Good Call

The expression on my face changed from a look of placid repose to a shocked, wide-eyed, open-mouthed gape, as if I had just been struck.  My wife looked up, interrupted from her book when I jumped.  "What is it?  Are you okay?"  she asked with concern.  I recovered quickly, and said that I felt a cold shiver run up my spine.  That was not what I had felt, but it would satisfy her curiosity.  I could not tell her the truth.  Not because it was something she couldn't handle or would not understand.  Rather because she had never been told and it had all faded away over the years.  We had never discussed any past relationships either of us had prior to our marriage and I certainly did not want to start now.  As the train we boarded 45 minutes earlier traveled toward Rome, she went back to her book while I began to mentally review the ramifications of what had just occurred.

I was again getting the Call.  Eighteen years after the breakup, the lines of communication were now apparently re-laid.  Images began flooding back, bringing with them feelings I had not felt for almost two decades.  The Call was a sort of telepathic communication that I had with an old girlfriend that would occur whenever one of us thought about the other.  There was no controlling it...it was just sent and received.  It could range in intensity and duration dependent on the depth of emotion with which it was sent.  During the time we were together the Call might be a gentle reminder or a precursor to a telephone ringing or the full impact of emotion together with image, sound, smell and taste, all dependent on the state of mind of the sender.  And it was now returning.

The focus of the Call I received on the train had been a high intensity comment about the strengths of our previous relationship.  We fit well together physically, emotionally and intellectually.  Her shape not only appealed to me but it worked well when close to mine.  She could express her feelings in ways I could understand and respond properly to and we were mentally on the same page, or maybe it was just that she could understand my humor.  An image of her had appeared with the Call.  She was laughing, her eyes locked on mine with a look of joy and compassion.  I could smell her favorite perfume and hear her characteristic voice.

As I dealt with the emotional aftermath of the Call, I was also struck by why I had received it.  I had not been in touch with her since our abrupt breakup eighteen years before;  and I did not even know her married name which she took less than six months after we ended.  I had, in retrospect, probably been receiving gentle reminders since the breakup which I mischaracterized as memories, but nothing like the urgent Calls that could wake me out of a sound sleep, until now.

The Calls were returned when we knew each other;  we were always just a telephone call away from providing solace or support for whatever had spurred the Call.  Now my current life and loyalties require additional considerations before picking up a telephone and checking on her.

After 18 years what support or assistance could I actually provide?  Out of touch for what equals half our lives, I find myself wondering who she is now.  I am intimately familiar with the lessons and changes life has taught and wrought in my world.  I must assume that her life has lent her the same perspective of years, just seen throught different glasses.  Regardless, our lives parted those many years ago and any positive contribution I could make would not be based on any level of familiarity, save the relationship nearly two decades past.  Her life to me now is as alien as Adam's housecat.

Also, my life has taken its own course.  Married with children, career and mortgage, I am fully invested in my life and committed to my existing relationships. I rather like the idea of having a platonic relationship with a woman I once knew very well, however, the reality is that the only women I know platonically outside of work are friends of my wife's.  The difficulty of explaining my prior relationship, it's resident ghosts, and my supposed rationale for desiring such a relationship, combined with the timing of such an endeavor are formidable and imposing enough to warrant strongly avoiding any such conversation.

Say my circumstances would allow me, as a normal course of action, to locate her married name and telephone number.  I make the call and simply ask how she is doing.  How would she react?  Surprise?  Shock?  She was a fun and witty woman when I knew her and gracefully intuitive in social situations.  But again, I do not know her now and cannot predict what such a call might produce.  And, frankly, the only desirable outcome would be a polite and friendly conversation sharing what has transpired in our lives since we last saw each other.  Nothing, however, can be guaranteed and there is always the chance that something completely unforeseen occurs which changes everything. 

The Calls bring varied impressions of the woman I once knew and allow her personality to lend a unique perspective to my mind.  They also seem to have the effect of allowing me a view of my world through the prism of one who almost became my wife, and oddly, one who has now become more phantom than reality.  Or, maybe they allow the reality of the deep feelings and emotions held with a previous lover eighteen years ago to remind me that those feelings and emotions are available in my present life.  I obviously have no idea of the rationale or purpose of the Calls;  but I can say they have resulted in an adjustment to my frame of thought.

The Calls have made me wonder what our life would have been like together.  My reasons and justifications for making the choices I made still seem valid, even through the fog of decades, though I still feel uncertainty.  The life I live is loving, fulfilling and comfortable with all the trappings of hard-earned success.  Regardless, some aspects of that prior relationship have never paled nor been superseded, even with the passage of time.  Those are the ties that have bound me to her since we met.  A day doesn't go by in which I am not reminded of a particular impish glance, her tousled short hair on a pillow, a funny turn of phrase, her signature scent, her distinctive laughter, her pretty face in profile while playing with a cat, or even the shape of her body with her hand on her hip; all distinctly her, and all evoking a sharp intake of breath, a quickening heart, a desire, a feeling of loss.

At one time I wouldn't imagine living without her.  Our lives abruptly took different directions and I lived with fading memories.  Since the train from Florence to Rome, my daily Calls, unbidden, bring her to me.