O:JA&L Flash Nonfiction
Personal essay, Memoir, or Vignette
Beth Duddy
Hand in Hand
From my second-floor porch I watch a young couple, mid-30’s I’d say, stride with purpose down 46th Street, holding hands. They are handsome: she in a knee-length skirt that exposes strong, shapely legs and he in skinny jeans, high top sneakers, and a messenger cap. Their gaits are perfectly aligned. A nondescript brown dog hovers obediently next to his right leg, and when the animal pauses to sniff a spot in the grass, the couple stops nearly in unison, she just a split second behind. How long have they practiced this symmetry of movement?
Moments later, I see an elderly couple make their way across busy Springfield Ave. She wears a shapeless black dress and moves faster, rocking side to side on stiff hips, pulling him along by the hand much as I once guided my children. He shuffles along in baggy khakis and a sweater, looking down as he carefully slides one foot in front of the other and impatient drivers creep into the intersection. I wonder how many years this couple has been holding hands and if they walked in tandem in younger days.
My husband and I never achieved this sort of congruence. Our hands never fit comfortably together, perhaps a portent of the marriage’s eventual end. He walked quickly despite his shorter stride. My long legs moved more slowly. We tried to develop a matching rhythm for a few months at the beginning of our relationship but soon gave up, and I spent the next twenty years trying to keep up with him.
After my divorce, I briefly dated an odd man called Rafael in San Francisco who carried a cooler of vegan food everywhere he went. He asked to spend the night on our third date, and I reluctantly agreed. In the morning, after I declined a kale smoothie, he suggested a walk down Valencia to find some breakfast for me. As we stepped outside, he put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. I had no choice but to place my arm around his waist, too, mostly because there was nowhere else to put it. But I couldn’t match his pace. The walk was bumpy, awkward, and very short. I disconnected quickly and broke it off with him later that day. The attempt at walking intimacy felt false, and I worried that he was already expecting more from the relationship than I was ready for.
Only once in my 64 years was there a man I was in sync with this way, and I got the chance to walk down the street with him only once. While our strides matched, Zephyr did not take my hand nor I his. I longed to reach for him but feared it was premature in our relationship, which had thus far been confined to my apartment and my bedroom, and that he wasn’t ready for such a public display of coupledom. We never did stroll with hands joined during our short and stormy connection. That we never had that opportunity to walk connectedly, demonstrating to ourselves and the world that we were a couple, is one of my deepest regrets.
Now, after six and a half decades, I‘m coming to terms with the fact that I’ll likely never walk in unison with a lover. Nor will I have a partner to lead or one to lead me if our gaits diverge. That’s one of many “never wills” in my life. I never will be President as I thought I could be in fifth grade. I never will be a rock star the way I planned in high school. I never will be a broadcast journalist who rakes in big bucks to be on TV. I never will live in San Francisco again. I never will walk hand-in-hand with Zephyr, the man who captured my heart so long ago.
As fall’s cooling breeze sneaks in and acorns fall from the oak tree across the street, more couples pass under my perch. I acknowledge that now, in the autumn of my life, it’s time to release my hope of finding the intimacy I see in them and accept that I am alone for the rest of my journey. My own hand wasn’t held much as a child. Two siblings followed me in rapid succession, and by the time I was two, my single mother’s hands were too full of other children to hold onto this “big girl.” I learned to walk alone then, and I walk alone now. In the end, we all walk alone.
About the Writer:
Beth Duddy publishes erotica under a pen name and is expanding her creative reach. Her first work of flash nonfiction will appear in the Fall 2024 issue of Barren Magazine. She is a copyeditor living in Philadelphia.
Image: The Oak by Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Oil on canvas. 33.4 x 39.3 inches. 1906. Public domain.
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