The Past and Pending
Gordon Donnelly


Held to the past, too aware of the pending. I can’t remember the first time I heard it. I can’t remember the exact moment it became more than a lyric, the song more than a song—the moment when, as songs are apt to, I was listening and, without turning up the volume, it became all at once heavier, the dead air in car or the garage or whichever dull arena galvanized, sweet and swirling, and wet, sticky with meaning; and no sooner had it strained its massive weight to lift itself high above my little body, and had I looked up see that it was for me, did it sink and, with a force and determination then alien to me, sweep down and through my love-drunk, swaying form, some of it staying, resolved to stick in my bones and my blood, where for three weeks I felt it’s full energy animating my every awkward move, standing up the hairs on my arm, my sense of everything heightened; everything’s full significance reigning down upon me until, in a blurred fury, I was buried. And still, under it all, the thing seeped, and for three weeks I leaked like a sieve: cold sweat and tears, sweet residue. 
​
 I’d only known Tori a few months—only seen her sporadically—before the split. But she was my first love. My friend Aidan had just split with his first, Estelle. We were too young to understand much of anything, much less what this all meant; too young to know where to go next, and yet still old enough to feel it, to feel everything: the enormity, the newness, the addition of our blind confusion, each palpitation. And of course, we were men: young men, and athletes. And so that Fall, our defeat registered in pulsing echoes around campus when, each day for three weeks, we walked down to the tennis courts after school and, in rhythmic grunts, with tentative ground-strokes, sorted out our plight.  

 I can remember humming to myself, dancing on the baseline, the song moving within me, moving and gaining now, leaking out in a low whisper, buzzing for a moment then fading, dissolving in a breath in the thin Autumn air as someone takes light to the first fire of Autumn we settle down to cut ourselves apart and receding again, but never for good, always turning, always combusting, always some foreign candle burning in your eyes. I looked across the net. We were both ignited. 

I stroked a flat, brutal forehand. “I don’t know what the fuck happened. Everything seemed fine.” Aidan made a graceful twirl to his right and knifed down, a defensive backhand, severed green fibers spitting up, detached and floating, while the rest sliced back, back away from the cold lust, from your house and summertime and clipped the net, deflecting, ejecting in a Cartesian arc and landing finally, with a soft thud, just beyond the service box. Compelled forward, I smashed a forehand down the line, watching him bend and stagger blind to the last cursed affair, pistols and countless eyes watching him reach, watching him whiff, the ball upending a layer of cold condensation on a link in the back fence. I put my hands on the net and bowed my head, panting. “I just feel like I did everything right here.” When I looked up he was coming to the net. He skidded a bit on a leaf. “Honestly, it sounds like you did.” 

“It’s just… all Summer,” I said, looking up at the sky and then back down at him, imploring. “All Summer, all of that, and now all of this. Just doesn’t make any sense.” 

“Trust me, I know.” He looked at me, and I looked back. Cough and twitch from the news on your face. I didn’t say anything.

“Trust me. It sucks now, but I think it gets better.” 

“How do you know?” 

“I have no idea.”

“Well, what if this is only the beginning? What if is gets worse?”

 He thought for a second.

“Well, I went to a movie by myself yesterday and cried during most of it. Don’t think it gets much worse than that.”

“Dude.” I stared. 

“Whatever.” He pulled his hat down. “Your serve.” 

We were walking back to the baselines. I turned and looked back at him. “Hey, have you heard that song Past and Pending by the Shins?” 

“No,” he said. “Any good?”
 
“Hauntingly,” I said. “I’ll show you after.” 

Where traditionally there had been an exchange of smiles there wasn’t, and in the next moment I was spinning, then rotating, putting all of my weight behind a first serve. It missed. I watched him take two steps forward. Alright, take a little off this one. I bounced twice and tossed, arching my back. Take a little off, take a little—offer me little but doting on a crime, we’ve turned every stone but for all our inventions I whipped the head over, lurched violently, spat venom. The ball screeched, spinless and hideous, over the net, lost for a moment against the service line in lines dissecting, lose yourself in lines dissecting, in love. He barely had time to brace for impact—his racquet had already recoiled, the ball dancing off its frame and hanging for a moment in orbit, behind it woods, rows of oak descending into the fog another low road descending into the Charles River. Inside I watched, and I know I marveled. At the trajectory, at the clarity, at my body as it hummed forward and cocked for an overhead. Head level, shoulder up, keep your eye on the—foreign candle, some foreign candle burning in your eye. It fell gracefully, knuckling. I loved how it fell. Cold vivid trail of October vapor trail of white blood betrays the reckless route the craft is running in its wake, that lovely wake coming down to meet me. Eyes up, muscle memory, I knew just when to swing. My eyes closed. I swung. We’ve turned every stone and for all our inventions--
I heard the ball hit the frame, clenched my teeth and bit down hard: blood, bitter enamel. When my eyes opened I was watching the ball sail over the pines and into the ether. Easy overhead. Should have finished it. I looked at Aidan. He was watching it too. We stood there for an extended moment and watched its flight. It was beautiful. 

“Fuck,” I said. “Sorry dude.” 

“Ah, no worries,” he said, waving at it. He turned back to me. “Should we call it?”

“Probably should. Only have two balls left. Getting dark anyways.”

“We’ll play tomorrow.”

“Sounds good.”

We walked to my car at the edge of the parking lot, behind the hockey rink, facing the woods. We got in and talked for a bit. I don’t remember what was said. At a lull in conversation I reached under my seat, grabbed a CD and popped it in. James Mercer’s voice flowed through the speakers, slow and heavy: Held to the past, too aware of the pending. Chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale.
 
“I like this,” Aidan said. We listened.
 
“Can you turn it up?”

“Yeah.” I did. It sounded like an echo. We sat in silence. We’ve turned every stone, but for all our inventions, in matters of love loss we’ve no recourse at all
​. 
On the drive home, I found myself giddy with solitude. I drove slowly, took wide turns, enjoyed the foliage in the red and dying evening. I stared into the rearview-mirror, the silhouette of my head strange and lovely against the backdrop, falling away, the street lights revealing, in ephemeral glimpses, the patches of road I’d just navigated: the potholes I’d circumvented, the loose gravel I hadn’t. Twice the sheen of high-beams erupted in my periphery, drawing so close the second time I felt it expedient to get off the main road. Here I was swallowed by pastoral, affluent New England, that peculiar amalgam, my only company the occasional cow pasture; the indecipherable street sign; the swamps and the lily ponds and the elaborate estates that dwarf them. I sped on through Dover, then Sherborn, down the huddled, shadowed roads I knew only from old fishing trips. I saw the same houses twice, three times, the same intimate café—bleeding light, smoke, ice cream-groping townies—carved out of the dark, adjacent wood; the businessman climbing, staggeringly drunk, into the black Suburban, the track-suited wife shuffling the kids in their soccer uniforms into the back seats, clambering in herself. She steals a cold glance at him, or I imagine she does—sleeves rolled, stubbled, guffawing as he throws it in reverse, triumphant in his imperfection—this man brandishes his flaws, flaunts them even. And she loves him for it, for that amoral nonchalance. Does she love him? How could she? I circled again—I was lost, and I didn’t care.

About the Author:
Gordon Donnelly is a student at Emerson College. His work has previously been published in Hollow magazine. 

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