He sat across from her at the diner,
his blond hair tousled loosely from being in the wind all day and
curled around his eyebrow. He ran his hands over the warm cup of
coffee that he had no intention of drinking. He wouldn't make eye
contact and it scared her, as he had been quiet all evening. Suddenly
he looked up, his eyes held questions and his mouth seemed to open
and shut as he tried to find the correct words.
“There have been many stories about
you,” he said as his voice caught and caused him to clear his
throat. “Many stories.”
“Such as?” Charlotte wondered as
she pushed her black framed glasses higher up her nose and tucked a
strand of black hair behind her ear. She leaned forward and watched
him as he squirmed under her gaze.
“For one,” he started, leaning
back away from the cooling coffee cup. “I heard that you have a
history with men. I am not one to judge, I know that you have not
been married. The history of lovers; the names I do not know nor do I
wish to know. I would just like to not be one of them.” He gulped
and looked down at the table, avoiding her gaze completely.
“What were the others?” she asked,
her hands trembling lightly in her lap.
“Many of the others revolved around
the stories of your lovers. There was one separate, but it may seem a
tad ridiculous.”
“Try me.”
“Well,” he started, clearing his
throat again and leaning forward to once again fondle the cup of
coffee. “Many ladies have said that you wear those glasses upon
your nose to look down at everyone.”
“What?!” Charlotte burst out
laughing, unable to control herself. “This is a serious claim?”
Louie nodded, looking at her with wide
eyes.
“I can tell you now that that claim
is false,” she sighed, removing her glasses and putting them on the
table. Her brown eyes looked across the table at him and squinted
involuntarily. “I am positively blind without them. Although, I
guess they could be used for fun.” She put the glasses on the very
tip of her nose and raised her eyebrows at him, making him smile
back at her.
“And the other claims?” he asked,
almost in a whisper as he looked down at his lap.
She sighed and pushed her glasses back
up her nose. “Also false.”
He looked up quickly, his mouth open
slightly. “Really?”
She nodded and played with the little
gold ring on her middle finger. “I have never been married, that
part is indeed correct. I have also never had a lover. The names of
those who claim to have bed me are either lying or very imaginative,
for I have vowed to save myself for the man who loves me enough to
marry me.”
Louie watched her. She turned from a
woman into an innocent girl in no more than a moment. Before he could
say anything, she looked up at him.
“Have you ever loved someone,
Louie?” The question fell from her lips and hit the table in front
of him with a bang only he could hear.
“Once,” he whispered, swallowing
the lump that formed in his throat. “Only once.”
“Well?”
Louie shifted in his seat and reached
in his pocket for his cigarette case and match box. He pulled one out
and lit it before placing the case on the table in between them. She
too reached across and took one, lighting it with matches she kept in
her purse.
“Before the war, I was engaged to be
married to a lovely girl in Tennessee,” he started, taking a drag
of his cigarette. “Her name was Anne, and she was beautiful. Her
hair was the colour of dawn and her eyes were ocean blue. She was my
everything.
“I left for war and I told her that
I would be back. She cried in my arms the night before and promised
that she would wait for me, as all women do. I was gone two years.
She had written to me often for the first year. After that, I hardly
heard a word and when I did, it was vague. An 'I miss you' here and
there. I thought nothing of it. Stupid fool I was.” He looked down
and sighed, shaking his head at the memory of it all.
“What happened?” Charlotte asked,
tears already forming in her eyes as she watched him take a deep drag
from his cigarette.
Louie blew his smoke straight up as he
leaned his head back. “I came home and the first thing I did was go
to her house. I practically ran up the steps of her porch and knocked
so loud, her neighbours heard. I was so excited to see her. Her
mother answered the door and looked up at me with such sorrow in her
eyes, the smile instantly vanished from my face.
“Anne was gone. She had married
Thomas, the butcher's boy who had not been drafted. Her mother had
the ring I had given Anne in an envelope with a letter from Anne
inside.”
Louie pulled a worn envelope from his
breast pocket and placed it on the table in front of him. His name in
fancy script was carefully penned on the front and a clear, circular
outline was visible through the thinning paper; the outline of an old
engagement ring. He touched it gingerly with his pointer and middle
finger.
“Why have you never opened it?”
Charlotte's eyes were focused on the yellowing envelope.
“I don't want to know what she had
to say,” a tear dripped down his cheek, he never made an attempt to
hide it or wipe it away. “I don't want to see the ring unless it is
around her finger. I don't want to read the goodbye at the end of
this letter. I can't read the goodbye.”
Louie leaned back and wiped his face
with his hands and laughed uncomfortably. He looked at her and
smiled, putting his cigarette out in the ashtray at the end of the
table.
“What about you?” he asked,
pulling another cigarette out of the case and lighting it. “Have
you ever loved anyone?”
“No,” Charlotte said, taking a
small drag out of her cigarette. “I thought I did. Last year, I
really thought I was in love. But I wasn't and it ended.”
Louie wasn't convinced. He raised an
eyebrow at her, smirking slightly.“Well?” he asked.
“My turn, huh?”Charlotte put out
her cigarette and leaned back in the booth, rotating the small, gold
ring on her middle finger once more. “I was with a guy named Mark.
He was tall, with the darkest eyes I had ever seen. He could look
right through me any time he felt like it. It was like I was naked
around him. He could see everything and he didn't care what it looked
like.
“He called me one day after I had
finished work at the diner and he said he had met someone else. I
didn't even cry. I didn't flinch. I didn't beg him to stay. I just
hung up the phone. I never spoke to him again after that day. I see
him from time to time. He comes into the diner with her and I feel
nothing. It's as if he is a stranger.”
“You were not in love,” Louie said
quietly, watching Charlotte spin the ring around her finger.
“I guess not.”
When Charlotte got into bed that
night, all she could see as she stared at the ceiling was Louie's
face. The tear that trickled down his cheek, so unashamed and
vulnerable, she felt closer to him than she had in the entire three
months she had known him. Her heart broke for him as she remembered
his fingers, so gently caressing the worn envelope as if it were a
newborn baby. The emotional, vulnerable side of him made her heart
beat just a little bit quicker than she had anticipated. She had
never seen a man act in such a way.
She rolled onto her side and closed
her eyes, trying to think of anything else but the way his grey eyes
looked through her that night. His blond hair, usually so pristine,
so perfect; the way it curled against his forehead in a boyish manner
after driving through town. The gentleness of his hand grazing her
fingers as she sat next to him in his car. Everything about that
night made her heard race and her palms sweat. Was this love?
Maybe she did love him. After the
emotional night, the bruised hearts were open for each other to see
and he had not shied away from her, nor her from him. They were open
and allowing each other to see the scars that plastered themselves on
their hearts like war wounds. Maybe this was what love was all about.
.....
Louie stayed up that night
staring out of his window. The people scurrying along the sidewalks,
even at 2am, momentarily distracted his thoughts. His mind was split
in two. One half contained the image that regularly haunted him:
Anne. With her hair the colour of dawn and her eyes shining with
light, she tortured him. The other half was Charlotte. Her long,
black hair swept around her shoulders, catching on her glasses as she
smiled meekly, her dimples indenting her face. Charlotte calmed him.
Her smile, the gleam in her deep, brown eyes, the womanly figure
behind the innocent persona; her image relaxed him, yet scared him.
He sat on the edge of his
bed with a cigarette tucked between his lips as he thought of the
night he had just experienced. He had never cried in front of a woman
before, not since Anne, and even then he had always tried to hide his
tears. He had never told anyone about Anne's letter, let alone shown
it. Charlotte frightened him. He was too comfortable, too familiar
and it was a new sensation that would take some getting used to. He
had not felt any connection toward any woman since Anne and Charlotte
was making it too easy for him to open up. The past three months with
Charlotte to call on made him feel comforted from the memory of Anne.
He felt his heart healing a little bit more every day. Was this love?
Was he falling for the innocent Charlotte?
The clock on the wall had
ticked its way to 4am when he finally accepted sleep. He closed his
eyes and saw her smiling at him. Her eyes were so tender and he felt
at home as he fell into a deep sleep.
“Char?” Louie called
out to her from the living room couch. He sat slouched over the
coffee table, his forearms rested on his knees as he waited for the
soft footsteps of Charlotte entering the room. When he heard her, he
looked up at her and patted the seat next to him. “Come here.”
Charlotte moved across the
room and sat next to him, eyeing him warily. “What is it?” she
asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. He pulled the worn envelope
out of his pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. Her
eyes widened in her head and she looked at him curiously.
“Still carrying it
around?” she asked, clearing her throat and tucking her hair behind
her ear.
“I want you to open it,”
he said softly, his gaze never leaving the envelope. “I want you to
open it and read me her letter. I can't do it on my own. It's been
years and she haunts me. I love you, Charlotte, but I could love you
better if I erased her completely. Carrying this around, it's done
nothing but hurt me.”
She reached for the letter
and held it in her hands. It was the first time she had ever touched
it. She had always been respectful of the envelope and the space that
Louie had put between them. This was one boundary she never even
thought to cross. Her thumb traced the first letter of his name, the
ink now faded with time, and she looked at him for approval.
“Are you sure?” she
asked, almost in a whisper. He nodded and moved closer to her as she
ripped the left side open and revealed the contents inside.
The sweet smell of time
spilled out from inside of the envelope. The paper, folded neatly,
with care, smelled of old perfume and ink. The ring, placed in the
bottom right hand corner, rolled toward the opening as if searching
for the light it had been denied for 6 years. It fell into
Charlotte's hand, the tiny diamond shining in the afternoon sun that
shone through the window. She heard Louie's quivering sigh next to
her and instinctively moved closer to him. With their legs against
each other's, Charlotte placed the ring on the table and opened the
letter. The paper rustled in her trembling hands, and she read the
letter out loud in a soft voice.
Dearest
Louie,
I
must say first that I am sorry. I am sorry that I was such a coward,
such an animal with no willpower. I never meant for this to happen. I
thought I was stronger.
All
I have been doing for the past 16 months is thinking of you. However,
the things I have been thinking were not the pleasant thoughts I had
hoped. All I keep thinking and dreaming about is you coming home to
me in a coffin or in a wheelchair. I keep having nightmares of
visiting your grave with a bouquet of flowers that you will never
smell. I look at photographs of you and I when we were happy and it
hurts me instead of making me feel better. It has been a hard 16
months.
I
hate myself, but I have found the affection of Tom Bueler becoming
more and more satisfying than waiting for something that may never
come home to me. I love you, Louie. Please do not think that I don't,
but I am in pain without you. The waiting and the longing; it hurts
to breathe. I cry myself to sleep every night and wake up every
morning screaming for you from my bed, it is exhausting. Please... I
hope you understand.
Tom
has asked me to marry him. He can offer me a life that I know you
would want me to have. He comes from a fine family, he says he loves
me and after the past few months of getting to know him, I believe I
love him too. He's a good man, Louie.
This
is my goodbye. I am a coward for not doing this in person. I just
know that I would never be able to stand the look on your face as I
walk away from you. I know that your eyes would keep me locked in
place and I can no longer stand still. As cowardly as it is, this is
the route I need to take.
I
will always love you Louie. I hope that you find someone who is
better than me. Someone who would have the courage to look you in the
eye instead of put a pen to paper. I'm so sorry.
Goodbye.
Love
always,
Anne.
Charlotte
put the letter down on the table after reading it and looked at
Louie. Instead of the tears she expected, his face was painted with
anger. His hands were balled into fists and his brow furrowed into a
deep line. Before she could speak, he grabbed the ring from the table
and stormed out of the house, the screen door clacking loudly behind
him. Charlotte quickly got up and followed him. She reached the door
in time to see him get into his truck.
“Louie!”
she called out as he turned the ignition and put the truck in
reverse. He stopped and looked at his fiance standing on the steps of
her mother's home. Her face was a mix of shock and sadness as her
hair swept around her shoulders and caught on the frames of her
glasses. He was brought back to the first night he had dreamt of her,
and turned the ignition off. He got out of the truck and she walked
down the path towards him. He grabbed her and held her tightly
against his chest.
The
train pulled into the station in Nashville as scheduled. Louie helped
Charlotte onto the platform and walked with her arm-in-arm towards
the street to catch a taxi. This was the first time Charlotte had
been outside of New York, and she was excited to meet Louie's family.
Her eyes scanned everything in site; the buildings, the cars, the
people and the houses. Everything looked so different and beautiful.
For a big city, it was nothing compared to New York and she loved how
small it was. It was rustic and charming, exactly how Louie had said
it was.
An
hour after arriving in the city, their taxi pulled up to an old,
Victorian style home, and a short, plump woman rushed outside. Her
hair was blond, just like Louie's, with grey strands forming around
the front and sides. She wore an old dress with an apron strapped to
her waist. Louie got out of the taxi and hugged his mother.
“My
baby,” the older woman wept as she leaned away from him and looked
at him. She had not seen him since he had left home 6 years prior and
it was if she was looking at him for the first time. Her hand reached
up and stroked Louie's stubbly cheek as Charlotte watched from the
other side of the taxi with a warm smile on her face. The woman
turned her eyes, the same eyes that she had passed onto her son,
towards Charlotte and made her way around the taxi to hug the newest
member of the family.
“I'm
Martha,” she said as she embraced Charlotte as if she was her own
daughter. “But you can call me Mama too if you like.” The corners
of Martha's eyes crinkled as she smiled widely, looking at Charlotte
with the affection only a mother could have. Charlotte felt like she
was at home instantly.
