ghosts & transatlanticism (short story)
an extract from my 2014 blog “venturing backward”
In the loving light of Renee, and in the presence of my oldest friends, I didn’t miss Michigan State at all. I didn’t want anything to do with that place or those people.
“If I never went back, I would not care,” I wrote in my LiveJournal that May. “I have no emotional attachment whatsoever to MSU as I do to Rochester.”
I knew that was because I spent most of my first year absorbed by my love for Renee.
But the way I was changing there was terrifying to me. Such changes were one-in-the-same as never marrying Renee.
I’d have to make this summer count if that was ever going to happen. If she wasn't going to leave me.
Because Renee had officially decided not to go to Michigan Sate. She had chosen a Lutheran school in Indiana instead.
Far from being the beginning of a new era of the physical proximity we had in high school, I feared that summer 2007 was instead the last one we would share together.
Renee had a lot of studying to do for her finals one week. She couldn’t really hang out too much. I decided to give her a nice surprise.
After quiet darkness had descended upon Rochester, I drove to Maggie Moo’s. It was an ice cream shop near our intersection – Adams & Walton.
I bought her the largest size of ice cream they had.
She met me on her driveway to get the ice cream. She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and glasses. Her long brown hair was messy and unkempt. And it was an image to save for a decade. Because she looked as beautiful under the porch light as she ever had.
I kept a few pictures of her in my wallet. I had looked at them often, during my whole first year at Michigan State. And I wished I could’ve added a photograph of that moment to the collection.
We hugged. I wished her good luck.
I went to Zales to buy her a gift. June was a big month for Renee. She was going to graduate from high school. She was going to turn 18. Then in August it would be our two-year anniversary.
I bought her a silver, 250-dollar necklace with a quarter of the money I’d saved from my grad party last summer. I showed my sisters and they liked it. I was so happy to give that necklace to Renee.
Graham tried to convince me to wear a white tuxedo with him to the Class of 2007's prom. He said we’d stand out and it’d be hilarious. Renee, who was wearing a white dress, was horrified by the idea and quickly vetoed it.
Graham and I went to pick out our tuxes together. With a chuckle, he made one last pitch.
I wore a black tux. We took some good pictures with Graham and his white tux.
We rode in a crowded limo to prom. We threw a Frisbee around inside the car and took plenty of pictures with each other.
Kanye West’s Gold Digger was still going strong. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol was still a song we slow-danced to. I still told her I loved her at various moments throughout the night.
All of my friends from the Class of 2007 were around. I got pictures with everyone I could.
Because once this group graduated, what remained of my world here would slowly crumble away. Reasons for weekend trips home would be severely diminished. And Rochester would finally begin to die.
I went to Renee’s commencement. She looked pretty in her curled hair and in her yellow gown.
With dusk setting in around us, I made sure to take some pictures with her. My arm around her, she smiled. She held her rose; she displayed her diploma case.
I went to her graduation party.
Renee had convinced half the Class of 2007 that she and Lindsay were cousins. So they had a graduation party together, as if they really were family. But Renee's half of the cake, by accident, had Michigan State all over it. Because that was the original plan. And now Renee had changed her mind.
I hated that. I was still hoping she’d switch back to East Lansing at the last minute. But I knew she’d rather attend the Lutheran school.
At other graduation parties that June, we could forget about how temporary this world we lived in was. We played each other in air hockey in a basement. We sat by a pool and a fire while cuddling closely under the same blanket. We held hands while driving together to various parties and end-of-high-school events. We made out in my car on dark subdivision streets.
We went to Lindsay’s house a lot. So we could hang out in the pool with her and Graham.
We had a triple date – me and Renee, Graham and Lindsay, Sarah and Trevor. It was a date that ended with all six of us hanging out on the Musson playground in broad daylight, true to our Rochester traditions.
I loved all those people so much. I don’t think they ever really understood the depth of what they meant to me.
But I was also getting ready to go to England for a month in July.
I was reading a bunch of books about the history of British foreign policy, about the intricacies of British social welfare policy.
Some of the reading was pretty left-wing. My foreign policy professor was a straight-up Socialist. And the social welfare instructor had assigned us readings that ruthlessly condemned right-wing solutions to inequality.
I found it all pretty persuading, which frightened me. I didn’t know how Renee would react to me venturing out so far to the Left.
And the more I learned about international affairs, the more it seemed like a requirement to live abroad for a year. So I was thinking about doing a lengthy program in Freiburg, Germany. It would stretch from September 2008 to August 2009. Right in the midst of our fourth year of dating.
I told Renee it would be okay. I believed our love was strong enough to overcome the Atlantic.
The program had a two-month break in the middle, from February to April. The information fliers said most students traveled in Europe during that time.
But I wouldn't travel. I would go to Indiana, where I could be with Renee.
It would not be worth it – to destroy my relationship with Renee just for two months of European travel.
I tried my best to ignore these approaching problems of ever-increasing distance.
I’d drive around with her. I’d blast Mika’s song Grace Kelly like everything was wonderful forever.
I’d buy Milka chocolate and Haribo gummy bears. I’d eat them with her beside me in the sunlight.
I’d show her YouTube videos I liked. We’d watch a British skit called Old Gregg and laugh about it together.
I read War and Peace that June. One of my favorite characters, Prince Andrey, went abroad from Russia for a year. By the time he came back, his fiancé – Natasha – had kissed another man. The wedding was canceled.
I believed in the prophetic powers of literature. I was afraid that Renee and I would be just like Prince Andrey and Natasha.
We went to the Borden Park fireworks again together at the end of June, just before I left for England. She was wearing the same green zip-up she had worn the year before. She had highlights in her hair and to me she was glowing.
We were there with our best friends - Lindsay and Graham.
But these were fleeting moments. This proximity, this closeness, this warm summer air would fade away.
The Atlantic would separate us now. And then it would separate us again my junior year when I went to Germany.
There was a rare night when I was just alone in my bedroom. I cringed with anxiety and sadness.
I looked out of my window. I gazed out into the trees and the Rochester darkness. I wondered what this place would be like in 2010, in 2012, in 2014. Renee, my friends, our world.
Within an hour, the sadness broke out into a trembling. The idea of suicide didn’t seem insane.
Renee and I jumped the fence into the 19th-century graveyard by Brewster Elementary School one night. The air was terribly black. Trees and tombstones were all around us. Skeletons and coffins were in the ground beneath our feet. Every twig that snapped could have been a ghost. Every vandalized grave with “Rest In Piss” spray-painted over its engravings could harbor a vengeful spirit.
I kissed her in that graveyard.
We were at Brewster another night, too. Sitting on the concrete of the parking lot with Chockley and a girl he loved named Sam.
Sam told us stories about nighttime terrors – like waking up paralyzed. Like waking up with a demon sitting on you and pinning you down. Like waking up when everything in your room is moving around.
I believed in ghosts. I believed they would haunt me one day.
A couple days before I left, Renee was in my bedroom. She was just sitting in my rocking chair. She had her highlighted hair stretching down past her shoulders.
I was 40 pages away from finally finishing War and Peace.
I walked to Renee. I leaned down and kissed her while she sat in my rocking chair.
I wished I could just stay in that room with her forever.
Her summer here in Rochester would continue for now. There were plenty of grad parties left that I wasn’t able to attend. There were plenty of nights for her to go to Lindsay’s pool. There were many afternoons for her to drive around with Sarah.
But there were realities around us that could only live on as ghosts.
I boarded a flight to Heathrow.
