"Let's Say It Never Happened"
by
Tim Stillman
"Let's say it never happened," Tony whispered as we stood on the terrace of the home, away from the party inside. He was nursing his third martini and in memory of the good times we had had together, in spite of my baleful outlook on things, like that campus in midnight moonlight starting and ending with the yellow coating the lamps dazzled on parts of it heaping in November glow as I shivered in my evening wear and Tony turned to me and said, "I was wrong and you were too and if I need my karma back sometime I think it might as well begin here."
I'd no earthly idea what he was talking about and that worried me for it was the night of October fest and the university where I still worked and he, a student when we met, a teacher now, he in Math, and I in English literature; it had not been love at first sight; more like a comforting we had not known before. We had met cute, but it was not our fault; I had finished class in Twain that day and was sitting at my desk, eyes closed, rubbing them, my glasses knocked off the table by Tony as he was walking to the door to his next class, on this rainy day, getting his raincoat on, knocking them straight onto the floor, breaking the left lens as he walked on them before realizing it. He apologized so wonderfully, offered to pay for them. I said no matter, I carry a second pair, as I pulled them out of my drawer, putting them on. He, worried, looked more beautiful than ever.
I am blind without them and have several things wrong with my eyes that make them delicate. After explaining all of this over time later on he finally told me to stop because after all, "it takes a few broken eyes to make an eyelet." And we laughed at the table at the College Urn because with our earnings we could afford only the reasonably low prices here as one day at our favorite table, fourth one in the back, left of the curtain with the university colors, I said, "Tony, we have to stop being cute; I mean there is more in life than being cute--and I don't mean that--kind of cute--you are adorable; but that is not the point." I had cut him off at the pass at every cute joke I had opened the door for, and glad I had only thought cutting him off---
"You are not complicated," he said to me then, as he said to me now at the head master's party, as Tony and I stood on the terrace in the deep Falling wind, and I said, "It's been fun," and I looked away from him for I thought I might weep a little, I said, just a little. He turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder. I took his hand and kissed its palm.
"You mean it, don't you Tony? I mean," and here I shuddered, "because everything is going right, because I see so much happiness now, I mean really see it, you've developed a Yogi phase and will boot me out because, not because I'm balding and pleasingly plump and giddy these days, or because you are strong and athletic and craggy faced, it's because--my world has spread--and you want knockers to do with it." I closed my eyes, waited for a knockers joke, got one, then walked to the railing of the terrace as he followed me.
"Paddy, look," Tony started, then finished his drink---
"You drink too much. Who will you have to drive you home from parties in the late night hours or to them in the pink setting afternoon hours?"
Tony sat down the drink and angled off next to me, shooting his cuffs, like men did in movies made in America in the forties, for we were both Bogie and Robinson fans, and he said, "Look at it this way, love" and his amber eyes broke my heart, that someone like me from the beer and skittles crowd back in the day, could wind up with this thoroughly decent, completely handsome, winsomely forgiving man, and he did then what he always did when we were both scared, and we both were, we hugged each other, as he kissed my bald spot, he being the taller of course, and he pulled back, as we remembered we were guests at the party which was still going strong in the red flocked living room with the silver glowy lit chandelier and the wine and the songs and the teachers and students and professors, as he smiled at me, as I turned from him. It was the first time I had done that on purpose to him. It was how I acted when afraid of someone, from childhood onward.
He spoke softly and distinctly, wanting to get the words right. He said, and the wind got colder, "It's not that you take things so seriously; many do and it's a good thing; and it's not that I take things not so seriously; and many do and that too is a good thing." He stopped for a while and I wondered if he was thinking of our first kiss that Spring night when he came home with me and for the first time spent the night with me, how we held each other and whispered we fancied one another and how deliciously good life was then and holding someone who held you in return. I wondered if he remembered the first time we made love, for it hadn't been that night he spent with me first time, we had lain there naked and explored and touched and told our most intimate most funny most childlike most silly secrets to each other. And I wondered if he felt that was the best night of love making above and beyond all the nights of us afterwards.
"It's spread," I turned to him. "My gloomy Gus has spread and you want out," to which he told me, as he touched my hands and held them in his Tony hands, "I never knew the gloomy Gus of you, I knew the sweet Paddy and I knew the greens where we had our picnics and I saw you as you." He cut off the word and said, "Look, let's just go back to the party, they are seeing us out here in the cold gesticulating around and must think us utter fools. Never happened. We'll be together till the end."
He smiled and his eyes danced that Tony dance and I said, "I love you." And he was as good as his word, and we went back to the party and it was as if the discussion never happened. Till months later, I happened to find his diary, not looking for it, not knowing he had ever kept one, and feeling on odds and ends that brisk March Sunday when Tony was away at meetings and I was using the empty hours tidying up our flat I happened to it shoved between books on his shelves--right between The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. and City of Night, to be specific, and I know I should have put it back, but I sat down and turned almost immediately to the part written about the October fest and our strange conversation on the terrace that windy cold night that left me in shivers for some time, not only from the weather, but it took us both a bit to build up our relationship to where it was again and I thought it was good. And Tony in his diary before and after then always said he loved me and it was good.
BUT...
Well, here's what he wrote after that party weekend, at ll:45 p.m. the night of the first day when it was back to classes as usual and I was asleep beside him:
"There's no one to say it to--I can't say it to Paddy, for it will break his kind compassionate heart and I would rather do myself in than that. So I will try it out on myself alone instead. I have never read that a person who is so serious is the shallowest of the lot. It's easy to be too serious, it's easy to be melancholy; god knows the world gives us infinities of reasons. It takes courage to not be sad, to in spite of things feel the world is right, if not some of the people in it, that the sun does come up in the morning whether or not you've been beating yourself all night on the heath or considering drowning yourself in a fjord. The sun does not care and people don't care how you conduct your lives.
"I love the telly and funny movies and sitcoms and I love to be at the University Urn making the same stale jokes of whose ashes are in the urn and has anyone seen it then ever anyway, with my Paddy and our friends and some students sometimes, lifting glasses of ale on high, and Paddy loves it too; he always used to be morose and things, he says, and now he sees it all with a lighter air, it costs the same--nothing--and you feel better at it the light way. You never hear anyone say damn this bloke is so comical and so laugh a minute and seems to me he's too damned complex for me, too seriously being happy and he's plunging the depths doing that and is leagues wiser and profound than I am so let's leave him be and try to find someone who's so serious, he's an absolute windbag of a gasser, a bluebird in the sky singing sparkly songs of Freud and Jung, just tickles our fancies, that. It's a prejudice in a kind of way, you know. And I guess I'm just sounding off a mite because it bothers me. It just does."
I put the blue bound diary in my lap. It had gotten late without my realizing it as I lay my head back against the chair antimacassar and drifted off for a time to sleep, the wind whistling spring come soon at the windows and walls and doors. I don't know how long it had been when I felt my hands being moved; I was still half asleep when he kissed my forehead; I opened my eyes and Tony said, "Hi, love," and he smiled and he helped me up and we went to the kitchen for a cuppa tea and as we sat at our little table, across from each other, he talked about his day and said to remember to meet him at the Student Center for lunch tomorrow. And in time we finished. I put the cups and saucer and biscuit plate in the sink. We went to bed and made love and slept and woke in the morning peacefully in each other's arms.
The sun was buttery up high as we walked cross the quad to our classes. It was quite nice, all of it, actually. Quite nice indeed.