Fifty years later

“Turn the camera on,” he laughs.

I don’t want to turn on the camera. I like the anonymity of telephone communication. But I fumble around with the icons in front of me. I’d rather he not see me like this. I can’t even remember if I combed my hair.

 My image pops up in a (thankfully) small corner of the screen. He is larger, tanned, his background— not virtual— is a magnificent portico. I know he is at his hacienda in Mexico where he lives with his famous wife, a designer, in a world far away from mine. 

I know because I have stalked them online. I know the story, at least the way it is told in Architectural Digest, of how they discovered their Mayan structure nearly destroyed by time and neglect – how she breathed life into it with her talent and resources. He was always at her side.  

 At the moment, I am huddled against the cold in my camper at the bottom of my property in western Virginia. Some wealthy people from Atlanta are vacationing in my house for Christmas so I can afford its mortgage. Airbnb and VRBO keep the money flowing.

“Your birthday’s in a few days, right?” he asks. He is still himself. Long, lean. Now white-haired and more frail, but still disarmingly handsome. My mother loved him. He was everything she had dreamed of. Athletic. Smart. Funny. Charming.

“You love my daughter?” she drunkenly slurred one night, “then marry her”.

He was not the kind of guy I was bringing home in those days, the kind she was afraid I might end up with. This one was a catch. You don’t let this kind get away.  

“Two days,” I answer, slightly annoyed that he couldn’t remember the exact date of my birthday – the one he celebrated at least three years in a row. No, four. He proposed on my twentieth birthday. The snow was so deep you couldn’t make out the cars in the parking lot six floors down from the balcony window of my mother’s condominium in Denver. They looked like bodies in a morgue, lined up and covered in white.  “The twenty-fourth,” I say.  

“How are you, Kate?” he asks, leaning forward, taking a cigarette from off-screen, lighting it, leaning back. I like that name, “Kate”. No one calls me “Kate” anymore. It sounds like an old movie with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

“I’m good,” I say. And I am good. I feel peaceful and okay with where I am in life. But I am also beginning to feel a little anxious, like I’m entering dangerous territory. He’s got some of my memories stored away.

“Where are you exactly?” I ask, deflecting. “How did you find your place?” 

He stands, and his loose-fitting khaki pants appear on my screen for an instant before he picks up the cellphone and begins to pan so I can see the expanse, the turquoise pool, the exquisite lawns, just like the ones in the magazine. I am relieved to see nothing was embellished for the publication. It’s as magical and perfect as they described. 

He was always meant to live in such a place, I think. Effortless life flows around him. He has people to cook and prepare and trim and manage. He needs only to laugh and move his arms in the air, like now, as he recounts the stories surrounding his home: the people, the culture, the history. So, I am surprised at his next words, 

“Kate, I’m sorry.”  

I peer into the camera, trying to read his face going in and out of focus. Both of us have terrible internet connections. “Sorry? For what?” 

“For hurting you like I did.” And there it is. All the wounds I tried to keep closed come apart.  

“I—” I begin to say, You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. Everything turned out okay, but I stop.  It does hurt. But why?

 He’s talking about a time in my life – fifty years ago.

He said those words “I don’t love you anymore.” in the sad, stuffy, pink-walled, furnished apartment on the upper floor of that house in Iowa, with ceilings so low he couldn’t stand up straight in some places. I was at my desk, studying for one of my college classes. He was in the overstuffed chair reading a book, with the gooseneck lamp arching near his shoulder. And my heart. Oh, my heart. 

“You had an episode.” he says, trying to remember. 

“Yes,” I say.  

“What…what was that about?” 

“I couldn’t breathe.” 

“Oh, yes. A panic attack, right?” 

I nodded. “They didn’t have a word for it back then. I just couldn’t breathe.” 

“And you stayed in a…” 

“Yes, they took me to a clinic for a few days. I don’t remember exactly.” 

“But they said—” 

“They said I hated my mother.”  

“Is that why—” 

“No,” I say.

“Then why?”

“You left me.” 

“I—where did I go?” He doesn’t remember this part. 

“You were teaching,” I remind him.

“Oh!” he says, a memory lighting up in his eyes. “The camp!” 

“Yes, you went on a camping trip with your students, and I had a panic attack.”

“Oh, Kate,” he says, his voice shredding. I can see that he is tearing up behind his fashion glasses.  

I want to say, “It’s okay,” but I don’t. I just let the forgiveness rise up in me and overflow. 

We sit like that. My dog breathes heavily at my feet. The gas heater kicks on. 

My husband is about to come in from working in the horse field. He’s an honest man with strong arms. I told him I was going to “chat” with my ex, and he didn’t like it. “Why?” he asked.

I know what he meant:  Why dig up the past and hurt all over again?  You can’t change it.

Maybe because it’s my birthday in two days.

Maybe because I just need to breathe again.