The Woman She'd Already Become

Her eyes slowly opened. I put my arm around her. She cuddled her naked body cozily against mine.

But there was a clatter of dishes from downstairs.

"We should probably get up," she murmured.

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People were packing and saying their goodbyes. Vernon and Lynn were there, and some of us went for a little hike across the fields. Mary Ellen wore a scarf on her hair. We ate a picnic lunch on the edge of the woods. You could see the church steeple off in the distance. Mary Ellen played with Abby's little niece, and I caught a glimpse of the patient, loving mother she would one day be.

Mary Ellen and I took our own leave soon after we got back to the house. The sky was dappled and glorious, the grass along the roadside verdant and lush. We picked up our crumbs along the lane, along the county road, along the state road, along the freeway.

We talked about this and that, about the wedding, about Abby and Tom, about Abby and Mary Ellen, about school, about class, about some of the books we'd read. We had a paper coming up.

"I haven't really picked a topic yet," I said.

"I'm going to write about The Age of Innocence," she said. "It's kind of funny. What I want to write about isn't really even in the book. I mean, it is, but it isn't. It's kind of in the blank space between one page and the next.

"You know how most of the book is about Archer falling in love with his exotic cousin even though he's engaged to his lifelong sweetheart. Will he will run off with the cousin to live a life of bohemian passion? Or will he succumb to the pressure of his family and remain loyal to his solid, but somewhat ordinary sweetheart?

"And then you turn the page, eager to know what will happen. And in that act of turning the page, twenty years go by. And by the time the page has settled and you've begun to read the first words of the next chapter, Archer has already lived his life. His children, who were barely imagined a page ago, are now grown. He's followed one course, but not the other.

"I cried. I cried for Archer, for the life he chose, for the life he didn't choose, for the woman he married, for the one he didn't. For all those years that passed in the turning of the page. For Edith Wharton, who could imagine such a vibrant 'what might be' and then turn it, in the twinkling between one page and the next, into such a poignant 'what might have been.'

"That's what I'm going to try to write about, if it makes any sense. How it felt to turn that page and see that tangible, palpable 'what might be' turned with such finality into 'what might have been.'"

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We'd reached our exit. The enchantment of the weekend, of the strange bed in the strange farmhouse, of the crickets and the newly plowed earth, of the slow dancing in the moonlight, had stayed with us all the way back. I wondered how we would act toward each other when I dropped her off.

We drove in cozy silence up leafy avenues. The sunset was just fading as we pulled up to her dorm. She took her bag.

We kissed.

It was the first grown-up kiss of my life. The affectionate kiss of someone with whom I'd shared something special, who cherished the memory and did not begrudge its intimacy, who sincerely wished me well and would be glad the next time she saw me, who was willing to give the man within me the chance to prove that he was man enough for the woman she had already become.

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Before our paper was even due, the fellow who was originally supposed to be Mary Ellen's escort was back in the picture. I can't even remember what I wrote about, but I do remember it wasn't very good. Over the summer they became engaged.

Mary Ellen lived off campus senior year, and we rarely saw each other. When we did it was like a warm reunion between affectionate cousins or childhood chums, fully in each other's unquestioned confidence even as our lives were starting to drift their separate ways. She and the fellow were married soon after graduation. She sent me a heartfelt letter telling me how much it would mean to her if I could attend the wedding. But circumstances conspired and I wasn't able to. I wrote back, wishing her all the joy and all the happiness in the world.

You've no doubt seen her photograph in the society pages from time to time since then. Her radiant smile still catches the eye. If newspaper accounts are to be believed, and I have no reason to doubt them, her life is a happy one. Rich, sophisticated, a loving wife and mother, a steadfast advocate for certain progressive causes.

No photos of me. I eventually married someone else. We're reasonably happy, moderately sophisticated, not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I'd like to think that Mary Ellen and I both chose wisely.

There was a time when I might have said that the farmhouse weekend had just been Mary Ellen acting out a melodramatic plot twist, with guest actor, from her larger opera. But deep down I know that that was not the case. She was as sincere that weekend as she was in every other situation in which I knew her. The offer in her kiss was genuine, and it was never rescinded, not up to the hour that it was overridden.

I just never followed through. I didn't have the confidence. I wasn't man enough. That's just the way it was.

There are those who rise to the stars, and those who sometimes rise to the occasion.