Reports of lovers' trysts
Were neither clear nor descript
We kept it safe and slow
The quiet things that no one ever knows
-Brand New, The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
"Come on inside," said Tiffany. "I want you to meet Sam."
The heady excitement of my first date with a new girl mixed with the cool, mysterious calm that always
seems to come around at 11:30 on early October nights. I wasn't exactly sure what I was
feeling, but I did know that the beautiful girl I had spent the evening with was inviting me
inside her parents' house to meet her family. That felt pretty good.
Much of Tiffany's half of the night's conversation
had been devoted to her two-year old half-brother; how she had put off attending a four-year university so she
could stay at home and help her stepmother raise him, how he woke her up at exactly 6:00 every
morning, how she would really miss him next year when her two-year stay at the local community
college ended. After making with the introductions to her folks, the four of us crept into
the master bedroom.
Sam lay in the exact center of his parents' bed, his head in the crease between the two pillows.
Tiffany later told me he had spent the entire day at the zoo. The four of us, Tiffany and I on
one side, her father and stepmother on the other, hovered around the bed, mesmerised by the
innocence of a two-year-old boy sleeping. Tiffany bent over and kissed his forehead. Something between
a bottomless pit and a knot formed in my stomach.
I had known Tiffany for less than a month, but on this night I was ushered into her life, meeting her
parents and watching her little brother sleep. I had taken Tiffany on a single date, and here I was at
the ground level of her universe. What had I done to earn all this?
The walls of the house were covered with pictures of Tiffany and Sam. Tiffany and Sam playing
outside. Tiffany and Sam at the beach. Whether I was an obvserver or a participant in this
world, I was not yet sure. Walking through the house, looking at those pictures, I felt strangely
detatched. It was as if my consciousness was floating outside my body, and I was watching myself partake
of something far too intimate to be real.
I was a stranger in a strange land.
In the time Tiffany and I were together, I never had the chance to see Sam when he was awake.
My only memory of Sam is of him asleep in the master bedroom, blissfully unaware of the world around
him. Unaware of my existence, while I was keenly aware of his.
There have been many times since, when thinking of Tiffany and the love we shared,
I think of Sam, lying prostrate on the bed that was much too big for him. Even then,
it did not escape me that our respective worlds were passing each other like two ships
in the night. It was a moment I will never forget, yet it is something he will never remember.
Socrates could never think of a word to describe a paradox so simple, yet so profound.
Truly, it was one of the quiet things that no one ever knows.