I am crying so hard in my car in the Barnes and Noble parking lot that I cannot see, and I cannot breathe. My Acura sits catty-corner in its space towards the back of the lot, quietly idling as it holds in the force of my awkward sobbing. Across from me, on one of the grassy medians that divide the massive lot into navigable sections, sits a gray hubcap. It's leaning against a small lamppost there, and there are a few large chips in the plastic spokes. I wrestle to gain my composure, but every time I see it again, a fresh wave of grief pulls me back deep into my chest.
You had a fine hubcap collection. You had an affinity for the broken ones, the ones snapped in half or missing chunks, likely casualties of the crowded highway that our apartment overlooked. When you moved in, you brought five or six with you, but your collection grew into something spectacular over the three years that we lived there. You asked me shyly if it would bother me for you to hang them on the bedroom wall, and I told you nothing would have made me happier. It was true. I was pleased that you wanted to start putting up pieces of yourself, to let yourself take up the space I wanted to give you.
The first wall seemed to fill up in no time, and the second wall was two-thirds full when you decided to move out. The last hubcap you found with me never even made it onto the wall. I was driving down a residential street, a shortcut on the way home after picking you up from work. You sat silently in the passenger seat, gazing out the window, sitting next to me, and being very far away all at once. It had been one of the days where we had run out of kind things to say to one another- every word we spoke was tinged with impatience. Suddenly, you gasped, and I tensed up and hit the brakes.
"Hubcap!" you cried.
"What?" I asked.
"Hubcap! Look," you answered, pointing just ahead of us.
It was lying in the gutter, mere inches from falling into a storm drain to its right. I looked over to ask if you wanted to get it, and your face looked so different that it made my heart feel tight. Your excited pixie smile had broken through the mask of indifference you wore when you got into the car. Any feeling inside of me that wasn't reverence evaporated at once. There you were, for that moment- and for that moment, I was full. I was without need or want as you grinned at that hubcap.
"I'll be right back," you told me as you opened the car door. You never needed my permission for anything.
I put the car in park, and you crossed in front of the headlights, then walked up
the street to grab the hubcap. I watched you the whole time, entranced by the unbridled
joy in your expression. I had forgotten how happy I felt when you were happy.
"Bingo," you said triumphantly as you got back into the passenger seat, clicking on
your seatbelt before turning your attention to your prize. You turned it over in your
hands, inspecting the cracks and chips in the finish and the plastic.
"Another for the wall," I said as I began to drive again.
"Mm," you murmured, still looking down.
"That makes, like, what- fifty-something now, right?" I asked.
"Something like that."
"I guess you don't need to keep count at a certain point. So what got you started
picking up hubcaps, anyway? I don't think I've ever asked you that."
"You have not," you agreed. We were quiet for a moment before you shrugged and went
on.
"It makes me feel bad to see it lying there. It makes me feel lonely to think that
it's just going to get picked up and thrown away. I'd rather keep it myself."
I remember thinking that explanation was so you. You could never leave anything behind.
You, the rescuer of frogs and lizards from swimming pools, the patron saint of roadside
kittens, the most likely person to be compelled to save a teddy bear from a clearance
rack, the one who cried when we had to throw out an old rug, you would never leave
anything behind without suffering the most profound heartbreak. It was as though you
felt so deeply connected to everything around you that to leave it alone was to make
yourself lonely. Everything you could, you were determined to keep close to you.
Except for me.
I was the one thing that seemed to slip through your hands like water. You held onto
everything else so tightly. But when you left our apartment- my apartment- for the
last time, I could see nothing in you but relief. The tears for the rug, the insistence
on the half-off teddy bear- you had been bled dry of that kind of compassion for me.
I was something you could comfortably shed.
The sky is dark as I step out of my car and walk across the parking lot. My legs feel
like they are moving independently of the rest of my body, the hubcap a beacon. A
part of me wants to take it home. A part of me is hardwired to do things that make
you happy, and I've found an abandoned hubcap that you haven't gotten to yet. I had
never noticed them on the side of the road until I met you, and I believed that when
you left, you would take all of the world's discarded hubcaps with you, and I would
never have to see another.
I begin to reach for it but stop short. Somewhere close by, a payphone rings. It begins
to rain.
