34 Seconds (10 page)

After short and simple sex on the couch, Chris checked the refrigerator for the food he’d requested be available when we arrived. There were two steaks, two potatoes, broccoli, eggs, cheese, four apples, and a bottle of wine. Virginia wine! What we were going to do with three bottles of wine in one night was beyond me, but maybe we could take some of it back to Colorado where it would be a rarity.

“They remembered the wine! I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to get us anything with alcohol. With so many bottles, we’ll have to be sure to put it all to good use. Let’s get cookin’!” Chris said, while wrapping his arm around my waist and kissing my forehead. I could be good with this, I thought. He was happy and excited to be there with me.

Chris cooked the steaks while I made our salads. It almost felt like those early dating days. We worked so well together; we laughed; and we went through an entire bottle of wine just while preparing our dinner. Bella had just stopped nursing a month earlier, so the wine hit me pretty fast. But it was so good! We ate dinner and drank another bottle of wine on the porch of the quaint little cottage. Chris must have apologized forty times for not having any steak sauce. He liked his meat rare with a bit of seasoning, and I liked mine almost well done and covered in steak sauce. Still trying to relax more, I kissed the tip of his nose and told him not to worry. Dinner was wonderful, and the company was great. Our conversation turned to his work and our children. When we found alone time and could focus on having adult conversations, we usually talked about what we knew. For me it was our children, and for him it was his work. As mundane as it might feel, it was actually very nice and comfortable. I didn’t want to talk about the sadness I felt just being back home and seeing all the change but no growth around the area, so staying within my comfort zone was good. Being in the little cottage on the south shore, a river away from my dad’s house, my aging grandmother, my sister, and my children, I felt like I was on the other side of an ocean. I felt at peace. But I missed my children. A lot.

***

Chris brought a blanket out to where I was sitting on a little country porch swing singing a song I remembered my uncle singing to me when I was little. I couldn’t seem to get away from nostalgia. Chris wanted to know what I was singing, but I couldn’t remember the whole song, just the line about swinging on a front porch swing.

“It was a song about falling in love, young love, on a front porch swing. You don’t remember that song? It was country, early ‘80s maybe, but I don’t remember any more of it,” I told Chris.

“In the ‘80s, I was listening to heavy metal, Nikki. Do you really think I knew any folk, country, or porch swinging songs back then?”

“I don’t think I knew the song either, but my uncle used to sing it to me all the time. Funny, I don’t think I knew what it was about back then, but the one line in the song stuck with me all these years. Now that I think about it, it was about a boy falling in love with a girl on her parents’ front porch swing. Life was simple then, wasn’t it?”

He wrapped the blanket around me and pulled me into his arms, and there we sat, just swinging. I’m not sure how long it took, but we both fell asleep right there on the swing. Parenting can be harsh. Stress is tiring. Traveling is exhausting. For the first time in a few years, we both found ourselves without responsibility, without children needing a cup of milk, a snack, a bath, a bedtime story, or just a hug.

At some point I woke to the sound of Chris snoring and roused him awake. The two of us crawled into bed. I lay there awake for some time, listening to the sounds of nature, the water’s soft waves hitting the beach, the wind blowing through the trees, and the countless bugs singing a nightly tune. I’m not even sure Chris was aware he had moved to another room. His head hit the pillow, and he commenced his snoring sequence. After waking every hour for three years to nurse one baby or another, once I woke in the middle of the night I found it hard to get back to sleep. I couldn’t turn my mind off once I was awake. I lay there hoping the girls were sleeping soundly, thinking of my sister and her kids, and of her husband sleeping in a rental house two miles away from the house they’d built together. I knew I didn’t want to be there, in a divorce, waiting for my kids to come and visit me or driving them to their dad’s house for a sleepover. I had to fix myself, heal my thoughts, stop focusing on the past, the things I didn’t have, and start focusing on how wonderful the man lying next to me was. And he was wonderful. He was just not always checked in; into the marriage, into the family. I often felt like he was somewhere else, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. But then I’d also spent a lot of time inside my own past lately.

I watched my husband’s chest rise and fall as he slept, then left the room. I walked through the cottage and headed for the beach. Before children, before marriage even, I would have been more assertive. I probably would have climbed on top of him, enticing him in his sleep. I didn’t have any assertiveness in me anymore. Instead, I found myself alone in the middle of the night wondering why he got to sleep, why I was awake with my thoughts, and wondering if we were missing the important things in life. Or maybe I was acknowledging the important things in life, like letting my husband sleep when he could because he spent his days working so hard he only slept four or five hours a night.

I sat on the beach, pushing the sand onto my feet, watching the moonlight sparkle on the water. I did love Colorado, but peace could always be found for me on a quiet beach. A real beach with real beach sand, not the crushed rock and hard pebbles Colorado beaches had. I’d been to many Colorado beaches over the years, and I couldn’t get used to the ice cold fresh water from snow melt, nor the pebble beaches. Nothing spoke calmness to me quite like a real beach. Chris and I honeymooned in Kauai, Hawaii, and every night I walked down to the beach to sit and stare at the vast nothingness. Chris felt obligated to come with me and keep up with the romance of the standard honeymoon, but after the third night, I told him to stay inside. It was just something my body, mind, and soul were connected to, and he didn’t have to come with me each night. For the next five nights, he stayed in the condo we were renting and watched TV while I walked our private beach and put my toes in as many sandy holes as possible. Chris even joked about all the butt prints I’d left in various sections of the beach each morning. I sat there at the beach near our Windmill Point cottage thinking of the many nights Will and I sat on a beach. We sang songs, wrote songs, talked, laughed, played, and fell in love more with each trip to a beach. I remembered a night the first summer we met.

***

Brian was still visiting with Will and his grandfather. Will was trying hard to spend some time alone with me, but Brian always seemed to be near. We were sitting on the beach in front of Will’s grandfather’s house talking about our interests, favorite bands, favorite books, what we wanted to be when we were truly grown up, where we wanted to live, and all those things we had in common. I was feeling so connected to Will, falling for him more and more with each word coming out of his mouth. By then I had memorized each mannerism, each unique sound, and couldn’t wait to explore more. Will started to tell me this story about a young girl whom his grandfather knew who had drowned on that very beach. He was such a fantastic story teller. I was enthralled within moments. Before I knew it, I was sitting on the beach in the 1950s with Will’s grandfather, a much younger man than the one I had met, and this beautiful girl thrashing in the shallow waters. I had no idea Will was just tricking me and roping me into falling into the story through his voice until Brian jumped out of the boat sitting on shore next to us. Before I could ever get a scream out, Brian was throwing buckets of water on the two of us. Will jumped up, tackled Brian to the sand, the two of them laughing while I sat still, mesmerized, not even certain of what was going on. Brian yelled something to me about the story not being true. Will was laughing, telling Brian he was just talking to keep me there longer, since we were alone. I could see the bond between the two friends. Neither were angry; they laughed while they wrestled down the beach, and no one seemed to notice I was sitting there soaking wet. So I stood up, peeled off my wet clothes, leaving on my underwear and bra, and started walking into the water. I got Will’s attention. Brian even joined us in the water, dunking us both and laughing at Will’s attempt to scare me into his arms by telling a ghost story on the beach.

***

I don’t know how long I was out there on the beach by the cottage reliving the past, but eventually my body found exhaustion again, and I crawled back into bed with my snoring husband. It was after nine o’clock the next morning when we both woke. It was only just after seven in the morning back home in Colorado, but it was the latest we’d slept in for years. For the first time in a long time, we were able to lie in bed and talk for a while. Once the guilt of responsibility set in, we headed for a couples shower, where we made love for the third time in two days. My heart was filling again. I felt I was needed, wanted, and desired again. I felt a connection with my husband again and recognized this was the break I needed. I realized for the first time, my standards for what I considered a break were too high. What I needed was time with my husband without our children, without our home, and without all the lists of things to get done looking us in the eyes. I needed to live in the moment, without the thoughts of noticing anything around me except for the love my husband had for me and the wonderful life he’d given to us. I felt whole again. We moved the love session back to the bedroom where I became the assertive woman I used to be. And I focused solely on my husband. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t think of my children, or how much laundry was piling up, or whether or not I had to take the girls grocery shopping, where I could probably forget at least one key ingredient for each meal. I didn’t even think of Will.

***

About three hours later, we were driving across the Rappahannock River Bridge on our way to pick up our girls. I missed them so much but felt rejuvenated and connected with my world, with my husband. Life was good again. My heart was filled with love. I was recognizing struggles within myself, and instead of pushing them away, I was learning to address them, stand up to them, and face them down. I decided I would move forward in a positive way, continue to love my life, what I have, what Chris and I have made, and raise our beautiful family. I felt connected to Chris in ways I hadn’t felt in years. I felt connected to Will in ways I hadn’t felt in years either, but I realized it wasn’t a bad thing. I wasn’t losing Will. I had already lost him years ago. We would still be friends moving forward. I would continue to love him as well, and he would still love me, but in the same ways we have loved one another for the past several years, not the ways we were in love so long ago. That was how it was meant to be.

Chapter Six

We arrived at Natalie’s house and saw five children playing well together in her backyard, tucked in amongst tall but thin pine trees. They were playing on a play set her husband had built sturdy, but crooked to look as if children built it. It had a fourteen foot long slide standing seven feet off the ground. The kids loved it. In the summer time, Natalie hooked a hose up to the top, and the hose sprayed a mist, wetting the slide just enough to get a good speed going. Once they hit the bottom of the slide, the kids found themselves sliding across the yard on wet tarps sudsy and slippery with dish soap. She had the best back yard for kids. I’d tried it once and learned more body weight sends one quickly down a wet slide, and onto a soapy surface leaving them in the mud beyond the slippery tarps. I never tried again. But it was only early May. Her water slide hadn’t been set up yet, so the kids had to settle for sliding down fourteen feet into dirt. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. I hugged Natalie and gave her many thanks for taking our children and helping Chris set up a wonderful night away. Then we sat on her deck and watched our children play. I didn’t want to ask about her divorce or husband unless she brought it up first. I had learned many years ago when they were trying to get pregnant not to mention any issues or touchy subjects unless she brought them up first. She eventually got pregnant after all kinds of fertility treatments and, oddly enough, the other pregnancy with the twins followed very quickly, very naturally, and came very much as a surprise.

She started the conversation on her own with, “Can you believe the bastard wants to take the play set to the house he is renting?”

I knew it wasn’t going to be a conversation filled with positive energy and moving forward. It was going to be an “I married an asshole” conversation. I knew I’d started a few of those myself with her, so I had to go along, especially since she kept five kids overnight and helped Chris plan such a great evening for me.

“He couldn’t possibly move it without causing structural harm, making it unstable, could he?” I asked. “How could he break it down and put it back together with the same integrity it has now? Yep, he’s a jerk.” I could tell Natalie wanted to vent. Chris got up and walked inside, probably to give us some girl time.

“Oh, you should hear all the stuff he expects now. He says I should pay him alimony and child support. He wants me to keep the house, but he wants everything from outside. He says I’m not using any of the outside stuff. What the hell does that mean? I’m not using any of the outside stuff? He’s just an idiot and being spiteful. I told him when we started this whole damned process to take the house, but he wanted to move closer to his Mamma. So he took all the cookware, dishes, anything of value, and moved to be closer to his Mamma. I say let him stay there, and she can buy him all of his outside stuff. He already has all the inside stuff!”

Yep, like most women, Natalie venting was just that. Many men don’t understand when a woman wants to vent, she doesn’t want anyone to talk unless you plan to verify she is in the right, and if you can’t, you just don’t say a word. Venting sessions also do not have endings with solutions. Many men don’t understand that either. They want to jump into the conversation with a solution. I am a woman, so I understood. I just sat there for the next fifteen minutes, and let her vent. Every now and then I would nod or moan along with her resentment or with compassion, but basically I just let her talk. My heart broke for her. The conversation left me reminded of just how much work my own marriage needed.