What If by Tamara Palmer
“The best part of love is the thinnest slice, and it don’t count for much…” I belt the Air Supply lyrics to Lost in Love at the top of my lungs as I drive to work. The windows are rolled up and the air-conditioning is on because I can’t ruin my perfectly coiffed hair, or risk sweat marks in the armpits of my silk blouse, even though I desperately long to feel the air rush through my curls as I cruise down the highway. It occurs to me that I’ve been singing these lyrics for over twenty years now. Twenty years. Has it honestly been that long? The cassette tape is battered and worn, coffee-stained, and mildly warbly. I found it last weekend, in the back of the junk closet, buried under the yearbooks and photo albums. The songs bring back buried memories of young love, and I soak up the sensation, as I allow my lungs to ache through the stories. My mind starts to wonder as it wanders through the landscape of my past.
What if…
What if I had kissed Ray instead of Evan? They were both so compelling to my thirteen-year-old hormonal self. I just wanted a boy, any boy. Ray was reserved and elusive. Ray was deep. Ray didn’t socialize with the others. He had tortured artist eyes and a matching pout, even at thirteen. A capture would have been unimaginable, but I never stopped trying. On the other hand Evan was eager, interested. Blonde hair, blue eyes —the proverbial boy next door. Evan was waiting. I gave up on Ray and took the easy road. Sexual exploration was becoming an imperative need.
My body can still feel that first kiss with Evan. I sat on his lap, in his closet, both of us atop that old battered chest. Evan’s step-brother Jason who was always with us — since he was the same age — had managed to finagle his small frame to the top shelf of the closet. We called him “monkey”, and he sounded like one, chattering and cackling, as he curled into himself. The three of us were sitting in the dark, because it was more fun that way. Then it happened. Evan’s youthful lips met mine, and for the first time, I experienced the softness of the touch, the curiosity of the tongues, the trembling arms, I shivered more and more as the heat in the closet rose. Jason knew something was up – we were both too quiet. He began to giggle. Neither Evan nor I cared as we reached for one another’s lips again and again, our tongues stumbling around like babies learning to stand.
Evan was a kind boyfriend, he’d hold my hand during couples skate, he’d kiss me softly and as often as he could, he would never hurt me. But then there was always Ray.
Ray was the older brother of a girl named Tina, not necessarily a girl I liked or considered a friend, but a friendship I actively cultivated for the explicit reason that it would bring me closer to Ray, specifically into his home. I would play Barbies with Tina and spend the night, even though their family was poor and this often meant sleeping in their house, with little heat, in January. I’d stay up late watching Ray watch David Letterman, wishing, hoping, praying, he’d acknowledge I was there. I wanted to laugh at the jokes because Ray was. Eventually, Ray would stumble off to bed and I’d stare at the couch where he’d just lain wishing Tina would go to the bathroom, so that I could run over and bury my nose in the cushions, drinking up his scent.
My Blackberry buzzes and I let one hand leave the steering wheel to retrieve the annoying device from my Coach purse. It’s my boss emailing with another agenda item for our 8:00 meeting. I tense a little with anticipatory stress, but then the next song starts, and I follow my exit from the highway onto the frontage road, as I lean further into my seat I toss the Blackberry aside and sing along, “Here I am playing with those memories again…”
This time I go back to the memory that often haunts me - the time a few years ago when I met Ray once again. We were adults and could face one another with a raw honesty that wasn’t available to either of us when we were young. It was the annual 4th of July festival and the first time either of us had been back in years. A lot of alcohol had been consumed over the course of the afternoon, and it helped to smooth over the awkwardness of jumping back into a life that was now so distant.
The sun set brilliantly over the cornfields as Ray, and me, and a small group of others swung in the community park, something we were likely doing on another summer night, so many years before. Ray had grown to be tender and kind, compassionate and sensual. He lit up when he first saw me that morning, and the image etched itself into my emotional brain, telling me there was hope, but hope for what?
As the night dawned, the lightning bugs flitted around spreading their magical dust of love and lust, awakening my thirteen-year-old heart that had long since been packaged away. I luxuriated in the softness of the warm, humid air while under the glow of a full moon alcohol finally gave Ray the courage to say what he never could when it mattered.
“I liked you.”
The secret entered me, burning through layers and layers of buried emotions until it got down to the root of it all and found a ball of pulsing, radiant heat known as my first crush. And just like that the confession was a match that restarted a flame. But it was all too late.
I told him that I had liked him too, but it came from a space of regrets and lost chances. My heart hurt harder at the thought of all the wasted years. For a split second, my mind challenged my morals. Was it really too late? I eyed my wedding ring and kept swinging. I knew that I could never go back, so I enjoyed a long hug with Ray and hoped it would satiate twenty years of repressed desire.
My Blackberry goes off again, this time it’s my husband. I wonder if he can read my mind and knows when to bring me back to him. It occurs to me that he probably plays the “what if” game too, and that sometimes it’s me bringing him back from his past.
I make the left hand turn at the green light and enter my office park. I find myself singing the words to Making Love out of Nothing at All, and it all makes so much more sense than it ever did when it was popular and I was in puberty. Entering my company’s parking lot, I pull into the same spot I always do. Looking down at my grown-up clothes: rayon black suit, sensible pumps, pearl earrings, I wonder who I am now. I long for white hi-top Reebok sneakers with Velcro tabs, hot pink leg warmers, and bangles. Perhaps I was asleep the day adulthood arrived. The clock reads 8:01 and I know my meeting has begun, but I let the music continue as I put the car into park, close my eyes, and let myself play “what if” just one more time before going in.
Tamara Palmer knew she was going to be a writer before she could even write. She would play elaborate dramas out with her Barbies for days,even weeks,on end. As she got older the stories made their way onto a typewriter and as the story goes… Tamara is actively seeking publishers for her two completed novels, Missing Tyler and Finding Lancelot. Her work has appeared in edifice WRECKED. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband. You can read more of her work at www.tamarapalmer.com
