“But they’re just not the same,” I add, having an idea.
It takes her a second, but finally she says, after a subtle nod, “Yeah. I guess it’s just that this place is such a significant memory—Shit, Andrew, I don’t even know what I’m saying!” Her thoughtful expression dissolves into frustration.
I pull out a chair at the table in front of the window and sit down, leaning forward and draping my folded hands between my knees, and I gaze up at her. I begin to say something to add to her explanation, but she beats me to it.
“Maybe we should never come back here.”
I didn’t expect her to say that. “Why?”
She presses the palms of her hands on the windowsill to hold up her body, her shoulders rigid, her back slouching. Confusion and uncertainty start to fade from her face as the seconds pass and she begins to understand.
“It’s like, you know, it doesn’t matter what you do, even if you try to replicate an experience down to every last detail, it’ll never be the way it was when it happened naturally the first time.” She looks out at the room in thought. “I remember when I was a kid. Cole and I would always play in the woods behind our old house. Some of my best memories. We built a tree house back there.” She glances at me and laughs lightly under her breath. “Well, it wasn’t so much a tree house as it was a few boards fixed between two branches. But it was our tree house and we were proud of it. And we played in it and in those woods every day after school.” Her face is lit up as she recalls this moment of her childhood. But then her smile begins to fade. “We moved away from there and into the house my mom lives in now, and I always thought of those woods and our tree house and the fun times we had together there. I used to sit alone in my room, or be driving somewhere, and get so lost in those memories that I could actually feel those feelings just like I felt them years ago.” She places her hand on her chest, her fingers outstretched.
“I went back there one day,” she goes on. “I got so addicted to the nostalgia that I thought I could intensify the feeling if I went, stood in the spot where our tree house used to be, sit down on the ground where I used to sit and drag a stick through the dirt to leave secret messages for Cole to read if I got there before him. But it wasn’t the same, Andrew.”
I watch and listen to her intently.
“It wasn’t the same,” she repeats distantly. “I was so disappointed. And I left that day with an even bigger hole in my heart than I had when I went there looking to fill it. And every day after that, whenever I’d try to envision it like I used to, I couldn’t. I shattered that memory by going back there. Without realizing it until it was too late, I replaced that memory with the emptiness of that day.”
I know exactly that feeling of nostalgia. I think everybody experiences it at some point in their lives, but I don’t elaborate or go into my own experience with it. Instead, I just continue to listen.
“All morning, I’ve been tricking my brain into believing that we’re not really in this room. That the bar we went to last night wasn’t Old Point. That the sad news about Eddie was just in a dream I had.” She looks me straight in the eyes. “I want to leave before I destroy this memory, too.”
She’s right. She’s absolutely right.
But I’m beginning to wonder if…
“Camryn, why were you trying to relive it?” I hate it that I’m about to say this. “Are you not happy with how things are? How we are?”
Her head snaps upward, her eyes filled with disbelief. But then her features soften and she says, “God, no, Andrew.” She moves off the windowsill and stands in between my parted legs. “That’s not it at all. I think it’s just that because we came here I subconsciously started trying to re-create one of the most memorable experiences of my life.” She rests both hands on my shoulders, and I reach out and hold both sides of her waist, looking up at her. I couldn’t be any more relieved by her answer.
I smile and stand up with her and say, “Well, I say we get the hell out of here before that brain of yours knows you’re full of shit.”
She chuckles.
I move away from her and immediately start tossing our stuff in our bags. Then I point to the bathroom. “Don’t forget anything.” Her smile widens and she rushes immediately past me into the bathroom. In just a couple of hectic minutes, everything is packed. We each have a bag and a guitar, and without looking back, we leave the room. Neither one of us even glances at the door of the room next door that we didn’t rent this time. When we make it downstairs and into the lobby, I step up the counter and request a refund for the week in advance that I paid for. The clerk takes my credit card and refunds it back as I slip our card keys across the counter to her.
Camryn waits impatiently next to me.
“Stop looking at shit,” I demand, knowing she’s risking the memory.
She laughs lightly and squeezes her eyes shut for a moment.
“Thank you for staying at the Holiday Inn New Orleans,” the clerk says as we leave the counter. “We look forward to seeing you again.”
“Holiday Inn?” I pretend. “No, this is the… Embassy Suites in… Gulfport. Yeah, this is Mississippi. What’s wrong with you, ma’am?”
The clerk’s features crumple and she raises a baffled brow, but doesn’t say anything back and we exit the building.
Camryn plays along once we get outside and start loading everything in the Chevelle: “I say we drive straight past New Orleans when we get to Louisiana.”