February 11, 2007

I’d spent two days sneezing on the train, and still hadn’t shaken the nose tickles by the time we finally arrived at the Catalina State Park campgrounds.

The train had arrived at the station in Tucson at 1 in the morning, and I sneezed may way through an uncomfortable sleep on the Amtrak station bench, while we waited for the 6:05am bus. I sneezed my way through the bus ride, and kept right on sneezing during the cab ride and the walk from the park entrance to the ranger station, heaving chest loaded down with a backpacking backpack on my back and a smaller backpack on my front.

We waited until 8:30am for a spot to open up in the non-electric sites, and then walked the last half mile to our new home. We set up our tent and I sneezily crawled in, the sun starting to saturate the cloudy skies to a brighter gray, as we lay down for some real rest.

We woke up at around 1pm. We made food, taking in the Catalina Mountains right there behind us, eating open-face peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I only sneezed a couple times; it seemed to be subsiding with the fresh air.

I looked at my phone to check the time, and saw that there was a missed call from Tava, at 8am. Apparently my phone had called her (buttons pushed while it was crammed between me and my bags, probably), and she’d called right back.

I told myself I really should taker her off of my speed dial list.

Tava and I lived together for 7 years, if you count the first year in the dorms where we lived in rooms two doors down from one another. It had been a very romantic, intimate relationship, for a long time, but in the last year, since we’d stopped living together, and maybe a little even before that, it had just, well, sort of dissolved.

I stopped returning her phone calls, because every time I saw her she made it clear that she had no interest in listening to anything I had to say, anything I felt or thought. My intensity and insight used to be something that had drawn Tava to me, but of late, it seemed like she maintained the friendship only out of a sense that she should; that she didn’t want to let it go, but with no interest in anything beyond superficial conversation. I’m not very good at superficial conversation.

Or at least, not with Tava. I’d spent too much time lying next to her in my tiny dorm bed, talking about philosophy or love or art or anything, anything so long as it was substantial.

While Mark went to wash our dishes, I played her voice message, snuggled back into my sleeping bag in the tent, with the door open.

“Hey, Maddy. I just saw that you called. I just got up, but I’m awake now, so you can call me back anytime. Okay bye!” she said, in a familiar, friendly, sleepy tone.

“End of message. Press 7 to delete this message, or 9 to save it in the archives,” said the phone machine lady.

I stared off into the yellow grasses surrounding our tent.

“Are you still there?” said the phone machine lady.

I took the phone from my ear and hit the end button, refusing to choose between 7 and 9. And then I sneezed a few times. I decided it must be something from the train, some sort of cleaning product maybe, that was now all over my sweater and fleece, which I was using as pillows.

Mark got back from washing dishes and sat down next to me, half in the tent. I played the message for him.

“Well. That was pretty charming,” he said grudgingly, understanding that it was confusing for me. “But, I mean, you don’t have to do anything about it right now. It’s opening up a whole can of worms you didn’t intend to open. I mean, you could call her and say you hadn’t meant to call, but she clearly wanted you to be calling her, so that might not be the easiest way to start a conversation.”

“Yeah, she did sounds like she wanted me to call,” I said. I sighed. I thought about Molly, and how I'd left Chicago with our friendship on a strained note, too.

I felt my eyes well up, thinking about all the ties that had been stretched 1500 miles thin, so far, and were only getting further. How do you resolve a conflict when you're across the country, can't get together to make sushi and watch Sex in the City, to make up?

I thought about calling Tava back, this time thinking she might be a good person to commiserate with about Molly.

But it was just too loaded.

So I called a different friend, instead -- Ruby. Ruby is an easy friend. Our relationship is based on mutual intellectual stimulation, and not on a ton of complicated emotional and historical dependencies. We do have emotional ties, but they're driven by our ability to enjoy one another's minds. We have separate social networks and living situations, and always have.

Ruby talked to me about both of them, let me cry out a little frustration and fear, while Mark played guitar and worked on his songs, at the picnic table.

I felt a bit better after getting off the phone, or at least a little vented. I got out of the tent and looked around at the gray skies and the desert mountains and tried to take a deep breath. My chest ached with the effort. I felt like I'd been crying for hours, my muscles exhausted from sobbing.

But there had been no sobbing. Just sneezing and a little light crying. No thunderstoms, just drizzle.

Even so, the physical sensation was the same.

I looked at the yellow grasses.

"Are we gonna go on that hike?" I said.

"Yeah, let's do it."

We started walking out of the campgrounds.

"You know what?" I said to Mark.

"What's that?" he said, arm around me, concerned and caring, wanting me to feel better.

"I feel heartbroken. I haven't felt this way in... God, for a long time."

He stroked my back gently and sighed.

"Since my second year of college, after Gregory. I feel like I felt this one night with Tava, after Gregory and I crashed and burned. We had dinner in this little studio apartment she'd rented, which she hated. It was the middle of winter and it was far from campus and lonely, so I came over, and she made this stir-fry that impressed the hell out of me, at the time. With peas and carrots and ginger. You know, cuz I didn't really know how to cook yet."

"Mm," Mark said, as we walked down the road to the trail head.

"And we listened to Bjork, and then we went to bed, and we were lying there on the futon, staring at the ceiling and talking about our broken hearts. Did I tell you her ex was named Gregory, too?"

"Yeah, I think so," Mark said.

"Yeah, so, both of us just felt confused and broken. And we lay in bed on our backs, trying to use talk and, you know, our friendship, to mortar up the cracks."

"Mm."

"That's how I feel. Like I did then," I said, looking off into the distance, maybe east, toward home; I wasn't sure. But whatever direction I looked, there were mountains betweeen me and whatever lay beyond.

"Just like that," I said. And Mark put his arms around me and squeezed my aching chest tight.