A Marriage Carol (6 page)

“Wait, I don’t even know your name,” I said. The man turned in the doorway. His voice crackled
like the fire. “My wife calls me Jay.”

I went to the pantry and found a plastic tub of doggy treats and opened it. Rue came quickly, his feet clicking across the hardwood. I tossed the treat onto the bed and he whimpered until I picked him up and placed him there.

I walked back into the main room and watched Jay carrying a tray upstairs. When he reached the top he paused and looked down over the banister. He looked at me—no, almost through me.

“Do you need something else?”

Water filled my eyes and I felt something quiver inside. What if I do give it a chance? What if I open up enough to consider there could be hope? Would that be enough?

“Stay right there,” he said. “I’ll be right back down.”

Jay removed the three pots from their resting place and arranged them in front of the fire. “Snow is God’s way of cleaning the landscape. He makes everything new that way. But when it melts, it reveals what is underneath. What’s hidden. What’s true. Melting snow exposes. Each flake is like a choice we make, the choices piling on top of one another. Do you follow?”

“I suppose, in some metaphorical sense.”

The firelight made his face look like a fiery sunset after a thunderstorm. “The choices you make lead your heart toward your husband or away; they are never inconsequential.”

“Can’t you just run parallel?”

“Have you ever tried to draw a straight line on your own? There’s always a little bend there because none of us is perfect. So it may appear that you’re moving parallel to each other when in fact you’re moving apart or together.”

“How does it work? The pots, I mean.”

He took my empty mug from beside the chair and put the spent tea bag aside. “Gather some snow in this from outside. Scoop it with your hands into the cup. Tap it down, get as much as you can, even letting it spill over. Then bring it to me.”

I slipped into my shoes that were now toasty and warm and headed outside. The wind howled and wet snow pelted the side of the house. Something moved in the darkness.

“Jacob?”

No response. I didn’t have to go far to scoop the snow,
and as quickly as I did, the act felt like foolishness. This caretaker was probably certifiable. Maybe he had another unsuspecting traveler upstairs trapped in a closet. Or maybe it was Jacob. Why had I trusted this old man? Why had I let my heart be moved by his kind words, or think there could be any kind of hope?

I hurried inside, kicking my shoes back over the heating vent, even though it wasn’t working. I comforted myself with the thought that serial killers don’t have nice little dogs, they have vicious curs.

“Good,” Jay said. “Now take the pan and put the snow inside and hold it over the fire.”

I gave him a look I usually hold back from anyone but my husband and the child who drops a glass in my kitchen. “That’s it? I’m supposed to melt snow and it’ll change my life?”

He smiled like he had heard that before and handed me a wooden spoon. “Hold the pot over the fire and stir the melting snow. Just try.”

“I don’t have to click my heels and say there’s no place like home?”

Crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. Age spots on his hands. A knowing look. A nod.

I held the pot over the fire and the snow began that slow descent from white to clear, pooling on the edges, moving on its own like an iceberg in an angry ocean. I stirred and a faint echo of music floated upward, a concoction of songs from the past reaching my ears, like tufts of air from birds’ wings. “Promises Made, Promises Broken,” by Dan Fogelberg. I recognized others we heard during our dating years. Songs discovered, uncovered by a new generation. “Riddles of romance” that stirred my heart.

Steam rose like incense and swirled in the fireplace, hovering under the flue, and I felt myself slipping, swaying, and in one uncontrolled moment I was enveloped. I did not fall, jump, or transmigrate; the scene simply cloaked me, and I was wholly and irrevocably taken in by the experience.

Pictures from the past, images of children laughing, moments captured and frozen in time cascaded around me like snow, passing me—and suddenly came to life. Music and voices and color, like a vast collage of my life—a dog I had known as a child; puka shells worn in a ninth grade ensemble; buttered popcorn spilled at a theater; my best friend and me eating muffins late at night,
smiling before the camera with muffin-stained teeth; me crying through
On Golden Pond;
a deafening concert in a sea of people near a stage …

“There he is,” I said breathlessly. More of a gasp of recognition than a full sentence. There was my husband, a young man again, hair much darker and fuller—no receding hairline. Swarthy and lusty and full of life, and a smile that made my heart ache.

The years had chipped away at his smile, had taken the edges of what was once irrepressible. Many long years had passed since the sight of him had stirred anything deep within me.

As I watched, I realized there is within each of us an inner longing for a place and season of life we have known—when the future seemed to stretch ahead like some green pasture, inviting us, across the meadow and into the breadth and depth of life itself. The desire to find such a place resonates and reverberates, creating a passion for that which can never be relived. And yet, here I was, looking into the eyes of the man who captivated me in this season of delight.

“Marlee,” he shouted across the quad. And before I could answer, a much younger version of me sprinted
into his arms. I took myself in, the thin thighs, the width of the hips—or lack of width, and the strong embrace. The difference was striking—not the physical difference between my body then and now, though there did seem to be less sagging in strategic areas, but the way I moved toward him, let myself be held, allowed him entry to my very soul. There was no reserve. Freely I opened my arms and embraced. Similarly, he held nothing back, and the look on his face as he gathered me in was pure contentment.

“I missed you,” he said, picking me up and turning in the sunlight.

“We had breakfast together this morning.” I laughed.

“Exactly. It’s been too long.”

I will not be dishonest. Something in my stomach turned as I watched. I couldn’t decipher whether this reaction was to the clinging love of two passion-struck college kids or the comparison of what has resulted from our attraction.

When I turned back to the scene, a misty vapor swathed me and I walked through it, searching for our former life. I found us walking near a familiar lake on a moonless summer night. Resting on that bench in the
middle of nowhere. We had pictures of this place on subsequent anniversaries with subsequent children in tow, though we hadn’t visited in the past five years. His words came back, a waterfall of a memory. Fumbling with a piece of paper to get it just right. My hands over my mouth, trembling at his heartfelt proposal.

I wanted to scream, to yell “caution”—to stop the events about to unfold. The giving of the ring, down on one knee, tears of happiness, and another long embrace that melted into a kiss so passionate I turned away. When I looked again, we had moved from lake shadows to candlelight in the little church where we were married. The gown, the smooth skin, the trim figures underneath the dress and tux, and the voice of our pastor charging us to love until “death do us part.”

Jacob had written his own vows. His deep, resonant voice cut through time and with emotion he said, “Your love has captured my heart. As long as it beats in my chest, I pledge to let nothing come between the love we will share in the years ahead. For it will take death’s cold embrace to separate us.”

My eyes shut tight. We
had
loved until death. Unfortunately it was love that died.

When I opened my eyes it was our first anniversary. Friends had given us a weekend stay at their mountain hideaway. A remote, snow-covered area where we had to park and hike the nearly mile-long driveway. There was nothing to keep us occupied but the stocked refrigerator, a few VHS movies, and each other. For some reason, having nothing to do didn’t bother me.

We were still in love back then, content in finding pleasure in each other’s bodies, and in our exuberance I knocked something from the shelf above the bed. As if peering over some forbidden parapet, the two of us pulled ourselves to the headboard and, mouths agape, looked in horror at the antique snow globe in a puddle on the wooden floor.

“How are we ever going to explain that?” I said.

Jacob laughed. I giggled, thinking about how the conversation might go. Then we were in each other’s arms again, delighting and wading deeper into the waters of pleasure God had created for us.

The next scene was the result of one of those marital forays into the unknown—the arrival of our oldest, Becca. My heart, not in part but the whole, leapt and beat furiously. I said some awful things to my husband
during that delivery. He just smiled and held my hand as I struggled through those hours. I always thought I didn’t really mean those things. He forgave me without question.

As I watched, the rush of memory aroused an unwelcome internal conflict. I didn’t want to be drawn to him, but I was, particularly when I saw his wonderment at tiny fingers and toes, heard the suckling sounds of my firstborn daughter at my breast, and drank in the wonder of a newborn.

“She’s so … perfect,” Jacob said. He reached out a finger and she grasped it as she suckled.

“She’s amazing,” I whispered.

Two people united around a shared infant. We were together. He even changed diapers, much to my surprise. And never complained about my nesting and the shuffling of furniture, and the crib I returned three times and exchanged because it just wasn’t right for the room.

“Children are a gift from God Himself,” Jay said. He was near me, watching the same scenes. My cheeks flushed as I turned to face him, and Justin ran past me,
chased by a much older Becca. My husband, a little older and more harried than in his college days, trailed the kids, carrying David.

“Can you see this?” I said to Jay, looking into the mist around me. Wondering how much of the anniversary scene he had witnessed.

“Don’t focus on me. Stay in the moment. Drink it all in because it won’t be here long.”

When I turned back to my family, my husband and I were sitting together on the couch, Christmas wrapping paper strewn about the house, Becca playing “panthers and cheetahs” with the boys, their little legs scurrying downstairs, yipping and yapping in an incomprehensible children’s game. A smile passed between us as we listened to their imaginations fly.

“Where do you think we’ll be in ten years?” Jacob said.

“Under a tree surrounded by wrapping paper.”

He laughed. “No, where do you want to be?”

“Someplace warm where we can listen to this,” I said, the noise of the panthers and cheetahs rising toward us.

“I want to give you that and more,” he said, leaning over and giving a kiss. “I’ll clean up down here and watch them. Why don’t you make use of these. You deserve it.”

He handed me the unwrapped bath oils he had helped the kids pick out. Lavender and rose, my favorite getaway fragrances.