Pisgah Road

by Mahyar A Amouzegar

  Daniel was driving crazier than normal. He had placed a grand on the game. I had no idea where he found the money, but the payoff was astronomical. He felt like the rest of us, unbeatable. But Alice was not used to his driving. She was getting mad. She shrieked every time he swerved to miss another car. At first Gabrielle and I didn’t care. I was holding her and we had kissed a few more times. Daniel couldn’t have been right, because just kissing Gabrielle was better than winning the Cup. Alice was screaming at me to do something, so I told Daniel to slow down for Alice’s sake. I don’t think he even heard me. He was an excellent driver and like most good drivers he didn’t want to hear instructions from non-drivers.

  “Daniel, for fuck’s sake. Slow down a bit, man.” He ignored me. So I said it again, “Come on, Daniel. You’re scaring Alice. She isn’t used to your crazy driving.”

  He slowed down a bit, but Alice wasn’t satisfied. It’s funny how a little argument can escalate. Alice was scared and Daniel didn’t want to be told what to do. Alice yelled at him to behave. “You promised,” she kept saying, loud at first and then more subdued. Alice had the right to be fearful. She was in a horrible car accident as a child, almost losing her parents, and the fear of car accidents had become ingrained in her psyche. Gabrielle didn’t say anything at first, but then she was telling me to take care of it. It wasn’t going anywhere. He was angry and didn’t see the police car ahead of him. He nearly slammed into an oncoming car when we all screamed about the cops. They stopped us, but Daniel was his charming self and they ended up talking about the game. The cop was a Wimbledon fan and he was too ecstatic to fault Daniel. He got away, but he blamed me for distracting him and not siding with him. That was our first real fight, a bad end to an otherwise monumental day. But I had opened Pandora’s Box. The event had sparked something in me. I was now fearful of driving with him. I was afraid to see Gabrielle in his car. Our arguments escalated and then in a blink of an eye our friendship ended. They’re just words — a sequence of letters — but when you put them in a wrong order and utter them to your best friend, they become poison. And there is no antidote for the hurt they cause. I wish I could take them back, but I can’t. All I could do is to go to Daniel and try to show him that I’m still his friend. He brought Gabrielle to me and then he took her away from me, but I’m still hoping today we can put everything to rest.

  I’m supposed to meet Gabrielle at three-thirty. I am running late. I pay for my meal and take a cab back to my hotel to change. I don’t want to look casual. We’re meeting at the Pantry in East Sheen. The Pantry is an old inn and has a great pub. We had agreed to meet there first and then walk over to Daniel’s, only ten minutes away from the Pantry. I take a cab and I’m there at a quarter to four. Gabrielle is not there. The Pantry has changed. It’s renovated. Now, it has a fancy restaurant with an expensive wine list. They have waiters with narrow ties. I get a seat and order a pint of cider. I look at the menu and nothing on it is less than forty-quid. Gabrielle shows up at four. We have to be at Daniel’s before six. She looks exhausted. She had to take the slow train from Waterloo. She had lunch with her parents and her in-laws and she had to lie about her London visit. She hates lying. I do nothing but lie. I felt exhausted just thinking about it. I’ve finished my cider and I nod at the waiter with two fingers raised. He understands and brings them to us quickly. Gabrielle takes several grateful sips and puts the glass down heavily.

  We drink in silence. We’re not sure what to say. It has been ten years and our last encounter started in the same inn. I’m sure she thinks I’m disturbed for wanting to go to the same places. She is probably right. But I feel I need to go to these places. They are like dots in my psyche and they need to be connected. I can’t solve my puzzle without visiting these places. I want to tell Daniel the whole story when I meet him, so I need to revisit our old haunting grounds so I can remember. Ten years is a long time to hold bad memories.

  We had finished our drinks. She doesn’t want to eat. I’m too full to eat again.

  “Why are you here?” asks Gabrielle.

  She asked the same question the night before. I’ve forgotten my answer. She had said she was sorry, but she never told me why.

  “I need to be here.”

  “Why now? Why after so many years? Why didn’t you come back before I married John?” She pauses for a moment not really expecting any answers and then adds, “Why didn’t you call me back when I tried so many times?”

  She has forgotten the bitterness. She thinks it would have been simple for me to come back. She was the one who pushed me away. Daniel brought us together, but it was Gabrielle who pushed me away. She blamed me. She reads it on my face. She had read the same thing a decade ago, but she was too upset to understand it then, or perhaps too angry to care. Words were spoken, but they were just words and not our true feelings.

  She says, “It was never your fault, Marty.”

  “I never thought it was.”

  I don’t mean it. We all had our share of guilt, but I don’t want it anymore. I want to say it out loud so it can crystallize and become my reality. She smiles. She smiled then too. We had the same conversation almost ten years ago. She told me it wasn’t my fault then and I had agreed. We are repeating the same conversation. We are boring. Her eyes had stopped dancing then too. They were silent for a long time. She had a sad, sorry smile then. It’s the same one she has now. I take a deep breath. It has been ten years. My fault or not, I am over it. Ten years is a long time. I want desperately to believe. I don’t think I can take any more responsibility for others any more. I wish I could have taken my words back though. I wish I were more supportive. I wish I were a better friend to Daniel, instead of being brutal. I wish our last encounter hadn’t ended in anger.

  She says, “Daniel never liked traffic lights.”

  “More so when he was drunk.” I don’t mean to say it, but it is an automatic response. It’s the same narrative that I repeated in my head, like a re-run of a bad old movie.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Marty. I never blamed you.”

  It is not true. She did blame me. She still does. She never said it. She never lashed out at me. I wished she had. She wasn’t there when I tried to do the right thing. She wasn’t there when I told Daniel we could never be friends.

  “I shouldn’t have let him drive.”

  “He never listened to anyone. You know that.” Then she adds, “He never liked the red lights.”

  We said the same thing then.

  “I tried you know. We fought. I shouted at him and I cursed him. We made spectacles of ourselves that night. I physically took away his key. I gave it to Alice and she hid it in her bra. Daniel was angry and yelled at us and tried to force it out of her, but she fought back. She never gave it to him.”

  I could tell it was news to her. “Then how?”

  “He had a spare. He had a spare under his car. One of those magnets.”

  She gasps and puts her hand to cover her mouth. She still blames me. She doesn’t want to after so many years, but she thinks I should have tried harder. I should have and perhaps he would have survived that night, but there would have been other nights when I wasn’t with him. I blamed myself, but I don’t want to anymore. I did try. Ten years is a long time and one can find clarity in those years. I don’t want to hold myself responsible for Daniel, and my father, and my mother, and for everything else I have done or have not done. We live and then we die. What we choose to do has consequences. My father could have talked to me. He didn’t have to put the envelope in my hand and say goodnight. My mother could have talked to him. She shouldn’t have had to hide her love for Jane. He could have said goodbye. He could have let me talk to him, but he only said goodnight.

  Gabrielle’s eyes well up with tears that she no longer cares to hold back. She is still holding her mouth as if worried she might scream. “You should have kept an eye on him. We all should have kept an eye on him.”

  It is finally out. She wants to say what she
should have said a decade earlier. She wants to say that I failed my friend and that she failed him too. She wants to blame me first, so she can forgive me.

  “He said he was going to get a pack of cigarettes and we had his keys. Alice wanted to go with him, but he was angry and didn’t want us. He wanted to get a pack and he wanted to go alone.”

  “He was resourceful, wasn’t he?”

  “He didn’t like the brand so he thought he would go next door. And he wanted to drive. He hated walking.”

  Gabrielle laughs. Daniel hated walking. He could sit on a park bench for hours and observe people, but didn’t have the patience for a five minute walk or a one minute red light. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted to drive to the store and get his nicotine. He never made it.

  “I’m sorry, Gabrielle. I am so, so sorry.”

  She is visibly crying now and I have a hard time holding back too. I miss him and I know Gabrielle misses him too. Daniel connected us and he then pulled us apart.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Gabrielle says in all earnest. She doesn’t want to blame me anymore. She doesn’t want to blame anyone.

  I blame Daniel. He never listened. He thought he would live forever. He thought he was an indestructible super-agent. His death made a rift so large that there was no chance of building a bridge between Gabrielle and me. I don’t blame myself. I blame Daniel for killing himself and I blame Gabrielle for blaming me for it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I

  Pisgah Cemetery is on Pisgah Road, London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames. It was built in 1906. Their brochure proclaims traditional style graves, and a natural burial area. There’s a chapel that is available for people of all faiths and beliefs. Daniel didn’t believe in anything. The chapel could hold seventy, but more than that showed up for him.

  Gabrielle and I walk to the gravesite. It’s a small trek from the entrance. It has been cleaned and there are fresh flowers on his grave. Daniel’s father must have been there earlier. I should have visited him as well, but I couldn’t before seeing Daniel. He will be happy to see me. He never blamed me or anyone else. He knew his son better than anyone. He was happy to see Daniel had so many friends and they all showed up to his funeral. He gave a beautiful eulogy telling everyone that Daniel lived his life as he should have and there were no regrets. He told everyone that regrets mean Daniel did something wrong and his son was too kind and too precious to be accused of that. He asked us to direct our anger and frustration at him because he raised Daniel to be a free spirit and if that caused his death, then it was his fault.

  We walk up the little hill and sit on the grass next to Daniel’s grave. We didn’t bring any flowers. He didn’t like flowers. We brought him a bottle of wine. He hated wine in a pub, but loved it at a picnic. I uncork the bottle and each of us takes a swig. I pour some on his tombstone. The burgundy liquid moves slowly on the granite, making several little fingers of red rivers. Part of his name is now tinted with the color of the wine. I miss him.

  We’re both crying. I hold her and she puts her head on my chest. I feel her body move as she sobs rhythmically. She looks up and she kisses me. I want to kiss her back. I want to show to Daniel that everything is fine and Gabrielle and I can be together despite it all. Daniel would have loved this. He would have approved. He would have wanted me to kiss Gabrielle back. But I don’t. I pull back and I can feel the pain of my decision in my chest.

  I say, “I do love you, Gabrielle. I’ve always loved you. You know that don’t you?”

  She doesn’t say anything nor does she move. She stays in my arms and I want her to stay with me. I can feel her heart beating like a slow thump of a drum, counting the time. I pause, but she knows I’m not finished. She’s waiting for me to say my piece. She can sense what I’m going to say before I say it. She waits for me patiently in my arms with her slow rhythmic breathing. I continue fully aware that Daniel is listening next to me. I take a deep long breath in order to manage my quivering voice. I exhale slowly and close my eyes. Gabrielle is waiting.

  “There was a time when we had our chance, but we never said it. We never did anything. It was my fault; I should have stayed and waited for you to forgive me. But it was yours too. You should have been kinder.”

  She doesn’t disagree. She puts her hand in her purse and pulls out an old envelope. I recognize my own scrawling immediately. I remember writing her address on the back of the envelope trying to get the letters straight, but not being sure of my own will, writing fast before I could change my mind. I had put a stamp on the envelope and dashed to the nearest postbox. There was a moment of hesitation, but I put the envelope in the box anyway.

  We had come back from Daniel’s funeral and we were all in pain. We had decided to go to the Queens Arms. This was Daniel’s favorite pub, but it was also the place where he started the night’s journey to his death. Gabrielle didn’t want to go. She’d said she would never go back to that place again. There was a row, and our grief turned to anger. Gabrielle went home and the rest of us went to the pub. We drank too much. I went back to Gabrielle’s place to talk. I decided that day to go back home with my parents, but I wanted to tell her that if she loved me, I’d stay. I wanted to tell her that I loved her.

  It didn’t work out that way. She was distraught and she was angry with me for going to the place that had killed Daniel. She blamed me. She thought I was callous. I told her that I was leaving and she told me it was better that way. I could read in her eyes that she blamed me for his death. Her eyes had stopped dancing. They had stopped dancing from the moment I delivered the news of his death. We should have talked about it, but we didn’t. We kept the words inside and they festered. I held her in my arms to say goodbye. I told her that I’d be back in a few months.

  She nodded and said, “It’s better this way, Marty.”

  I hugged her tightly and she returned it without much affection. I had so much more to say. I wanted to tell her that I had tried to prevent Daniel from driving. I wanted to tell her that I felt guilty that I didn’t do a better job. I needed her to console me. I needed her to be a friend to me, the living, and not to Daniel, who hated waiting for red lights. We told him so many times, but he had laughed it off. We had stopped driving with him. We had berated him but to no avail.

  I kissed Gabrielle on the forehead and then on her mouth. It was a soft kiss and she neither accepted nor rejected it. I kissed her again and she kissed me back. She was crying and I could taste the salty tears around her mouth. We kissed again and the passion that had been kept in check escaped me. She didn’t want it. She wasn’t ready. The timing was wrong. Everything was wrong.

  “Marty. No!”

  It felt like a slap and I stood back. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle.”

  “I can’t, Marty. Not now.”

  “Gabrielle… I need…”

  “Please. Please leave. Please go,” she said and then to soften it, she added, “We’re okay.”

  We were not okay and I could see that she meant it — she wanted me to leave. I left her house with so much unspoken. I went home and told my parents that I was going back with them. They didn’t disagree. They thought it would be good for me to get away for a few months. They were thinking it would be temporary, a long summer break. I knew it was not. I wrote a note to Gabrielle and mailed it before leaving. She has the envelope in her hand now.

  “I’m sorry, Marty,” she says as she hands me the envelope. “I should have said how I felt about you then. I should have let you kiss me more. I should have let you love me. But I was in so much pain then and I was angry with you for going back to that horrible pub. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help being angry with you. I blamed you and I blamed myself. I didn’t want to be happy and love you, while Daniel’s mangled body was in a coffin.”

  I take the note out of the envelope and read it:

  No matter what I say, it’ll be construed wrongly, but know this: there were never any expectations, nor plans, nor intentions. It was
what it was, at the moment for the moment and nothing more. After all these years, I don’t think we know each other. You don’t know me, not really. To me, the moment didn’t feel like a farewell but a goodbye, given the events, and that disturbed me more than it did you. Perhaps I’m more sentimental about such things. I believe I was there for you long ago when you were distraught and needed someone. I needed someone too…

  So Goodbye.

  I read the note once more. The words are strewn on the page like rusty nails, useless and yet perilous. I feel disappointed. I remembered the content differently. I remembered it as a profound poetry of love and anguish. But it’s now just the sad rambling of a distressed boy.

  Of course it is, you wanker, Daniel says.

  I ignore him. I was fooled by my own memories.

  I told you not to write it.

  You did? I don’t remember you saying anything. You were angry and then you were silent, Daniel. At least you should remember that much.

  Nevertheless, it was a stupid thing to do.

  I ignore him again. I don’t want to be told what I already know. I stare intently at the faded words on the crumpled lined brown paper and then I remember.

  I was utterly hurt and embarrassed by Gabrielle’s rejection and I ran home, trying to hold back my tears, but at the end failed and wept uncontrollably in front of our door. After a while, I managed to walk to my room and not knowing what to do, I started writing what, at the time, I thought was a long letter professing my love, but what I actually wrote is what I’m holding in my hands.