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Show down on my knees in front of him and ask if he had returned to loving me yet. Had the new guitar, the amp, the sweet cards, the food, the treats, the trips to the outer islands, the willingness to let him do anything he wanted persuaded him that I was lovable again? Could I change my clothes, my job, the way I ate? Could we start again on the mainland, in Wisconsin, near his friends? And he would tell me that he loved me like a sister, that he could not bear to touch me, that all he wanted was out. So he left. Our last night together we had dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant. The tables were covered in pink tablecloths and silverware that gleamed in the candlelight. On the following day he was boarding a plane to move back to the mainland. Earlier I had given him a care package filled with presents to make the transpacific flight more bearable-magazines, candy, a new game for his Gameboy that I had spent hours choosing as if it were a diamond. I had packed his suitcases, shipped some boxes, and checked the bathroom to make sure he had his razor. During dinner I talked about the Packers and what kind of season they might have. I did whatever I could to make the fact that he was leaving more palatable for him. Or maybe to disguise the fact that I was being abandoned. After he boarded the plane, I returned to our empty apartment and called home. Though John and I had moved to Hawaiijgjive=nejtfmy family, they had moved back to the mainland within months of our arrival and once again an ocean separated us. The middle of the night in Texas, my father was up. I could hear the tinkling of ice in a glass 221 |
