Twenty-something years ago, when life was simpler but I didn’t know it yet, I was heading home from the neighborhood bar with my boyfriend. It was what I half-jokingly but very accurately described as ‘stumbling distance.’ We could fall out of the heavy bar door, carefree and smelling of spilled beer and pub pizza, onto the quiet streets of Chicago and wobble home, arm-in-arm. The city always felt more vibrant, more electric on the way back, as though it was a completely different place than I’d walked just hours earlier.
That night, the air was crisp, and snow might have been beginning to fall. It was the time of year when you notice how the cold smells and the way it makes your nose tingle. Our nearly matching fleece pullovers in royal blue stood out against the black-and-white city.
A young man approached us gently, asking for money. He looked to be about our age, maybe a little older, but not by much. He wore dark jeans and a thin white T-shirt. My boyfriend smiled, gave him a knowing nod, and, without hesitating, dug into his pocket and pulled out a tangled stack of money. This was back when we had cash in our pockets in the place of cell phones.
He reached out with folded bills, I don’t remember how many, a few dollars, maybe five, and their eyes locked as it passed from one hand to the next. We turned and started toward home, but my boyfriend stopped, and I stopped with him.
He pulled his jacket over his head and called the kid back, alcohol smoothing the edges of hesitation; “Hey!” he said, handing over the crumpled jacket, “You must be cold.” A look of surprise. A mumbled thank you. The silent patter of snowflakes against skin. I held his bare arm the rest of the way home. He was smiling from ear to ear.
I really liked that jacket. As we walked, I looked down at mine, dotted with tiny droplets of melted snow. We had bought them together at the Sport Mart, easing through the circular racks set too close together, the fabric rubbing against both sides of our bodies. They matched. We had matched. That meant something, didn’t it? What did it mean? And now, it was gone. When we got home, I may have tried to search the internet for a replacement, watching each page load, one image at a time.
That night, I lay on our lumpy mattress, rewinding the moment like a VHS tape and replaying it over and over. Two steps, stop, pivot, the jacket came over his head, his T-shirt rising halfway with it, exposing his core and revealing that he used to have a belly button ring. I had forgotten about that. Then the jacket was gone. Ten seconds, tops. Did the guy really need that jacket?
I glanced across the room at mine, inside out and strewn over an Ikea chair in the corner. In the dark, it looked like a deflated balloon. Was that guy actually cold? How far did he have to walk? My skin felt oily and wet, seeping the delicate scent of ethanol. Was he homeless? He didn’t “look” homeless.
Eyes open, staring at the ceiling, I saw myself on a barstool earlier that night, talking to someone. Who was it? I could feel the words coming out of my mouth. I could see their face contort as I spoke. Surprise. Embarrassment…but not for themselves. A suppressed smile. Something behind the eyes. But what did I say? I kicked the covers off. How can I replace that jacket? I rolled over to look at him, out cold beside me. Why would he do that?
I replayed that moment long after the relationship ended, long after the jacket hung limp on a thrift store hanger or had been shipped in a bale across the ocean. I still felt an ache in my chest every time I saw it leave his grip, followed by shame rolling through my body like a heavy wave. It was only a jacket.
Sometimes, I still find myself standing inside that moment, but now with greying hair, a rounder body, and out-of-fashion jeans. I watch a young man, full of empathy and courage, acting in the moment and moving forward joyfully and with purpose. And I see a girl willing time to stop.
I want to tell her that she can’t stumble home forever. That constantly resisting will make her so tired. Exhausted. I want to lean in close, feel the warmth radiating from her smooth skin. It will be a long time until she understands.
It might have been easy that night, walking past the closed Blockbuster video and under the El tracks to feel joy in that moment, to be open to the opportunities ahead of me. To be grateful for the closet full of warm jackets at home, curious about where that blue one would end up, and to imagine its journey separate from mine. To feel the bumps on his skin, hear the sound my wet shoes made against the sidewalk, to smell the sweat evaporating from his damp t-shirt into the night air.
Had I let go, the careful facade I held together with toothpicks and Chardonnay would have ruptured. It would have triggered a cascade of change, unstoppable, uncontrollable, beautiful. The moment would have expanded infinitely, splitting itself into a million possibilities, the road cracking open beneath my feet.
But I didn’t. Instead, with a white knuckle grip, I held on tight enough to collapse it into a shriveled pea under a thousand mattresses. I dug in until the earth formed weights around my feet.
I just stood on the corner next to him, ignoring the sky, waiting for the light to change.
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