If I Lose Her (6 page)

 “I don’t
want you to stay just because of me.”

 “Well, they
say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

 “I’m already
too fond of you,” she said and I laughed. “You’ll write me right?”

 “Of course.”
  

 School was
out for the summer and we were officially seniors.

 Even though
I was not leaving until the morning for Minnesota with my mother, Jo and I
decided to say our goodbyes the night before so that we weren’t rushed.

 I pulled up
to her front door and gave a quick beep on the horn letting her know that I was
there. A gentle breeze blew the smell of someone’s freshly mowed lawn through
my open window, and I could feel the cool air rustle the hairs on my arm,
giving me goose bumps.

 She had
curled her hair and pulled it up into a bun. A single curl hung down across her
glasses. Under her arm was the little black purse with a silver clasp that she
always used on special nights out, and she was carrying a medium sized box
wrapped with a red bow.

 I got out of
the car and opened her door.

 She walked
up to me, smiled and scrunched her nose for just a second, which was her way of
saying ‘Hey you’, and it got me every-single time. 

 I let out a
single soft whistle between my teeth.

 “Wow, you
look…nice. You heading somewhere special?” I said in my best flirty tone.

 She put her
hand on my cheek. “Oh, I don’t know. You wanna take me somewhere special?”

 I swallowed.
Then I smiled.

 “I’ll take
you any-where I can,” I said, to which she responded with a short perk of the
eyebrows and a smile that was much more Aphrodite than sweet schoolgirl. Then
she got in the car.

 I took a
deep breath and shook my head as I walked around the car.

 Now, Jo was
an attractive girl, but she wasn’t exactly front-of-the-magazine when it came
to fashion or trends like her sister was, which meant that most of her best
features, like her legs, were hidden away behind tattered jeans and vintage tee
shirts, but tonight she was wearing a white blouse, a pair of open toed, black
heels and a black-pleated skirt that ended just above her knees that drew no
small amount of attention to her legs.

 I tried to
focus on the drive downtown, but I couldn’t stop looking at her ankles, slender
legs, sexy knees. Then she caught me.

 “That’s a
nice skirt,” I said trying to hide my roaming eyes.

 She smiled
and put her hand on the back of mine.

 “You like it?
Susan said she wouldn’t let me leave the house without me letting her do my
hair and makeup, and I figured, why not? It can’t hurt letting her do me up
once right? My mistake was telling her that, because next thing you know, half
her closet is on my bed and I’m trying on my fifteenth pair of shoes.”

 Then Jo
started playing with the hair on the back of my neck. She didn’t know it at the
time, but this seriously turned me on, and I mean all the way on.

 
I have to
focus on something else.

 “Well, you can
definitely pull off a skirt like that better than she can.”

 “Really? I
don’t think so.” Then she stopped playing with my hair and turned to look out
the window.

 This wasn’t
the shy push off she was good at when we were flirting or playing around with
each other. This was something deeper. 

 “Jo. Hey,
look at me.”

 She turned
and looked at me with a huge question in her eyes.

 “Don’t you
realize? You’re beautiful.”

 She turned
away.

 I don’t know
for sure because she kept looking out the side window, away from me, but I am
pretty sure she was crying. She wiped her cheek once or twice then reached for
a tissue in her purse, which she tried to conceal in the palm of her hand.

 “So, where
are we going?” She asked after a minute of silence.

 I wanted to
say more but decided that it wasn’t the right time. Instead, I made a mental
note to start telling her more often how beautiful she was.

 “Well, I
thought somewhere like the Brown Palace would be nice, but I didn’t want our
last meal to be some stuffy hotel steak. So, how’s Paris sound?”

 “Paris
sounds good,” she said finally turning to look at me again.

 We drove
downtown to the café and chatted about what her plans were for the summer.
Every two or three years, her parents liked taking a road trip to a national
park. Rocky Mountain National Park. Zion National Park. The Grand Canyon. Her
dad especially liked anywhere where there was desert, since he had grown up in
New Mexico. If they couldn’t afford a longer road trip, either because of time
or finance, they liked to at least get away to one of the many campgrounds
scattered around the Colorado mountains. There wasn’t going to be any extended
event this year, just a four-day weekend up Golden Gate Canyon to stay at their
favorite campground.

 Susan had grown
out of camping four or five years earlier, but this made Jo love the camping
trips even more. Now she got some good alone time playing games and going
hiking with her parents. After that she thought she might look for some
part-time work, mostly just to keep herself busy.

 We pulled up
and parked across the street from the café that was busy, inside with people
listening to the live band brought in a couple of times a month and outside
with people smoking and chatting about god knows what.

 “I have something
for you,” I told her as I turned of f the car and reached into the back seat.

 “I have
something for you too,” she said sliding her hands over the lid of the box on
her lap.

 “Let me go
first,” I told her, handing the gift to her about the size of a shoebox wrapped
in butterfly print.

 She took it,
tore the paper away and lifted the lid.

 “I told you
I would write you, and I want you to write to me.”

 She lifted
up a pad of paper printed in flowers, a stack of matching envelopes and a roll
of stamps.

 “There are
enough stamps there for you to write me every day for 3 months,” I told her.
Then she moved the stationary aside and found the small blue box with a hinged
lid. She picked it up and opened it. Inside, in a small pile, lay a gold chain
and a locket.      She opened it. A tiny photo of me smiled
out at her.

 “Alex, I
love it,” she said running her finger around the edge of the photo. “Help me
put it on.” I did.  “Now open mine.”

 I untied the
bow and lifted the lid.

 The first
thing I noticed was the cloud of her fragrance that rose to meet me. First was
a stack of seven photos that she had taken of herself. Around her house, around
school, one was even of her in the darkroom back on campus. This one I liked
the most.

 “I’m going
to send you a new set every week,” she told me.

 I kept
digging.

 There was a
pack of Oreo’s (my favorite cookies), a letter that I wasn’t supposed to read
until I was at least two states away, a brown leather bracelet with button
clasps, and then I lifted up a white tee shirt- thin with holes. I wasn’t
entirely sure what to make of it at first, then I realized that the
intoxicating bouquet I was smelling came from this.

 I lifted it
to my nose and drew deeply of it.

 “I usually
only sleep in that and my underwear,” she told me. “Now that I’m giving it to
you, I’ll only be sleeping in my underwear. Just remember that when you’re off
in Minnesota.”

 At that
moment, for the briefest of moments, she could have asked me for anything and I
would have said yes, but she didn’t. Instead she leaned over, kissed my cheek
and got out of the car. I took another deep inhalation of this amazing mix of
her perfume, lotion and natural body fragrance before I put everything back in
the box and followed her inside.

 For the next
two hours, neither of us was going anywhere for the summer. We were both
entirely present on this little island in time of music and sandwiches,
laughter and spiced tea. Then the music stopped and it was time to say good
night.

 I dropped her
off at home and we said our goodbyes. I tried to convince her that there was no
reason to cry, but she convinced me that there was and then I left.

 Northfield,
Minnesota is just shy of 900 miles from Denver, and my mother always made sure
that the 14-hour trip was part of the fun. We would leave early. I would check
the tires and the oil while she filled the car with gas. Then we would grab a
quick breakfast of coffee and muffins on our way out of town. The air always
smelled clean in the morning and with almost no one else on the roads, I felt
like we could drive until the end of time.

 Not long
after being on the road, my mother would turn on Celine Dion and before I knew
it we would both be singing ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ at the top of our
voices while cruising down I-80. We would head East through Sterling, and with
a steady hand and taking turns at the wheel, we could make Lincoln, the
half-way-point just around lunch. It was our tradition, for at least the last
five years, to stop at Sloppy Bob’s BBQ, off the highway just outside of
Lincoln, for what was just about the best pulled pork sandwich I think I had
ever eaten before or since. Then we would be back on the road with the
intention of seeing the ‘Welcome to the land of ten-thousand lakes’ sign
shortly after dark.

 Along the
way I made sure to capture frame after frame of our trip. Most of them were of
mom with her long, curly blond hair laughing behind a driver’s wheel or asleep
on a pillow leaned up against the passenger window. There was one of both of us
smiling over a plate of barbeque sandwiches and another of her paying for
something through a gas station window. As the mile markers rolled past, I
marked our trip with clicks of the shutter.

 “How are
things between you and Jo?” She asked somewhere between Des Moines and Ames.

 I put the
book down I was reading and looked out over the wide-open spaces that make up
most of Iowa.

 “Things are
good. I’m just going to miss her this summer.”

 “It’s not
necessarily a bad thing to pull back and let your relationship breathe a
little.”

 “You’re
probably right, but I want to be with her every minute. I mean I miss her
already and it hasn’t even been a day yet. It’s not the same with her as it’s
been with other girls I’ve dated. After a few weeks, maybe a couple of months,
I always found reasons that I didn’t want to be with them anymore, but with Jo
I honestly think I like her more now than I did the first day we met. She’s not
just some girl I’m dating; she’s my best friend.”

 “I know.
Maybe we can work it out so we head back early so you two have a week or two
together before school starts up again.”

 “That would
be really good, but I probably won’t say anything to her until we know for
sure.”

 There was a
long pause.

 “I told her
I loved her. It kind of slipped out one night at a baseball game I was
shooting.”

 “Did you
mean it?”

 “I wouldn’t
have said it if I hadn’t meant it,” I said, a little annoyed that she would
even ask me that.

 “How did she
take it?”

 “She said
she loved me back.”

 “Has she
ever dated anyone else?”

 “No.”

 “Well, then
be careful. Whether you two end up together, like it or not, you are her first
love and you will be the one she remembers for the rest of her life.”

 “Was dad
your first love?”

 “Oh honey. I
was twenty-one when I met your daddy and I did love him very much, but my first
love was a boy named Michael Zimmerman. I was seventeen and he was a lifeguard
at the pool near our house. God he was beautiful,” and she laughed. “You know
what I remember the most?”

 “What?”

 “I remember
his hair. He had the most beautiful chestnut-brown hair.”

 “What
happened?”

 “Like
everything else, my parents. They thought that seventeen was too young to be
dating. But boy, we had a great few weeks together.”

 “I think I
can see myself with Jo for the rest of my life.”

 Then my
mother reached over and squeezed my hand.

 “Just take
good care of her Alex. I’ve never had a man in my life who was worth a damn and
that’s why I raised you differently. Treat her like a queen and she’ll love you
the rest of your life.” Then she trailed off to somewhere else; somewhere in
her past and we didn’t say anything else to each other until after the sun set
behind the Iowa cornfields.

 We didn’t
make quite as good of time as we would have liked, but it didn’t matter much to
either of us since we didn’t really have anywhere else to be. We pulled up to
the white, two-story house in the little college town of Northfield just after
eight, and climbed the same steps to the same door I had come to know so well
over the past several years. A key was taped to the front with a note. My
mother pulled it off and turned to look at me shaking her head.

 “Small town
security huh?” She said, and I smiled.

 The note was
brief.

  
‘Hope
you had a great trip. Clean bedding is in the linen closet.  Will be
       around tomorrow ‘round ten to make sure
you’re getting settled in. –T

 T was for
Theresa. She was the lady who owned the house. Her husband had owned the bank
in town before he died some years earlier. Now she rented out two of the three
homes they had owned around town, both of which were converted into apartments.

 It was all
we could do to unload the car before we both crashed hard for the night.

 The first
day back in Minnesota we went and spent the day at my grandmother’s house. It
was good to see her again. She was just about the tiniest lady I have ever seen
before or since, partially due to the worsening slight curve in her back.

 Everything
at her house was exactly the same, right down to the bald spot in her front
grass that she tried to make grow every year. I told her about Jo as we ate
sandwiches for lunch. She told us about my cousins and we went out to a local
buffet for dinner. She showed us her pear-apple tree that was so full of fruit
that it was breaking its branches and we gave her some photographs of us from
the previous year.

 “You’re
getting so big Alex,” she said wrapping her arms around my chest, a sign of how
short she was.

 When the
evening came, my mother and I went back to our little white apartment for the
night. 

 The next
morning I woke early and went for a run around this little town I had come to
know so well over the years. Up the street and around St. Olaf campus with the
beautiful chapel then down to St. Dominic’s Church and back home.

 When I got
back I walked in to the smell of my mother’s French toast.

 “Morning.
What do you want to do today? I was thinking that we could go on out to Doc’s
Dock and see how Doc and Stella are doing,” she said.

 I reached
into the fridge for a bottle of water.

 “That sounds
good, but I need to stop at Target and get some stuff.”

 “We can do
that on our way.” 

 After
breakfast Theresa dropped by, and I went into town to see what all had changed
while I was gone. A new Blockbuster video was going up along I-35 that ran
through town, but other than that everything looked the same. There was the
quarterback club where mom and I could get a delicious burger, fries and coke
for $4.95, the library overlooking downtown that got dusted in orange and
yellow leaves every autumn, the little newspaper that found a way to print a
daily edition, Good-bye Blue Mondays coffee shop that served a spicy Mexican
hot chocolate that would put all other hot chocolates to shame and my favorite
sandwich shop in the entire world- Hogan Brothers. I wanted to go around and
buy up all of my favorite eats, but I knew I had to pace myself. So, I settled
on a Mexican hot chocolate from Good Bye Blue Mondays, or Blue Mondays for
short, which was always full of people since Carleton College and St. Olaf
University were both within walking distance.

 I bought my
beverage and walked down past the bank where Jessie James was killed, to the
edge of the Canon river that ran through the center of town. Afterwards I
visited the library and a few of the shops, then decided to see if mom was
ready to head out to Doc’s.

 “I’ll be
ready to go in a few minutes,” she told me as I walked into the house. “Theresa
said that some family from California should be here today to rent the bottom
apartment.”

 I found my
fishing pole and tackle box and went outside to see what damage a year of
disuse had done.

 On a white
table in the front yard I opened my tackle box and rummaged around, taking
inventory of what I had and what I needed to get from Target when we stopped.
Then I moved on to my reel.

 As I stood
there with my reel in my hand, a blue SUV pulled into the drive next to my
mom’s car.
This must be the family from California.

 A husband
and wife climbed out and the wife stretched. Then a boy with shaggy brown hair
and a girl with blonde curls, like my mothers, climbed out of the back. They
both looked to be about my age.

 “Hi, how you
doin? I’m Steve,” the father said to me as he walked up to shake my hand. “You
staying upstairs?”

 “Yeah, my
mom and I are,” I replied shaking his hand.

 “Well, this
is Jennifer my wife, and that’s Nathan and Kristina. We’re from California.”
Then he leaned back to stretch.

 “We’re from
Denver,” I replied looking past him at his wife and kids.

 They looked
like a family that you would see in a catalogue trying to sell you something.
They were all too damn attractive; Steve, Jennifer, Nathan AND Kristina.

 “Oh, hello!”
my mother said from the second-floor deck. “You must be the Browns. Theresa
said you would be here sometime today.” Then she came down the steps and shook
their hands.

 “I’m Steve.”

 “I’m
Jennifer.”

 “And, these
are my twins Nathan and Kristina,” Steve said.

 
Twins?
They don’t look like twins. Although, they do look a lot alike. They must be
fraternal.

 “Twins?” My
mother asked.

 “Yep, only
four minutes apart,” Steve said, and I caught Nathan rolling his eyes as he
pulled a backpack out of the back.    

 “I think
Theresa left a key and a note for you on the front door there. Alex and I were
just about to head out. Can I help with anything?”

 Jennifer
walked up to the front and retrieved the note and key.

 “No, I think
we’ll be fine. We’re just going to settle in and get washed up,” Steve replied.

 “Do you know
where the nearest grocery store is?” Jennifer asked.

 “There are
two in town,” and my mother gave them directions and drew a small map on the
back of Theresa’s note.

 I walked up
and shook Nathan’s hand who simply said: “Hey”. Then I walked up to Kristina.

 “I’m Alex.”

 “I’m Kris,”
she said brushing her hair back behind one ear. “You like fishing? That’s all
Nate’s been able to talk about. There aren’t a ton of places to fish where we
live.”

 Now I need
to take a minute to mention that there are pretty girls and attractive girls
and then there are those rare few who are so beautiful you can’t help but look
at them because they don’t quite seem real. Kris was the latter.

 “Cool,” I
said turning to Nathan, who was hauling a second load of luggage into the
house. “If you want I know some great places to go.”

 “Cool,” he
said continuing into the house.

 “Well, like
my mom said, we were just heading out, so I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

 “Okay.”

 My mother
and I drove out to the edge of town to Target. Mom bought some groceries and
toiletries that we didn’t want to pack with us, and I picked up a fishing
license and a new lure.

 We pulled up
to Doc’s Dock and it looked like nothing had changed. The windows were still
dusted with a patina of antique spider webs and the tint of cigarette smoke. A
neon sign hung in the window reading: “Budweiser Sold Here”, that hadn’t
blinked with life since Elvis served in the military. Willows on the edge of
the river rustled in the breeze.

 The inside
of the bar smelled like wet wood and the inside of my tackle box. A single
customer nursed a glass of something golden and Stella walked over to greet us
with a look like she had been expecting us all along.

 “Well there
you are? Where you been all this time?” Stella asked.

 My mother
laughed and walked behind the bar giving Stella a hug.

 “Oh, you
shouldn’t come behind the bar while I got customers dear.”

 “Oh, sorry.
Of course,” and my mother tip-toed back to her safe zone.

 “So, you
back for a while?”

 “Yeah, Alex
and I thought it would be nice to come up north for a while- do some fishing,
maybe sell some brooms.”

 “Mm, hmm,”
Stella replied. Then she turned and looked at me. “Well, aint you growed up?”
she said finally smiling to show her complete lack of teeth. “You’s bigger than
you was last time I seen you.”

 I didn’t
know how to answer that so I just smiled.

 “Is it still
a dollar to fish on the docks?” My mother asked.

 “Yep.”

 “Well,
here,” and she pulled out a dollar bill and layed it on the bar. “Why don’t you
go out and do some fishing Alex?”

 “You need a
mark,” Stella replied reaching behind the counter.

 I had
forgotten until now that everyone fishing from the three, half-falling-down,
wooden docks on this side of the river had to pay a dollar and get a black X on
the back of their hand. This was absurd on multiple levels, but all two of us
who ever fished from the docks just humored Doc and his wife. I accepted my
liquid brand and went out to assess the water.