A Misplaced Memory

Irina Oren (Wilcox…Oren-Wilcox?) glows, inside and out. Having just arrived for her own wedding reception (my wedding, she kept saying to herself, with increasing hysteria), she kisses Michael enthusiastically on both cheeks and the lips and, apologizing profusely to everyone, rushes to the ladies' room to get her first elated look at herself as a married woman.

The restroom is way too big, way too lavender, and way too plush for a restroom. The mirror is floor-length and takes up the entire wall beside the prissy row of sinks. Her eyes flit around her own reflection. Flushed cheeks – check. Lace and little flowers – check. Golden band on fourth finger of the left hand – check. She practices flashing her wedding smile. White teeth – check. Perfect posture – check. Empty eyes – check. Fuck. There it is again. That politician's wife smile. That ugly disappointment and plastic happiness.

She doesn't understand it. Her joy had felt so alive in that moment, so genuine, and yet the mirror has transformed it into something material, hollowed it out, distanced it from her. It has been this way a lot lately. And she had been so sure that her decision to marry, to make the fundamental assertion of her love, would be the thing that finally allowed her to look in the mirror and see happiness.

She does love Michael. So much. It felt so incredibly real just now; she knows she can make it real. But the mirror, in its bizarre and all too familiar fashion, has drained her luminosity, and now she feels herself wilting.

She can't go back out again until she has rekindled the glow. It is a different world out there (more like a different dimension to this version of her). She knows she cannot survive out there (physically or mentally) without her glow. She can't deal with the mindless conversations about work, weather, houses and potential children. Or the inevitable badgering from Michael’s parents about whether she plans to convert now that she has had a Christian marriage (and she has certainly heard more than enough from her own parents on the issue). She is itching for a cigarette. (Michael will wonder where she is, but serves him right for starting her on smoking.)

She creeps out of the bathroom like a guilty dog, metaphoric tail between legs, glancing about for a low-key exit. That is when she spots the boy, sitting several yards away at the corner table in the very back, even while everyone else has congregated outside. There is a girl with him, too, but it is the boy that draws her closer.

She does not know who he is (perhaps a friend or relative of Michael's?), but she does know that she does not want him here. Not now. In plaid and denim, he certainly is not dressed appropriately, but it is more than that. It is the sudden waves of emotion (an aurora borealis of emotion) that strike her with his appearance. Anger sadness desperation love…romantic love, too, everything she longs to feel for Michael (I want to climb windmills with you). She is repulsed. That boy can't be more than seventeen.

She can't help but move closer. Detached from her will entirely now, she drifts toward the boy until she can hear his voice (poetic voice, dreamer's voice) whispering softly (gently, lovingly) to the girl. Soon she is standing less than a foot from the table where the young couple sit face-to-face. They take no notice of her (or they ignore her). The boy is far too caught up in his words, and the girl is far too caught up in his eyes.

She recognizes the girl now as her sister's daughter, Vera, a shy and frumpy adolescent who had holed herself up in the guest room with a book and barely said two words to anybody when her family visited Irina and Michael in Jersey two years ago. Olive-skinned, with long dark curls and thick glasses, Vera has always reminded Irina a bit of her own awkward adolescent self (pre-contacts-and-nose job, of course). Moody, insecure, and nerdy to a fault. But tonight Vera is glowing.

By now Irina has drawn close enough that she can hear every word the boy says.

"Please don't hide your face from me anymore. Let the world share your light. You are beautiful. You are a goddess. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to scale mountains with you! I want to climb windmills with you!"

Vera's face flushes like a sunrise. She stares into his eyes and stutters aimlessly. He continues to recite to her.

"Please never think you have to change for me and never change. I couldn't love you any other way. Don't ever let anyone force you to be different from you or different for you or different for them or the same as them."

Irina feels a firestorm rising up inside her. How dare this boy love Vera! How dare the both of them ignore her as she stood there!

"…and I can't even begin to describe the feelings you bring me. An aurora borealis of feelings!"

Vera suddenly bursts into tears. "I'm sorry, I have to go. No one has ever said anything like that to me. I don't know what to do. I don't even know who you are! I don't believe you."

She gets up, kisses him on the cheek, and brushes past Irina with tears on her face. The boy stares straight ahead. Without thinking, Irina slides into Vera's empty seat, her white dress bunching around her legs. From this new point in space, she stare right down the endless tunnels of the boy's dark eyes.

"But I love you. You have to believe me, Irina."

Her mouth drops open. She feels her throat constrict and her eyes sting. With his invocation of her name, understanding burns around the edges of her mind and memory becomes an obscure figure in the distance. Each word she has heard him speak tonight echoes inside her being, and she suddenly knows she has heard them before, hundreds of feet up amid a desert sunrise thousands of miles away. He reaches out to her and she takes his hand.

"Jonathan Luo." She says the name before she thinks it.

"I love you, Irina."

"You can't be here Jonathan. You're not allowed."

"I'm here, Irina. Don't forget me. I love you."

Irina closes her eyes, but she can still see him in the darkness. "You love Vera now."

"No. I love her likeness to you. After you pushed me away, I came looking for you, Irina, but all I could find was her. Vera is very much like you. And you are so different from you." The words are no longer spoken to her, but rise from deep within her.

"You don't understand Jonathan, I needed to forget about you…so I could be happy," She is sobbing now. "You're gone now. Jonathan Luo died on August 13, 1997…at St. Lucy's Hospital in Mojave, California…at 10:43 am from leukemia...his body…rejected…there was nothing else they could do."

She remembers now. The last time he had spoken those words to her had been 286 feet up atop the Titania wind turbine, on the day he learned he was sick. But he hadn't told her that.

"Yes, Irina. I'm gone, but you can still live. Don't forget to live."

"Yes, Jonathan."

And with those words, she accepts him. She feels him bleeding back into her, through every pore of her skin and fiber of her mind, a memory once deserted by her cowardice finally returning home. She sits one moment in silence and in the next she rises, walking away with a vigorous determination. Past the plush bathroom, past the guests and tables, past Vera glowing on the dance floor. Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone grabs her elbow and pulls her in. She finds herself facing Michael. His face is sweaty, flustered.

"Where have you been?"

She stares into his blue eyes, and finds she can only get so many layers deep. She dives anyway.

"I want to climb windmills with you, Michael."

He laughs, and disappointment spreads in her stomach before the words have finished leaving his mouth. "All right, sweetheart. It sounds like someone has had a bit too much to drink already."

She is suddenly gripped by the sickening, magnificent, and irresistible urge to tear herself away from him and run, run, run under blue skies.