Second Love
Corin woke up, on his first morning in Maria’s house, with the feeling of being a baby bird in its nest covered in down, and pleasantly unable to open its eyes. He stooped to stand up in the attic and slid back the small curtain over the dormer window. Half of the attic was filled by boxes, and the other half was a twin cot and a dresser. Corin dressed and climbed down the ship’s ladder into the kitchen where he found Erla sitting at the table, wearing a cotton nightgown with no sleeves, and her eyes closed peacefully against the sun coming in the glass back door.
“Good morning Corin,” she said getting up, “are you an early riser like me?”
“No, not normally.”
“Well that’s a shame. The morning is the most beautiful part of the day.”
She showed him to the coffee appliances and watched him wait for the water to boil.
“So,” Erla leaned forward with a warm smile that showed a few teeth were missing, “what is your story young man? Where are your two friends? Where is your family? Where have you come from?”
“I,” Corin’s voice was uncharacteristically soft and polite, “I’m from San Francisco. My friends are most likely asleep in bed twelve blocks from here, and my family,” he had been compulsively sipping his coffee at the stove and nearly finished it, “my mom’s in San Francisco with my two younger brothers. I don’t really know where my dad is.”
Erla spun her long white hair with her finger and said, “why don’t you get yourself more coffee and sit here at the table.” She surprised Corin and slapped a bony hand on the large wood table. Corin did as she said.
The backdoor sun fell flat on the whole of the table and their cups cast long shadows.
“So why’d you leave? Did your buddies kick you out? Better yet, why did you leave San Francisco?” Her voice was nasally like how you’d imagine three witches might speak to each other around a cauldron, maybe just a little sweeter.
Then after a long, piercing stare - clear through lazy eyelids - she cackled a little laugh and said, “You left because of a girl! I should’ve known.”
Corin broke out smiling.
“Now tell me Corin, when you left San Francisco, were you running towards or away from her?”
“Well, I don’t think she’s the whole reason, but given that she lives in Berkeley, I guess you could say away.”
“What is this young lady’s name?”
“Estelle.”
“The star,” Erla said sweetly, “Were you led astray?”
“Led what? I don’t know how much you want to know, but she broke my heart so yeah led astray or something like that.”
“Did she leave you for another man?”
“Yes,” Corin said.
“I see. You ran as far away from them as you could. That’s not a bad way to do it.”
“Well she’s not—” he said , “I mean I left her. I broke up with her.” ANd he leaned his chair back on two legs.
“Oh,” she raised her eyebrows, “that isn’t what you just told me.”
“Well I still loved her when she slept with some new guy. And I know what you’re gonna ask: ‘then why’d you leave her?’, that’s what everyone asks. I don’t know.”
“Do you still love her?”
“I can’t love her now.”
Erla leaned back with a quizzical eye, “Why’s that?”
“She betrayed me. She never loved me.”
“Oh young man,” Erla said, “you’re just a little boy really, aren’t you?” she laughed, “tell me, how is it you discover that she never loved you?”
“Because she slept with another man.”
“And so she never loved you?”
“If she loved me it would be too painful to do with him what we did together. Therefore she could never have loved me and all of the promises she made were false.”
“After all my years, I never cease to be amused by how you young romantic men are the most puritan of us all. Is sex love? Is that it? She loves him now?”
“Is it not?”
Erla smiled, “In the best case.”
“In any case.”
“Tell me, was Estelle your first love?”
“There is no first love because there is no second love. There is only one. No third love. If there were ever more than one, then they would mutually annihilate each other. I loved Estelle. But I’d been with other girls before.”
“Did you love them?”
“No.”
“Did you sleep with them?”
“Yes.”
“But if like you said, sex is love, you must’ve loved them then,” she was earnest now, with her lazy-eyelid sinking over her clear eye.
Corin tipped back in his chair again, “it was different.” And he tried to think why, “I loved them like friends, not like a man loves a woman. I guess you can say I had love for them.”
“Isn’t it possible—” she rested her bony knuckled hands about her cheeks and steadied her head there, “that your new love for Estelle - how did you say it,” she did sarcastic air quotes, “‘mutually annihilated’ your old love? So thatYour past love could never be real in the face of present love?”
“Yeah yeah. I’ve considered that. Estelle used to always tell me that she had never loved another and never would. I didn’t believe her about all the guys she used to see, and now I see she will love again after me.”
Erla chuckled, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she still loves you.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t trust a person who says they’ve never loved. Soon she’ll be saying she never loved me.”
Maria walked in in her pajamas and messy hair. She saw Corin sitting with Erla, the backdoor sun now only stretched across half of the table.
“Good morning darling,” Erla said.
“Morning gram,” Maria replied groggily.
Then in a quiet voice very close to Corin, Erla said, “people fall in love again and again, and again and again. That’s the only fun thing we’ve got going on here on earth.”