Dream Backwards

Dear J.

              Please forgive me for lying during the time of your visit when we stopped at the vista point of the famous bridge.  You remember that it was a sunny and windy day (it's always windy there),  you were wearing my overcoat and we were holding hands like a pair of teenagers. There were many other tourists there, we heard several foreign languages, constant clicks of camera shutters.  I was pointing out to you  sights of interest across the bay, when a middle aged couple approached us and the man asked a direct question that immediately identified him as American: "How long have you been married?", and I answered "Thirty years", even though we are not nor have been married. (Yet!)  He then said "I've been married twenty eight years.  We're from Iowa, where are you from?", and I answered saying "Chicago", even though I live here, and you have never left our hometown of Philadelphia.   I've been to Chicago enough times to be able to invent a home address and the name of a school where we would have sent our children, should he ask, but he didn't.   Then, his wife, I assume the woman was his wife, said, "It's awfully windy out here," and I momentarily forgot my false tourist identity and told her "It's always windy here," but immediately  realizing my mistake, I added "I read in the guidebook. Fodor's."  Yes, Fodor's. Always remember to decorate your lie with one incontrovertible truth.

Later in the car, you said you didn't like my lies, didn't understand why I had to lie.   What should I have told them? That we had been married and divorced from others, that our own love died thirty years ago to find us again only recently, that we each had had our share of disappointments and tragedies, betrayals and defeats, conflicts, intrigues and despair?  This couple returned to Iowa telling their friends there about a nice pair from Chicago they had met, who still loved each other after thirty years of marriage,  and what's wrong with that?!

I wish we had been married for thirty years, don't you?  But you can't dream backwards.

I send you all my love, hoping to see you soon,

Yours,

K.