I think often of when I was a younger woman, with no name but the ones I
chose and no home but the ones I made. And I can't think of these times
without thinking of Apple.
Apple was two or three years older
than me, though I wouldn't swear to it. We didn't have birthdays during
that time. I never knew his real name either. We shared so much, but
never our names or our birthdays. And, when he disappeared, he was gone
with no trace.
Apple had ruddy red hair and dark brown eyes. He
stood about six feet, towering over my five feet and one inch. He had a
crooked grin and one pierced ear, his "pirate look" he said. He played
the guitar with such a tenderness as to make everyone around him cry.
We
met on the eve of September's birth, as he put it. Always the poet, it
was his way of saying we met at 11:45pm on August 31st. We met at a
party thrown by a mutual friend, under a fake banana plant while a slow
Sinatra song played. We met with our hands full of cheap vodka and our
hearts full of search lights.
"You have the most beautiful violet
eyes I've ever seen." he said, looking down his Roman nose. His eyes
sparkled with alcohol and untasted sweets.
I flushed with pleasure and took a bashful sip of my drink.
Later
that same night, around 3am, we stumbled into a deserted park and we
played on the swing set. Under the monkey bars, with a million dying
stars watching, he kissed me.
We never agreed to stay together,
but we lived and loved for three or so years. On that night, we agreed
to keep our names and our birthdays secret. We agreed to keep our
histories and our futures a delicious treasure buried well. Sometimes
the things we tried to hide bubbled up through the pain we often shared.
While
we traveled, I found out that Apple's youngest sister was killed in a
car accident. He found out that my mother's husband had raped me several
times before I finally escaped. He knew my real name began with a Q,
but we joked that it was 'quince,' like the fruit. I discovered his
middle name was Adam and that he hated it.
"It breaks the flow of my name as a whole." he would say, laughing.
We
decided to call each other by our favorite fruits, thus I was dubbed
'kiwi' and he was 'apple.' It helped that he had the coloring of an
apple, ripe and fresh as the morning. We were unable to afford kiwis and
apples most of the time, but we dreamed of them often.
We rode
around the country in a turtle top van, a camping van. Nomads of the
Western world. We put up a sheet behind the front seats to afford us
some privacy when we slept. He pulled out the chairs and the table in
the back so that there was room for us to lie on the floor.
The
'ceiling' we decorated with broken mirrors and fake stars. During the
long winter nights we would snuggle up in the dark and use a flashlight,
pretending we were beneath the starry sky. We were eternally chasing
those stars. They defined us.
Throughout those homeless times we
worked odd jobs and ate lots of peanut butter sandwiches. I worked as a
waitress for three different restaurants while Apple played his guitar
on the streets. At my worst, when I felt like giving up, Apple
persevered. He was more reliable than the mailman. Through the rain and
the snow and the blistering eat he was on a street corner, playing until
his fingers bled.
His guitar was weathered, but the music it produced was uninhibited by its age and deterioration.
We
discovered, amid our too brief time, that summer was when he earned the
most. The pennies and the dollar bills would coat the bottom of his
beat up guitar case. Sometimes someone would put a ten or a twenty in
the case and we would celebrate with fruit or potato chips. One time he
bought me a single, long stemmed, pink rose. I put it in a small tin box
to dry. Mostly, however, we would stock up on gasoline, peanut butter
and bread.
We had a fridge in the van, a tiny thing that barely
held a gallon of milk. In the summer, though, it wouldn't work. It was
as if the weather had to be cold before the machine itself would be cold
enough to preserve food. It didn't matter, we rarely had the money for
luxury items such as gallons of milk or ice cream.
The extra
pennies we would put in a cracked Mason jar, copper dreams for a better
future. Apple talked of leaving the country, buying a house boat and
living in the middle of the ocean. I talked of fancy clothes and
mouth-watering foods. We talked of so many dreams for futures we never
planned on living together.
"Kiwi," he would say, rolling over to look at me. "do you want to get married someday? Have babies? What do you dream about?"
I
would smile and kiss his nose, but I always stayed quiet. He knew the
answers. He knew my desires better than any psychic. He could see my
dreams of babies in beautiful houses with a husband and money. I dreamed
of sleeping under a real roof, in a real bed. I dreamed of being in
love with him, even though it would never be.
The day we parted I
gave him everything I had. I gave him my soul in a tin box, smelling of
dried roses and starlit kisses. I gave him my body, we sat holding each
other tight, trying not to let go even as the spaces between our
fingers grew longer. I gave him all the love I had to offer.
He
drove off and into the sunset, heading west to some brightly painted
city. There were no tears, no real goodbyes. I had already packed my few
belongings. I had already kissed the dried rose petals and looked up
into our homemade starry sky.
I didn't even wave goodbye as he
drove off. I watched him, as though he was a brightly lit torch drifting
over the horizon, and I wished him luck.
I married a man of
means and we had three beautiful children. My husband found it odd when I
gave our oldest son the middle name Adam and our youngest the name
Quince. Our only daughter I nicknamed 'kiwi' for her bright green eyes.
I didn't see Apple, in person, again. Though my dreams brought his face to me every night. I still love him.
Under
a sea of stars, we stretched out on a blanket. Apple pulled me closer
and we lay in silence. It was a moment that defined the whole of our
relationship.
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