First Love is the One We Never Forget

“I’ve had two husbands, but neither was what people call a great love.” As soon as the words are out, she regrets them. They smack of failure, and she has betrayed an honorable dead man. The two women at the table are startled (perhaps secretly gleeful). Hadn’t she been the adored wife of a respected judge? Isn’t she a well-off widow, owner of a fine brick Victorian house, a woman with an impressive career behind her? What unsightly cracks has she just exposed?

It’s the fault of four glasses of white wine and the anticipation of what morning will bring. Or is it this rare evening of confidences, the conjuring up of vanished sweethearts and irrecoverable youth? 

Secretive, she listened to the other women’s stories of faded romances, lost chances, marriages gone sour, but didn’t mention her many lovers. Yet, she remembers them fondly, for time affords indulgence (although, surely, she has forgotten some, and others were less than agreeable).

But isn’t this a sign of aging—remembering positive things, blocking out the negative, showing tolerance? She regards her younger self with the same leniency, refusing to condemn irresponsibility or recklessness. Sometimes risk is the only option. Hadn’t it given her the fortitude to be the person she is now?

The others want more. Elaine slides forward, eyes eager, while Lila watches, almost hostile. How to divert their curiosity? What can she give them? Not the truth, for that might jinx her prospects (the superstitious thought almost makes her smile). Would they, twenty years her junior, find surprising or ridiculous the romantic dreams of a silver-haired woman in her seventies?

“Perhaps great love is a fantasy.” She’s hedging and hopes they won’t pry.

“Or it becomes the usual emotional disaster of people living together for years,” says Lila, angered by her achingly vile divorce.

“In some cases, yes. But what’s happening with the sale of your house?”

As a diversion, it works. Talk swings back to lawyers and compromise. Then, mentioning last-minute packing, the need for sleep before an early flight, Patty Jo stands, makes her exit.

Warm yellow light fills windows along these streets she knows well, emphasizes the night’s moist chill. She rarely thinks of her age; when she does, she isn’t old. Perhaps most people are the same, seeing themselves as young, enthusiastic, but captured in a mature body.

Vivid are things long gone: the scent of summer sun on reeds and sedges along an inky northern lake, the hot tang of melting tar, the early morning whistle of a vanished factory, the thud of oars on a rowboat’s bottom, the wheedling of a long-dead dog.

She can still hear leaves rustling on the scrawny birch in her former backyard. How she’d loved that feeble thing, daring to put down roots in a poor neighborhood of parched grass, scraggy shrubs, and oil-splotched driveways. Trees didn’t belong there; they only had the right to grow lush in the gardens of the rich.

The birch seemed to sense that in its thin-branched, fearful way. It knew it was doomed. How, axe in hand, Don Ried had cheered when it lay on its hacked, defeated side. If she’d feared that man before, her hatred of him was now complete.

She slips her key into the lock of her front door. Without turning on a lamp, she goes to sit in the living room of her home. Her home? In the gloom, she can sense more than see the red brocade, the heavy curtains, the waxy shine on hardwood floors, the shape of furniture handed down from one generation to the next. How is this her home? Has she changed one thing? Eliminated one oil painting, one pretty watercolor? Has she added a decorative crock? Or has she been nothing but a shadow in a deceased man’s realm?

She pushes questions aside. Why fret? She’s made her mark elsewhere, has turned fate around. She likes herself, is proud of her accomplishments.

No, it’s hope fused with anguish that has brought on doubts. For tomorrow she will make a grab for the past, snatch at the great love that has eluded her. But what if she’s got it all wrong?