Three

            Even before Grampy asked my mother on dinner what day it is, I have already learned where tonight’s conversation is going. And I’m pretty sure it’s not about yachts.

            Mashed potato Monday �" that’s what we call it. Millie would be stumbling in our house by now with a pot of steaming mashed potato on her mitten-covered hands and she’d burst into the kitchen exclaiming, “What day is it again?” just like the way Grampy has asked it this evening, but only with a slight tone of interest.

            “Maybe she’s running late.”

            Across the horrid mess of usual Italian slash modern American dishes (overly-creamy white spaghetti, a lasagna smothered with the least finest tomato sauce in town, and all sorts of garlic bread �" the burnt ones, of course), my mother incredulously smiles over her plate of Caesar’s salad and looks at either both of us �" back and forth and back and forth until she stops her eyes on me. And when she had regarded my blank face and the exhausted-looking rims slumping under my bottom lids for over four point something seconds, I knew she gets the message �" that Millie is not coming around anymore.

            “She’s not going tonight,” I finally say. “Or the next Monday or the next, next Monday or the other Mondays of the year. She’s gone for the following light-years.” Yup, gone forever and ever. I point this out mostly to Grampy, because he loves Millie more than he could ever love me �" his own grandson, loves her maybe a little more than our yacht. If The Liberator is a human, she would be stressed to find out Grampy is not paying any more attention to her.

            And somehow, he gets the message too, because he drops his silverwares down his plate and quietly wipes his mouth with a table napkin, perhaps feeling lightheaded after my words.

            Mom clears her throat, audible enough for Grampy to stop whatever he was about to say �" conceivably about Millie. I’ve only eaten three and a half rolled scoops of Mom’s spaghetti and an awful tiny bite from the six-layered lasagna when I excused myself and went hurriedly to my bedroom, my steps becoming heavy as I push myself further up the flight of stairs.

            As I enter my room, the speakers are still on, realizing that I might have missed turning it off before coming down to dinner. Lea Michelle is still singing and I think of Millie right away, so instantly that I didn’t catch myself falling down to a safer heaven �" my bed.

            I look around, she is everywhere. She’d be here or there, or sitting under an oak tree and smiling at the sun with no care at all or banging on her jammed locker and wondering how she can burst it open again. She’d be in my pictures, my walls, my laptop, my desk , my memories, my malfunctioning orangutan head.

            She’d be in my past. And I’m actually glad that at least she’s staying there �" with me wrapped in her arms like home.

            Even now, I couldn’t let go of her. I couldn’t avoid the thoughts of her arms dangling around my neck, of me pulling her in until we’re waist to waist, of her lips on my face, of her incredibly blue-greened eyes, of what used to be us. It is beyond inevitable. Like the stars are telling me to get over the night’s darkness and just hang on to their lights. But it wasn’t supposed to be that way. It was always about Millie and me.

            If anyone walked on my porch before and told me that I won’t ever have a complimentary future with her, I would have laughed the most preposterous and most nonsensical laugh in all the history of laughter. It’s because I wouldn’t believe it �" no one would. We were too strong enough that the storms were scared to go through us. But if I did, if I did listen to the warnings of every newscaster on our way to the hereafter, I would have devised a plan to wipe it out or shield us from the devastation and we would be back to our happily ever after.

            “If you came to me empty-handed, I’ll bring the ocean to bring you home.”

            I hear the radio singing it to me like a clear sign of promise. Soon after that, visions of Millie recklessly cloud over my head and all I see is a memory of that hot summer day when everything had begun to slip right off my fingers. It is unsympathetically killing me. All I ask for is to bring back thoughts of her bliss, the purest drops of her happiness, the smile on her face when I tell her I’ll never leave her. I want to bring those back. But every time I close my eyes, I’m always enveloped by the great cloak of darkness and the ghost of Millie curled like a ball in the corner with her folded knees under her wet chin. I once tried to get near her, thinking that she might need me back. But she shouted words at me that I no longer want to hear.

            She told me to go away.

            Reaching out from my sheets, I switch my lamp off and decide that maybe sleep will help me heal my wounds �" or at least try to forget them.