The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I am reminded lately of your perfume.  Not the scent you wore during London, but before then, before New York.  I remember it came in a short clear bottle and that it was a golden color which, as you can see, does little to narrow the field of the thousands of perfumes available today.  Of course I'm fully aware, as you taught me, that if I were to find it and the salesclerk sprayed it on one of those paper swatches, or on her wrist, or mine, it would not emit the same scent that arose from your wrist, or the back of your ear, or the curve of your neck.

And that simple fact, that dilemma, becomes all the more sad and diminishing when I think how very long it's been since I've been able to close my eyes and see your face; or in a quiet setting, conjure your voice; or lying half awake in the darkness, imagine your touch.  These have all left me many years ago. 

Only that fragrance returns.  Lingers.  Dissipates.  It is - for all the joy and pain and love and sex and multitudes of sheer glee and bottomless sorrow and wrenching guilt (Catholic and otherwise) and great conversation and quiet moments and long winter walks among the tall oaks around the frozen ponds and back to the couch and the mulled wine and the fireplace and Keats - the only thing that remains, the only thing that's left to me of us.  And so even as I cling to it, I push it away knowing it would ultimately destroy me.

I did not recognize it as your perfume at first.  Or even as perfume at all.  Just something in the air.  I didn't even consider that it might be man-made until Monday when I stepped into the elevator at work and caught a whiff of something floral, and yet there was something ominous to it as well.  Like a dare.

And so all last week, I went searching for it in department stores, on those kiosks in the mall, even in pharmacies, anywhere really where perfume is sold, because I knew if I could just breathe it in again, it would tell me something I needed to know about now and myself and the inexplicable sadness that still stirs within me.

By Wednesday, I understood that it had something to do with someone I'd known, perhaps even loved, when in that revelation came the image of a red flared coat.  I can see the sway and rustle of wool moving away from me down Ninth Street past Duff's then disappearing around the corner onto LaSalle. 

We found that coat in Frank Murphy's in downtown St. Paul.  Remember?  You threw it on like you'd owned it forever, gave it a twirl in front of the triple mirrors, then frowned at the price tag as though it were an obscenity.  You slunk out of it and I saw then how dispassionate you could become when you chose to shrug something off.  But then it came back to you a few weeks later, under the Christmas tree and you shrieked with surprise when you opened it.  That, as they say, was a good day.

But that other day, the day I watched that coat walk away from me, I stood there for the longest time looking at the corner where it had turned and disappeared, not even hoping it would come back really, but just staring at the vacancy in its wake until someone bumped me and I found myself in Duff's working on my fifth Jack Daniel's.  I got myself home that night, somehow, and stood in the doorway of my new one bedroom apartment.  It felt as cavernous as an empty warehouse.

If Duff's were still here, I would have taken a break from searching for that perfume.  I would have sat myself down with a tall one, but instead the hole in my heart grew larger as the hunt became an obsession and now there was no mistaking the origin of my sorrow.

Was your hair black or blonde, thick or thin, curly or just curled?  Were your eyes baby blue or green or brown or reddish brown?  Did you tan easily, or were you the one whose skin someone once described as translucent, whatever that means.

If only I had that perfume, it might all come back.  Even some small physical trait would help, a mannerism, a gesture, anything from which I could weave the bigger picture, but I have so little to work with, nothing really, except for that red coat walking down Ninth, and then I see it, movement, rhythm, a steady, confident gait, though not a happy stride, just a determined motion away from me - and the hair comes in to focus, a light brown, almost blonde.  Margie or Mary or Maggie - God, a name would be everything, but now I'm not even certain it begins with an M.

Maybe a drink now, just a little taste to help turn the key.

By Saturday morning, I am thinking that I must be going crazy to be talking out loud to you as I sweep the garage floor, hose down the driveway, do a week of dishes in the kitchen.  Crazy to lay here on the couch as the midwinter afternoon slips away, addressing you in the gathering twilight in this quiet tender voice as though I am reciting a prayer that I'm making up as I go along.  But I know something now that I haven't known for years.

I take out a legal pad and start to write down everything I'm feeling - hate, confusion, longing, mourning - as the room is reduced to this sheet of yellow paper beneath the cone of light pouring from the lamp - just me, writing and talking to you.

A phrase here, a nuance there, unveils a pair of lips.  Your lips.  Unbelievable.  I can see your crooked mouth!  Don't you see what that means?  It means you are real.  It means I haven't been going slowly insane this whole week chasing a phantom from one perfume counter to another.  If only there were a voice to go with the lips, and yet lips are a lot.  I can build on lips and suddenly I have a chin, but it stops there.

I would like to think that that cluster of freckles on that calf muscle is your calf muscle, but I can't be sure, so to build on that might destroy the whole process.  I could even lose your lips, so I push that from my mind - but then it's not your calf at all, it's your ankle, and now I have a whole leg, two legs, two wonderfully long thin gams, superbly defined legs, dancer's legs and New York and London and finally Minneapolis flood back to me, Northrup Auditorium, that little experimental piece that became Loyce Houlton's signature and I am filled with a sense of awareness, giddy over the prospect that I can see your legs and your lips and maybe even your blue green eyes.

Maybe. 

Maybe they're blue or green, but regardless, I am so happy to see those legs, see them plié, see them stretch and kick and bound across the stage, turning, bending at the knee, extending the foot, beautiful and of course erotic as all get out.  No one wants to use that word when describing dance, but it is erotic, rousing something deep in all of us, men and women alike, so I'll break the silence here and now.  Ballet is totally erotic. 

God, those were great legs, probably still are.  I can see them at home now, crossed at the ankle, or the knee, or one tucked under your butt with the other stretched across the couch dangling a red patent leather pump from your toe and clothed in a sheer nude stocking.  My God, you wore stockings!  I think you were the only woman I have known in our generation to wear stockings whenever you wore a skirt or a dress.  Never pantyhose, never thigh highs, just great stockings and a garter belt.  All those colors, black, nude, tan, blue, but my favorite was that red pair with the seams running up the back that you wore on Valentine's Day at the top of the IDS and you had on that red silk dress with the high slit.  We sat in the cocktail lounge on those short chairs waiting for our table and when you shifted, I caught a glimpse of the hook and eye of your garter peeking through on the welt of those red stockings.  There was nothing like it.

I'm thinking now how we met and I am feeling amazed, honored, stunned that you would take even a second out of your glorious life to acknowledge me sitting in the manager's office, the ledger spread out before me on that little desk and the bookkeeper asking me something about non-profit compliance.  You floated past, light as a feather, then smiled at me, at me!, those soft pink lips parting across your white, white teeth - so that's how a CPA ends up with a ballerina.  I see you smiling, Theresa or Terry or Tammy or whatever the hell your name was/is.

Maybe a sip to celebrate the legs and the lips and the teeth and the smile. 

Damn.  I need a meeting.  But then the urge leaves as quickly as it flowed over me and I am back thinking of that smile trying to make out your voice as a huddle of words goes from a gurgle to clear enunciation.

"I think we should take the duplex by the lake before someone else gets it.  Damn the price."

That's what you said.  You said, "Damn the price."  I remember that, and we did.  Hell, I remember the place!  I could get in the car right now and drive over there if I wanted to.  It had that great deck overlooking the lake, well not right on the lake, but you could see the lake if you sat sideways, and now I see your hand picking up that wine glass and bringing it to your lips, those delicate long fingers stroking the stem, and something I say makes you laugh and in the memory of that I have your voice!

Some women have such a dumb voice, I mean I know that some men have dumb voices too, but some women you just can't listen to for more than a few minutes without hoping they'd just zip it.  But your voice, clear and confident, firm, but sweet, I could listen to that voice recite road signs for as long as it takes to drive from here to Chicago - and we did that, didn't we.

But why? 

Why did we go to Chicago? 

I feel the sadness again with the thought of that city and the image of your thin waist and that black-haired guy with the troupe, Andrew something, lifting you high over his shoulders and turning you as though to present a trophy, his trophy, to the audience.  That narrow waist of yours, those small breasts and those long, skinny arms reaching out to the foot lights and opening wide to acknowledge the wild hoots and bravos.

If I had a drink now, this would all come clear and I could go to sleep and start Sunday morning out fresh and alert.  Just one would be OK.  Progress doesn't always happen in linear sequence, does it?  I don't think so, but I've got a glimpse of your ear and I can't afford to move just now.

That fine blonde hair, I'm certain it's blonde, is pulled tight against your head and wraps behind your ear to a pony tail.  Lovely.  That beautiful skin, running from the temple to the jaw, it really is translucent.  A profile comes into view, the high cheekbone, the straight nose, the strong jaw, the tilted head on that long neck resting there like an ornament and I think now I can finally see you, but it's just a flash and I find myself looking at nothing.  Like a portrait an artist is still working on.  He knows the scene and the setting and the clothes that the subject is wearing.  He has painted her hands, dabbed the silver ring on her finger, scribbled the strand of pearls around her neck, even finished off the hair, but the face remains blank.

Sarah or Susie or Suzanne or something starting with an S or maybe a K like Kate or Karen or Kim, not Kim, something stronger, Katherine or maybe Catherine with a C but then it all vanishes.

I am driving my red Volkswagen and you are sitting next to me and we are on the freeway from Minneapolis to Chicago and you are not talking and those long legs of yours are clad in skin tight black jeans and crossed at the ankle, and your feet are wearing short black heels and you've got that tight lavender knit shirt on that you once said made your breasts look smaller than they were/are.  We have made a decision, the two of us, although it think it was really your decision when it came right down it.  It is, as you so often reminded me, your body - and I am suddenly shaking, struck by the truth of that simple statement.

I had thought we were going to Chicago so you could meet that nun and see the convent and the other girls, but that's not what we were doing at all, was it?  I was so naïve.  You threw up this stupid smoke screen, wove this Theodore Drieser tale about nuns and convents, knowing that I was still so off balance by your news that I'd believe anything.

And then there was that cold shoulder over the next few weeks until that one day I found you sitting on the deck in early November, crouched in that skimpy lawn chair, your arms wrapped around your legs pulled up against your chest and I said, "Cyn" - that was your name!  You liked me to call you that even though if anyone else had, you'd reel and snap, "Cynthia.  My name is Cynthia."  But I could call you Cyn, until that day on the deck when I touched your shoulder and asked, "Cyn, what's wrong?  Why are sitting out here in the cold?" and you just looked around at me, eyes brimming with tears and said, "Cynthia."  I can hear you say it as though you were sitting next to me here, breaking through the silence, and in that single word, I now have your face, the green eyes, the great cheekbones, the blonde hair, the translucent skin, the soft, happy, full of life expression that could so quickly turn grim and sour as it did that morning on the deck.  In less than an hour you were packed and gone and now I was the one sitting sideways on the lawn chair, looking at the lake, shivering and wondering what the hell had happened.

What is the use of keeping that bottle of Jack in the cupboard all these years?  Would it be so god awful if you just cracked the seal, just gave the cap a little turn so you could smell something real instead of that goddamn perfume?

Oh, how I hate you, hate you still.

That chance meeting downtown that day, it'd been four months since you walked out on me, and there you were traipsing down Hennepin Avenue wearing the red coat I had given you with half the troupe laughing at your little observations and that Andrew guy - I thought he was gay - with his arm around your waist and it hit me, that waist is still so thin.  And our eyes met and everyone stopped laughing and then it was just you and me standing there on the street with the traffic noise so loud we had to shout to hear each other, but you wouldn't even duck into Café di Napoli so we could talk a little, you had to go, you had lost the baby and there was nothing else to say.

I believed you as unbelievable as that is to me now sitting here with the press of humiliation closing in on me.  There had never been a convent or a nun or any of the crap you made up, just a clinic and a doctor and a solution that didn't involve me.

Until that day, standing out in the noise on Hennepin, I didn't know that I had this big gun to my head, not until I walked into Duff's and had those five Black Jacks, then went home and drank myself through that next week.  When my boss called wanting to know when I was going to get over my flu, I felt such a rush of exhilaration when I told him - you know I think I actually sang it into the phone:

Take this job and shove it.

Huh?

You heard me, asshole!

And I slammed the phone down, smug and satisfied, but within minutes, wished I could dial back the clock, if not for a few years till before I met you, at least for a few minutes before I threw away one of the best jobs I'd ever have.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  I was up for partner that year and easily would have made it.

I am drifting off.  It is so late at night, so late in life.

My arms feel numb, my heart is aching and I sense a quiver in my lip as the tears well up and drip from my eyes.  I am floating on a cloud, a cloud of purposeful anticipation that carries me to the cabinet and cracks the seal and pours the golden salve into the sparkling tumbler and with that first swallow, my face goes flush and a warm, very warm blanket draws up and over me as I instantly, bitterly regret this, but there's just no way to get the damn stuff back into the bottle.  So I toss the glass back and pour another and another - and does it really matter how many?

Because despite all my transgression, I will wake up tomorrow to a life without you, a life without the menace of booze crouching in ambush, but most of all, a life without the vague guilt I have harbored across these many, many years because I know now that God in all His mercy will forgive me for the role I have played in all of this.

And the only perfume I shall smell will be of spring flowers as the world awakens from this long, long winter.