Ashleigh's Dilemma (5 page)

“Hello, Ashleigh; I almost barged in through the gates to rescue you from whatever you got mixed up in.
Saint Valentine's Day
only comes once a year and our table awaits...”

“We don't have a table!” she snapped
interrupting him. 

Patrick was immediately taken aback. He tried to recover. “If you'd given me your cell phone number, I could have called…”

“That's precisely why I didn't give it to you!” she injected cutting him off yet again. The tone of her voice was full of acid. Their conversation went downhill from there.

“Is it something I said, or did?” he asked, but he already knew; he didn't have to wait through her quick silence to know.

“That had better been some kind of joke, what you sent,” she hissed; “Trying to get a rise out of me, I suppose?”

Patrick made another attempt
to recover. “No, no, I meant what it said. That's how I feel.”

She sighed deeply, rolling her eyes,
showing her exasperation. “I hope not! We're not even friends. I have friends and you’re not like my friends! We have lunch together and that’s it! We're not in any kind of relationship and never will be!”

Oddly, she led him to the counter, they ordered, and sat down together. As they each fumbled with their food, Patrick tried to explain. “So... I didn't mean to upset you.”

Ashleigh, not done, the anger still with her, burst out, “I don't like the way you treat me; why don't you just treat me like a friend, like one of your friends you speak about so often? I don't understand it. Why do you open the door for me when we enter the restaurant? Why do you walk along the curb while we're on the sidewalk?”

“It's politeness on my part... habit. You can't blame me for how I've been trained...
Canadian, eh?”

“No, I can't, I suppose -
but I don't like it.”

Patrick had a Valentine's gift for Ashleigh stowed away in his pocket: a paperback copy of Darwin's “
The Origin of Species
”, but there was no way she was getting it now.

They were done. The anger
that possessed her would not lose its grip on her. She broke off the meal early and stood to leave. Patrick asked her why she had bothered to come. She replied she had errands to run, some dry cleaning to pick up, including some salt for her driveway in case it snowed.

“And lunch with your friend Patrick?”

She didn't respond but he caught her rolling her eyes.

After
that, though, he could see the anger in her was spent. It was as if everything she needed to say had been said. She glanced up before closing the car door. “Have a good weekend,” she said fumbling with her seatbelt, and adding, “See you later.” without glancing up at him, or waving goodbye.

What he didn’t know was that her heart was racing, her head was still spinning from reading his poem, and she thought she was about to be sick
and that was why she had to leave early. It was all she could do to stop herself from shaking and crying in front of him. Her anger was due to her inability to control herself as well as her deep surprise and ultimate shock at what she had read. Her anger was a release. It protected her. She couldn’t help it.

Patrick would later think that
in some very fundamental way she did not like him – but not while he was standing in the parking lot watching her pull away. At the time, he was far too upset to think about anything other than how sad he felt.

There was an attempt by Patrick to mend the situation. He sent Ashleigh emails to express his shock and dismay, saying how he hoped they might reconcile – all of which remained unanswered. He sent her a letter, asking her about her silence; it didn't matter, there was still no response. He called her at home; he knew she'd be there later in the evening, but recognizing his number she wouldn't answer. Finally, he called her at work.

“Hi, it's Patrick.”

“Hi...” 

He could feel the tension
through the lines. “I realize you have nothing you want to say, or even need to say,” he said. 

Ashleigh immediately jumped in with, “I'm not avoiding you! I've simply be
en too busy. Work's crazy!” Her words sounded flat, forced, and he didn't believe her. He waited but she didn't add anything more.

“...I think we should get together to settle things, Ashleigh. We need to talk.”

She agreed. But where? Her tone turned and now she sounded strained, barely controlled, as if she wanted to yell out. He suggested
Subway
. She nervously injected, “Not
Subway
, not with you!” “Somewhere neutral with no echo of the past, then?” Patrick suggested. “Fine.” “The library?” “Fine.” The situation was eating at her. He didn't want that. He almost called it off. “Come alone and come unarmed,” Patrick joked hoping she'd see some humor in the situation. She didn't and there was none. She suggested meeting in one hour and hung up quickly.

The first thing Patrick noticed when they met was how visibly upset Ashleigh was. As much as she was obviously trying to hide that fact, she could not do so. She held her hands tightly in front of her, and when she released them to sit across from him, he could see they were shaking. She hid them beneath the table. She was otherwise prepared, and stern, he thought.

“It's a simple thing,” P
atrick began when she looked up. “I was falling in love with you.”

Ashleigh's self-control almost broke
, but she took a deep breath and held on. She didn't speak for a long moment but when she finally did, she avoided the subject. “I don't know why I'm like I am,” she sighed as she momentarily closed her eyes. When she looked up her eyes were glassy and cold.

“If you want m
e to disappear from your life, I will. I won't like it, but I will,” he offered as he wondered about the changing expressions on her face. “I will give you your life back,” he added.

Ash
leigh nodded and shook her head all in one motion. “Yes, I want my life back,” she said. “I liked my life the way it was.” She again briefly closed her eyes and sighed. He waited and speaking as if Patrick was not in the room, she quietly whispered, “I'm sorry... I just can't handle this…” She shook her head and gathered herself, settled, and then said, raising her head and looking at him directly, “Perhaps we can still get together occasionally. I enjoy our conversations. I don't get too many opportunities to talk with anyone like that.”

It was so simply stated,
so matter of fact, that Patrick might have laughed aloud if the moment had not been so serious. Instead, his heart lifted and sank. “Then you will have to make the arrangements,” he said; “I can't, not after this. There is just too much to overcome.” He waited for that to sink in and added, “But I'd love to hear from you - please call.”

Typically, Ashleigh did not respond
, or agree to anything. She merely shrugged.

It was over. They went their separate ways. When he was walking her to her car, he said with sadness, “In situations like this, the couple would normally walk away separately and never speak to one another again.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to walk with me.”

“I'm walking you to your car because I care for you, and respect you, and not because I think you need an escort.”

“I don'
t know why you feel you have to. I can get home safely without you. I have done so all my life,” she said.

“But that's not the point...”

She nodded her understanding, again without agreeing to anything.

A month passed, and another. It was spring. The pine Patrick had planted was now a vibrant green. It had grown at least a foot, Ashleigh thought as she looked out the window into her back yard. She hadn't spoken to Patrick since the library; he hadn't called. She knew what that meant. He'd said to her once, “I feel that if I don't call you, you won't, not ever... so I do the calling.” She hadn't answered, but knew it to be true. Now it gnawed at her. His silence gnawed at her. She felt the pit in her stomach fall even further and her heart twist yet again. She couldn't call him; she wanted to, but couldn't.

She stepped back from the window
. She was about to return to her laptop and finish off her report but instead turned and went to the back door, opened it, stepped through, and stood on the middle of the deck. The evening was upon the day. The air was cool. She could smell the damp earth and fresh grass and the drifting and sweet scent of the tulips about ready to break open. She took the steps down from the deck and walked up to Patrick's pine. She ran her fingers through the soft needles and before letting them slip back broke some off, lifted them, and smelled the resin. “I love the smell of pine.” She stuck her face deep into the tree and inhaled, letting the scent fill her.

Ashleigh knew the movie she wanted to watch. She had been thinking about it for weeks. It was perfect; it said all she felt. She hoped Patrick would feel the same. She straightened the cushions
on the couch and removed the magazines from the coffee table, slipping them out of sight behind the curtains that covered the sliding glass doors that opened to her yard. He'd be arriving soon. She took a deep breath and stood in the center of the room searching about - neat and orderly. She suddenly remembered and quickly ran to the hall to retrieve the DVD from where she'd left it with the rest of the mail. She hurried back in, peeling back the cover, carefully reading the title to ensure it was the right one – it was – and placed it into the player – the tray opening, she setting it in, and the tray closing. She watched it load. It would go through all the previews until it reached the leader, repeating it over and over until Patrick hit the “play” button. The men she knew - like her brother - always took charge of the controller. They were inbred like that. Patrick would assume control without even asking. This bothered her a bit, but she decided she could live with it. For once, though, she'd like a man to, at least, offer the controller. If Patrick did, she'd definitely take it. He wouldn't, though; he wouldn't even think to do so. She stood back and listened to the sound of the disc whirling in the player and was tempted to turn on her television just to make sure it was playing, but decided it wasn't necessary. Changing her mind, she turned it on just to be sure - and all was fine.

She sat back on the couch leaning into the cushions and stretched her arm along the length of the back. She drummed her fingers. When they sat to watch the movie with the Chines
e food Patrick was to bring arranged before them, would he try to sit too close? She didn't know - but probably not. Patrick would sit with a cushion between them. He'd smile as he sat, letting her know that he was purposely placing a distance between them. She knew what he was saying; he was saying, “See? This is the distance you like, isn't it?”

The first time they had sat together on a couch it was at the
Outback
waiting for their table to be ready, he holding the red-blinking pager. He'd sat too close and she'd been forced to elbow him back. He did move back, but instead of being angry or annoyed he had smiled; he was always smiling, nothing seemed to bother him, not ever.

He’d said, “I don't know what's wrong exactly
, but I'm pretty sure I don't smell. I did shower... I even used soap.”

“You'd sit on my lap, if you could!”

“You’re right, I would,” he laughed again.

She had rolled her eyes making sure he saw
, but she could not help but smile with him – and that, in and of itself, annoyed her; if she’d had a choice, she would have instructed her face to obey and she would not have smiled. The body is very frustrating. You think you own it but really don’t. Sometimes she wished she didn’t have a body, per se, at all; it would be much better to be a robot, she theorized – with, of course, full access to the source code that controlled such things as facial expressions, as well as all those autonomous bodily functions such as blushing, the buildup of intestinal gas, and so on.

Now Patrick
was very careful around her. He kept his distance; just the right distance, she decided: not too close, not too far. I have trained him well, she thought; but knew she had almost nothing to do with it – it was all Patrick.

But
despite the distance he kept, he was nonetheless reaching for her; she could feel it. She hesitated because she didn't really know how he could possibly be reaching for her when there was absolutely no physical evidence that he was. It was in the inflection of his voice, she decided; and how he smiled. That's how he reached. But who knew what is, or is not, going on inside Patrick? There may be no love in his heart. Like all men, he may just be scheming for one thing and one thing only. But she quickly decided that was unlikely. Patrick was not like other men. Well, he was like all other men - it's the nature of the beast - but he gave her the space she needed, and she liked that.

Ashleigh pushed herself up from the couch and walked into the kitchen. The last man she had invited over had, despite the fact she had prepared her most popular
Creole
dish – that is, the dish the
Woman’s Club
she was a member of enjoyed the most, and which also took half of the day before and the full morning to prepare - at first had almost ignored her completely. She'd invited him on a recommendation. He was a co-worker and they seemed to get along fine. Her friends – again, the women in the
Women’s Club
– suggested she ask him over since he was such a nice man, and handsome too. “Clever, like you, too, dear.” But once in the house, greeting her by shaking her hand, he'd sat on the couch and watched golf all afternoon, his full attention turned to watch the little ball skip over the green even as she talked and served him the
hor d’oeuvres
- which were perfect and needed to be observed and enjoyed for what they were: that is, perfection.