Liddy and David
Towards the end, David and Liddy would spend their evenings together-he as bartender, she as waitress-and those were the best hours she’d known. Not the best she could have asked for, but she’d learned to live with far less than that. After the pub closed, Liddy would sit across from him and he would draw some beers from the tap, and they’d talk about Old Orchard, and relive the joys and glories of their youth with the same stories night after night - reminiscences of drinking and sex, which grew taller with every telling - and also the potential they’d left untapped on the springy boughs of youth, back before all of those decision they’d made. They would sit, with David doing most of the talking, long into latest hours, when the sun would start to rise and even the nightcrawlers would turn in to rest.
Liddy would listen, and wait, and occasionally say a word or two. She rarely spoke; Liddy had always thought the world of him, but David never knew. To him, she could only be the sister he’d never had; while for her, he was the love she’d never known. All their lives, things had been that way. They’d hardly spoken a word to one another in high school. David had risen through the ranks of high school football to small town stardom as the first string quarterback. Liddy, on the other hand, had always looked on from the stands; always alone, always with a textbook on her lap, always with her eyes on David - her doughy browns magnified behind the curve of thick glass lenses - and always surrounded by tittering, muffled laughter which grew in unchecked crescendo during those moments when she tore her gaze away; during these moments she’d inscribe fervent, desperate lines - amorous notes and poetry, all written in pink - into the notebook she’d withdraw from her left breast pocket. Those around her would watch in mirthful study of the pen clenched by her hand, and the contorted exertions of her face, which was subjected to a drive which gave no quarter.
Liddy spent four years watching David, and never once did they exchange words; until graduation, when they were paired together to walk towards the podium. They talked talked as they, and spoke haltingly at first. Then David announced suddenly that he was leaving town, leaving Old Orchard; getting away from it all, striking out on his own, so that he could find out what he wanted to do and to be. Listening to David, she felt such inner stirrings as she’d never experienced since that revival preacher had come to town. Liddy, on the other hand; she had a full scholarship to Purdue, a place to live with relatives, a promising future in mathematics. But she had nowhere in particular to call home-to run away from, or to run away to-nor any conception of the sort of life she might forge from time. Because for her the only life she’d ever known was right then and there, an arm’s length from David, with his blue eyes shining above her.
Only she didn’t tell him that. When he said he was hopping a train headed west, tomorrow morning when everyone would still be drunk and spent from post graduation festivities, Liddy remarked with surprise that she, too, was taking the train west to tomorrow. She asked him where he was stopping off, and when he said Chicago, she was as surprised as he to find that she, too, planned on stopping off at Chicago. He laughed and said they would make a trip of it, and she smiled, and blushed, and found she was at a loss for words, where just before words and decisions had come in a rush which she was at a loss to explain. And then her body shook with a warm and delirious joy that teetered on the edge of something she’d never felt before, and to which she could not give call.
Her hand trembled and her face shone with a tremendous inner light as she accepted her diploma, so that a hundred of her former classmates startled from the sprawling boredom of the ceremony to wonder who this beautiful girl was that they’d never seen before. And just as abruptly as she had entered their lives, she walked off stage and was gone; a face as vague and shining as the promise they’d been taught to believe, and which later they would learn to look back upon and resent-an assurance that the path trodden and smoothed over by the labored steps of thousands could lead to lives of fulfillment. After the ceremony, her classmates would celebrate, and then disperse, to choke on the dirt kicked up on the dusty road well traveled, and to watch with pained and disbelieving eyes as the luminosity dimmed, sputtered, and was finally lost in stifling darkness.
Liddy snuck from her grandparents’ house unnoticed that night - or perhaps they did notice, but refrained from calling her when they heard her soft treading steps, to permit their granddaughter a night of well earned freedom - and dragged her bags across town to the train station. She hid in the shadows when drunken graduates passed by, in freewheeling tractors and vaulting sedans, and she crept across yards and hopped over fences when she thought the effort worth avoidance of attention.
When she got to the train station, she sat at a bench, with all her bags around her and under a light which had drawn a fleet of bugs, and she shivered - not from the evening cold - but from the excitement of having got there, all on her own, and for no other reason than that it was the surest path she could see to what she wanted.
She woke up with the bright glare of the morning sun of her eyes, and the sound of a car horn honking close by. She turned to see David, waving his friends goodbye. When he walked towards her with a single bag slung over his shoulder, and a slow smile of recognition on his face, she realized he’d forgotten about her - while thoughts of him had been ever present in her mind - but now he remembered. She smiled, he said good morning, and then they waited together on the bench. They waited until the train came, and then they boarded it, and David said they should say goodbye to Old Orchard forever. Together they waved, leaning out of the window, and Liddy laughed the hardest she ever had, for the first time with a mind free of self-doubt. As it turned out, neither one of them would ever return, though together they would revisit memories (mostly David’s) of Old Orchard countless times.
to be continued...?
Liddy would listen, and wait, and occasionally say a word or two. She rarely spoke; Liddy had always thought the world of him, but David never knew. To him, she could only be the sister he’d never had; while for her, he was the love she’d never known. All their lives, things had been that way. They’d hardly spoken a word to one another in high school. David had risen through the ranks of high school football to small town stardom as the first string quarterback. Liddy, on the other hand, had always looked on from the stands; always alone, always with a textbook on her lap, always with her eyes on David - her doughy browns magnified behind the curve of thick glass lenses - and always surrounded by tittering, muffled laughter which grew in unchecked crescendo during those moments when she tore her gaze away; during these moments she’d inscribe fervent, desperate lines - amorous notes and poetry, all written in pink - into the notebook she’d withdraw from her left breast pocket. Those around her would watch in mirthful study of the pen clenched by her hand, and the contorted exertions of her face, which was subjected to a drive which gave no quarter.
Liddy spent four years watching David, and never once did they exchange words; until graduation, when they were paired together to walk towards the podium. They talked talked as they, and spoke haltingly at first. Then David announced suddenly that he was leaving town, leaving Old Orchard; getting away from it all, striking out on his own, so that he could find out what he wanted to do and to be. Listening to David, she felt such inner stirrings as she’d never experienced since that revival preacher had come to town. Liddy, on the other hand; she had a full scholarship to Purdue, a place to live with relatives, a promising future in mathematics. But she had nowhere in particular to call home-to run away from, or to run away to-nor any conception of the sort of life she might forge from time. Because for her the only life she’d ever known was right then and there, an arm’s length from David, with his blue eyes shining above her.
Only she didn’t tell him that. When he said he was hopping a train headed west, tomorrow morning when everyone would still be drunk and spent from post graduation festivities, Liddy remarked with surprise that she, too, was taking the train west to tomorrow. She asked him where he was stopping off, and when he said Chicago, she was as surprised as he to find that she, too, planned on stopping off at Chicago. He laughed and said they would make a trip of it, and she smiled, and blushed, and found she was at a loss for words, where just before words and decisions had come in a rush which she was at a loss to explain. And then her body shook with a warm and delirious joy that teetered on the edge of something she’d never felt before, and to which she could not give call.
Her hand trembled and her face shone with a tremendous inner light as she accepted her diploma, so that a hundred of her former classmates startled from the sprawling boredom of the ceremony to wonder who this beautiful girl was that they’d never seen before. And just as abruptly as she had entered their lives, she walked off stage and was gone; a face as vague and shining as the promise they’d been taught to believe, and which later they would learn to look back upon and resent-an assurance that the path trodden and smoothed over by the labored steps of thousands could lead to lives of fulfillment. After the ceremony, her classmates would celebrate, and then disperse, to choke on the dirt kicked up on the dusty road well traveled, and to watch with pained and disbelieving eyes as the luminosity dimmed, sputtered, and was finally lost in stifling darkness.
Liddy snuck from her grandparents’ house unnoticed that night - or perhaps they did notice, but refrained from calling her when they heard her soft treading steps, to permit their granddaughter a night of well earned freedom - and dragged her bags across town to the train station. She hid in the shadows when drunken graduates passed by, in freewheeling tractors and vaulting sedans, and she crept across yards and hopped over fences when she thought the effort worth avoidance of attention.
When she got to the train station, she sat at a bench, with all her bags around her and under a light which had drawn a fleet of bugs, and she shivered - not from the evening cold - but from the excitement of having got there, all on her own, and for no other reason than that it was the surest path she could see to what she wanted.
She woke up with the bright glare of the morning sun of her eyes, and the sound of a car horn honking close by. She turned to see David, waving his friends goodbye. When he walked towards her with a single bag slung over his shoulder, and a slow smile of recognition on his face, she realized he’d forgotten about her - while thoughts of him had been ever present in her mind - but now he remembered. She smiled, he said good morning, and then they waited together on the bench. They waited until the train came, and then they boarded it, and David said they should say goodbye to Old Orchard forever. Together they waved, leaning out of the window, and Liddy laughed the hardest she ever had, for the first time with a mind free of self-doubt. As it turned out, neither one of them would ever return, though together they would revisit memories (mostly David’s) of Old Orchard countless times.
to be continued...?