Wendy

Sunday night

It was fall or early winter, and I was walking alone along a modified version of the Harrison Street Shopping Center in Arlington, one in which several sections of shops filled both sides of vertical dead-end streets, as opposed to one long horizontal strip. I was thinking about Wendy G., about how we'd had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. I was married now, and was feeling guilty about how I had left the situation with Wendy inconclusively. Maybe I should contact her and apologize.

*****

This dream is basically wishful thinking. Wendy and I never had a romantic relationship, no matter how much I wished that we had. She was the girlfriend of my friend Jeff back in the early '80s, and after they broke up, she dated his brother, Bernie for awhile. I was the friend and confidant -- same old boring story. We wrote long notes that we passed to each other, which certainly meant more to me than they meant to her. Wendy's dad had some job in the foreign service, so Wendy moved to Europe with her family, and ended up going to college over there. We corresponded for a few years, but eventually the letters stopped coming, and we lost touch.

One day in the mid-1990s I was sitting with some friends in the Metro 29 Diner on Lee Highway and happened to look across the room. There was Wendy, sitting at a corner table, with her family. I hadn't seen her in 10 years, and had always wondered what happened to her. At the end of their meal, Wendy's family got up, and she walked over to my table. She said, "I thought that was you," and gave me a hug. After that, my memory is a little hazy. I know that we exchanged pleasantries, and I said something to the effect of, "We ought to get together." Either I drove her home that day, or we met up the next day, and talked for awhile. In any case, I dropped her off at her parents' house, and she was supposed to call me about going to the movies that weekend. She never called, and I'll admit that my feelings were terribly hurt. In the absence of any other information, I turned the situation in on myself. I wondered, "Did she size me up and think I was stupid? Did I say the wrong thing? Was she turned off by my lousy car?" (At the time I was driving a used red Hyundai Elantra, and one of the front parking lights had a habit of popping out and dangling by the cord. Not too cool.)

Maybe she was just busy, or maybe she lost my phone number. I'll probably never know. I suppose that I could have called her, but I guess I wanted some proof that she was interested in getting in touch with me. I still lived at my parents' house, so she could easily have found us in the phone book.

I haven't seen her since. By now it should be obvious that I spent way too much time in the '80s and early '90s pining after the wrong people.

This dream may have been influenced by an episode of "The Sopranos" that my wife and I watched last night on DVD. Christopher Moltisanti had just gotten out of rehab, and Tony Soprano was asking him how he was doing on his 12-step program. Christopher said that the only thing he had left to do was to contact those he'd hurt along the way, and make amends.