Chapter 7: Picnic at The Indian Tree

DAY 3

Mid-day. Mid-day and thirty actually. I had been waiting for Audrey for thirty minutes or even more, when she finally turned up. I'd been standing there on the sidewalk of the main road which crosses our town, thinking 'Boy, I'm being stood up here! She never intended to come in the first place'. I'm looking around at the unusually busy street on a Sunday day, hearing the shuffling feet of passers-by, with crowds heading both ways towards indistinguishable goals, and none of these people are Audrey. They make me feel lonelier than I had ever been, thinking I'd been stitched up here, all the time looking - staring at people, trying to read where this frenzy had come from so unexpectedly. There's a middle-aged lady, dressed in black in some sort of rain coat, passing me, eyes gazed ahead of her, seeming so unapproachable, and in no way alleviating the sense of unbelonging to this 'family of people' which feels so sharp right now. I'm thinking once Audrey arrives I will be able to vanquish all this anxiety because she will listen to me. There will be one person in this whole street who will give me a chance to speak about things that trouble me and to which I occasionally find solutions to.

It looks like a beautiful day for a picnic, people wearing shorts and T-shirts and, every now and then, twenty-year-olds in sandals. Then, all of a sudden, once some sense of stillness of time and acceptance of loneliness had been installed, I look in front of me to see this young woman approaching, carrying a backpack, her head covered in a silky, pastel-colored veil. She has the most incredibly beautiful eyes I have ever seen and has a sort of carriage as if not to intrude or disturb the flow of passers-by. She has a downcast glow to her face, immobile, like that of a wild child being raised by wolves and now being released into the real, human world. I look down at the way she steps around cracks or tiny crevices within the sidewalk and how she does it without casting her eyes down, how she knows where hurdles have been placed to deter the walk and how she avoids them like prey animals do when they prowl or move about. As she passes me by, I look into her eyes. She does the same and, as if not to scare her or overstate the importance of the moment, I start walking in the opposite direction, although I'm not meant to do so. I'm just meant to stay there and wait for Audrey. Then, as I walk and do that, I cannot help but think that I have seen this woman in another lifetime, and that we have lived together and been married before, and have spent centennials together in the times of the Titans or the great conquerors. I stop and turn back and see that she has stopped, as well, and turns to look at me, and has started moving towards me, and that the most incredible, beautiful smile has enveloped her face.

'Oh my God! I was so deep in thought I didn't even recognize it was you!' she says, caressing my face and then jumping into my arms.

And as she does so, some of the veil falls off her head and then, as though awaken from the trance, I see it's Audrey.

'I'm sorry... I... I was also daydreaming, I think..., I mumbled close to her ear, smelling not perfume but rather the freshness of sea waves through her hair. What on Earth had happened? How could it have been possible not to have recognized her from the very beginning?

'You are so cute' she continues, and I'm just happy.

'You look great'. My heart pounds at an incredible rate.

'I'm sorry I'm late. It took me longer to bake the pie than I had anticipated. I hope you don't mind but I didn't want to bring you raw food. Did you get my texts? she asked apologetically.

'Yes, I did.' She had sent two texts to say she would be late but they left me more anxious than I had thought. 'If you are not busy later on, I was thinking we could both go together for the Sunday service.' she continues, and I stand there frowning and wondering how she had come up with such a plan. She's not really a Christ-follower and I remember how vehement she had been against certain chapters in the Bible.

'Shouldn'it take place right now? I ask, having myself a God-like enlightenment to come up with the right question.

'No, they're having it tonight as some sort of Church special, because of the whole meteor thing - she replies with a twinkly smile that shows her dimples. 'I think I wanna go. I'm so curious as to what the priest has to say about it.' She has been quite acerbic towards Father Mitchell, who in truth comes across as quite a jackass. I haven't spoken to him a lot - actually only once, although I have seen him in town on several occasions - but he has a sort of arrogance about him, difficult to swallow.

' Yeah, yeah... Let's do that'. 'Good. Then it's settled', she answers swiftly and sprints ahead onto the sidewalk.

The day with Audrey was an outing in Sonoma County. If you haven't been to Sonoma County, you should. We walked across the sun-drenched hills, vineyards and pear orchards and, occasionally, sheltered from the heavy sun on cool, forest trails or under the branches of pear-trees. I'm blessed to have lived in such a beautiful place as a child. Only lived, not born. I was born in Lithuania, where my father is originally from. He came here when he was twenty-four and I was three. My father hated the Americans, initially, for their dogmatic and cold way of embracing life, and now praises them as the greatest nation on Earth, because they get straight to the point, they are correct, and they 'listen' - a quality, which in fairness, is not something I have ever found in my visits to Lithuania. People there like to speak one over another - they ask a question and never bother to wait for the answer. 'You? Good? Sit down and enjoy this apple tart I've made for you! Sit down, I tell you!' - words my Aunt Nona would say, and which reflected the entire Lithuanian culture.

As for Audrey; she's pure, born and bred American. Well, she is and she isn't. I mean, her parents are and she is, too - by birth certificate, at least - but she doesn't act like an American. Whatever that means. I mean, she has all the Americanisms, the passive way of sarcastically making fun of a situation or injustice, from a distance, but she also throws herself into the strangest, not to say dangerous of situations, no-holds-barred, which is not in the nature of Americans. It's not in the nature of anyone, frankly - only the marginalized and the destitute who have nothing to lose and take a gamble with life - and is the stuff of movie scripts.

Even now, as I watch her sprinting ahead on the Sonoma trails, leaving me well behind, and then popping onto the meadows to smell her favorite flowers, I see a free spirit. Not in a Hippy sort of way, but more like someone who either hasn't grown-up or has found, in fact, some inner truth that escapes the rest of us and which makes her more mature than we could ever aspire to be. 'You let me know when you're hungry', she shouted from a distance, when hunger was the last thing on my mind. I was charged-up, like a bull, in all this isolation with this beautiful girl, and wanted to wrap my arms around her, lift her frame while she crossed her legs behind my back, and kiss her passionately as I pass my hand through her hair. I haven't had sex in over six months. I feel guilty feeling this because sex is not on her mind right now and I'm forced to admit we are not on the same wavelength at this particular instance. She's living the moment and I'm not.