If I Lose Her (9 page)

 The drive
back to Colorado wasn’t nearly as fun as the drive to Minnesota for either my
mother or I since I was upset that she was talking to Peter or seeing Peter or
whatever it was she was doing with Peter, and she was frustrated that I
wouldn’t just leave it alone and let her make her own decisions. We made the
usual stops for gas and stuck to food that could be eaten on the way.

 I decided
the best way to tell Jo about everything that happened between Kris and I was
to put it in a letter and give it to her when I saw her. This way I could see
that it all came out clearly and the way I wanted it to. It took me three
drafts, but there it was, folded and ready to go.

 We got home
around 8:30.

 I helped mom
unpack our luggage. Then I changed my clothes so that I didn’t smell entirely
like I had just been in a car for fourteen hours and explained that I was going
to see Jo. Mom wished me luck and I left.

 9:30 was
pushing it a bit to just drop by her parents house, but this was a special
occasion and I knew Jo would be at least as excited to see me as I was her, so
I bought two-dozen red roses and pulled up to her front door. The lights were
on and a car was in the driveway that I didn’t recognize. It didn’t matter.

 With roses
and letter in hand I walked up to her door. I was nervous. Jo and I obviously
knew each other, but ten weeks is ten weeks. Some of the sweat on my palms had
to be from my excitement to see her anyway.

 I wiped my
palms on my jeans and knocked on the door. My heart was rising up in my chest.

 Jo answered.
It took her a second to register who it was standing in front of her. Then she
screeched louder than I had ever heard her screech, and she flung herself into
my arms. I spun her around and squeezed her tightly.

 “Alex! What
are you doing here? I thought you weren’t back for two more weeks.”

 “Ha ha, I
know right? Mom and I talked about it and thought it would be fun to come back
a few weeks early so that we could spend some time together before summer was
over.”

 “Oh my god
Alex, I’ve missed you so much,” she said burying her nose into my neck.

 “Ah babe,
I’ve missed you too. You smell sooo good. Your shirt ran out of smell about a
week after I arrived. I wrapped it around my pillow so that I could smell you
when I fell asleep. These are for you,” I said pulling her back so I could get
a better look at her, and handing her the flowers and letter. “You look great.
And you’re all dressed up.”

 As soon as I
said that the look on her face changed from excitement to worry, and she put
her hand over her mouth. “Oh, god Alex.”

 “What?” I
asked as I saw she was holding a photograph. I reached out and took it from her
hand.

 It was a
photo of her, and by the looks of how she was dressed it had been taken that
night at some formal occasion…with another guy.

 “What is
this?” I asked looking up at her.

 “Jo, what’s
going on?” Someone else asked from the house.

 I turned and
saw the guy in the photo standing in the open doorway of her house.

 “Alex, I can
explain,” Jo said reaching for my arm.

 I pulled
away. “Explain what? What’s going on?”

 “Jo, is
everything okay?” The guy in the doorway asked, stepping out onto the porch.

 “Who the
hell are you?” I asked taking a step forward, but Jo stopped me. 

 “Yes,
everything’s okay, Paul. Please, go back inside. I’ll be in in a minute.”

 I waited for
Paul to finish looking me over and go back inside. Then Jo turned back to me.

 “Who’s Paul,
Jolene?”

 “He’s a
friend of my parents. They wanted me to go with him to this ROTC officer’s ball
downtown. I didn’t want to go, but they kept on me about it until I finally
said yes. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

 “Not that
big of a deal huh? Great. So, I’m gone for a couple of months and you go off
dancing with the soldiers?”

 “Alex, it’s
not like that. I’ve known him since we were like ten or something.”

 “So it was
just a dance?”

 “Yes, it was
just a dance.”

 “Was it just
a dance for him, Jo, or does he like you?”

 She didn’t
say anything.

 “Was there
just a kiss afterwards? Maybe JUST a little touching?”

 Then she
slapped me.

 It took a
second to recover before I looked back at her and saw the tears streaking down
her cheeks. She walked up to me and put her finger on my chest. “I have never
let anyone touch me, Alex, the way I let you touch me,” she said clearly trying
to hold back just how much I had crossed the line.

 I put my
hand over my eye and rubbed my face. Then I reached for her shoulder.  
“Jo I–”

 But she
pushed my hand away and went back into the house.

 I turned and
walked away, got in my car and drove off.

 It didn’t
even hit me until I was almost home how much of an idiot I had been.

Especially since I
knew that right about then she was opening my confessional letter I had put in
the flowers and reading about all the things I had done that summer.

 All the way
home from Minnesota all I could do was hope that she would understand and
forgive me for what I had done, which she would have I’m sure, even though what
I had done was so much more of a screw up than her going to some stupid dance
with some guy she grew up with.

 “Who’s the
asshole now?” I said looking at myself in the rear-view mirror.

 When my exit
came on Sixth Avenue I didn’t take it. Instead I drove to a late-night
Starbucks in Golden, bought myself a Venti Latte and headed up Lookout Mountain
to think.

 I dropped
Aerosmith’s ‘Nine Lives’ into the tape deck and let Steven Tyler scream at me
while I maneuvered up the hairpin curves.

 It was
pretty late, around 10:30 I think when I rounded a curve and saw something jump
from the trees into the street.

 
Shit!
I swerved barely missing the slender animal as it jumped into the trees on the
other side of the road. My heart was beating.
Thank God I’m only going 25.

 I pulled up
to my favorite spot, laid the blanket out on the hood of the car, now musty
smelling from months of disuse, and sat down. It was so quiet up there while I
looked out over Golden. Lakewood. Aurora. Denver. Littleton. Aurora. I could
almost draw lines in the air where each city ended and the next began. I looked
down at the Coors Brewery, the Colorado school of Mines campus and Table
Mountain. I looked down the stretch of Sixth Avenue to Downtown Denver and saw
Mile High Stadium glowing in the night like a band of luminous white diamonds,
and I looked out into the distance to the tiny-white-tent peaks of Denver
International Airport.

 I took
another sip of my cooling coffee and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.
The night air was getting cold this high up.

 I picked up
the pad of paper I had taken out of the back of the car and started writing.

 
My
dearest Jolene,

 Please
let me start by saying how sorry I am for getting so upset at you. You were
right, you going out on a dance with someone IS no big deal. I was so excited
to get home and see you. Then when I saw that other guy I guess I got more
confused than anything, which is no excuse. Please believe me, I’m not writing
this to make excuses, I’m writing this to say I’m sorry. I’m SO very sorry. I
should never have questioned your faithfulness. I know you love me, and I love
you so much. Then on top of everything I said those awful things. You have
no
idea
how badly I wish I could take them back. I know that you wouldn’t let
anything go on like that.

 I also
want to apologize for the timing of everything. I wrote you that letter
expecting to be there when you read it so that I could answer any questions you
had and try to assure you that nothing else happened between Kris and I. Then I
had to go off and be a total ass.

 I know
that things like this can fracture a relationship beyond repair, but I really
hope that’s not the case. I meant it when I told you that I love you. Summer
was awful without you, and I can’t imagine going back to school knowing that I
can’t have lunch with you or give you a ride home or that I won’t find any more
of your letters squeezed through the slats in my locker. It’s too much! Please
forgive me. I’m so so sorry. I love you.
          Love,

       -Alex

 I felt my
eyes getting sore and the back of my throat starting to burn as I wrote it.

 I looked at
my phone. No calls. No messages.

 It was
nearly midnight now.
I should get home.

 
I
folded up the letter and slid it into my rear pocket. I folded the blanket,
tossed it onto the passenger seat and got in.

 I started
making my way back down when the music came back on. It must have been between
songs because it went from complete silence to full Steven Tyler, and it
startled me. I looked down to turn the volume from emotional disaster to
something sane.    When I looked up again I had just enough time to
see the deer in my headlights.

 I swerved
but clipped it.

 The window
smashed and my headlights went out.

 I saw the
edge of the road and swerved to compensate.

 It was too
late.

 The loose
gravel on the roadside pulled my backend around, and the car flipped.

 I remember
the world outside my window slowly slowly turning upside down.

 Then a pain
shot through the side of my head, and I blacked out.

 I woke up in
a dimly lit hospital room with a heart monitor beeping in my ear. My head hurt.
Something was pulling at a sore spot on my arm. When I lifted it to have a look
I saw a tube sticking out. I touched my head. There was cloth…some sort of
cloth wrapped around my head. It took me a minute to focus my vision. Near the
end of my bed was someone. Wrapped in a…blanket. It was Jo, wrapped in a
blanket. She was asleep. There was another chair with a blanket. An empty
chair. I didn’t see anyone else.

 “Jo,” I
quietly said trying to sit up.

 She opened
her eyes.

 “Hey you,”
and she smiled, wiping the hair from her face and walking over to me.

 “What’s
going on? Where am I?”

 “You’re in
the hospital. You hit a deer coming down lookout mountain road and flipped your
car. The bar tender who works at the bar at the top of the hill heard the crash
when she was driving home down the mountain, and she called an ambulance. They
had to cut your car in half with the Jaws of Life to get you out because you
were wedged between two trees pretty bad,” she said gently touching my face.

 “How long
have I been here?”

 “About two
days.”

 “Am I
alright?” I asked starting to move every body part I could think of. “My head
hurts, but I think I can feel everything.”

 She smiled
and brushed my cheek. “Yeah, you’re alright. Just a concussion from smashing
the side window with your head.”

 “So, I’m
concussed huh?”

 She laughed.
“Yep you’re fully concussed, but the doctor’s pretty sure you’ll survive.”

 Then my
mother walked in with two cups of something hot.

 “Alex!” She
said setting the cups down and hugging me. “Oh thank you Jesus. How do you
feel?”

 “Pretty
concussed.”

 “Pretty
what? Should I call the doctor?”

 I smiled and
Jo shook her head.

 “Oh, I get
it. From the… very funny,” and she sat down on the edge of my bed. “The doctor
said you should be fine, and that we should let you wake up on your own, but
you hear about people losing their memory in books and in TV shows and…I’m just
glad you’re awake. Are you hungry? We could get you something to eat. The
cafeteria isn’t all that bad.”

 “It’s pretty
bad,” Jo countered.

 “Okay, its
pretty bad, but I could get you some jell-o or something.”

 “I’m okay.
My stomach is all over the place.”

 “Yeah,
that’s probably the medicine. It might take a few days for your appetite to
come back. How’s your head feel?”

 “It hurts.
So does my lip.”

 “Yeah? Well,
you got punched in the face by a car.”

 I laughed.
Then pain streaked through my head and I winced.

 “Ew, ok
maybe enough with the jokes for now,” she said rubbing my leg. “Jo, honey,
here’s your coffee.”

 “Coffee
huh?”

 She
shrugged. “It’s not exactly a Starbucks down there.”

 “Alex, I’m
so glad you’re okay,” my mother said. “When I heard that you had been in an
accident it just tore me in half, and I kept thinking how things haven’t been…”

 “Mom,” I
said holding up my hand. “Please. It’s okay.”

 She wiped an
eye and took a deep breath then took my hand and kissed the back of it. She
stood up. “Well, I know you two have some stuff to talk about so I’m going to
go find you something to eat.” Then she left.

 “Jo I–”

 “Shh Alex,
let me talk first,” she said putting a finger on my lips. “When your mom called
and told me that you had been in an accident I almost passed out. I thought there’s
no way I can lose you like this, not now, not after…”

 Then she
leaned onto my chest and started crying.

 “All I could
think about was how the last time I saw you I slapped you in the face. I’m so
sorry Alex. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I would never have gone
out with Paul if I thought you would have a problem with it, and I tried to
call you and talk to you about it but there was no answer. And…”

 “Jo, Jo.
Look at me. It’s okay. I was such an asshole about the whole thing. You were
right, it wasn’t a big deal. I trust you; I don’t know why I said what I said.
Did you read the letter?”

 “You were in
the emergency room and your mom said they found a letter on you so I read it
and saw how you said you were sorry about our fight and about Minnesota and how
you expected to be there when I read it. I had been too angry with you to read
the other one you gave me, so I pulled it out of my purse and read it then. And
Alex, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I trust you too. I don’t want this to come
between us either. I didn’t even get the chance to tell you how much I missed
you this summer.”

 “I missed
you too,” I said laying my hand on the back of her head. “Can we just go back to
how things were before I left–before this summer?”

 “Please,”
she said lifting her feet onto the bed.

 I draped the
top blanket over her, and we just lay there next to each other letting the pain
of all that had happened shrink away.

 When mom
came back with a plate of something covered in plastic, Jo was asleep, curled
up next to me.

 “Hey,” she
whispered. “How is everything? Are you two okay?”

 I
nodded.        

 “Good. I
called her right after I heard where they had taken you and she came right
down. She’s been in that chair the whole time. I’ve tried to get her to go take
a walk down to the cafeteria or outside for some fresh air but she’s refused to
leave. She wanted to be here when you woke up.”

 I smiled.

 She sat
down, set the food on the table and started nursing her coffee.
         I closed my eyes. I had never
slept with anyone before.
This is nice
, I thought to myself. Then I fell
asleep.

 I was in the
hospital through the next day while the doctors ran more tests, to make sure my
brain hadn’t swollen. I guess a concussion can be anything from minor to pretty
serious, so they didn’t want to let me go until they knew I was alright. I laid
around while Jo told me about her summer at Camera Obscura Gallery downtown.

 In the time
I was gone the gallery had had two separate showings, which Jo helped hang. She
also flipped through almost every book in their little bookstore and met more
than a dozen local and national photographers. She said that instead of a lunch
break every day, around 2 o’clock Hal Gould, the gallery’s owner, would host a
coffee break complete with cheese board, fruit, nuts and a variety of other
little bits that he or the curator, Loretta, would bring to the table. In fact
Hal’s coffee breaks were so well known, she started expecting photographers to
drop by nearly twice a week always bringing something special to add to the
treats.

 “Ah Alex, it
was so great getting to be at the gallery all summer. One of the photographers
who came in almost every week it seemed like, was William Corey, a photographer
from Boulder. Just before coffee break one afternoon, he brought in prints from
a series he had shot on his last trip to Japan, ‘Zen Gardens in Kyoto’ I think
it was called, and they were amazing. He uses an old, large-format bellows
camera that is eight inches wide and twenty inches long, which makes photos
that are this really cool rectangular shape, and Alex, the colors are so
AMAZING! I mean I could swear that I was actually looking at a real garden
laying spread out in front of me. There was one of a stone fountain with leaves
lying all around it and one with these red bridges like something you would
think out of Memoirs of a Geisha. Oh, and there was one that he shot from
inside a wooden porch looking out onto a garden of trees that were turning the
brightest red I think I’ve ever seen,” she said gesturing with her hands as she
tried to explain the compositions and shapes. As she spoke I would watch her
eyes wander past me, back to the images she was remembering.

 “One of the
two photographers I got to help hang was Phil Borges, who does work for
National Geographic and Amnesty International. He goes to remote locations like
Tibet and India and photographs indigenous people. He tries to not just take
their pictures but talk to the people and work with them until they let him
capture their image.  He’ll shoot with a Polaroid back and give the people
he’s photographing a copy. He told me that for some of these people, it’s
probably the only photo they’ve ever had of themselves. His stuff is really
interesting too. It’s really solemn, and the colors are so subtle that they
almost look black and white when you first glance at them.

 “I’ve
learned so much from working at the gallery Alex. It’s like someone has just
opened my brain and dumped in the collected photographic genius from the last
hundred years.

 “Oh, and
I’ve got some really great news.”

 “What’s
that?”

 “I was
talking about some of my underwater photography to Loretta, Camera Obscura’s
curator, and she wanted me to bring in a few pieces to show her and Hal. Well,
I took in three prints and they really liked them, and they want me to do a
solo show!”

 “Are you
kidding? That’s great, babe! Congratulations.”

 “They said
I’ll be the youngest artist they’ve ever hung. Did you hear that? They called
me an ARTIST. Loretta said that they’ve wanted to start showing work from some
younger artists to try and draw in a new generation of photo buyers.”

 “Wow, how
much of the underwater stuff have you done now?”

 “Probably
about a half-dozen pieces. Which, I want to show you some of when you get
home.”

 Just about
this time my mother came back in the room to tell me that they were ready to
finally let me go home, which was fine with me since I was about to go crazy
lying around in bed all day. So, Jo and my mother helped me out of bed even
though I assured them I could handle it myself, and we headed home.

 I slept away
the better part of the next two days, and when I was awake, either Jo or my
mother were right there to make sure I had anything I could possibly need.

 Jo and I sat
on my living room couch curled up under one of the blankets my mother kept
beside the couch for movie watching. I was flipping through channels on
television and Jo was trying to finish the last forty or fifty pages of
‘Angela’s Ashes’ without being distracted by the barrage of noise. Nothing was
on so I clicked the television off and turned to her.

 “I thought
you said you had something you wanted to show me.”

 “Huh?” She
asked not lifting her eyes from her page.

 “Back in the
hospital. You said you had some prints you wanted to show me.”

 Now she held
her spot and looked up at me. “I do. It’s some of the stuff I was working on
over the summer while you were gone.”

 “Well, let’s
go see them.”

 “Are you
sure you’re up for it?”

  “Yes,
I’m so ready to get out of this house and DO something.”

 “Maybe your
mom can run us over to my house.”

 “No, no.
I’ll drive us.”

 “Are you
sure you’re really ready to be driving again? I mean it’s been less than a
week.”

 “I’m fine,”
I said jumping up. Let me just change my shirt and get my mom’s keys.

 We walked
out to the garage. I opened the garage door and we climbed into the grey car I
had driven countless times, all the way to Minnesota and back.

 I sat down
and buckled my seat belt.

 I felt my
stomach tighten and my hands started to shake.

 I looked at
them.

 I took a
breath and rubbed the steering wheel.

 “Are you
okay?”

 “Yeah, I
guess I’m a little more shaken up than I thought,” I said looking at her.

 “Maybe we
should get your mom to take us.”

 “No, I’ll be
okay. I need to drive again sometime anyways right?”

 I put the
key in the ignition, and we slowly backed out of the driveway.

 It was
peculiar. I had been driving for years now, and it was always something I did
without even thinking about it, like flipping a light switch or surfing the
internet, but now I had this heightened awareness that the machines around me,
in driveways, in parking lots, on the road, could kill me. We made it to Jo’s
house without any trouble, but neither of us had said anything to each other on
the way.

 Her parents
and sister were off listening to a guest lecturer at their church.

 I followed
Jo into the house and up to her room where the photos were that she wanted to
show me, which felt like I was walking on hallowed ground since I wasn’t
allowed up near her bedroom when her parents were home. She opened the bedroom
door and I looked around as I walked in. Christmas lights framed her bedroom window
and a Fiona Apple poster hung over her bed. There were dried flowers covering
the top of her dresser, pictures of me squeezed in the crevices of her vanity
mirror and stacks of my letters on a small table by her bed. In the corner of
her room was a couch where large prints sat like guests at a dinner party
waiting to be served cocktails. They were wrapped in white plastic so I
couldn’t see them until she lifted the first one out of its protective
covering.

 “Oh my god
Jo, are you kidding me? How did you do this?” I asked.

 Her face lit
up to my reaction. Then I reached out and took the print from her.

 The image
was taken from above a young woman in a white dress that floated out around her
while she knelt in water with her arms held out over her head. The photo was
aged and the colors were muted down almost to a kind of metallic sepia. A drop
of vibrant color came from purple wilted flowers that the woman held in her
hands.

 “This is
really beautiful Jo. Is it Amy?”