Written for Quotation Inspiration Contest – Quote: Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would chose pain. – William Faulkner – Until I realized the contest called for an Essay, so, poo!
Word Count: 1,869
Gloria’s Tears
I was in love with Gloria Marks, the girl from art class, Wednesday nights. I never really talked to her much; she wore head phones in class. Sometimes I nodded to her when she looked at me, she usually smiled, and looked down, then continued painting.
She was gorgeous with long, luminous auburn hair and sparkling green eyes. She was short, and slender, and always wore knee high boots of some variety. One night she looked like Robin Hood, wearing green tights and worn, brown leather boots. She always wore a scarf no matter what the weather was like outside, and she carried a large, slouchy purse where she stowed her art supplies.
I felt like we belonged together. Some cosmic pull that guided me to sit next to her every Wednesday. It took me almost six months to ask her, I mean, who would want to date me? I’m Jason Diggs, the nerdy kid in art class that paints impressionistic art that sucks. Finally, one night before class I asked her if she wanted to go for coffee afterward.
She giggled. “Class ends at eight, I’d be up all night!” she covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. I took her hand.
“Don’t cover it, you’re,” my voice caught in my throat and I cleared it. “Beautiful.”
We went for coffee after class, and yes, we were up all night, sitting on the plush carpet in her living room, talking about art, love, relationships. We even brushed on the topic of death.
“I’m not afraid to die,” Gloria said, handing me a plate of chocolate pie. “Not at all.”
“Why’s that?” I asked. “Mm, good pie!”
“Well, I feel that I live every day to its fullest, so if I did die, I have no regrets,” she smiled with chocolate in her teeth. “What about you? Are you afraid to die?”
I was terrified of dying. “No.”
We finished our pie in silence. Gloria took the plates to the kitchen and when she came back, she dropped to the floor next to me and kissed me. She tasted like chocolate pie.
The next morning, Gloria was gone before I got up. She left a key on the counter with detailed instructions on what to do with it.
1. Pick up key
2. Go to door
3. Open door
4. Walk out
5. Turn around, close door
6. Put key in lock
7. Turn key
8. Put key in pocket
9. Call me later
I smiled.
When I called her later, she didn’t remember giving me the key or our night together.
The following Wednesday, I saw her in class. She approached me with a confused expression on her face.
“You didn’t call me,” she said.
“Yes I did,” I told her. “You didn’t remember me.” I handed her the key to her place.
“What’s this?” She asked.
“The key you gave me,” I said.
“What does it open?” She asked, turning the key in her hands.
“Your front door,” I said. I should have checked my tone. Her mouth fell open and her eyes grew wide. She shook her head slightly and regained her composure.
“What did we do?” She asked in a small voice, she looked at her hands fiddling with a hang nail.
“We stayed up most of the night talking,” I said. A tear dripped onto her hand. I raised her chin with a finger and wiped a tear from her cheek.
“What did we talk about?” She asked with a thick voice.
“Tons of stuff,” I said with a smile. “It was the best night of my life.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. Her face contorted with sadness. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“What?” I asked.
She sniffled hard and took my hand. “Let’s go sit down somewhere.”
She pulled me into a closet in the art wing and sat on an overturned bucket. I sat on a step stool.
“I black out,” she said. “Whenever I have strong feelings, I black out and I don’t remember things that happen.”
“What?” I asked again, feeling like I sounded like a broken record player.
“I don’t know what happened the other night, but I remember writing a note for you to call me.” She said. “I must have felt something powerful or the situation caused some sort of stress, and my brain blacked it out.”
“But you were still moving, you were still conscious,” I said. My heart beat hard. She didn’t remember, she really didn’t remember our kiss, our love making. It was all a blank space in her mind.
She shrugged her shoulders and looked down. Her face contorted again.
“I don’t feel anything,” she cried. “Because whenever I start to, my brain blocks it from my memory.” She full out bawled into her hands at this.
I held her close and pet her hair that smelled like raspberries and champagne.
“We’ll get through this,” I said. “I still want to be part of your life.”
I did some research and told Gloria that I thought maybe she couldn’t remember because a lot of memory has to do with the emotions we feel when experiencing them. I didn’t find anything on why her brain seemed to turn off when she experienced the feelings, but tried to link emotions back to her childhood. Gloria couldn’t remember much of her childhood, she thought because it was so full of good emotions. She was wrong.
A letter came from her mother a week after. It was a note that explained everything. It was one that started: If you’re reading this, I am dead.
Gloria let out a small gasp as she started to read it, and one by one, tears began to slip down her cheeks. I was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a stir fry, but could see her on the couch. A hand went to her lips.
When she was done, she crumpled the letter and threw it hard, then fell back against the couch and cried.
I rushed to her side.
“My mom,” she said. “Is dead,” she gasped for air and to control her tears. “I was,” tears started anew.
“What?” I asked, once again.
She pointed to the letter. I picked it up, straightened it out and read.
Her mother explained that Gloria was adopted at birth from a young woman named Sarah Grews who was only sixteen when Gloria was born. I read further and gasped, just as Gloria had.
I knew he was doing it, and I didn’t stop him. If he could get it from you, it kept him from asking for it from me.
I almost gagged. My stomach turned. How could a mother, adoptive or not, allow a grown man to molest a young child? I didn’t know what to say, so I crumpled the letter and threw it against the wall. Then I picked it back up and burned it.
“Where is your adoptive father?” I asked her.
Gloria was quiet now, her head shaking back and forth slowly, her eyes red-rimmed. “Dead,” she said in a whisper, staring at nothing.
After about an hour, in which tears continued to slide down her cheeks, she finally looked at me. “Why am I crying?” She asked. She wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and stood up. “Aren’t you making stir fry?”
I didn’t tell her about the letter, but it explained everything.
A year went by. We moved in together after three months, talked about marriage, but Gloria didn’t want to get married.
“I won’t remember it anyway,” she said, plucking a grape from a vine and tossing it into her mouth. “Besides, we’re happy like this, aren’t we?” She held up a journal that I told her to write in. She could look back and read about the high emotional incidents we shared. Sometimes I wrote them for her so she could read my viewpoint. I got the idea from a movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. She flipped open the book and I watched her eyes scan across the page. They got wider and wider, and then her mouth dropped open again. She looked up at me.
“I remember this,” she said. She turned the book toward me. It was an entry from a month ago when I asked her to marry me and she said no.
I laughed. “You crushed me, Gloria!” I said. I had written that entry for her. The ring I had given her sparkled on her ring finger.
“I said, a life long engagement would suffice,” she said. That wasn’t in the book. “I love you,” she said suddenly. After a year, she had never said it, telling me she didn’t know if she did or not. Finally, she knew.
I grabbed a pen and started writing down what had just happened. Gloria gave me things to say, her feelings, how it was all so overpowering. Then she stopped talking.
I looked at her. Her eyes were glazed over, she looked through me, not at me. Suddenly, they rolled up into her head and she dropped to the floor.
“Gloria!” I shouted. I went to her side and held her while she trembled in my arms. “Oh, God, Gloria!”
The ambulance came and I followed it to the hospital. Waiting during a time like this was torture. What happened to her? What was going to come of it? Would she remember me? The event we just shared?
A doctor came out of the ER and approached me.
“She’s stable,” he said with a grim expression. “It won’t be long, though.”
“What?” I asked. “What won’t be long?”
“She has a tumor in her brain,” The doctor explained.
“Can’t you do surgery?” I asked, flabbergasted. I didn’t know what to say. I felt a panic welling in my chest, causing my heart to beat in my throat. My breathing quickened. My nose burned with tears. “Well?”
The doctor’s lips tightened, his brow creased for a moment, and he shook his head. “No, we did all we can, you may see her now.”
I went to Gloria’s side. She looked like she had aged twenty years in an hour. Her skin was pale, her hair has lost its luster. I sat down and took her hand.
“Jason,” she said with a weak smile. “I love you.”
I squeezed her hand, trying to control my tears. “The doctor said you don’t have long,” I started.
“Shh,” Gloria said. “I know.” She took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “I can feel, now.” She said. “I can feel the emotions of my past welling up inside.” A tear leaked onto her pillow. “At first they were all bad feelings, they must have been from my childhood. But now,” she smiled and caressed my cheek. I pressed my face into her palm. “All I feel is happiness,” her eyes twinkled. “And this overwhelming feeling that I don’t know what it is, but it has to be love.”
I cried against her hand.
“Don’t worry,” she said to me. “I’m not scared.”
“I know,” I said. “You told me a long time ago.”
“I remember,” she said with a smile.
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