This Time Last Year - Jackie Davis-Martin

This time last year had been the wonderbread of their relationship. That’s what Gordon had called it, leaning against one of the railings of the Brooklyn Bridge, looking back at Manhattan, then at her. “I can’t get over the wonderment of how we get along!” he’d said. “The wonderbread of it.” He’d emphasized it, as though their love was beyond exclaiming—or even explaining.

Sharon had laughed, leaning next to him, pressed against him, both of them watching the view of a city, a future, that seemed limitlessly exciting. Who’d have thought, in addition, there would also be on this bridge such a weaving of lines and cables that fanned out from arches as grand as a cathedral’s? From their angle, one of the stanchions of the bridge, Manhattan was seen as an Escher drawing, a complex mesh screen through which the city itself, the array of buildings, was arranged as artistically as some of the canvases they had viewed the previous day at the MOMA.

This time this year Sharon couldn’t even ask for a picture. There must have been one. Gordon had handed his camera to one of the couples walking those planks, the sky above, the cars passing below, and posed the two of them, him behind her and arms around her, her hair stirring in the breeze. She’d had on a turquoise blouse with short sleeves and was thinking how nice it would look in the photo, next to his white polo, his tanned hairy arms wrapped in front, leaning forward so their cheeks, hot from the sun, the walk, touched, too.

She had a calendar in front of her, the big one her college sent her every year, the one she could write in the squares on. It was been this exact day, really, that they had stood on the bridge, June 16.

“Bloomsday,” she had said to Gordon and he’d been delighted to know there was a holiday out there for them, until she explained about James Joyce and he was—not annoyed—but disappointed. Maybe she did that too much, she thought now, blurted out bits of poems and credits that had first had charmed him (“You’re such a wonder!”—and he’d kiss the top of her head), but then had had him saying things such as “Oh, that’s something,” or “Really? Who would know that?” or maybe just grunting before she wasn’t saying anything at all because he wasn’t there any more.

But surely that was more a symptom than the cause.

A year ago last night they had lain in the hotel bed, cuddled into the soft sheets, staring at the tops of buildings, partially visible and made crooked from their position, the position they sought as much as they could, making love as much as they could, part of the wonderbread of what they’d had. They wanted to do the same things--bike the park, row the lake, walk the bridge, see the world. “I can’t get enough of you,” Gordon had said. “I can’t take you all in.”

Last night she had seen him—seen Gordon-- at a Singles discussion group. Her friend Madge had insisted Sharon go, to get her out of her doldrums. (Doldrums was Madge’s word, which made Sharon’s situation seem temporary and almost funny, like wading through a bit of muck.)

The Singles Social took place on a pleasant campus of a Unitarian church where people would sign up for topics they wanted to explore. It was stultifyingly contrived, but one had to start somewhere. They all started there; there was a mixer afterward, punch and cookies and eying each other. That’s where Sharon spotted Gordon. He was sitting on a wall, directly outside the refreshment room, his arm around a woman—pretty, dark hair pulled into a pony tail--the two of them with their heads close together. Sharon realized they had come in together—they hadn’t just met here—they had come to a singles mixer on a date, to do what? Laugh at the others still trying? They were laughing then, on the wall. Sharon was so sick with it she asked Madge for her keys and waited out in the lot, hidden in the car.

Now, a year later, staring at her calendar, so filled with adventures for a while—a year’s worth, almost—she saw metaphors in everything in the New York Trip a year ago. She saw the entangling structures of the Brooklyn Bridge; she saw the remoteness of the city, of any real meaning from where they were, and of course she saw the lack of wonder in wonderbread, of all things, and she wondered whether that’s the way her life would be counted: a year ago, two years ago, five years ago at this time. And so on.