Photographs of the Soul

It's a thing you wish you could remember, maybe after 40 years or more of never giving it a thought.

It was probably 1967, the year after I moved here with my folks. She lived behind me and off to the side, around the corner if you took the street, but why bother when you could just walk between the garages and into her back yard?

Off to the left of the couch, high up on the wall in her living room there was a picture of her, one of those portrait-style things that looked like an oil painting. I didn't care for it. She was only a few years old when it was taken, and it wasn't very flattering. Disturbingly curly hair. Eyes too big, even for a toddling girl. I suspect she wouldn't have cared for the idea of publishing it on a social website.

What I wish I could remember was the first time I saw her. It's completely lost to me, and my guess as to when I met her is based simply on the fact that I moved here with my parents in September of 1966. We lived in my aunt's house on Woodland Terrace Drive on the way to Deep Creek for a few months while Mom and Dad found a little bungalow on Tanner Place in Cradock – an event my sister found utterly maddening. She had married a guy 6 states away and settled into a house 594.65 miles from home in Massachusetts to get away from dear old Dad. Next thing my sister knows, he's living around the corner. 
Me, I had no clue, but one thing is sure: were it not for that event, I never would have met her..

I rounded the corner of Tyrone Place winding out first gear when I saw her walking toward home. I pulled up next to her and was treated to a look of cold fury that convinced me I was a stone jerk. The only thing more disconcerting than the look in those eyes was what the rain had done to that naturally curly hair.

I couldn't blame the girl. She hated her hair. She'd spend a lot of time on it, and it paid off, for she was lovely when she rolled out in the morning for school.
But humidity and rain were demons with microscopic egg-beaters for hands that got hold of that magnificent red hair and turned it into trillions of corkscrews small enough to fit through the eye of a needle . . .

I remember the word “frizzies” sounding a lot like a cuss word when it passed her lips.

So naturally, on that school day when it was drizzling outside, she expected me to give her a ride home like I often did. For some reason, I was nowhere to be found as she stood in the usual spot where I'd pick her up. Giving in, she started walking, while the rain had its way . . .

That girl - she really was trying on purpose to make me feel bad.

She succeeded, and the moment is one of the most precious memories I have of her.

In case you're wondering, I gave her a ride for the remaining 70 yards or so to her house. Didn't help much, but I suppose she forgave me at some point; she usually did. I saw that same forgiveness in her eyes when I saw her years later at Tower Mall.

I don't know who introduced us, but it was probably my sister Patty. She and her little sister would often visit Patty's house, as did I. I was a little older than she was, and of course she was something of a pest. She hadn't changed a lot from that picture I was telling you about, and I was too busy wishing I was Jimi Hendrix with John Kay's voice to bother with her except when I needed to show off.

After awhile, though, she started to look different. I started to spend more time at Patty's. She told me years later that she used to go over there and wait for me to show up. “I wish Jeff would come over” was how she described her thoughts. I always found it gratifying that she thought I was funny. She was probably just being nice.

I can't remember when I met her. And I can't remember when I fell in love with her. I just know that both happened.

I still owned the GTO that she was looking for the day it rained when we rolled into the parking lot of the Foosball parlor that sat around the corner from the pharmacy in the Triangle Shopping Center. You older-timer Cradock people like me remember the place – it looked across the parking lot toward the Dixie, a regular haunt for me and Gilbert McDonald, mostly because his Mom worked there and the coffee was free. But I wasn't there to play Foosball; I hated the game because I was lousy at it.

Besides, intelligent guys like me played pool, right? Wasn't much good at that, either . . .

Nope, I went there because it was where I expected I'd find the guy that had tried something with her that I found offensive. Just like in the movies, he was right there in the parking lot - all we needed was a couple of Colts to perfect the scene. Freddy Madiera told him to take his jacket off after I made my intentions known by shoving him. I considered trying to break his nose while his arms were still in his sleeves, but thought better of it. Seemed a cheap shot. Calculating the distance I had to cover and the direction I was going to take to get at his throat had me so preoccupied I never noticed the guy that owned the Dixie – and the Foosball parlor – ambling up beside me to announce that the fight was over. He being roughly 6 inches taller and 100 pounds larger, I figured, well, the fight was over. She and her little sister and I got back in the Goat and drove back to my house. Something makes me look in the mirror to see her little sister giving the guy a parting look that would have earned her an Academy Award if Sam Goldwyn had been around.

Gilbert showed up about 15 minutes later. Walks in the door and says one word: “Who?” She cracks up, because that's just about exactly what she had predicted would happen. He'd heard I'd been in a fight, but didn't know who my opponent was . . .

It's all forgiven now. I see the guy every ten years or so. I'd never think to mention it and I don't even know if he remembers it.

I do, but only because of her.

We all went to the Outer Banks once, long before this. It was probably a lot cheaper then, and I remember her uncle, my brother-in-law, fishing on the shoreline while a storm approached. My sister was fussing at him for acting like a lightning rod, and me, I headed for the cottage after hearing how that worked. He didn't catch anything or get hit by a bolt, so I didn't miss much.

That night we're all in our beds, bunks, couches, or sleeping bags and someone starts the “Good Night” routine. I was still too cool and aloof to have much to do with her, but I did join in. She and little sister thought I was hilarious. Some folks are easy to please, I guess.

On the way back, little sister is wondering aloud about the Great Bridge. We're somewhere along Battlefield Boulevard or George Washington Highway when she starts asking if we've already crossed it. The adults laugh, but I was annoyed to the point of distraction with the whole thing. I think it was because the world was being so slow in recognizing my rightful role as Emperor, all these people included . . .

In the last years I was around her, I never could understand why she felt the way she did – or rather, why she didn't feel the way I wanted her to. She was always a friend, but try as I might, I never won her heart. Likely I tried too hard. It's easy to smother people that way. She had a way, unintentionally I'm sure, of often having me feeling like a slow step off the top of the nearest high-rise was a preferable option to her being so close and so far.

Like it was yesterday, I still remember when I found out that she had given herself to someone else . . .

Before the love came, we went to Mapp together for 68/69, although she was two years behind me. I have but one memory of her for that period. My Mom or my sister had told me to walk home together with her - keep an eye on her, sort of like a personal security dog. I did - about 10 yards in front of her. I looked back once or twice to make sure she hadn't fallen down a storm drain or been abducted by the Russians. At this point in our “friendship” it was still necessary for me to treat her like dirt every so often so the wrong message didn't get sent. On this day, I was doing something to her that she never, through 6 years of almost daily contact, did to me – I was being deliberately mean.

Little sister was standing in front of the kitchen sink one day when I went over. At the time, I had to admit I'd never seen anything quite like it. Big sister had come running to my room out in the garage in a panic that could have been measured on the Richter scale, telling me they needed me right away. That's what had me standing next to little sister in the kitchen observing the result of a little too much pressure being exerted on the bottom of a glass that's being washed – a glass glass. Not much blood, just one rivulet running parallel to her thumb and a scratch or two, mostly because terror had locked her in place. I hear her mewling softly as I observe her hand extended all the way through the bottom of the shattered drinking glass, ragged edges like a broken beer bottle in a bar fight millimeters away from her wrist. Big sister doesn't ask why when I tell her to go back to the garage and get the wrench I had left sitting somewhere on a bench or something, she just hightails it there and back in what seems like seconds with a 9/16ths combination. Good girl; just the one I wanted. By this time I've told little sister she's going to be okay, and have put a clean dishrag under the faucet to soften it up. I ask big sister to gently hold the glass and trust little sister to stay as still as she can. Starting from the top of the glass, I work the rag between her wrist and the glass, pushing first, then gently pulling it along as soon as I can get my fingers on it without impaling myself on what look like mountain spires of raw teeth. With her wrist covered, I can make the move I had planned. I knew her terror would never allow her to move her hand to pull it out of the glass – she'd already been standing there for 7 or 8 minutes in virtual shell shock, so the answer was pretty obvious. I take the wrench and concentrate on the outer surface of the glass as I swing. It works perfectly, me pulling the hit before it goes far enough to get to little sister's arm and maybe drive the glass into it. The glass shatters and falls harmlessly in the water.

I wonder if little sister remembers this.  In sorrow, I'll never know now.  She passed away a couple of years ago.  Damn you, time, thief, scoundrel.  I'll see you pay one day.

The one I now love is standing in front of the main door of the high school. The girl in the picture is long gone, replaced by one who rips me apart by smiling. Her upper lip has a sensual curve that makes the smile devastating. Slender, with a sultry voice and eyes that are innocent but capable of dislocating your head with the greatest of ease, she has grown into a graceful and beguiling girl that would have the room wagging its collective tail simply by walking in and putting her books down.

Jimmy Kendrick is there with us, admiring the view. The front of the school faces roughly east, so the morning sun is behind her, bright enough in the sky to make it through the fabric of her skirt, and Jimmy is complaining because she's standing with her legs close together, making it impossible to see the maddening inner curve of her thighs. She nyah-nyahs him with that smile and doesn't move. She wins, Jimmy loses. None of us, including Jimmy, minds. She isn't arrogant, but she knows she's a prize, and she never underestimates the power she has. She isn't actually a knock-out, but there is something about the totality of her presence that made her far more desirable than some who might have placed higher in a beauty contest.

I'm married. Something has brought me to Waldenbooks in Tower Mall. I leave the store, and I hear her. It's as if her voice is a lasso that grabs my head and jerks it in her direction while the rest of me keeps following its original trajectory. She hasn't changed, although time has had roughly 8 years to do so since I had last seen her. Then, as now, I don't know when or where that was, or why we lost contact, although I suspect I had given up and was weary of the pain. I know she is married. I know she lives in the house my sister lived in when my presence was wished for. I think she has children.

“Hi, Jeff.”, with the same smile, the same voice, the same eyes. She's still moving. So am I..

“Hi.”

It takes only a moment for our eyes to communicate all the history, all the recognition of our influences on each other, all the regret that we won't say anything more because neither one of us knows what to do, and her forgiveness for it being that way. We never slow down, and the moment is gone in a mutually agreed upon awkwardness that allows both of us to escape without the burden of figuring out what to say next.  It is a choice that I still regret after 32 years.

I am married again, and standing in line at the old Food Lion store in the Triangle Shopping Center. Another 20 years or more have gone by, and I have lived what seems like three lifetimes since that day in front of Waldenbooks, years that have all passed with no contact with her. As one usually does, I spend part of my time looking at nothing and the other part looking around. I exchange a brief glance with a woman standing in another line. No response, just two folks who don't know each other sharing an inconsequential encounter. In a few minutes, I have paid for my items and walk out to the van. Just before I step in, I notice a car pulling up and slowing. It is obvious the person driving is stopping to talk to me. It is the woman that I exchanged glances with in the store. I have no idea who she is, and I guess that she is going ask me for directions.

She asks if I remember her. I try to be polite as I admit my ignorance.

“I'm Cindy.”

Cindy had hair that wasn't quite as curly as her sister's. Blonde, cascading in gentle curls, it was the kind of thing Breck would have paid real money to get their hands on. She was a pretty girl, bold, but she had moments when she needed others, like when she had a savage and angry drinking glass wrapped around her wrist like some hideous bracelet from a cheap horror movie and the guy that was in love with her sister saved her with a wet rag and the open-end of a Craftsmen wrench. After a minute or so, and without malice, she was required to use a wrench on me.

“I don't know if you knew; Natalie died a few years ago.”

____________________

I have a friend, one that I treasure, the daughter of friends from my time living in the Northern Neck. She is an adopted niece, and she is also the one that introduced me first to Instant Messaging, and later to Facebook. So much of what I can now experience, I owe to that beloved niece.

As irritating as it can be, I have to say that Facebook has been an enormous blessing to me, putting me back in touch with many people that otherwise would have remained lost.

Recently, I have reconnected with a few people from the days when the sunlight would make it through the fabric of her dress and her legs weren't quite so close together, and the days when the clouds would bring forth the demons who would try and fail to get through the glass of my GTO. As I have written this, I have relived some of the moments we spent together, not thought of in generations, and I realize that she, like many others, would have made me a much poorer man had she not shown up. For all the anguish, there were equal moments of delight as she allowed me her attention, her laughter, her trust, and in the way she was willing, her love. I miss her horribly, tearfully. I've wept over the impossibility of apologizing to her for the unsavory influence I was to her on occasion, and regretting not taking the chance of stopping her in the mall so that I might have just a little more of her to carry with me for the rest of my years.

In a way, I suppose I could say that I've seen her again. I found two pictures of her in the '73 Admiral. As strong as my memories are, I had lost much of the sense of just how enchanted I was by her. She somehow managed to be understated in the way she dressed but still be powerfully alluring. In one picture, she is standing next to a fellow who towers over her, but yet to see him, it is as if I have to look at another picture. Of the other young lady in the picture, I know she is attractive, but in spite of seeing the photo just a matter of hours ago, I have no memory of what she looks like. Natalie is still quite capable of overwhelming me . . .

____________________

One of the friends that has come to light here in the group lived on Farragut Street. Like my sister and her loved-his-toys husband, his Mom and Dad owned one of those Magnavox console stereos that looked like they'd reach from Red's to the far side of Holy Angels. Two side firing 15s along with 5” midranges and horn tweeters - turn them up and things that weren't nailed down would move around. I liked his Dad's better, though, because it had a reel-to-reel tape deck, and Magic Carpet Ride sounded a lot better on tape. He was, and still is, a good and valued friend, and that we lost so many years is sad, but we'll do what we can to make up for it.

We had burgers at Kelly's last Tuesday night. He brought something along.

Back in our middle school days, she, like many of us, collected Beatle albums. She loaned my friend a couple of them while he loaned her a Humble Pie and a Zeppelin. As it turns out sometimes, they never got their albums back, He still had the two Beatle albums after all those years; now, they're sitting a few feet away - with her handwriting on them. If I had tried to remember what that handwriting looked like, I wouldn't have had a chance. As soon as I saw it, I remembered it. She wrote in that endearing girlie way, with the big looping letters. Paul's name always has a little heart next to it, imagine that.

It is strangely disconcerting to touch those albums. Chances are good a forensics guy could pull her fingerprints off them. Either way, I know she touched them so many years ago. She's been gone for years, and it hurts immensely to think of that, but yet through some college guy under the influence who came up with the idea of starting a website to rate hot college women I now have sitting within arms reach two items of hers that have reached across the years against cosmic odds. They remind me of her, and her handwriting and her love for an old rock and roll group that, for all I can remember, I may have introduced her to. I'd try to search for some deeper meaning, but what's right in front of me is more than enough.

I think it's inevitable that by the time you reach this age you have any number of regrets and what-if scenarios that pop up from time to time. Somehow, they enrich this life, I believe – even when they come with pain. I'm not one that thinks that if you could go back with the knowledge you have now that your life would be all that different. The ability to change things would only work the first time. Once you made the first different decision, everything you knew would be gone and you'd be right back to operating blindly, and the person you are would still be driving, trying to make the decisions that would get you what you want. I believe you'd get back to the age you were and you'd still have regrets and what-ifs – maybe worse ones than you have now.

I am grateful to my Savior for the times I have had, even the bad ones, and there have been plenty. Fact is, it's the tough times that make us better, if we allow them to do so. But my life has had plenty of good times, some moments bringing so much joy that I half wonder if they weren't intended for someone else. You get both, it seems. And though I'll probably never understand in this life why these memories of her have been brought back with such force, even placing something she once owned in my hands, I intend to treasure them as long as I have the ability to do so.