Marty didn’t see Michelle the entire graduation, and it was just as well. The next day was his first day of freedom in 13 years from the compulsory education imposed on him by the State of California, and he didn’t want to be reminded of his past. As long as he could remember, he had tried to find an unconditional love – whether from parents or a significant other – and yet he couldn’t remember a single moment of unbridled affection. He could produce love in great swells of emotion, but couldn’t catch any ebb tide of fondness. Nobody had ever looked at him the way Katherine Ross looked at Dustin Hoffman at the end of The Graduate. Maybe it’s me who can’t recognize true affection when it comes, he commiserated. “I don’t have the gene that knows how to be loved,” he said out loud to Krishna, who was getting a neck rub and purring stridently. Only this cat has stuck by me since the divorce, he fondly realized, and understood for the first time why lonely people will pay so much money to pamper their pets.
Mike had been AWOL since the morning after graduation, telling Annie he was “going fishing,” when in reality he just needed to get away and think. Marty last saw him headed in the direction of the Inkwells, where he could head up to the far reaches of Kent Lake and not see another soul for a few days. The weather was locked in summer mode, and the forests breathed as one tree. The sun was reaching its apex, when it could shine straight down through the tall redwoods at noontime, illuminating the washed-out ground that was beginning to regain its cover. Alders and blackberry bushes reached out from the understory, converting precious sunlight to calories while it lasted. Marty began to think about another hike up to Big Bear Lake in the Trinity Alps. He needed a little soul-cleansing time, too. He wondered if Mike would want to go when he returns, or if Chas could get some time off work… Of course, he could hike somewhere else a little closer, but that particular lake was calling to him in his dreams, as if it had a secret to share.
His own job at Aquarium Beautiful was becoming too much of a routine. The animals came and went, but the humans were always the same. Bob was drunk most of the time, and rarely remained at the store for more than an hour. Marge was well enough to work a little, but Marty ran the place, and was the main breadwinner of the family. He did all the ordering, put everything away, and helped customers who were more familiar to him than his own friends. One hot day, as he closely examined some fuzzy discoloration on the fins of a discus, a voice behind him asked for help. He turned around, wiping his hands, and it was Michelle! He nearly jumped into the tank with the fish!
“Hi Marty,” she offered lamely, with her face trying so hard not to show emotion that it was crawling with candor.
“Oh, hey Michelle,” he scurried for cover in his mind, the way a hermit crab ducks inside its shell. “Did you need some tropical fish?” It was the best line he could come up with at the time. The air was thick with awkwardness.
“No, um, I just…” her fluorescent eyes gleamed in the dark aquarium room. “I wanted to say goodbye. I’m moving down to L.A. to get a place before college in the fall.” Her hair was partly tied up in a bun, with long, wavy bangs framing her movie actress face, and she wore a plaid flannel shirt tied at the navel, with faded blue jeans that seemed to be painted on…
Marty snapped out of his reverie and dropped his imaginary paintbrush. “Oh, you’re going to college already?” he was taken aback, but more surprised that the news was not causing him any distress. He felt only the relief of a mouse that finds the snake is too full to be hungry. They both proceeded to relax, and had an almost normal conversation about the classes she’d be taking, and her new condo in Malibu, while Marty changed half the water in the discus tank.
“What will you be doing now?” she couldn’t resist asking, the way a good journalist should. She glanced around the smelly, bubbling fish room curiously, as if to answer her own question.
“I’m going backpacking,” he declared, and knew it to be true. He didn’t say that he wished she would come with him, but his eyes invited her all the same. She looked away in unspoken decline. They chatted amiably for a while, but just as a phonograph needle comes to the end of a record, they ran out of things to say. Both of them knew it was the end of the music. They exchanged a farewell handshake in the form of a brisk hug, and she left.
The dusty, old radio next to the sink played a poignant song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash in the background:
“Just a song before I go,
A lesson to be learned.
Traveling twice the speed of sound,
It’s easy to get burned.”