4. The Impossible Thing

The rental car sat in a light rain outside along the curb. I glanced outside, noting the change in weather. The harsh electric light beamed down from above our booth. Freddie flipped through the menu as if he didn't already know what he was going to order.

"So how is life in the big city?" He said without looking up.
"It's different," I sipped at my coke, "Much louder. I can hardly think when I'm there. But I'm so busy, I don't have time to think anyway."
"How did you end up in Real Estate of all things? It's hardly what you wanted to do when you left. That must be some story." He glanced at me as he said that.
"Well, it's just the job I was good at. Turns out, photography didn't suit me." I shrugged. The exit sign blinked behind Freddie.
"It suited you alright before you moved to New York." He put his menu down.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I was beginning to sense that he had something capricious to say.
"Nothing, sorry. I just meant that you seem to have changed a lot. I just want to make sure you're OK." He looked around for the waiter as he said that.
"Kind of hard to be OK right now. Given the circumstances." I raised an eyebrow. He was upset with me.

Our conversation was interrupted by the waiter who had seen Freddie's no so subtle look and sprung to the table. He took our orders and then promptly headed back to the kitchen.

"Sorry, Ames." Freddie, having given his menu back to the waiter, had nothing to do with his hands, and so he tore at a paper napkin, "I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say, or how to approach you. We're not like we used to be and it sucks. Help me out here?"

I wanted to get back to him too, to all of it. Nothing felt quite as welcoming anymore. Even the once hallowed Friday night hangout, Joey's Pizza Palace, felt smaller and colder. I was a complete stranger in the place I was supposed to call home. The weather was not improving the mood either.

"I'm trying." I kept wringing my hands, pulling down my sleeves or twisting my ring. "This isn't how I want to be, especially with you. I just keep getting stuck in my head. I'm remembering all the things I didn't do or say and then what I actually did do and say doesn't seem to compare. It's all a bit suffocating." I tried to avoid eye contact. My eyes had threatened fresh tears and it was too early in the meal to leave politely.

Freddie gave a sympathetic smile. He rested his hands and stopped destroying the napkin.

"I understand, I think. My sister felt the same way when she came back last year. We knew she would change after deployment, but it was like Cody was a foreign country. Sometimes she would go to do things, things that she had always done, and it was like she's never done them before. I get that it's different but I think there are similarities. You're seeing all this through a new set of eyes. It should be familiar but it's like it's all new."
"Yeah, sort of." I admitted. "I can't help thinking about how things might have been it I hadn't moved away, or if we hadn't fought." The exit sign flickered again.
"A lot has changed, but not because you left." Freddie pushed the napkin carnage to the side. I met his eyes and I realized he didn't believe what he was telling me. He, like most people, couldn't say it out loud. I had left. She had died alone, because the one person she had left abandoned her.
A tear, of guilt, or grief, or frustration escaped, no doubt leaving a black trail of mascara in its wake.
"Let's talk about anything else, please." I managed, finding a nearby napkin and dabbing away the evidence from my cheek.

"Alright. We got a new football coach again." He started.
"No Freddie. Something interesting." We laughed.

Our food came and in my mind rivaled the cuisine of Stout, that restaurant we had visited on our first trip to New York. Then again maybe it was the company that made the meal taste so good. There is something about looking out of a small-town pizza place and seeing the rain tap the large windows, the parking lot illuminated by a buzzing neon sign, the same three cars that have always been there parked next to your own, the far off deep silhouette of the mountains beyond the town, and the smell of cheese, sauce, crust and a hint of pine.

Freddie's smile was a welcome sight, and it had been too long since I had gazed at that friendly face. It was sacred to me.

The rain faded as the night passed us. Plates empty and hearts full Freddie glanced out at the parking lot.

"Have you been downtown since you got back?"
"No, I drove to the grocery store and that's been it."
"How about a stroll down memory lane?" He smiled and I had to agree.

The fresh scent of rain flooded my senses as we left the pizza joint and headed towards Sheridan Ave. The pale concrete sidewalk was lined with lamps that reflected in the puddles as we passed. Cars lined the Ave, more concentrated in front of popular restaurants and shops open late. We passed the Silver Dollar, where a woman played guitar on the open porch and a group of tourists sang along, out of key but still captivated by the charm of the moment. The bouncer nodded at Freddie as we passed. I glanced in the windows of the stores. T-shirts, jewelry, and sporting goods met my looks. Then we were standing in front of the cornerstone of Cody.

The Irma hotel, with its grand white walls and original wooden porch, stood a monument to the town's history and the family that built carved our home out of the mountain's valley. I had once been compared to Buffalo Bill's daughter, Irma. We had similar facial features and both cared immensely for Cody. But like her father, I had the spirit of an adventurer and had to see more than the repeating tourist seasons and winter commas of activity.

I kept walking and Freddie, sensing trouble grabbed at my hand to stop me.
"What's wrong?" I asked seeing the worry splattered on his face.
"Before we get there. You have to know that-" He sighed, "it's the park."
"What about the park?" I turned and craned my neck, trying to see beyond the ancient pines surrounding the courthouse.
"They sold it." He frowned.
"They sold City Park?" I didn't understand.
"Well, they are selling it. It's under contract, I guess." He shrugged, as though that was unimportant information.

I found myself charging towards a chain-linked fence that now surrounded the green lawn. Freddie followed. I could hear the gentle splash of his brogues behind me.
"I don't understand, when did this happen?" I frowned, "How?" Freddie was about to respond but my mind was moving faster than my ability to censor myself. "Someone has to say something. The City can't do this."
"Well, they can. They own the land. It's my understanding that they can sell it- but you are the real estate agent so." He was being bold for someone who has been so caviler only a moment prior.
"I mean we can't let them." I ignored his attitude.
"Thank god, our savior came back in time to save City Park." He said, his arms folded.

"OK. Freddie. I get it. I left. I had the audacity to seek a life beyond the place I was raised. I'm practically the Antichrist." I turned to him, "but I'm now and this can't happen."
"What, so we can sneak out on school nights and watch the stars like old times? Things are different now. We have to let it go. Please don't make this a cause." He met my eyes pleading.
“Some traditions are important,” I said, folding my arms, in defiance. Freddie shook his head, in that knowing way that had always vexed me.
“You hate traditions. You see them as some unmovable things in an ever-evolving world. They are reminders that everything else is changing and you don't handle change well.” He said as the temporary chain link fence rattled in the breeze.

While, in general, Freddie was right that I did not like traditions, some were redeemable. My mother had a tradition of making lavender and mint tea on Christmas eve, she said it was lucky and that it brought the snow. It always snowed at Christmas. That was a Cody tradition.

“Are you sure you are interested in this for the right reasons?” Freddie pressed.
“I’m not doing this for my mother.” I looked over the decaying gazebo in the center of our old haunt. Everything changes.
“Good because it won't bring her back,” He said.

There it was- the cutting remark that should have ended the conversation. I glanced at him. Somehow his remark, awful and mean, had missed my heartstrings, landed in the puddle on the sidewalk next to me. The breeze had picked up but not grown into a gust just yet. I stood still, my eyes fixed on the empty place of our glory days.

“Don’t you think that this important?” It was my turn to press Freddie and now the power of the conversation had shifted. I could tell he felt the weight of his ineffective jab, “You once told me that some things, some places are scarred.” I said.
“Sure it's important and nostalgic, but is it possible?” He tried, changing the course of his argument from pathos to a more practical stance.
“We have to try.” Yes, Freddie, I do get to be sentimental about this park regardless of the length of my absence from it.

“Don’t you have a life in New York now? Don't you sell sacred places?” He laced his fingers through the chain of the fence and gave it a little shake, I suppose to emphasize his point.
“What? The apartments we sell are not scared just because they are old.” He shrugged at my remark and then I caught his drift, “and if you’re talking about Life building, I didn't make that sale.”
“You didn't stop it.” He pouted.
“What should I have said to stop it? ‘Hey Kelly, that multi-million dollar deal you're about to close, well the building is sentimental to me so could you not’?” I mocked him. There was no doubt that he was the best friend I had ever had, but sometimes I wanted to smack the shit out of him.
“That’s my point. What makes you think anyone is going to want to save this place, is no one cared about the Life building.”
“It was falling apart.” A building like that in Manhattan was begging to be remodeled, shown off. Everything old in New York was like that, somehow interesting again and in need of a millionaire’s touch.
“So is this place” He shot back.
“But this is our town. It's different. Things matter here.” We lived in two very separate worlds. Besides, it was much easier to fix up a dilapidated gazebo than an entire building.

“Someone's had a change of heart.” Freddie looked over at me. I couldn’t tell if he was testing me. It felt like a game- one that I had played a thousand times and somehow still didn’t understand the rules. A game I had never won.
“Things always mattered here I just never had the ability to save them. That changes today. I'm staying until I save this place. What do I have to lose?”Cards on the table. Fuck it. Freddie, what do you want from me?

Freddie’s expression twisted into a face I didn't recognize. He held his words behind his lips, unwilling to speak them. I marched up to him, took his hands and said, "Whatever you're thinking, whatever doubts you have, however angry you are with me, we are Ames and Freddie, we can do anything."

Tired of fighting, he hugged me. His arms wrapped me into a warm and familiar embrace. I was surrounded by the scent of pine. His chest rose and fell and his heart pounded in my ear. "I can't watch you break your heart again. Please don't make me. I will always love you Ames, but I can't take this pain from you." I pushed back from him.

"My mother, that's what you're talking about?"

He swallowed and held back tears of his own and I saw for the first time that he was hurt too. Of course, he was grieving. She had been a second mother to him over the years.
"Freddie, whether or not we are ready to admit it. We are in this together. We are here now, and we can do something she would've been proud of-" He shook his head stopping me before I could finish.

"No, Ames. I can't." He sighed and walked back towards Sheridan Avenue, his frame blurring in the neon lights of main street and the uninhibited tears now filling my eyes.

"Freddie." I heard myself whimper, but he- like the past- was gone.