Читать книгу The Museum of Lost Love - Gary Barker - Страница 10

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MUSEUM SUBMISSION 23-2006

We met at a tattoo parlor in the Village. We were there with mutual friends. The deal was that we were all going to get one. He could see I wasn’t sure. He whispered in my ear, asking if I wanted to make a run for it. He texted an excuse to our friends that I wasn’t feeling well. Once we were outside he grinned at me like he was five-year-old boy.

We stayed up all night just talking. How many guys really say what they feel? And then there was how he reacted when he saw my left hand. I was born with just four fingers on that hand. It’s always curious to see how people react. I like to watch them squirm when I catch them counting a second time. Not him though. He just held my hand and said that he always thought nine was a much more interesting number than ten. His mother was a pediatrician so he even almost knew the proper name of my condition: Symbrachydactyly.

He called a few weeks later and said that he had broken up with his girlfriend and that he wanted to see me. I told him we should give it some time. He said that it had already been some time since we met at the tattoo parlor and that he had been thinking about me ever since.

We met at a coffee shop near my dorm. From then on it was like every moment between classes, we just wanted to be together. It was two months later that he said he loved me and I said it back, which is not a thing I do, ever.

We started doing things couples do together. He met my father, who took us out to dinner when he passed through the city. We hung out with each other’s friends. But I never met his parents.

Three months later he went to a journalism seminar at Kent State with two other classmates. They rented a car and on the way back they were hit by a truck that had jumped the median.

I totally lost it. I cried for days.

I didn’t get an announcement about the funeral. His roommate told me when it was and we took a train together to Philadelphia. After the ceremony there was a gathering at his parents’ house. I didn’t want to go, since I wasn’t invited, but his roommate insisted.

His parents asked me how I knew their son. Before I answered, his mother reached out to hold my hands. She could see my sorrow, or see something, I think. As she held my hands, she looked at my left one for a few seconds. But I don’t think she figured it out.

I told her I was their son’s girlfriend and they both looked at each other awkwardly. Just then, a young woman came over to us. I recognized her. It was his previous girlfriend, the one he had broken up with to be with me.

His ex went up to them and they hugged her. She and I made eye contact and I just nodded and walked away while the three of them hugged and cried.

I started to leave the house but then I snuck upstairs and found his room. I saw the young him. I imagined we might have slept together in his teenage bed. I took this, this trophy, from a high school tennis tournament, and I put it in my purse.

If his parents ever come to the museum and say it’s theirs, you should give it to them. They knew him longer. Their tears weigh more than mine. Although I do think that waking up with him next to me and hearing him say he loved me means something. That gives me some rights, doesn’t it? Even if they don’t know who I am. Even if his mother didn’t notice how many fingers I have.

New York City, USA, 2006