The Faces of Love

by Sam Bluefarb (February 2015)

“There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the face of doom, which invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given color to their lifetime. . . .”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 

an incurable romantic, something she would not have felt comfortable admitting.

been working on, the story behind it, than anything more insidious. Would this be a cynical exploitation of a vulnerability? But his whole (conscious) reason for choosing her was that he knew she would be the one to appreciate such a sharing.

than just the home situation. Too risky professionally, too messy personally.

reasons.

to be more than just another invitation to coffee. Curiosity and the hint of a flirty smile lit up her face.

satisfaction from it.

girlish enthusiasm coming through.

laughed.

eldest of her two brothers, a first lieutenant with the Army Air Corps, had been killed in the war, his plane brought down over Germany.)

On that mid-week afternoon, he and Judy would meet long after those who came for the hot lunches had departed. So the place, with the exception of an English language class in another wing of the building, was now silent.

teasing.

smile.

years, in it the description of that place, except that it fitted another time, another evening back in the late-forties, some twenty-five years earlier.

The International House was a sprawling, hacienda-like complex two miles east of downtown Los Angeles, just north of the darkened hillocks of Hollenbeck Park. It was a poorly lighted neighborhood of early twentieth century clapboard houses, with their roofs shaped like witches hats and their wide verandas. . . .

had not been a burning passion in the early days of their marriage, what had grown with time, was a love stronger than anything he could have imagined, something that went far beyond momentary passion.

*         *          *

maybe its delay?

the Lido, with its seafood and pasta places where they always stopped for an early dinner.

*          *          *

been in the navy and was also attending university on the G.I. Bill. Sal had sat in the seat next to him in that Age of Milton class. He was one of the few Mexican-American vets majoring in English and, like himself, intending to go into teaching.

with each passing year, until that first one had become a memory, yet a memory that would not completely die.

chosen Judy. She, better than some faceless reader.

but they had never truly opened that door, never entered that rose garden.

a moderately successful stock-broker with a large Beverly Hills financial institution.

own words, though she seemed to think they would console him.

She shook her head, as if there should have been a more satisfying ending, the loose ends neatly tied up, some sort of poetic justice, like the happy ending of a popular novel.

elbow.

Angeles. The light coming through those dust-filmed windows was crepuscular, as though any suggestion of cheer in such a place would be inappropriate at this time.

had been their first date.

Indeed, it only seemed to strain relations between them--and, in some subliminal way, may have had something to do with their break-up!

that could not be. . . .

and he waved back. He watched her drive off, then walked away. There was one more thing to do.

*          *          *

widowed or widowered, as was she. Some separated. She had a married daughter living on Eastern Avenue. The daughter occasionally picked her up to baby-sit the grandkids.

ceased to dye her hair, but her periodic visits to her hairdresser kept it neatly coiffed. She had invited him in, flashed a seductive smile, and moved toward him. . . .

with hers, parents from Guadalajara, etc. From what little he told her, she knew, without his coming out with it, that he must not have had any sex life in a long time.

thing more than pedestrian kisses and fondlings.

a beauty that had little to do with age, and everything to do with the ages.
 

 

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Sam Bluefarb is Prof. Emeritus, Los Angeles Harbor College.

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