Kathy, I’m Lost

Blame it on Simon & Garfunkel. Bookends was playing in the coffee shop where he stopped most mornings on his way to work, or maybe just Greatest Hits. In either case, those lyrics about laughing on the bus followed by soaring harmonies celebrating freedom and discovery put him in a mood that should have been simply nostalgic but instead turned regretful and nagging. He understood why. The morning had already been difficult, the three-year-old up before 5 a.m. and fussy by 6:30, the kindergartener stuffy with the first hint of a cold. His wife, too, was cranky even though it was his day to drop the kids at the downtown Montessori. Before leaving he made a pot of coffee only she would drink, since he preferred his topped with steamed milk foam.

As always, the song brought back a rush of memories, not all of them pleasant: lots of sex, yes, but also fights and tears, camping trips that turned out to be too cold or too wet, his mother butting in with unwanted advice, his brief, miserable stint in the army before the breakdown that led to his discharge. He’d been so much less happy then than he was now, though happiness, it turned out, included plenty of daily irritations and frustrations, as well as an abundance of boredom.

He didn’t want those days back, not really, only to indulge the romantic feelings they stirred, which is why he wrote the text message: Heard S&G this morning and thought of you. So many roads. Don’t write back. Just hope you’re in a good place.

Ten years, and he still had the number in his phone. He didn’t want that to mean anything, but this morning it seemed like a sign—that he’d been hanging onto things he should have let go a long time past. He told himself he’d delete the number now, he could finally be free of it, a burden lifted. And maybe he would have, except within a few seconds of hitting send, a response vibrated his phone.

That’s bullshit man. Can’t step back in my life after all this time and say don’t write back. When do you want to meet.

He knew what a mistake he’d made, and he tried to back out of it. He told her he was sorry to bother her, said he just wanted a quick link to the past he felt like he was losing as he got older. It must be because he’d turned thirty-five a week ago, he wrote, and he couldn’t believe how fast time was moving. He really just wanted to wish her well.

She replied: When?

He named the only time he could come up with, which would mean he’d be late coming home from work and would have to invent a client meeting he’d been called into at the last minute. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lied to his wife, and certainly not the biggest lie—not compared to telling her she was the first woman he’d really loved or the only one he’d gotten pregnant—but this felt more deceitful than the others, which were about covering up his past rather than hiding his present. She’d be annoyed to have the kids on her own while trying to make dinner, and she’d make sure he felt her annoyance all evening. But what else could he do? Sneak out in the middle of the night?

Okay, she replied. You know where.

He did. He got to the Greyhound station five minutes before the time they agreed on, even though he knew she’d be at least ten minutes late. She was, and he spent the time on the hard wooden seat staring at the schedule he’d stared at when he was nineteen and trying to decide which direction might provide escape, which city he’d never visited—half he’d never heard of—might shelter him. She’d been beside him then, ready to take whichever bus he determined was the right one, both of them hugging backpacks stuffed with a few changes of clothes, toothbrushes, the birth control that would soon fail them. This was after their first terrible break-up, during which he tried to punish them both by enlisting. And then, because it was too late to back out even though they’d reconciled, the only option was to run. Except he couldn’t make himself choose between Edmonton and Calgary, and instead they went back to his mom’s house, where he packed for Fort Benning. A month and a half later, she called and told him she needed an abortion.

Now he’d been to many of the places on the schedule, had spent some time in the Canadian Rockies with his wife before the first of his kids was born. That time, too, was full of romance and mystery, and if he’d heard a different song—Guy Clark’s “Instant Coffee Blues,” maybe—he’d have experienced a longing similar to the one that drove him here, only it would have nudged him in the direction of the woman with whom he already shared a home and a life. He hummed it to himself now, as protection, perhaps, but it was too late for that, because the door of the station opened, and she pushed through in that harried way she always had, never meaning to be late but never doing anything to prevent it. Except now she was dressed as he was in formal work attire that suggested she, too, spent her days in a downtown office building: blouse and slacks, a black raincoat, hair cut shorter than it had been when she was twenty-five and he said goodbye for what was supposed to be the last time. She was getting on a plane then, not a bus, flying to the other side of the country and then over an ocean.

But now she was back, sitting on the wooden seat beside him without first smoothing down her jacket, so it bunched beneath her. Side by side again, staring at the grimy plaster wall. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. It was clear she would wait as long as it took for him to start.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to drag you out of your life. It was stupid to text you.”

“It was,” she agreed. Her voice, deeper than he remembered, but with the whispery quality that made the hair stand up on his arm.

“Sometimes,” he started, but didn’t know how to go on, or was afraid to.

“Sometimes?”

He snuck a glance at her profile, and yes she looked older, a woman now, no longer the girl he’d known. Her jawline more distinct, the little nose without much slope missing its stud, skin finally free of the blemishes she could never keep herself from picking.

“It’s easier sometimes to look back. Instead of facing what’s here. Or what’s coming.”

“What’s the point, if you can’t change any of it?”

“I wouldn’t want to. Not most of it, anyway.”

“I’m not saying life is so much better now. But it is what it is.”

“Don’t you ever wonder what it would’ve been like?” he asked. “If we got on that bus?”

“I can imagine it well enough. You arrested for desertion. Me pregnant in a city where I don’t know anyone.”

“But you’re here now. You wanted to see me.”

“To confirm what I already knew.”

“That I’m the best-looking guy you ever dated?”

He hoped for a laugh, or at least a smile, but she just stretched her legs, shapeless in the slacks, to their full length and leaned back as much as the stiff chair would allow. “And you? What do you want from me?”

He could think of things he wanted her to do—with her hands, with her mouth, with her legs wrapped around his waist—but nothing he could bring himself to say aloud. All he really needed was to feel for a moment that love he knew he’d never have again: the kind that was fierce and terrifying and had no kids in the way, nothing practical, that hurt so badly when you lost it you’d do something as stupid and reckless as join the army though all through your teenage years you professed to being a pacifist, wearing your hair down to your shoulders, going camping every weekend with doses of acid or a baggie of mushrooms. To hop on a bus and ride anywhere and regret it almost instantly.

“It’s not fair to ask,” he said.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I promise I’ll never text you again.”

“Go on. Ask.”

“Remember what you told me? When I was leaving for basic? And I was sure I’d wrecked my whole life?”

“Vaguely. Not the exact words.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Her body straightened, elbows easing forward onto knees. An alertness, he thought. A sense of presence he hadn’t felt from anyone—including himself—for so long. “Well enough, I guess.”

“Will you tell me again?”