“Leaving?”

“Yes Dani, leaving.”

“You can’t leave.”

It was sheer luck that Dani arrived home in time to meet Maris on her way out with her faded red backpack slung over her left shoulder and a small cardboard box in her hands. From the flush on her cheeks and the guilty expression in her eyes, Dani deduced Maris had hoped to be long gone before her return. From the uncluttered look of the efficiency she had already cleared out her personal belongings. A plain white envelope was slotted between the clear glass salt and pepper shakers on the pink dinette – not the first adios Dani had received via letter.

“I thought you had a scrimmage today.” Maris’s eyes darted to the calendar on the wall beside the door and back again.

“It got cancelled.” Dani tossed her duffle bag like it was a basketball onto the futon.

Before this moment, before this shocking discovery, Dani had enjoyed a drive across town in her yellow GEO Storm with all the windows open her CD player blasting P-Diddy plowing through the warm Indian Summer light and the rush of the warm Indian Summer wind --the temps had lifted into the low eighties by early afternoon and stayed there – convinced that life could never be better, her good mood immune even to the cancelation of basketball scrimmage.

Now the sun had dipped behind the brick commercial building across the alley and the doorstep was in shadow. The interior of their humble home was swallowed by premature twilight.

Maris sighed. The sound was meant to convey longsuffering; Dani only heard rejection. Maris slid the box onto the end of the shiny flamingo pink dinette, and relieved her sagging shoulder of the burden of the overstuffed backpack, settling it on the box. She was a trim five foot-four; her lithe body dressed in untreated Levis, the hems cuffed a precise half inch above the top of her penny loafers showing pristine white crew socks between. Maris was all about retro from her choice of furnishings right down to her shoes. For whatever reason, the girl had a fetish for the Fifties. Her hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail. Her white button down blouse sported a Peter Pan collar and was topped with a pale yellow hand knitted mohair cardigan.

Dani closed the door by leaning her back into it. She crossed her arms over her chest. Her palms were clammy.

“You can’t just sneak off - talk to me. Whatever your problem is we can figure it out, like we always do.”

Maris let her breath go in a scoffing hiss.Her eyes remained fixed on a point an inch or two above the back of the vintage table’s matching chrome and vinyl chair – Maris’s infatuation with the table and chair set was what had made her fall in love with the efficiency. The rent was way too pricey and it was located in a neighborhood too far from campus, but Dani had said yes to the efficiency because the yearning in Maris’s brown eyes had been too much to resist indulging.

“You’re mine.” Dani blurted. Bought and paid for and now what am I supposed to do, file it away in my financial statements as a bad investment?

“You can’t stop me from leaving.”

Dani raked her fingers through the cropped black hair on top of her head then dropped it to clutch the door knob at her back. It was a cold black ceramic orb. Her knees shook; her belly clenched. Oh, but did she not want to? The need to keep Maris from leaving shouted inside her head, no it screamed and screamed until her stomach was knotted and tangled like a bunch of cables behind a tv.

“Please don’t make a scene.” Maris crooked her arm over the top of her pack, but her attempt to appear nonchalant was belied by her white knuckled fist.

Dani glanced at the small envelope on the pink and chrome dinette. So this was how three years together ended, with a letter, a quick getaway, an empty apartment and this parting admonishion: Don’t make a scene’?

Maris’s eyes flared with fear. “Dani, move away from the door.”

But Dani did not move. She could not; her hold on the shiny door nob was the only thing keeping her from flying off the handle. Her legs trembled furiously. She prayed Meris did not notice. She willed herself to calm down. She purposefully calmed her breath. She had to let Maris go. Would she hold her lover here against her will? What would that accomplish? She had to relinquish, she had to give in, like it or not. What she wanted, what she needed was of no consequence and Meris had made it clear that getting out of their beloved efficiency with its vintage table and chairs was what she wanted.

“Fine! Go then!” Dani stepped aside. She wrenched the door open so hard it crashed into the dinette with enough force to make the glass window in the door rattle dangerously.

Maris flinched. She re-shouldered her pack. The weight of it seemed to settle her body until her height depreciated by an inch. She gathered the box in her arms and paused at the door; gave Dani a sidelong glance.

“Read the letter Dani. It’ll explain everything.”

“Sure run away and hide behind your letter. Coward!”

Maris said nothing. Keeping her eyes averted she pushed open the screen door and edged out onto the stoop, took the two steps carefully balancing her load before she scurried to the street leaving Dani to follow the sound of her hasty retreat until dread impelled her out onto the small porch. She knew she should not, her pride warned her not to, but her heart overrode pride. The oncoming chill of evening glanced across her hot cheeks. The setting sun sliced an angle across the mouth of the alley where Maris stood illuminated, her ponytail swaying, before she cut to the left and disappeared around the corner of Holly Dunn Real Estate.

Bitch. She wanted that word to be a curse, but it turned instead into a despondent whimper.

Dani left the letter untouched for the next few hours. She ordered takeout and wolfed down a pint of Pork Fried Rice, drank a glass of milk, devoured a crisp Macintosh -- an early escapee from Mad Tom’s Orchard -- and stared with a baleful eye at the nasty white envelope that bore her given name written in Maris’s tight left leaning script.

“Danielle.”

She read fifty pages of “Tristan and Iseult” in French. Her cell phone beeped several warnings but she ignored the text messages. That would be her study group wondering where she was. She studied “Business Concepts in the New Global Economy” for about fifteen minutes before boredom encouraged her to move on. She caught herself staring at the letter again.

Ignore it. Mail it back to her unopened. She was full of fury but her heart longed for that explanation, the reason for Maris’s sudden abandonment.

She put away her books, cleaned the remnants of her dinner, crushed the fortune cookie over the trash can and shook away the resulting crumbs leaving the strip of white paper with the fortune on her palm.

Don’t worry; be happy.

So much for ancient Chinese wisdom; disgusted, she dropped the strip into the trash.

The letter begged her. Read me. I will explain everything. Did she want to? Would that melt the hard, cold knot taking shape in her stomach or give back the glorious contentment she had been reveling in on her way home looking forward to a few precious hours alone with her lover? Would not that letter’s message awaken the beast she kept chained just beneath the surface of her otherwise calm exterior? What if her temper flared?

“Well you can bet no one will be here to see it, Dani girl.”

Before she knew she had the envelope in her hand tore it open and pulled out the letter.

Dear Dani,

How can I say this to you? How can I make you understand? You are a good person so full of potential but I can’t talk to you. I can’t tell you anything because you hear only what you want to hear and I am tired of being afraid to tell you the truth for fear you will go crazy and do something dangerous.

Dani crumpled the letter and threw it into the trash, a perfect basket from across the room and just as quickly retrieved Maris’s note from the waste basket and dropped on the futon and smoothed out the wrinkles flicking a few fortune cookie crumbs out of the way.

It took me so long to figure out what went wrong between us. Before I met Alex I didn’t realize there was a problem.

No shit! Dani shook her head.

Alex said I should keep her out of it but the truth is if I hadn’t gotten to know her I would have never seen you for who you really are.

You are so cold Dani. There is no feeling in you at all. I feel like I am talking to a statue. The only time you ever show any passion is when we disagree or when you talk about your mother – in other words, practically never.

I have to push you to get any kind of emotion from you – and then it’s all fury.

All this time I believed I could help you get better, but now I know I can’t.

You have to find your mother and confront her. Everybody agrees with me. Your problem is your anger at HER! Some of us even doubt you’re really gay. Sometimes I think you want to be with women to make up for the loss of your mom. I’m not absolutely sure about that but I admit I wonder sometimes.

Plenty of our friends have wondered the same thing.

You should really take a break from school and go find her. At least try to find out why she abandoned you. If you don’t the rest of your life will never be right.

Dani crushed the letter in her fist and dropped her hand to her leg. Its pitiful message made her feel like she was in high school again; outraged, helpless and completely humiliated

Her fury mounted, giving credence to Maris’s accusations but after that despicable letter Dani would rather go to hell than admitted Maris was right about her temper. Her anger was at times terrifying, but at this moment Dani felt extremely justified.

Maris had dumped her. The bitch had discussed Dani with their friends; worse still she had discussed Dani with Alex. Then, to add insult to injury, she wanted Dani to go away, disappear, get as far from her new life and her new partner as possible. Was Dani supposed to feel the weight of their failed relationship as if the failure fell solely on her shoulders?

The letter was signed: “Best wishes, Maris.”

Only slowly Dani realized that even in the letter Maris had not the courage to say, “I am leaving you, Dani.” She smoothed out the crumpled paper folded the letter and returned it to the tattered envelope.

She sat for a good while with her thoughts and feelings in turmoil. What she wanted, what she longed for more than anything at that moment was what any young woman nursing a broken heart wants: her mother, the good it did her!

Dani met Maris the year she transferred to Troy High exactly one month following the sudden death of her best friend Jordon and from the first it became clear she and Maris were perfectly matched; Dani brought Maris out of her shell, and Maris taught Dani to slow down and smell the roses, so to speak and on the cusp of Jordan’s bloody departure, Dani was ready to settle down and give sobriety a chance. Since then their roles had reversed completely: while Dani channeled her energy into achieving her academic goals Maris had developed a hunger for excitement. Had Dani contributed to this breakup because she was now so focused on her academics she barely had time for Maris? Aunt Angie had warned them both it would be a mistake for Maris to follow Dani to Middlebury, but neither dared trust their love to a long distance relationship. They would have plenty of time together between classes and they would have their weekends.

Maris applied to Middlebury College but did not qualify for financial aid so she opted to take a year to work and save her money. She lived in the off campus efficiency that Dani’s money paid for while Dani, subject to school rules, lived in campus housing her first year leaving Maris alone much of the time though Dani did spend most weekends in their tiny abode.

Maris had plenty of time to get acquainted with local girl, Alexandra, the neighbor who befriended them their first week in Middlebury and introduced them to the local gay community. Nothing had worked out the way they planned. Dani consentrated on her education while representing Middlebury College on the basketball and softball teams, Alexandra spent the subsequent months wedging herself between them until seemingly out of nowhere Maris began spending more time with Alex than with Dani. She had sensed trouble coming as early as February but had told herself Maris was too smart to fall for that fat ogre. Apparently, she had misjudged Maris.

Dani continued her language studies through Middlebury’s summer emersion program, giving Maris plenty of time and room to roam.

Eventually Dani’s eyes focused on all the stuff Maris had left behind: everything they had bought as a couple to enhance their living space, every piece geared to Maris’s taste. The dishware, the rugs, the throw pillows, the posters, and yes, the brand of dishwashing liquid they used. Dani cared little for the accouterments of home life – most of theirs had been found on weekends at auctions, flea markets and tag sales. Dani preferred to travel light and kept her belongings to a minimum so that if she wanted to – or needed to – travel or move or whatever, she could just pick up and go. Life was a whole lot easier without all that weight holding you down.

Maris wanted stuff, all the time more stuff and though Dani had endured the clutter she had to admit the place now felt empty without it. All that remained was the stuff that had once represented the us they had been and it all seemed to blame Dani for its forlorn and abandoned condition now that the brunt of Maris’s personal stuff had been removed. Much of what Maris had taken with her and everything she had left, as well as the room it had personalized, had cost Dani thousands of dollars, every penny of which she had fought to justify to Aunt Angie and here she stood in the middle of what had once been their home with empty hands and a maxed out credit card in her pocket with nothing to show for three years of devotion but two posters, a few kitchen appliances and the white matching 12 once mugs perched as usual on the microwave, arranged so that each giant red initial, “M” for Maris and “D” for Dani, read “MD.” Quirky Maris had been inordinately pleased that their initials spelled “MD” though neither of them pursued careers in medicine.

The overwhelming urge to run to Mama washed over her again. She actually picked up her phone and flipped it open prepared to dial “home.” That was rich. There was no mommy at home to pick up the call, only Aunt Angie, who would commiserate but was too pragmatic to be patient with whiners. Angie kept her sympathy nerve on a very short leash. She was as different from mama as night from day. Mama had always had time to listen to Dani’s troubles and often knew there was trouble before Dani could tell her. She longed for that phone call that would have anticipated her pain and preempted her inevitable call home.

The phone did not respond to her longing.

Her eyes stung from unshed tears. The very last time she had cried was that cold night nearly seven years ago. Even Jordan’s sudden death, three years later had not inspired tears, but a vacuum in her soul had threatened to turn into an all consuming rage that she barely managed to conceal until Maris had appeared and offered her peculiar brand of serenity and Dani had calmed down and found her center again. She could not take her eyes off those mugs: tacky, cheap, ridiculous, and yet the very essence of all she had loved in Maris: her nonsensical humor that had all but disappeared of late. What gave Maris the right to change so fundamentally and then to have the audacity to blame Dani?

You are so cold, Dani.

Suddenly she found herself standing dead center in the efficiency, and no memory of having moved from the futon. Her lips felt fuzzy. Her heart banged against her ribs. She was breathing hard and her palms stung hot but felt numb. She looked down at her shaking hands. There was a deep laceration on the outside edge of her left palm leaking a fairly steady stream of blood down her fingers that dripped into a small puddle on the floor.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two