Key South

I got a letter in the mail. That didn’t surprise me, because all my correspondence comes in the post mail for me, but what surprised me was who it was from. Rory Abbott, with his name on the envelope. I used to let myself secretly think, in unspoken thoughts I was too ashamed to acknowledge, that I wanted him to reach out. I wanted him to work to find me, to tell me that he missed me and wanted me to come back and start our life together.

I stood at the mailbox in the humid morning air, the sea breeze blowing my lazy fallen strands of hair back around my neck. It was a lush morning, and quiet. The heavy tropical plants seemed to be collecting sweat already, the bright houses were glowing in the morning rise, and chairs rocking breezily on their thick wooden-plank porches.

I looked back down at the browned envelope in my hand, already damp, having spent a few days traveling through the Keys, no doubt. Now that this letter was here, I didn’t know what I thought. I didn’t feel the sense of relief and romance that I thought I would. No, there was nothing but a wave of self-loathing that I had worked so hard to give up.

I walked back up to my porch, barefoot over the uneven cement where thick crabgrass grew in the cracks, slowly, slowly up the steps, and sitting at small table in the small wicker chair on the porch in a daze. I tossed the mail on the tabletop in front of me, Rory’s letter face-up. I sipped iced coffee. I thought about Rory. I thought about me. I thought about the plane that brought me here, and the disaster that kept me here.

It’s been four years now. Back then, I was living in Boston. I was married. I would have said that I was happily married, because I truly felt that I was happily married, but happily married people don’t have affairs. So why did I do it? I’m asked that by everyone, but I asked it of myself more. I had just moved to Boston with him. We had been married a few years, I loved him. Then I met Rory, by chance, on the small walk of West Street off the Commons. I felt nothing more than some sort of Hunt; it raised my blood pressure, awoke my Fight or Flight, brought tension and adventure to my life. And the moral world, the world on paper, can’t seem to believe in relationship indulgence out of marriage. I didn’t believe in it either, until it happened. Isn’t that the way it always goes? And now? Am I criminal for being human?

When everyone found out, I broke. Why was I surprised? Energy in, energy out. Tension build, and tension break. My husband left for a week, to stay with his brother in Milwaukee. I didn’t blame him, but I cried on the floor while he packed his things. Who had I become? I thought I had integrity. I still felt like I had integrity. Did this slip invalidate my entire life? I couldn’t stay there in that emptiness. A friend had once told me about a beach in Belize. I had never seen the beach in Belize.

I loved that beach. It was lush. I felt loved, at a time when I wasn’t loved, not even by myself. It was weird though, the way I couldn’t push the dark thoughts out, couldn’t stop internally berating myself, couldn’t stop thinking about my husband, about Rory, about the way I ruined my life at 24, and the stain I was going to carry on now forever… but when the afternoon thunderstorms came, my mind was clear, I could think of anything.

It was gone when I got on the plane. I was back to my place of suffering, the room I knew would always exist in my brain, always there in my mind for me to revisit, no matter how many locks I put on it. We had a layover in Miami, but we didn’t get that far. The plane required an emergency refuel and the closest airport we could get to was Key West, and we barely made it there. As the plane descended in a rocky, turbulent landing, I knew my impending death would be everything I deserved. I cried against the window while they refueled, until they told us we all needed to disembark. I wrestled my carry-on out of the overhead compartment, and sulked into the airport to wait, but as I exited the plane into the Florida air, something changed. Something smelt of hope, the wind brought a sense of rebirth with it, that heated island air. I was barely in the lounge when they announced our plane was discovered to have a mechanical error, and to see customer service to book new flights. I saw the signs for customer service. I walked towards it. Got to the desk. And then I kept on walking. I walked right out of airport. There was nothing to go home for. I had ruined lives. Me, I was the cause. I didn’t deserve to feel better, and they didn’t deserve me around for the hurt, and they didn't deserve me around to use me. I would be home now, on Key West.

I took a cab to the downtown. I found a room not far from Ernest Hemingway’s house. I saw the neighbors waving to one another. I saw the old man smoking at the outdoor café. I saw the roosters roaming the streets. And I saw myself here, for a long time.

I had a fine job in Boston, but the job market in the isolated Key was limited. I approached the landlady of my small inn and offered to work for her for room and board. She agreed. I worked for some of the sunset cruise companies in the evening for money. I made friends with tourists, I made friends with the locals. I didn’t tell anyone but my parents where I was, and told them not to tell anyone else. The humid climate suited me well after those cold Boston winters. The small, intimate community was good for me after the sprawling anonymity of the larger city. I found myself happier here, alone, than I had ever been with someone, up north. I found friends in other local business owners. It was enough to satisfy my lonely times, but not enough to ever make me godmother, and that was how I liked in. I began painting the lighthouse in different painting styles. I braided my hair, I bought flowing island dresses, I let go of my self-degradation. I bought a bike. I fed the roosters, the roosters who wake us for morning, for light. And only sometimes would I wish that I would Rory would work to find me, to prove to me that maybe it had been real, that maybe it was worth ruining my life over. But he never did. And each year I forgot about it a little more, and my wedding ring tan faded into oblivion, as though it had never been there.

And four years later, here it was. I had disconnected myself in every way possible, and his sealed, stamped letter had found it’s way here to my life on Key West that had been so devoid of everything before, that at times I really was able to convince myself that it had never happened. I looked at the letter, and reached for it, and my fingers were trembling.

I looked at it, and took a breath, and then tore it open, pulling the letter from it and almost ripping it, and was disappointed at the brevity of it, even though I hadn’t read it yet. What would it say? Would he reappear? Would this all be worth it? Would he come? Would I go? Would it be an ending?

 
You’re hard to find, you know that? Let me know when you’re in town again, I still have that spare room

Rory

I felt sick. I had wanted to hear from him I realized, but I wanted it to be something other than it was. But it’s what it had always been. Why did I still want him more than the man that had been my husband? I see now that he was the better man, better for never reaching out, better for never tormenting me, for delineating me. And he was the one I knew I’d never find again. Who comes up with these endings? We all have so many acceptable endings for our lives, so many permutations and ideas, and none of them ever what we are actually delivered.

I heard a rooster crow. I took my iced coffee in my hand and walked back down the porch, down the crooked walkway, into the street. Did Hemingway ever feel this validated? He had to have walked this street at some point during his tenure here. I smiled because for the first time, I knew with certainty, I knew that here was where I’d stay forever.