Time to Go (17 page)

She might think. Well, she might think. Yes? She might think I'm not good enough for her, though not so much in those words. Those were the words my father used. “You're not good enough for her,” he once said, though all the other times he said “She's not good enough for you.” When I'd introduce them, my folks, to a new girl I'd been seeing, or would ask her over for dinner, ask them first after they'd asked me several times who've I been seeing lately? or “What've you been doing with your time lately?” or “Where do you rush off to at nights so quickly after dinner? How come you don't hang around the house more?” I'd say I've been seeing a girl lately and they'd say “If she's so special why don't you bring her around for dinner one night?” or I'd say “I've been seeing someone lately, someone I really like, would you like to meet her?” and then I'd suggest bringing her over for dinner and if they said yes and they invariably did, I'd ask what night was best, or they'd say “Bring her Friday,” and I'd say to her “My folks invited you for dinner this Friday, I hope you can come,” and she invariably did, would ring the doorbell, I'd answer it even if I wasn't the closest one to the door at the time, though most of the times I'd pick her up at her home or meet her someplace on the outside and bring her to our home, and sometime the next day, though a couple of times much later that night after I'd taken her back home and my folks or just my father was still up, he'd say “You want my opinion of that girl?” and I'd say “Sure if you want, what?” and he'd say “I don't think she's good enough for you,” and I'd say “I knew you'd say that,” But sometimes I'd say “Why do you say that?” because maybe I had some suspicion myself about how good enough she was for me, and he'd say “She isn't bright enough.” Or “pretty enough.” Or “nice enough…lively enough,” or something enough and sometimes many things not good enough. Though once after I'd brought someone home for dinner and then taken her back to her place, my father said “You're not good enough for her,” or rather “You know what I think about you and that girl?” and I said “What?” because I knew she'd made a good impression on them, more so perhaps than anyone I'd ever had over for dinner, and he said “I think you're heading for big trouble with her,” and I said “How?” and he said “Because you're just not good enough for her and she's going to know that soon and drop you and you're going to get very depressed over it, more so than you have with any young lady you've been attached to.” I said “No chance of that. She likes me, I like her, I'm good enough for her and she knows it, just as both she and I know she's good enough for me,” and he said “You want to know why I don't think you're good enough for her, as good as you might be for just about every other young woman her age?” and I said “Why?” and he said “Because she's too rich, too pretty, too smart, too refined, too educated, too imaginative, comes from too good a family, too everything, and no matter how much she might think she likes you now, and it's clear to your mother and I she likes you a lot, people like her family and friends are going to convince her you're not good enough for her and that she's wasting her time when she could have any available guy she wants, and eventually she's going to think less of you from what people say and drop you though do it with some sadness and sensitivity, and you're going to get very upset and if you don't watch it, make the biggest damn fool of yourself you've ever been.” I said “Number one I don't believe it, and two, even if I did a little, which I don't, I'd chance it because seeing her now is so worth it,” and he said “Don't come around crying I didn't warn you,” and a month later she dropped me as he'd said, sadly, sensitively, saying she knew how much this would hurt me but what way was a good way to say what she had to say? and I said “What's wrong, aren't I good enough for you?” and she said “It's not that, it's just that I don't want to get so serious with a boy yet,” and I said “Oh bull, you just don't think I'm good enough for you,” and she said “Okay, maybe in some ways that's true, but there are also some other things,” but no matter what I said, some of it for me, some against, she'd had it with me and I felt sadder than I had with any girl who'd dropped me before and maybe with any girl or woman since. It took me a month or more, more, a couple of months or more of deep depression, wandering around lost, trying to expose myself to colds, that sort of thing, before I got over her enough to function as a normal human being again. Magna's like that girl too. She's too good for me. She's too beautiful, too intelligent, too perceptive, too creative, too everything. She doesn't come from wealth or earn much of a salary now, but that isn't important to her as long as she works at what she enjoys, nor that I don't earn much either. She's going to find out soon enough that I'm a little more boring and cynical than she can take. That I'm really not as broadminded and kindhearted as she thought. She's going to have enough of my silly jokes and ribbing after a while too. She's going to see lots of things in me she won't like pretty soon. She's going to think “I'm seeing this guy too much and that's not too wise a thing to do because he's going to want to get married or tie me down some way and though I might like that very much with someone else in the near future, I don't want that with him.” She's going to think she can do better. She no doubt has done a lot better. I know she has. She's talked about some of the men she's known. Known seriously. Been lovers with. Was in love with when they were in love with her. I have to admit I don't stack up much in comparison to several of these men. To some I do, to some I don't, but to a few I really don't. The latter were all extremely bright, well-liked, handsome, sociable, had jobs or professions where they were already very successful or were soon sure to be, and other good qualities but with none of the negative ones I have, or so it seemed to me by what she said about them. I've asked what went wrong with the best of these relationships. Was it sex? Was it family or money? What was it? She said that a couple of these men got scared of a continuing deep relationship and a couple she got scared of. One man was already married and she didn't want to bust up anybody's home. Another man wanted her to change her religious faith to his. Another wanted her to change her citizenship to his and move to his country, but she felt that would be a spiritual and creative death. One man died of a heart attack and another in a rock-climbing accident. One wanted to get married but didn't want to have children. One couldn't have children but wanted to adopt one or two, while she wanted to give birth to at least one and then maybe she'd adopt a second. I'd love to marry her and have a child, but she's eventually going to see how wrong I am for her. On some intellectual topics we talk about, for instance, it's obvious I don't go far enough for her. She likes to socialize a lot more than I, and her friends are often much smarter than I too. No, it won't work. I know it. Maybe she knows it by now also but doesn't want to speak about it yet for any number of reasons. She might be trying to find the best way of telling me without hurting me so much. She's like that. And I don't want to get hurt again as I did with that girl twenty years ago and several women since. I can still get hurt that way. Being in love with someone so much, and that person leaves you—there's no way I can't get hurt. I'll miss just about everything about her. Miss talking to her, walking with her, looking at her, making love with her, just being silent and doing nothing with her or nothing but reading beside her. Holding her hand or knee when we're at a movie or stage show. Her head on my shoulder or chest or my thighs pressed against the back of her thighs when we're dozing off at night. Going into a store. Sharing some food at a restaurant. Watching her dress. Coming up with the same opinion about someone or something. Differing with her too. Fighting it out and making up. Everything. Miss missing her too, when I was away for a day or so and knew when I got back I'd see her. But for some reason, a very good reason, the reason being it's inevitable she's going to leave me pretty soon so better now when I can take it better than later when I'll be even more used to her and it'll hurt much worse. So I'll phone her, right now, and if she's in, tell her what I've been thinking and that we should call it off now.

I phone her and we meet and I tell her what I've been thinking lately and she says I'm crazy and she loves me and was thinking the same thing about herself to me, that she's not good enough for me, not intelligent and insightful and pretty enough and other things, and if I want—”Well is this what you want, because it's what I want, let's get married, let's have a baby, let's live together, do everything forever together, or as much as we can do together, okay?” I said yes and that's where we stand today.

I phone her and we meet and I tell her what I've been thinking and she says she's afraid she's been thinking the same thing lately, the relationship should probably end now before it gets even more serious for me and where she'd have to end it on her own rather than do it mutually as we can do now, and I put my hand out to shake hers, she said “Oh don't be silly,” and kissed me on the lips and I turned around and walked home and cried inside just about all the way and that's where it stands today.

I phone her and she's not in but I get her later and we meet and talk and she says it's not that she's too good for me or the other way around or even that we might just be perfectly suited for one another or anything like that but that there's another man in her life, one of the ones she might have mentioned before, she hasn't seen him since a few months before we started seeing each other a half year ago, but he called last week and said he's thought and thought about why their relationship ended and all the things she said would improve it then but at the time he didn't believe in, well anyway, he now goes along with everything she said and knows she was definitely right for him just as she is now and just as he still thinks and hopes and even prays he's still right for her and he wants to give their relationship another chance if it isn't too late and also if it isn't too late to move back in with her. She's afraid she still loves him, she said to me, and that her feelings for him the last six months are probably what always kept her a little held back and unrelaxed and withdrawn from me at times. I said I never noticed her being any of these ways with me particularly but if there is this other man and she's in love with him and wants to resume things and so on, well there's nothing I can say, can I? especially after I already said I've been feeling for weeks she's just too good for me in so many ways. That's just not true, she said.

She's not like that at all. If it wasn't for this other man she knows we could have worked out in time and had a wonderful relationship. There's just no saying how far we could have gone. That I have everything she ever wanted in a partner, everything, but just that this man is someone who has, not more than me, it's not that he's better or brighter or handsomer or anything like that, and actually on many of those things I do even better than he, but just something mysterious she can't quite explain or communicate and maybe it's ridiculous trying to explain it because it is so mysterious, but just something, and for all she knows it could be just his being there before me and suddenly leaving while she was still very much in love with him and didn't want him to go and also because of everything they went through, and what those things were she doesn't want to go into. But that's it, she's sorry, in some ways she wishes he never came back so we could have continued our relationship and she could have seen how it developed and in time perhaps lived with me and maybe even got married and had a child or two if that's what it would have come to, but in some ways she's very glad of course, and she has to be honest about it, very very glad he came back, though also of course what she regrets most is how it will affect me. “But don't be silly,” she said. “I was certainly good enough for you and you were more than good enough for me.” We shook hands and kissed and I left her at a street corner and crossed the street and turned around when I got to the other side and saw her walking the opposite way from me and she didn't do what she usually did when we left one another on a street—turn around and look back and wave—she kept going, till I couldn't see her anymore, till she was part of the big midafternoon crowd walking both ways on the sidewalk. I went home and was surprised I didn't feel as bad as I thought I would.

The wind is wet. That sounds nice but doesn't make much sense. Any sense. I wrote it because it sounded nice. In my head. Wrote it as I usually write something to start off a story, or rather, as I often do. I don't know where it came from. The wind is wet. Wet wind. The windy wet. Any of those could have come and I suppose a wet wind and Wind is wet could make some sense. It doesn't make for good reading though. They don't and The wind is wet doesn't. At least I don't think it does. And make for good writing, I mean, since it hasn't really led to a second and then a third, and so on, sentence. Maybe in rewriting it or just writing it over, rather, I could make it better. I've done that before several times and it sometimes worked.

The wind is wet. That sounds nice but doesn't make much sense. Any sense, or very little. I wrote it because it sounded like a sentence that might be the, or rather, a suitable beginning of a story. I don't like Suitable but I don't want to lose my line of thought. Because I sat down to write a story. When I sit down to write a story and nothing's in my head when I sit down, I usually write the first thing that comes to mind when I start typing. The first thing I think of. The wind is wet was the first thing I thought of. It sounded right. As though it might lead to other things—sentences, phrases, etcetera—that would connect one after the other to be the first draft of a story. It's happened before. I've written opening sentences in a similar way. Meaning I wrote the first thing that came to mind when I started to type and which had no connection to anything around me, since not only wasn't there a wind out when I started to type but it was and still is a dry sunny day, and they've often led to follow-up sentences or dialogue, which became paragraphs and then pages or just one long paragraph, and once one nine to ten pages, which became in the end first drafts of stories. This one I don't think will. It doesn't have what? I don't quite know, or rather, I can't quite put it into words, but something—a force, some action, some staying or holding power, something. I knew I couldn't quite put it into words. Not Quite.