The First Person And Other Stories Part 12

You're not the first person to think he or she could save me, I say.

I'd never be so presumptuous, me, you say.

You're not the first person to squeeze whatever love juice it is you've squeezed into my eyes to make me see things so differently, I say.

Eh? you say.

Then you make the innocent face you make when you're pretending to be green.

You're not the first person I ever had really good talks like this with, I say.

I know, you say. Been there, done that. You feel very practized.

Thank you, I say. And you won't be the first person to leave me for someone else or something else.

Well but we've a good while before that, with any luck, you say.

And you're not the first person to, to, uh, to , I say.

To stump you? you say. Well. You're not the first person who was ever wounded by love. You're not the first person who ever knocked on my door. You're not the first person I ever chanced my arm with. You're not the first person I ever tried to impress with my brilliant performance of not really being impressed with anything. You're not the first person to make me laugh. You're not the first person I ever made laugh. You're not the first person full stop. But you're the one right now. I'm the one right now. We're the one right now. That's enough, yes?

You're not the first person to make a speech like that at me, I say.

Then we're both laughing hard again in each other's new arms.

The day slips away without us noticing. It's summer dark outside. It's not long, by the looks of it, till the light will come up again.

On my way downstairs to make us some tea I see the dining room table still out there in the garden on the lawn in the moonlight.

It looks unexpected. It looks unsafe, anomalous. It changes the garden. The garden changes it.

It strikes me, as I look at it, that the table is way beyond my control. Up until this moment, I mean, I believed I owned that table. Now, looking at it out in the open air, I know that I don't. I know for the first time that I maybe don't own anything.

If it rains tonight, the wood won't warp immediately. But if we leave it out there for long enough in the open air, it'll split. It'll buckle open. It'll stain. It'll have little tracks all over it where wasps and other creatures have gnawed at it for nest material. Its legs will sink into the gra.s.s, gra.s.s will come up and round the sides of its legs. Bindweed will find it. Heat and cold will ruin it. Greenness will swallow it up, will die down and spring back up round it, will make it old, ruined, weathered.

I don't know what I'll think tomorrow or the next day, but this is what I think right now.

It's the best thing that could happen to anything I ever imagined was mine.