She was happy that I offered to come over, to stay the night or at least half of it (this was in the pre-Ambien days), to offer comfort. She seemed impressed with my sincere and caring gesture. So what is it exactly that I did wrong? I didn't leave my apartment for a full hour after the phone call. I stayed home playing online poker, hoping to recover a loss that was just another failed recovery.
I recovered the loss (temporarily of course). I packed my things up too quickly (forgot a few things). I couldn't blame my lateness on the traffic. I could have walked to Los Feliz in less time. I made up an excuse about a phone call. She could probably see through my lie.
Yes, it was her sister who suffered the worst but, you see, the sister's pregnancy had offered hope for what was a sad, sad situation. Before that night, she didn't talk much about the sister but she said enough - and with enough of a faraway look - to suggest that her heart was broken by her only sister's misfortune and that was one of the reasons it wasn't open to me. When the misfortune got worse, the brokenness didn't budge.
She told me never to make her a mix CD because she didn't want the songs to remind her of something that failed later, after it failed. Despite her factual accuracy, I still think she was wrong. The mix would have gotten her through Thanksgiving.
It wasn't my worst hour of 2006. That came months earlier, when I didn't stop to think about what the fuck I would do after I got over that ugly hill past the valley (sorry for the obtuseness) and the spring turned into a folly of retreat and boxing clever.
She could be reading this, presumably unlike the subject of the first 3/4 true story. The sister could be reading this. I'll allow that I may read too much into their loss, my gesture, and my stupid addictive one-hour delay.
The experience did offer insight. Insight I couldn't see until December. Insight that I stopped seeing on that June afternoon I got the phone call - the good news phone call - from Chicago. I felt a call of the old and I lost my way for a bit. Sorry again for the obtuseness. The 25% that is untrue could be in the months and details of this paragraph. Or it could be in the title.
I'm smarter than that. I'm better than that. I'll move past my regret and say sorry (to myself, to the sisters, to the dead) and move on. I'll say sorry for disappointing others and step forward. I'll do my dishes and feed my cats and the one outside. I'll wait for the game show to air. I'll throw a party that night.
I'll let go of the aphorisms and remember that camera songs are like train songs - one moves into the next like 37 to 36, like dining car to sleeper. Stations become photographs - remembered, signified, mislaid.
I had a realization in Minnesota that I had to carry on, that pain can be pushed through, waited out. It was hours before I was in the attic, looking at photographs of redwood forests and now-closed cafes, before I separated the music that was mine from the music I would give away, two days before I started my fifth drive from Minnesota to California, this time with someone who I'd like to make the return trip with. I had the realization that mistakes happen and eras end and everyone moves on. Cities and highways and rental cars move on. Strength doesn't turn to weakness. It just disappears. When it comes back, it's good.
The next morning - after the one-hour gambling delay, after the silence on her couch, after the half-sleep - I woke up early. I needed to go home before work (like I said, I forgot some things.) I had parked my car on Franklin, the street that I once claimed, in a poem, "cuts a swath through the undead part of Hollywood." I go back to that area often. On Franklin, I always think of that morning. I never think of the night before. Next time.
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