A Winter Dream

Chapter


Thirty-two


I have decided to journey the dark path to my past—to find the light of hope or to permanently extinguish it.

Joseph Jacobson’s Diary





At noon the agency closed. I took my things to the hotel, then caught the Blue Line at Clark and Lake. I was going to the diner. A small, hopelessly optimistic part of my psyche hoped that April might have called and left some contact information with Ewa or one of the waitresses. But the realist in me knew that wasn’t likely. I was going to the diner to formalize my loss and put the past to rest—like going to a funeral to see the deceased.

I had intended to go straight to Mr. G’s, but when the train stopped at Irving Park, my breath caught a little. How many times had my heart ached as she stepped off the train here to go home? Then I thought of something. Perhaps April’s roommate, Ruth, would know how to find her. I jumped off the train just before the doors closed.

In spite of the patches of ice, I practically ran the distance to her apartment. The main-level door was locked, so I buzzed the apartment, twice, but there was no answer. I waited there a few minutes until a tenant walked up to the door and opened it. I slipped in after her and went up the stairs to April’s apartment. There was a FOR RENT sign on the door. I don’t know why I was so surprised. April had been gone for nearly two years. I never should have gotten my hopes up.

I walked back to the platform, taking the next train just two stops west to the Jefferson Park station. It took me fifteen minutes to walk from the station to my old apartment.

It was a little past three in the afternoon. The traffic along Lawrence was light, the street dusted in white, its curbs concealed beneath tall banks of dirty snow. Even though it was freezing cold, across the street from my old apartment a woman in a parka was sitting on the steps of her house blowing soap bubbles for her dog.

I couldn’t believe that I’d ever lived in that place. Already it seemed like a lifetime ago. I wondered if this was how soldiers felt returning to a battlefield in peacetime.

I remembered. That first sleepless night walking down Lawrence Avenue, first to the Polish market, then, later that same night, to the diner. The night I met her.

Oftentimes it’s the smallest, seemingly inconsequential acts that make the biggest differences in our lives. What if April had remembered to lock the door at closing time? How different my life would be. How different I would feel at this moment. It was so easy falling in love with her. Why couldn’t letting her go be just as easy?

I took a picture of the ugly apartment building with my phone, then headed further down Lawrence toward the diner.

At the sight of Mr. G’s the memories flooded back, carrying such joy and pain with them I didn’t know if I could hold them all. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, I thought. No, it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but it was the right thing to do. There was no sense prolonging the agony. It was time to face the corpse of my failure, shut the lid on it and move on.

Even though they were open for New Year’s Eve, the diner was nearly empty. It was that slow hour—too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Everything looked the same as before. I sat down at a booth and picked up a menu, even though I already knew everything on it. Nothing had changed. Not even the daily special.

No, everything had changed.

“May I help you?” I looked up to see Ewa standing above me. “Hey, long time no see,” she said awkwardly as if she’d just learned the phrase.

“It’s good to see you, Ewa.”

“It is good to be seen,” she said. “How have you been?”

“Surviving,” I said.

“That is better than not.”

“Usually,” I said. I took a deep breath. “You haven’t heard from April, have you?”

She looked at me as if she didn’t understand my question. “Haven’t heard?”

“I mean, has she called?”

“Yes.”

“How is she?”

“She is okay, I think. She could be better, but okay.”

“Is she happy?”

Her brow furrowed. “That is a very difficult question to answer. Maybe you should ask her for yourself.” Ewa turned back toward the counter. I looked over. April was standing there, staring at me.

“April.” I jumped to my feet and walked to her, our eyes locked on each other. I couldn’t read her. I didn’t know what she was thinking.

We stood there, just inches from each other. Maybe miles. I wasn’t sure. “I never meant to lose you,” I said.

Tears began to well up in her eyes.

“I came back to find you . . . but you were gone. Then they sent me to New York.” I wanted to touch her—to throw my arms around her. “I never stopped thinking about you.” I just looked into her eyes, hoping she would say something. She didn’t. “Why did you leave?”

She wiped her eyes. “After what I told you, I thought you had left me. It was too much for me. You’re the first man I’ve ever truly chosen. At Christmas, I called Ewa to wish her Merry Christmas. She told me you had come for me. So I called, but your phone was turned off. So I came back. I went to your apartment . . .” She paused. “But you were gone.” She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t know a heart could break twice.”

“I’m so sorry.” My voice cracked. “I was so stupid. I scared you away.”

“You didn’t scare me away,” she said. “I needed to go back. I needed to take care of my past, so I could have a future.”

I stood there, still frozen, afraid to ask. “Am I a part of that future?”

She looked into my eyes with a peculiar light, then slowly shook her head. “No.”

My heart fell. “No?”

“Not just a part,” she said. “I was hoping you would be my future.”

She fell into me and we kissed. Passionately. Fully. This time there was no past to suppress, no secrets to steal her away, no guilt to own her. This time, for the first time, she was mine. I would never let her go again.