Kiwi and Apple

I think often of when I was a younger woman, with no name but the ones I chose and no home but the ones I made. And I can't think of these times without thinking of Apple.

Apple was two or three years older than me, though I wouldn't swear to it. We didn't have birthdays during that time. I never knew his real name either. We shared so much, but never our names or our birthdays. And, when he disappeared, he was gone with no trace.

Apple had ruddy red hair and dark brown eyes. He stood about six feet, towering over my five feet and one inch. He had a crooked grin and one pierced ear, his "pirate look" he said. He played the guitar with such a tenderness as to make everyone around him cry.

We met on the eve of September's birth, as he put it. Always the poet, it was his way of saying we met at 11:45pm on August 31st. We met at a party thrown by a mutual friend, under a fake banana plant while a slow Sinatra song played. We met with our hands full of cheap vodka and our hearts full of search lights.

"You have the most beautiful violet eyes I've ever seen." he said, looking down his Roman nose. His eyes sparkled with alcohol and untasted sweets.

I flushed with pleasure and took a bashful sip of my drink.

Later that same night, around 3am, we stumbled into a deserted park and we played on the swing set. Under the monkey bars, with a million dying stars watching, he kissed me.

We never agreed to stay together, but we lived and loved for three or so years. On that night, we agreed to keep our names and our birthdays secret. We agreed to keep our histories and our futures a delicious treasure buried well. Sometimes the things we tried to hide bubbled up through the pain we often shared.

While we traveled, I found out that Apple's youngest sister was killed in a car accident. He found out that my mother's husband had raped me several times before I finally escaped. He knew my real name began with a Q, but we joked that it was 'quince,' like the fruit. I discovered his middle name was Adam and that he hated it.

"It breaks the flow of my name as a whole." he would say, laughing.

We decided to call each other by our favorite fruits, thus I was dubbed 'kiwi' and he was 'apple.' It helped that he had the coloring of an apple, ripe and fresh as the morning. We were unable to afford kiwis and apples most of the time, but we dreamed of them often.

We rode around the country in a turtle top van, a camping van. Nomads of the Western world. We put up a sheet behind the front seats to afford us some privacy when we slept. He pulled out the chairs and the table in the back so that there was room for us to lie on the floor.

The 'ceiling' we decorated with broken mirrors and fake stars. During the long winter nights we would snuggle up in the dark and use a flashlight, pretending we were beneath the starry sky. We were eternally chasing those stars. They defined us.

Throughout those homeless times we worked odd jobs and ate lots of peanut butter sandwiches. I worked as a waitress for three different restaurants while Apple played his guitar on the streets. At my worst, when I felt like giving up, Apple persevered. He was more reliable than the mailman. Through the rain and the snow and the blistering heat he was on a street corner, playing until his fingers bled.

His guitar was weathered, but the music it produced was uninhibited by its age and deterioration.

We discovered, amid our too brief time, that summer was when he earned the most. The pennies and the dollar bills would coat the bottom of his beat up guitar case. Sometimes someone would put a ten or a twenty in the case and we would celebrate with fruit or potato chips. One time he bought me a single, long stemmed, pink rose. I put it in a small tin box to dry. Mostly, however, we would stock up on gasoline, peanut butter and bread.

We had a fridge in the van, a tiny thing that barely held a gallon of milk. In the summer, though, it wouldn't work. It was as if the weather had to be cold before the machine itself would be cold enough to preserve food. It didn't matter, we rarely had the money for luxury items such as gallons of milk or ice cream.

The extra pennies we would put in a cracked Mason jar, copper dreams for a better future. Apple talked of leaving the country, buying a house boat and living in the middle of the ocean. I talked of fancy clothes and mouth-watering foods. We talked of so many dreams for futures we never planned on living together.

"Kiwi," he would say, rolling over to look at me. "do you want to get married someday? Have babies? What do you dream about?"

I would smile and kiss his nose, but I always stayed quiet. He knew the answers. He knew my desires better than any psychic. He could see my dreams of babies in beautiful houses with a husband and money. I dreamed of sleeping under a real roof, in a real bed. I dreamed of being in love with him, even though it would never be.

The day we parted I gave him everything I had. I gave him my soul in a tin box, smelling of dried roses and starlit kisses. I gave him my body, we sat holding each other tight, trying not to let go even as the spaces between our fingers grew longer. I gave him all the love I had to offer.

He drove off and into the sunset, heading west to some brightly painted city. There were no tears, no real goodbyes. I had already packed my few belongings. I had already kissed the dried rose petals and looked up into our homemade starry sky.

I didn't even wave goodbye as he drove off. I watched him, as though he was a brightly lit torch drifting over the horizon, and I wished him luck.

I married a man of means and we had three beautiful children. My husband found it odd when I gave our oldest son the middle name Adam and our youngest the name Quince. Our only daughter I nicknamed 'kiwi' for her bright green eyes.

I didn't see Apple, in person, again. Though my dreams brought his face to me every night. I still love him.

Under a sea of stars, stretched out on a blanket, Apple pulled me closer and we lay in silence. It was a moment that defined us.