Word count 612

                                                              

I was going to college and hung out at a hamburger stand a block away from school. Adams had good burgers and I liked the personnel.  There was a young male cook that I kidded with.  He called me Maynard because of a character played by Bob Denver in the TV show “Dobie Gillis”.  I called him “Archie” the typical teenager.  A young woman was called bird woman because of her flighty nature.  The cook was an older woman who also kidded around.  The last one was the one that interested me; Jane was a beautiful and charming woman.

I was surprised when she agreed to go to a movie with me and it went well.  Other than a fairly long relationship which started in high school and ended in college, I had not previously had any luck with women or girls.  No need for a long list of my disadvantages at romance.

Her parents both taught at my college and we got along well.  The families met.  Sometimes she visited my hovel.  She was smart as well as beautiful.  I thought that we were the real deal and I was ecstatic.   One time she asked me if I would love her is she was seven feet tall.  She could be charming.

It didn’t last long.  She was very erratic.  There were periods of time I couldn’t contact her.  She stayed with my parents one time when for some reason she didn’t want to go home.  What I thought of as little things seemed to set her off.  She asked what my image of a wholesome girl was.  When I said blonde and blue-eyed, she erupted because she had an adopted Indian sister.  When I was taking her home from a date, she insisted that I let her out on the street in the dark instead.  One night a guy came to my hovel asking about his wife meaning Jane.  I never found out if she was really married to someone else.

I got a summer job on the coast.  She came down to visit and we had a good time, but that same summer I was visited by the police.  He said Jane was raped that night that I had dropped her off from the date.  She never mentioned it to me, and I didn’t want the details.

Because of her behavior and my insecurity, I tried to not say anything upsetting, so I didn’t find out what the problem between us was.

Towards the end of college, we were getting along well.  I went off to graduate school, but visited home a little later.  When I called her she told me to leave her alone.  With the tumultuous nature of our relationship, I wasn’t shocked and that seemed to be the end of it.  I wished her well.

Fifty years later I was back living in my home town with my wife.  Proximity to the earlier affair led me to wonder what happened to Jane.  I did some cyber stalking and found her address.  Because both of us were married, I wrote a letter to her that referred to the abrupt ending to our friendship rather than romance.

She wrote back to tell me that she had suffered from a past trauma and needed to take a complete break and it wasn’t anything I had done.  Later I found out from her brother that it was a car accident that she survived but in which an earlier adopted Indian sister had died.

I saw her one more time at the memorial service for her mother.  I hope that she is happy now, as I am.

Appears in Raven Cage, Books N’ Pieces, and Down In The Dirt