by Madison Cavicchia
The month of November trickled in like a gentle blue stream. This is when I
met him—a boy I hardly batted an eye toward at first and don’t particularly want to
name now because I hate that he still has so much control over my current emotional
whims. I don’t want him to have that kind of power over me anymore. Though, he is not
even the scum of the worst person I have ever been interested in–not by a long shot.
I don’t even think he is a bad person at all. I think he just stepped out of his integrity
for a moment. He was just human. He was just a human being, and my entire life
fell apart, respectively. That probably didn’t help us, either.
I wish my world hadn’t crumbled before my feet after December.
Thanksgiving had just passed, and work was finally picking up again. I was
back at the local gift shop where I had worked during the holidays between school
semesters. For sale was anything breakable and terrifying for clumsy hands like mine
to touch: expensive wedding champagne flutes, hand-blown Christmas ornaments,
and vases with blue and green polka dots that distorted your face like a funhouse mirror
if you looked into them. This was the first minimum-wage job I had not only learned to
tolerate, but to actually enjoy because of the busy yet not overwhelming atmosphere
and my coworkers, all of whom quickly became close friends. No matter the age or
life-course that led them to this job, we all, on a personal and professional level,
understood one another. We laughed and cried together, and when it was time to work,
we moved as one, a well-oiled machine, singing holiday jingles all the while.
The day he and I met, I arrived at work first, not expecting anything new,
certainly not life-changing. Then, I heard a doorbell ring, as my manager walked
through the double doors with a face I did not recognize.
This must be the new name I saw on the schedule, I thought to myself. I was a
little surprised because I half expected the new hire to be, yet another retired individual
who was bored out of their mind at home, looking for something on the weekends to
pass the time. This person, however, was certainly not an elderly man who’d sit behind
the counter his entire shift, paid to watch me do all of the work. He was young
(I guessed around my age), he was tall, and he had blue eyes.
My manager walked him over to me, and he smiled as he introduced himself.
Well, I couldn’t exactly see the smile behind his face mask, but I could tell it was warm
and genuine because of the way his eyes crinkled upward. That was the first feature
I noticed about him apart from his dark curls and good-postured stature. This was the
very same grin he left me with the last time we saw each other, smiling blue eyes
and a face covering.
He didn’t say much, like me, which I found intriguing. When he did speak, I always
found myself laughing. When he didn’t speak, he was always watching, bright blue eyes
observing with care every customer who came in and out of the building, every piece
of glass sold, and me with all my silly quirks: quiet humming, nail tapping on the
countertops, and general uncoordinated nature all included.
And I, too, observed, with my little blue eyes, his mannerisms. It was a dance we
did with our separate gazes. Sometimes, they would intertwine, and we would lock eyes
for just a brief moment, blue to blue, then quickly turn away, diverting our attention to
something far less absorbing like a dusty Santa sculpture that was probably older than
me or the muddy carpet floors. In that instant, I always wondered what he was thinking
behind those pretty blue eyes, but I never asked. I should have.
I had a funny feeling his favorite color was blue. Maybe it was because of his
eyes; I am not sure. I think it was his energy, like moonlight, that convinced me. I could
look at any person and see their energy, their aura. My best friend is yellow as a
sunflower, my brother is electric purple, I am ballet slipper-pink, and he is the
embodiment of the night sky over the salty ocean—blue.
Most often, he and I worked together on Sundays, so one Saturday evening in
December, I raided the cabinet behind my bathroom mirror in search of the perfect blue
nail polish. I needed to test my theory. After much deliberation, perhaps too much, I finally
settled on Sally Hansen’s number 710–a navy shade named Beatnik, referring to the
1950s Beat Generation or the color of the 1969 Ford Mustang, I have no clue.
Nonetheless, I sat at my desk, turned on my pink headlamp for maximum lighting,
and spent the next hour primping, filing, and painting until all of my nails were as blue
as the midnight sky. Then, I went to bed with a smile on my face for the first time
in a long time.
It turns out I was right; his favorite color is blue. As soon as he arrived at the
gift shop, he quickly took notice of my hands and complimented my nails. He liked them;
they were pretty. In my head, I was giddy like a child who finally convinced their parents
to take them out for ice cream. My little scheme had worked. On the outside, I was calm.
I asked him if blue was his favorite color, and he replied, chuckling, “yes.”
Throughout December, we grew to know each other little by little. What started
as a simple hello quickly turned into sharing childhood stories, photos of pets, and
favorite foods during breaks and in between rushes. Our closeness and soft fondness
for one another grew more and more apparent with each memory we created,
decorated in tacky Christmas tinsel. Certainly, it was all in my head. This never happens
to me. Things don’t work out for me. My other coworkers firmly and enthusiastically
assured me otherwise.
It was a frigid and slow afternoon sometime after Christmas. The icy blue weather
made it so that I could count the number of customers who came into the shop during
my seven-hour shift on one hand. We were bored out of our minds, he and I, and so
were the other two people scheduled to work that evening. This time, we were all
stationed at the ice cream parlor next door to the glass shop, filled with sweetly
scented candies and overpriced holiday decor. After an unsettling length of silence,
Emily (who also, like him, smiled ferociously with her eyes) suggested that we gather
behind the front desk, prop up her phone, and watch a movie. Emily is a bubbly girl,
filled with silly puns and a natural love to laugh. She had worked at these shops the
longest of all of us, five years, and always found ways to bend the rules for the sake
of some fun whenever she could.
Before we started the movie, he and I scooped ourselves some ice cream.
He gently handed me a bowl and spoon and chose vanilla with cherry while I decided
on black raspberry. Then, we went over and sat together on the fraying black mats
covering wooden laminate floors. We sat in our own little space, leaning against bubble
wrap containers and boxes and slowly leaning in toward each other, space blue
sweatshirt against cranberry cardigan. It was the same blue sweatshirt he wore
almost every time we worked together, and I had become accustomed to envisioning
him in it, sleeves rolled to the elbows and arms crossed, always next to me.
After the movie ended, Emily pulled me away from the blue sweatshirt and into
the back room. She jumped up and down like an excited child, pulled down her face
mask, and loudly whispered:
“You guys look cute together!”
I was then informed that apparently everyone else that worked in these gift
shops thought we did, too. Apparently, he definitely had a crush on me because he
was a completely different person when I was around. Less sulky and sullen. He stood
up straight in his blue sweatshirt when I was around. He lit up like a flickering candle
flame when I was around. Me.
Emily then proceeded to quickly Google our astrological star sign compatibility,
just to make sure the love was real. Two water signs, a Cancer and a Pisces:
a rare but perfect match.
Rare, unusual, and out of the ordinary. That is what the doctors told my father
as his sister lay dead in a hospital bed on January 23rd, the day my family’s life
changed forever. January 23rd. The day I realized December was over.
Just two weeks earlier, my Aunt Megan had gone into surgery for a small
cosmetic procedure; she had recently lost some weight and wanted her loose
skin tightened. It went smoothly, and her recovery was going well until it wasn’t
anymore. Her recovery was going well until one Saturday morning when she
stopped breathing and never began again.
Staring at the skirt of my royal-blue dress during her funeral, anxiously
fiddling with the hem, I zoned out for a while and impulsively thought a lot of things,
some of which I am not proud to admit. I was irritable. Her ceremony had been split
up into two incredibly long days because of the virus–some of the longest days
I have ever lived. And I was so cold. Standing outside and sitting inside, no matter
where I went, no matter how many pairs of tights I wore underneath this blue dress,
I was shivering.
I was angry, too. I was angry that her stupid boyfriend of fewer than six
months, Al, who was old enough to be my dad when my Aunt was barely thirty, was here
in a suit and tie, sighing woefully, inviting all of his friends and family to bid their
tearful goodbyes when they had only ever met her once. Al was taking up too much
space in this cold room, making it about his sorrows when it should have been about
my grandmother—crying in a black folding chair. It should have been about
my parents—desperately searching to find pictures of my Aunt to display because
she never liked having her photo taken. It should have been about my
brother—hiding in the back room. It should have been about me—in charge of
picking out the right scarf to cover the giant gash from the hospital tube on my Aunt’s
already bluing neck.
Immediately I felt guilty for being so cruel in my mind to someone who was
simply grieving, and I stroked the bottom hem of my blue dress even more frantically.
I also felt guilty because I was still thinking about him, the boy from the gift shop.
Before we parted ways, he had told me he was quitting to go work for a funeral home,
and I half hoped it was this one just so he could comfort me. Just so I could see
him again, his blue eyes and blue sweatshirt, because we enthusiastically exchanged
numbers, and he promised to call. Twice, he promised. But he never did. He never
did and I don’t know why and I think I still miss him. Maybe I am just missing the
rose-tinted idea of December most of all. Missing the other shades of blue.
Blue comes in so many different shades. Blue is mutable. Blue is water. Blue is
both the calm stillness of a receding tide and the raging tsunami surely to follow.
Blue is proof that life happens in cycles; it ebbs and flows, and you can’t scoop blue up
with your hands and try to mold it into anything different, anything other than what it is
meant to be. You have lost control, and you can either push back against the waves
or float with them.
You can’t choose between navy blue or royal; you get them both.
In late May, I went back to work, and by mid-August, I put my sapphire-blue
uniform shirt on for the very last time. I couldn’t do it anymore, and I hated myself for it.
I hated unearthing this shirt from the depths of my closet, buttoning it up, and fixing
the sleeves, for the first time since December. It would be my first time back at the
gift shops since I’d lost my Aunt and that stupid boy broke my stupid heart. It would
be my first time back since I lost a piece of me, the part of your brain that tells you
the tick-ticking sound from the clock means that time is passing. I must have lost that
some many months ago because for me, time had stopped progressing the day
before January 23rd.
I didn’t know what to expect when I walked through those double doors again,
but it certainly wasn’t anything like this rush of emotion—a twisted sort of deja vu.
I walked in bravely, donning my blue uniform, only to crumble at what I saw, or the lack
thereof. It was so empty. Everything: the shelves, the countertops, the faces of the
few coworkers that remained (Emily included). This ice cream parlor was a ghost town,
but my memories lit it up like Christmas lights in the most painful way. Holiday memories
of a time when I didn’t feel so blue, memories of grinning eyes, navy nails,
and sweatshirts. Moments of shared ice cream and laughter and excitedly watching
my family exchange gifts beside the highly decorated pine tree in our living room.
My entire family. And I couldn’t even bear to peek into the glass shop next door,
completely gutted out and under construction, locked up tight and closed for everyone,
especially me.
Suddenly everything was blurring together. I was a girl in a haze, somewhere
in the atmospheric space of hanging up her winter coat because the seasons are
changing even when she still feels the cool, blue chill in her bones, stepping into
the beating sun.
I had to get out of here. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror at work
on that first day, I hated myself. Most of all, I hated that I had to go back to this
goddamn gift shop every day. I couldn’t move on.
So I left.
The last time I wore that straight jacket of a blue uniform was on a hot and
sunny day in August. And it hurt immensely to leave, but it hurt even more to stay.
Blue comes in so many different shades. Blue is mutable. Blue is water.
Blue is both the calm stillness of a receding tide and the raging tsunami surely to follow.
Blue is proof that life happens in cycles; it ebbs and flows, and you can’t scoop blue
up with your hands and try to mold it into anything different, anything other than what it
is meant to be. You have lost control, and you can either push back against the waves
or float with them.
The waves of blue come and go. Just the other day, I realized that it was
September and that soon enough I was going to have to relive December and January
once again. I also came to the unsettling realization that I was going to have to do
this for the rest of my life, stumbling through the beauty and pain in each calendar date
I crossed out during those months. A time most families come together to celebrate,
mine was no longer whole. Yet another space had been hollowed out with a carving knife,
one less chair at the dining room table, one less voice to fill the room.
Lying on my carpeted bedroom floor, I glanced upward at my wall collage,
eyes dancing from funny quotes, floral designs, movie ticket stubs, and pretty envelopes
until finally reaching a poem. “Holidays” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, taped to the
elephant grey wall underneath my light switch. It was a parting gift from my tenth-grade
English teacher, Mrs. Pole, a petite woman with shoulder-length dark brown hair and
one of my favorite laughs. She hand cut and taped it on a bright baby blue notecard for me,
the same blue notecard I gave to her on the first day of school with my name,
phone number, activities I enjoyed (namely the piano lessons I would give up shortly),
and my goal for that year, 2018—to do well in calculus. I let out a jaded chuckle at the
thought that at age sixteen, my greatest worry was passing a math class. Then, suddenly
I peeled myself off of the floor. Something pulled me to get up and read that sonnet
again. I stood and mumbled each line to myself:
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;— a Fairy Tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
Mrs. Pole chose this poem for me because she said she saw me in it.
She also wanted to give me something to remember her goodbye. Mrs. Pole was
freshly pregnant and moving with her husband who also taught at the high
school to Austria to be with his family. She announced this exciting news a few weeks
prior, as my friends and I ate Chinese food for lunch in her classroom.
When she called me over to her desk and handed me the blue notecard,
my entire body filled to the brim with excitement. What a rare and sentimental gift,
sharing a piece of something, the words you read that eventually become you,
with someone else.
She said she saw me in it.
I stood there and read it over and over again in my bedroom. A pretty
string of words, I know. But I cannot see myself in them anymore, not in-between
“sudden joys” or “happy days.” I certainly could not see myself standing
broad-shouldered and alongside its name-sake and central
theme–holidays. At least, not right now.
Blue comes in so many different shades. Blue is mutable. Blue is water.
Blue is both the calm stillness of a receding tide and the raging tsunami surely to follow.
Blue is proof that life happens in cycles; it ebbs and flows, and you can’t scoop blue
up with your hands and try to mold it into anything different, anything other than what
it is meant to be. You have lost control, and you can either push back against the
waves or float with them.
At the moment, I am standing toe to toe with every single shade of blue.