I Am Still Waiting, A Flash Memoir by Jeanne Simonoff

The others were shocked when we finally left each other – you off to Trinidad,  and me stumbling around in my life like an old trooper, taking three lovers at the same time instead of that monolith who was you and who else could it be after all: the breakups – three and getting back together. And why three? Because that was a good number. Because that was coming back to each other which made it exciting. New to each other after someone else or else it was just missing, hearing our song. There were several but one will do, Dionne Warwick singing, “Walk on by, foolish heart.” And what was so foolish about two young women, girls really, venturing into a big world of beginnings. Beginning a new love, Beginning a concept of two. Like grownups imitating characters of our favorite movies. Writing scripts for our Friday night out to the Mint. You walk in first, then I follow, say it’s five minutes later, enough time to make us new. Enough time to reset a scene that had been played out in our living room overlooking Los Angeles or the smog tainted San Gabriel mountains or looking over the small dog wanting special attention, Call it dinner when time stood still each of us wrapped up in each other furthering the story by one word or one photograph leading us to our beginning together. Once upon a time there were two ever so young women, girls really. Whose eyes locked across the room my eyes haunted by her. The one who looked like Kim Novak and the two of us cherished each other. That first meeting. Say it was at Los Angeles City College.Say it was enchanted, because to tell the truth, (a line from my mother) my heart knocked around in my body and came to rest beside you. There was/there is always beside you because you had the audacity to die years after we broke up. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know there was no hope for second chances. What I lost was palpable, your face appears on every woman who wanders past my soul. Like a shadow even at noon on a hot summer day you are there. How can that happen that someone who is dust and bone can hone into my heart leaving no traces except where only I can see. The rabbits traveling across my three acres you appear. You fill my notebooks with one last script: The day my dog died, the one you gave me. The phone call: She’s dead. They are both dead. What is forgotten is why did we suddenly take up different geographies, longitude and latitude. Or are these just different terms for what I can’t bear to say, dare not say: You loved me. We stood the test of time but time was just not long enough. Fifty years later I still don’t know what wedged, forged, tore, mended and still now, I alone mourn you. This is my fantasy. Keep us as us. No one else dare enter. What I have in a steel safe is love notes. What I have in the safe long lost to me, the combination faded away, the location well marked, is love notes but what good does that do me now? I say help. No one comes to my rescue. Not you, the ghost of you, the sense and smell of you. I have even forgotten your favorite perfume.
I am still waiting.