Entropy and Sorrow's Kiss

And now, as suddenly he knew that without him she would collapse before his eyes.

If they insisted in confronting their futures as they had lived their past, he knew they would perish. There had to be change. Now, tonight.

She pulled back from him, some force or realization compelled her now, and he watched as she took off her blazer. She handed it to him, then slowly unbuttoned her blouse, and this too she handed him. She reached behind her back with both hands and unfastened her brassiere, and he watched it fall away to the floor. She reached out and took his left hand and brought it to her right breast; he watched her lower lip trembling, saw her eyes grow dewy with a sorrow that possessed her completely. His hand fell to the skin of her breast and she laid his hand there with both of hers, forcing his hand into the yielding softness.

It was obvious. He felt it immediately. Like a spongy-hard golf ball – the mass was instantly recognizable as out-of-place and full of malevolent purpose. He felt himself looking at the breast, then up at her face; she was crying quietly now, her eyes closed, her soul bared, and it looked to him as if she was ashamed of her body, ashamed that it had failed her – and him – in some crucial way.

And she was waiting for him.

Waiting for the polite goodbyes that had to come next.

But then she felt him bending to her breast, and he kissed her there. Gently. And again.

'I'm so scared,' she thought. She felt him there, felt his lips caressing her with such knowing tenderness. Quiet waves of fear washed over her, building, threatening to consume her if she stood in this silence – alone – for too long.

"I'm so scared!" she cried out loudly, losing herself in the undulating terrain of remorse and fear that dominated this new landscape. She was holding onto him with relentless tension pressing in from every direction; this new – and unfamiliar – feeling was infantile in it's capacity to invoke an infinite regression, longing for a father's pure love. Life, death, an endless circle of life and death; that's what she felt – she longed to love her father as she never had, simply, purely, innocently – and here was this man, so simple, so pure, and perhaps more innocent than he knew. Emotions cascaded through this new landscape, and within the thundering mists of tears she felt him attached to her body as if he was cradling her soul through the crucible of her breast.

This man so simple, pure, and innocent. Was this the circle of life she had been dreaming of lately? Was HE her redemption? Did she even have the right to consider him thus?

She held his head with furious possessiveness etched over the features of her body, and she thought as she felt her muscles tremble that she was only as strong as an aspen leaf on a summer's breeze. There is life in the time of an aspen's leaves, she thought, the universe allows for even the tiniest miracle of life to dance under the afternoon sun.

But everything has it's time.

She dropped her face to his hair and drew in his scent, and she thought it smelled honest, and somehow decent, almost holy. Like life, she thought, honest, somehow decent if that was what you made of it.

Or life could be pure darkness, if that was your choice.

+++++

She woke sometime in the darkness; she heard him on the telephone saying he wouldn't be into work that morning, that he was taking personal time off to be with a friend, and she thought that sounded like a miracle in and of itself.

'A friend?'

'Could that be me?' Keeper, she may yet choose!

She could barely see him in the faint light of her bedroom – only the faintest glow from a little nightlight in the bathroom was seeping into the room – but she could make out that his clothes were off, and she felt that she was completely naked under the sheets. Then she remembered him carrying her to bed sometime after her meltdown, and she felt echoes of him when he held her, when he was stroking her face, kissing her forehead. He had run his fingers through her hair so gently, letting her feelings have free reign, and she had cried as she kissed him, as she had felt him responding to her as a man should respond to a woman. She had taken him in her mouth and taken his need and it had all felt so innocent. She had never done that with a man, had always thought it debased her, but with him the flow of give and take had felt so natural. He hadn't pushed her or demanded anything of her; he had simply enjoyed what she had given him and then held her as she fell asleep – her head nestled by his.

And now he was beside her, making sweet noises about hoping he wouldn't wake her but having to call in, of wanting to cook her breakfast, of needing to talk with her and hold her and kiss her. She nuzzled into him, smelling him, wrapping herself around him, and her mouth found his. His hands roamed her body unashamedly, and he explored the terrain around her neck and shoulders with his mouth, kissing here and nibbling there until he felt her trembling again, and then he was down between her thighs, probing, caressing, until she was lost in the wonder of life, craving the miracle of release.

And then he was inside her, his weight easy to bare as he slipped inside her, and he had made love so gently, so tenderly, that as they came together she had cried again at the simple beauty of the moment, and he had lowered his face to hers and kissed away her tears, holding her face while he told her how wonderful she was. As they came back to earth she held him again, held his head in the cradle of her neck, and she whispered sweet things in his ear as his breathing grew slower and deeper.

She drifted between memories of her father and the breath that warmed the side of her neck, and she struggled to perform the calculus that might reconcile these two men. What had happened, she wondered, to her father. What had driven him to surrender his soul to that madwoman he called his wife, only to seek the restitution of his soul in the arms of his daughter. They had never had sex, he had never been so craven, but his longing for her was a given, though an unspoken lust for his wife was never far removed. Only little Joanie, his daughter, had hated him for this simple duplicity. In the end she hated both her parents for their mendacity, for their shallow understanding of the pain they visited on their house, and the coarse, grating words that had passed for love.

But what of this man laying beside her now, she thought. What did she know of him? He talked sparingly of his life, his past, but he listened to her. Really listened to her. He noticed things; his eyes roamed all night long, taking in everything. She had looked at those eyes and instantly trusted them, knew she could depend on them to tell the truth, but slowly she had perceived something terribly unsettling in his eyes. His eyes saw past lies, past deceit, and wounded her when they recognized insincerity. His eyes smiled when they came across a simple truth, or happened upon a cherished memory, and she basked in the radiant glow she saw reflected in his eyes. But she was wary of his eyes now, for above all else in this world, she feared her past and what he might learn.

She knew that in the end there was little she could hold in her heart as truth. The truth of her life had scorched and burned her soul, and she hid from these truths as easily as she breathed. She recoiled from them, massaged them, and, she thought, buried them with never as much as a prayer. She buried her past with so little effort now that she never thought of it anymore, never thought of who she was, or what she had become.

'You are a liar,' her past said. 'You are a chameleon, a sycophant.'

And on those rare good days, when she almost felt good about herself, she was simply an actress.

'Am I acting now?' she said to herself when she felt him stir on her breast.

"What was that?" she heard him say.

"Hum? Did I say something?"

"You said, 'Am I acting now?'"

"I was thinking about you, Alan, and my life. I was feeling so wonderful for a while, you know, and then..." and she felt herself drifting into that landscape of tears and betrayal she called her life, and she felt herself falling... falling...

He leaned into the gales of her despair and held her, kissed her, willing her to come back to him. He gave her what comfort he could, but he could take no measure of her life's torment, he could only guess what betrayals had brought her to this precipice. All he could do was rely on experience, feel his way through her pain and be at her side if she needed him.

If she would let him.

He felt the anger and anguish that visited him daily on the streets, always the emotions that came for him, overwhelmed him, and he thought of the struggle to build walls around the violence and pain that lived with him on the streets of this life. It was easy to manage pain and uncertainty if you could put your feelings and fears in little compartments and lock them away at the end of the day, yet he knew in the end those walls had killed his marriage just as surely as his quiet infidelity had. It was a simple matter of control.

But you don't control love, massage it's contours with thoughtlessly oiled deceptions.

He could not have this woman, he understood, if his walls remained. Those walls would doom them both to the false judgements of silence, and verdicts rendered in silence would be as hollow as any truth they sought to explain. He felt his way through the realization that, by generalizing human experience – labeling and categorizing human misery to make it's wounding impulses seem more endurable – he had doomed himself to never really understand the misery he dealt with day after day on the streets. He was a bystander, a not-so-innocent bystander in the dramas that played out on the streets. He wondered how many lives he had touched so inadequately, how much torment lay smoldering outside the battlements of his walls. Why was it so hard to let human misery in, he thought. Why was another soul's wounded despair so hard to accept as a burden?

'No!' he thought, stunned by sudden insight. No! This pain was not a burden. It was a gift. It was a privilege to help another soul find peace. Worth any sacrifice. He knew that now. He could feel the truth in his bones.

He pulled her deeper into his embrace, and held her there in the knowledge he had gained, in the understanding she had led him to.

+++++

He was washing dishes, scrubbing an omelet pan as he whistled, looking out the window over the kitchen sink and listening to her as she made small talk. She was walking around the kitchen, chattering away about Eggs Benedict and which champagne was her favorite, then she came to him, put her arms around him and leaned into his back, her head on his shoulder. She ran her hand under his shirt, twirled her fingers through the hair on his belly while she nibbled at his back through the thin material of his undershirt.

He flipped off the water and turned to face her, and she smiled up at him, then ran her fingernails up his belly. He twisted under the assault, but she held firm, digging her nails in ever-so-gently until he got the message and relaxed. She kissed him, tenderly, slowly, and she felt his hands take her face and he pulled her back into the moment and looked into her eyes, suddenly very serious.

"Would it be silly to say that I think I'm falling in love with you, Ma'am?"

She leaned into him and kissed him, then pulled back and said, "Not if that's what you feel, Alan." She thought of all the fear that loomed in the distance as she looked at him, and she felt somehow – safe – here in his arms.

He watched as shadows played across her face, saw the happiness in her eyes and the fear he knew that lay under everything. "On the fridge, the card says you have an appointment today at 1:30. Want some company?"

She was suddenly caught between two contradictory impulses; first the fear she felt when she thought of the procedure they would perform this afternoon. Fear made her want to run in panic as if from an advancing storm, yet there was nowhere to hide. Second, she felt a real need to hold on to this man, this man who offered refuge from storms and battering gales, gales whose winds threatened to overwhelm her. She felt lonely when she thought of the road ahead, but she no longer felt alone. What a difference that was, she thought. She held on to the feeling, savored it for the rarity it had been in her life.

"They're going to do a needle biopsy, then schedule surgery, I mean I assume they'll schedule surgery..."

"What have they told you so far?"

"Not much, probably a radical mastectomy." She looked down at the floor as she talked.

"Is that as bad as it sounds?" he asked gently.

She continued to look down, then around the room, wondering when this world was going to disappear, when antiseptic wards would carry her away into the night. She shuddered at the silence she beheld...

"Anything you need to do before we head down?"

"Hum? No. I just, maybe I'll take a shower. How about you? You need to run home and change?"

"No, I keep a change in my gym bag, in the car."

"Wash my back?" she said, a twinkle of mischief passing through her eyes.

"S'pose that might be right fun, Ma'am," he said, looking at her with a grin spreading across his unshaven face, and dropping into his best Long Island style East Texas Redneck accent. "Don't mind if I do." He walked over to her and took her hand. "Mind if I finish the dishes later?"

She took his hand and looked at him, then stood up and walked toward her bedroom – pulling him along.

+++++

He was beside her in the recovery room, holding her hand. He looked at her tear-streaked face, knowing the news must have been very bad, and he leaned forward, wiped a tear off her cheek as another built in her eye and rolled down her face.

"Can I take you home tonight?" he asked, not knowing what else to say.

She shook her head. "No, they want to do the procedure in the morning. First thing."

"Is it bad?"

"I think so; about as bad as it gets, or so the doc said."

"Is their anybody I can call for you?"

"Alan, I don't really know how to say this, but you're basically all I've got. Most of the other people I know... well... I don't want them here. They are... were... part of another life, and that life's over. All over now."

"What about your parents?" he asked. The transformation was instantaneous and complete, he was shocked at the hatred he saw cross her face. "Are you sure you don't want me to call them?"

"No, I'm not sure," she said finally, resigned to the contradictions that ruled her universe.

"You have the number handy, or do you want to call them?"

"Let me think about it for a while, huh?"

"It's alright, Diane. We'll get through this."

"Oh, WE will?" she said, her voice full of fear and sarcasm. "This doesn't feel a lot like a we kind of deal, Alan."

He looked at her, measuring her strength, probing her despair. "Diane, you can do this alone if you want. That's certainly a choice you can make, and it's your right to make it. Just make sure that's what you really want. But before you do, could I give you some advice? It's free, so it might not be worth much, but you might at least listen."

She looked up at him, dark circles already etched under the skin of her eyes.

"We can learn from our mistakes, Diane, and if we survive them, hopefully we grow a little. If we don't learn, we keep making the same mistakes over and over. And I think one of the mistakes we all make is that... well, somehow, someway, we've forgotten how to forgive people. We live in this world concerned with our own lives, with our own survival, and we've lost sight of something very basic about our humanity over time. We've isolated ourselves, lost touch with each other, we've lost our sense of community, lost our ability to help one another, to rely on one another, to see each other through goods times – and bad. I get worried sometimes because I see this every day, and I see it everywhere... rich, poor, black, white, women, and men. We've become a nation of islands unto ourselves."

She looked at him, a question on her face.

"John Donne," Burnett said. "'No man is an island'. We need each other. We meet that need or we perish. And forgive me, but you're making a big mistake if you think I don't care about you. I want to... no, that's not quite right. I think I need to be here with you, Diane. I need you, need you more than anything else in this life right now. And I think you need me, too."

Her eyes were full of tears, her nose was running, and he leaned over to kiss her. First he kissed her on the forehead, then he kissed her lips. He held her face, felt her trembling, and he pulled the blanket on the bed up over her chest.

"I'd forgotten that, Alan. 'No man is an island.' That was a poem, wasn't it? I can remember reading it in high school, in front of class. I used to think there was something to it, but then I learned the truth. My father taught me the truth."

He looked at her, saw the coldness seeping back into her eyes, and he knew she was leaving him.

"My father taught me," she said, "that love is a fairy-tale, sold to women and men..."

"And is that all you learned from him, Diane? Or did he hurt you deeper than that?"

She looked up at him, cold fury building in every fiber of her being. "What would you know about it? What gives you the..."

"What, the right? You don't think I haven't seen abused children before, Joan?"

She started to think of a reply, but then the subterfuge of her name blasting into the light of day kicked her in the gut, brought her up short.

"Yeah, I know your name, your real name, and I could stand here and tell you that I know all about you, but let me be the first to say, Joan Dickinson, that in truth I don't know the first thing about you, but I've been with you for..." he looked down at his watch "... about twenty hours now, and yeah, I've read your files, and yes, I've heard all the stereotypical bullshit, seen it all, been there, done that. But let me tell you one true thing. That stuff doesn't mean shit. I've looked in your eyes, and I've seen your truth. The truth about you, in your heart. It's all in there, in your eyes. Now, here's that other truth again. No man is an island. I didn't believe that until last night, I've never believed that, not ever, not once in my life. But I do now... right now. But if you want to do this alone, that's your right, that'll be your choice. But I want to be here, now, with you."

"Alan?"

"Yes?"

"Alan. I'm only go to say this once, so listen. I want you to go now, go – and leave me be. Turn around right now and leave. Now."

+++++

Alan Burnett listened to the same oldies radio station he listened to everyday, that AM station that had been around since a year longer than forever and that was still lost in a play-list that seemed planted deep somewhere north of the sixties. The Moody Blues were still cruising through Tuesday Afternoon, and Burnett sat in his squad car, his thumbs drumming away on the steering wheel, cruising down one suburban street after another, looking for something – anything – that would take his mind off his betrayals, but the effort had been useless. For months he had thought about Elaine and Debbie and Joan, and he thought about his choice, and theirs, and he wondered why he was still so confused about everything.

"2114," the radio blared.

"2114, go ahead."

"2114, signal 54 at 5–1–1 Byron Court, ambulance en route."

"2114, code five."

"2114 code five at zero nine thirty six."

He made a u–turn and headed back toward Saratoga Estates, jotting down the dispatch time and address on his daily activity report on top of his aluminum clipboard. His mind was reaching, trying to remember why that address sounded so familiar. He was about five minutes from the address, a welfare concern/sick call with an ambulance on the way, when it hit him.