First Day of My Life (8)

-8-

First Day of My Life

 

Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

-Bright Eyes

 

Aden was torn between wanting nothing to do with Cale and wanting nothing more than to pull him out of the hail, but he knew he couldn’t strip the shovel away while Cale was busy digging his own grave, especially not while Cale was kicking him to the curb.  He could see now why Aurora was falling away; Cale had a habit of pushing away those who cared for him most when the wallpaper started peeling around him, aggressively displacing blame, and treating people like minor characters in a film starring him.

And now this whole drug scheme with Caliban?  That was the last thing Cale needed, another black situation to tug him deeper underwater.  Again, though, it was only typical of Cale to throw himself down a hole the moment the curtains seemed to close around him.  He’d cloak himself in optimism until the ruin was undeniable then shell away all hope and act like it was too late to fix it.

It reminded him of their senior year in high school.  Cale had gotten into Dartmouth but couldn’t afford to go because he didn’t get enough scholarship money. 

‘It’s bullshit Aden, I have the brains to get into a school like that but my reward is debt?’

‘You didn’t apply to any scholarships?’

‘A few, but they won’t cover jack.’

‘It’s just money, go where you want.’

‘Just money.’ Cale scoffed and kicked his feet over the dock. ‘The world puts just after money.’

So Cale ended up going to school with Aden and spending the first semester wasting all his money on booze, skipping class, and blaming everyone else for his failure to be proactive.  It took academic probation, near expulsion, and an underage drinking charge to pull Cale back on the rails. 

Aden wouldn’t play hypocrite, he had a habit of stirring up his own storms as well, but while he’d criticize everyone else for this and that, inside he stacked himself with all the blame until his own hatred for who he was and who he couldn’t be burned all the bridges around him.

He decided to give Cale some time, but if it came to it, Aden wouldn’t let him cut all the ropes again.  He just didn’t know how to help Cale with Aurora and he didn’t want to further the damage already done.  The two of them had dated for more than a year, most of it apart, and Aden had always been jealous of how close the two had become, how they seemed to share something deeper than he would ever know or feel.

Aden texted Shoshanna, hoping to meet up with her later and maybe get a girl’s perspective on the whole matter with Cale and Aurora.  They decided to meet in the afternoon after she was done teaching, so Aden headed back to the apartment to catch up on the sleep he’d lost from the night before.

A half hour before she got off work, Aden caught a cab to her district, stopped at a florists for a bouquet of hibiscus syriacus flowers, and waited outside a café near her school.  He watched through the window, frowning at the occupants inside sitting in booths, laughing over lattes, and thumbing through newspapers, others picking up pedestrian cups to match their three piece suits and high brow strides back to the corporate coop.  The modern world at its progressive climax drowning reality in comfort, luxury, and lukewarm drinks.

“Cale!”

Aurora came peeling down the sidewalk in a smoke grey turtle neck with a stack of books and papers and a herd of kinder kids waving her off to catch their bus rides home.

“Want to get some coffee?  I need caffeine bad.”

Comfort. Luxury. And lukewarm drinks.

“Sure.” Aden complied and held the door, oblivious to his former state of mind.

“What did you do all day?” She asked as she ditched her books on a table and got in line.

“Nothing much.  Found out my cigarettes had turned into a Bronte novel.”

“You know I made an exception last night when I kissed you.”

“Did I taste like an ash tray?”

“Did I taste like Diva?”

Aden laughed. “I made an exception.”

They both ordered Americano coffees, no sugar.  Aden added cold water; he couldn’t stand drinks that burned his tongue.  Shoshanna had a stranger habit.  She asked for an extra cup, drained half her coffee in it, dumped several packets of sugar in one, poured the coffee back into her first cup, and shook it up instead of stirring it.

“That might be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen done to coffee.”

“Have you ever had Kopi Luwak coffee? It’s made in Indonesia from civet cat crap.”

Aden eyed her queerly as she sat across from him.

“Dead serious.  Also costs something like thirty bucks for a cup.”

“Something tells me there’s something wrong with anyone who pays thirty dollars for a cup of poop coffee…”

“That’s the least of what’s wrong with the world.”  She half-smiled and took a sip.

“How were classes?”

“Bat crazy.  I had an eight year old sing me Frank Sinatra for a verbal project.”

“Is he competition?”

                “He’s out of your league.”

                “I’d throw in the towel to any kid who sings Sinatra.”

                “What else did you do today, besides quit cigarettes of course?”  Aden caught the shell of her cigarette comments in a comical tone, but he could see her pupils skip like stone across water every time she said it and knew she preferred strongly that he quit.  Quitting wouldn’t be much of a loss, it’d spare his wallet and lungs, but he couldn’t stand be shouldered into doing something, even if it was for his own good.

                “Slept really, you wore me out.”  He laughed before lingering on what he really wanted to talk about.  She caught on and edged him forward.

                “How’s your friend doing?”

                Aden danced his finger around the rim of his cup.

                “He’s taking it hard.”

                “That’s good.”

                “What? That he’s taking it hard?”

                “I mean it’s not good but it’s good, you know what I mean?”

                Aden bent his brows and waited for her to explain.

                “A guy who can just shrug a girl off the day after is a dog.”

                He agreed but he felt like she was implying something deeper, some generalization about men, including himself and Cale.  Aden knew that the gentleman was becoming extinct, like table manners, and most guys wanted uncommitted, detached pleasure, a quick drunk squeeze, but that wasn’t who he was and that wasn’t who Cale was with Aurora.

                “I don’t know, I feel like she was the one who shrugged him off.”

                “Maybe, if so, let him look at the bright side, at least he’s not anchored to someone willing to just dump him like that anymore.  But I don’t think you really feel that way.”

                Aden caught her gaze.  He knew Aurora considerably well, more as Cale’s lover than anything else, that’s how he always knew her, but he never expected her to just dodge out the way she did.  Maybe his anger at what she was doing to Cale scrambled how he felt, or maybe it was his expectations of who he thought she was, objectively he knew she wasn’t shrugging Cale off, but relatively that was how Cale was perceiving it, and it’s perception more than anything that sets the tone of the reality we wear so heavily.

                “Maybe she didn’t just shrug him off, it has been slipping away for some time now, they did date for a while and I know she’s probably taking it just as hard as he is, but at least she has family, friends, home, something familiar all around her.”

                “Maybe, but you know there’s nothing you can do or say, there’s nothing I can do or say, it’s all up to them in the end.”

                “I know, but it’d help if Cale knew something, anything.”

                “Well, don’t let him fall apart completely, make sure he doesn’t just rattle off whatever he thinks to her in anger or react immaturely, no matter what he’s got to stay strong through it all, that’s what a girl wants to see more than anything, a man recover and stay strong.”

                “I will, but she should have at least given him a reason why.”

                “No, she doesn’t always need to give a reason why, sometimes it better if she doesn’t.”

                Aden pooled it over as he sipped on his coffee.  He didn’t agree.  Love shouldn’t just be stripped without probable cause; she can’t just leave him in the dark like that and move on.  What’s wrong with the world today?  When lovers can so easily drift apart and not even whisper a reason why?

                “How’s that fair?  What’s a guy supposed to do?  How do you expect him to just work it out?”

                “It is fair Aden.  It’s love, it’s commitment.  If she’s going to give herself away completely she’s got to know he can work it out, that he can stick to the rope no matter the outcome, she’s got to feel like he’ll stay on solid ground.”

                “Sounds like a trial…”

                “A trial, maybe, she’s got her reasons, he should respect them no matter what.  Maybe she doesn’t want him to drop what he’s doing here and come home to her.  Guys think a girl wants that, a guy willing to drop it all for her, and to some end we do, but not when it means he’s compromising who he is, the man we fell in love with in the first place.”

                “That’s what he wants to do.”

                “What?”

                “Drop everything and go home to her.”

                Shoshanna started to speak but hesitated over her coffee.  A part of her was jealous, jealous that some girl miles and miles away could have a guy willing to dump everything to come home to her and save love even on the brink of decay.  She wanted that with her ex, to feel like she was queen, but she realized through him that it was dangerous to base her meaning on anyone else other than herself.  She also knew that however much the fairytale romance a return like that sounded, it couldn’t be done out of desperation and that if there were further underlying issues it would only wreck them both.

                “Aden, I honestly don’t know, neither do you, you’ve got to let him figure it out and come to understand that whatever happens, happens.”

                “That’s not good enough.”  He was getting annoyed at Shoshanna, at Aurora, at everyone and how lightly they took everything in life.

                “What’s not good enough?”

                “That’s what’s wrong with everything, people just say that’s the way it is, shrug, and move on.  They just take what future is given them and dispose of the past.  It’s that kind of complacency that ruins us and how we capture the present.”

                “I’m not saying we should just shrug and move on, but there’s a point where you have to let things go and play out as is.  That’s what’s wrong with everything.  We think everything in life is attached to some string, that we can just tug it this way and that and it’ll all work out, sometimes you’ve got to have faith that when it doesn’t work out, it’s only a part of things working out slowly in the long run.”

                “It’s an excuse, that’s all it is.”

                Shoshanna backed off.  She could sense his tension, not with her, but himself and the world around him.  It was the same hot water she still felt in her father, a man who let his own brilliance cripple who he was by killing the beauty he recognized everywhere in the world with the toxin of always obsessively trying to control and understand.  She spent her life trying to change her father, trying to make him understand that in the end, more often than not, we have no choice but to let go, even if it meant her mother would never come home. 

What scared her more than anything was that Aden would grow up to become that same man, that no matter what she did or said, she couldn’t keep him from wrestling with the ghosts he bred out of discontent.  She didn’t want that; she wanted him to change on his own accord, but she realized that if he couldn’t, she would have no other choice but to let go.

“What do you think of women?”  Her question caught them both off guard.  She wanted to switch rails, though it wasn’t in her to just change a conversation like that, neither was it in her to just rattle of a question, but her subconscious curiosity got the best of her and she wouldn’t play the question off now like she never meant it.

“What do I think of women?”

“Yes, what do you think of women?”

“I don’t know, I don’t really just think of women as women, I don’t generalize.”  The question made him uneasy and he wasn’t sure where she was going with it or what she wanted him to say.

“I’m just curious.  We all generalize to some degree.”

What did that matter, Aden thought, why was he second guessing himself into trying to say what he thought she wanted him to.  He would say damn well what he thought and what he pleased.

“I think they have unreal expectations, they’re too socially dependent, too willing-” He caught her shifting in her seat and wondered if he was saying too much, too harshly.

“Go on.”

Go on.  Was she amused that she managed to still himself in his tracks?  He’d go on on his own accord.

“I think women are too willing to compromise for a safer less over a deeper gain, that they often sit back and wait for the lottery rather than work for a steady paycheck, that they abuse their own intellect, that they live in a state of paradox-”

“Don’t we all Bright Eyes.”  She cut him off.

“Don’t we all what?”

“Do everything you just said.”

“Maybe, but you asked me what I thought of women and I answered.”

“You generalized.”  She corrected him in a condescending manner.

“You said we all generalize to some degree.”

“So I did.  What’s your excuse?”

What’s my excuse, Aden scoffed to himself, everyone else seemed to live with one so why couldn’t he?

“I doesn’t matter…”

“It does matter.  If you think about it, it does.”

Aden finished his coffee and leaned back.  He wouldn’t put up with her shoving his words back in his own mouth.  He meant when he said it last night, now she was abusing it, for what reason?

Shoshanna didn’t intend for it to come out like mustard gas and it bothered her that he took it so heavily.  She compromised herself to still the water by changing lanes, again, hating how he made her back off so easily, but maybe she was afraid, she didn’t want to lose him all because she had to make some stand.

“We all generalize.”  At least she wouldn’t compromise entirely by admitting solely that she generalized as well. “I guess it bothers me, grouping, social identity, how we all kind of put everyone in a category and only revere a few.  It’s like love.  A man will spend his life treating all women on common ground except for those select few he happens to be attracted to or fall in love with.”

“Reverence is a part of love.  Is it a crime that I put you above the rest?”

“It can be.”  This is why love absolutely tears people apart.  How do you become so special to someone else, how do they become so special, how do you share so many sacred moments, only to one day fall away and become nothing more to one another than everyone else?  How can anyone recover from something like that?

“It can be.  But it shouldn’t be.  Think about it this way.  Only a certain insect can pollinate a certain orchid, isn’t that natural reverence?  A special bond?  It’s not only necessary, it’s a necessity.”

“Reverence can be false and easily perverted.  Reverence to country, reverence to money, reverence to one creed over another.”

“I’m not talking about reverence to some artificial bullshit; I’m talking about reverence in love.”

Shoshanna wouldn’t say it out loud, but she wondered at times if reverence in love was only based mostly on some artificial bullshit as well, some desperate clinging to meaning, to a validation of the self through someone else. 

“Reverence doesn’t excuse generalization and stereotyping.”  She said instead.

“No, I agree.  But stereotypes are based on a general truth.”

“Stereotypes are only bias perspective, there is no truth.”  Shoshanna believed deeply that there was truth, that there had to be some sort of absolute, because without it, the meaning of being would only remain relative, and to what?  Ourselves?  Only a fragile pillar of meaning could be founded on the self alone, though she believed strongly that humanity shared a common absolute, it was only a matter of awakening.   She simply wanted to know if Aden believed in a truth beyond those withered observational facts that set the spinal work for stereotyping.  “I just wish people would stop grouping, learn that sex, race, material reputation, and all that societal garbage, none of it matters, it only keeps us from living in a harmony we are capable of reaching.”

 “People will always group because there is no real truth, we’re all just too obsessed with the idea that there must be some absolute somewhere out there and we only end up with labels and theories and systems and endless nonsense.”

Shoshanna felt herself break inside.  Was it because she wanted Aden to live with the notion that there was absolute purpose, to help carry her to that purpose?  And wouldn’t that just make her dependent on him for reason?  Or was she afraid, realizing that she might not be so far different from her father or Aden in silently obsessing over trying to comprehend the world around her?

“It’s not wrong to be obsessed with truth, is it?” 

“Even if it’s wrong, it’s the right thing to be obsessed about.”  Aden paused and looked around at everyone with their comfort and luxury and lukewarm drinks.  “But people don’t give a damn.”

“I do.”

“I know you do.”

“A lot of people do Aden.  It’s not humanity that’s messed up, it’s society.”

Aden wouldn’t buy it; he saw her face half-flood with doubt and wondered if she spent her mornings convincing herself over and over again that the sun also rises.

“Humanity created society.”

“It can change.”

“It’s too late.” Aden began. “We’re like that old man who still hasn’t realized he fucked it all up years and years ago, that there’s no going back.  I’m tired of caring about whether or not it’ll all change.  I just want to leap off the edge of the world.”

“Wait for me.” She leaned in and reached for his hand. “We’ll hold hands and leap off together.”

Aden couldn’t hold her orchard stare for too long and he wished they’d never met, he’d only drag her down, like he did his father, Cale, and everyone else back home.  If it wasn’t for him, Cale wouldn’t be saddling the fence between the outlier life looking in on all the vetted nonsense of society and the strapped man still clinging onto the belt loops he doesn’t want to leave behind.  If it wasn’t for him, Cale would still be home with Aurora.  If it wasn’t for him, his father and mother might still be alive.

Shoshanna could feel him slipping away again and she knew they couldn’t sit here any longer and drag on like this, he needed to lose himself, she needed to lose herself, in a moment of doing rather than a bus stop conversation of lead.

“Let’s get out of here, I have an idea.”

“Alright, let me use the bathroom first.”

Aden left her as she started collecting up her books and stepped into the bathroom.  He needed to breathe easy, to shed the ball and chain.  He was thinking too much about everything and shearing strings that didn’t need trimming just to palm a loose end. 

He turned the faucet handle, washed his face, and eyed himself in the skinny mirror.  His mother’s green eyes found him in between the light and foil, her soft cheeks, her Roman nose.  He wondered how deep her wells of thought were and how much mud it took to fill them?  His father learned the world with his hands, but did she, like him, find it in words, in silent change, the gradual doing and undoing of all things?  How, then, like his father said, did she tread the storm and learn to dance in the rain?

Let it go, let it all go, you will never learn now, you will never know, he told himself, but statements and matters of conviction often contradict, and when left wound tightly on the same spool, the fabric woven will only tear over time.

Aden dried his face, let his thoughts float to the ceiling, and left the bathroom.

“You ready?”

“Ready.  What’s the idea?”

“Something my father and I used to do, slightly goofy, awkward if you’re caught, but if you just act crazy they let you walk.”  She rambled on as they left the café and headed down the sidewalk.  “When I was young my father used to write on the sleeve of one book in a bookstore and I’d spend the whole day reading every sleeve until I found what he wrote.  It’s not your typical daughter-father activity, but it’s one of those special things from your childhood, like sitting on the porch and watching thunderstorms roll in and out or staying up all night watching blockbuster movies and eating popcorn.”

Aden laughed.

“Go on,make fun of me.”

“I can’t make fun of you, my father and I used to buy a Shel Silverstein book once a month and when we finished reading it we would write a note on the inside and sell it back to a used bookstore or thrift shop.  He’d tell me there are no such things as strangers, we’re all people going through the same thing everywhere, and well all need that little note from someone we don’t know to remind us we’re all here together.”

They rounded down a side street toward a bookstore only a few minutes from Shoshanna’s flat. 

“Do you talk to your father much while you’re over here?” Shoshanna asked.

“He passed away a few years ago.”

She lingered on the revelation, knowing an apology on a matter like that was beyond shallow, but unsure of what to say.  Aden was used to the reaction by now and made an effort to break the silence on her part.

“But I still write him.” He tiptoed on the thought of her.  “And my mother.”

“Is she back home?”

Aden steadied his eyes on the pavement. “She died in childbirth.”

Shoshanna couldn’t imagine how that felt, the burden of losing both parents at such a young age, and she began to understand why he was so hard on the world.

“What about you?  Do you talk to your parents much while you’re over here?”  Aden shifted the conversation.  He knew what she was pooling over, the same everyone else thought when they found out about his past, but at least she didn’t apologize like most people, as if that helped, as if it would change things, as if they could understand and sympathize.

After his father died, it fretted him inside every time someone would try to comfort him, to tell him there was nothing he could do, that it was his father’s time or this and that, all so they could readily unseat the sudden realization that the world was tragic, that loss exists, that death is imminent and unpredictable. 

“I talk to my father a lot but my mother left when I was a kid.” 

They both had suffered a loss and both knew their casual conversation was only a product of forced acceptance.  It was what it was and both had come to understand that words could not translate a feeling of such proportion, it was better to be mention as a matter-of-fact, blunt and direct.

They reached the book store and passed through the swivel doors onto the first floor.  It was a chain store with three levels, the top level were books all in English.  Shoshanna led Aden upstairs and to the classics aisle where they pooled over their favorites.

“What do you think of East of Eden?”

“First favorite novel.  I used to write ‘timshel’ on everything.”

“Nerd.” Shoshanna poked and kept walking.  “I went through a Steinbeck phase.”

“So what are we going to do?  I write in a sleeve and you try and find it?”

“Better idea.” She began.  “You pick a novel, I pick a novel.  We write each other a note and then get one chance to guess which novel it is.”

                “Alright, just in this aisle?”

                “Wait, I’m not finished!” Shoshanna half-shouted and continued. “We don’t get to look though.  We have to buy it and wait until midnight and then see if we were right.”

                “And what if the carriage doesn’t turn back into a pumpkin?”

                “Serendipity.”

                “It didn’t end well at first for Cussack.”

                “Key words being ‘at first’.”  She noted before turning him around.  “Now wait downstairs until I’m done.”

                Aden went downstairs and thumbed through various Korean books, pretending he understood in order to cope with the awkwardness of being the only foreigner wandering around by himself surrounded by the unfamiliar.  He found an illustrated book on Obama and amused himself with cartoonish sketches of Obama celebrating his presidential victory by standing on top of a Cadillac and waving an American flag.  Whether or not the Koreans actually digested that as fact or simply wanted to be entertained by Obama’s apparently flamboyant party behavior, Aden had no idea.

                A few minutes later Shoshanna popped around a bookcase and sent him upstairs.  Out of curiosity he thought about starting to thumb through the different books to figure out which one she left her note in, but he decided to go with ‘serendipity’ or whatever the hell that meant.  What was her idea behind this anyway, to test chance, to weigh their relationship on some cardboard notion like fate?  But he caught himself before he thought about their meeting and damned himself for tripping over everything too deeply again. 

This is all in good fun, that’s all it is, lose yourself in it, deflate those damn thoughts, he told himself before walking up the aisle to find a book to write in.

At first he had no idea what book to pick, wondering, instead, if he should just close his eyes and pick at random, go with the whole flow bit, but it was too impersonal.  He wanted to pick exactly what she would expect him to, to find his book, to know him-

Shut it, you’re thinking too much, you’re trying to tug on the strings again, he told himself, pivoted, and found the perfect book.  It didn’t take him long to figure out what to write either, he knew exactly what he would say.

“Done.”

He found her sitting on the floor between two bookcases shuffling through her school work.

“Awesome, time to pick and buy.”

They went back upstairs and fell away from the world, lost in the moment that only they would share and ever remember, and it scared Aden to think it always ends, that it will one day end completely, and that that one day might be sooner than expected, but his fear dissipated as she held his hand and led him out of bookstore and into the heart of the city.

They had dinner on the patio of an Italian restaurant, laughing and second guessing, fading out of the ashen past and worry of tomorrow and the day after, until Aden had to leave, still concerned about Cale, and Shoshanna had to prep for her final classes of the week. 

Aden walked her back to her flat as the tangerine sun slipped behind the cavern-colored horizon, both not saying much, comfortable in the silence of simply being together.

“Remember, midnight, you can’t look until then.”

“Midnight it is.”  Aden laughed and held her close.  She blushed as he studied her, watching the last strands of sunlight slip from her face and the shadows of the city rise in violet ink powder against her skin.

“I love you.”

Shoshanna smiled, but she’d heard those words before from cold lovers who abandoned her, who misused her, who abused love.  She believed Aden, but she wanted to know, to feel safe.

“Is it different this time?”

“What?”

“When you say it, when you say ‘I love you.’”

“It’s different, and every time I say it, I fall deeper in love.”

She watched him long after he disappeared down the street, still caught in the moment and already missing him. 

You’re falling too fast again, and too hard, she told herself as she leaned against her apartment building and drew out Aden’s pack of cigarettes.  She smoked sporadically, but it was a secret that would go with her to the grave.  No one, not even her father, knew of her random habit.

Her father…

She saw so much of him in Aden, his persistence, the coal dreams no one could steal, the constant circulation of thoughts, but it scared her.  Her father had let his dreams fall to the wayside for her mother, he settled down and tolerated all the bullshit of being tied down because he loved her so deeply, but it destroyed him, especially when her mother left.  However much he swore he was alright, that what was done was done, she knew he rarely slept, he spent days quiet and alone, that he wasn’t alright and that he was torn to pieces.  For her father, her mother was reason enough for him, but when she left, she took that reason to live with her. 

Shoshanna wouldn’t be her mother, she wouldn’t do that to anyone, and she wouldn’t let Aden fall into the trap of crowning her and leaving his darkest issues unresolved hoping that she could forever whitewash them.  Every sanctuary has a price and if the temple walls of your only refuge crumble, what then? 

Not wanting to think about it any longer and pinned to a tightrope by her curiosity, Shoshanna decided to break her midnight rule and see if she found the right book.  She snuffed the light out on the wall and pulled out the book she picked, brushing the jacket clean out of unconscious habit and breaking in the spine.  Aden by no means seemed like an Objectivist or even a second string Rand fan, neither did he give an inch of hint when she grabbed The Fountainhead off the shelf, but just as she began to doubt her intuition, she opened the book and her fear, that the glass shoe would shatter at midnight, blossomed in the moonlight of another occurrence too surreal to salt and expect to stay a fairytale to the very end.

Things too perfect never last, she told herself, never…

                                      They can’t.

 

We will never grow old

And we will be young forever

And when the wrinkled trees collapse

And the smokeless lightning crashes over dead water

I will reach for your hand

Trace the hard blue veins running, like highways,

To the room where my heart lies with yours

And we’ll close the curtains

Pour ourselves two sour glasses of tequila

And disappear into the carnation buzz

Of a love so deep, so god-driven,

That when death jars our tears at last

And looks back at the city of our ruin

It will fade into pillars of salt.