THE MORNING AFTER LAST NIGHT

? Jeffrey Robinson 2024

When I was a kid, I had a secret-sharer special friend. Her name was Barbara and she was my second cousin. She was a tall, thin brunette and even as a ten or eleven year old, I thought she was beautiful and found myself jealous of all the boys she went to school with, who carried her books or held her hand. She lived in Baltimore and I lived in New York and we would write letters and she would write SWAK on the back of the envelope. Sealed with a kiss. We never actually kissed, although I would have liked that, and later, as adults, I wanted that. I think she would have liked that, too, and maybe she also wanted that, but deep down we knew that would change what we were sharing. And neither of us wanted that. When she was just 15, both her parents died in a tragic accident, which transcended our youthful crush into something more spiritual. After college, she was living in Washington and I was in the Air Force, and I’d drive down there to spend weekends with her. She liked that because I would bring her hearts of artichoke. And we’d have meals at the Officers Club at Bolling AFB where she liked to order Oysters Rockefeller and Lobster Thermador. We decided we were, finally, both very grown up. Then she moved to Boston, and by then I was living in France, and I would go to see her whenever I was in the country. We went on walking tours organized by some architecture society and visited the homes of people who’d done magical things with where they lived. We spoke about reconverted duplex lofts and admired walk-in showers surrounded with plexiglass. We went to movies together, and ate shad roe together. Sometimes, at night, I would read her my stories. But mostly, we just talked. It wasn't as simple as pretending that she was the sister I never had or the brother she never had, it was that she was alone in the world, and I felt a compelling need to help her make sense of her life that had been detoured by tragedy. I guess deep down, doing that was also a way of trying to make sense of mine. It was special because she didn’t have to explain to me who she was. And she accepted me because she knew who I was. We never had to express our feelings for each other, at least not in words, because we both just knew. We both understood. We had history. And then one day, my mother wrote me in France that Barbara had been killed in a horseback riding accident. I still have that letter. She was 34, almost exactly the same age as her mother when she was killed. The void she left in my heart is not the same void that I carry for my parents, or for friends I went to school with, or for people I loved along the way. The void she left is different, because ours was a special secret kind of love. Like I said, we had history. Then last night happened. My country was already on life support and more than half of my fellow Americans decided - in a mass self-destructive act of brain dead stupidity - to turn off the machine. It left me with the same numbness I felt when Barbara left me. As it happened, I spent 35 years of my life vagabonding around the world, living in foreign countries, all the time insisting that I was not an ex-pat, not an ex-anything, that I was - that I am - an American. That I am someone who has had a special relationship with America because I have seen first-hand the alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears, and those amber waves of grain. I have deeply felt the magnitude and graciousness of the country that is mine. America and I have history. It is often said that time heals all wounds. That is not true. Time can play tricks with your memory. Time can help you pretend that you’ve gotten over it. But time is like a Motrin. It won’t cure the malaise, it will just dull your senses for a while and ease the pain. Time doesn’t get you through the night. And now, in sunset, I am suddenly without two special friends. Even if there was a way, like a Genie in a bottle, there is not enough time left for me to find that Genie. There is not enough time left for my well to fill up the void. What remains this morning, the day after last night, is the constant pain of, forever, missing the two of them inexorably. May these dreams of mine rest in peace.

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