A Marriage Carol (9 page)

Shaking, still holding the pot, I placed it back over the fire as Jay left. The water grew warm again and steam washed over me. I closed my eyes, wondering if Jacob could still be alive. He needed medical help, but with the phone out and no cell I couldn’t imagine what we could do.

The scene was the pasture again and Jacob’s shoe
moved under the covering of snow. A good sign.
“Get up,”
I whispered.

Headlights shone on the road above, and then a terrible sound of rubber on ice, trying to grip, trying to stop the momentum of the downhill slide. The car careered into the thin trees above, headlights wobbling over the snow, then toppled over the hillside toward my husband.

The steam sizzled and evaporated in front of me. I put the pot down and ran to the back door, looking over the landscape. I could see nothing through the storm, not even headlights.

Frantic, I scooped snow from the back patio into the plastic bowl and ran back to the fire, pouring it quickly into the bowl and jamming it on top of the fire and holding it close until the white began to melt.

“Come on,” I whispered.

Something moved behind me. Rue was back, sniffing and whining at the garage door. When I turned back to the fire, the steam rose and I entered without any thought to the process, whether this would work or not. I peered into the wafting vapor, looking for my husband and the old man who would be his paramedic and savior.

But I did not see the pasture.

STANZA 5:

A woman with long,
brown hair carried a feverish child back and forth across the kitchen in a small apartment. The baby’s croupy cough startled me, the chest rattling like marbles in a tin box. A vaporizer sat by an empty crib and the woman pulled the child close. By the window was a scraggly Christmas tree draped with a secondhand garland.

When she turned, I recognized something in the face. Was this me years earlier with Becca? I didn’t recognize the apartment. Had I chosen the wrong gold pot?

A phone rang and as the woman picked it up, the baby began a crying, coughing, wail. “His fever is up. I can’t get it down. I don’t know what to do.”

The voice.
Her
voice. My own daughter was a mother.

“No, I’m not calling her,” Becca said. A pause at something said on the other end. “I don’t care if she could help, I’m not calling her.”

Slowly, the scene in the apartment faded and I was in a loud, dark room filled with laughter and music and people shaking off snow on the wet, wooden floor. At a table in the corner, raising two drinks toward each other and clinking glasses, were two young men, ruddy and handsome, grizzled with a week’s growth of beard.

“To another Christmas Eve,” the younger one said. “It’s good to see you.”

“Same here,” the other said, taking a long pull on the drink.

Silence between them. Not much eye contact.

“Feels like yesterday, doesn’t it?”

“What? The accident?”

The man nodded. “Twenty years ago tonight. Our lives changed forever.”

A glance at the table. “Yeah. Wonder how Becca is tonight.”

“I don’t think she and her husband are doing well, to be honest.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised, can you?”

The younger one shook his head. “You okay? “

Another long pull and a shrug. “Sure, as long as I have one of these in my hand.” He stared at the glass. “If I had to be honest, I’d say I feel lost. Like there are a thousand roads to choose and every one of them leads to a dead end. Every time I hear snow forecast or see the lights flicker during a power outage, I’m right back there in the living room under those covers.”

“Christmas was never the same after that year, was it.”

A nod. He drained the glass.

“Have you talked with Mom lately?” David asked.

“No. Still hard to get past everything that happened.”

“Yeah. But it’s been twenty years. Maybe it’s time.”

“Can I get you two something else?” a pretty waitress said, bouncing in place as she stood by the table.

“Time for a couple more of these,” Justin said.

“Be right back,” she said.

The maelstrom at the bar and the two at the booth faded, along with the peanut shells and booming music. Though I wanted to see my husband, I had stumbled onto something entirely different and unexpected.

As if seeing my children wasn’t enough, the next scene
took my breath away. Jacob, the husband of my youth, was much older and stoop-shouldered. His face was stubble-filled and ravaged by time. His skin was spotted and wrinkled and there was a darkness to his eyes, something vacant. He ate his meal in silence and sat by a small tabletop Christmas tree. Scattered pictures lay on the coffee table. Images of what had been.

I noticed nothing significant about the scene until he stood. Moving from the table to the kitchen was a Herculean effort. His right leg was almost useless as he dragged it beside him. He was missing fingers on both hands. I reached out in the shadows but made no connection.

“Oh Jacob,” I said.

And then I was gone, through the swirling snow again, inserted into another scene of a woman putting away groceries. Even though I did not see the face, I knew her. You can always tell your own figure in a view from behind. If I had compared the slender hips of my youth to the ones of midlife, I was now comparing them to twenty years in the future. Gravity had continued its work, but I felt a certain pride at my appearance. My hair was shorter, grayer in places, mainly at the roots, my arms a little flabby underneath, and when I turned
I noticed the lines in my face and extra skin at my neck that could have used tightening. All in all, not bad if going strictly on a score of physical attributes. What concerned me most was the look on my face.

A sound of announcers and cheering came from the living room. The unmistakable cacophony of televised football. At the bottom of the grocery pile was a case of beer, and no sooner had I put away the other bags than a much more portly Erik waddled into the kitchen.

“Hope you didn’t run the heater in the back.” He ripped open the box and felt the cans, then cursed. “These go in the fridge downstairs. And could you bring up the rest of the Coors when you come back?”

It was at least a request and not an order, but something about the way I acquiesced to his demand made my jaw drop. Then, as he walked out, I muttered something as I picked up the case of beer.

“What was that?” he said, turning.

“Nothing.”

“No, what did you say?” Erik stood in the doorway, where he could both yell at me and have a good view of the unfolding game. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The kind and considerate man who had sent e-mails and
supportive messages was now staring me down.

As I bent to pick up the case, he grabbed my arm. “Don’t ignore me. Tell me what you said.”

“Nothing,” I begged, tears in my eyes, trembling. There was real fear here, as if this were only the latest salvo. Perhaps this contributed to the hollow in my eyes. “Please, let me go. I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better be,” he spat.

Glancing around the kitchen, I noticed pictures of the three children in inconspicuous places, hiding here and there, as if there was a moratorium on the past leaking into the present. Something in my stomach twinged, like a light of knowledge being flicked on, and I saw what no one could tell me about the greener grass on the other side of the relational fence. Like taking some wild animal into our home and trying to domesticate it. The only life in the home was not the sound of children or grandchildren, but a football battle and the occasional belch. And me trudging back up the steps with the remaining case of beer for the man of my dreams. How had this happened? Had I spent twenty years with … him?