The close-cut corners of the yards, the long high whistles from the swallows, the purr of running motors and the bright blue sky that served as a constant reminder of our highest flying dreams. But that’s not what I remember most about Hickory St. It was how the carnival came into town on the hottest day of August and stayed a total of 3 days. It was how the sweat stuck to our backs and made us long for those cool dips in the river. It was how the night gave way to daylight and the stars disappeared from the sky and into her eyes. It was the rough cut of her maple-blue jeans and the way she wore a smile…and how it seemed to fade away and wear out like those same tired jeans.
Taylor was 12 when I met her, two years younger than I was at that time, blond hair cut short and sticking out under a New Jersey baseball cap. She had just moved into the house beside us and would later spend a summer painting it bright yellow. Her father had gone inside to rest and she was ordering around the movers, pointing her finger at various places and shaking her head when they did something wrong. My mother had told me, being the able young man I was, to help them out and, while I’m at it, why don’t I bring over some cookies? So, armed with a red Tupperware box and my head held high, I marched over to Taylor and stuck out my hand. She raised an eyebrow at my gesture and took the red box from my other hand. Balancing it on her hip, she said, “Thanks,” and turned back to the men unloading a large green couch from the truck.
I frowned as she told them to be careful with that, and said, “I’m David…uh, David Williams.”
She looked back at me like I was an insect on her carefully arranged tea-set.
“Can I, uh, help you with anything?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, “No. We’re fine... I said be careful with that!” and under her breath, “Imbeciles.”
I laughed then caught myself and said, “So, New Jersey, eh?”
“Huh?” Then her hand flew up to her hat and she suddenly looked sad, “No. It was my mom’s. She brought it back for me.”
“Oh, cool.” I dropped my gaze to the flowers sprouting between my feet, bursting buds of blue, silver and green, surrounded by a lush green patch of grass; a forest for timid creatures.
“I’m Taylor.”
I looked up at her, her eyes clustered with moonbeams, and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Taylor.”
Once she told me, “I’ve stopped believing.”
And I asked, under the silvery sky, “Stopped believing in what?”
“In everything,” her head tilted to the sky until she was drunk with the moon.
And I held her hand as she wished for more, and I was just happy to be what she had settled for.
Just after Taylor had moved in, my mother had told me to be very nice to this girl because her mother had died from cancer and wouldn’t I just be a wreck if my mother died? I had nodded and went to go play baseball, stopping, like my mother had told me to, by Taylor’s house and asking if she wanted to come out and play with us.
A sweet smell of cinnamon greeted me at the cement steps to Taylor’s door. I climbed that last step and rang the white doorbell, which stood as a reminder of how far away Taylor always was, and yet how close she would be if I could just remove that one formality.
The door swung in and I found myself face to chest with someone much too close for my own comfort. I looked up, “Hey Mr. Peterson.”
Taylor’s father was to me like chalk on the sidewalk. I knew it was there, but I also knew that, when the rain came, it would all get washed away. I suddenly felt bad for thinking him old and tired, knowing that he had lost his wife, and so I just skid my shoe along the cement and muttered, “Is Taylor home?”
Giving me a humble smile, he turned and called up the long, winding staircase to a room full of mysteries (at that time I imagined them to blue, though I don’t quite know why I had chosen that particular color.) Hair flung up in a messy ponytail, Taylor tripped down the stairs and looked at me with awkward curiosity, a flame ignited in her eyes, but cooled by her demeanor.
“What’s up, Dad?” she said.
“Don’t quite know, myself. What’s going on, David?”
I fumbled with the baseball glove in my hand, noticing the large streaks anew on it, wondering if they had been there before, or if I had just never looked that close. “I was…well, the kids around the neighborhood usually play a game of baseball on Sundays, and uh, if you weren’t doing nothing…you know…if you wanted to play with us…we could use another outfielder.”
Taylor nodded to her dad, who nodded back to her, then to me and quietly left to his study, where he would finish the day in quiet solitude, a cigar in the corner of his lips and the computer screen buzzing his grammatical errors.
The door shut softly behind us and Taylor gave me a wary glance, “I play pitcher.”
I laughed and shook my head, “No. I’m the pitcher.”
“I’m not playing no outfield position. I ain’t no girl.”
“Well, you sure do look like one,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me and said, “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about! And I won’t play no outfield.” She grabbed the glove from me and threw it down to the freshly muddied ground. Tears splayed in the corners of her eyes as she turned and ran away from me, her hair falling from her elastics and landing just past the nape of her neck.
I bent down and picked up the glove, my heart heavy with wondering about my poor mitt, and my eyes following the trail of her blue flip-flop shoes.
Halfway through the game (we were winning and just needed to keep the other team from a home run, an easy concept when we were playing with rusted bats and spitballs), Taylor showed up behind the fence, her fingers grasping the chain-linking and her eyes red from tears. And I don’t know what made me do it, but I stepped away from the mound and walked towards her. She gave me an angry stare and made to leave but I tossed the ball high up into the air and over the fence. She caught it almost without looking, her eyes trying to find a hidden meaning behind mine.
The guys were yelling at me to come back and what was I doing, this being our last pitch and me giving up? I blocked them out and said in whispered tones to Taylor, “Go ahead, pitcher. They’re calling you.”
Tilting her head as she moved around me, her eyes acknowledged me as if for the first time just before she ran out to the field and took my place. And I watched as she struck them all out with a flick of her wrist.
It was raining when I kissed Taylor for the first time, a few years later than when I had first met her, on the last day of the carnival, which had come on the hottest day of August and the weather had quickly dissipated into clouds and thundershowers.
She had been wearing that smile and her blue jeans, covered in maple syrup from adventures in pancake making that morning. I had picked her up at six, and we had stayed till midnight, not wanting to leave and wanting so much to be caught up in the storm of our lives. It was on that night that I kissed her, and on that night that she revealed her dreams to me.
Taylor told me, under shade of an oak tree and within view of all the lights in the world, of her past. When she was very young, after her mother had died, she had told her father about how she would see her mother in her dreams, and how she had called to her, wanting her to follow her and dance and sing and it was so lovely, just too lovely. Her father had become worried about these nightly visits, worried that his daughter was stuck in her grief. He had told Taylor to not follow her mother, to say no if she asked Taylor to join her. Taylor had become confused, but did as her father told, stopped thinking about her mother and the land that seemed too wonderful to belong to anyone else than fairies and magical creatures. Taylor had wondered if her mother was a magical creature, to be in such a place.
Her eyes searched the skies for a single drop of water, and when she was denied, she continued her story, “I’ve started seeing her again, David, in my dreams. She’s calling me…She…,” she touched the rim of her New Jersey hat and continued, “I know it’s not real...I mean, it can’t be right? But I just can’t stop having these dreams, and I don’t know what will happen if I let go and just let her take my hand and lead me away…you know? Well, no, you probably don’t. I’m sorry David…I just…”
The first raindrop splattered delicately below her eyelid, reflecting the colors of her iris.
I didn’t want her to leave me. I thought if she went with her mother…somehow, she would leave me. So I told her what I was thinking, and she gave me a soft glow smile followed by a nod of her head. I thought she looked a bit sad, so I tried to cheer her up the only way I knew how; I kissed her as the rain fell down.
The very next month, Taylor called me on her pink sequined phone, and asked me to come over. I slid through my window and into hers as she pulled me up and kissed me on the cheek, the rims of her eyes encircling mine. And she told me about how the sickness had returned in her, through her mother’s blood. She cried and screamed at the sky as I sat on the edge of her bed and wondered why she hadn’t just thrown me to the ground and ran away like she had so many years ago. I wondered why she was still here, and I pulled her close to me as the rain fell now through her perfect eyes, and I kissed her once more, and told her that I would always be there, no matter what. I just didn’t know that she would take that to heart.
A note was pinned to my window screen, on neon green paper and with her scrawling handwriting, one morning, on the saddest day of my life. It had been a year past the summer when I had first kissed her and after I had learned that she had been diagnosed with cancer. It had been the year of her fading smile. It was too late when the ambulances arrived…it had been too late when I had woken up and thought she was still asleep.
They buried her with her New Jersey baseball cap. My mother cried and baked cookies all day. Taylor’s father would spend the next week in his study, smoking cigars and thinking about how the loves of his life had left him. I would wait for thunderstorms under starry skies and think about those blue flip flops walking away, and read her note until it was tattered and torn. I read it until I had memorized every word in her scrawling script. I read it until the rain blurred the letters and I couldn’t see because of tears blocking the light to my eyes and the ink smudging her away.
Dearest David,
Don’t think me doing this was a way to hurt you. I’ll always hold you in my heart. I hope you’ll hold me in yours. I know you told me not to go with her…I know you told me to stay strong…but David, it was time. And I held on as long as I could, thinking about you and how I knew that, even if I left you, you would be okay, because you helped me realize that I am real and that believing in stars and rain and sunshine, well it’s not as wonderful as believing in love. Tell my father not to be so sad, and thank your mother for her support. And David…I’ll be waiting in your dreams. If I call you, will you come with me?
Love,
Taylor
