Of small towns and first loves

A man goes back to visit his hometown, a small town, with his new, beautiful wife. She wants very much to be a part of his story, to belong to his home and his life and his world. But he ignores her desire, and one day she finds out why.

He used to play sports with all of his friends, most of whom were male and one of whom told her that one of them was not; his first love. She played sports with the guys, with him, on the team. And she was the reason why he couldn’t include his wife. His wife did not belong, was not a part of the memory of the past that he shared with his special and significant someone else. She was only the present. Only ever the future.

The moment she is told, she understands, she is envious, and she accepts. You loved her. You must still like her a lot, and she must be so beautiful, god damn her, I must like her too. She must be the kind of beautiful that makes you love a person instantly and for always. Something of this reminds me of a Mandy Moore movie.

Shortly, briefly after, there is a terrible accident. One around the pillars in which the scene is set, in which the dream is lain. I don’t know why she ... there is a terrible accident ... and a train runs off a bridge. Part of it lands up right on a perpendicular bridge and another part of it slips and slides and skids down between the two bridges, and swings back and forth like a clock’s pendulum in the curve of an upside down arc below.

The wife is on the bridge when it happens but that is not when she dies. She stands there, waiting, for the second carriage, the one that swings like the pendulum beneath the perpendicular bridge to swing free. It swings back and forth and it comes back again, and every time it does, the space between the two bridges widens even more.

So she stands there waiting for the space to widen and for the carriage to swing free, until that very last swing, where it doesn’t and she knows, all hope riding on that moment, that if it was to swing free that it would have had to have been then.

She knew that if it didn’t swing free then and there, it would be the end.

The first carriage of the train, the one standing upright, falls flat upon her and the perpendicular bridge, taking her, taking it all, along with the second carriage of the train swinging in the curve of the arc beneath, down below into the water, and even further below that. I feel the impact, I feel it crush, and tear, and break, and mangle her body, and I hear her release ...

The softest cry of pain as she sinks beneath the surface of the waters, and dies, and is gone for always.

The man watches from the other bridge, powerless to save her, and he asks himself why didn’t she move, what did she wait for, why did she allow the choice to be taken out of her control, why didn’t she move herself, for herself, why didn’t she move. They had a baby girl. A daughter who’s now motherless because her mother was too weak.

Too weak to move, too weak to make the decision for herself, too weak to make the choice. Too weak.

Now he runs over his memories of their short, brief time together in his hometown, the way he ignored her, the reason why. He flashes back and he feels as if life has come to an end, because his life has come to an end, now that hers has.

And he’s walking and he’s numb and he passes his first love. She is an exotic daylight dancer. He looks at the small triangles of her breasts, and at the varying sizes of the triangles of the breasts of all her fellow dancers. Topless and beautiful, they sit in an obento box, wearing brightly-coloured, floral-printed skirts; and he remembers his new, beautiful wife and what she said.

You loved her. You must still like her a lot, and she must be so beautiful, god damn her, I must like her too. She must be the kind of beautiful that makes you love a person instantly and for always. Something of this reminds me of a Mandy Moore movie. She is the reason why. She was the reason why.

He remembers her attempt to be included in his home, and in his life, and in his small town, hometown world, and he ignores the memory of her words the same way he ignored her. The dreaming ends and I awake with an aching sense of loss and grief for these people.

People I’ve never met, people I’ll never meet, in all of my life.

(And it prompts me to send asinine, exceptionally inappropriate and utterly unnecessary text messages in the dead of 3:50 a.m. in the early morn.)

Sweet dreams ...