back. Otherwise you’ll spend your life sitting in gardens talking to old ladies like me.”
“Well,” Jose began, looking around at the perfectly manicured garden, Major Dickinson purring in his arms, condensation on the glass wetting his fingers. “It’s not so bad right now.”
Amanda, on the toilet, jeans at shins, panties at knees, phone in hands, had become distracted by a video she’d happened upon on her Facebook news feed of a rabbit taking a bath in a sink. Realizing she’d been watching the video for nearly two minutes, she placed the phone on the sink beside her and focused upon a set of bathroom books stacked on a tiny, dollhouse-sized coffee table opposite the toilet.
She picked up the first one. Easy Origami. Easy Origami? Who does origami on the toilet? She opened the book and began to flip through the pages of colorful animals being folded from paper. She had to admit that it was somewhat interesting. Okay, one for one on the bathroom books. Placing the book on the bottom of the stack, she tried the next one. The Ultimate Book of Useless Information. Classic bathroom book. Cliche, even. “Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.” Wonderful. Next book; Memories: 1975 – 1985. A thick, heavy photo album, of marble red exterior, imprinted with cursive gold text. She opened to somewhere near the beginning.
The first photo she saw was of Rebecca and Stan and three other people sitting around on couches and chairs in someone’s living room. It was daytime; light was streaming in through a bay window, which looked out into a green backyard. Everything looked 70s as hell. The colors were fading, but there was a lot of beige, and white, and dying teals and yellows. Rebecca was striking. Her hair was long and straight, parted down the middle. She wore a knee length pencil skirt, not unlike the one she was presently wearing, high waisted around a buttoned white blouse. Through the washed out tones Amanda noted that her hair was somewhere between auburn and burnt orange. She realized that she never wondered what grey haired people’s original hair color was. She was smiling and holding a glass of wine, leaning forward on the couch, staring straight at the camera with large brown eyes. Stan was beside her, leaning back against the couch. Still mustachioed, with wavy shoulder length hair, a red sports coat and bell-bottom slacks, legs crossed. He looked like he could have been in a band. His arm was around her shoulder and he was looking out toward the window, a smile playing just beneath the surface of his mouth. The rest of the guests looked hip and happy. They all held drinks.
Flipping forward from here, Amanda found many similar such pictures. A birthday party with hats and streamers and a big ‘Happy Birthday!’ banner. A shot of Rebecca holding up an elegant black dress before her, attempting to look serious, another dress in her other hand. A group of guys including Stan sitting outside in lawn chairs, drinking beer around a tiny portable television, on which she could just barely make out the lines of a football field. A Halloween party where Rebecca was dressed like a witch and Stan a scarecrow. (The Wizard of Oz, Amanda realized a couple pages later).
Amanda thought of the previous Halloween. She and Jose had dressed up as a lion and a tiger. The idea had been hers, and her lion costume was finished by the end of September, well thought out and meticulously crafted. Jose’s tiger, despite her persistent reminders throughout October, consisted of no more than old black jeans and a black shirt painted crudely with orange stripes, as well as some ears and face paint. She’d tried not to let the lack of effort get to her, but the beautiful couples costumes adorning her Instagram feed soured her mood in the final hour before they headed out for a party. (She elected not even to post a picture of the two of them together, a detail Jose failed to notice.) At the party she got superbly drunk and spent an inordinate amount of time flirting and dancing with Jacques, a French student in her program (always so punctual, polite, well-groomed), which left Jose quiet and prickly on the Uber ride home until the tension bubbled over into a fight that began over who’d left the door unlocked and ended with Jose leaving the apartment for a few hours to smoke weed and wander the streets alone while Amanda passed out in her costume, her Lion makeup smeared by the tears running down her cheeks.
What a stupid fight. And it all traced back to Jose not properly preparing a stupid tiger costume. And look here; Rebecca’s witch was nothing more than a black dress and hat, Stan’s scarecrow an old flannel shirt stuffed with hay. But they looked so happy. True, there was no Instagram then. But then again there were physical photos and photo albums like the one in her lap. No, it wasn’t about the costumes. It came down to expectations. She’d expected Jose to do this stupid silly thing for her because it so obviously meant something to her. Why couldn’t he change his habits, if just ever so slightly, to make her happy on a day that for some godforsaken reason seemed suddenly to mean so much to her?
Or look here; Rebecca on Thanksgiving, proudly displaying what looked like (and what Amanda was surprised to find herself recognizing) a whole cornish game hen stuffed inside of a turkey. She was the chef in the house, and here she was, putting in the maximum effort, smiling, going the extra mile for her partner. Likewise a couple pages later, Stan and two other men standing cross-armed before their own wine barrels, clothes stained with purple liquid. Clearly, thought Amanda, this was an expression of love for his red wine connoisseur of a wife. (Never mind the very distinct possibility that Rebecca drank so much red (and it did show up in an impressive number of the photos) only because Stan had a habit of making it.)
Although, here’s an unpleasant thought, what had she done for Jose lately? Most recently she’d lambasted him for failing to shut the door and letting the cat out (god, why were they always fighting about the fucking door?). In her mind she’d spent much of the time on the patio preparing her opening statements when she undoubtedly put him on trial for smoking weed in the middle of the day with a total stranger while she sat there holding the cat and wanting to go home. She’d even given him shit this morning when Jose had gone for breakfast without her while she was sleeping off a hangover even though he’d brought her back pancakes, all because she woke up with no one beside her and the apartment empty and had felt very alone and ashamed at feeling so insecure about being left alone. Racking her mind for some recent display of affection toward Jose, she found herself absent mindedly turning the pages, looking for answers in the photographs.
“Y’all were together for what, like, forty years?” Jose was asking, only aware at the subconscious level that he’d already asked this question since he did not know the answer.
“Just about. Thirty-nine since the first time we met.”
“And that whole time, thirty-nine years, you never asked, ‘Oh jeez, what if I’m meant for someone else?’ You never met anyone else I mean, that you thought, ‘Well maybe this is my soulmate?’ Did you even think soulmates were a real thing?”
Rebecca took another hit of the pen. Jose calculated that even with the strong tolerance she’d obviously developed, she must be getting pretty blazed by now. “Oh sure. There were all sorts of interesting gentlemen, both at the school and in town, or regulars at the store.” Jose made a mental note to ask her what kind of store she ran. “I really liked a lot of them. It was just never enough to throw away everything I’d built with Stan, that’s all.”
“Did you ever talk to him about it?”
“Of course; we were together thirty-nine years. We had very few, if any, secrets. Maybe other couples did, but we actually thought it was funny, the crushes we’d get on people. But what good would an affair do? A little fun for a night, a few weeks. Then what? Lying, covering up, stress, anxiety. No thank you. I suspect Stan felt the same.”
“Wow. I mean, I always thought like, if you’re the one for someone, you know, no one’s even supposed to interest you that way. At least not so consciously.”
“Well we’re only human,” Rebecca went on. “And also,” she began, lowering her voice and taking a sip of wine. “We did used to swing a little bit here and there.”
Jose’s eyes just about fell out of his head. “Swing? Like, with another couple you mean?”
“I mean we didn’t make much of a habit of it. But from time to time, if there was another couple we found ourselves interested in… well what can I say? When you don’t have kids, you have a little more freedom for such activities.” She chuckled as Jose fell back in his seat, his mind so demonstrably blown. Now it was his turn to take another hit of the pen. A long one. He held on as long as he could, Rebecca chuckling the whole time, then bending forward to rub the cat and sit back in her chair, awaiting Jose’s response. Finally he exhaled, coughed, and took a sip of his tea.
“Once,” he started, slowly, “Amanda was trying to make that happen.” Rebecca perked up, intrigued, inviting him to go on.
“We, uh, we met this other couple, at this party, it was a Spanish party. Well I mean it was a lot of Spanish people. Actually they were Chilean and Argentinian. And mostly bio majors. Anyhow, we were pretty drunk, in the kitchen, and we were just talking to this other couple who I guess were the hosts, for like, an hour or something.” He found himself reaching for the crackers. “So here we are, in the kitchen, four of us.” He placed four crackers on one side of the table, thinking for a moment that the story involved some complex geography. “I’m talking to the girl, she was a blonde girl is all I remember, and all of a sudden I look around and Amanda and the guy aren’t there.” He moved two crackers to the other side. Rebecca leaned forward over the table like a master pouring over a chess board.
“Now, I said to the girl, ‘Hey I’m gonna go find my girlfriend.’ I was actually kind of worried, I don’t know why, Amanda flirts with guys sometimes but she’s never done anything, well at least as far as I know. But I was drunk and my mind was racing so I go upstairs, and as I’m going up I get a text from Amanda. She says she’s in the first bedroom on the right of the stairs, and I should come in.” He moves the ‘Jose’ cracker up an imaginary staircase and into a ‘room’ with another cracker.
“But when I go in, the dude is in there. He says Amanda’s in the bedroom across the hall. Suddenly his girlfriend walks in, and she says ‘Oh, so you guys are down?’ I don’t know what she’s talking about, and I’m asking where Amanda is, but then this girl starts kind of making a move on me, like coming right at me and grabbing me. I was drunk, right, so my reactions weren’t really the quickest. I couldn’t even process what was happening for a second.” He gave up with the crackers, biting into the one that Rebecca had mentally labeled as ‘the other girl’. “She pushes me down on the bed, and starts like trying to kiss me, really slowly, and the boyfriend is sitting next to us just watching! Then right as I’m making sense of it all and pushing her off of me, Amanda walks in, and I’m horrified, thinking she’s gonna think I’m cheating but instead she says ‘Oh Jose, you’re already here? You’re okay with this? So we’re doing this?”
Rebecca fell back in her chair, shaking with laughter, wiping tears from her eyes. Jose looked at her, unsmiling, and continued. “It turns out that they’d been negotiating it, Amanda and the guy, the whole time, and that him and his girlfriend are like into that stuff. Well I said hell no I’m not okay with this, and I booked it right out of that bedroom and downstairs and right out the door and started walking home without even looking back. We had a fucking crazy fight about it that night, though. It sucked. That was a bad night.”
Rebecca was laughing but Jose could only shake his head, remembering how awkward he’d felt in that bedroom, how rough their fight had been, screaming in the streets all the way home, really just having it out very publically, briskly walking the whole time. He took another hit of the pen and remembered that he’d gotten really high as soon as they got home and laid down on the couch listening to Amanda cry and thinking over and over to himself ‘Don’t feel bad for her, don’t feel bad for her.’
“Well, it sounds like it was quite a surprise for you, what a situation to find yourself in!”
“Fucking crazy.”
“But do you think, if you’d been given proper warning, and had had a chance to talk with Amanda, that you’d have been alright with it all?”
“I don’t know. Probably not, but it would have been a hell of a lot better then getting assaulted by that girl in her bedroom.”
“It sounds like either Amanda gave you the wrong bedroom or you went into the wrong bedroom, and she probably was trying to talk to you about it,” Rebecca motioning to the two remaining crackers, which Jose promptly snapped up and devoured. He was getting the munchies hard, and started to make a move for the cheese.
“That’s what she was trying to say later, but still, it’s like, did she ever think about what it was like for me to have two people on me like that, two strangers in the dark?”
“I’m sure that must have been awful, truly. Fortunately, I can’t imagine what it was like. But she was probably embarrassed all the same.”
“Yeah, yeah I know she was. I just, I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Was it the first time she’d suggested something like that?”
“Nope, but it was definitely the last time.” He sat up abruptly and looked at Rebecca, his eyes now filled with something like hurt for the first time since he’d sat down. Major Dickinson’s eyes opened, his head popped up in alarm, and he started wriggling in Jose’s arms.
“But what do you expect me to do? Have some kind of crazy foursome just because she wants to? I don’t wanna do that shit, I don’t even think I could… you know, like, even do it. Christ. It’s like she’s always got this idea that she knows what’s best for us, she knows what I should be doing or trying. She’s always got ideas, she gets upset when I don’t act the way she wants me to. ‘Oh Jose, you shouldn’t smoke so much. Jose you shouldn’t eat out so much, why don’t you learn to cook? It’ll be fun! You should make more friends from your program, then we could invite people over! Jose you should be checking your credit score, you don’t even know your credit score? Don’t you want to own a house someday? Where do you want to live? Where do you think you could get a job? We should look for jobs in the Northwest, or in Canada, do you like Canada?’ Fuck I don’t know if I like Canada, I’ve never even been to Canada, are there even any Mexicans in Canada anyway?” Major Dickinson tried to leap from his hands, but he squeezed the cat tightly until it submitted. He felt dizzy in the heat and reached for his iced tea, but it was empty. Something inside of him was anxious and he felt a sudden urge to stand up, but pictured it and thought it would look silly and stayed where he was.
Rebecca leaned toward the boy and took one of his hands in her own. It surprised him but he didn’t move. “Jose, you are an individual. You are your own person. Your destiny is under your control. You’re not on a bad trip, and you’re not on a good one. Everyone is on their own trip, and no other person should change yours if you don’t want them to. There should be no expectation for you to do anything you don’t want to.” Jose had the fleeting thought, just for a moment, that he felt like he could cry, if he really wanted to, but he very much did not want to. Rebecca was still talking.
“Stan and I made many sacrifices, changes, compromises over the years, but it was because we wanted to. Nothing felt bad, nothing felt forced. I think all Amanda wants from you is for you to at least ask yourself if changing is something you want, and to see things from her point of view. To understand where she’s coming from, what she wants from you, and why she wants it. That’s the only way you can begin to grow together, to build something that’s going to last.” Jose looked down at the ground. He didn’t speak, but he was thinking, thinking about the fight that night, other fights, how he might have tried to see it from her angle. The painful thing, though, was that whenever Amanda gave him shit, he knew deep down somewhere, some place that he kept below the surface of his consciousness, that she was vaguely right, that he had some things to work on, some decisions to make, some growing up to do. But it was too difficult to think about this for too long, and he distracted himself by counting the crimson blocks. He was too high for all of this.
“Speaking of,” Rebecca said finally. “Has Amanda been gone a long time? Or have we smoked a little bit more of that pot than I’d thought?”
Unaware of how much time was passing, Amanda was deep into her continuing passage through Memories: 1975 – 1985. It seemed that every aspect of Stan and Rebecca’s life in those ten years was spread below her, like looking down at a city from an airplane, seeing all neighborhoods, parks, stadiums, lakes, rivers, and skyscrapers at once. She could trace their own personal changes (Rebecca’s newfound penchant for padded shoulders, Stan’s on-again off-again relationship with sideburns) alongside changes in culture (the plush, brown chairs were replaced with sleek steel ones, a student-aged guest showed up with a vibrant blonde mohawk).
Two thirds of the way through the book she recognized the kitchen she’d walked through, though clearly before it had been renovated; they’d moved into the home in which she presently found herself. Some of the same friends appeared in many photos. At some point a few of the couples had babies, then toddlers, then little kids. (It was obvious that Rebecca and Stan had none of their own; no weary but elated shot of Rebecca in the hospital room clutching a newborn, etc.) Other folks showed up just once. Rebecca’s parents made an appearance; her mother was a spitting image of the Rebecca she’d met in the backyard. Stan’s age began to show. His hair thinned, lines began to appear in his cheeks and on his forehead, he lost his mustache. Rebecca went through a period with short hair and bangs.
As she flipped the pages, there was this constant thought ping-ponging around in Amanda’s head about something like ‘Would she and Jose have a photo album? Would they be together long enough for that? Would physical photo albums even be a thing? (Probably not, but aren’t they beautiful?) Would they have a house, invite friends over, celebrate holidays, look happy?’
She wanted it, of that she was fairly certain. What kinds of hobbies would they have? What hobbies do they have now? Imagining a middle-aged Jose in a candid photo, hitting the bong, his eyes glancing up just as the picture is taken. True, Rebecca smoked weed, but she looked so elegant doing it in all these pictures, with the real hand-rolled joints, not Jose’s disgusting bong that she forced him to clean and keep outside on the balcony. Maybe he’d take up woodworking. There he was, a candid of Jose hard at work at the circular saw, safety goggles on, pencil tucked behind one ear, shirt tails tucked into deep blue denim (she was looking at a photo of Stan doing the same). And herself? She liked the idea of getting back to the piano, working through Chopin movements in the evenings while Jose read his beloved visual novels on the couch. They would have animals, dogs and cats. A horse if they could get a big house on a ranch. And kids, eventually. Cute little halfies running around, dressing them up in color-coordinated outfits for family photos.
But getting Jose to move into the apartment with her, after they’d been together nearly three years by then, was like herding a cat into a bathtub, even though he’d slept at her place nearly every night for the year prior. She took that now to be an early sign, a sign confirmed by similar such behavior, like freaking out about meeting her parents, or a refusal to talk about what city they should look for jobs in, or even just avoiding making vacation plans for the summer after they graduated (‘What if I get a job that makes me start right after school? What if my mom gets sick again and I need to stay with her? The Philippines?! How could we know now if we’ll be able to go to the Philippines? What if it’s in the middle of a crazy hurricane or something?”)
But a sign of what? Is this a blip, a rough passage through the breakers before they hit the extended ocean of smooth sailing, only the occasional windstorm or shifting tide to throw them just the slightest bit off course? Or is he planning to jump ship before they even get to that ocean of serenity, of buying a ranch and hosting Memorial Day barbecues and woodworking in the garage and the colors all fading and disappearing off the polaroid film? Perhaps they weren’t sailing upon what four years had convinced her was an ocean, but merely a lake, dark and deep, and rough at times, but finite, with an opposite shore that was just out of reach, land to be spotted for the first time next year, next summer, tomorrow.
The room around her had just about disappeared. The book was her sole source of attention. Within its boundaries she was finding not just a map but a parallel universe, an alternate reality. Stan had finished a new woodshed; that was her woodshed. The rose garden Rebecca was planting back when they’d first moved in to the new house had sprouted by the next spring; wasn’t she, Amanda, so proud of those flowers? Yes, she’d have to add some azaleas, blue ones, beside them next season. A friend’s baby, which was born back in ‘78 or ‘79, had turned 5 years old, and here was Uncle Stan showing him how to wear a baseball mitt. He’s started kindergarten, but they might move him up into first grade, seeing as how he can already read. Gone was the sink, gone was the mirror, the miniature table holding the other bathroom books. The dimmer switch had lowered itself. The walls had collapsed around her; out beyond them was Rebecca and Stan’s living room, the bay window looking out to the yard. The Talking Heads droned from a record player, playing ‘This Must Be The Place’. The smell of food wafted from the kitchen. The backyard was there, beyond her, cosmic colors in a picaresque blue sky, with characters eating, drinking beer, listening to AM radio, bangs, mustaches, plaid, shoulder pads, denim jackets, bell bottoms, shirts tucked in, all faded, all in pleasant fading pastels and sepia tones. What a nice life she’d built for herself.
She made it to just about the final page, which contained a series of photos taken outside in the backyard, the very same as the one before her. A group sat around a plastic table covered with a red, white and blue tablecloth. Hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob and mashed potatoes were placed along its length. Amanda recognized Stan and Rebecca, another couple she’d seen a few times, their kids, some other friends. Then at the far end of the table, a couple she hadn’t seen before. Amanda and Jose. Jose was looking straight at the camera, wearing a white button down. Amanda was in profile, listening to a conversation down the table, wearing a green sleeveless dress with a plunging neckline. She didn’t recognize the clothes. Looking down at the rest of the photos in the series, floating before her in the ether, she saw that Jose and Amanda appeared in two others. In one, Jose held a can of beer, talking to another man, gesturing with his free hand. In the other, Amanda was standing before the grill in an apron, holding a pair of tongs lovingly and smiling at the camera, no teeth, head tilted at an angle, the way she always posed for pictures. She was wearing a pair of thick black-framed glasses she had never seen before.
Amanda slammed the book shut and replaced it atop the others in front of her. She pulled up her pants, flushed, thought once about washing her hands but then, catching sight of herself in the mirror, turned and walked out of the bathroom, down the hall, to the patio door. She opened it and stepped outside.
Jose and Rebecca looked startled at her abrupt appearance. “Where were you? Did you fall in?” Jose asked, sounding confused at the sound of his own voice.
“We need to go. I mean, we have to get going. Jose. Now.”
“Is everything all right?” Rebecca asked, concerned. “You were gone quite a long time, are you feeling okay?”
“Yes. No. I mean, it’s not alright. What the fuck, what’s the deal with that photobook in there? Are we on a gameshow or something? What’s going on here?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Which photo book?” Rebecca asked. Jose looked alarmed and sober. He was frozen to his seat.
“The one in the bathroom! Memories 1975 – 1985. We’re in it! Me and him, why are we in the book?!”
“You were, in it?”
“Amanda, what are you talking about.”
“This! This book!” Amanda found herself marching back through the kitchen, sliding door left wide open behind her. She opened the door to the bathroom, the sight of which disgusted her. It was bright and white and hauntingly normal and austere. Taking the book, she marched back outside, where Rebecca and Jose had both stood up. “Look, this book. Why are we in this book?” She dropped the book onto the glass table and flipped to the last page. “Look! Jose, look! What is going on here?” Rebecca and Jose both bent over the table before her while she scanned the set of photos from the barbecue.
“Amanda, what are you talking about?” Jose asked, looking up at her, frightened. She focused on the photos. There was the one of the table. And at the end… a couple. A young man, short, tan, Hispanic, with black hair and a white button-down. And a girl in profile wearing a green dress, Asian, maybe Filipino, freckled, with glasses, black hair pulled into a top bun. They were in their early-twenties, cute, petite. But they were not Jose and Amanda.
“Is this who you mean?” Rebecca asked, pointing at the couple. “This was one of Stan’s students, Len. And her fiance, Roberto. I think this was a 4th of July barbecue we hosted.” Silence, awkward, squirming.
Amanda peered closer into the photos of not her and not Jose that did not change, did not morph before her eyes into what she had seen before. “I’m… I’m so sorry, I thought that…”
Rebecca inspected the photos further. “I admit, they do bare a striking resemblance to the two of you. I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of that before. But this photo is from the 80s, they must be in their fifties by now. I haven’t seen them in a long time.”
Amanda could feel Jose staring at her, his eyes burning into her face, but he said nothing. She was staring at the page. Roberto gesturing in the background. Len holding the tongs. Roberto staring at the camera. Len listening to a conversation down the table.
“And here I thought we were the ones smoking weed,” Jose said, but he didn’t laugh, and neither did Rebecca, and he realized how fucking high he was and wanted very badly to be sober again.
“Umm, I gotta go. We gotta go,” Amanda said promptly. “Thank you very much for the iced tea and for finding our cat.” She made a start for the gate before turning around, looking away, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry, about,…” guestering, “this.” She made a motion to Jose, who gingerly side-stepped Rebecca.
“Thanks for everything Rebecca. Very nice talking to you.”
“Oh, don’t mention it. And don’t worry; this heat, it can get to you sometimes.”
“Yeah, plus losing the cat…” Jose trailed off, cradling a miraculously sleeping Major Dickinson.
“Of course. Well I’m so glad you found him. Do stop by any time, I’m just here around the corner,” Rebecca said.
“Thank you very much, talk to you later,” Jose said, knowing he would not. He followed Amanda through the gate and they were gone.
Rebecca stood on the patio with her hands on her hips for another minute, thinking of the strange thirtyish minutes she’d just experienced, wondering if it all wasn’t actually quite normal but only seemed bizarre because she was high. She turned back to the table and looked down at the open photo book. Yes, Roberto and Len did bear quite the resemblance to this curious young couple she’d just encountered. But Roberto’s nose and chin were more pointed and angular, Len’s eyes larger, her lips fuller, her cheeks rounder.
She remembered now something that Stan had told her, it must have been about five years after the barbecue captured in the photo book. Len had called him up to ask if he could be a reference for a job she was applying for, and while they were catching up she had mentioned that she and Roberto had gotten divorced. A shame, Rebecca thought, both then and now, remembering what a lovely couple they had made.
Short stories, by HR Huber-Rodriguez 