Rory's Blues

Watching the tape, he thinks about a teenage girl's bedroom, stuck between Brownsville and East Flatbush back in 1969. The walls are plain white and the furniture is heavy, plain and old. The curtain he's closing over the window is plain white. It looks more like the room of a nun than a teenage girl. Except for the bookcase, painted in day glo colors with swirls and stars, peace signs and cartoon dolphins leaping out of cartoon oceans. He taught her how to draw the dolphins one long warm sunset evening, sitting on the roof hoping for a cool breeze. He sketched in chalk the dolphin that she embroidered on the back of her black denim jacket, white chalk transformed to a hundred shades of ocean and sunset. It's hanging on the bedpost at the foot of the bed, where she's sitting untying her sneakers.

The girl on the tape knows what she's going to do is wrong but she's too hungry to care. She just needs the emptiness inside to go away, no questions asked. Fumbling, clutching, tearing the shirt off the boy who's now married elsewhere, needing. Just needing.

Back in the bedroom he remembers the girl is singing along with the stereo. She's wearing bell bottoms and a blue denim work shirt. Her long brown hair is in a ponytail and she has a red bandana around her neck. He loves her so much he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. In some deep part of himself he knows it will never be like this again, so he tries to remember every detail as he kisses her eyes, her mouth, her throat. As he opens the first button on her shirt.

On the tape the dream castle burns up into a mess of wrinkled sheets and averted eyes. She's already hungry again, and she already misses him while he's still standing in front of her. On cue her mother comes home early, takes it all in and understands in one sad glance. He feels bad for her but worse for her daughter.

Back in that other time they are lying still, arms around each other. She's somewhere between crying and giggling, which is usually a good place to be. He's feeling a warm stillness that he can't think of a name for. After a while they sit up and look in each others' eyes. You'd need a thesaurus to describe that look. They get dressed even though they don't want to; her mother will be home from work soon. They walk out into the June light, arms around each other's shoulders. Time for pizza.

He's rewinding the tape and feeling bad for the girl on it. She deserved better than that.