1997, Texas

By A. Kalyani

On the day Charlie and I had appointed to meet for the first time, the sun never came out. A dull light was the only sign that morning had come; the whole sky, from one horizon to the other, was ash grey, and a damp November chill hung in the air. But as I slipped my black jacket on and ran down the flight of stairs and out the back door of my dormitory, everything inside me was burning. Adrenaline was coursing all through me as I cut across campus to the front entrance, and I could feel my cheeks flushing.

It wasn’t like we didn’t know each other. Something crazy had brought us together: one of those chance online encounters. Our very first instant messaging conversation had lasted for three hours. We’d talked about the weirdest and coolest things — everything from cowboys and horses to church denominations and the photography project he was working on for college. That night, my mind was full of thoughts about this “stranger.”

Something about Charlie was just different: he had a mind and heart with thoughts and passions that mirrored my own. I was 22, and I wondered, even on that first night, if I had maybe encountered my soulmate. Within a week, we were talking on the phone every night, across the three hours that separated us from each other.

We talked about our dreams — we both wanted to go to China, to photograph for National Geographic, to always be home for Christmas. We talked about our secret pains — I was on a path far from my family, his children were being taken away from him. Something connected deep inside us. Finally, after nearly a month, the voice that had become so familiar asked me, “Can we meet?”

At first, a chill had run through me. “I’ll break your heart,” I promised him. “I just can’t get into a relationship like this.” And yet, I knew this man was the only kindred spirit I’d ever met in the more than two decades I had lived on earth. I couldn’t say no. So we set a date: the first Saturday in November, at the entrance to campus. We’d meet there for the first time.

Now the day had finally come. My feet that had started off walking at the dorm were now at full run, and suddenly, as I rounded the corner of a building, I saw him standing there, next to his car. He was tall, solid, with wavy, dark brown hair. As I got closer, I saw his eyes, grey and green, the color of the sea in the light of late afternoon. We hugged without a word, and I hopped in his car. Off we drove into the grey, misty morning, not even knowing where we were headed — not caring.

The first place we went was a little coffeeshop, where we sat across from each other and wrote messages using a bag of Scrabble letters. We talked about our growing-up years. I was a city girl, who loved skyscrapers and streets crowded with people in styling clothes and high-heeled boots. He was a country boy who always heard the call of nature. The trees, the birds, the sky taught him everything he knew: they put the wild spirit into him.

“I haven’t spent much time in the country,” I told him. “But someday, I’d love to go to Montana and Wyoming, and see the mountains … especially to do some photography.” He already knew that photography was my passion, and that I loved the work of Ansel Adams, who captured nature in its awesome majesty and pristine beauty. But something sad passed over his face at my mention of going out West.

“I want to go back to Montana, too,” he told me. “The last time I was there, my brother and I were scattering my father’s ashes over the mountains.” Across the table, I touched the soft hair on the top of Charlie’s hand and watched the tears come to his eyes.

“Someday, we’ll go there together,” I told him. “But I want to see your land. I want to see the places you walked with your dad, the place you grew up. I miss the little boy I never knew.” That made him smile, and he promised me that he would take me down to his land when I had a long weekend break from school.

That day sped by and darkness had fallen by the time I got back home. Charlie promised we’d see each other again soon, and before he left, he softly kissed my hand. I held the kiss there for three weeks until we got to see each other again.

When he finally returned the weekend after Thanksgiving, we drove around talking and laughing, until we found a park with a green hill that sloped down to a duck pond. There we lay on a blanket, finding pictures in the clouds above us, talking about the classes we hated, the people we admired, the places we wanted to go.

“I want to see the whole world,” Charlie confessed to me. “I don’t really want a big house, or many things at all. I’d rather live out of a backpack, sleep in a tent, and be a friend to man. I’ll always have my camera with me, and I will find people who nobody knows and tell their stories to the world.”

“Take me with you,” I asked him. Silently, he leaned over me and kissed me on the mouth — the first kiss, as soft as a feather and as sweet as the last note of a song.

“Of course you’ll go with me,” he promised. “You’re the lost part of my soul. If I go on without you, I live the rest of my life like half of a person. We’re both Bedouins at heart, but neither of us is a nomad that can travel alone.” I understood perfectly. I too knew that I always would have to be on the go, a restless soul that could never settle down. But I needed Charlie to be the witness of my days, to love and to live with. I needed him body and soul.

There was a long time of absence from each other after that sweet weekend. He went back to his school and home, and I went back to school and eventually home on Christmas break. We were 1,000 miles apart and he was a secret to my family and friends back home. But somehow, thanks to the miracle of cell phones, we managed to talk for hours every night. He was the best friend I couldn’t imagine living without.

When I went back to school, I only had a month of classes left. At the end of that month, Charlie came again for me and took me back to the place he called home. Everyone who knew me at school thought I was going home. Everyone who knew me back home thought I was still at school. So for one crazy week, I was free to be completely there, to live in someone else’s world, without anyone in my life knowing where I really was.

That week I was submerged into everything that Charlie was. He showed me pictures of his two little kids who were gone, and he let me hold him while he wept, missing them. He roared in protest against the words his mom and I invented during our impassioned game of Scrabble. We shopped and cooked and walked and talked.

One day we drove down miles of winding country road to a deserted place out in the wilderness, his land. “Some day I’m going to build a house and live here again,” he told me. We walked through the woods there holding hands. A lonely white trailer sat deserted amidst the trees, and old toys were scattered outside it. I remembered how suddenly they had left this place, after his dad died. I knew that part of his heart rested here.

Outside the woods on Charlie’s land, huge acres of prairie seemed to stretch endlessly. We climbed over a fence into the grassy fields and struggled our way up a slight hill until we reached two gnarled oaks that I recognized from a black-and-white artistic photograph he had given me. The twin oaks. “I’m going to bring you back here and make love to you between these trees,” he told me. But for then, he just laid me down, lay beside me and kissed down my neck and arms.

The end of that week came far too quickly. Every moment spent with Charlie was a moment to remember. “You’re the love of my life,” he told me. “I won’t let anyone or anything take you away from me.”

But deep inside my heart, there was a cold knot. I had another life, a life where Charlie had never been, a life where I could never take him. I knew I was going to have to choose between that life and this man I loved. I knew what choice I would be forced into by the people who held sway over my life.

Before I even came down to visit him, I had bought a red leather journal and a stack of old National Geographics. From the pages I had cut pictures of people and places we had talked and dreamed about: tango dancers in Argentina, the curving Great Wall of China, children running and laughing at the seashore. Each page represented something we had hoped or dreamed together.

And on the very last page, I pasted a picture of a very old man and woman, sitting side-by-side. Underneath it I glued two words: “The Beginning.” I told myself that those two old people were us, being close to death and still looking forward to what was yet to come. That was something else we had in common: We both believed in the promise of eternity once this life was over.

The day Charlie was to take me to the airport, he and I went out to the dam where the river was held back. As we got out of the car at the water’s edge, a slimmer of sun peeked through the grey clouds. I crossed over to his side of the car and handed him the book I had made. “Charlie,” I choked, “Promise me that even if we can’t travel on together, you will go to all these places … and more.”

Setting the red leather book on the top of the car, he pushed me back against the car and kissed me hard, all down my face and neck. His entwined his fingers through my hair as he pushed his mouth against my ear.

“I can’t live without you,” he whispered. “You will always come back to me. Your soul is tied to mine. Nowhere on earth will be home if you aren’t with me. I need to hear you singing in that off-tune voiced that turns me on like mad. I need to have you tell me I’m being an idiot when I’m acting stupid and stuck-up. I need you to be the amazing stranger of a woman in the novels I’m going to write. I need to watch you open presents every Christmas. I need to make love with you. I need to sleep with my arms around you when we’re 80 years old.”

That dark January day was 10 years ago. I’ve gone on and traveled the world, a lonely nomad in search of rest. Charlie is somewhere else, far away, for reasons I don’t have the words or the heart to tell. But I have never found another soulmate. Charlie was my first love. He still whispers to me every time I catch a glimpse of National Geographic, every time I see an oak leaf fallen on the sidewalk.

A. Kalyani is a teacher, writer, and photographer. It’s her passion to capture the beauty she sees, either in words or on film, and to help others do the same.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, January 26th, 2007 | Email This Post

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