Magnolia Wind

A romance, and a story about grief. Old-hat plotlines for me, but I like it. Finished 8.28.23; edited 10.13.24.

The day was hot for late April, but was cut by a billowy wind from far out past The Banks. The breeze came on hard, then stopped: flouting its mastery, proving it could dance and die within the space of a breath. The heat never reached discomfort. It stayed warm on our arms without searing our necks.

It was a good day for Debussy, or Jon Bon Jovi. Early summer was peeking out at the seams.

It was a good day to fall in love.

There was no planned aspect to it, no announcement of its coming: nothing pointed to its arrival during the day’s early phases. All I felt when I woke up that morning was the press of hunger against my ribs. I had worked through another proper dinner the night before, guts twisted on ritalin and blue Monsters as the marking period came close to an end. All my slacker habits had come crashing heedlessly into my need for academic validation. Good grades were necessary for my ego, and were also the key to a static, disengaged relationship with my parents: this was was top of mind, since end-of-year party season was around the corner. There were rumors about big things planned for Juneteenth, and a couple other of our end-of-year holidays besides. I took grades seriously, albeit irresponsibly.

I looked down at what would likely be a grim sort of day as I tried to shake off what little sleep I’d had out of my eyes. Calc test, L-D debate in Ethics, and tutoring during my lunch period, meaning who knew when I would eat prior to a five-hour shift at work after school. Christ, it was still just Wednesday. 

So I nuked the last two breakfast burritos in the back of the freezer with my coffee, and dug out a few grab-and-go-type snacks from the back of the pantry with equal disinterest. They’d have to hold me.

I remember seeing you as I showed up at school. I remember the way your posture tightened and your shoulders came back as you neared the school steps, cardigan stretched across your arms and shoulders, that pleated skirt you like pulled firm across your waist. You looked to me then as you look to me now: fresh and unbothered, like new linen. Some part of you was already in my mind from the beginning of that day, and that glimpse near the steps was just the first loose thread in the sweater.

But no, that metaphor doesn’t quite fit. It didn’t feel like an unraveling. It doesn’t.

At any rate, there you were, uncharacteristically late; there I was, half-asleep but for your presence; and then the day took on its own motion as we filed down the hallways. We lost each other in our separate schedules, with their separate conflicting demands.

Calc was fine, ultimately. Ms. Reese had a way of making the material stick to our brains, so the only doubt was over whether there’d be some conceptual trick, or ambiguity in a prompt’s directions. This didn’t seem to be the case, and the answers came quick off my #2. The L–D debate was a different matter. Mr. Karras was well-intentioned, but a new teacher always meant poor moderation during the more heated debates we got into. Tanya and Aaron, with this issue as most, started playing it fast and loose with decorum, and everything devolved quickly: access to contraceptives was a hot-enough topic without those two stoking each other on. We finished the debate, but that was about the most that could be said for it.

Karras looked ready to curl up in a ball in the corner and reassess every aspect of his life that had led him to teaching here. But he didn’t have that luxury: there was another class coming in after mine.

The rest of the periods just sort of meandered by. No shape to them; no deeper interest activated. Since coming back to school from my bedroom 16 months ago, a lot of my life had seemed to scroll by in this way. My eyes were open, my brain retaining enough to classify me as sentient - but in the places where there was curiosity before, there was static. A terrifying indifference.

I used to be fine with school. I resented the daily loss of freedom like we all did, but overall, I was good with the structure it imposed on my day. I felt like it supported me. These days, I felt like a puzzle piece jammed onto another because it was close enough; except it wasn’t, and I couldn’t unjam myself. I could only hope that whatever force behind me who was doing the puzzling would notice their mistake, pry me off, put me somewhere else. Take me out of this corner I’d been shoved into.

I had a lot of hopes pinned on college, but was still a Junior. In any case, I had the sneaking suspicion that people could feel just as lost within themselves on their dream college campus as they could at their district high school. 

Even my finer thoughts had a way of curdling into pessimism back then. 

I’d been listening to The Smiths a lot, which is about the best way to typify my life then. It’s the Rosebud detail from that era. The course my life had taken had changed me from a basically happy, well-adjusted kid - with meaningful relationships, and a variety of extracurricular enthusiasms - into a solipsistic, lovelorn, English-Irish dandy-boy. All in the space of a pandemic’s aftermath. “Stretch out and wait, stretch out and wait.”

I was out into the hallway and heading towards my shift the moment the 3:05 dismissal bell rang. The day’s meaninglessness clung to me, and even though the sky had clouded over and things were promising humidity until the next storm broke, I was anxious to get away from school.

I noticed you again, chatting with Diaz outside his doorway as I neared the 3rd floor stairwell. It was probably about yearbook, at that time of day. You’d had a strand of hair come loose under your headband, and I remember having a specific urge to tuck it behind your ear as I walked down the other side of the hall. I’d been about to catch your eye when I got the call. 

Sorry, the message. The news arrived as a straight-to-voicemail message, which really was a true-to-character move for Al McCardell, my chickenshit of a supervisor. He was - probably still is - a crapulous, cow-eyed low-middle manager of encroaching middle age; an offensive tackle gone soft in the backfield and smooth on the brain. I listened to his voice as I walked down the emptying hallway, towards the double-doors of the exit.

“Hey Auggy - uh, Al here, uh. So, bad news. The company’s laying off city-wide, and our branch has to lose three people, uh, three people, if we’re gonna avoid the axe. So - ahhhh - it’s a seniority thing, not about your work at all. I talked to Hector and ahhhhh he said he’d write a great letter of rec for you, so…I’m sorry. No need to report today. Just - ahhhh - come in, um, Friday, same time as usual, and we’ll get you the payroll records and your last check and that letter. K? We’ll still pay you out as if you worked the full week. K. Uhhhh sorry again, thanks and talk soon. OK. Bye.”

I was barely past the school doors before I felt a hot rage up my neck. A rage at all the lazy assholes protected against downsizing by their shitty little titles, doing next to nothing on the phones or with the customers. A rage about what this loss of income would do to my car and college savings. A rage at the idiot-rot in our economy, in our educational systems. A rage at how little prepared I felt for every aspect of my life to come. A rage against circumstance, at a rolling boil, under my skin.

And I had been cut loose from the day.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I began walking without intent, no animating purpose of any kind. Just walking to put some distance between myself and the hate that threatened to bank over and flood out of me. 

I walked past the faceless low-income housing units; past the half-asleep Home Depot, and the squat, ugly mattress warehouse adjacent to it; past the three dry old casinos with beat signage and glaringly false-optimistic names - The Gold Ingot, Fortune’s Favor, Lucky Prospector - ringing the Southern boundary of the downtown like a broken necklace.

I eventually turned up Main, and then through a tonier section of neighborhood. By around 4:30, I had in effect just turned a giant loop: I was only a few blocks from school. But my rage had burned down, and my mind was closer to its familiar apathy. I still felt scorched-over, sunburnt, raw at the day’s events. But I was back where I’d started.

I came upon a neatly manicured ribbon of sidewalk separating Fort Harmony Park from the neighborhood, and on a whim, followed it up to the park’s entrance.

There you were. 

* * * * * * * * * * *

You looked as lovely as you had earlier, in the same cardigan and skirt. You were standing with your head tilted upwards, under a magnolia tree which had passed peak blooming season and was dropping its flowers. The wind from earlier had shaken loose a thick harvest of pink-and-white petals; they lay under your feet.

It wasn’t until I was almost next to you that I could see the stricken look on your face.

“Hi - is everything OK?” The question was there before I could check it: the answer was an obvious no. I should have been more tactful.

You didn’t move your head or react with your gaze. It was as if some part of you had anticipated me and my concerns arriving at just that moment. 

Or maybe it was just indifference. Maybe you didn’t care much either way about my being there. I’ve been too scared of the answer to ask you, because the romantic in me likes to think we were preordained. (Maybe that’s not the romantic in me).

At any rate, you said, “I missed the magnolia blooms.”

 Same tragic face as before you spoke. Same sad-vacant distance in your stare.

“They’re almost done for the year.”

You lowered your eyes to look at me for a moment, then you took them to the ground. Your grief seemed suddenly private and overwhelming: obviously beyond the parameters of the situation itself, beyond a simple change in the season. I was on sentimental turf here; my worst surface.

“Well-” I began, then stopped short. I couldn’t refute your point. The evidence was at my feet, and molting petals were separating off the branches as we spoke.

You looked up again and met my gaze. My search for a thought was called off. I noticed your big brown eyes again. How they seemed a full and complete and earthy brown, yet faded into something like deep cinnamon as they drew closer to your pupils’ edges.

“I know it seems stupid to care. But I always think of my dad when I see the magnolia blooms. And I missed them this year.” 

You exhaled deeply through your nose and mouth. Then you put your private thoughts aside to talk to me.

“You’re August, right? I’ve seen you in class before, but I don’t think we have any periods in common this year.”

“Yeah, we had Martin for English last year. I used to like watching you argue with her.”

“Ha, dumb bitch. Those fights were about all that got me up for that class.” A pause, then you had it. “I remember now! You sat near the window. You never spoke much.”

“No. I do in some classes, but I hated her too. Guess we just had the opposite reaction to her bullshit.”

You gave a little snort-laugh at that, and you didn’t cover it up or look embarrassed. I was happy I’d made you laugh in such a genuine way, then I realized with a paralytic fear that I had no other place to take the conversation.

You seemed to feel it, too. We both stood there a moment, shifting our body weight.

“Well, I should probably go—”

Why the hell’d you say that, now.

“-but, y’know, the blooms will be back. I bet you won’t miss them next time. I bet you’ll appreciate them even more, for having missed them. Next summer, every summer.”

I remember how ambiguous the smile you gave me seemed then. I remember what an open-ended reply it made against your face. Your eyes felt easier to read.

“Thanks, August. I’ll see you around.”

“Take care now.” And for some reason, I gave a stupid little wave; a feeble effort to underscore my smile. I turned to go.

I perseverated on that stupid little wave, the inadequacy of it, and embarrassment kept me from looking back at you until we were some distance apart.

When I finally did, you were still under the tree, but your head was down. You were back in a private space, tucked up with your dad and with those magnolia blooms - a world away from this shitty planet, its shitty people. Your mouth was moving. You were probably having a talk with him. Telling him about your day, all the small things you could recall.

That’s what I imagined.

Hey, but I’d had the impulse to imagine something. To speculate about something! I was back, baby!

* * * * * * * * * * *

The wind gusted up again on my way home, and I felt it carry right through me.