Break Free of a Nimbostratus

A week after my cast has been removed, I stand alone on the footbridge in Knight's Park, leaning my weight on the railing, gazing down at a pond I could walk around in less than five minutes. The water underneath me has a thin layer of ice on top, and I think about dropping rocks through it, but I do not know why, especially since I have no rocks. Even still, I want to drop rocks through the ice so badly, to puncture it, proving that it is weak and temporary, to see the black water below rise up and out of the hole I alone will have created.

I think about the hidden fish - mostly those big goldfish people stock the pond with so old men will have something to feed in spring and little boys will have something to catch in the summer - fish now burrowed in the mud at the bottom of the pond. Or are these fish burrowing just yet? Will they wait until the pond freezes completely?

Here's a thought: I'm like Holden Caulfield thinking about ducks, only I'm thirty-five years old and Holden was a teenager. Maybe the accident knocked my brain back into teenager mode?

Part of me wants to climb up onto the railing and jump off the bridge, which is only ten yards long, only three feet above the pond; part of me wants to break through the ice with my feet, to plunge down, down, down into the mud, where I can sleep for months and forget about all I now remember and know. Part of me wishes I never regained my memory, that I still had that false hope to cling to - that I still had at least the idea of Nikki to keep me moving forward.

When I finally look up from the ice and toward the soccer fields, I see that Tiffany has accepted my invitation to meet, just like Cliff said she would. She is only two inches tall in the distance, wearing a yellow ski cap and a white coat that covers most of her thighs, making her look like a wingless angel growing and growing - and I watch her pass the swing sets and the large pavilion with picnic tables inside. I watch her walk along the water's edge until she finally reaches her usual height, which is five feet and a few inches tall.

When she steps onto the footbridge, I immediately look down at the thin layer of ice again.

Tiffany walks over to me and stands so her arm is almost touching mine, but not quite. Using my peripheral vision, I see that she too is now looking down at the thin layer of ice, and I wonder if she also wishes she could drop some rocks.

We stand like this for what seems like an hour, neither of us saying anything.

My face gets very cold, until I can no longer feel my nose or ears.

Finally, without looking at Tiffany, I say, "Why didn't you come to my birthday party?" which is a stupid question to pose at this time, I realize, but I can't think of anything else to say, especially since I haven't seen Tiffany for many weeks - not since I screamed at her on Christmas Day. "My mom said she invited you. So why didn't you come?"

After a long pause, Tiffany says, "Well, like I said in my letter, your brother threatened to kill me if I made contact with you. Also, Ronnie came to my house the day before your party and forbade me to go. He said they never should have introduced us in the first place."

I had already talked to Jake about his threat, but I have a hard time imagining Ronnie saying such a thing to Tiffany. And yet I know Tiffany is telling the truth. She seems really hurt and vulnerable right now, especially because she is sort of chewing on her bottom lip as if it were a piece of gum. Surely Ronnie said these words against Veronica's wishes. His wife would never let him say something so potentially ego-damaging to Tiffany, and the thought of Ronnie keeping Tiffany from attending my party makes me a little proud of my best friend, especially since he went against his wife's wishes to protect me.

"Bros B4 Hos" is what Danny said to me every time I would lament Nikki, back when we were both in the bad place - before he had that second operation. In art therapy class, Danny even made me a little poster with the words written in stylish gold letters, which I hung on the wall space between my bed and my roommate Jackie's - back in the bad place - but one of the evil nurses took Danny's artwork down when I was not in the room, a fact Jackie confirmed by blinking and banging his head against his shoulder. Even though I realize the phrase is sort of sexist (because men should not refer to women as hos), saying "Bros B4 Hos" in my mind now sort of makes me smile, especially since Ronnie is my best bro in New Jersey, now that Jake and Danny live in PA.

"I'm sorry, Pat. Is that what you want to hear? Well, I'll say it again, I'm really, really fucking sorry." Even though Tiffany uses the f-word, her voice sort of quivers like Mom's when she says something she truly means, and it makes me think that Tiffany might actually start crying right here on the bridge. "I'm a screwed-up person who no longer knows how to communicate with the people I love. But I meant everything I told you in my letter. If I were your Nikki, I would have come back to you on Christmas Day, but I'm not Nikki. I know. And I'm sorry."

I don't know what to say in response, so we stand there for many minutes, saying nothing.

Suddenly - for some crazy reason - I want to tell Tiffany the ending of the movie, the one that was my old life. I figure she should know the ending, especially since she had a starring role. And then the words are spilling out of me.

"I decided to confront Nikki, just to let her know I remember what happened between us but do not hold any grudges. My brother drove me to my old house in Maryland, and it turns out that Nikki is still living there, which I thought was sort of strange, especially since she has a new me - this guy Phillip who works with Nikki as a fellow English teacher and always used to call me an illiterate buffoon because I never used to read literary books," I say, leaving out the part about my strangling and punching naked Phillip when I caught him in the shower with Nikki, "and if I were Phillip, I probably would not want to live in my wife's ex-husband's house, because that is just sort of weird, right?"

Tiffany doesn't say anything when I pause, so I just keep on talking.

"When we drove down my old street, it was snowing, which is a little more rare in Maryland and therefore a big deal to little kids. There was only maybe a half inch on the ground - a dusting - but enough to scoop up in your hands. I saw Nikki outside with Phillip, and they were playing with two children - by the colors each was dressed in, I figured the one in navy blue was a little boy and the one mostly in peach was an even littler girl. After we rolled by, I told Jake to circle the block and park the car half a block away so we could watch Nikki's new family play in the snow. My old house is on a busy street, so we weren't likely to draw Nikki's attention. Jake did as I asked and then killed the engine but left the windshield wipers on so he could see. I rolled down my window, as I was in the backseat because of my cast, and we watched the family play for a long time - so long that Jake finally started the car back up and turned on the heat because he was too cold. Nikki was wearing the long green-and-white-striped scarf I used to wear to Eagles games, a brown barn coat, and red mittens. Her strawberry blond hair hung freely from under her green hat, so many curls. They were having a snowball fight; Nikki's new family was having a beautiful snowball fight. You could tell the kids loved their father and mother, and the father loved the mother, and the mother loved the father, and the parents loved the children - as they all tossed the snow at each other so lovingly, taking turns chasing each other, laughing and falling into one another's heavily bundled bodies, and ..."

I pause here because I am having trouble getting the words out of my throat.

"And I squinted hard trying to see Nikki's face, and even from a block away I could tell she was smiling the whole time and was so very happy, and somehow that was enough for me to officially end apart time and roll the credits of my movie without even confronting Nikki, so I just asked Jake to drive me back to New Jersey, which he did, because he is probably the best brother in the entire world. So I guess I just want Nikki to be happy, even if her happy life doesn't include me, because I had my chance and I wasn't a very good husband and Nikki was a great wife, and ..."

I have to pause again. I swallow several times.

"And I'm just going to remember that scene as the happy ending of my old life's movie. Nikki having a snowball fight with her new family. She looked so happy - and her new husband, and her two children ..."

I stop talking because no more words will come out. It's as if the cold air has already frozen my tongue and throat - as if the cold is spreading down into my lungs and is freezing my chest from the inside out.

Tiffany and I stand on the bridge for a long time.

Even though my face is numb, I begin to feel a warmth in my eyes, and suddenly I realize I am sort of crying again. I wipe my eyes and nose with my coat sleeve, and then I am sobbing.

Only when I finish crying does Tiffany finally speak, although she doesn't talk about Nikki. "I got you a birthday present, but it's nothing much. And I didn't wrap it or get you a card or anything, because, well ... because I'm your fucked-up friend who does not buy cards or wrap presents. And I know it's more than a month late, but anyway ..."

She takes off her gloves, undoes a few buttons, and pulls my present from the inside pocket of her coat.

I take it from her hands, a collection of ten or so heavily laminated pages - maybe four by eight inches each and held together by a silver bolt in the top left corner. The cover reads:

SKYWATCHER'S

CLOUD

CHART

An easy to use,

durable identifying chart

for all outdoor enthusiasts

"You were always looking up at clouds when we used to run," Tiffany says, "so I thought you might like to be able to tell the difference between the shapes."

With excitement, I rotate the cover upward so I can read the first heavily laminated page. After reading all about the four basic cloud shapes - stratus, nimbus, cumulus, and cirrus - after looking at all the beautiful pictures documenting the different variations of the four groups, somehow Tiffany and I end up lying on our backs in the middle of the exact soccer field I used to play on when I was a kid. We look up at the sky, and it's a sheet of winter gray, but Tiffany says maybe if we wait long enough, a shape will break free, and we will be able to identify the single cloud using my new Skywatcher's Cloud Chart. We lie there on the frozen ground for a very long time, waiting, but all we see up in the sky is the solid gray blanket, which my new cloud chart identifies as a nimbostratus - "a gray cloud mass from which widespread and continuous rain or snow falls."

After a time, Tiffany's head ends up on my chest, and my arm ends up around her shoulders so that I am pulling her body close to mine. We shiver together alone on the field for what seems like hours. When it begins to snow, the flakes fall huge and fast. Almost immediately the field turns white, and this is when Tiffany whispers the strangest thing. She says, "I need you, Pat Peoples; I need you so fucking bad," and then she begins to cry hot tears onto my skin as she kisses my neck softly and sniffles.

It is a strange thing for her to say, so far removed from a regular woman's "I love you," and yet probably more true. It feels good to hold Tiffany close to me, and I remember what my mother said back when I tried to get rid of my friend by asking her to go to the diner with me. Mom said, "You need friends, Pat. Everybody does."

I also remember that Tiffany lied to me for many weeks; I remember the awful story Ronnie told me about Tiffany's dismissal from work and what she admitted to in her most recent letter; I remember just how bizarre my friendship with Tiffany has been - but then I remember that no one else but Tiffany could really even come close to understanding how I feel after losing Nikki forever. I remember that apart time is finally over, and while Nikki is gone for good, I still have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful. In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all of this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me - in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.

Nikki would not have done this for me, not even on her best day.

So I pull Tiffany a little closer, kiss the hard spot between her perfectly plucked eyebrows, and after a deep breath, I say, "I think I need you too."

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