She emerged at my twelve o'clock on a bicycle. That same doughy face with the smallish mouth and big nose and eyes pressed like raisins on top. I knew her at first glance and I turned on my heel hoping she would not see the beat of recognition in my face. I cowered under my umbrella. I hoped that she would know better than to say anything to me.
So of course it was no surprise that she rode over and stopped her bike to ask if it was really me. The doltish gesture was followed by an expectant gaze to which I had nothing to say. Nothing at all. Not a single word. The bus was coming, the bus I needed to get on was arriving, I was already late, but that wasn't just it. I had nothing at all to say to her.
She seemed to nod in some sort of understanding at the panic in my face and the lack of words. She pedaled away strongly as I boarded the bus and I watched for some time her figure gain some distance then lose some distance until suddenly she was gone again. And then I breathed.
There many ghosts here, even though it is big and full of people, I have lived here for a long time and there are many people I have cut loose, cast aside, let go of, and in some rare cases been let go. These ghosts sometimes cross my path without meddling with me, choosing to disappear into obscurity, some forgetting my face, lost in the hum of their own thoughts. When I see them I consider the things that led to our departure from each other, and usually those musings involve some small coins of regret that when tossed into a fountain had been hopeful wishes but have since become unrealized and forgotten.
She meant a lot to me at one time. She was in my life at a time when I was a giant mass of uncertainty and she helped shape part of who I am today. She had been a coworker then good friend and perhaps a best friend at some point, and when I needed her the most, she took a critique I made about her behind her back and to a mutual friend and made it mean everything.
I knew I was somewhat in the wrong to do so, a lesson that has since affected me in always saying out loud and to the person that needs to hear it everything I feel. What bothered me was not her anger about it, which was reasonable, to some degree, it was her embarrassment that her behavior had been questioned at all, and by me, someone who was her friend, to someone else who was her friend that did not know the behavior in question. And all of this high school tomfoolery arrived when things between the burnham and I were in a state of despair, because I had done the same behaviors and it cost me my relationship. And so, in the span of a couple short weeks, I lost my boyfriend and my best friend.
They both returned some time later, him with more success than she. We never really saw each other again after that summer night, when she tried to convince me that talking about her with our friend was a very bad thing and I just wouldn't let her be right. Part of me was ready to throw away that relationship, it had become tiring, I could tell she was no longer interested in my many twists and turns of testing out who I was or might be, she didn't seem to care anymore, we had grown apart and it was a long time coming. So when she crawled back into my life in the most discreet way possible (through blog comments and emails) I made no motion to ban her, I responded to her as best I could with the advantage of time to ponder my reply.
Even then she was tiring. Assuming things that were not true, pinpointing the most inane details, pressing books of great interest to her that I found droll and uninteresting, cheerleading that reeked of tail-between-the-legs earnestness all without any attempt at clearing up the rift or an apology. So it remained, for me at least, unresolved. Oh sure, time has lessened the sting of it, and since I was feeling less than enthused by her friendship I didn't miss her very much at at all, but I still felt bad that someone out there somewhere in the world had tried to mar my good name while I was already down no less. I have no doubt that she trotted out the scenario to any of our mutual friends who would listen to her lisping tiresome storytelling. And that to me, that was the overriding hypocrisy that cancelled out my own rock crashed into the still pond of our friendship.
Over the years I hear of her in little snippets, like news items, and I find them mostly to be good things for her, that she too has been trying to figure out her place in the world and who she is as a person. Some of the news I found corresponded to that loathsome quality of hers in which religion was her anchor and bringer of great guilt. I felt badly that she erased parts of herself to suit her beliefs, but to each their own.
Sometimes our rift causes one of our remaining mutual friends a bit of concern over who not to invite (I suspect she alternates our invitations in the interest of fairness) and I feel bad that I'm partly responsible for a delicate situation. I don't like having these sort of emotional land mines to navigate, preferring things to be cleaned up at the parting.
So all of that was running through my mind when her leg halted her bicycle next to me and she obtusely asked if it was me. And then, even though I have found myself, known myself, I couldn't reveal myself to her and I still couldn't lie and pretend seeing her was anything but alarming and unwelcome. Even now, a week later, I still have no idea what I could have said to her. Because none of it really matters until you start asking questions. And I could not say yes to her.
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