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The sky was fading quickly as Mendel took Trina home. They drove along the winding roads back to her house in the suburbs. Her parents were out of town, so the entire house was theirs for the night until Mendel had to go back home before work the next morning. Trina thought he looked adorable as his knuckles went white on the steering wheel. Mendel had just gotten his license in the last year and he did not want to get into an accident while Trina was in the car.
For the most part, the trip had been quiet. Trina fell asleep once or twice on the way from the drive in movie. Mendel just listened to Trina’s deep breathing. The day had been a bit rough for her, seeing as she had two tests and a quiz. Mendel just listened to her talk about how much she despised being in the same class as Marvin for English. But Mendel tried to comfort her, and it was in his attempts to comfort her that the idea of going to the drive in movie came about.
On the way up Trina’s driveway, which had a particular pothole that Mendel always managed to hit, Trina startled awake, looking around, blinking, and finally resting her eyes on the headlight lit front door. Mendel was still gripping the steering wheel tightly and it wasn’t until he was safely parked next to Trina’s parents’ garage that he finally--finally--let go.
Mendel sighed as he turned the ignition key. His car was an old station wagon, a “gift” from some family member or another. Trina always thought that the chipping paint job reminded her of a journey. Like they were the battlescars of Mendel learning to judge turning curbs and the time that he ventured too close to a mailbox. Trina had had a license longer, but she always let Mendel drive now, despite his apprehension.
Trina looked up at him, her eyes still cloudy slightly with a sleepy sort of dream. It was obviously about Mendel, she thought, remembering the idea of them kissing in her dream. They hadn’t gotten there yet. It was sort of like a slow romance, and then all at once, they were dating.
The sky was just turning a violet shade as Mendel ran around the car and opened the door, always trying to be a gentleman for her. Trina loved it. And Trina’s parents, initially upset with her break with Marvin whom she had been with for three years, were just starting to warm up to Mendel.
It least he’s Jewish, her mother had said, not even looking up from the dishes. Trina had rolled her eyes, irritated that her mother had already written off the first person who made her happy in years.
“The sky looks beautiful,” Trina said absentmindedly, taking Mendel’s hand as he helped her out. She stared up at it. Mendel looked up too, just now seeing the moon coming from behind a series of clouds. The stars winked at them absentmindedly from their place light years away. He smiled brightly, eyes lighting up. As darkness fell around them, Mendel wondered just how long he could stay. How long wouldn’t be “pushing it.” How long he might be able to hold Trina in his arms. He tried, and she didn’t pull away. In fact, as he put an arm around her shoulder, she leaned against him, nuzzling her face in his neck. “Love you,” she murmured. Mendel brought his hand up and started playing with the ends of Trina’s hair, just now growing out after she cut it short c. the “breakup.”
“I love nighttime,” Mendel mused, looking out at the land around them. Trina’s parents lived in a hilly area of town, and their house was perched against the back of the woods. In front of their house was what felt like it could a valley of grasses and flowers. “It’s always so much more alive .”
He felt Trina nod into his neck, agreeing lightly as her words seemed to get lost in a hum against his jaw. He felt his heart soar a little. There were little pulls in his fingers, telling him to just hold her closer, to press them together and to not let go. Trina didn’t seem to mind. She was tired and hopelessly in love with Mendel Weisenbachfeld. He may have been awkward at times, but somehow, he charmed her. He made her feel wanted, but more than that, loved.
“Wish we could just stay outside,” Trina mumbled, this time audible to Mendel. As she said it, it felt like the nighttime birds and insects seemed to start a symphony of music. A series of chirps and hums and melodies that only they could understand.
Mendel had an idea and pulled away from Trina, reluctantly, of course. He raced to get into the trunk where is overbearing parents had made sure he had at least three blankets in his car in case he ever got stranded. It was like they expected it.
He returned to Trina’s side, wrapping one blanket around her shoulders and setting the other in the grass in front of the house. The front porch light was on, giving them adequate luminescence, however it did not take away from the atmosphere. It was like a void. A void that seemed to take away the stress of the day. He guided Trina, who was waking up a bit more, to the blanket and they sat among the chirping crickets in the grass. Fireflies began to blink around them, and Trina, staring up in wonder as one flew by her face, murmured, “lanterns.”
Mendel looked down at her, confused. “They’re lantern bugs,” she mumbled. “It’s what I always called them. They’re like guides from this world to some other world.”
There was a little sparkle in her eyes, like she was remembering something. Mendel wasn’t sure exactly what to say. It sounded poetic, but he was also certain that Trina was still tired. And then he was surprised. Trina had leaned against his chest, her weight sort of sending them both into a slow descent to lying down.
“Comfortable?” Mendel asked as Trina snuggled up against him.
“Very,” was the reply. She leaned up and kissed his cheek, adoring the feeling of just being with him. It made her heart jump. It made her nerves twitch whenever they touched. It wasn’t anxiety. It was an eagerness to just hug and hold him. Trina would say that Mendel was the best thing that ever happened to her. Actually, would wasn’t right. She did say. To herself. All the time. Mendel had found her at a low point in her life and had just lifted her up a bit. Helped her perk back up. And Trina was forever grateful for someone who would even do her the honor of calling her by her correct pronunciation. Most of her teachers never did and even when she tried to correct them, it just seemed to revert.
Mendel held her close, soft prickles of grass against his back. The blanket was knit. A gift from a deceased grandmother or great grandmother somewhere up the line. They lay like that for a long while. Far longer than they realized because by the time they got up, the automated utility lights over the garage had gone dim. Mendel walked the still sleepy Trina up to her front door. They held hands, with what felt like a star between their fingers. A burning sort of connection. The heat of an entire collapsed galaxy just between their hands. And Trina didn’t want to let go. Mendel didn’t either, so when he was ready to reluctantly pull away, Trina held his hand closer. Trina pulled him closer.
She just didn’t want him to leave. “Stay,” she said. She didn’t mean the night. And maybe it was because she was tired. Mendel wanted so badly to stay. It was Friday night and he didn’t have to work at the grocers’ until noon the next day. And that didn’t matter to Mendel anyways. He was ready and willing to do anything for Trina.
“I should, but your parents?”
They didn’t like Mendel in the house. Trina was too much of a rule follower to go against them. So she looked at the antique porch swing with an appraising eye. Without letting go of his hand, she led him to the swing and sat down, pulling him down with her. Mendel didn’t mind. The swing creaked lightly as it swayed, their weight and Trina’s occasional push against the ground sustaining their motion.
“Aren’t you tired? Shouldn’t you go to bed?”
Trina frowned at that. She didn’t want him to go. At all. And she wasn’t above saying that right now, she just wanted to spend forever with the crickets and moths and lightning bugs around them. She wanted to hear that mother owl in the trees in the woods, hooting against the dark as if to attract her babies back home. Her eyes seemed misty, not as if she was crying, but as if she was thinking.
Mendel held her close, and realized quickly that he could feel her heartbeat acutely reverberating through his body. “You should really go to bed, Trin,” he said, shaking her shoulder. He was trying to be responsible, despite all urges to stay the night. Even if it was on the porch swing, he would do anything to hold Trina and see the sunrise from the antique porch swing with ivy growing up the post of the porch.
“I just don’t want you to go,” she said simply. The tone of her voice. The sound of it. Mendel looked down, realizing that Trina was no longer in her sleepy state. She seemed more aware. She seemed more alert.
“Trin, you have to go to bed,” he asserted.
“Five more minutes,” she said seriously.
Mendel thought it sounded like him in the morning. “Okay, five more minutes,” he agreed. Trina seemed content with that and snuggled further against him, taking the blanket from her shoulders and draping it around them. The blanket seemed to fend off the cold of the night, and Mendel wished he could stay there forever.
The night, long as it might be, would end, and Trina would have to go to her morning Shabbat service, a minor atonement for missing tonight’s service. Mendel reminded himself that if he didn’t get Trina to actually go to sleep, she would be distraught about missing.
When whatever he considered five minutes were up, he gently shook Trina awake and looked down at her fondly. “Come on, bed time,”
Trina looked upset. Protested. But in the end, accepted. She unlocked her front door and lingered in the doorway, her back to Mendel. She didn’t want him to go. This was the first time they had really spent time in that limbo of sunset into night. She wondered about it. She wondered about what it was about tonight that made her feel like an entire universe could be between their fingertips. Like they were connected. She turned back suddenly, kissed him on the lips, and pulled away.
“Goodnight,” she said quietly.
“Goodnight,” was the reply as Mendel slowly started backing off the porch, careful to turn as he approached the three steps.
Trina watched him as he disappeared around the side of the house, let herself into the front hall, and only once he was gone did she switch off the porch light, finally letting the darkness have their small corner of the world.