Common Ground

         She went for walks in the Common often—too often, Greg thought. But he wasn’t allowed to say that out loud. She had never specifically told him not to, but he understood that her solitary walks around the park were sacred territory. He had tried, once, to ask her about them.

         They had started out as weekly walks. Every Sunday morning, after he had read the sports section and had his coffee and she had read the travel section and had hers, he would start working in his little home office and she would slip out the front door and across the street to the Common. The walks cleared her head, she said. They got her mind ready for the long week ahead, teaching high schoolers in Dorchester. It was a hell of a first job, that was for sure, so Greg never begrudged her the walks or asked questions about them. But now they had turned into daily walks, each one almost longer than the last, and so he brought it up one day.

         “Hey,” he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek as she walked in, trailing orange leaves freshly blown off their trees by the October wind.

         She didn’t respond, just smiled and hung up her coat.

         He tried again.

         “You’re out a lot,” he said.

         “Yes,” she said simply. Yes, and what of it?

         He shrugged in answer to the silent question. “Is everything alright?”

         “Fine,” she said. “Totally fine.”

         “Are you sure?”

         She stopped fussing with her jacket and turned to see him. “Yes,” she said. “I am.” There was finality in her voice, like a gavel coming down hard on a judge’s desk. This case is closed.

         He had not brought it up since.

         But now it was January, and the ground was covered in snow. She had left after lunch and had not been home since, and Greg was concerned.

         He knew that she felt caged inside the small apartment. She had told him so one day, probably without even meaning to, when she was drying dishes after dinner. He had stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, dipping his chin into the space between her neck and shoulder.

         “You should do this more often,” she’d said, putting down the dish she was working on for a moment.

         “Ok,” he’d said drowsily, simply glad to be with her in that moment.

         “I don’t know where I am.”

         “What?”

         “I don’t know where I am,” she’d repeated. “Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck, sometimes I feel like I’m falling away. I don’t know.”

         “You’re not. You’re here,” he’d said. 

         She had nodded slowly and picked up the dish again, not even noticing when he kissed her on the check and left the room.

         Is that what she thought about on her long walks? Was she trying to find herself in between the sugar-dusted bushes and kids having snowball fights? Could he find her for her, bring her back to herself wrapped up like a belated Christmas present?

         She seemed so fragile now, and he had no idea why. He didn’t want to break her.

         Restless, he grabbed his coat and hat, throwing them on as he dashed out the door. He was immediately aware of the fact that he had forgotten his gloves—the air was freezing. He rubbed his hands before jamming them into his pockets and jogging towards the park.

         They had rented the apartment on Beacon Street because it was so close to the Common, just a five-minute walk in a straight line from their front door to the edge. As he neared the gate he realized that she could be anywhere in there—it never occurred to him that she could be long gone, in some other part of the city. She was there, somewhere in the pristine white vastness that in the spring was so alive with colors and people. Nice people, too. Greg always thought that Bostonians were happiest in the spring, when they had just slogged out of another long, grey winter. They were happier to be alive and happier still to find that other people had made it out alive too. At least, he was. He was always glad to see daffodils and burgundy tulips again.

         Now, though, he saw nothing but trees covered in white and the little bridge that went across the lake, where the swan boats usually floated. It had snowed hard the night before, and there were only a few skaters making their way over to the Frog Pond on the other side of the street. Most everybody had decided to stay in today, only going out in the below-freezing weather if they were desperate to finally be outdoors again. Or just a serious skater.

         He couldn’t see her anywhere, though she should have been easy to spot in her red hat and patchwork scarf. She had made them both. The hat was supposed to be for him, but it was one of her first projects and it had come out too small for his head.

         They were sitting next to the little Charlie Brown tree he had surprised her with that morning, a year ago, just after they had moved in.

         “Here,” she said, handing him a red bag with green foil tissue paper. “I think I messed it up.”

         He opened the bag, wondering what it could be, and had to stifle a laugh when he opened it. She had messed it up—royally, in fact, because the hat looked small enough to fit a toddler.

         But Greg, good sport that he was, insisted that it was fine. “Look,” he said, “I’m sure it’s stretchy. Or something.” He put the hat on. It ended inches short of his ears, and when she saw how ridiculous he looked even she couldn’t help laughing.

         “Oh, God,” she said. “I did screw it up. Give it back!”

         “No!” he said. “I still want it.”

         “Why?”

         “Because it’s cute.”

         She gave him a look that pointedly asked how that could possibly be. “It didn’t work,” she said.

         “It means you thought of me,” he said, as if afraid to admit that he was touched by her effort and care.

         “I did,” she said, “but it still doesn’t fit.” She snatched it off of his head.

         “You try it on,” he said.

         “No. I’ll fix it and give it to you for your birthday,” she said, finding the knot that held the thing together so she could rip it apart and start over.

         But he had stopped her before she could. “Hey, chill out,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a nice hat and someone should get some use out of it. Just because it’s not me doesn’t mean it’s a failure.”

         He took the hat out of her hands and put it on her head. It wasn't perfect for her either, but if she tugged the brim down a bit more it would be fine.

         “See?” he said. “There’s no need to be such a perfectionist.”

         She had nodded, but she had also cried anyways.

         An icy wind snapped Greg out of his reverie. If he stayed there staring at the lake, or rather, beyond it, he would freeze. Time to keep moving.

         It was easy to see why she liked the Common. It was peaceful, he thought as he shuffled through the paths. It was easy to get lost in your thoughts and, if you had too many of them, to spend hours there in the open air waiting for them to float away like dried up flower petals. But not in this weather.

         He trudged along, still thinking. He should have never brought up New York. Maybe that was it. Maybe he had worried her with his offhand comment enough to really make her scared.

         “What do you think of New York?” he had asked her not long before the daily walks began.

         They were watching TV at home on a Tuesday evening, both of them exhausted and trying to stay awake but neither one admitting to it. Why he thought that was a good time to bring it up, he couldn’t say, but the words were out before he could think better of it.

         “New York? Why would we move to New York?”

         “The firm wants to move up there,” he said. “The partners just won a big case and now they have enough saved up to move the whole operation down. I would have to go too.”

         “They wouldn’t let you stay in Boston?”

         “No. I’d have to go with them or find a new job.”

         “What about me?”          

         “Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

         She frowned. “Figure out,” she said. “Like it's a problem.” She was grouchy. It had been a long day. She knew they would get nowhere if she kept this attitude up, but she was too tired to think clearly. It was so much easier to just be mad.

         “No, not like a problem. Like…like a puzzle, or—“

         “I can’t leave,” she said.

         “I didn’t think so,” he said. He knew she couldn’t. He knew that Boston was her city, the one she had picked out for herself long before she ever met him. In college she had told everyone who asked, including Greg, that she was from “around here,” and he believed her. It wasn’t until later that she confessed that “around here” was actually code for middle-of-nowhere, California, a place she had no intention of ever returning to.

         “We’re both working on masters degrees here anyways,” she said. “We’d have to transfer.”

         “They told me they’d take care of that,” Greg said. “They'd pay for my tuition somewhere."

         “Just yours,” she said, like she already knew the answer.

         “Just mine.”

         He had been working too hard on this to give it up, and she knew it. She should have been happy for him. But at that moment, she just felt tired.





         What it really came down to, she thought as she wore a circle of hard packed snow around what used to be a tulip bed in the center of the Common, was what she loved more: the freedom she felt in Boston, or the love and security she felt with Greg.

         Greg has a good job and he’ll get a better one when he’s out of school and he’ll take care of me. If he marries me.

         But Boston is beautiful! Boston is home, it’s still independence and adventure and all of those beautiful things that made you pick it in the first place. You could have gone anywhere.

         But you came here and you met Greg. Maybe that’s a sign. Boston has served its purpose. Go to New York.

         Does New York have the Common? No.

         It has Central Park, smart one. Central Park is just as nice.

         No it’s not.

         Is too.

         Fine. But does it have Fenway? Does it have the open-air market in the North End?

         It’s got its own history and it’s own markets, probably. New York could be an adventure.

         But I don’t want an adventure anymore. I want Boston.

         And Greg.

         But he’s not being flexible in this decision either. It’s pretty clear that he’ll leave you all alone if you stay here in Boston, which means that he doesn’t really care about you that much anyways. You might as well just stay here.

         That’s not true. He wants the best for both of us. He does care.

         Does he?

         She left the circle of ice she had created and headed towards the Frog Pond. Her thoughts were still spinning. Usually a walk was enough, but sometimes, when her thoughts really wouldn’t shut up, she went over to the frozen pond and watched the skaters. Sometimes instead of trying to sort out her thoughts, she needed to ignore them and try to get into someone else’s head.

         As soon as she saw him, she stopped. What was he doing here?

         “Rose!” Greg said, spotting her motionless red hat in the snow. “God, Rose, it’s freezing out here. Let’s go back to the apartment and talk, ok? Please?”

         Finally, he wanted to talk. But by now she had nothing to say.

         “I can’t change your mind,” she said. “So I need to figure out my own.”

         He shook his head. “If this is about New York, then believe me, I haven’t made a decision. Hell, I’m as worked up about it as you are. I just brought it up to see what you thought.”

         “You’re telling me you’d stay here?”

         “I’m telling you—“ he stopped. He didn’t know what he was telling her. “I’m telling you that I don’t know.”

         “We’re both stuck,” she said with a trace of a rueful smile. “We want each other and we want our lives. We can’t have both.”

         “Yes we can,” he said. “We can figure something out.”

         “We tried the long distance thing in college, remember?” she asked. “I was in Venice for a semester and it didn’t take either one of us long to forget that we were already attached.”

         “We’re different now,” he said. He hoped.

         He remembered those fiascos all too well. They were named Giancarlo and Linsie Beaumont. He never asked Rose about Giancarlo. He had taken what she told him without further questions. They met at a café. She was lonely and he was Italian. Greg hadn’t called in a few weeks—that was his own fault; he knew he could have done better—and Rose was mad enough to have a month-long fling with Giancarlo. When she’d called to break up with Greg, that was all the information she gave. No last name, no real reason. So he had gotten blackout drunk, called his old girlfriend Linsie, and started a fiasco of his own.

         “Are we?” Rose asked.

         The weeks after, when she came back and realized what a mistake she had made, weren’t easy. It was like starting all over with Greg again, trying to figure him out as if she had never met him before. Yes, they were both different. They were different after their mistakes and they were different now that they had gotten past them, graduated, and decided to try to become sensible adults.

         “Maybe that ruined us,” she said.

         “Rose, please, let’s go talk about it all inside. I don’t know how you could stay out here for so long.”

         She looked up at the sky, and Greg thought that if she had been wearing all green from neck to foot she would have looked even more like her namesake, like the last stubborn rose trying to find the sun.

         “I think better outside,” she said. “There’s air here.”          

         Greg rubbed his hands together. “There’s air in the apartment, Rose. Do you hear yourself? There’s air everywhere, there’s air in New York!” He immediately regretted saying it.

         “It’s colder here.” Her voice sounded far away, even though she was a few feet in front of him. She looked straight at him. “I’ve never felt like myself anywhere but here,” she said. “I don’t just mean Boston, I mean here, in this park. If I walk around Central Park, I’ll change. I don’t know who I’ll be. You’ll change too. Doesn’t that freak you out?”

         “People change all the time,” he said. He had given up on trying to get her back to the apartment. If she could stand it out here, so could he. “You changed when you came to Boston.”

         “I know,” she said. “And I like the change. I don’t want to mess with it. This is normal now. This is perfect.”

         They stared at each other, neither knowing what to say. Rose was right. They were stuck.

         “I don’t know what else to do,” she said.

         “Me either,” he said.

         “Give me ten more minutes here,” she said. “Give me a more time to think.”          

         “You can have all the time you need,” Greg said. “It doesn’t have to be out here.”

         It started snowing then, very softly, and she put her hand out to catch the first few flakes.

         “It snows in New York, you know,” he said. He didn’t mean it unkindly.

         “I know,” she said. Neither one said anything for a minute. "This is where I saw snow for the first time. Remember?”

         Of course he did. They had been walking around the park one December day, freshman year, and all of the sudden it started to snow, fat flakes drifting down with a gentleness that seemed impossible for their size. Her wide eyes and shocked face made her look like a five-year-old seeing Mickey Mouse for the first time. She was ecstatic. She was beautiful, lit up from inside by pure awe.

         Everything happened at once. Greg fell in love with Rose. Rose fell in love with Boston. And both, without even knowing it, promised to never leave their new worlds.