Always

Michael Sedano

Once again her house thronged with Barbara's friendships, dozens of joyous people brimming with memory. Today, mourning puts a damper on ebullience. Not for long. We've gathered to remember and gente are remembering all over the place. That time we... Remember when she...How she used to like...

The living room, dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, sitting room, throng with people sitting, moving through, greeting and hugging and wiping tears. Every soul remembers Barbara's Christmas Caroling parties, the houseful of souls, the front room stuffed with people singing and children basking in the glow of these people, this room, the fireplace, everlasting love.

One person came with evil, Caligula I'll call it. Who can know why such a person moved among us? And the person moved among us, from room to room, not anyone's friend, few, if any, greeted him with a "long time no see!" He liked it like that, moving into the hallway where the closed doors meant please, don't enter. Every party here, there were closed doors.

Caligula pushes open the closed bedroom door, looks into the silence before pulling it closed with disgust. So neat and orderly like the rest of this enormous house. 

A good mind but twisted heart, Caligula pushes the office door open and sees with relief a messy desk. But his eyes spot a target of opportunity. In a flash, Caligula is inside the office, he grabs the man-purse off the desk, turns to the door stuffing the property under an armpit, and takes the three steps back to the door and is in the empty hallway.

Outside, people sitting on the patio tables take little notice of Caligula seen through the window, except to laugh at someone so incompetent they get lost looking for the toilet at the opposite end of the hall.

Caligula holds his arm stiffly to keep the bundle in place as he steps into the sitting room, eyes the patio realizing he might have been seen. He was. People laughing and conversing, smile at the furtive-looking stranger who glances side-eyed at them as he slips out the door, into the living room where he passes through like a shadow, and out the front door into the fresh air with his loot.

He is happy for the first time today, Caligula is. "I taught him a lesson. I went into the closed rooms and I found his wallet and he'll never know which of his friends is an evil soul with no quality whatsoever. I never liked him, though I guess he was right about me."

In 1985, Barbara found this house while I was out of town. I phoned home from Washington D.C. and her first words are "I found a house!" and I said "buy it." And we did.

Inside Barbara's house, love endures and insists on remembering the good times here. None of us knew that evil haunts such a place of purity today. Caligula is someone's child, someone's spouse, someone's parent, someone's friend. Caligula looks like everyone else here, like one of us. The thief ate, drank, remembered Barbara with the rest of us, just as if he were capable of love. The thief reads this line and cherishes my pain. 

As the Memorial Celebration for Barbara Sedano comes to a close, I sit at the piano to serenade the memory of my love. I played Irving Berlin's "Always" for Barbara and our friends sang along.

The next morning I cleaned the house and decided to take myself to breakfast. My memory is getting so bad, I cursed myself, I couldn't find my wallet. I looked everywhere.