“The Purse”

He lay basking in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking. He gazed across at her chaotic hair on the pillow. She turned slowly, facing him, yet looking at her own inward thoughts. A slight sheen of sweat showed on her browned skin. She had been working the garden since the early spring. It was now the dog days of summer. He kissed her neck and she smiled, but in her distant way. They lay in that pleasant half dream state that sometimes lingers after the energetic coming together, as each party slowly recovers.

Beyond her, in the upstairs bedroom of their small country farm house, a purse hung from its strap on a wooden chair. It was the same purse that had brought them together, three years before, when she had spilled it on a city sidewalk.

It was an unusual purse. There was some very fancy hand leather-work, which had been done to an old postal satchel. The satchel had been re-cut and made smaller, yet the tooled words, “U.S. Mail” still showed on the flap, which was now held closed with a large silver and ivory button. It was a very elegant purse, yet quite subdued—–utilitarian, at first glance, yet a beautiful work of art, on closer examination. Someone special had made it for her, she had once said, but she refused to elaborate.

They’d been together now long enough to have gained that familiarity of behavior and mannerism that divides the short term relationship from the more serious and lasting. He now knew her smell and her look when she was sound asleep. He knew, now, the rhythm of her period, and how she squatted when she surreptitiously peed out doors, and he stole a quick sideways glance. And he knew the way of her own private crises at moments like the present. Yet, in-spite of all these intimacies, she remained, on a fundamental level, a mystery to him, still.

She talked little of her past. She was evasive and always laughed away his attempts to ferret out historic details. In fact, they had a standing joke between them, from the first time when he had asked where she came from and she had quipped that, “I don’t know. I never looked. “. Yet, she let it be known that there had been some past pain, and he in return, took the chivalrous and polite tact of not prying her further.

She had talked of a working class background, a small rural farm in the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps her parents were intellectuals. There was mention of involvement in organized labor struggles. Perhaps these had ended badly. She had been in a relationship with someone she had loved, but there the story became vague. Someone had left someone, for some reason. Perhaps there had been an abortion. She always managed, in some pleasant way, to make the past seem unimportant.

She had gone to college, a state university, apparently the first in her family to do so. But she’d stopped short of graduating, because something had happened. It seemed as if the law might have been involved and also that this connected with the dissolution of the old love affair. Names were never mentioned.

She had studied Latin, of all things. This was because of her interest in plant nomenclature. She was more interested in the plants than the Latin. The plants were her passion, the Latin only a tool. It amused him to think of her interest in Latin, because she seemed anything but scholarly, but yet, her thoughts ran deep.

He glanced again at the purse, hung from the chair. The afternoon sun shone through the curtains, and he reminisced over their meeting, back in an East Coast city’s financial district, where he had then worked and had a large office. Though not quite at the pinnacle of management, he was headed in that direction. He had at least two dozen personnel assisting him and under his direct supervision. He lived in a luxury apartment, with a view of a park below. He was something of a womanizer. Though the demands of his career made it hard for him to put time into the demands of a relationship, he had no trouble gaining female attention. He was handsome, he drove a beautiful car and wore beautiful clothes. He slept with many women, and some men envied him because of it. Most of his encounters eventually ended with no love lost. He knew that he had been judged heartless more than once. He had also been judged cut-throat by certain of his peers; his business ethic summed up by such cliches as “survival of the fittest” and “second place is the first loser”. His hard hitting competitiveness had brought him success but only a few friends.

The heady financial district, with all its movers and shakers, fostered quick relationships, high flights of luxury, the tease of ultimate desire fulfillment. But, the flowering was yet another dreary Monday.

He’d been on a sidewalk late in the afternoon, beyond the end of the business day, when he first saw her. She stepped from an older model car, that looked distinctly out of place in the financial district. Its faded paint was foreign to the surroundings here. How had she even found a parking space?

She too looked out of place. She had something of a country look about her—-homespun, but more solid than the city. Her perceptions of prosperity were rooted in real soil, rather than abstract financial strategy. There was an elusive polish to her appearance. She was above average height, or carried herself tall; he was not sure which. Soft curls of hair fell casually about her shoulders, yet there was no high priced haircut, no tailored garments. It was a look that could not be purchased. She had a number of silver bracelets loosely dangling from one wrist. She wore a linen blouse that revealed a strong and lean musculature—-athletic almost—-but above all graceful. And it was that gracefulness that made the spilling of the purse so unusual.

As she crossed from her car to the curb, her purse strap slipped from her shoulder and spilled the contents across the sidewalk in front of him. She laughed at herself, and he stopped abruptly in his stride. Their eyes met, raised in mutual surprise. Her expression seemed to unapologetically, even laughingly say, “Well, there you have it!”. All this, her undeniable beauty, her good health and strong spirit, caught him in her spell. From that instant, he was caught. They spoke and again she laughed at herself. He made all the moves, in his expensive Italian suit, and his fine leather shoes. He, so used to his position of power, was the acquiescent one. “Could I help you?”‘ he begged. She was open to him, but hardly charmed; just open, and just barely. She could have said no, but she would not have taken the trouble to say no. And so that was when it all started, three years ago. That was the abrupt turn in the road of his life.

Their relationship had started slow. A phone number was exchanged. But, over months, a strange growing passion led him to follow her, away from his own destiny. After much deliberation, he eventually left his position with the prosperous firm. Their lives became entwined. He was caught up in her mystery and beauty. After a year, they moved west and purchased the farm house. He had sufficient investment, such that they didn’t have to worry.

He was not blind to what he’d sacrificed career wise. His former colleagues could barely cloak their disapproval, their disbelief, and when confronted with this he sometimes became confused. Yet, he had no regrets for all he had given up for her. In retrospect, his former life, with all its enviable success, had been something of a madhouse. And so he effectively burned all the bridges of his carefully constructed career. Although the loss, or rejection of his former world had come at great price, he tried to not look back. She made it worthwhile, in his mind.

As he lay watching her on the bed, he was happy and in love, as was she, though slightly less so. This was never acknowledged however. And he ignored his apprehensions.

Their lives were bonded by the work they shared. They cultivated medicinal herbs, and sold them to a distributor. The money kept them from digging deeply into his savings, and she seemed to prefer this on principle. The life they lived made him peaceful and satisfied. They kept a fine vegetable garden, and they ate well, and were healthy. The country life served him better than the gym in the city. She taught him how to cook simple and delicious food. The visits of his old acquaintances from the city became less and less common, and he did not care when they ceased entirely. At times it still amazed him that he had chosen a path so divergent from some previously established formula of desire. He felt that he had found a better path, and, of course, it was she who had shown him the way.

She made things clear to him—-new sets of values and new perspectives. He ate less and less meat. He came to admire the Dali Lama, as a premier guide to life. There were fundamental life concepts which had been entirely unexamined by him in the past. How could he have been so blind? This he often asked himself now. In the city, he had focused exclusively on the virtues of material gain. Gain for gain’s sake. She, by contrast, regarded material gains as unworthy of consideration, beyond the basics of subsistence. And so she gradually transformed him into a new creature.

Her value system was the antithesis of the camel unable to pass through the eye of the needle. When he had long ago exchanged his Mercedes for an older, yet dependable Chevy pickup, she was nonplused. Once, when mentioning the old purse, she had explained that it had an enduring quality beyond fashion, and that she was happy to not replace it. She had an elegance that she created from within, all of her own; a richness and value which lacked all affectation. All these things he absorbed, and he liked himself better for the change from his former self.

She seemed genuinely good natured. She had a laughter, which came easily. And though simple in its expression, sometimes, underneath, there was a tone that verged on sardonic, as contradictory as that seemed. Somehow, this was inextricably connected to her obscure history. There was a private distance, with an unstated suggestion that the present must inevitably change again as abruptly as it had when they met. And here is how that happened.

She rose from the bed, took a brush from her purse, and carelessly moved her hair back from her face. She wore her nakedness with no thought, while the perfect picture of modesty. She turned now at the sudden distant sound of an approaching engine out on the long road leading to their farm. The rays of the afternoon sun played across her face as she looked down from the window at a car approaching up their dirt drive, a trail of dust behind it. A ripple of shock passed through her skin and she clutched up her clothes. He sat up quickly. She starred out the window unusually silent. Something was changing. Something which had long been vaguely anticipated, was now suddenly and violently changing. A cloud drifted across the sun.

Tears began to well in her eyes, and he looked at her with alarm. He rose and grabbed his clothes. She then turned to him with a look of infinite sadness. She faced him square and with the quietest voice imaginable, explaining the universe in a grain of sand, said simply, “You knew he’d be back. ”

Yes, he had known. Through unspoken words, he now knew that she had always let him know. There were in a lifetime, intricate spider webs of obligations and loyalties, of hopes and desires, of longing and commitment, locking each in amber. She would now return to a former life, which she had never really left. In a tragic instant, it was all revealed to him, that he would now be left behind.

What would become of him? He could not return to his former life, for she had been an epiphany through which he had left behind a vile nature, and discovered, through her, a better self. She had been his compass star, but now he knew the way himself, and so his new life would remain, independent of her—-the new values, the new perspectives, they would remain. He was a better person, because of her. She had once, jokingly told him that enlightenment was a one-way street. It climbed ever upward. It did not descend. And so it was with him. He had climbed, and would not descend.

He had followed her, and now, she would return to someone from her past. She was anything but heartless, yet she would leave him for another. The former love was greater. Things in her past had once fallen apart, just like her purse spilling onto a sidewalk, all things scattering randomly.

As he stood stunned next to the disheveled bed, and as she descended the stairs, he saw, in a flash, how the spilled purse had been a miracle, that had brought him to this new place. Before he had met her, he had taken women and left them. And he knew that her now leaving him, was a reckoning. He wondered for a bit, and then realized that, the careless accident of the spilled purse, which had changed everything, changed his entire life, had been no accident at all, but her clear intent.