Part One

I remember you when you were the man you mourn. Sitting large on your front porch like you ran the town—and you very well did by the way people talked. Everyone knew who you were. You were the ‘go to’ man. If a lawn needed mowing, you mowed it and then some. Took your neighbors trash out, hell, you took care of every kid in the neighborhood all year round. You’d think they were all from broken homes the way they set up camp at your house, and broke your house up too! And not one parent ever called to see where their children were, damn shame how some people are. You couldn’t walk down the street without getting hit by a ball or assaulted by noise. The racket at your place!

I spent some time with her, you know? I know you guys had a falling out, I’m sorry to hear that. I really do hope that you find some way within you to make it work—you guys were all right. She told me all about it, what happened. She said she couldn’t talk to you about anything because you already think you know everything. Now, don’t look that way, don’t shoot the messenger, I just thought I could try and set things straight. You might not want to admit that you need her, but you do. I see it. You think about her and that light goes on again. The one that lights you up like a beacon. She wants to try to make something work—might not be what you were hoping for—but something still counts, right? Makes you a little less alone? Makes her feel like she can fix things, patch up some holes and make things a little more right and a little less wrong. She misses you too, in her way. You are wearing her down too from the sound of it, you’d think she was being haunted and you are the ghost before you even step one big booted foot in the grave. She says she walks around with echoes in her head and is sometimes surprised to look down and see that her shadow is in her own form and not a silhouette belonging to you.

She used to sit out back at her place, you know, pretending to garden and listen to all of the commotion going on at your house—did you know she did that? I bet you didn’t. Seems lonely to me, picturing her there like that. Consumed by what she considered the ‘deafening quiet’ at her place, she would seek out the noise and barely controlled chaos of yours and long to be a part of it. I don’t think she really could have survived it for a second, but she sure did think she wanted it. I guess she had all the order and the peace and the quiet she could take and it just didn’t sit right with her. Looking at all of you crowded in there together from the sidewalk through the cracked windows, she must have seen something that she felt she lacked. She said it made her sad, to be able to hear what she wasn’t a part of. And then that all fell apart for you and she tried to help and you would’ve thought that it would’ve worked, you know? You had both such high hopes but when it came time to settle down there was no place for you to land, to put down roots.

—Darjeeling