Puzzles

May 1994

            There was a picture that hung on her wall that was nothing more than a blank puzzle with a piece missing from it.  It looked ridiculous up among prints of Kandinsky and Miro, so I asked her why she would frame a white puzzle and hang it up.  She answered with such an intense seriousness that it belied the humor I had injected into the question.

            “Loneliness.” she replied, and continued to place coffee into the machine.

            I don’t think it was until then that I realized what a deeply intense person Wendy really was.  There was a burning fire in her eyes that I hadn’t ever seen before when she answered me.

            Wendy wasn’t an unhappy person in the normal sense of the word; Indeed, when I met her she was vibrant and full of life and understanding.  People were important to her and friends played a singularly important place in her life. So, it was with a sense of shock when I heard the bitterness in her voice when she described what the picture meant to her.

            “We are born alone.” she said.  “Our mothers and fathers raise us and we play with our brothers and sisters and friends, but no one knows what you are thinking, no one really understands what I am thinking.”

            I admit to being stung by her remark because although we had only been going out for a three months, I felt as if I were a part of her, as much as she was a part of me.  Our time together was not flawless, but it was fulfilling and whole to me.

            “But what about your friends, your family?”  I asked.

            “Friends are important.” she said emphatically.  “Family is important.  They stave the loneliness while we are alive.

            “Sometimes though I wish I could find that piece in me that would make me whole.” she continued, “Then I could understand why I am here, why we all are here.  Its just that sometimes I feel so alone.  So lonely.”

            “I’m here.”  I said with grudging understanding and took her into my arms.  She continued to stare into the nothingness for a while before turning to me and resting her head upon my shoulder.

            “I know.” she said.

            We made love that night and I held her afterwards.  In the morning as we were getting ready to go to our respective jobs, she seemed relaxed and cheery as if the entire converstaion the night before hadn’t taken place.  On the wall hung the puzzle, her puzzle, a reminder of the unhappiness that was somewhere inside her.

            We kissed each other goodbye at the subway and didn’t mention the puzzle again.

            When a loved one passes away the world seems to crash around you like tearing a piece of you from it.  From time to time I wondered if that had happened to Wendy to make her see the loneliness so clearly.  We all feel the pangs from time to time, but only a few of us actually see the loneliness clearly.  I didn’t understand what she meant, until Wendy herself passed away.  There is a gap in my life now, a gap that seems too large to fill.

            Sometimes as I take tourists on tours of the galleries and exhibits I think of the blank puzzle that used to hang on Wendy’s wall.  The puzzle must have reminded her of the emptiness she felt when she woke in the morning,and the stark feeling of aloneness when she walked among the other people. There was a part of her that I could never hope to fill in her and I think it is because it is the nature of some people to be alone.

            I found the same puzzle at an art store, supposedly there for people to paint pictures or write letters to friends and send the pieces for them to reassemble. A novelty item, and not a work of art. I bought one on the way home from work but it was whole and complete, so I threw it away. The act of removing a piece from the puzzle made the forty cents of cardboard a work of art; a priceless statement. I don’t know what happened to Wendy’s puzzle, perhaps it lies in one of the boxes that her parents used to collect Wendy’s things after the funeral. Or perhaps they threw it away, thinking that it was a frivolous knick-knack, unassuming and unimportant.

            Her parents never really understood her anyway, they were always squabbling about this or that. More often then not, it was about me, how I would never amount to anything; that I kept going to school to avoid facing reality. It wasn’t uncommon for the two of us to be invited to dinner only for us to walk out with Wendy in a barely controlled rage, and me in a sense of guilty resignation.

            I can’t believe she is dead, part of me won’t accept that I’ll never see her again. The memories are too vivid. It seems like only yesterday that I was holding her hand and walking along the river. Only, it wasn’t yesterday.

            Some days, I try and try, but can’t seem to remember Wendy’s face, and I have to go scrambling to my desk or through my closets to find a picture of her just to remember. It shames me to think that her face can slip from my memory so quickly. Its agonizing to think that I care so little as to forget what she looks like. Wendy, I am so sorry.

            What’s more frustrating is on the days that I can’t remember her face at all, I can still remember that damned puzzle, every line, every shape, so regular, yet so subtly unique, but her face will ellude me.

            Sometimes when I sit on the train on the way home I think I hear her voice, but when I turn around its not her, and I am looking into the eyes of a complete stranger. Other days it takes even less, a fragrance, a familiar sound, and all the memories come cascading back.

            When I think of her, I don’t think of the passion, rather I miss the companionship, the smiles, and the laughter. Its funny, when she went away to San Francisco on a three day business trip, I thought I was going to die of depression waiting until she came back. Ironically, here I am, still alive, even though I know she will never come back.

            The puzzle haunts me. I wanted to be with her one day and find that the picture was completed. I wanted her to find the piece or I wanted to be that piece myself, but it never happened before she died and the puzzle remained incomplete.

            When I find myself in the emptiness I think of the missing piece and wonder where it must be.

            Her mother called me the other day, something about Wendy leaving me something when she died. Wendy was always fatalistic like that, its not like she knew she was going to die before she did, but she always did things just in case something did happen to her.

            Part of me wanted to go and ask her parents if they had the puzzle, and if I might have, it cheap document frame and all.  When I finally did, they didn’t know what I was talking about, and I don’t think they cared.  They already resented me before Wendy died, but I think they resented me even more when I didn’t go to the funeral; I couldn’t, it hurt too much. They took it really hard when she died. I think not getting the chance to reconcile and make peace with their daughter made the passing particularly hard.

            In any case, when I met her parents today, we conversed politely enough, but they were brief if not curt. I don’t think they wanted to give anything of Wendy’s up, so with as little ceremony as possible, they gave me an envelope and sent me on my way.

            I must admit that I had hoped that what Wendy had left for me would have been the picture, but it seems her it was not to be the case. The envelope that her parents gave me was scarcely enough to hold a letter, much less an entire picture frame. Wendy couldn’t have known how much that puzzle was going to haunt me, obsess me.

            I hesitated before opening the letter I had in my pocket. Apprehension seemed to charge the moment and for all that I wanted to hear from Wendy again, I was afraid. Afraid of what she might have said. I mean, she could not have known that she was going to die, anything that she might have written would only make me miss her more.

            I left the envelope in my pocket until after I came home. After dinner I called some friends and talked for a while. I almost forgot about it until I went to hang up my coat. The envelope didn’t fall dramatically from my pocket, or anything, it ate away at the back of my mind reminding me it was there, that Wendy was there. I considered leaving it unopened, or even tearing it up in some kind of melodramatic unsaid-last message.

            It sat there, unrelenting, like an unbearable rash that begs to be scratched. And though much of me did not want to read it, a part of me was compelled to. I broke the seal and set myself irrevocably upon the path. With trembling hands I opened the letter and stared in shock for a full minute staring at the paper. It was only one sheet, the kind you buy in reams for copiers and laser printers, and it was blank. Not a single word or note was written upon it. I sank into my chair in dissappointed shock. It was disturbing. I began to think of what it might mean, whether the empty page may mean more than simple blankness. Zen notions had started to come to mind when the envelope fell from the edge of the table where I had left it. When it hit the ground something rolled from it and fell under the couch. I peered under the edge and reached back to retrieve what had fallen. My finger tips grasped the white cardboard and drew back a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle; that piece.

            It was then that I came to terms with myself, to terms with Wendy, and dare I say it, to terms with loneliness.