Reinventing Mike Lake (14 page)

              I didn’t take nearly as long as I thought I would to pull up the courage to make the call.  I knew that I wanted to marry her, and this was just another step to get to that goal.  He answered the phone on the first ring, quicker than I expected, but still I wasted no time getting into the reason I called for fear I would pass out.

              “Hello, sir, I called to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

              “Okay, do you want her whole body in marriage, or just her hand?”  He asked.  I was so put off by the question I didn’t know how to handle it, hardly noticing this was his attempt at a joke.  Instead, I asked the question more clearly, or as clearly as I could at that point.

              “No.  I.  Um.  I wanted to ask your permission to make sure I had your blessing in marrying your daughter.”

              “What if I said no?”

              My heart dropped.  If I wouldn’t have been already sitting on the couch, I would have dropped too.

              “Well, um…”  Then I heard him break into a laughter which at that moment was one of the best things I had ever heard.

              “Ha, ha, ha!  I really got you; you must have been sweating as bad as the first time you met us!”  I hadn’t realized our relationship had reached that level of humor, but I was obviously thankful he had just been joking.  Or, testing me. 

              He continued, “Her mother and I sort of expected this sooner rather than later.  Her mother’s request is that you let her finish school, and I stand by that as well, but we both think you will make our daughter very happy, and of course, we expect it.”

              I appreciated the joke, in time, but also was sure to hear the seriousness in his voice when he gave me his answer.  After wiping the sweat off the receiver, I assured him it was our plan for her to finish school, and then have a wedding a few more months after that.

              “I guess you expect me to pay for that too, huh?” this time letting me hear the sarcasm in his voice, figuring he had pulled me through the ringer enough.

              Upon hanging up, and with one of the hardest parts over, I now had to work on doing something more romantic then just blurting out “Will you marry me?” when she walked in the door after working with horses all day.

              I finally figured out how I wanted to propose.  It wouldn’t be for a few weeks, but still I thought it was perfect, even if the wait seemed impossible.  We were planning on going to my house for an annual Cherry Blossom Festival my little town holds during the last week of April.  Generally my town had a population of a few thousand.  During that weekend our population grows to about 10,000.  This was the weekend I decided I would propose to my wife to be.

              Leading up to that trip I might as well have just put duct tape over my mouth because I hardly spoke for fear of ruining my surprise.  A few times my quietness came up in conversation, but I just made an excuse about how someone at my job was bothering me and I was dwelling on that.  I hated lying to my wife to be, but I knew that I would be more upset if I ruined the surprise I had in store.

              After what seemed like an eternity, the day came when we would be heading to my parents house for the festival.  I don’t think I ever packed a car so fast, eager to get to my proposal destination.  I was tempted to see how fast our little Toyota could go once we hit the highway, but not wanting to look overly eager, I tried my best to hold my composure for the five hour drive, not wanting to spoil the surprise. 

              After the longest drive in my life, we arrived at my parents’ house at about two in the afternoon.  The festival would still be open until six o’clock, which was plenty of time to see my plan unfold, but I was still predictably nervous and anxious to get on with it.  After exchanging quick pleasantries with my parents, so quick my soon-to-be fiancée said I was rude; I was ready to drag her out the door.  I had told my parents I was going to propose, and assuming I called them in an hour or so and she said yes, they would have a small get together in celebration.

              A few weeks before heading home I had called one of my parent’s friends, Peggy, who I knew would be working a booth at the festival.  The festival was entirely volunteered based, and Peggy was well known for her volunteering efforts in our town.  The problem was I didn’t know which booth she would be operating until I called.

              “I’ll be operating the goldfish booth.  You know, the one where you throw ping pong balls into the bowls and win a goldfish,” she told me.

              I pondered for a second how I could use this in my proposal, but after a few minutes of bouncing ideas off of Peggy, I had come up with something.  After getting the plans in order, I thanked her, and told her I’d see her in a few weeks.

              Finally, we were heading into town to go to the festival.  I was hoping I would recognize Peggy and her booth right away within the dozens and dozens of games, food trucks, and crafts that made up the event.  I had no luck.  Of course, my wife wanted to stop at every booth, and I impatiently dragged her from place to place.  She was a bit perturbed, and I was starting to fear she would get angry and be in a bad mood during my proposal, so I tried to relax.  After about an hour and a half I spotted Peggy at the goldfish booth.

              When we reached the booth I told my wife to be I wanted to try my luck.  I handed Peggy a five dollar bill, which gave me 50 chances to secure a three cent fish.  Peggy did a wonderful job of acting like she had never seen me before.  It was showtime!

              First, I had to get one of the balls into a bowl.  I had played basketball in high school, so I figured this would be fairly easy.  Wrong.  After about 40 balls I was 0-for-40.  I detected that my wife to be was getting a bit bored with the waiting, and was even questioning why I was so interested in winning a goldfish. 

              Growing impatient and nervous myself, I lifted the basket that was now down to about ten balls, and threw them all at once in the direction of the bowls.  I watched in slow motion as one of the ping pong balls danced around the edge of a bowl before dropping in.  On cue, Peggy told me congratulations and reached for a bag.  My wife to be seemed relieved we would be moving on, and I had to hold her hand to keep her close by.  I dropped to my knee, she didn’t notice that either.

              “What is that in the bag?”  I asked Peggy as she handed it to me.  My wife hadn’t turned around yet.  I tried again, this time a little louder.

              “What is this in the bag?”  I asked, while tugging on her hand lightly.

              Finally, she turned around, and looked down at me.  Inside the bag was the engagement ring, the fish swimming happily above it.

              “Will you marry me?”  I asked.

              “Yes, yes, yes!” she replied, dropping to her knees to hug me.

              I handed the bag to Peggy, who opened it and put the fish into another bag, cleaned off the ring and dried it, and handed it back to me while looking at it closely and saying, “Nice job!”

              I placed the ring on her left ring finger.  When I did this, the crowd I hadn’t been aware of, applauded for us.

              “We are going to keep the fish too, right?”

              “Of course, what should we name it?”  I asked.

              “Bliss,” she answered.

22

              We decided to have the wedding in September, just five months after getting engaged.  This allowed her to finish school in May, upon her parent’s request, which she did, with honors.  She was able to find a job just a few minutes away from my parents’ house and we rented an apartment just a few miles from them. 

              The wedding was beautiful.  Her dad did end up paying, thankfully, but on the condition we have the wedding in their hometown in North Carolina, an hour south of Hickory University.  I had put up a brief argument with my wife about how I had no ties to North Carolina, but not being a very religious man, and being more concerned with just marrying her than anything else, the argument sputtered out quickly.  I was getting exactly what I wanted since that first day I saw her in the campus bookstore.  I would have married her on Mars if that had been her family’s request.

              My wife had just started her job at the local veterinary clinic so she didn’t have much time for a honeymoon.  Because of the small town we lived in, it was very hard for her to find relief; still, we managed to rent a very nice cabin in the Poconos Mountains.  I assume the weather was lovely, but we enjoyed the inside of our cabin most of the weeklong honeymoon. 

              The rest of our history, despite being filled with many happy memories, is one I came to regret over my year of mourning.  It wasn’t that we weren’t happy, it’s just that after a while it seemed like every day was the same.  At one point early on in our marriage we both had a desire to travel, but with her demanding job, and me picking up freelance writing jobs by the handful, we really didn’t have much time to travel.  Instead, we usually settled for family holidays, birthdays, and reunions for our forms of traveling.  It’s not that those gatherings weren’t full of love and enjoyable, but I think we always wished we could experience more together. 

              Three years after getting married, we bought our first house, the house I still live in, with the idea of having children.  The only other living creature that ended up living in that house, beside a stray cat or two, was Bahama. 

              A couple years after moving into the house, my wife went to work, despite a foot of snow on the ground, and growing.  She had all but told herself she wouldn’t risk it, but as the only vet in the area she felt obligated.  When she finally got to work she trudged her way up the walk and to the door.  As she was turning the lock she heard a whimpering from the bushes to the left of the door.  When she got a closer look she saw a puppy was underneath, partially covered by the rising snow. My wife gathered up the soaked and shivering puppy and brought her inside and gave her a thorough check-up.  Besides being a bit underweight, she appeared to be in good shape.  I once heard that we don’t pick our pets, they pick us.  That was the day Bahama picked us.

              We chose the name Bahama partially out of irony because we found her in a snowstorm, but also because the Bahamas was a place we had always planned to visit had we had the time or money.  As it turns out, Bahama would end up doing the traveling in place of my wife, though it would take years. 

              The topic of children came up, but it was never the right time.  For the first couple years of our marriage, I suppose that was a viable excuse.  With my wife afraid she’d lose her job if she missed any considerable time, and with me picking up more jobs than ever, it was a daunting thing to think about having a baby.  After a couple of more years, I think we both decided maybe having a child wasn’t for us.  It’s not a decision I regret, but it has always held the top spot on my life’s “what if” list.  Especially now.

              So time went on, as it does.  There were weddings to go to and be in, funerals of grandparents, and the ups and downs of our personal lives.  We were largely homebodies, but loved our house, generally opting to cook out on the grill and watch the sunset.  The monotony of our life took a sudden turn for the worse, bringing worse news than we could have ever imagined possible.  Just after our seventh year of marriage we had our yearly physicals, a chore we put little thought into.

              When her blood work came back they said there was a concern, but there shouldn’t be too much to worry about.  We went on with our lives, I wrote, she saved animals, and tried to forget about the tests.  But then there were more tests, and more tests.  My wife grew more tired and stressed with each impending blood test, but still put herself into her work and never ceased making me happy regardless of all the concerns and possibilities raging in her head.

              Finally, on a foggy morning in December, we heard the news that changed our lives forever.

              The doctor told us it was a rare blood disease, but since they found it early they were confident they could cure it.  The next year and a half was a roller coaster I have largely blocked out.  During a doctor appointment my parents drug me to during my year of mourning I mentioned to the man that had been my doctor since I was a little kid, that I couldn’t remember a lot of the last year and a half.  He told me this was normal.

              With each week my wife got more tired, and began getting headaches and having stomach issues, all symptoms of the disease.  In each other’s presence, and in the presence of family, we refused to call the disease by name.  We didn’t want to give it life.  Despite our best efforts the disease continued to spread.  Medicine worked, then didn’t, then worked, then didn’t.  She missed a lot of work, and finally had to find someone to replace her, first part-time, then full-time.

              We tried diets we had read about online that we were told would battle the disease, different doctors, specialty doctors, but none of them could do anything.  Her prognosis was grim.  First she was told she shouldn’t work anymore, then it was she shouldn’t leave the house, finally followed by she shouldn’t leave her bed.  Through it all she never complained, which at times surprisingly enough, infuriated me.  Here she was dealt the worst hand in the deck but all she worried about was my well-being.  She wondered how my writing was going, and if Bahama and I had encountered anything exciting on our walks.  I tried to answer in an uplifting manner, but all I could do was curse God, a God I was never sure I believed in to begin with, for doing this to such a wonderful woman.  The woman I loved.

              When her time on earth came near an end her parents moved in, and my parents were there most of the time too.  A hospice nurse brought pamphlets on what to expect as she neared death and how her family was to cope after she died.  I never read them.  It wasn’t right.  It’s still not right.