And I Love Her

Is there anybody going to listen to my story? I ask myself sitting here alone. Not George the cat. I’ve got a feeling he is too old and deaf to care or hear. But I tell it anyway, looking out the window, watching rainbows that never seem to come. I don’t finish the story. Like always, I’ll cry the end instead. I’ve just seen a face in my mind of a girl who was buried along with her name. Nobody came.


We were both Beatles fans before we knew each other. When we were kids. And though we lived only a town apart, we may as well have been across the universe. Inexplicably to me, it took nearly four decades for our paths to cross. But wherever we were, we listened to them. I think we were fated to meet. Maybe we liked different songs or albums, but surely some were the same. I like to think there might have been a time where at the exact same moment we were both listening to Hey Jude, singing along. I like to think that she was waiting for me, but in reality, she was the kind of girl who waited for no one.

I met her at a bar called Piggies that was on Penny Lane, which sets beneath blue suburban skies. She introduced herself as Eleanor Rigby when we met, having no idea that I was a fan, as well. Perhaps, she thought it would go over my head. I simply introduced myself as Maxwell. Maxwell what, she said with a provocative smile, entertained the way a spider is entertained by whatever it is about to eat, what is already in its web. I was forking my plate of yellow matter custard.

“Just Maxwell,” I replied.

“I think I know your father,” she said.

“Mean Mr. Mustard? You know me pop?”

She smiled, wider still. “Yes. I once took him out to look at the Queen.” It looked uncomfortable for her to smile. She said she was glad I wasn’t Father McKenzie, and I shuddered about the eccentricities and loneliness of a man darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there. All the while, the bar lights bled in her eyes like aneurysms of green and gold, and her hair was like strawberry fields forever. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. 

“Why are you here alone?” I asked, perhaps too bluntly.

“Look at all the lonely people, altogether now,” she said ignoring my question. “They all got to carry that weight.”


There were only a few people down the bar from us, and a few more in the tables behind. There was a fireman with an hourglass, and in his pocket was a portrait of the Queen. There was a girl named Sexy Sadie having dinner with a different guy than last night, and a regular named Polythene Pam, who looked strung-out and who was talking to someone on the phone. She came in through the bathroom window, Eleanor whispered to me.


Pam kept saying into her phone, you know my name, to the point that it was getting annoying. Sometimes she would say, well, look up the number, and I was convinced she was talking to her dealer, but I couldn’t say for sure. Pam put her phone down for a moment to tell me that it was she who took my father out to look at the Queen. Neither of them knew my father, who wasn’t actually Mean Mr. Mustard. Nobody was really sure, but my father was from the House of Lords. 

“You waiting on someone?” Eleanor asked me.

“Yes. Michelle,” I said. “My belle.”

She nodded. “Another girl.”

The barmaid, Lovely Rita, smiled at me, but she smiled at everyone, so I didn’t feel any better about it. She kept talking about a sister or two. I ordered a drink called a honey pie, and quickly had another.

“Where’ve you been tonight?” Eleanor asked.

“It’s been a hard day’s night. And I’ve been here, there, and everywhere,” I said. I got a text from Michelle saying she wasn’t coming. She said she had patched things up with her boyfriend and didn’t want to see me anymore. I thought about the things we said today, and I replied, “hello, goodbye,” sarcastically in reference to the brevity of our relationship, but in fairness to her she had told me, we can work it out, when she was telling me all about her problems with him. You won’t see me anymore, she texted back. I replied, you like me too much for that to be true, but she didn’t respond, so I guess it was true after all. I knew I was being selfish. I, me, mine. Cry, baby, cry.


I ordered another honey pie and Eleanor had another savoy truffle. Lovely Rita said I should try a wild honey pie or an apple bonker, but I was already a little drunk, so I said I’ll wait for another time. I tried to act naturally, but Eleanor must’ve known that Michelle wasn’t coming so she asked, do you want to know a secret?

I said she didn’t have to tell me a secret, but she cried, “I want to tell you!” so excitedly that I couldn’t possibly refuse. “Everybody’s got something to hide except me and my monkey.”

I asked her what the hell that was supposed to mean, and she said she has never been happier since she beat her addiction, which she calls her “monkey,” and since, she’s been open about it. “I dig a pony,” she said was some kind of celebratory language. She never said what she was addicted to, but I had a feeling it wasn’t drugs. She said to me, “I think the key to happiness is brutal honesty, Maxwell. I wanted you to know I’m an addict. You know, if we fall in love, I’d really want you to know something like that. I’d want you to know every little thing.”

Lovely Rita might have been eavesdropping and trying to do me a favor when she asked Eleanor if she’s ever seen Maxwell’s silver hammer, but Eleanor didn’t seem interested in knowing what she meant. I should have known better then. But when you’re in love, you overlook things that might indicate potential problems with someone. Things that tell you that she will break your heart. I am always an optimist, despite my father committing suicide when I was 12. He blew his mind out in a car. He didn’t notice that the light had changed.  He thought happiness was a warm gun, I suppose. He didn’t leave me a note. He left only the start of one to my mother, which read only, “Dear, Prudence...” 

I was already in love with her, I knew. She was like a hole you fall into by feeling. And though something in my gut told me you’re going to lose that girl, I didn't listen. The two of us got drunk and we had a four of fish and a finger pie. We got the bill, but Rita paid it. We stumbled out and Eleanor crooned a song to the moon, and said she was a singer of some sort. She offered to teach me how to play guitar. She said the moon had the face of a girl she once knew named Lucy, and along with the stars, it looked like Lucy in the sky of diamonds. I asked her who Lucy was, and she said she was a baby she miscarried. I said I was sorry.

I could hear the melancholy in her voice. In the parking lot, we ran into some older man she knew. She introduced him as Doctor Robert and he looked sinister to me and I wanted to punch him in the throat for something I was sure he had done to her. I asked her what kind of doctor he was and she gave me no reply. She said he was a doctor, but now he is a taxman, and she advised me that I should declare the pennies on my eyes. She asked if I thought we should hail one of the newspaper taxis that appeared on the shore, and I said no, baby, you can drive my car. And as we drove, she told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh. She asked if I did, and I said I work eight days a week, but not tomorrow, and we drove back to my place.

It won’t be long, I said before we got there. She put Sgt. Pepper’s on the turntable and I realized it had been a while since I heard it. I go in and out of early/late Beatles phases, and lately, I had been in an early mood. I liked their covers of Twist and Shout and Please Mr. Postman. She skipped right to Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite and said she always wanted to meet a Mr. Kite and marry him because she thought her name sounded smart with Kite as a surname. But she said she had never met a Mr. Kite and asked me if I had, and I said no, I hadn’t. She wondered if there was a Mr. Kite in the world and what his first name might be. She said she thought about looking in a phone book. 

I saw her standing there and was taken by her so suddenly that I was overwhelmed. She stood there watching the album spin on the turntable in a short white dress.

“Do you know what you’re doing to me?” I asked her. 

She turned and offered a dismissive not guilty smile. I thought she was beautiful in bar light, but she was exquisite in the softer light of my bedroom lamp. I reminded myself that you’ve got to hide your love away, but I was never any damn good at it, and I had never been so in love with anyone in my life, I knew. 

“You like me too much,” she said. “You can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have it in me. All I have is misery.”

“I don’t believe that. I’ll get you,” I said confidently. “I want to be your man.”

“Words of love,” she replied, grinning sadly. “I’m down. Don’t waste them on me.”

“I want you. I got to get you into my life.”

“If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true?”

“I will,” I promised. “I love you to...”

“Lady Madonna!” she cried suddenly, excited about a statue she saw across the room. She acted like a little child in a way, and her mood seemed to shift so rapidly my head spun. Then, with her back turned to me as she held the statue, she told me in a soft, mournful tone that her name isn’t really Eleanor Rigby, but rather, it is Martha. I said it didn’t matter to me and that I like Martha even better. 


“Where did you get it?” she asked, gazing at the statue.


“It’s from back in the USSR.”

“Dig it,” she replied. Then she accidentally dropped the statue which shattered on the hardwood floor. She apologized profusely, but it didn’t matter to me. Broken glass was just broken glass no matter what it was before. It wasn’t special to me. It was a gift from my Russian uncle, Rocky Raccoon, and we weren’t close. “Oh, darling! I am so sorry!” she cried.


“Don’t worry about it. Just don’t cut your feet.” She was barefoot, but she put on an old brown shoe of mine to clean it up. And so she hobbled on one foot and swept it up in a dustpan.

She marveled at my place as though she were in a museum. She seemed to particularly admire my grandmother’s looking glass. “Baby, you’re a rich man.”

“No. I’m not at all. It’s all junk, really.”

“Nonsense. What do you do for a living?” she asked as she swept up the broken glass.

“I’m a paperback writer.”

She laughed a little again.

“And you?”

“Your mother should know,” she answered rather vaguely. She then said I wouldn’t believe her if she told me in such a way that it appeared she didn’t want to tell me at all. She then noticed my parakeet and asked its name. I told her, “His name is bulldog.”

“Unusual name,” she chuckled. “Hey, bulldog!” She gently fed him crackers through the cage. “And your bird can sing?”

“He talks mostly. Babbles, really. Says, number 9, over and over. Quite bizarre.”

“Does he know any songs?”

“Only a northern song,” I replied. She nodded. “I like him. In a blue jay way. I don’t care for cardinals, or most other birds. Though I've always wanted a blackbird.”

“Tell me why.”

She didn’t answer. We danced and I kissed her. She resisted at first and I backed off and apologized. She shrugged it off and buried her head in my chest and I told her, “I’m happy just to dance with you.”

We made our way to my bed as though we had known each other for a while. Much better than a couple who had only shared four fish and finger pies and a couple drinks. It was like we knew each other forever.

“It’s been a long, long, long time,” she whispered in my ear. But I knew that was a lie. 

“Want me to slow down?”

“No.”

“We can sleep if you’d rather.”

“No,” she returned quickly and softly. “Please, please me. You know what to do. Love me do.”


We were very happy for four months. It was like we were on a magical mystery tour. She would come and she would go. When she was here, we couldn’t be more in love. But when she was away, I sometimes wondered if I would ever see her again. When things started to come together, they fell apart. But I never lost hope that someday I would be greater than her depression. I felt that we were permanently fixed. The inner light she lit inside of me burned brightly, and brighter than it ever burned before. My friends told me she loves you, but there was always something off. Not ever in me, but something that didn’t come from her. She appeared to have a revolution inside her now and then, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. She said something to the effect when she was drunk once. She called them revolution 1 and revolution 9. I think 9 was the worse. When the music died and everything that lived in her became statues. Playing music helped, but she often went weeks without picking up her guitar. She seemed to try to force something that didn’t exist inside her and it was hard for me not to take it personally. Sometimes, I believe she loved me as much as she could love anyone. Other times I simply believed she loved me because she felt she should love someone.  

Maybe it was my lack of money. She said, “You never give me your money,” once when she was drunk. But money can’t buy me love, I knew. Not the love I want. This boy is poor, I said to the jeweler who showed me the rings. The jeweler’s name was Julia and she had a diamond ring on every finger. I spent everything I had on an engagement ring, hoping that a diamond would do what my love apparently could not. I bought us tickets to a Beatles tribute concert in Pittsburgh where I planned to propose to her between songs. The early Beatles’ songs. Maybe I would say this is from me to you and give it to her.

Then one morning I woke up and she was looking at me. I'm looking through you, she said to me with a smile. 

“Good morning,” I smiled.

“Hold me tight. I’m so tired!” She said she didn’t sleep the night before. I asked what she did and she said she laid there and thought. I didn’t ask about what, and I knew I couldn’t understand what was going on inside her. But still, I was sure that all she needed was love. My love. And that my love was greater than anything inside her to the contrary.

I got out of bed and then parted the curtain and climbed back into bed with her thinking the sunshine would make her feel better. I read that somewhere. Depression is due to a lack of vitamins absorbed from sunlight.

“Here comes the sun,” I said as I did. Golden slumbers quickly filled her beautiful brown eyes. “Tell me what you see.”

She was quiet for a minute, and didn't reply. “Will you love me when I’m 64?” she asked.

“Even more so, girl. Doing the garden, digging the weeds.”

“Who could ask for more? I love you,” she said looking at me. I believe it was the only time she ever looked me in the eyes when she said it, and I was surprised by it. I was taken aback, but replied, in kind, “I love you, too.” It felt different though than ever before. The sadness in it was unmistakable. I got out of bed and she fell back asleep. I went downstairs and made breakfast, and when I came back up to wake her, I found that she crawled up to sleep in the bath. The water was pink and it dripped eerily from the spigot.



A pretty nurse came by selling poppies from a tray, so I bought the lot and put them in a vase by her bed. I thought about yesterday as I stood there in the doorway in the fancy room on the gray Norwegian wood-pattern laminate floor. I started to leave, but she spoke up.

“I’m only sleeping,” she said weakly. “I haven't been right since I lost my little girl.”

“I know. I was going to read you a story.”

“What story?” she smiled.

“The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill.”

“I don’t really like that one. It’s too scary for me. How about The Ballad of John and Yoko?”

“I don’t know it all the way through. What about I am the Walrus?”

“Goo goo g’joob. You going leave me now?”

I laughed, “No. Ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve always loved you. Before I even knew you. I was made to love you.”

“I want to know what’s within and without you.”

“Love.”

“But what else?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You love me enough for both of us?”

“I do. You have all my loving,” I said holding her hand. 

“And all I've got to do is love you back. If I needed someone, I’d need you,” she told me as though I should be flattered. I should have been, if I knew her. She then said, why don’t we do it in the road, and we laughed.  

A few days later, we went home. She stayed with me because no family came or called to offer to stay with her, or for her to stay with them. I had the ring in my pocket. I told her not a second time, and she promised. The concert was the following week and I felt we just had to make it to then. She broke up with me twice after the hospital, but she came back. I tried to get by with a little help from my friends, but nothing seemed to make me feel any better except for when she came back. Then she broke it off once more and promised she wouldn’t be back. She said she’s leaving home in such a way I knew I might not ever see her again. But her dress came off and my heartbreak was delayed until morning.

She curled up naked into my body. Warm and wet. She tried to get out of bed, but I told her to get back. She had nowhere else to go. I told her about a day in the life, and she said, for you, Blue, and slipped down onto me again and did what she knew I liked. She liked to call me Blue sometimes when she didn’t call me Red. She rarely ever called me Maxwell. 

“What kind of man are you, Blue?” she asked.

“I’m a nowhere man, I guess.”

“What do you do for yer blues?”

“There’s a place that I go,” I said.

“Where?”

“In my head. It’s an octopus’s garden. We got to take a yellow submarine to get there. Would you like to go with me?”

“I can’t possibly,” she said curling her leg over my thigh. There was only the warmth of naked flesh between us.

“Sure, you can. All you need is love.”

“That’s all I need?”

“Yes. Let’s go. I have enough room and love for us both.”

She got up and put on her black dress. The album that had stopped playing hours ago skipped back and Sgt. Pepper again taught the band to play. It went on until Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise and then finished itself. 

“Where are you going?”

“I got to go. I’ll call you when I get home.”

“Really?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s only love,” I replied.

“It’s all too much,” she said sadly.



Nearly a week past and I hadn’t heard from her. I had terrible dreams without her. There were babies in black bonnets with black eyes crawling all over me. And then they fell apart and I tried to put them back together but couldn’t. I don’t know the meaning of it. But I had terrible dreams without her.


Then I ran into her at Piggies on Penny Lane and she was laughing and talking to Polythene Pam and Lovely Rita until she saw me. She said, she said. They stopped talking when I came in. I ordered a blue meanie and made it a double. I had one of those wild honey pies, Rita had offered me a while back. When I tried to talk to her, she said don’t bother me, but I knew she didn’t mean it by the way she said it. I knew I was a reminder to her that real love was at her door and she wasn’t answering its call. I had the ring in my pocket and I asked her to go to the concert with me. We talked about it for a few hours and she smiled and seemed happy again. She assured me that we weren’t going to get back together, but she would go so not to waste the ticket and the hotel. I went home and picked her up the next morning, optimistic still. 

Good morning, good morning, we exchanged. She gave me a reluctant kiss, honoring our agreement, I could see in the coldness of her eyes, to have one last trip, one last day the way it used to be. We drove to Pittsburgh early on a Saturday morning to visit some art museums before the show. It was a good day sunshine with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. We were flying down the highway and made good time. She smiled at me and said I want to hold your hand, and I held it out and she put hers in mine the way she used to. Traffic was helter skelter and the men were fixing a hole in the road that left my mind wondering. My head felt like a shattered glass onion, but I was happy to have one last chance. For as much as I loved her, it felt that I was trying to fill a bottomless hole, though I was always determined that love can fill any hole. 

We visited the art museums and had drinks in and out of corner bars and I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t talk back much, though it seemed like she wanted to say something. When I asked her to say something, she replied, “I don’t want to spoil the party.” I told her, you’ll be mine, and she laughed. We checked into our hotel and bought a few tickets to ride the rail, and took it further downtown to the theater. In the railcar was a man who was asking people for change. He was dirty, but seemed happy. He seemed careless and free, so maybe I envied him a little. He said, “If you’ve got trouble, you’ve got more trouble than me.” 

We took our seats in the theater and I held her hand. A little sad by it, but happy with the music that meant so much to me. To us both. And the music awoke something in me and in her, I could feel. And I again thought that we were destined to be together and we should be together, and when I looked over at her from time to time, I could see it on her face and I knew that all I had to do was to ask her to marry me. But I had to pick the right song. So I decided that I’ll follow the sun.

“How do you feel,” I asked.

“I feel fine.”

“It’s a good show.”

“Yes, it is,” she smiled. 

And I searched for the word and the nerve and between songs I got down on a knee and I asked her to marry me. Tears filled her eyes and she said yes and everything of doubt and of pain seemed to disappear the way the blue meanies disappeared from Pepperland. And for the rest of the show, she held my hand and looked down at the beautiful ring on her finger.


“Don’t let me down,” I said. And she smiled in such a way that I knew she wouldn’t. 

A homeless woman outside the theater said, don’t pass me by, don’t make me cry, don’t make me blue, but we did in our hurry to get back to the room to consummate our newly established engagement. We walked side by side to the hotel. We made love that night and everything that had been wrong was right again, and there was no doubt between us. 

When I woke up, she was looking at me with a smile on her face. She said she loved me and promised she would never change her mind about it. We made love one more time and packed our bags and drove home. She seemed happy on the drive as we talked about the wedding. She googled wedding dresses all the way home. I dropped her off at her door. 

“You don’t want to be free as a bird?” I asked her.

“I am. With you,” she said. “You will never give up on me?”

“No, Martha. I will never give up on you or us.” 

“Even when I need help?” she asked.

“I will be your help.”

“Think for yourself, Maxwell. Not for me.”

“I am. I dig a pony with you.”

She smiled. “I love you, Mr. Silver Hammer.”

“Martha Silver Hammer. Sounds better than Martha Kite, if you ask me,” I smiled. She agreed with a kiss.

That night I drove the long way home down Sun King and past Her Majesty Drive. I kept thinking about Martha and the long and winding road it took to get there. I had felt like the fool on the hill, but I knew then it was true what they say. All you need is love. It began to rain. I nearly missed my exit, until I remembered it was the one after 909. 

I got a text from her later that night, well into morning, that said, “I can’t sleep! P.S. I love you.” She said she was still picking out wedding dresses and would see me in the morning. She took a picture of her finger in the ring and sent it to me. She then called me and asked me practical questions. Where we will live and what will we do. I told her we will figure it out, and tomorrow never knows. She then said there’s a place she now goes when the blue meanies come. It’s an octopus’s garden in Pepperland and it’s through a sea of holes near where the rain gets in. 

My god, I love her. How easy it would have been to give up, I think now that we are 64. But all these years later, we have been so happy and have lived such a beautiful life. And still, she always smiles looking at her ring. And still, I always smile looking at her.


She got sick recently, which prompted me to write this. She had to go to the hospital. And I say prayers to Mother Mary for her to get well. And like always, when I find myself in times of trouble, I go home and I pull my guitar out of the closet and play all of our favorite Beatles’ songs as best I can. There is no one to hear me but for George the cat who can’t hear at all. She had taught me how to play over the years, though I wasn’t a very good student. That first night without her, I played long into morning. And every night since she’s been gone, I fall asleep while my guitar gently weeps. I love her and though I know I need to eventually let it be, I long for yesterday. But I will see her again. There’s a place for us. There will always be a place for us.


Thank you, girl.