Memoir

My life isn’t that important, but I remember that afternoon seeing you run away and only get so far. You cried on the lawn next to your lawn. The high hedge grew mountainous between them.

You’d wrapped your things in a bandana and tied them to the end of a stick. Behind you, the shrub bent with its load of pomegranates. On the ground, one of the globes torn open, spilling its red tears.

I left my Chinese elm and crossed the street to sit down with you. The man who owned that lawn, the man we hardly ever saw, flew a biplane along the coast of North Africa. He smuggled guns for Tunisian rebels. He had ripped off the ears of temporary captors. He had left scorpions in the limp gloves of spies. We wondered if his curtains would suddenly open and we’d see him again at his picture window, like that time he sat there all month, his arm in plaster, his forehead stitched, smoking cigarette after cigarette and grinning as he exhaled, grinning as the smoke snaked back into his nose.

We lay on our backs, the grass itching our necks. Now there was the sky deep blue with autumn, and now there was the problem of how to go back home.

In your bandana was a pair of socks, a change of underwear, the missal you received for your First Communion, a Werewolf comic book, a Mars bar, a pencil with a broken tip, a travel comb, a Stardust Hotel ash tray you used to keep coins in before you ran away, one three-cent postcard stamp, a piece of chalk taken from Mrs. McGovern’s classroom, a Charles Atlas ad snipped from the back of another comic book, a length of yarn, a skate key.

Now there was the problem of how to go back home. All your things spread out like items at a sad picnic. Under them, a paisley pattern rippling across the uneven altitudes of grass.

You broke the Mars bar in half and shared it. There were lines on your cheeks where tears had cut trails through the dust. You gathered your bundle together. You broke the stick in half and threw it under the hedge. You made me swear I never saw you cry. We crossed our hearts. The green of that street scratched us. The blue of that street made us shiver. A stranger might have watched through the drapes. I crossed my heart. My life doesn’t add up to much, but that was the moment I betrayed you, even though it took all these years until now to see it through.