The Long Walk Home

(What follows is mostly fiction)

                                               The Long Walk Home

I'll tell you right up front: I blame the heat.

It was one of Maine’s rare heat waves that year, temperatures in the 90s with heavy humidity. To people in some climates, that may not seem like much, but in Maine, we just aren’t wired for it—not our bodies, not our minds, and certainly not our homes. Air-conditioning is a refuge only offered in grocery stores (or your own car).

The heat started on a Wednesday, the day before Independence Day, and it still seemed exciting—new and interesting—after the week or so of drizzly, 60-degree weather preceding. Trekking inland, to meet with my best friend and her huge family of siblings to grill pizza, laughing, wondering if the heat was a fluke, nobody bothering to check the weather report.

When he walked in, he swallowed me in that familiar bear hug—nearly crushing the oxygen from my entire body, and we caught up a little, in short bursts; not enough. He charged off with the men to chop wood or build something; I soaked up the ladies’ chatter in that happy kitchen I’ve known all my life, making plans for the next day, the holiday.

The heat was still in its infancy; a nuisance, but a novelty.

After dinner was cleaned up and plans made, I wandered back to the coast, finding temporary relief in my blissfully cool vehicle, driving slowly (for once) to savor the reprieve from my own flushed and sticky skin.

The heat crushed onward through the night, and in the morning we all struggled forth from sweaty sheets and ominous, shadowy dreams, feeling hung over despite a lack of alcohol.

The Fourth brought another trek inland, this time against the receding tide of parade-goers, but I was happy in my nest of cool air. Beside me sat a cooler full of humus and tidy little boxes of berries, bound for the Great 4^th of July Hippy Party I’d heard about for years.  

We tumbled carload after carload of children and food and drinks down the winding-weaving, twisting-turning road, slipping past trees and along rivers, as the heat pressed against our windows, clawing to get in and escape from itself.

When we arrived, it seemed that all the food and people had been there for at least a week, wilting in the sunshine, so I didn’t eat anything I hadn’t brought (which will explain how I managed to accidentally become a bit drunk, but we’ll get to that later). I met the hosts (friends of my best friend’s parents) and various musicians and artists and quickly lost sight of my best friend and her gaggle of small kids.

It was hot, heavy, mind-frying. It was getting harder to talk as the hours wore on, and harder to remember…anything. (Like who I was, in real life, or who else I was connected to out in the real world, away from this summertime haven of disjointed, alternate-reality-lined worlds I was inhabiting, as I traveled the country).

Gin and tonic? He said.

Any other day I would have likely declined, but this day, the thought of a clear, cool glass of anything sounded almost as perfect as it ended up being.

With a laugh and a flourish he handed me the plastic cup, already dripping with the sweat of evaporative cooling.

The dry taste of gin, the tang of the lime, the chilliness of the cup as I pressed it against my neck, rolling it across the skin—almost brought me back, but I was too far gone.

Chairs and blankets scattered themselves across the sharply sloping grassy hill (I hesitate to call it a lawn; Maine’s landscape is too wild and relentlessly fertile for such a tidy word), facing the field.

They made their own crop circle, I giggled, sipping gin and watching the men set up fireworks in the wide space they had cleared.

Something caught my eye, on the edge of the clearing. A teenager had climbed an unbelievably tall pine tree, and sat playing his guitar, long hair in his eyes, bare feet propped on the branch above. Maybe that’s when the day started to feel like a dream.

I haven’t been drunk in a long time, I said.

Oh, I remember you drunk… he said.

And then another gin, another tonic, another lime.

I heard “La Vie En Rose,” filtering out from some distant speaker and I knew that if I closed my eyes, I would open them on the same scene, but 30 years would have slipped through my fingers and instead of this crowd of happy strangers I would see my parents, young and dancing, laughing…together, alive. So I didn’t. I kept my eyes wide open, taking in my surroundings: trees crawling with moss, willows weeping over us (tears of joy, surely), and the green hills rolling away toward the setting sun, as I laughed and touched his arm, not wanting to miss a single twinkle of his eye.

This—all of it—I had not felt in years…too many to count. The blush of flirtation, the flush of libation; I was drifting away from my happy life, my good life, and existing only in that warped and delicious present. The heat was cooking my soul—like heroin in a spoon.

We danced to the Marvin Gaye song floating through the tree branches, swirling, twirling in wide circles, around and between all the tie-dyed and patchouli’ed guests who sat strumming guitars on couches dragged onto the wide porch, or stood talking in the shade (deepening into evening, is it evening yet?). We smiled more than we talked, so happy to be in the same place at the same time.

I wanted to press my hand against his cheek and remember, remember…

But the fireworks had started, so we ambled back to the hilltop facing the crop circle and the pyro technicians and the tottering children and the tired Moms. When the sun left, it took some of the heat with it, but not enough.

I was drifting in the muffled quiet of a mind slightly drunk, smiling up at the colors, almost-thinking, almost not-hot, enjoying the limbo of this place and its blurry lines. I was just getting comfortable in this semi-reality, ready to see where else it could lead, when the fireworks ended. The sudden transformation around me was jarring: from the quiet hum of a gently relaxing evening to the impatient hustle and bustle of parents lugging sleepy children and empty coolers back along the road to the cars lining it for a hundred yards.

I rode along in my best friend’s back seat, surrounded by her sleeping children, deposited safe and sound to my bed.

I slept fitfully, alive with this newly remembered vitality, dreaming of him in vibrant colors with undertones of guilt.

So maybe I shouldn’t have texted him when I woke up, to see what he was doing that night, but our friendship had lasted long enough that it seemed safe.

The heat dragged us down Main Street, rubbing elbows with artists and their patrons, from gallery to gallery to gallery. I should have been accustomed to the heat by now but instead, it was making me delirious—skin permanently damp, sticky; hair wild, eyes wilder.

I do blame the heat, but…I still ordered gin and tonics, well aware of the time machine they created.

As we waded through the exhibits and the waves of heat, we folded deep, earnest conversations between it all. There was an exuberant reunion around every corner, small town, hometown summer night; and paintings to inspire, sculptures to mock (they really did look like penises!), and live music. Music, music…it seemed like it was everywhere, but looking back, most of it was just in my head.

We talked about motorcycles and first marriages; we talked about mutual friends and Russian punk ska bands and sailing…but the conversation kept taking detours down memory lane.

Why didn’t you tell me what a psycho she was?? he asked.

Would that have made a difference? I knew it wouldn't have.

We laughed some more, and I leaned into him, looking up into his eyes, and falling back in time, to that other night…the opposite end of the spectrum: 60 below zero, winds slicing through parkas, as we walked the streets of Portland, New Year’s Eve, relentlessly seeking…

Here, in the heat, we stood in the dark, at the back of the crowd in the old movie theatre-cum-concert hall, remodeled to its sumptuous Prohibition-Era style, and moved to the unfamiliar beauty of Mexo-Americana melodies, while almost holding hands.

But it was under the trees, on the brick patio of the Mediterranean bistro, with the guy from the Les Claypool Band JAMMING-THE-FUCK-OUT, that I let the heat (and intensity of music) push reality from my mind and I reached out to cup his neck, drawing him down so I could shout into his ear that it was time to go.

We walked, slowly, but not because of the heat (the culpable, dirty heat). I swayed a little, and reached out to steady myself, but he was already reaching for me. The heat didn’t leave room for thinking (his girlfriend was in Europe, my husband on the other coast), so his lips found mine and we were flying through a wormhole, the years a jumble of mixed-up numbers—we were at a Blues Traveler concert, and 4-wheeling with our Subarus, and at each other’s weddings and his college graduation and my Dad’s funeral, and in my front yard, and in that bar (I’ll marry you, just move back here…). We kissed and groped, and whispered aching, broken words, and his hands fumbled with the keys and we stumbled into the backseat.

The next morning, the heat had lifted and we dressed and parted, leaking slowly back into the real world.

I blame the heat.