Photographic Memory

It stays with me, though it was some time ago. Spring had come, the day was bright, the air warm. It was a weekday and I was off from work. I can’t recall why I was off, but I do remember that I was not going to work.

It was just the kind of day to make a heart light. I was doing 55 mph in a 45 mile zone, window down, Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” blasting through the speakers. It was one of those mornings where the world and my place in it felt right:

“I must have been through about a million girls,

I’d love’em then and I’d leave’em alone.

I didn’t care how much they cried, no sir.

Their tears left me cold as a stone.”

I don’t remember the car’s color, nor its make, nor model. I do remember that it was a newer car, and a nice one, and I remember its driver. She was forty-ish, brunette, seemingly monied. I saw her face through the window as we passed in opposite directions. We locked eyes for a moment only. For a split second I allowed my eyes to leave the road and look into hers. She has stayed with me since that moment, she with that face, and may never leave me.

I did not know her. I had never seen her even, but I recall that her expression was a mask of agony and pain. I remember her mouth open as though she was screaming, her hair mussed and matted after an uncombed morning. The hair did not look natural, or right, nor did the eyes, they being smeared clownishly black from dripping masquera. She looked like a woman who took pains with her appearance, but here on this beautiful Spring morning, a morning full of sunlight, hope and optimism, she had let herself go? I could not help but wonder why?

My first thought was a problem at work. She had appeared classy, professional even. It was the time of day when people should be at work, or on the way, but she was travelling away from the city’s shiny collection of steel and glass? Fired? A big mistake on an important deal? That was exactly the kind of thing that might break me down... but no. Somehow that didn’t feel right for her.

Love? Love would certainly have the power to break a woman down. A man could do it. A man with a wife perhaps? A man who loved two? A man who loved them both, but the other woman was his wife? A man too weak to let one go, so it was left to her to drive away alone... again? The mornings after were her Hell no matter how warm and bright the Spring day, they having become empty and soul-less, the mornings after leaving her feeling used up and dirty, but still she could not keep from answering the fucking phone when she saw his number!

A phone call at work, perhaps? A death? A pet, or a parent, maybe? This direction was much worse, wasn’t it, and would certainly bring any man or woman to tears? And what if it was worse yet, a spouse maybe? The emergency grew as I thought it through. I hoped not, for her sake, but the face in the windshield had been forlorn... tragic even. A child? No, certainly not a child. That would be too tragic! I would not think it and make it so, even if it was only in my mind. I would not make it so for her, or for anyone.

Herself? What if she was returning from the doctor? What if the news she was given was the worst? What if she had been sitting alone in a sterile examination room when she heard the voice, but it was only now registering in her ears? What if she were losing her husband AND her children? What if she was losing all, in fact? My beautiful Spring day darkened at that. No wonder her despairing face, her running make-up. She would need a friend, a hand to hold! Perhaps I could catch her if I turned around now? But what if that was not it at all? What if that was not even close to being it?

What if she was only neurotic? Clinically depressed? What if she just cried for no reason what-so-ever? What if it was something as simple as a lost wallet, or a house key that broke her down? What if she just found out she was going to have to wear a bathing suit in front of a new boyfriend this early in the Spring? That might be a tragedy to her, for sure, but it was scarcely worth a dangerous, shreiking u-turn and a break-neck race to run her down with an outstretched hand, a hand with a desire to protect, to shelter, and to wipe away a woman’s tears.

I smiled at that thought. Outside, the sun grew bright once more. My “I have a day-off on a weekday” feeling returned. I slipped on my sunglasses. Elvin Bishop picked up where he had left off. I continued on my way, and that other car with its forlorn driver? I must assume it continued on its way as well, and I am left to hope that all was well.

“Oh, yes I did, I fooled around, I fooled around, I fooled around, I fooled around and fell in love! Oh, yes I did!”

But there are still those moments when I am driving alone and left to wonder, to recall a stranger’s sadness, a woman’s sadness, and to ponder hopelessly at its source. How strange that the briefest snapshot of life can rolodex itself and its emotions into your memory forever? And how strange that a picture can resurface those emotions in a moment, spinning them back ’round to the top? And strange that a song stays attached to that particular file card like a paper clip, clinging to it through the years.

“I fooled around and fell in love... Oh yes I fooled around and fell in love!”