by dizzy turek
That was the note. The note from Faith to Art that got dropped and Dado got a glance at but didn’t ask anything further that got retrieved by Marina who had a huge crush on me but that’s not of interest and I was really happy at the time nothing happened to it other than hair and dust and a bit of wetness.
That was the note that I speculated was a love note because everyone said Faith was in love with Art. I speculated that because I didn’t know anything about anything especially not love whatever that meant. When I told my first girlfriend I loved her, it was a total guessing game. I was guessing that whatever is supposed to happen will happen as it should so that meant when we were together all the time and we kissed and did stuff that meant something was happening between us and that something must have a name and love works well enough. She did not agree. Everyone speculated Faith was in love with Art because that’s what you guess is happening when people spend a ton of time with each other and you have nothing better to do then not ask them and speculate. Who knows? People send notes for all other reasons than love.
That was the note that I found forever ago going through jeans that don’t fit me. It made me think about how we live apart because pieces of paper can be the link between people not near each other or email but email is a skeuomorphic imitation. I took out the note at the time and put it in a drawer with other pieces of paper like cards from my grandma, grocery lists, plays, degrees, prayer books, scrap, playing cards, self help, fake suicide notes, bands I’m trying to not forget.
This note that was from Faith to Art is earthshatteringly embarrassing. I won’t be reading it. My grandma asked what it was when I found it in my jeans a few years ago. I didn’t lie, said it was an old note. She said she had a note from years ago that she always wondered where it went until one day she found it and then she lost it again and wondered where it went. I told her I was glad she found it and was sad she lost it. It was from my uncle. I see, I said and I played the rest of my hand and got shuffling. It was an apology, she said.
That was a note, to give this, from myself to myself. That this note is a fill-in-the-blank. This was a place to place what was between Faith and Art. Faith was Nate’s cousin. Art turned out to be gay. I never asked him what he meant by that. The note to myself was that the note was a fill-in-the-blank because I can’t speak for them. I’m the messenger which makes me responsible for the message not what’s in the message. The note I’m giving myself is watch out and give it room. After all, it’s a message I never wrote and as it so happens never delivered.
With this note, I was like Pheidippides. I ran when I was young. I don’t run anymore. What for? Back then, it was a marathon everyday. Everybody had steam. They would go from one edge of the playground to the next. They’d race on the concrete. Nate would cheat. We would run to get it all out. We would run as far as we could to the edge where the houses started. We’d run back except Dado would stay out there and I knew Ms. Hartman was going to give him detention. Nate would be back already. Where’s Dado? I warned him but he just stayed out there getting smaller as I ran back.
That was the note and it reminds me when I saw Art last at his brother’s graduation party. I had been invited for some strange reason by his brother. His brother said hello which was strange because I don’t really know his brother. His brother was nice enough, pointing me to the catering and the dessert table. I saw Art. It had been years. We sank right back into something like it had been. Art did instruments. All kinds and when a person can do instruments, it’s a miracle. It’s another language. I wanted to hear him play at some point but we stopped talking because I had somewhere else to go that evening and my brother picked me up and that was the last time I saw Art.
That was the note Art played. A piano on a YouTube video. He made it in Australia on a fellowship. A simple note played on a piano. It sounds about right on the YouTube video. It makes me long for the real thing. Each note is similar to the last but different in a way that I don’t have the words to describe because I don’t know music at all. Similar yet different. Art the common denominator.
That was the note Faith gave to me, after galloping up from the big tree near the playground after looking at bugs. Faith was a gal who was a bug looker. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Bug lookers are as a part of society as any other person. Bug lookers have a distinct Pokémon quality to their pastime. Nothing wrong with being a person who watches the ground to find its tiny inhabitants to pick them up and pin them to styrofoam. My friend Harvey did that. He had a GameCube which I tried to play as much as I could to make friends with him. Faith was a bug looker of the highest order. A loner and a freak and a girl freak which is extra painful as boys are meant to be alone. Alone girls are too sad to be pitiable and when they have notes to send, most people read them and publicize the information. Faith was a friend or at least a friend of Art’s so I kept the secret. Faith trusted me with a note after looking at bugs and barely said where it was to go to. I found out by the “to Art” that it was for Art.
This was the note that I held on to through middle school, lost in high school, found again in college, and found again here on the other side of college.
That was the note that Dado got a glance at and I never asked nor was close to him enough to ask what was on the inside. Dado is out there, somewhere, living a full life. He knows something about my friends I don’t know and I hope he thinks about it from time to time. Then again, people forget things all the time.
This note is turning into a prayer. A message goes to heaven. When the soul of a message is lost it goes to heaven if it is good and hell if it is bad. If it goes to heaven, it’s read by God and any who were expecting it up there. In hell, it just is never read.
There was not a note as far as I was made aware. Someone sent me a text message which is like a note but slick and plastic. There were several posts, there was even a website for the funeral, emails. Notation, passing back and forth. There’s a grave, a mark, a note somewhere that I need to visit. One of the last things I wrote about Art was a note that I sent in an email with as many memories as I could pull from my mind. Even then, there are memories missing. Simply a fill-in-the blank. A space where you feel a memory used to be.
I’m just grateful no one will ever read this. It’s between them, Faith, Art. I just hope they got to say whatever it was they needed to say to each other without me getting in the way.
After all, that was the note and now it’s nothing but a bunch of washed up pieces of paper. Left it in my jeans, through the wash. Flat, weak, worn, and I just have to throw it away now after all this time.
dizzy turek writes in Chicago but is originally from Ohio. he also does theater.