Missed Connection

by K Larsen

  The second I walk in the door, Luke is all over me. Questions are flying and all I want to do is pull on some pajama pants, a wife beater and slump on the couch to relax and enjoy the feeling of my happy balls.

  “Yes, I had a good time. No, we aren’t ‘together.’ Yes, she’s pretty. No, I’m not seriously interested in her. Yes, LUKE, it’s time for bed,” I ramble off.

  His brow furrows and he huffs at me mumbling ‘whatever’ before stomping off to his room. It’s these moments where I’m unsure how to be a good parent. He’s my son but he’s my best friend, too, and the line has to be drawn somewhere. He doesn’t get to hear all the nitty gritty details. He isn’t old enough to understand yet.

  Now that Luke is in bed, I can relax, and relax, I do. I throw my feet up on the coffee table after changing into pajama bottoms and decide that it’s time to catch up on some recorded shows. Wouldn’t you know it, hours later, when I’m drifting off to sleep, I realize I haven’t thought of her since I got home. I end up falling asleep with a slight smile on my face.

  Morning comes too fast. I feel well rested and more like my normal self. A good lay was really all I needed. I stretch and crack my neck. It’s stiff from my position on the couch. Sunshine fills the windows. It’s going to be a great day for a ride on the lake with Emily. I get up and pad to the kitchen barefoot and topless. Once the coffee is started, I pull out all the ingredients to make apple pancakes, Luke’s favorite. I’ve got the bacon frying and pancakes flipping, when Luke stumbles into the kitchen. He moans. “The smell motivated me to get up.”

  I chuckle and toss him a strip of cooked bacon. He shoves the length of it in his mouth before grabbing a mug and making himself some coffee. It’s these moments that I live for. These easy, lazy Saturday mornings. The smell of a hearty breakfast, the moans of bacon love from my son and the way the sunlight filters through the house, as if to say the day is too gorgeous to waste away indoors. It gives the illusion that there isn’t a damn thing wrong in the world.

  I fill a plate with bacon and apple pancakes and slide it across the island to him.

  “Any big plans for today?” I ask. Luke douses his pancakes in butter and syrup, while crunching on another bacon strip.

  “Nope.” His reply is mumbled from food in his mouth. It makes me laugh. “You?”

  “Taking Emily on the boat for lunch and to do the interview. Two birds, one stone and all that nonsense.”

  Luke whips his head backward, sending his hair flying out of his face. “Cool.”

  I pile my plate with breakfast and refill my coffee before sitting next to him and digging in.

  “Yeah, cool,” I say.

  I’m sitting at the dining room table surrounded by folders. I ordered blue lights for Angie after all, I can visualize where she’s going with it. The wedding will be pricey but I think that’s what John expects. I’ve made a spreadsheet to show him where I cut corners anyway, even if he won’t be impressed. My phone buzzes and I glance down to see it’s Angie. I take my reading glasses off and lift the cell to my ear.

  “Morning, Honey. You’re up early.”

  “Barely up. I’m chugging coffee. Dad home?”

  “No, Angie, he left almost an hour ago. Did you need him?’

  I notice my coffee cup is empty and stand to fill it in the kitchen.

  “I don’t want him to be there. Are you sitting down?”

  “No, I just got up. What’s going on?” I hear the pop and hiss of a soda can opening. “Angie, are you drinking soda for breakfast?”

  “I don’t live at home anymore, Mom. This is Redbull. You’re going to need one, too, turn on channel four, or six even. It’s on all of them.”

  “Terrorist attack? What’s happening? Darling, you’re scaring me.” I fumble with the remote control for the television in the kitchen. God knows I’ve never turned it on before and I don’t know how to use the damn thing.

  “Not quite. More like friendly fire. Seems Mr. Black Coffee is looking for his woman, too. His letter moved from Craigslist to Facebook, and all the way to the morning news.”

  “Shut up!” I yelp and finally get the damn thing on. There’s a group of women sitting around a circular table and leaning in toward one host who is reading. I push every button trying to find the mute and when I hit it, of course, the volume is blaring.

  “Listen to this, it gets better: But as I cast this virtual coin into the wishing well of the universe, it occurs to me, after a million what-ifs and a lifetime of lost sleep, that our connection wasn’t missed at all.”

  “Oh my, he’s so poetic,” another woman at the table says, her hand clutching her heart.

  One of the ladies, who appears younger than the rest, is trying to salvage her mascara by running a perfectly pink fingernail along the rim of her eye.

  “He has to find her!” she warbles dramatically. “I’ve never read anything so touching.”

  The camera pans out to the audience and there are some women actually in tears. Histrionics, I think. They encourage the audience to react and promise them time on camera. Seems like a lot of hoopla, but of course, I didn’t hear the whole letter.

  “Kind of like my thing, you’re thinking?” I ask Angie while I pour creamer in my coffee.

  “It is your freaking thing, it’s your story, genius! Turn the channel!”

  And just like that I drop my mug on the floor, hot coffee splashes onto my beige colored capri pants and I can feel the heat of it on my ankles. Because when I turn the channel, it puts me in front of his face. I’m staring at a screen containing a photo of the same man who sat across from me that night. Of course, he’s aged a bit, has some greys and a few lines, but if anything, the years have made him even more gorgeous than he was when I met him. He has the most kind and simultaneously vulnerable gaze I’ve ever seen in my life. I could never forget it, even when I tried. That gaze somehow penetrated me and left its signature on my being. I’m breathless and paralyzed and speechless at seeing him again.

  “He’s hot,” Angie says dreamily.

  “That’s him,” I whisper, fighting the urge to burst into tears.

  “Yeah, it is him and his name is Titan.”

  “Ty,” I whisper and his name buzzes on my lips.

  “He wrote you a letter and everyone in the world read it. Some people put it up on Facebook and then the entire universe shared it. One of his buddies uploaded the picture to help it along.”

  “He is beautiful,” I say and frown and quickly change the channel when they move the shot away from his face.

  “You’re not the only one who thinks so. Apparently, Titan has gotten everything from marriage proposals to offers of no-strings-attached sex. He’s a single dad with a kid. He’s got his own construction company.”

  “Floozies,” I say and finally find a channel that has a picture. It’s a different shot on this one, he’s on a boat and looks to be fishing with his young son. Then they pan into an interview with some random couple who met and married via a lost connection.

  “Mom, he wants you. You’ve got to contact him!”

  “I’m a married woman, Angie. I made my choice that night in the diner.”

  “Mom, you and Dad have had separate rooms since I started high school!” She’s screeching into the phone and I feel dizzy with the onslaught of information.

  “Honey!”

  “What? I’m not blind, for crying out loud! What, are you no longer a person, you’re not a human being anymore? Since when is forty-five old, Mom? Look at Demi, look at Elle. You’re gorgeous, people ask us if we’re sisters all the freaking time! Go live a little!”

  “Angie, what’s gotten into you? Don’t you want your parents together?”

  “Fine, don’t take it! This one chance that the universe is offering you!”

  “I will write him. I will. But this is crazy talk, Lovey, it is. We might not even feel anything at all after all these years. A lot has come to pass in that time.”

  I’m on my hands an
d knees with a sponge, a tea towel and a spray bottle of homemade cleaner. My knee catches on a broken chip of ceramic and pinpoints of blood begin to appear through my pants.

  “Just read the damn letter,” she huffs and then hangs up the phone. I shake the broken pieces of the coffee mug out of the towel and into the garbage. Skimming through the channels, I see the daily news shows have moved on to new fodder. A storm that caused tornadoes in the Midwest, left hundreds of thousands without power. The election. Commercials for adult diapers. No more of his face. Creeping hesitantly toward my laptop, I pull up our Angie and Jess’ podcast page to see what all the fuss is about.

  An hour later, I’ve read and reread the letter a thousand times. My eyes are red-rimmed, my heart is pounding and nervous energy is running through my limbs like an ungrounded electrical current. His words are more than poetic. They were meant for me. Ty is looking for me. I feel like I somehow heard him through space and through time. It was his outcry and his need that reached me and woke all of those hidden memories up. I feel so connected to him, that I’m at once, terrified and ecstatic. I never thought I’d see him again in this lifetime or the next. What was a once a distant dream has suddenly burst through the void and blazed smack into my reality.

  It looks like I have a letter to write.

  Ty, I am the girl from Hope’s Diner that New Year’s Eve in the snow. You have been with me, too. For whatever reason, I was somehow unable to let you go. I always wondered what my life would have been, had I left with you that night instead of returning to my dorm. I was later reprimanded by my future husband, for leaving without telling anyone, for not wearing a jacket. He accused me of being rash and irresponsible and foolhardy. None of those things sounded so bad to me and I wondered if you would have thought so. I don’t even know if it was an option, to take your hand, to go with you, to see where the wind would take us.

  I have to tell you that I never would have left you alone, never, had I known the path you’d walked down before ours crossed. I never would have let you question your worth. I would have told you that you deserved to thrive and to live a full life, like you have. You deserved that and more.

  Ty, I don’t know what to say to you, except thank you. That night meant so much to me. I wish, in some ways, that I had been braver than I was—that I could have offered you more solace, even if it were just my two arms and the warmth of my body. I wish, too, that I had spoken aloud what I was feeling, a connection so strong it was all consuming and overwhelming. I didn’t know what to say or do or even how to broach the topic. So I did the only thing I knew how to do in my naïve, twenty-two years. I ran. I ran away from things I didn’t understand.

  And now, twenty years later, I can only apologize for my behavior. I can say now, that I wish I had stayed and we had explored what it meant. I wish I had given reign to the thing that was happening between us. What would have happened had I trusted my instinct, or your instinct? I wish my fear could have been replaced with spontaneity, with a healthy sense of adventure. But I was scared, Ty. I was young. I’d just found out I was pregnant, carrying my daughter, who is the love of my life.

  I didn’t tell you my whole name. I’m Jesenia Van Buren. I’m married. I have one daughter, Angelina. I’m very preoccupied with crafts and home design. My Angie and I have a podcast where we broadcast do-it-yourself design projects, step by step to our listeners every week. I still live in New York, back and forth between the Capitol and the City. I’ve led a good life this far and I find myself mostly happy these days. I hope you are happy, too. I hope, with the exceptions that you mentioned in the letter, that life has been good to you.

  If you are ever in the City, please drop me a line. I’d love to meet for coffee again, maybe share a slice of cheesecake. I will wear a green dress and you just be sure to bring that same look in your eyes.

  Better twenty years too late than never.

  Jesenia

  It’s Sunday and the weekend’s almost over. The interview with Emily went really well, I think. And our picnic boat ride wasn’t too shabby either.

  “Any response?” Rusty asks while searching my house for his son. “You know it was Dan who sent those pictures in.” I’m mortified that my picture has made television. I’m mortified that anyone outside of her has been reading my post. It’s not something I took into consideration when I posted it.

  “Figures! You know what? I haven’t checked my email since Friday. Probably not though.” At this point, I’ve committed to the idea that getting an answer from Jess is a lost cause.

  Rusty grabs his son, Dillon, by the collar as he walks by. “Do not go out of earshot boy, we’re leaving in five or your mother will castrate me.” Dillon nods and walks off toward the backyard with Luke. “Well there’s always this Emily chick.”

  “Nope, that Emily chick, has already checked out and is on her way back to Albany to write the story.” How Rusty ever landed a wife is beyond me. And Edie is about the sweetest thing you’ve ever met.

  “You better hope you were a good lay or the story might turn out hostile.” Rusty laughs at his joke but I don’t join in. I had two rounds with Emily to confirm that we were both satisfied. I’m confident the article will be a good one.

  “Dillon!” Rusty bellows.

  “You could walk to the back door and call him,” I say, laying the sarcasm on as thick as possible.

  Rusty just looks at me. Dillon comes barreling through the house and heels at his father’s side.

  “Thanks for having me over, Ty,” Dillon says.

  “Anytime,” I tell him.

  At eight, I sit down at my desk to finish up some paperwork before tomorrow morning. Luke is locked away in his room doing homework. I finish up logging receipts, I enter everyone’s payroll and balance the books. Mindless stuff. Boring stuff.

  “Eight forty-five!” I holler from my seat. Luke knows that he has ten minutes to wrap up whatever he’s doing because it’s our TV time. We pick a show and watch it together, Sunday through Thursday nights before bed.

  I pull up my email and log in.

  Two hundred new messages.

  Two hundred. Jesus. I start scanning through, quickly marking the obvious ones for spam and leaving the ones I’m unsure of. I’m down to seventy-five when Luke appears.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I had two hundred new emails.”

  “Dang, Dad.” Luke bumps my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’ve weeded out all but seventy-five.” I lean back in my chair and wrap my palms behind my neck for a good stretch. Luke pulls up the spare chair and sits next to me.

  “Let’s go through these and see if she’s here.”

  So we start opening emails and scanning. Twenty minutes later, I’m ready to leave the rest until tomorrow.

  “Last one, Bud.” I close my eyes and rub the heels of my hands over them.

  “Dad.” I look to the screen, knowing something’s up from the tone of his voice.

  Ty, I am the girl from Hope’s Diner that New Year’s Eve in the snow. You have been with me, too, for whatever reason. I, too, was somehow unable to let you go. I always wondered what my life would have been, had I left with you that night instead of returning to my dorm.

  “It’s her,” I breathe. Suddenly, I’m frozen. I hear Luke’s excited voice yammering on about her name, Googling something, pictures and other nonsense, but he sounds miles away. My stomach feels like it’s on a rollercoaster. My mouth is stuck open. I don’t know what to do except read and re-read her email and blink.

  I crawl into John’s king size bed in the middle of the night. The mattress is soft and the down comforter is billowy, there’s a mountain of pillows he’s tossed to the bottom of the bed and onto the floor around the bedroom.

  “John!” I whisper, shaking him gently. This was once my room, too, and I haven’t stepped foot in here for ages.

  “John! Can you hear me?” I try to rouse him again. He’s always slept soundly, like he hasn’t got a care in t
he world. John always said I burned all of my calories by worrying too much.

  “Christ, Jesenia? What time is it?” He barrels as he sits straight up in bed.

  “Not quite three thirty. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “And you couldn’t wait a few hours? What’s going on? Are you having an episode, do we need to call the doctor?”

  “No,” I say slowly shaking my head. I grab a cylindrical pillow with a lace appliqué pillowcase. I slowly untie the ribbon where it’s gathered at the end. I tie the bow back up again and try not to be angry with him.

  “You know, John, when was the last time I had a really bad episode? Ten years ago, maybe? Maybe even more? It was during the time when you lost the mayoral election. We were all under a lot of stress and I came down with the flu that same weekend.”

  “How could I forget? They wanted you to do an inpatient stint and we had to pull out all stops necessary to avoid a scandal.”

  I remind myself to breathe in and out to help keep me from yelling at him. I don’t want to blame him. I just wish he could understand me better.

  “I’m not so sure myself that the ‘episode’ needed hospitalization. I stayed up for three days. I knitted and crocheted.”

  “Maybe fifty pieces, Jess. You painted the den green.”

  “I paint lots of things a lot of different colors, John. I like to paint, color is important to me.”

  “You hire someone to do that. You don’t spend three sleepless nights doing it yourself!” he barks. John throws back the covers and grabs his robe.

  “You almost sound like you’re mad at me. That happened ten years ago, John.”

  I don’t get an answer, as he shoves his feet aggressively into his slippers.