Heather J. Bennett
This story won second place for Romance in 2021 in the Southwest Writers contest and appears in their 2021 anthology, Ramblings & Reflections.
The language still sounds like gibberish to my ears. No matter how hard I listen, I can never hear a word that sounds like, well, a word. It’s a harsh, hard language full of sounds virtually impossible to make unless you grow up here. It’s a beautiful country, however, in spite of how they communicate. Pretty brick buildings, some leaning to and fro, with steepled stepped roofs look out onto cobblestone streets and scenic canals, little arched bridges over them, and bicycles. Amsterdam is simply a beautiful city. One of my favorites to visit, partially because despite its sharp-edged language, most everyone speaks English so I can figure out where I’m going and ask questions. They were one of the first places to embrace our music, completely enthusiastic for that American rock and roll sound, way back when in 1973 when we first came here, but they’ve also always been respectful to us when we’re out and about. I can walk out of my hotel without getting mobbed, or having to pose for photos at every cafe I stop in. That’s not to say they don’t ask for autographs or photos; it’s just different somehow. It’s not as entitled, I suppose.
I’ve managed to find the little cafe, and it amazes me that even twenty-something years later, it’s still a little cafe. Not much has changed inside from when Jaylee took me here back in 1973. It’s still small, with uneven slate tile floors, small wooden tables scattered around, some things hanging on the wall, mostly mirrors with beer or coffee names on them, or the universal Coca-Cola signs. The radio plays in the background—an unusual selection of Frank Sinatra, N*Sync, and Golden Earring. There’s a counter with pastries and sandwiches displayed. It’s not incredibly busy, but we’re not in the City Centre so it’s more of a local joint, I suppose. It used to be around the corner of Jaylee’s little apartment on the top floor of one of those crooked little houses. I remember standing at her window and looking down to the canal below, people riding their bikes, those tiny little cars zooming down the street and wondering how many of them and bikes end up in the canal.
I see her walking across the bridge and release a breath I didn’t notice I was holding. She’s still beautiful. One of those people that others turn to look at as she walks by—and she’s completely unaware of it. Her hair is shorter now, still that pretty chestnut brown with red highlights when the sun hits it. It’s smooth and straight until it curls under evenly, the ends brushing her jaw gently. She’s wearing big sunglasses that hide her beach glass eyes. They were what caught my attention the first time I saw her. Those light green eyes, square little chin, and pouty perfect mouth that smiled so easily. Tall and slender still, even as she walks toward the cafe, her jacket open in the warm Autumn air, wearing a pair of blue jeans and a cream-colored sweater with brown boots. She’d take my breath away today if I bumped into her.
The little bell over the door jingles as she comes in, and she glances around until she sees me standing and breaks out into a bright, warm smile. Coming to me with her hands out, she rests them easily on my shoulders and greets me with the customary three kisses on my cheeks before I pull her in and give her a warm embrace. She’s brought the outside air in with her, and I get the scent of baby powder as she pulls back with a warm laugh. “Look at you!” she says in that gorgeous Dutch accent, her hand still holding on to one of my elbows. She drops her chin and grins at me. “It’s never fair that you continue to be so handsome after so many years.”
“Me?” I laugh, motioning to the chair beside me. “I was watching you walk in, and you still take my breath away.”
“Oh, sheesh!” She laughs and waves a hand at me, a blush coloring her cheeks. “You flatter still.”
“That’s not flattery, dear, that’s just the simple truth,” I say and stretch my hand out to take hers. “How are you?”
“Tired.” She chuckles. “I don’t know how you are so awake after such a show last night.”
A waiter comes over, and we order some coffee and pastries. I actually just let her order. I’m not really here for the food but could use some of the coffee. Europeans don’t fool around with their coffee. I sometimes find it a bit too strong for my liking, but she’s right; we had a late night last night. I didn’t get to sleep until 3:30 and didn’t get a whole lot more than six hours.
“So, you enjoyed the show?” I ask once we’re on our own.
“Always,” she says with a smile. “You get better each year. And the venue gets bigger. How is that possible?”
It’s my turn to feel awkward, and I look away with a lift of my shoulder. “We ask ourselves that very question each night. It’s kind of crazy.”
“Now,” she scoffs, “it’s how you planned it to be. Other bands without as much talent didn’t last. You were always focused on the talent. That’s how. That’s why so many want to come to the shows and love the music so. You bring back many good memories for people.”
“How about you? Do you have good memories of us?”
She squeezes my hand. “You know I do. I feel like a young girl each time I hear your songs. And sometimes,” she closes her eyes and smiles, “I close my eyes and remember what it was like back then.” She looks at me, those pretty green eyes bright and dancing. “My kids can’t believe the stories I tell them.”
I choke, blinking at her. “What did you tell them?”
She shrugs. “Everything,” she says. “They know their mother was once young, too, with a little wild streak in her sometimes.”
I smile to her with her charming accent as the waiter brings our coffees with almost impeccable timing. We fall silent as he puts everything on the table and asks if there’s anything more we need. Jaylee gives me a look, silently telling me to answer… in Dutch. She taught me a few words and phrases decades ago. “Nee, dank u wel,” I mumble, always feeling a little self-conscious when I do that. It’s one thing on stage, and even then, I’m still self-conscious and rush through the words, always uncertain if I’m doing the pronunciation correctly. I think I did it okay just now, going by Jaylee’s bright, proud smile.
“See,” she reaches out to push two fingers against my arm, “you can speak Dutch.”
I laugh doubtfully. “I sincerely doubt it. Only a few of the few things you taught me ages ago.”
“What else?” she questions.
“Nog een andere bier,” I reply with a lift of my eyebrow and a smirk.
She laughs and reaches for the pink sugar packet. “Anything else?”
Ik hou van jou. I reach for the milk and shake my head. I love you. “Not really.”
“Well, you have the important phrases remembered,” she giggles. “Remember to say please. Alstublieft.”
“Couldn’t you have come up with something a little easier to get my mouth around?” I laugh.
“No,” she says and takes a bite of one of the pastries. “We like watching the foreigners fuck it up too much. It’s a very Dutch attitude, you know.”
“I think that’s why I like this place so much. I understand their humor.” I chuckle and take a sip of coffee. Very strong, bold, and slides down smoothly. I needed some strong coffee this morning.
“And how are you now these days? Everything fine?” she questions, her face bright and curious as she peers over her coffee cup at me.
I smile and nod fluidly. So polite these days. We’re grown-up’s somehow. Only took us twenty-some years to get here. “Good, yeah… busy, you know.”
“And your beautiful wife and baby?” she asks.
At that moment, two twenty-something girls walk in with their long, straight hair and slender youthful bodies, giggling with one another. We both watch them briefly before they get their pastries and hurry out. I look over to her, and her gaze is still on the door, looking after them. When she turns her head, there’s that sadness I put in her eyes and a faltering fake smile. “Do you think of it, sometime?” she asks, her voice soft, and I drop my chin, looking to the table.
Probably not nearly as much as she does. The guilt jabs at my gut, and it makes it a little difficult to breathe for a moment, knowing that aborting our baby took away her ability of ever having another one. I think of it more now that Chelsea and I have our own baby. She reaches out to rest her hand on mine, and I draw my gaze to her. She’s smiling at me and squeezes my hand. “We were children,” she says again. She says that each time we see each other and this comes up. “Me, especially. I was not able to be a mother and too young.”
I squeeze her hand in return and force air into my lungs. “I know.”
I do, too, but I remember getting that call from one of her friends saying Jaylee was burning up with a fever and bleeding too much. Our band had moved on to our shows in Paris. I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t do anything but call someone from the local label and send them around with a credit card to pay for whatever she could possibly need. I sent flowers, pointless, useless flowers, and our entourage moved on to Italy; no stopping the machine once it got rolling. “I still wish there was a different outcome for you, that’s all,” I say.
“But then there would be two other children without a family,” she says. “And I love my children very much. They don’t need to come from here,” she points to her lap, “to be mine.”
“I know.” But I am going to live with that guilt for the rest of my life regardless of what she says. I also know I couldn’t raise a kid at twenty-four. She couldn’t raise one, especially as a single mother, at seventeen. But I hate that I put her through that. I hate that it was done badly to ruin her chances later on.
I was shocked when the band came back three years later to see her backstage waiting for me. That was when we came to her little apartment around here somewhere. At some point during that night, we cried about it. I held her in my arms and told her I was sorry; words about as useless as sending flowers, but she kissed me when I said it, soft and gentle, and her fingertips wiped at one of the tears on my cheek. I never let anyone see me cry. She is one of a handful of people who have.
“Kijk,” she says, slipping into her native language. I look at her, and she smiles. “I mean, look,” she clarifies and shuffles around in her purse. She opens her wallet and shows me a picture of two teenagers, one of them clearly in the middle of the awkward in-between years. She’s thin and gangly and just looks like her body doesn’t fit yet. The boy, the older one, is more confident and striking. He also has brown hair, broad shouldered and if they played football over here, he’d be a quarterback. They don’t look anything alike, but both have bright, cheerful smiles and twinkling brown eyes.
That’s one of the things that hurt the most; no child will ever have Jaylee’s gorgeous light green eyes. But these kids look cheerful and happy, loved and wanted. “This is Sander,” she points to the boy in the back, “he’s fifteen, and Anneke,” the child in the front. “She’s thirteen. Crazy, wild children which I love with all my heart.”
I look at the photo and smile. “They are beautiful,” I say.
“And let me see yours now.” She takes her photo back, smiling at it. It’s a real, honest, loving smile. I can only guess at what the process was to get them, but she is a mother. I didn’t take that away from her. I dig into my back pocket for my wallet and flip it open to show her my photo. Chelsea is sitting cross-legged on the grass with our year-old son sitting in her lap. He’s none too pleased either and gives his usual scowl at the camera with big blue eyes. Chelsea is laughing; I can almost hear it in the photo, her dark brown curls falling over her shoulder and Timmy’s little fist grabbing handfuls of it.
She gasps and sits back in her chair with a smile on her face. “They are beautiful,” she says, her eyes lingering on the picture. “He is exactly like his father,” she teases, her eyebrows furrowing playfully as she looks over to me. “Very serious.”
She hands the photo back to me, and I look at it with a smile. “He has his moments. You should hear him giggle.”
She leans in and whispers, “I have, very late at night,” which makes me laugh. “Something like that, yes,” she continues.
I slip my wallet into my pocket and sip my coffee, my gaze looking out the window as more people walk by. The tree across the way is changing colors and seems to match the brick buildings around it. “Isn’t your old apartment near here?”
“Two blocks that way.” She points over her shoulder. “You remember it?”
“I do,” I say. “It was so nice to wake up someplace that had personality and not some generic hotel room in the middle of a tour. It was nice to wake up to a cozy neighborhood and walk around holding hands with a pretty girl to get coffee in the morning and feel like I was a normal, average person for an hour or two.”
“And I remember wishing to bump into someone I knew so I could show you off.” She chuckles. “To all those mean girls in school who teased me, I wanted them to see who I could attract.”
I shake my head. “I can only imagine that they were jealous of you.”
“They were mean girls,” she just says with a smile. “And having you made me feel special. You gave me confidence.”
“I would never have thought you needed any confidence. You didn’t show any lack of it anytime we’ve ever met.”
“Because you made me feel special,” she says. “You look at me in a way no one else ever does, and I liked that. You still do.”
“What about your husband? Does he make you feel special?”
She smiles warmly. “He makes me feel loved.”
“Will I ever meet him? I always put your name plus one when I play here.”
“No,” she says with a shake of her head, and it cracks me up. “I want to be selfish with you. I want to meet with you and remember my crazy youth and carefree days of being young when I don’t think I was ever tired.”
I laugh. “Oh, for the days when I could go all night and day. I think they catch up with you in one fell swoop. You wake up one day and just bam! It never goes away.”
“I blame the children for that.” She laughs easily. “And for the little lines, now.” She brushes a finger along her eyes to imaginary wrinkles.
“I don’t see any,” I say with a shake of my head and another sip of coffee.
“And that is why you make me feel special,” she says with a smile blooming. “That is why I still love you, and we meet like this after so many years.”
We finish our drinks, and I walk her to the foot of the little arched bridge. Someone flies by on a bike, ringing its bell as a warning. I step forward, closer to her, to get out of the way. She laughs. I laugh and look after the cyclist briefly. I turn when her palm rests on my chest. In our kiss, we are kids again behind our closed eyes, with hopes and dreams lying before us.
Last time we met was over five years ago, and I wasn’t married yet. The last time we were together was just once after she was married with a four-and two-year-old at home. The three other times since, we’ve met like this, caught up on one another’s lives and laughed at the silly things we’ve done, both together and separately.
Each time, we grow up that much more, and those silly things are left further and further behind. I leave her name plus one at the door each time I’m here and hope I see her in the crowd. She hasn’t disappointed me yet, and each year that goes by, I wonder when the time will come when she doesn’t come. Maybe I will be the one that stops coming. One day, the touring will end, and I’ll be an ex-rock star living that boring, quiet life I dream about but never seem to capture.
But not yet. There are still albums to be made, and families to raise, and old friends to meet and wonder about different lives and missed opportunities, just like Amsterdam. When you have an aerial view you see the many rings connected by big bridges and pretty little arched ones. We always seem to find a way to build the little bridges, but never a way to reclaim the land and make it ours. We keep building new roads to take and will meet at the arched little bridges to find out where we’ve been and how we got there with so much water flowing under them. She pulls away first and runs her thumb under my lip with a warm smile. Then, she pats my chest, tucks her hair behind her ear and starts walking across the bridge.
The buildings in Amsterdam still lean sometimes, and the floors might be slate tiled and uneven, but they stay standing. As I make my way back to the hotel, I wonder what they’d think of the little bridges that cross the busy canals, and whether they’d wish they could ever take their own steps to cross them if given the chance.
