Chicago. [Part II] --- A Christmas Story

In my dream, she watched me through a pane of window glass, her warm breath distorting the image of her face, shaping her into no more than a foggy outline. Outside, the snow fell down upon my shoulders but I was not cold, and I watched her smile for a long time. When, at last, she began to cry, I could no longer see her tears, and I watched that too.


I awoke, my mouth dry and my covers turned upward, and I ran two miles. The acute sensation of the wind on my face struck me and woke me, and when my legs would burn, the cold air would brush against them. I ran until I tasted blood and shook with sweat, and after I got breakfast, I ran right home again.

The remembrance of this morning still thrills me, the racing of the blood through my head and my legs and the smell of snow and ice still a potent memory. The taste of copper, egg and sausage still haunts me like a friendly spirit, and this morning passed me by without so much as a puzzling thought. For one morning, I was free of all of my wayward images of home and lost love.



"My father’s recipe.”

And we were here again, the door to the lecture hall. She smiled at me from beneath a head of white hair, dyed with flakes of soft, melting snow, cheeks red with what might have been the light and what might have the cold. “You’re looking better.”

“Yeah.” Quiet. “See, I hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep. Insomnia.”

“Uh-uh.”

“First time being so far away from home.”

“Yeah.” Silences. The black thing wiggled. “What happened?”

It stopped. I watched her. She gazed through me, eyes bright and knowing.
Often times, we find our words wasted on trifles- shouts of indignation, exchanges on the weather or politics, soft murmurs pressed into the sheets, never to be heard or understood. I have quite often made a habit of wasting my words. When I used to say that the sky was blue, or that the coffee was hot, I would mean it with the truest sincerity. I no longer state the obvious, because I find that despite my dearest efforts, I cannot know anything with the same truth as I did my next words. I am no longer certain of anything.

“It was something amazing.”

She looked down at her feet, her smile widening.

“I can make it for you again.”

A chill ran up the edges of my spine and into my shoulders, my quivering, to her, a response, and in a way it was. Such energy. Such power. Such sensitivity. I ached for the sweetness of knowing and being known. I hungered. “How about tomorrow?” She asked. “I’ll come over and we’ll… I don’t know. We’ll watch TV or something, huh? After all,” – and here she chuckled, that thing squirming uncomfortably below my belly. She knew. - “You’re never sure when that next bout of insomnia will start, am I right?”


The back of her head was my cradle. I rested, nestled into her scalp, wrapped in those cool strands of black river, and there I found my roots. She sat three seats down, and I admired her eyes unwavering from the front of the classroom, as mine wavered far too often. My mind gave way to the weight of her, and each moment was a struggle to both remain in her presence and keep my pen moving. In that moment I knew Johanna- the scholar, the deep thinker, the philosopher. I knew her because I wanted to know her, and her mystery unraveled me.

So, there it was. There was the Johanna who walked along her sidewalk curb, whose ears and neck were cold at the places I would have liked to kiss. There was the Johanna who pleaded with her eyes, the five-years-ago Johanna, who looked up from her bangs and into the dark space between us, and now Johanna was a Johanna with something to hide. Her quiet exterior both eluded and distracted me, but inside of her cheeks and her hands, inside of her softer spaces, she spoke so loudly, and it reddened her skin. This was the newest Johanna, still containing those places I would have liked to kiss, but she had shed her innocent skin.

I was no longer listening, my head down, lying within the tangles of her hair, the warmth of her light consuming me, and there I slept until I was awoken by the sound of shuffling feet.



The hot chocolate steamed from the “Over the Hill” coffee mug that my mother had slipped into my moving boxes, by accident (of course), and the newest Johanna sat at my side and watched the television with eager eyes.


“What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.”


The blue television light shone brightly off the edges of her tender edges, the new places I wanted to kiss- her lips and that place beside her earlobe.


“I'll take it. Then what?”


I caught the corner of her eye and her gaze shifted. She looked down, the blush barely visible, and she smiled one great, honest smile.


“Well, then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve, see... and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair...”


And…


Her mouth moved.


“am I talking too much?”



“What?” I asked.

“You look like you want to say something.”

“What would I have to say?”

“How about… that you like it.”

“You know I like it.”

“My dad would have liked to hear it. I know that I can’t tell him that you said it, but… sometimes, I like to think that he can still hear when people give him a compliment.”

I paused, watching George Bailey, and then looked up.


“It’s good- really good.”


“You know-“ She stopped.

“What?”

She pointed a finger. “Don’t laugh.”

I raised my hands in surrender, and she lowered her head, the television light filling her eyes like a flood. “Sometimes, I like to pretend that it’s magic… He used to tell me that his recipe could heal. I’ve kept it a secret for so long that I’ve started to think it’s real, you know?”

My silence made her shift.

“Well, and who’s to say it isn’t though, right? It sure made you feel better, didn’t it?” She shook her head quietly and, with our bodies both aglow, we watched the TV for a while longer. “You tired yet?” She asked finally.

I laughed a little. “Not yet.”

“Well, we’ll have to remedy that, now won’t we?”

She stood and stepped toward the kitchen, her figure fading into the darkness where my eyes struggled to adjust. Her footsteps stopped, her body turned, and with surprise, I realized that she was staring at me. “I think… I think that we all need something good to believe in. So-“


“So, don’t think less of me.”