To the Door He Could Have Walked Through But Didn’t

He looks up from the chocolate chip cookie in his hand, smiling, and says, “At least you had a car.”

Silence, after the word “car,” filled the room. No, “filled” is wrong because it suggests it took time, even a couple seconds, for it to be complete. This was instantaneous. The way light shocks a room with the flick of a switch. Everything suddenly visible: a chair slanted away from the table, a small blue plate next to the couch, the clock.

Robert and I had been talking about our high schools. We were as far from adolescence as we had ever been, sophomores at SMU, and we believed we had fully infiltrated adulthood. We were sitting in my apartment, eating cookies and falling in love with our friendship, turning every now and then to write in a notebook a line for a poem. My typewriter in the corner.

He hated my 1-room apartment, reminds him of a place he lived growing up. I thought it was cozy; he said crowded. I said simple; he said distressing. I said “just right.” For him, that phrase was nonsense. When is anything “just right”?

But just then, we were talking about not being rich. About being poor. I wasn’t pretending to be; I thought I was. Not live-in-the-street, have-no-food poor. Not dirty-face poor, not movie-poor. But struggle-poor. Have-to-budget-carefully poor. Practical-gifts-like-insurance-for Christmas poor. I was not, I insisted, like the girls I went to high school with, driving brand-new BMW’s or Cameros. I drove an old Dodge Colt, no A/C, vinyl seats.

“At least you had a car.”

Robert and me, 1986

He could have left. If the tables were turned, I probably would have. In fact, I may not have even been my own friend. The lines I drew were thick and deep, divides I refused to cross. Not Robert. He just pointed, “See this? Did you forget this? This is here.”

The apartment had one door. Maybe he glanced at it. If there had been a fire in front of it, he would have grabbed my hand, and we would run through it, the only exit.

He did.