Route 550
"Love is a responsibility because you make a commitment. Love is that, 'I’m here for you.' or as our friend... Toni Morrison said, 'Love is a bench. And a bench is something that, no matter what—when you’re tired, when you’re sad—you can sit right there. It’s got your back.' That’s what love is: Love’s got your back.”
- Nikki Giovanni
“So, what would you have done differently?”
“I would have left sooner, rather than stay and be treated ambivalently. You?”
“I would’ve called more.”
‘Called more.’ That’s it.
Thelonious was joy embodied, wrapped in a Hershey’s kiss, a warm cynic, and a myopic creative mind like his namesake. Memories of him were set to the soundtrack of his steady heartbeat as Ella rested in her favorite spot in the narrow valley between the plateaus of his vanilla scented chest.
She met him the second week of April, the connection felt like a spring cleaning renewing her heart space. By their fourth week together, Thelonious had asserted he wasn’t interested in dating her exclusively. He made it clear he was not moving with intention. And yet, there she was in his apartment in October trying to retreat while reaching towards a tenuous idea of romantic possibility. It was early fall, just before Halloween. Ella had been teaching Tuesday afternoon youth writing workshops at GrubStreet Creative Writing Center all summer into the late fall. Ella and Thelonious had made a routine of Tuesday nights, she would finish at the writing center and settle in with him for the night. Though this midweek meetup was different. The July rupture that occurred while he was in Santiago had shattered their fragile peace.
During the overcast days leading up to Santiago, Ella was in Amsterdam surveying black art, arrested by a Kerry James Marshall piece called ‘Black Painting’. Colored in shades of black, it captured the tranquil moments of Black Panther, Fred Hampton, in bed with his partner just before his assassination by Chicago police in the twilight hours. Thelonious was in the States, drafting his sheet music for his symphony orchestra audition. Yet something was off, Ella had not returned his calls while away and barely texted. Passing each other in the sky, she flew back to the States and he jetted to Santiago.
Typically reserved with his feelings, time and space had begun to chisel cracks in Thelonious’ shell. Anxious rumination orchestrated his fingers to type up a text sent while Ella was in flight and delivered hours later upon her landing.
“Hey Ella, it’s been hard for me to sleep the past couple of days. I was wondering why I haven’t heard from you much. Has anything changed with us since we last spoke?”
Six hours later at 4:56 p.m., Ella gathered her thoughts into a voice note.
“Hey, I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well and yeah I’ve been reflecting and my expectations for emotional care and what I’m experiencing with you is not aligned.”
“I’m sorry, Ella, I’m sorry I’ve made you feel that way. I added this really dope section to my audition and I really wanted to show you —I wanted to share it with you — that’s why I sent that text. It sounds like you don’t want to hear from me again though…right?”
“Oh wow that sounds amazing! I’m glad it’s all coming together now!” “I’m not saying we can never speak again, I just can’t date in a space that activates me to feel disempowered, like I am an option, like I’m not good enough.”
“Yeah! I finally got my selections organized and notated.” “Anyway, I don’t want you to feel disempowered and inadequate.” “I’ll keep my feelings to myself though, I don’t want to influence your decision, hope this isn’t the end.”
Thelonious neatly folded and tucked away his feelings as expected, he wasn’t one to allow Ella into his inner world, though he would let her peek from the doorway…sometimes.
By seven pm, the polite bookend had subsided into volleying resentments over the phone. The octaves of verbalized pain raised higher and higher until his frustration pried open his cool demeanor and combusted.
“You just too much!”
In the burned space between them, Ella silently etched her musings into the ashes. Interesting, not Mr. Unbothered, actually being bothered.
“Yeah, I don’t want to do this. I’m good on you.”
Reverse Uno.
“Let’s just take a beat and talk about it later.”
Later came…another Tuesday together. The thread of words unsaid tied their tongues; all they could do was smile.
The phoenix of self-abandonment took flight, carrying away the final end into the abyss of ambiguity.
______
Saturday, December twelfth, Thelonious said ‘I love you.’ Then he stopped reaching out much for weeks after, and they only saw each other once between the ‘I love you’ and succeeding silence. He called three times between January fifth and January eleventh. Ella answered on the third try.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“You didn’t answer the other two times I called, I assumed you ghosted me.”
“I would be justified to ghost you, no?”
“Justified? Nah.”
“You said ‘I love you’ and then didn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards.”
“Yeah, I’m prioritizing my relationships with my peoples and intentionally distancing from romantic relationships. We can be friends…but I do see you romantically though. So, yeah.”
“So, why would you say I love you?”
“Because I do.”
Forever pushing and pulling, it was a chronically onerous detached attachment. Conscious of the futile nature of countering Thelonious, Ella allowed the flailing hubris of her optimism to offer one last challenge.
“Love to me is intentional and rooted in action."
“I hear you. To me, it’s just a feeling, ya know?”
“So what do you love about me exactly?”
“I can’t really answer that cause like I said, it’s a feeling.”
“Have you ever heard someone say what I love about them is XYZ?"
“Okay, but you ever heard someone say it’s just a feeling?”—“Do you feel like I love you?”
“I suppose when you cook for me I do.”
Ella and Thelonious tucked in the tension like they always did, leaving the restless legs of their attachment to wreak havoc beneath the covers.
Thelonious called forty one minutes later, they talked for forty-five seconds.
“Wanna come over before your volunteer shift?”
“…………Mmm, yeah!”
Ella was always down for an adventure with him and yet constantly silencing the intuitive notifications telling her she was far from home. The key to his front door worked intermittently and unreliably. Following Rt. 550 on the seventy-five minute drive back home made the invisible distance feel tangible. Her unstoppable force of resilience constantly meeting his immovable force of ambivalence dissolved the highway asphalt into mud. The whiplash of his sequential push and pull rhythm was becoming unbearable.
“I’m sorry you feel that way but that’s not what happened.”
“I’m sorry. I projected my own stuff onto you and made you responsible for it.”
____
“You’re a lot.”
“You’re so brilliant.”
____
“Yeah, I did think about making plans for your birthday, but I decided to chill instead.”
“I love the way you think, I love our morning talks.”
____
“Okay, but I was honest and did say we weren’t dating, technically I don’t owe you anything.”
“I love when we are really here with each other. I feel really connected to you.”
Glimpses of XYZ peeked through where the mirage of steadiness almost seemed to be real.
Love is ‘I’m thinking of you even when you’re away from me’. Ella shipped him the art she brought back from Paris for him, even though they weren’t speaking again after Santiago co-hosted their implosion.
Love is ‘I will care for you'. They made a routine of him preparing dinner and her washing dishes afterwards. It was the cup of tea he made her in the evenings, it was him sharing his plate of food with her as he packed for Rio de Janeiro. It was her calling from the perfumery in Lima to make sure she got just the right scented candle he wanted.
Love is ‘how can I make your life easier’. Remembering Thelonious lost his professional Audio-Technica headphones, Ella found them in-store and drove ninety minutes just to make sure he had what he wanted because she wanted to, because she wanted him to have what he needed. It was him picking up packages delivered to her apartment doorstep before move-in day and letting her know he had them, easing her worries.
Love is curious. He unveiled his unfulfilled wishes after her direct inquiry as to why he kept asserting that he drove her, not them, so they could go on a hike together. He desired to be cared for, cooked for, nurtured. Curious excavations led her to understand she wasn’t adequately meeting his needs because she lived with her mom. Meaning he couldn’t find an overnight respite with her. He said he thought she wasn’t caring in a way that translated. He said how he felt understood and valued that there was no yelling.
But, the chasm between them contracted and expanded. For every action of love…
“Ella! I be so happy to see you forreal forreal, ya boy is pressed. I love it though.”
“You wrote this!? Of course you did, I knew it would be fire. Your mind is so beautiful.”
“I got you. Always.”
there was a reaction of disconnect…
“Bro, who hurt you? Cause I ain’t him.”
“Here you go. You always mad about something.”
“I mean, you can just leave if it’s that bad then.”
Love is repair. Though, Ella could never quite find the right needle to stitch the hurt back together. Ten times urging Thelonious to check that she made it home, ten different reactions.
“Not checking if I get home safely bothers me. It matters to me and is representative of care to me.”
“But like, you live so far away, I be distracted with something else and forget to check by the time you get home.” — “tru tru, my b! sorry.” — “See! I didn’t look at your petty text and I remembered to check.”
From apologies, unmended wounds, repeated missed connections, and naming Ella petty for the upside down smiley face that accompanied her “made it home” text, the road home stretched longer and longer. Exits were missed and GPS rerouted over and over again until Ella crashed into a wall, halting their inertia.
“Why do you act like that?”
“Your eyes, man. That smile. It’s gon’ get me every time.”
_____
“I do like you, I just don’t want you. We can enjoy each other in the mean time though.”
“I’m really happy you picked up. Hearing your voice makes me worry less, like everything is right in the world.”
On February seventh Ella climbed out of the car and began the long walk home. The key unlocked her front door faithfully. Her heart space was in disarray. Writing and coping, she crafted the mantra “I am wherever my feet are. I am wherever my joy is. I am who I think I am.” Writing and coping, she reached out to many hands to make light work of cleaning the mess within her pages. Writing and coping, she opened to the next chapter, reading each line attentively.
By April, she was wearing cascading cream linen dresses to dinner parties under string lights. She extended her thousand watt smile with ease. By May, she was dancing in her new home, celebrating the purchase of her dream Brownstone. By June, she embraced the road less traveled as her path. And by July, Ella was back listening to the beats of his rhythmic heart in her favorite vanilla scented valley.
Love is evolution. And when the tide of Thelonious pushed ashore once more, the sands of him almost felt sure, like solid ground. Then as was the routine, he would retreat, pulling away the temporary earth with him. Though now she was not unmoored alongside him, she was a lighthouse, steady and unmoved. She was a bench of her own making.
“You wanna bring your guitar over? I’ll teach you how to play ‘A Song for You’.
“Yes.”
cover image: untitled (porch deck) (2014) kerry james marshall