June Twenty First

 

The old man sits on the park bench scattering breadcrumbs for the colorful pigeons that are fearless and well-fed. He has never seen a blue one before now. In Ohio, they call them doves. They are beautiful there, but here they are a kind of nuisance, pesky squab. The blue one seems rather submissive to the others but the old man is sure to throw some crumbs its way when the others are distracted by what he threw in the other direction. So is his way. It is sweltering hot and the sun beats down upon him and the bench he chose offers very little shade. He would choose no other, for the bench and the park have meaning of immeasurable sentimental worth. He never learned the name of the park, but it never knew his name either. And that is okay with him. He is just fine knowing it as “the park in Charlestown” and with it knowing him as “the old man.” He’s simply the old man who sits on the bench once a year reminiscing, throwing breadcrumbs to pigeons. Every year for twenty-five years he has come to sit on this same bench. Every June twenty first at exactly 1:23 in the afternoon, he is here. He has never missed a year, nor has he ever been late. No job, engagement, or illness has kept him from away, though many things have tried. He buys his plane ticket, packs the same bag, flies 750 miles, checks in at the same YMCA hotel, room 421, and makes the same walk here. Two blocks over and two up.

            Some years it rained but he was still on that bench sitting without an umbrella. Somehow, an umbrella would feel like cheating to him. Twenty-three years ago, the lightning caused a concerned police officer to ask him to leave. He was nearly arrested for civil disobedience but he didn’t move. The officer gave up, not sure what he would charge the man with, and so there he sat. The lightning eventually stopped and the rain fell softer until it fell so lightly that he barely noticed it at all. That was the year he thought he saw her drive by. A similar lightning storm struck only four years ago and he looked much more pitiful as an old man sitting their getting soaked. The first twelve years he stopped at the place that sold smoothies and bought a “pineapple explosion,” but that business didn’t last as long as he did. The parking garage did, however, although he has outlasted seven attendants. It was the parking garage with the air conditioning on Third, where she parked twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years passed in the blink of an eye.

            Sometimes when he stares long enough he drifts into a trance and he can see her across the street. Sunlight haloes her smooth body, glistens off her amber hair and shines upon her cheeks. The glitter of her chestnut-colored eyes he remembers first; her black lashes; the smell of her buttery-soft neck as his face found it; the sweet taste of the sweat on her ample skin; the feeling of her perfect hips in his hands. The sight of her, however illusionary, makes his tired eyes water and his heart ache. But it is a good ache and tears are not always of sorrow. He knew before then, that first meeting, that she was the one, his one real love who he had hoped he would find for so long.

This year’s trance is magnificent. He sits in the grass where they sat after the bench and as he leans back on his arms he can feel her rest between his legs leaning back into him. But it is only a breeze. Still he pretends for having her in anyway is better than not having her at all. The problem with illusions is they disappear when interrupted like pigeons scatter when threatened.

            “Hello,” the sweet soft voice of interruption speaks just as he feels her hair in his face. He was just about to kiss her neck. The old man smiles, lets her go again, and reluctantly opens his eyes. A beautiful girl stands in front of him smiling nervously. “I hope you don’t mind me bothering you.”

            “No,” the old man replies pleasantly. He is always kind to strangers. “I was only daydreaming,” he says wistfully.

            “I go to college here in Boston and—” she pauses nervously, “I have to ask a random stranger in a public park what it is they think about—for a paper.”

            The old man smiles and the nervous girl isn’t nervous anymore. Any chance to talk about her, he would take for in talking of her he could relive his life with her, however brief. He could copy it and repeat it in stories as he had for so many years, splicing it on a reel and watching it roll through the projection of his mind. 

“Lost love,” he begins. She smiles. The man invites her to walk with him to the bench where he tells her all about the girl he met here all those years ago. The girl smiles and asks him questions, prodding him to continue a story that must last well over hour. “I am here on this exact date and time every year,” he says proudly.

“Every year?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Where do you live?”

“Ohio.”

“Wow.”

“The memory of her is wow. I keep it alive by coming.”

“Why did it end?” she asks fearfully. His mood shifts briefly but he recuperates his strength and pleasantness. The fondness of her memory far outweighs the sting of her loss.

“She was my real love, but I was not hers. And I wanted her to be happy so I waited until she found someone else and I drifted away like one of those sailboats out there,” he points to the harbor where boats drift out of view, their sails gleaming in the bright sun until they are only a fleck of light.

“What became of her?”

“I don’t know. I like to think she found true love and happiness and perhaps I helped her get there.”

“I’m sorry,” the girl covers her mouth and tears begin to pool in her bright eyes.

“Don’t be sorry!” he insists. “I was lucky to have known her. Most people never get that chance. I held on as long as I could and then some. I hoped she would call back but she never did. I am the fortunate one.”

 The girl feels somewhat better and holds the old man’s hand in hers. He has the gift of making people feel better, even those who have hurt him.

“She was much younger than me, you know, and I was her old man twenty-five years ago. But the heart knows no age, and when love is pure it is a gift. I wonder if she ever thinks of me...”

“I am certain she does. I’m a woman, after all, and I would think of you. I mean who does this? Comes all this way...for a memory?”

“You are kind,” he smiles. The giggles of children playing in the nearby fountain makes them smile. The sun is blistering, but not as hot as it was the day he met her, he tells the girl more than once. It was 102 that day. The old man smiles longingly wondering what their children would have looked like. It is a reoccurring thought. They were close to being but for the trip to the drugstore and a forty two dollar pill he regrets buying. A toddler in a bathing suit waddles by like a little plump duck. Her belly sticks out and her arms swing madly as her mother catches up to her. “Am I giving you anything good for your paper?”

“More than I could ever have hoped for.”

He smiles and exhales in satisfaction. The feeling of helping people has always satisfied him. And this time it involved doing what he loved to do most. The girl helped him make the twenty-fifth trip to this park all the more memorable. He always wondered if he helped the one person he wanted to the most and was never satisfied with the answer.

“Did you ever think she would come back?” the girl begins to cry again. She apologizes and instinctively the old man holds her hand again.

“Honestly, I’ve been hoping that for twenty-five years,” he smiles brightly. “I used to watch every passing car so closely. Look at the faces of women walking by but she has never come back.”

“Did you ever marry after her?”

“No. I didn’t have the heart. I write novels so I wrote my life away and traveled.”

“Have you ever been in love since?’

“With trees, food, cars, places, a motorcycle and few good dogs, but never with another woman. I have been almost everywhere on Earth and haven’t found her equal.”

“Did you hate her?”

“No. She followed her heart and was honest to me. I love her. There is no room for anything but.”

“I love that you speak of her in present tense after all these years.”

“She has never gone,” he admits.

The girl begins to cry uncontrollably and the old man doesn’t know how to comfort her. There seems to be no words he can say to make her stop. She falls into him and he holds her on that park bench the way he held his Chipmunk twenty-five years prior, the day he caught a plane back to Ohio. Finally, the girl stops enough to thank him for his time and apologizes for her emotions. She gets up to leave, but as she walks away she suddenly stops and turns around. Seeing him sit there smiling makes her cry again. Her right hand is clenched and she walks to the old man and holds it out for him. He looks at it inquisitively as she holds her fist there hoping to find the right words to explain its content to him.

“I have something I’d like to give you, sir, if I may?” she says.

He nods smiling at her. “Of course.”

She opens her fist, palm up to him, and there in her beautiful little hand sits the silver St. Patrick coin that he gave to his love twenty-five years ago—the blessing side up. She says it word for word. “...and until we meet again, may God hold you on the palm of his hand.”

The sight of it compels his tears but he is composed and doesn’t stop staring at it, remembering giving it to her so long ago. The girl cries and doesn’t say how she got it. She doesn’t have to. He knows.

“You are—” he chokes.

“Her daughter, Jana. She is my mother.”

“Jana?”

“Yes. Please take it. She wanted you to have it.”

“Wanted?”

The girl has to slow herself to stay composed. “My mother passed away around Christmas. She succumbed to breast cancer. Before she died we had many talks about love and—well, you. She said you were her true love, but there was a time when she didn’t believe in that sort of thing and she didn’t know it until you were gone. She said she missed you, stupid. Refresh, refresh, refresh.”

The old man laughs at the “stupid” part. It was her name for him. Then he cries openly, the way he did when they watched The Notebook, or when said she was with another man, these tears heavy in sorrow. There can be no mistaken them. “I asked about love once long before she was sick and out of respect to my father, who deserves none, she said only that if I ever find it to never let it go. Grab it by the neck and hold on. She showed me the coin and told me about those with big hearts, the dreamers, and the writers. I could tell she missed someone. It wasn’t until she was sick that she talked about you and about the day you met, here in this park. She said you would be here because you loved her that much. She wanted to come the years after you two split but she couldn’t. She knew she hurt you and didn’t know how to face you after she became pregnant with me. She planned to come this year if she got better, it was her vow to herself, but she didn’t. She gave me the coin to give to you when we knew she wouldn’t be coming herself.” The girl cannot hold back her tears any longer and holds out the coin finally. “Here. Please?”

The old man takes it and holds it in his hand for a long moment. He takes a few deep breaths and sits contentedly for a while. Then he looks amiably towards the girl. “It was a pleasure to meet you. You are beautiful like your mother,” he says kindly. “Thank you for coming to see me.” He bows graciously and pigeons gather at his feet one last time before he can get up. “Your mother was afraid of them,” he grins. He has a few crumbs left in a bread bag and he scatters them evenly amongst the birds. The girl watches him walk away slowly not sure of what to say. She wonders if she should say something more, invite him to dinner or coffee to share memories of her mother, but she realizes she has said enough. And he has said enough. Her mother told her about him so she could understand what love is. And now standing among cooing pigeons in the park watching a brokenhearted old man walk away one last time she understands. She looks down before she leaves and sees that he left the coin on the bench. Then she looks into the harbor and watches another sailboat become a fleck of light that disappears into the horizon.