This Is a Love Story

by Jessica Soffer

It was my era of “at least it’ll make a good short story.”

Sometimes, I think, the stories write themselves.

When you are like this, it feels like hitching my wagon to your horse. I want to follow you raspberry picking, listen to you contemplate fish and sun and shadows in oil on driftwood.

I remember how you made time expand.

It is something, I think, how everyone believes they’re your favorite. It has something to do with your attention to detail. Just being with you feels like being chosen, winning a prize.

You remember we were walking by the Ladies Pavilion in the Park when you said that you could not be with someone who would not put their art first.

i love the confidence

I remember our love making me feel lighter.

You remember our wedding. Your feet pinched, champagne with raspberries, being introduced to most of the guests by my mother. You remember sable and Brie, pink satin, the smell of lilies, and how I kept finding you, making you feel on-kilter.

this sounds so sweet and pleasant

You remember Turkey, Greece—that was a surprise to everyone but we did it—tomatoes, black rice. You remember white houses and water the color of flags. You remember ruins of stairs with no end, cats flicking their tails that smelled like the sun.

this also sounds so pleasant

reading on a bench with nowhere to be.

you’d get up before the sun. There was so much hope, so much promise before anyone was up.

This is a love story. Joy doesn’t read flat on the page. I’ll take happiness, our happiness, even when it writes white.

What’s the word for the opposite of love? It isn’t hate. It is far crueler than that.

Meet him after class.

ugh no

Think, for a moment, about cinema and drama. How nothing, in real life, has ever measured up. It is never as good as you imagined it.

The way he wears his sweater feels like a gift.

There is seeing and then there is being seen.

Margaux has a line of boys and men interested in her because she’s got gray eyes that she opens and closes as if they’ve got better things to do. She dances to music in her head and everyone stares, wondering which song. She is going to run the world.

And perhaps that’s your main problem: the imagining. It gets in the way. It has always made real life pale, pallid, pathetic, in comparison.

Sometimes, you want to sit for him and let him write your story as if it were a portrait. As if depicting you would fully realize you.

You want him to say, Oh my gosh, you’re so. Show your empathy. Show the way you hold your heart when you laugh.

For the first time in such a long time, a moment isn’t its measly self. It isn’t dulled with routine, or boredom or immaturity. It isn’t too much or too little. It is just. You’re so.

There is eye contact. Then there is this.

You love to take them to the Park not because it reminds you of Abe exactly but because you are comforted by the memory of being at the start of something, once.

Maybe his is the only story you ever knew.

Sometimes, Max convinces himself to do traditional, everyday things. It never works.

Her friends say she’s in love with love.

sadness carves deeper than happiness, doesn’t it?

But also, I remember you dancing to Buena Vista Social Club in our kitchen in an apron and socks, tomato soup on the stove. I remember that better than I remember almost anything else. And doesn’t that mean something?

You remember telling him, Michael Dedo. Your pain will be useful. Decades later, we saw his jazz performed at Lincoln Center. His pain was.

You remember it was not long after that that I finished the novel about a couple not unlike us but not quite like us. You remember not taking any of it personally exactly but it feeling exactly personal. You remember believing in it. And you remember that it was not just because you loved it and not just because you loved me. That is the thing about fiction, I think. I’m not trying to make a point here, and yet. We were on the mend. You were all right, for the time being. Max was selling old copies of Playboy, was nationally ranked in chess, would run for fun, miles and miles around the Park. He was tall, charming, provocative. And we were hopeful. As in: there were so many reasons to hope.

You remember how we used to sit on the sofa and read the same books so we could talk about them as soon as we both were done.

this sounds heavenly

Your words are sparks in the night.

What can I do but hold on to you? I do.

You remember the Modern Love I wrote about you getting sick

omg

The stories that live only in us, within us, and how they die every day with us too.

You remember that was around the time, on East Eighty-Eighth Street, visiting an old friend, I was mugged in broad daylight. You remember they used a pipe on my knees. You remember I didn’t care about the wallet, the cards, the money, only the notes from you, the Chinese fortunes, and the coffee card: one away from a free cappuccino, I’d said.

I remember you making everyone kinder, softer, better. Always.

You remember our love like a river, a rock, a fountain, a rainbow. You remember it as an August evening, the holidays, the first spring day. You remember it as sparkle, or maybe I do. Why not? We had our bumps. You remember it wasn’t always easy, but so often it was. How lucky are we? Sometimes, over the top is just enough.

Instead, I remember you at twenty-three, eyes the color of autumn, a dimple spooning the side of your mouth.

And, Jane, do you remember all those things you taught me? How to draw a rabbit, be patient, peel a grape with my teeth. Remember how you liked your tea? Remember how you liked your mornings? Remember how you used to love when I rubbed your back with the heels of my hands? Remember that Max was lucky to just be near you, okay? I want you to remember that.

Sometimes, the less sound, the more feeling.

The difference between stopping and ending is that one is intentional. Anything can be a beginning if you say it right. Any moment can be the end.