This probably belongs on the “other” front page of the internet, but I’ll try here first. It’s a request. An exploration of memory. An attempt. I’m looking for something I read once. I believe it was a short story, most definitely not a novella and it most certainly wasn’t one of those books that stays with you long after the closing sentence. I was wondering if any of you had read it or know who wrote it and, more importantly, know where I can find it.
At first blush, it sounds like something Papa Hemingway eked out onto the type machine in the confines of a sea swept shack on of the farthest Florida Keys tucked just under a hurricane’s nose, below sea level and flirting with impending disaster. So romantic, I know. Something written under the duress of whisky, candlelight and the burning lament of unrequited love. It does sound like something he wrote, but, alas, I simply cannot find anything remotely akin to this story I’m sure I read once. The question remains: Who was it?
So. Here goes. It went something like this:
One day, a young soldier deserts his post and returns to his hometown. He knocks on the door of a house remembered. A beautiful young woman answers the door and she regards him as a ghost. She is both astonished and repulsed. He is calm, focused and adamant.
“Hello —–.”
“What are you doing here? —I thought you—“
“I deserted. I’m AWOL. I came to see you.”
“…”
“I thought we could go on a walk through the meadows, in the breeze, we could smell the flowers and sit and talk under that big old oak tree.”
She stares at him. She knows the walk and the tree.
And she knows him.
She turned as her mother called out from upstairs: “Honey who is it….”
“Just a vacuum cleaner salesman, Momma, finish your bath.” She steps out, closes the door and brushes past the handsome young soldier. She bounds down the steps. He follows her.
They walk in silence for a bit. Through the meadows, in the breeze, to the old oak tree.
Finally, she turns to him. Asks why he just got up and left one day, with no forethought or warning. How he up and left and went off to join the war.
“Through the meadows and past the younger trees. Come, let’s just walk…”
They reach their destination. It’s some Americana painting. A bucolic paradise, untouched and pristine. It’s an ancient, picturesque, gnarled storied oak that sits atop a hill which overlooks the valley above their small town. The sun sets. Dusk, shadows, that kind of thing as he stares at the setting sun and then into her eyes. There is the terrifying unfamiliar upending, the terrifying emotional upheaval rooted inside that begins to surface, a feeling for which there no words. And she has none for him.
Finally, he says that he found out she was going to be married, so he woke up that morning, left his post and walked to her house. He wanted to go on a walk with her. Like they used to—through the meadows and fields and to the old oak tree.
She begins to cry. Her arms are crossed; her aura and nature are some weak attempt at being impervious against him. After a beat, there is a torrent of faux rage. The anger masquerading as sudden loss for her long-lost prince. She berates him and then scolds him. She curses him for leaving and, then, finally, damns him for showing up on the eve of her wedding. And for what? She has no sympathy; he has fewer answers.
Well, she says, he made his bed; now will lie in it. He will be court martialed and she will be married. Her tears disappear quick as they came. He is just looking at her, beholds her in his eyes as if seeing her for the first time. The way he always did.
I love you, he says. It’s definitive, audible and although he barely gets the words out, it’s the loudest thing she’d ever heard.
I’ve always loved you. I wanted to take a walk with you and tell you here, under the old oak tree.
The sobbing begins anew, and then she turns to leave. She says goodbye, it’s over because he left and she’s going to be married tomorrow. She walks–and then runs–away from him. He does not follow or call out to her. He watches her.
He stands, watching her.
Her form on the horizon, shrinking with the crimson sunset.
She is near the horizon when she turns around.
And runs back toward him.
And into his arms.
There, they embrace under the old oak tree and sway synchronous with the rhythms of the sun, the moon and the stars.
And that’s where it ends.
Sometimes I don’t know if I read that story somewhere, or had a dream that I read it. Or maybe it’s the story so many of my patients, foster children and charges have told me about that absent person/parent/partner in their life—the One They Pushed Away only to realize too late that it was a mistake. But I’m not sure. All I know is that I read that story one day and I want to find it and read it again.
Maybe it’s mine.
Or is it yours?
-Circa 2015. Los Angeles, CA
Difficult To Cure 
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