I want to see what love looks like when it's triumphant. I haven't had a good laugh in a week.

I want to see what love looks like when it's triumphant. I haven't had a good laugh in a week.

(inspired and borrowed in part from my friend's story TB)

Charlie made sure he had change for the tolls.

Paintings, boxes and suitcases loaded down the rental car. Charlie’s new life waited.

“Everyone” just wanted him to do it NOW – Sell the house and continue with the plan.  Just before she left, Patricia told him “Charlie, keep your promise to stay to the plan.”

He asked her “How?”

She said.  “I don’t know, other than you just do it.”

And then she left him.

We emptied the “temporary” storage locker they had opened 3 years earlier, to keep “Florida clothes and things” they would need after they sold the house and moved permanently to Florida to retire; when the both intended to keep to the plan.

I smiled when I saw the familiar items that had gone missing; the mischievous Gypsy painting Charlie brought with him when he came to the US from Paris, old beach towels and various knick-knacks that decorated their home in Boston.  I pulled the card board top of one box to check its contents and determine if it would be making the trip with us.  

Pat’s blue floral colored dress lay folded on top. I pinched the soft material between my thumb and fingers. I recalled her warmth, and the way her voice faded to a whisper when she shared some good gossip usually about her neighbor’s troubled marriage. We’d sit her kitchen table like it a couple of school girls at a lunch table in the cafeteria. She enjoyed her collection of teas and offered me my choice:  China Caravan, Darjeeling, Earl Grey, or English breakfast.  An assortment of muffins, crumpets, cakes and cookies were always displayed and always in reach. She listened with sincerity to my complaints and stories about shortages at the animal shelter, politicians, men and life in general. But like I said, Pat departed, and I’d promised to help Charlie. The blue floral dress, I decided, would make the trip too.

 We traveled the road they always drove. I encouraged Charlie to talk. I liked his stories. Charlie liked to talk about Pat; though, to him she was never ‘Pat’; she was always ‘Patricia.’

“Patricia was very young, about 16 or 17, when we met. And I was quite a bit older, maybe 21. I’d just come back from overseas and was kind of raggedy and wild. And she was very beautiful, you know...And we turned everything into a kind of adventure. And she liked that. Just an ordinary trip down to the grocery store was full of adventure. We loved that old movie with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. ‘It happened one night.’ We saw ourselves as the center of some screw ball comedy more than we did a romance. We were always laughing at stupid things. I liked to make her laugh, especially when we were driving. I’d know she’d need a bathroom so I’d do my best to try and make her laugh at my stupid jokes to see if I could get her to pee her pants.”

I watched him drive and could see glimpses of the young man this eight-two year old man now was with his white hair and multiple spots on his hands.

“We didn't much care for anything else because all we wanted to do was be with each other. We were always together...Yes, we were, real happy.”  He smiled as he drove.

“I loved her more than I ever felt possible.”

They met in Florida over 50 years ago; Fort Lauderdale to be exact, at Gulfstream racetrack they would often joke.  

They both worked summers down The Cape for various hotels and resorts and headed back to Miami for winter work and some fun.

He talked about the night they saw Frank Sinatra perform at The Fontainebleau in Miami, the wins & losses dealt out at Gulfstream races.  Seeing confederate flags waving as they drove north through parts of Georgia – these were just some of his random thoughts. He side tracked for several minutes first praising Carl Yastrzemski as he and Pat’s all-time favorite Red Sox player but then berating Yaz for his numerous impromptu pop-outs late in his career. 

Charlie started to chuckle to himself. I asked him what was so funny.

“I was just remembering one time when Patricia didn’t quite make it to the rest area in time and it was my fault. Boy was she mad,” He said.

He said that he had stopped and bought watermelon slushes and a water with the sole purpose of filling her bladder. They started back on the highway and listened to the end of the Sox game.  Sure enough, Yaz hit into a double play to end the game. Well, Patricia made it very clear that she very much needed to stop to pee. “It’s going to be a close play at the plate” she warned him.

She started shaking in her seat and squeezed her knees, and whistled.  Finally, they pulled off the into the service area up on Route 2. She jumped out of the car started to hurry away to relief, but he called for her to come back to the car for something important. She came back.

“What-What I’m gonna burst!” She started to do what resembled a bad Irish jig.

“They just said on the radio that they figured out how to make Yaz more like Babe Ruth.” Charlie said.

They are taking him out tonight and getting him a hooker.” He finished.

Pat gave him the death glare and turned to go…She got about five away when the silliness of the joke hit her and she started to laugh. And that was that. Charlie got a beach towel out of the trunk for pat to sit on for the ride home. She didn’t speak to him for an entire day.

At that time, they didn’t realize what would come of their lives, or if they would end up building a life together, but over time their plan was to return to where it all began, a lifetime ago.

“Many times over they called us crazy!”

People took bets at their wedding that it wouldn’t last long but their gambler friend Dave countered that they would make it at least 50 years because they were both equally crazy!   That explained what Pat had told me long ago.  The secret to a happy marriage was, you could both be different but the “fundamentals of life” must be the same.

The winter trips ended and they settled in Boston.  They would go on to own and run two restaurants; the first, a fancy, French restaurant in the heart of Harvard Square during the rebellious mid-60s.

As a kid, when my parents and I would visit Pat & Charlie, it was always such a treat; and in a very ooh la la sort of way!  I could pick whatever gorgeous, custard & creamy pastry I wanted from the magical, rolling cart (always an éclair) and/or make my own hot fudge sundae.  I think back now and wonder, what more do the people want.

They were such fun grown-ups, not at all like my parents.  Pat drove a convertible and Charlie could speak French and drank wine.  They always had the summer off and my family would visit them at the Cape.  They would often travel for a year at a time and always sent me postcards from where they landed, Paris or I remember one from Barcelona; the image of a charging bull’s snout with the caption “wish you were here” – yup! I certainly wished I was there.  Of course, as I got older the stories got much more shall we say saltier …. drunken nights, dancing until dawn in Portugal, 10 year anniversary celebration in The Algarve and missing the plane home the following morning, etc.

Time wandered into a rehab and came out the other side commercialized. Harvard Square closed its bookstores closed the Tasty and opened an Abercrombe&Fitch.

“The Square grew up and moved out.  Patricia and I thought it best to do the same. We worked on a plan, the heart of which Was to sell the house and return to Florida. They prepared to make an offer on a cottage near Red Sox Spring training, but it never happened.  

Charlie took off his pink Red Sox baseball cap and scratched his head as we pulled into a gated Florida community for active seniors. 

We swiped the pass key his new landlords sent him in the mail, and entered into a spacious home meant for two. We matched the promised modern amenities to a checklist (modern refrigerator with buttons on the outside to make ice – “fantastic”, a walk-in shower … with a two-seater bench, etc.)  The pool was a golf cart ride down the hill.

He said as with his life up to this point it just made sense to do what Pat wanted him to do.  I noticed a list of hospitals nearby, and another list with social activities. I convinced myself he’d not be lonely. I imagined him being one of the seniors shown playing property in the communities t.v. add that places repeatedly late at night.

I offered to take Pat’s belongings from the storage locker and drop them at the goodwill center I found online.  He said no he’d get rid of them in time. He then handed me a wrapped present and hugged and kissed me on my cheek goodbye.

Saying good-bye was so strange.  Sure, I would see him again in a few weeks, but things had changed.   It drove home to me that Pat was really gone and per her instructions, she said, “life must go on.’

On the drive to Orlando I found myself laughing because, earlier that day when we were at the pool, an older lady had walked by him and as she passed , she told him he had a nice butt!  Welcome to active senior living.    I remembered I had asked him if he thought he was going to like living here and he nodded “I think so.”

I remembered the present in the seat next to me and felt it through the wrapping paper. It felt like a dress. I hoped it was blue.