Nov. 2, 2009
Falling Leaves
All around me leaves crunched under careless feet-shuffling, scraping, dragging. I was the only one that took care not to shuffle. I lifted my foot a bit higher with every step, striding carefully around each fallen yellow/brown star, looking always at the ground.
When I was in 3rd grade Ms. Brash had said that leaves were the corpses of Fall, the fallen soldiers of nature. She may have been quoting some romantic poem by some long dead poet, I can’t remember, but it seemed logical enough. That same year Father Burns gave a sermon about respecting the dead.
It was in all the papers about how these kids had gone to the cemetery at night and sledge hammered tombstones and spray painted mausoleums, desecrating tombs is what Father Burns had called it, rot in hell, that’s what Father Burns said happened to people who do such things. Eternal Damped Nation and some such hellish consequences. So I stopped stepping on leaves.
Every year they fell like clockwork and every year I was careful- if leaves were the corpses of Fall and it was a sin to disrupt the dead than it just made sense that I shouldn’t step on them, disturbing their resting places.
The air was cold and campus was long, too long. It took almost 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other. I didn’t mind the walking even with the cold- it was never the walking that I minded it was the time. Too much time for analysis and thought was afforded when strolling campus. I looked down. Suddenly an engine roared to my left howling hurricane wind- a leaf blower- a sin, like a sledge hammer to a tombstone. I turned away in disgust. I wasn’t even half way to the library yet. I looked down again and decided to count the squares in the sidewalk.1,2,3…6,7,8,…20,21,22.
When I was 14 I was an 8th grader at Field Middle school and during the first nine weeks my dad died. He wasn’t old. He wasn’t sick. He didn’t have an accident that took him away violently. He just died. One day he was as alive as you or me and the next… The doctors said it was a heart attack, the silent killer. No one saw it coming; on one could have known.
Mom didn’t take it so well. She took me to live with grandma. She never got out of the bed she had spelt in as a child except to run down the street in her night gown screaming and crying. Grandma was too fragile and sickly to chase her so she sent me. I hung my head as I lead her back to the house like a little, lost, half naked puppy as the neighbors gawked from slits in venetian blinds or heavy drapes.
I didn’t go to school for a few weeks. Mom needed me. Grandma needed me. I had to take care of them. All day I’d cook and clean and nurse my ailing grandma and unhinged mother but at night I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t sleep, my mind was constantly racing. Count sheep. That’s what Grandma said to do; she could see the dark circles and the darkness replacing that light that had shined behind my once innocent eyes. Count sheep. I did. I counted a thousand sheep, a million and somehow there was comfort.
Counting didn’t make me sleepy, nothing did, but it did calm my mind forcing out unpleasant thoughts. Soon I wasn’t counting just sheep anymore.
I kept counting, dodging leaves, and avoiding reflection until I realized how badly I had to pee. I quickened my pace. 30, 40, 50.
Inside, the library was full- typical for the late morning. I barely noticed them as I pasted the entry way and headed for the elevators-3rd floor, elevator 3, ding, ding, ding. There were evenly spaced lights on the ceiling more controlled than the sporadic ones in the entry. Safer. 1,2,3. I counted them as I looked for the bathroom. In calligraphic black lettering a wooden door was labeled restroom, not for rest but exactly what I was looking for, although rest would have been nice too.
A boy held the door for me as I headed in. His hair looked like the fourth of July, fireworks jetting in all directions fading into nothing but a dark cloud of smoke brown. Dangerous yet fun and cleanly edged as though the sharp edge of a jackknife had cut each hair individually. There as a mole visible through the short hair on the side of his head perched about two inches behind the ear.
“Can I help you?” he asked puzzled.
“No, I think I can handle it.” He chuckled extending his arm like a butler showing me the door.
His eyelashes were longer than most girls I knew and noticeable even though it was unlikely he’d use mascara. The hair on his arm was Robin Williams thick, like a wooly sheep dog you could see yourself petting before shaking off the disturbing thought and image of petting a person. All the hairiness was contrasted by a completely shaven face. It was clear his hair was his most notable and identifying feature.
The bathroom was empty. Perfect. I checked the six stalls. Two were too dirty to use, one still contained the leavings of the last patron, one had no toilet paper and one had a broken latch on its door. I choose the only acceptable one, the handicapped one… There were three sinks. One had a hefty wad of tissue in it and some unidentifiable brown substance I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at. One other was missing the knob for the hot water. I washed my hands in the 3rd.
When I came out the boy was still there, still chuckling, still smiling.
“What?” He said nothing and simply pointed to the door. “Men’s Restroom” My jaw dropped. He chuckled harder.
“I guarded the door for you.”
“You could have told me,” I said nearly at a whisper the voice gone clear out of me.
“You seemed sure enough of yourself,” he smiled.
“I was distracted.”
“Clearly.”
“Thank you,” I said
“For what?”
“Watching the door,” I said walking away. He jogged up behind me.
“What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“I’m Matt.”
“Hello Matt,” I said shaking his hand and feeling like an idiot as I always do when I shake hands.
“It’s your turn.”
“My turn to what?”
“Introduce yourself.”
“Amrut.”
“Bless you?”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t you sneeze?”
“No.” He shrugged so I shrugged.
“So, what’s your name?” he smiled.
“Amrut.”
“Oh! Pretty?”
“Thanks?”
It was an odd way to meet the love of your life but I’ll admit that not much about me isn’t odd. Matt wasn’t odd at all. He didn’t seem to have any eccentric traits or idiosyncrasies about him but he liked odd I guess because he liked to watch me, which I guess is kind of odd in itself. Especially when I was doing something he thought was quirky. He told me I could trust him and I did. I told him about the leaves and he would dodge them with me. What a pair we must have looked like jumping like hopscotchers down the middle of campus arm in arm.
He called me his narcotic compulsion.
I called him my medicine.
We equaled each other out which was great for me but not so great for him.
At first it was the counting. It didn’t bother me at first but then he’d count aloud, which I never did. When he could focus he’d press his lips together but when I talked to him I could see he wasn’t paying attention being much too busy counting my words.
Even though lightly annoyed I still loved him. When we touched it was electric and our worlds made sense for a little while, only when they came together. When we were truly together not just occupying similar space in shared time, but truly together it was bliss. When we’d sit in “The Booth” at Denny’s and tell the story of how we met he could almost pass for normal, for the same guy I’d met by accident.
By the time the last of the Fall leaves had begun to disappear leaving tiny chalk outlines stained on the white sidewalks I had stepped on my first leaf since I was nine years old. It was by accident. Most of the leaves were gone and I no longer filled my walking time looking out for them. On this particular day it was windy. The leaf had probably blown from some far off pile protected from the weather and right into my path. I stopped and picked it up, tempted to kneel right there and beg forgiveness and find a place to bury it but it crumbled and two feet in front of me there was another- the only other one in sight. It wasn’t even a whole leaf but a crumpled piece. I stepped on it. It was on purpose! I waited for lightening to strike, the leaf police to ambush me, the Halloween gremlins to come to drag me to Hell but nothing happened. On the way home a little later I also realized that I hadn’t counted all day.
That same day Matt developed a new quirk- organizing. When I came home my CDs, DVDs, and books had been alphabetized. My room was spotless.
He didn’t see why I was upset. He took off his gray beanie cap and scratched his bald head. I screamed.
“Why did you cut your hair?”
He wouldn’t say at first. He put the hat back on. I snatched it away. Finally I got him to tell me. He’d cut it because it was too “unorderly”. I gathered him up on my arms. He held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered.
“What?”
“It’s over Matt…I’m so sorry.”
We had our first and last fight. He pled with me to reconsider. I refused. He begged. I cried. He tried reason. I stated emotions. He stormed out. I cried some more. He didn’t understand that I wasn’t leaving him because I didn’t love him, or because I couldn’t handle his compulsions, it was because I must have been the cause of them. He was normal before he met me and I was driving him mad. I couldn’t do that to him. I had never seen myself as a bad influence but as I looked at my movie collection from “Across the Universe” to “Zorro, The Masked Adventurer” I couldn’t help but feel that I was the cause of his developing narcosis. Perhaps he was the cause of my advancements toward normality but I wouldn’t be his downfall; I loved him too much.
He called every day for a week wanting to talk about the fight and our future; I had to force myself not to answer. The days snail crawled by. I had never felt so alone.
…
The semester ended uneventfully. I packed my things and prepped my apartment for my long departure. Mom was sitting in her chair in the living room when I arrived; she was watching TV and the house smelled like gingerbread. She smiled when I came in. Her body was so frail under my embrace that I feared I would break her. She had dealt with things her own way- sometimes forgetting to eat for days at a time and it had taken its toll. She looked at me like I was stranger, a loved stranger.
“Look at you.” She said her voice so tired sounding-so sorrowful even in her happiness.
“Look at you.” My voice was more critical though I tried to hide it. I loved her. I worried.
“I know.” She giggled pulling her sweater closed, letting it swallow her up as though it would hide her.
“Hungry?” She said leading me to the kitchen.
When Christmas rolled around it was just me and her. I was reminded that this would be the first Christmas without Grandma. I couldn’t have felt more depressed. I started to count out napkins. We were getting dinner ready when there was a knock at the door. Mom went to get it. It was supposed to just be the two of us tonight but people had a habit of dropping in to check on us during the holidays. I counted out ice cubes- six for each cup, which made twelve all together. The voice at the door was familiar and when I looked up there was the fourth of July! Forgetting myself, the 3rd grade, counting sheep, dodging leaves, “Across the Universe” to “Zorro, The Masked Adventurer”, and sidewalk squares I ran into his arms and kissed him and petting his hairy arms and ran my hands though his hair which looked just the way it should- the way I remembered it.
I introduced him to Mom. She liked him right away and he stayed for dinner. We laughed and ate and fell into each other like no time had passed and our worlds made sense again. When he left I couldn’t stop smiling, it was the best Christmas gift I could have ever wanted.
We made each other crazy and sane, better and worse, but most importantly happy. I was his compulsion. He was my medicine. We needed each other as teachers need long dead poets to quote and preachers need sermons to frighten their congregation into proper behavior. I was bad for him but he said it was worse without me. After that we were inseparable our love renewed each year with the falling leaves.
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