Chapter 11
She felt the gray skirt as it swished against her ankles. It hugged her hips and was quite retro almost 40’s. It was tube-like with large black buttons down the right side. She wore a tightly buttoned long sleeved burgundy blouse. Perhaps the very antithesis of the pleats from the day before, substituting the ‘imagination’ with ’schoolmarm’. It felt safe, there was no vulnerability whatsoever. She wanted to confront her poet no matter what and too intimidating a style could have the opposite effect of what she wanted.
She left the office just after eleven and walked directly to the park. She waited on the bench where she had found the note yesterday. There were few people around, virtually no one apart from the inevitable gaggle of mothers across the canal with all their buggies and equipment. The haggard tramp sat on her old bench and in a way it was fortunate as he would chase any would be couriers her way. Regardless of the heat, he had a heavy coat on and though his hair was long and ragged, he appeared to be clean-shaven. Unlike most tramps he didn’t have a cartload of possessions with him, perhaps he had a place where he could kip down. Jenny knew the shelters were often full and many had to sleep rough. It was usually the older ones who were forced out onto the street. He had his Great Dane with him, the noble friend stared in the same direction across the canal toward the stark line of trees. They rarely moved but seemed to see and think the same sad thoughts. He reached in his pocket and the old dog stood up and shuffled around for the treat. He scoffed it without even chewing. Jenny wondered if it was the biscuits she had left days ago, she hoped so. As abruptly as the biscuit had disappeared the gentle beast turned and sat his haunches on the tramps feet and they resumed their placid gaze across the canal. Such a simple friendship.
It was well after twelve and there had been no sign of anyone trying to approach her at the new bench or any courier interrupting the tramp. The path was getting busy and it appeared as though the tramp was becoming uncomfortable with the traffic. He rose and started to shuffle away toward the bridge away from Jenny. The dog stood but remained near the bench. The old tramp turned and waved him to follow. The Great Dane shuffled his paws but seemed defiant. They appeared to eye each other. Like two gunfighters they waited for the other to flinch. Their sad eyes, glazed with sorrow, were transfixed on the other. It was the old man who relented and followed the dog. Jenny watched the swagger of the long black limbs as they ambled toward her. The old tramp was a little unstable on his feet too - not drunk, just pained. His cane was an important third limb. Jenny looked at his feet and though the rest of him was consumed, bundled in the rumpled overcoat he seemed to have a fairly good, though dirty, pair of running shoes. Probably stolen she thought. They approached her bench and neither made eye contact with her. Just when they were level and Jenny was staring rudely at them, was there a hint of a pause. The tramp’s eyes flashed at her. She only saw his eyes. They weren’t frightened, scared or aggressive. They just seemed to have floated to another world. Perhaps that was alcohol or heartbreak, maybe both. They shuffled past her. There was no foul odor or unpleasantness about the twosome at all. They just appeared a bit discarded and forgotten. Jenny returned her gaze to the now vacated bench, watching for the delivery.
Oddly she felt she too was being watched and turned around to find the massive black dog only four yards away staring back at her as the tramp had continued to shuffle on. The huge black eyes stared unflinching at her, demanding. The dog wanted something. Had he actually managed to get the biscuits she had left? She felt uneasy; his riveting eyes were too constant, too penetrating. She stood and wandered a few steps away. She looked back, the dog had loped off after his master plodding in a half run the way sleepy dogs do. It must be hot for him she thought. Jenny wandered back to her original bench.
She was aghast. The poem was there. The tramp had unknowingly been sitting on it. Thank heavens he'd finally moved on.
She sat on the bench. Below it she saw the box of canine gourmet biscuits she had bought the previous week. So that piercing stare was perhaps a ‘thank you’ from the old dog. She looked up and searched the canal area for the poet. Had he been watching and waiting for the tramp to move? How long before she arrived had he set the poem down? How long had the stupid tramp sat on it? What would’ve happened if the tramp hadn’t moved on?
The same words were written on the outside and she realized that it wasn’t for the ‘joy’ of reading that the meaning of the heading was intended. It was the recipient’s name Joy or Joyce. It was the name of the girl the poet loved. She opened the wrinkled creased paper. It was almost the same format. A Japanese haiku some free verse and then it was followed by a series of rhyming couplets.
LOVE ON A PARK BENCH 9
Swallows across the sky
Leave no reflection on the still water
Love’s beauty unmarked.
The bravado of my heart now leaves me as a tangled mass stumbling stupidly with pen and paper through the tunnels of aspiration and inspiration as if by waking and walking I could somehow capture and retain the glory of your soul in mine so that the pain and loss of fluttering directionless, hopeless, would not be cast upon me, whose shoulders with out your great love are but aged brittle shafts unable to endure the pain of not drinking your beauty each and every morning, of not inhaling the fragrance of your heart, of not feeling the glow of essence washing through your skin. Without this I am traceless, a shadow cast that falls on nothing.
Where goes the beauty when the blossom
fades?
Where goes the warmth when the sunshine
shades?
Who tastes the lips when a love has grown
cold?
Who holds the heart when faded and
old?
When do we stop crying when all hope has
past?
When do we stop holding the vision as if it
might last?
How can we be sure our great love feels no
pain?
How can we continue to hope to meet once
again?
Why was time so fast, life so short, for me
you to love?
Why were you such a wonder granted to me
from above?
I know we shall soon be together, no longer
loving from afar.
I journey to join you and rest my heart on
your star.
Love on a park bench.
Jenny closed the paper and looked across the canal as the tramp had done. There was no sound, there was no wind, no movement. She was aware of heat waves blurring the images across the canal making the slender tree legs quiver, stillness pervaded. No butterfly or bee to buzz and blur the depth of sorrow. The poet abandoned by his great love was left to endure the loneliness of asking questions. Questions with no answers. The only pleasure for such questions is in ridding the soul of ever having to ask the question.
Jenny took her UHU glue out. There was a quiver and sorrowful tremble in her wrist as she secured the poem safely with the others. She walked back to the office with the leather notebook held tight against her chest. Her mind was swimming with thoughts, with yearnings. She wanted to get back to her desk and pour forth. She had no compunction to speak or look at anyone. Her solitary thought was to get back and some how release her poet so he may find his love. Even if it wasn’t her that the poet loved, such a love needed to be free. The boundless emptiness of the poet left her with an abundance of confused passions.
She toiled for hours but everything seemed to yell back at her, contrived like a crazed animal. It was at about three o’clock that she heard her name called out. She looked up, over the partition. Cindy and Charles were standing around Stephen’s desk.
“Jenny could you give us a bit of advice here on this?” Charles asked.
Jenny was a little dumbfounded Charles had never asked for advice from her. He believed himself to be educate
d to such a level as to not warrant input from others. Cindy’s specialty was historical biographies. Jenny approached cautiously, they might be wanting to make fun of her, especially if it was Stephen and Charles.
Oddly enough it turned out to be quite an academic discussion. The piece was a bawdy fictitious biography of the life of Ovid. It was a bit heady for anyone. The discussion ranged for at least ten minutes. Bernadette came over to join in.
“Just wanted to remind you guys it’s classic film night at the Consort Theater tonight, so if you are a Fastbinder fanatic you-”
Jenny dashed past her. Her temples squeezed with rage. She couldn’t believe what she saw over Bernadette’s shoulder. Robert was at her desk across the room, utterly absorbed in something. He was unaware of the others. Jenny didn’t hurry or jog - she ran with blood on her mind.
“How dare you, you bastard!” She screamed and ripped the notebook from him. She slapped him across the face hard, intent on causing as much injury, not insult, as she could. Being a farm girl she could really belt when she had to. “You son of a bitch! How dare you invade me!” She punched with a closed fist but missed.
Robert recoiled stopping the next slap and holding her as she struggled to hit him again. “Invade you? Invade you?” he yelled at her face.
“You have no right. You invaded me. It’s mine, leave it you bastard.” Jenny continued to struggle and got one hand free and scratched out, slashing her nails into his neck. Her eyes were popping with hate. Stephen and Charles arrived and pulled them apart. Jenny was frothing like an animal.
“Invade you. This should be ours! Invade you?” He looked at the blood on his hands and the crumpling woman in front of him.
“No! No!” She screamed, clutching her notebook and struggling to get free of Stephen. They both panted wildly.
“This is my company this should be shared with everyone.” He snatched it brutally from her grasp and pushed both her and Stephen back into small cubicle where her desk was. He threw the notebook on her desk and walked to within inches of her glowering face. “Invade you. Damn you Jenny! Get out of your cocoon!” He backed away and she slowed down and tried to catch her breath. She continued to stare at him with total hatred. He moved back in close to her and pointed his bloody finger right in her face. “You will bring that to me finished tomorrow afternoon so I can read it over the weekend or you find a new place to hide on Monday morning. I will not allow you to bury yourself. This is not a bloody hiding place for… for, bloody caterpillars.” He took a few steps away then stopped. The office was completely silent only the panting of Robert and Jenny cut the air. He didn’t turn. He wiped his neck with his handkerchief. He spoke in a warm level voice as if helping a child to ride a bicycle. “Do it. Please.” He walked briskly out the door.
Stephen, still holding the crumpled sobbing Jenny, lowered her into the chair and slipped away. Cindy and Bernadette were there instantly with a sweater as a blanket. Jenny erupted in tears of anger. The anger was at her self, her state. She pounded her notebook with her fists over and over and over.
The tirade abated in three or four minutes and she looked at the faces of people whom she never thought wanted to be her friends. Their faces were blurry as her eyes were riddled with tears. Her throat was tight, she wanted to throw up, wanted to gag. She wanted to disappear. Charles passed her a cup of tea. “Two sugars right?”
She nodded and sniffed taking the cup from the tweed. Her hands shook uncontrollably. Cindy and Bernadette rubbed her back and offered soothing words.
Jenny’s mind raced. How had the past two weeks been torn to shreds?
She sipped on the tea and continued to shake.
“Terry,” Charles motioned him to go around to the other side of her desk. Charles waved a finger at a pile of papers in a tray labeled ‘to view’. “Jenny we’ll take your work for the rest of the day, yeah. Terry can you distribute it to everyone.”
Stephen put a friendly hand on her trembling shoulder. “Seems you kind of have a deadline?”
Jenny sniffed, “kinda,” she tried to laugh.
“We’ll get this done, you do what you have to,” pronounced Charles.
“Yeah well, I ah, …ah ...I -” Jenny had no idea what she wanted to say.
Everyone drifted away except Cindy and Charles. Jenny looked up at them her eyes were red and her mascara was all over the place, her nose dripped. Crumpled Kleenexes formed a blanket over her desk. Charles passed across his handkerchief across to her. “If it’s that important to you, take up the pen, don’t be a mediocrity.” Charles smiled at her, half winked and crossed away.
Cindy looked down from under her wonderful black fuzzy halo. She leaned down and hugged Jenny and whispered in her ear. “We knew you were in love with something. Write girl, write.”
Others filed by as they resumed their work and tapped her shoulder to urge her on. These colleagues whom she thought didn’t care had worked all afternoon to try and finish her workload so she could tackle something that was important to her. They had no idea what it was and yet were willing to pull her weight. Was this the truth of friendship?
Two hours later Bernadette came by and gave her a hug and produced a slice of carrot cake. “Here this’ll keep you going, nothing like fattening food.”
Cindy popped around behind Bernadette. “We’re out of here Jenny. Don’t kill yourself on that. But if you feel you have to, then, kill yourself on it.”
“Cindy, that’s the most crap advice I’ve ever heard.” Bernadette said.
“It’s why I don’t write motivational books.”
“You don’t write any books.” Bernadette quipped.
“Irrelevant Bernie, irrelevant.” Cindy said.
Jenny stood and hugged her two friends “Thank you guys for sticking by me.”
“There’s a charge,” said Bernadette as she pulled back from the hug. “We want a name. Is it Robert?”
“No.” Jenny didn’t know what to say. She could feel shame and love fighting in her throat to speak. “I receive love letters, poems, in the park and I kind of respond to them and that is what that bastard read, my conversations-”
“Yeah, but the poet must have a name.”
Jenny just shook her head. She was starting to get upset with the thought that Robert had read her private letters. She was not ready to be assessed in that way.
“He never signs them, I just sort of find them and then respond.”
“My God that is so romantic. How come this kind of stuff never happens to me Cindy?”
“They don’t redirect the mail to Claudio’s.” Cindy said.
“That's not nice Cindy, not nice. You wanna go for a drink?”
“No thanks I need to get home to Clarence, we have to plan our summer vacation.”
“I’d ask you Jenny but you might try to rip someone else’s throat out and I need to keep my tab going there.”
“You’re impossible Bernadette. I think I'll stay and work late here.”
“Be safe, be smart girl. Not too late.” Bernadette said as they wandered off and Jenny was left alone in the office. It was extremely quiet. After ten minutes she heard a chair slide back. She thought she was alone. She peeked tentatively over her partition. Charles was standing ready to leave. He looked at Jenny without speaking. Jenny thought she saw a tremendous sadness in his eyes. He suddenly smiled, nodded and briskly left. It was odd, but then so was Charles.
Initially she tried to respond to the last poem but had not been able to come up with anything, so she went back and reviewed all the other poems and her responses.
She continued the editing until she noticed it was dark. The carrot cake was gone but she wasn’t tired. She needed some air. She packed up her note pad and some extra papers and left the office.
The security guard was surprised to see her. “You’re working late.”
“Yeah, I might have to go f
or most of the night. If I go down to the canal can I get back in?”
“Yeah there’s someone at the desk all night.”
“Thanks.” Jenny headed to the door.
“Wait.” The guard came around the side of the desk. “Are you really going down to the canal?” Jenny nodded. “Then here, take a walkie talkie-”
“It’s okay there won’t be a-”
“Just do it okay. Don’t be stupid. Hell, a nice looking woman like you; I shouldn’t even let you go.”
“I’ll be fine, it’s quiet. I’ll only be a couple hours.”
The security guard would not listen and passed the radio unit to her. “I will leave it ‘on’ the whole time. All you have to do is press this and speak. I can be at the canal in seconds. Just stay near the entrance.”
“Yes Dad.”
“Hey, if I was your dad, my pretty little girl would not be going to a park regardless of how quiet it is.”
“Well if you were my Dad you would’ve become a father in primary school.”
“Whatever just push and speak.” The guard stared at her with an unimpressed stern acceptance.
“Thanks got it.” It was sweet Jenny thought. He was obviously caring, she had never noticed before. She left the building and walked to the bench. It was just before nine and wasn’t completely dark. It was that strange transition, when the shadows were very heavy and were blurring into the black fog of night. It seemed to Jenny that shapes were there and then gone, as if the darkened forms had blended with their own shadows. She had become like that in the office. She had blended into the forms and shapes of the office so that the real Jenny, the aspiring writer from Wyoming, desperate to be like her grandmother, was smothered into the porridge of mediocrity. She smiled at the thought of Charles and how of all the people in the office, it was he who could quote of mediocrity.
She sat on the bench and waited. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. Would the poet emerge at this late hour? He could possibly come by, he seemed to know so much about her? Or did he?
Perhaps waiting was what the poem was about. The last two poems were questioning. With one half gone the other is left to wander in search of a means to fill the void. If a swan dies, the remaining swan searches for the rest of its life for that same partner. Which is more cruel, to have your life cut short or to be the one to carry on alone and suffer the unending cold of loneliness. Which was a greater cold? Which was a more torturing violent silence, death or loneliness? She picked up her pen and began to write her response to today’s poem.
It had been almost an hour before she heard the gravel scuff softly behind her.
“Jenny?” Startled she whipped around and fumbled for the radio. It was the security guard. He was carrying something with him. “Everything all right Jenny?” he asked.
“Yes it’s fine, the work’s going well.”
“Here. I brought a thermos of coffee and a snickers, thought you might be hungry.”
“Oh you’re wonderful. Can you stay or...” She hoped he would say ‘no’, but it seemed only polite to ask him.
“No I gotta get back to the desk. Any problems you just push the button and hold it down while you speak.”
“Thanks.” He turned and hurried back across the street and forecourt to the office block. He was such a nice guy she thought.
Writing at the canal side was easy and she knew where she wanted to go with her response to the poet.
No one moved along the path, no tramps, young thugs, no one – not even a cat.
It was almost two in the morning when she heard the footsteps behind her again. She had just finished and was pleased with what she had. It was good. It was very good.
“Hi again Jenny. It’s me.”
“Hi,” she paused, “sorry I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Clive. I have to go off duty now. There is a new guy, Andy he-”
“It’s okay I’m finished. The snickers bar did it for me.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I‘ll walk back up to the office with you to get my stuff.” She stood up and packed her papers into the notebook she could paste her work into the notebook tomorrow. She dumped all her scrap into the trashcan beside the bench and handed Clive’s thermos back to him. “You’re a saint for that coffee Clive.”
“No problem. I’ll call you a cab while you get your stuff. You’re not riding your bicycle home.”
“Thanks.”
The taxi ride home was a great idea and she crawled into bed just before three. The sheets smelled fresh and they glided with a crisp frostiness across her skin. Her brain felt tired but her senses seemed to be charged with a kind of tingle amplifying everything to an exotic scintillating rush. She left her bedroom window open; it wasn’t something she normally did, even though she was on the fourth floor. It let the eerie blue of the night waft in. The night was still as she lay gazing up, the city was asleep. She listened to the streets. There was the occasional siren, a car, sometimes a muffled voice. She heard a dog bark at some shadow. She recalled her grandmother had said there was ‘only one kind of big dog – a Great Dane. The rest were wannabees’. She would get a puppy and could train it. She would have some time off from Monday. Her severance package could help buy the puppy and she could go back to Wyoming for a few weeks with the puppy. Her Dad was great with dogs, her mom far too much of a softie. She wasn’t in the least bit tired, in fact she wasn’t sure why she had even climbed in to bed. Her mind was an aquarium of ideas. She wondered if he was asleep. Was her poet all wrapped up in expensive sheets? Maybe sheets of Iranian cotton or perhaps he slept in a massive bed all alone searching for his love. She might see him tomorrow; it seemed things were coming to an end - certainly at her work anyway. She didn’t regret it at all. The poet probably knew. He was probably someone in the building. Could it be Vince? He was handsome enough and she had a lunch date with him next week. She drifted off.