Title: The House On Newport Avenue

Author: M. Reis

Rating: PG

Notes: Loosely a companion piece to On Coffee. Alternatively titled On Trinkets.

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There were things in my apartment that were not mine. There are things in my life that are not mine. Just as slowly as they came to build up here, I’ve been giving them away. I remember the first time you came to see me in this apartment, you left your sunglasses.

I hadn’t seen you for over six months. You’d broken up with me and now you were coming back. You must have figured, hey, after six months, he’s got to be over me, right? I thought the same thing too. So you came for a drink. We talked about the wine (a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc) and your shows and about everything but us. We ate reheated pad Thai off the cheap plates I bought when I moved to this dirty city and then you were gone. You left your sunglasses.

I remember finding them in the morning, on the kitchen table, like a promise you’d return… or maybe just something to remember you by. I agonized over what to do. I didn’t want to leave them on the table, to think about you until you called, but I didn’t want to put them in a drawer either. I called you and told you left your sunglasses. Two weeks later, you came back for them. They were on the table, right where you’d left them. I wasn’t brave enough to even move them an inch.

That time you left your lighter and half a pack of cigarettes. Again, another promise you’d return. We talked that time, about us, and about how I was in love with my memories, but I didn’t love you anymore. You promised you wouldn’t go away again and I believed you. You didn’t say you’d never loved me and I wouldn’t have believed you if you had said it. I knew you had. We promised each other friendship, but neither of us meant it. We knew we’d always be in limbo, but maybe it could be close enough to feel like a friendship that… well, maybe we could love each other enough to have a friendship. You promised you’d be back and you left your cigarettes and clear purple lighter, still filled halfway.

This time, I knew you’d be back so I set them on the windowsill of the kitchen. It wasn’t the brand I smoked, but I ran out of cigarettes one night and so I smoked one. It made my mouth taste like you and I remembered how when you first left me, I started smoking your brand so I could remember you three or four times a day. After a while, I stopped. I didn't want to do that again so I went out and bought my own brand.

We went to a play and had dinner the next week. That’s when we fought about what had happened. It was this small, Irish pub, two blocks from your apartment. We didn’t go back to your apartment though, because I swore I’d never go back to the house on Newport Avenue. But we argued over apologies and friends and how most of the time you hurt someone you love without meaning to but sometimes that’s exactly what you meant to do. You broke down and apologized for how you left me and how your hurt me. I told you I didn’t need an apology because I didn’t know what else to say. It’d been so long at that point that I’d kind of come to terms with it on my own. We went back to my apartment. You took your cigarettes, but left the lighter, saying you’d already bought another.

The lighters started to collect, you’d leave one each time. Each time, I’d think they were a contract, your way of showing me you meant it when you said you weren’t going to disappear again. I pinned my hopes on those lighters. You left other things too. An mp3 player you came back for. Maybe a pack of gum or your chapstick. You’d leave a business card, a phone number. I’d set them aside, meaning to return them, but I’d forget or you’d leave them again. I started wondering what trinkets, if any at all, were on purpose.

One time you took my dog for the weekend and when you brought him back, you left your sunglasses again. This time I set them in the drawer, next to a sewing kit and the dog’s heartworm pills. We forgot about them because that time, it was a long time until you came back again. I ended up back at the house on Newport before you came back. You were supposed to come back sooner, but you rescheduled our dinner plans, then cancelled, and never made new ones, begging off with new excuses each time.

That was when I found out why you’d started canceling our plans. I had a mutual friend in from out of town and so we all had coffee in your living room, which was as dirty as I remembered it, but still, it felt as comfortable as you always had. I said I didn’t want coffee and you poured me a cup anyway. You had a new lover, you’d gotten one the same week you’d cancelled our dinner plans. I guess you thought a cup of coffee was the least you could do. I remembered your sunglasses were still in my drawer. I wished I had brought them with.

That Christmas, we agreed I’d call you for old time’s sake. I always called you at Christmas. You reminded me on the phone that it was around Christmas that you fell in love with me. I reminded you had a new lover. We poked fun at our former lovers and talked about our sordid scandals and you offered me twenty bucks to sleep with your lover’s best friend. You reminded me how well you knew me and where every button and trigger and switch was.

You came back right after Christmas. You brought red wine and cigars, ones you’d grab off the counter of the liquor store, gifts that were chosen hastily, as an apology for not coming back sooner… for being afraid to. You bought me dinner and admitted that you’d stayed away because you knew this—us—would complicate things with your new lover. We drank too much red wine that night.

We didn’t drink red wine normally because well, I couldn’t handle it. If I got too drunk I’d get too honest and more to the point, so would you. That was exactly what happened. You told me how you loved me more than anyone and how I was your best friend and I told you about how I wasn’t in love with you anymore, but I did love you. You held onto me and you almost cried, or maybe you did, ‘cause I remember your eyes welled up. You wanted to know what we were going to do, you said no one understood how much you loved me. I said we’d get through it together, but ten minutes later, I held onto you and slurred drunkenly about how I knew you were going to cut me out of you life again. You promised over and over that you wouldn’t.

An hour later, you kissed me, standing in my hallway on the rug my mother gave me. Your kiss was razor sharp and poised, not passionately hard or mysteriously sweet. You knew what you were doing, kissing me that way. But you know, I kissed you back, so maybe it’s my fault too. These things don’t happen on their own. I kissed you back and I was the one nibbling on your neck while you were on the phone with your lover. That wasn’t the only time we kissed that night. You left because I wanted you to go to bed with me and you wanted it too, but you knew you couldn’t. You had a lover, she was just in Texas for the holidays was all. You were right, so I hailed you a cab and remembered to turn my head when you went to kiss me goodbye.

You came over the next day. I had promised to help you pick out a gift for your lover. You glanced at the table, still filled with the empty wine glasses, shot glasses, the cigars you left. You smiled. “The aftermath,” you noted. We left to go pick out a gift. You didn’t take your cigars.

On the bus back from the store, you told me I should meet your girlfriend and I agreed. I pulled the stop wire at Cuyler and gathered my things. Before I got off, I glanced over my shoulder and wondered if this would be my last memory of you, sitting pristinely on this dirty city bus. Would I think of you every time I took the 151? I cleaned up our aftermath, put your cigars in the drawer, and sorted the wine bottles into the recycling. I tried not to worry that you weren’t coming back.

You did. You brought red wine again, not as an apology this time, but more like a dare. I took you up on it and asked you to go to bed with me. But your lover wasn’t in Texas anymore, so after some playful flirting, you kissed my cheeks and got ready to leave. I stopped you at the door and told you I didn’t want to drink red wine with you anymore. You feathered back my hair with your fingers and paused for half a second, studying me slightly. You giggled and told me you liked to drink red wine with me. I knew what you were doing and I knew you didn’t know what you wanted, but I asked to stay anyway. You didn’t.

That time when you left my apartment, you didn’t leave any trinkets besides empty bottles, but I realized, in a way, you had. All those months and visits, you’d been leaving me behind each time and I… I was something of yours. I was still yours.

That time, I knew it’d be a long time before you came back, if ever. I called to confirm some plans we’d made and I wasn’t surprised when you forced all the emotion out of your voice and backed out. I heard through from a mutual friend you’d told your girlfriend I came onto you—a reader’s digest version that omitted the red wine you brought and how you were the one who kissed me in the first place—and she had asked not to see me again.

Even with that though, I wasn’t going to give up on you, not because I wanted to have you or because I knew what to do, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to not have you in my life. After a few useless phone calls, it was decided—no, you decided—we needed time and told me to wait you out.

I was embarrassed and humiliated, but I did it anyway. I told everyone I was doing it, waiting you out so that this time, I could be the one who walked out on you. I daydreamed about shouting my grievances and humbling you. How I’d cast you out of my apartment or storm from the house on Newport Avenue.

To pass the time or maybe to convince myself that this time, this time, I’d leave you, I started to find new homes for your trinkets. I slipped your sunglasses into a box I was sending to the Salvation Army. One by one, I threw away business cards and phone numbers. I started taking your lighters with me to parties and leaving them there. A couple tried to return to me. A watchful friend would remind me not to forget my lighter and pick it up. Oh, no, it’s not mine, I’d say. It wasn’t a lie. After a while, only the last cigar remained. I took it as a sign and so I called you and that was how it was I came to see you at the house on Newport Avenue one last time.

The house on Newport was surprisingly quiet and empty of its many inhabitants, except for you. I was convinced this must be the first time that the house on Newport had heard such silence, but I’m sure it wasn’t. Even though I’d gone back after swearing not to, my visits had been limited. When I was walking over, I’d rehearsed my speeches and dramatics, how I’d yell, how I’d hold you accountable, but then I realized that wasn’t me. I’d never raised my voice to you really. Three years. One as your friend, then one as your lover and the last as your former lover, I’d only yelled once.

I knew if I yelled, it’d be to bully you into staying and I remembered everything you’d done to make me stay and everything I’d done to trick you into coming back and I know I changed myself trying to keep you with me. If I yelled, I’d be changing again and so I promised that this time, there’d be no lies, just love. That should have been enough.

You told me you were leaving and I begged you not to do this again, hadn’t you promised you wouldn’t? No lies, I promised, just love. And I told you how I was grateful I was for all the good we’d been to each other and you told me you were grateful to, but I was too much like you and loved you too much, even the bad parts of you and so when I was around, they’d come out again. If I were still around, you were never going to change and well… you just didn’t want to be that person anymore. You said I was only person you’d ever treated like this. I called bullshit because I didn’t and still don’t believe that was true. Our story had been beautiful, but I never tricked myself into thinking it was unique. Besides, casting me out of your life wasn’t going to change anything. You agreed that might be true, but you’d never know unless you tried it.

I got upset because you were making another decision about the two of us all by yourself and hadn’t that been what you’d always done? And if you’d just left alone, we’d have been fine, maybe? It didn’t have to be this way. I told you it was my turn to make a unilateral decision and that I wanted to stay and I wanted to get through this because, damn it, we wouldn’t have still been there if we hadn’t loved each other and if hadn’t been worth it. You choked the emotion from your voice and told me you wouldn’t let me.

It should never have come down to that. It had never had to be that way.

I remembered that one night you told me I was your first lover who just held you, instead of holding you up as a goddess or a bitch. I wanted to remind you of that. I wanted to demand you recognize how good I’d been and how much I’d loved you and remember that I had been the one who kept you grounded because I recognized your fragile state, but I’d only discovered your glasslike qualities in the first place because I had held you up, to the light and I saw how translucent you were. So instead I just sat there with head in my hands and I knew you were leaving and I didn’t know if I wanted you to stay or leave or how to keep you or remember to live myself and I looked up at you and I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, or if I really even loved you. I didn’t want to cry and I didn’t know if I would anyway, so I started laughing instead. But my throat closed and, oh lord, my heart never ran so fast.

You looked at me expectantly. “I… I should get my coat,” I said. You nodded. I stood up and got it from the other room. As I came back towards you, I stopped in the in the entryway between the rooms. I gripped the collar of my coat. “I just… uh, I just realized that the only reason you and I are still here is because… well, it’s not ‘cause we’re in love with each other, but it’s because we’re both so afraid I’m not in love with you anymore.”

You didn’t say anything.

“You’re as afraid of it as I am,” I continued, holding onto that jacket for dear life. “That’s why you kissed me that night. And I just thought, what a strange moment to realize, just now, that I’m not in love with you anymore.” I nodded and then walked for the door. I opened it. Took a breath. As I prepared to walk through it, I heard you.

“Hey.” I turned. “Good bye.” I nodded, but didn’t agree.

I got about twenty feet from your house before I realized what I did want and that I did love you. So I stopped and looked back at your house, standing on Newport, ashamed that I’d lied. So I turned back and rang your bell one more time. After a long moment, you came down. You didn’t speak. “I promised no lies,” I said. “That was a lie.” You nodded and I turned and left, feelings your eyes on my back. Maybe it was just imagined. I didn’t think to look.

So again I descended the steps of the house on Newport, for the last time, and I wondered what trinkets I’d left you that time and over the years. A novel I wrote about you, a book by Noam Chomsky, no doubt countless pens and highlighters. A shirt, socks. You could probably solve the mystery of my missing calculator. I must have left a dozen lighters and countless phone numbers and bits of paper. I wonder what you did with them all. My books, I know, were torn from your shelf after our first break-up. Once there was a post-it note of mine on your refrigerator. I found my letters on your dresser. But what about the lighters and pens?

It doesn’t matter. That time, when I left you, I realized I’d left something altogether different. Over the years, I’d left my hopes there and a lot of my pride… and you. But on that particular day, I left my past at the house on Newport Avenue. That time, when I stopped, I steeled myself and I didn’t look back. I haven’t looked back. You don’t even live there anymore.

There are still things in my apartment that are not mine. Other lovers have left breath mints and lighters. A toothbrush, a lipstick. There haven’t been any sunglasses since you. These lovers, they’re not mine either, just borrowed from time to time. You see, for a long time there was still a lot of my heart that was not mine. But now you, the lover that was mine, are not in my life. So the other night, I gave that last cigar you left to a friend and watched him smoke it away. Now there is nothing in this apartment that belongs to you. That includes me.