Left Behind
Silence crept up on me and shook me hard the day Warren left for Queens, reminding me of the old nursery rhyme about cheese and being alone. Of course, I was happy for him. He’d been offered a staff position at a halfway house for drug and alcohol dependent mothers. It was the kind of work he really wanted to do. But it meant that our secret summer was over.
Or perhaps, I should say private summer. For we never did anything particularly scandalous. It was simply the fact that we owned that summer, that precious little pocket of time that existed between college and actual adulthood. Neither of us had “started” our lives yet. My teaching job wouldn’t begin until the fall, and Warren was still searching and interviewing. In the meantime, we had the season to ourselves, our own private, special season that no one else could touch. We developed a unique bond that summer, waiting for our lives to start. It was as if we existed in our own sacred bubble—the only two souls left in Scottsboro. Or at least the only two souls that mattered.
Warren was working at his mom’s real estate office. I was back at the day-care center that had employed me through three college summers. Every night after dinner, we’d drive around in his car, listening to The Cure and talking about our in-between jobs, our in-between lives, and nothing in particular. Sometimes, we’d go for a drink. Sometimes, we’d go for a few. Sometimes, we’d take long walks in the dark and hardly talk at all, except to point out the stars. My biggest fear was that he’d finally get the kind of job he wanted and our little bubble would burst. But then again, maybe it was only meant to last one summer. It would’ve been impossible to float away to eternity on a bond created out of sun and circumstance. But at least we’d always remember it—the last summer we could really call ourselves kids.
Warren once said he’d eventually get over me. That day had arrived and passed by the time he moved to Queens. I knew because our summer had been devoid of “moments,” “us” talks and, best of all, ridiculous fights. I’d venture to say the drop-dead giveaway was the absence of lust. There were so many opportunities to feel something during those carefree summer nights, but the Fourth of July was as close as we got to fireworks. As for my part, there was no denying that Warren was one of the most attractive guys I’d ever known, but thinking of him “that way” had honestly become almost gross, like he was too old of a friend or something. I wasn’t sure if he was quite at the gross-out level with me yet, though he did say one night in his car that I was the sister he’d never had. Unless Warren was kinkier—and more demented—than I’d ever imagined, that pretty much clarified things. It may have taken five years, but by the time he left for Queens, it seemed we’d finally mastered the art of being truly platonic.
Three months of owning the world, or at least our town, of being kids for one more summer, one more season, one last time. And then Warren left me—to start his real life and be a grown-up with an apartment in Queens. The cheese stands alone. Everyone eventually left me all alone. Scottsboro and me—people were born to leave us. Emily, John, Blanche, my father. And now Warren, to be a man in Queens. It was silent when he drove away, softer than it had been all summer, not what I’d expected the bursting of a bubble to sound like, the shattering of youth. And then I remembered the cheese and filled my head with the old nursery rhyme. It made me feel better in a way, less lonely to have beat out the silence. But the song soon exhausted itself, and it was still only me, the only soul left in Scottsboro. Me. The cheese. The silence. Alone.
Dear Warren,
I feel so bad about canceling our plans. I really do want to get together and talk—about everything. I promise I’ll call as soon as I get back from Europe.
I miss you!
Love always,
Stella
Just what I was so sure he wanted—a postcard from Philadelphia. But at least the sentiment was there. Not that it meant all that much without the truth. I just couldn’t give that to him right now. Emily had really made things impossible for me—in every imaginable way.