up, up, always up- an excerpt from Rise

at the wedding rehearsal dinner of Meg & David's best friends-- that they set up

Thank God Meg was separated at dinner from everyone that was really close to her. Lindsey was with her family and David was with his. This gave Meg the opportunity to freak out in peace at a table near by with the drunkest members of Lindsey and James’s friend. These were some people Meg had never met before named Sammy and Joshua, who spent the whole slide show and dinner process making out with each other and narrowly avoiding letting a glimpse of Sammy’s nipple show.

          Also, thank God for Philip Vassar, that artsy, chain-smoking crusader of her wildest white knight dreams. He was the conversationalist she required at every juncture with this David business, and the first and most adamant to recognize that NOW, if never before, would be the time for all the shit to go down just like she had planned it, if, albeit, on a much more elongated time scale.

            --Well the first thing, besides how OBVIOUS you two are, is that you’ve got to let whatever you’re angry at him about go…

            --Angry? What are you talking about?

            --Well, you’re very obviously antagonistic towards him. It’s very bitter. He’s sorry, you know that, he knows that. If you want to marry him, you’re going to have to stop making him feel bad about whatever he did in the past.

            --No… I— who says I’m even interested still? I told you. I came here…besides the obvious obligational reasons, to figure out if I still felt anything for him. No--

            --No, nothing.  It’s so obvious you love him that the blind, deaf couple on the patio who’ve never met you know it.

            --God damn it, Vassar. Glad it only took you five minutes to call my game.

            --Well, to be honest, I had it in the car before we even met up with David, but I’m good like that, and…what can I say? You would’ve been my first choice to make out with this weekend, so I needed to gauge pretty quickly if that was gonna happen. But I have a pretty good feeling you’re here for him and he’s here for you and I’m going to help you in whatever way I can.

            --Oh yeah? How are you going to do that?

            --By not letting you do the same thing that you’ve been doing wrong for the last 8 years.

            --And what would that be? I’d love to know.

            --I’m not sure exactly. But I know it has something to do with making him feel bad about things. I know it has something to do with some way you feel that has nothing to do with him, but you make about him anyway.

            She could’ve put her face in her fajitas and not felt anymore embarrassed than she felt at his words.

            --But, Meg, I also know that I saw how he looked at you…

            --I know that look! She chimed. That’s the look that made me fall in love with him!

            --Right. I saw him look at you. And this is one of those chips are down, I gotta think about my life and what I want it to be kind of times, and I know what he’s thinking right now…it’s the same thing I’m thinking…me and every other unmarried guy in this room. If I’m thinking it, and I don’t have a…a, a…you? A someone who has…stuck. Stuck for, what, a third of his life? I mean, we’re from Texas. And we’re thinking, James is doing it. James is taking the plunge. We’re 25 and that’s not as young as it used to be. We know that if we don’t at least begin to consider what real life and real family means, then the people we really do want to be married to will be married to someone who doesn’t deserve them, but gets them because they were smart enough not to wait around thinking they were better than marriage and better than…than what it is that people do. The only thing we were programmed to do…which is be together and make families and change each other with that experience.

            --He’s thinking all that, huh?

            --At least. If that’s what I’m thinking and I don’t even have someone I’m so obviously supposed to be with. I mean, unless there’s some element to the story I don’t know about… like…he’s not in love with either Lindsey or James is he?

            Meg could only shrug.

            At this point either could have been true for all she knew of the caverns of that boy’s heart. For 8 years she had done nothing but try to know and understand that singular, all important heart of his. And today, she knew as little as she had the day she met him. He was as myoho as ever.

            After two entire years away from him, two years where his non-communication forced her to invent excuses as to why he had devolved into someone unrecognizable to her, he could have been any stranger off the street, for all she knew him, except…

            Except that he was, everlasting, her David. And even as she pondered Philip’s questions, she gazed over at the table to her right where he laughed away with the people there, and looked at him with a familiar landing, like a jet hitting the much looked for runway—more than that-- the kind of certainty the brain experiences when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.

            So even when he was one part stranger, he was still two parts her very own soul. And at the moment of her acknowledging that, he glanced her way too. And they smiled together, Meg knowing that at that very moment, they shared one memory, of the moment when this moment began, on hot, patriotic day in 1999.

           Surely, there was a God, even Meg could concede for this moment to be conceivable. A moment full of so much hope. Hope all around.
          There came a moment in the festivities when a line was drawn in the sand between the people who were staying out and then Meg and Lindsey. The night before her wedding, only Meg got to stay with Lindsey in the apartment she shared with James. Lindsey and Meg together one last time. Just the two of them. It was Meg she wanted by her side that night. Which was a tremendous source of pride for Meg. It made her proud to choose Lindsey over David that night. It was so easy to choose her.

            Maybe because Lindsey had never made her work to be understood, maybe because Lindsey had never made her work for her love and friendship. Lindsey had always made things so effortless for Meg. And she was so grateful to Lindsey, that sometimes, Meg felt like her heart might stop or spin out of her chest it beat so hard with…well, what was it really? Gratitude, worthiness and pride mixed with unworthiness and humility, being totally squashed and totally exalted knowing that she had earned a friend who made her feel like Lindsey did. A friend that obliterated her ego, the need for her self, the thought of her own needs. She thought only of their lives in duo. Of the great partnership she had found.

            Even as her heart belonged to Lindsey that night, in leaving Meg knew that David had vice tight grip on her lungs. Or pain did. The denial, still. Pressing down on her lungs, that suffering that never seemed to end, for all of her life, crushing her really like a snail, whose hard shell was just a joke when It came to really protecting her.

            But Lindsey… ah, Lindsey. She must have known what each time walking away from David felt like. She must have known, as they walked through the parking lot, blue neon casting a light down on them, what it felt like for Meg when David called to them from the balcony of the restaurant above their heads.

            --Ladies, he called. Good evening. Take care of the bride, Meg. And Mrs. Beaknor, take care of our Meg.

            She must have known, and she sought out Meg’s hand and swung her whole arm in alliance, as they made their way to the valet. Solidarity. And totally silent all the way from picking up the car until they pulled into Lindsey’s parking space at her apartment complex.

            In New York, Meg missed the freeways. She missed the stretch of road in front and behind, to eternity. She missed the blur of lights without end. In New York, it was always up, up, higher. In Texas, it was always ahead. But that night, it was just in that spot. She thought back to the afternoon, damp and humming with air conditioners, when Meg had explained to Tex that they were each the Buddhas of their particular spot. They had almost kissed.

            With that same hum, this time of tires, Meg didn’t look ahead, or up or back, she looked merely to her left, where right at that very moment, she had her best friend. The one who had picked her as maid of honor. She didn’t feel wise or enlightened even, but she did feel her fortune, and that made her feel like the Buddha of that passenger car seat.

            --You are the only one who could be with me here tonight. I’m so glad we’re here together. 

            It was then, if not at any other time, that Meg realized the very thin line between one person, namely, herself, and anyone else. Never before had she felt the meaning of the idea of practice for one’s self and others. Never before, had she felt like a boddhisatva of the earth. Meg had always viewed herself as an ultimately selfish human being, even after the beating, but right there, she knew that there was a part of her that had no concern for herself, only that of the ones she loved most, and she finally felt capable of giving all of herself to that endeavor…of being boddhisatva for their happiness. That her happiness would come from theirs. The ego was gone. And all that was left of herself was her love. This groping, uncompromising intensity of love. Of her. Of him. Of all of them. Nothing more. At least, nothing worth mentioning.