Tuscaloosa Craigslist Missed Connection #23 – Cinchonism – Not My Party – m4w – 22

"Mother," by Thomas Zimmerman.

It must have gotten lost in the mail. Things get lost there sometimes: I tried to send a phonebook one state over and it never surfaced. Just the other day I heard about a woman who received a letter from her grandmother with a five dollar bill in it—her grandmother had been dead for seven years. It was the granddaughter’s birthday. If I had a five dollar bill I would have put it with the invitation: it would’ve been a way to let you know that I was thinking about you, that things here are good and that I hope that things are good where you are. I understand the process. I have learned to forgive the process. You should have been here: it was nice. Everyone brought their own drinks. You always opted for gin: you only trust things that you can see through: windows, keyholes. I kept a green bottle in the freezer for you—the ice built up on the side of it, my palm turned red when I tried to twist the cap off of it to make someone a gin and tonic. There was no tonic, so the party was ruined. You were supposed to bring the tonic. You would always bring the tonic: you would arrive at my house, plastic bag in hand. You would make jokes about how we would never die from malaria—that the mosquitoes would drop dead the second our blood hit their tiny stomachs. I would be nervous, so I would peel the label off of the bottle and stretch it out length ways—a yellow flag: slow down. I never told you this, but my grandmother drank tonic water when she needed the taste of a drink without the alcohol. When I was younger, I took in a large mouthful thinking it was soda, looking for something sweet. How clever I was. My mouth filled with quarters, dimes, nickels. I licked the back of my hand to get the taste out of my mouth. My grandmother sends me a card every year for my birthday. Inside of it is five dollars. Some years it is a few days late: it arrives the 23rd, the 24th. Some years, I think she has forgotten about me. Yet, darling, the card always arrives.

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