Friends reunited are still miles away.

“Walls, you need walls,” he said, pointing the top of his thick white hair straight at her, his eyes that knew life, lost in cement. “That’s what you need ... walls.”

Jessica reeled. Her gut split open and her heart fell out. Walls, she thought. Boxed in. Nailed down. Snuffed out. Does life live there? Is that where life is? That’s what you put things on so you can see them. That’s why he said it. You need walls to hang art on.

Martin still couldn’t decide which of the drawings to choose. He kept hovering over them spread out on one of the two large glass patio tables on his ballroom-size wooden deck. Lush flowers -- purple, fusia, orange and white -- spilled out of terracotta pots. The lush pastoral green rolling hills and tabby-colored Guernsies in full view added weight to his comment that Jessie should get herself some walls.

Thick brows, white as his knitted hair, shadowed Martin’s eyes as they ravished the drawings of her deceased ex-husband, his old friend. Why wouldn’t she stay in one place and have walls to hang Victor’s artwork on?  Why must she keep roaming from sublet to sublet, wall-less and deprived of a shrine? Why was she giving his artwork away when she should be kneeling before it counting her blessings that she had been his wife, his lover?

Jessica could read his mind. It was right there in his eyes, and god, she was tired of the unspoken, un-named brow-beating she felt in all that Martin was: a sticker-to, a non-challenging make-a-choice-and-stick-to-it man. No relationship is perfect, she thought. He should know that. He and Mark have been through forty years of ups and downs together.

In Martin’s mind, Jessie failed the marriage test. She caved in, wanted out, strayed from the fold. And now poor Victor, dead in his gave these twenty-two years had an ex-wife who was still looking for herself, wandering heedless of the grand necessity for walls.

The patio door swung open and Mark emerged, bare and barrel chested in bright shiny orange shorts -- sumptuous smells of freshly baked bread and basil-soaked fusilli wafting from his hand-held platter across the thick summer air. He was a fine cook, an excellent Host. He always put love into everything he did. Mark truly is the perfect wife, Jessie thought, filling herself with guilt. Why guilt? Why this heaviness that makes me choose a life of struggle and pain? Because I left Victor all those years ago? Because he ended up dying? Did I really kill him? Could he really not live without me? Wake up, Jessica. Victor had cancer. Let it go!

Mark’s bright blue eyes and graying temples reminded her of her father. Another loss, another death, too early in life, and tragic. Oh god, don’t cry, Jessie told herself. She tried desperately to stuff it down, but an overwhelming wave of sadness that had been drowning her for months, came back like a tsunami. Her body bloated with tears as every painful memory of loss enveloped her. Walls. A place to hang artwork on. A place to hang myself on. A tree perhaps. A tall spindly tree with no leaves. No life. No heritage. No future. No Victor to remind me that he is dead and it was my fault. No being around old friends who stay together for life. Jesus!

Everything that Martin and Mark had she wanted. The palatial country manor house. The extra rooms that housed umpteem visitors each week. The solid careers they still loved. The dogs that were their children and could be replaced when they died.The money for exotic trips. The physical tactile closeness. Someone hearing you breathe. Touching your skin. Finding a place in the crook of your arm where you could lay your head. She had been alone too long. Had told herself time and again that an intimate relationship didn’t matter. So why was sadness overtaking her now? Why was she feeling like the biggest loser on the planet? The dumbest of all because she was smart and made all the wrong choices?  When did she lose her sense of humor? Her sense of irony? Of balance?

She sunk back in the lawn chair as light talk flittered about her like hollow flies.

She could hear their oohs and aahs, their: “That one. I love that one.” And, “The animals. He drew such wonderful animals.” He did this and he did that. He was a god among men. He was Euripedes and Wordsworth and Picasso, and you killed him because you wouldn’t hold onto your walls. A person’s got to have walls to be in this life and be happy. Coat racks and walls. Refrigerators and hoses. Televisions and bridge tables. What’s WRONG WITH YOU???

They were right. But it was too late. She felt old. She had circles around her eyes and a pocket beginning to form in the fold of thin skin along the bridge of her nose.

She was no longer the head turner she was only a few years ago. She had lost her sense of sexiness, her womanly earthy essence when they removed it surgically and left her with a prescription for estrogen and the lie: You’ll feel yourself in no time.

No time was the truth. There never was a time she felt like herself again. And now, vulnerable in a thin and thinning skin, all that ever was packed down in her socks was up in her face. All the old stuff had come back to haunt her.

“Drink? Would you like a cold drink?” Martin asked, hauling out a pitcher of ice water.“There’s pop and wine.”

“No, it’s all right.” She couldn’t even let herself have water. I’ll just sit here and die a little more, she thought.

“I choose this one,” Mark said, gushing like a bride.

“Yes, it’s wonderful,” Martin quipped.

It was Jessica’s favorite drawing and she was giving it away.

But, why her favorite piece? It was definitely the best of the lot. Why couldn’t she keep it for herself?

Because it hurt to look at his artwork.

Why?

Because she killed him.

Wrong.

Because she gave up a lover who she loved.

Wrong.

Because she had no walls and didn’t know when she would have them again.

Right.

But, why not hold onto the hope that one day she would have walls of her own?

She couldn’t see how. How she could afford walls.

How could she afford walls?

It wasn’t her job to sell Victor’s artwork.

He had a tough enough job doing it when he was alive.

Now?

Jessica had to leave. “Great! It’s yours,” she said. “Enjoy, enjoy.”

“Are you sure you want to give this one away?”

“Yes,” she said, uncertain. Yes, the more I give Victor’s art away the more free of him I’ll be. Hanging his work on my walls would be like staring him in the face. I couldn’t bear that. Is that true , she thought. Or a myth I made up and am holding onto for some reason?Some filler in my life to keep from getting on with life. But why do I need filler?Because my compass broke and I don’t know where to go? Yes, that’s it. My compass broke. I’ve got to get a compass.

Jessica said some pleasantries and left. It looked like she was walking toward the door but in her mind she was running. Running from memories of the four of them when they were young and full of hope and beautiful. Running from everything she wanted and believed she would never have. It was too late. Too late for walls. Or was it that she wanted walls but of a different kind? Walls that were light and transparent? Walls that she could see the sun through? Hang the moon on? Be free to run with? What were they really then? They couldn’t be walls you could hang artwork on. Or photos from the past. Or visions of the future. Or awards. Affirmations. How about doorways instead?

Open doors? Doors you could fling off their hinges.

Was she fooling herself again? Running away from or running to? Why wouldn’t she, couldn’t she fit in anymore? Why did her body heat up just thinking this through?

Where is my home? she thought. What is home? she thought. It used to be where my mother lived. She’s dead now. It used to be when my son lived with me. He’s gone now. It used to be where I had a career. That’s gone, too. So where is my home? What is home now? I have no roof of my own. No thing that defines me. I’m told it’s all inside. My experience makes me unique and important. That alone is it. That’s my home. It’s inside me. It’s not an external thing. It’s not walls. It’s not people. It’s me. Just me. I am my home. Then why am I crying?