Winnie Returns Home

Even after her return, Winnie stayed hidden away. She hugged me tightly when I picked her up at the airport but was not very talkative on the ride home. I walked her to her front door where she kissed me once, and then said she needed some time alone.

This was not what I envisioned. I imagined some long walks and conversation that would allow me to really get to know this woman. Instead, she disappeared into her apartment and I didn’t see her for several days.

It’s strange that someone as curmudgeonly as The Forb would have wise counsel for me.

“It isn’t about you, Max,” he said, dipping his Earl Grey tea bag up and down in his cup. “It’s about grief.”

“How long does it last?”

He shrugged. “Days. Weeks. Different for everyone. I think what you will see with Winnie is a cocooning time. She’ll hibernate for a while, cry, think of her life with her mother, wonder about life without her, and so on. Then she’ll appear again and the former but slightly modified Winnie will return to the land of the living.”

“How do you know all this?” Sometimes The Forb had too many answers to offer, and I often questioned the veracity of his claims. This bit of wisdom, however, rang true.

“I’ve lived with women who have suffered loss,” he said. “We men deal with it differently, and probably not in a good way. We buck up, get back to work, push on, and stuff it all down. Women seem to be better at processing grief. Don’t worry, Max. Winnie will be back.”

This made sense to me, so I sipped my coffee and gave his words some consideration. After a few minutes it dawned on me that I was in The Forb’s territory. I looked over at my regular booth and saw two strangers sitting in it, an apparently retired couple just passing through. They didn’t know better.

“Where is Limerick Bill, Forb?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him for a few days.”

“He’s off doing business somewhere,” he said.

“Business? What kind of business? Is there really a market for bad poetry?”

“While it defies logic, Bill is a genius in his own right,” said The Forb. “He’s brilliant about some obscure area of software integration, and his talents are occasionally summoned by some major institutions. He works on a contract basis and makes some big money from time to time. He just banks it, wears ratty clothing, lives in a lousy studio apartment, and writes dirty limericks. I think he may be a bit autistic.”

I had a hard time imagining Limerick Bill slithering through the marble hallways of large financial corporations. I wondered if they asked him to work during the nighttime hours in order to keep the employees from being offended.

“How did you come to know Bill?” I asked.

“He’s my godson,” said The Forb. “His dad and I were in the Army together. When he and his wife died in a car crash a few years ago, I started looking in on Bill. I help him keep his accounts straight and set him up with a financial planner. He’ll be okay.”

I see The Forb in a new way now. I realized that once you chip away at someone’s outer presence, you find some surprises. With Winnie, The Forb, and Limerick Bill, the surprises were good. With people like Alan, not so good.

When I saw Winnie walk in the café door at that moment and look around for me, I was not only delighted, but slightly shaken by the realization that my own outer presence was chipping away. I was a little worried about what surprises would worm their way out.