A Marriage Carol (7 page)

“No, I need to get lunch started,” I said.

He shook his head. “Upstairs. Now. The wildebeests will survive.”

“Panthers and cheetahs,” I corrected.

“Go.”

Had he really been that thoughtful?

The warmth and noise quickly faded, and in a blink Becca was nearly grown. We were in the car heading to soccer practice.

“Why do you and Dad fight so much?” she said.

I stared out the windshield. “We don’t really fight; we just disagree about a lot of things.”

“You fight,” she said. “And you don’t make up. It’s like a teakettle that’s always ready to boil anytime the heat’s turned up.”

I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “That must feel bad to live with every day.”

“Yeah.”

It felt like the scene in
Citizen Kane
where the husband and wife are sitting at opposite ends of the dining
room table, the years flitting by, and the distance growing between them. The more I poured into our home and family life, the more Jacob seemed to pour into his work. The resentment festered. There we were, snow falling outside, him staring at the Sports page, me staring at the Obituaries.

“Dan Fogelberg died,” I said.

Jacob didn’t even drop the paper and look at me. “What from? Accident?”

“Prostate cancer.”

“Shame. He wasn’t that old, was he?”

“Fifty-six.”

“Remember ‘Leader of the Band’?”

I nodded, but he didn’t see me. He hid behind his paper—except I noticed he wasn’t reading the sports any longer. He was just staring off, out the window, hidden behind the football standings. I moved toward him through the mist, shocked that there was more going on in his head than scores and statistics.

“We saw him once, didn’t we?” he said. “In Cincinnati?”

I answered vacantly, telling him the name of the town and venue. He could have told me how much the tickets were, of course. But he kept staring, finally lowering the
paper and looking my way. I was already gone. I had shut him out. Decided conversation wasn’t worth the time.

He pulled the paper up and I heard a voice amplified through speakers. We were sitting in a large church with a few hundred couples, listening to a man talk about going deeper in our marriage. I sat beside him in rapt attention taking notes. He glanced my way, nervously twirling his wedding band. I gave a look at his empty conference notebook, then back to my own. I thought he was uninterested in our marriage, at making it work. But when I looked more closely, there was something written in the book. I strained to see it at the bottom of the page, but he closed it quickly.

And then we were saying good-bye to the children earlier that afternoon. David held on tightly to me, and I choked back the tears as I heard myself tell how soon we would be home. The door closed and the three children went to the window to watch us.

“Where are they going?” David said.

“Probably more Christmas shopping,” Justin said.

“Yeah, probably more shopping,” Becca said, putting a hand on their shoulders. Her face was the last thing I saw as the mist engulfed the scene.

Drifting, floating, swirling like vapor rising, the mist parted and I saw the empty pot over the fire. Jay pulled my hand back and rested the pot on the brick fireplace. I was too stunned to speak. To see your own life vaporize before you that way, to see your own children struggling with the choices made, even though they didn’t understand them, took my breath away.

“It felt real. Like I was right there. Every bit of it.”

“You have beautiful children,” Jay said.

“You saw it too. How?”

“I can only observe, but the one holding the handle controls the experience. Those were your memories. It was your life.”

“But I didn’t experience some of it. I didn’t know what my children said. I didn’t know my husband had written anything down in that notebook.”

He nodded. “The answers to the questions you now have will surface from the snow.”

“What do you mean?”

“The hope you have for your marriage will lead you forward. The snow will show you the truth. Your mind will guide you from one memory to the next. The questions
you have now, the observations you made, and frankly, your openness, all combine to lead you to what you’re really seeking.”

“But I told you, we’ve made up our minds. It’s over.”

“Yes, but you also said you would give my hope for you a chance. The images spring from a desire for change.”

I looked at the warm pot on the hearth and the two that awaited me. “I want to check the phone. Try to call the children.”

“That’s fine,” Jay said.

“I don’t think I can go any further,” I said as I reached the hall. “It’s too painful … too much emotion.”

“I know. But part of you wants to know more. Part of you wants to hope.”

STANZA 4:

The phone was stillborn.
As lifeless as my soul. I put the handset on the cradle and thought of Jacob’s face as he fought the wheel coming around the curve, saw the oncoming headlights, and I closed my eyes again, awaiting impact. He was still out there somewhere. He wouldn’t have left me alone to freeze. Or would he?

A bay window near the kitchen table looked out on the landscape. I imagined fragile couples sitting here over fresh cups of coffee and warm biscuits, repairing their marriages a meal at a time. I shone my flashlight through the window and gasped at the piling snow. Wet, thick flakes as big as my hand fell fast and straight. Tree limbs swayed and quivered under the weight.

On the kitchen table sat a plastic Tupperware tub, the kind the kids used for popcorn at one of their “sleep-overs.” Jacob would pop the corn, Becca would melt butter, and Justin and David were ready with enough sea salt to raise blood pressures in two states. Laughing, giggling, they would hurry off to the family room to watch one of the latest from Pixar or an old horror movie Jacob loved to show them. Frankenstein or Dracula or the Wolfman.

I took the bowl and opened the side door. Without thinking, I stepped onto the porch in my socks. There was a sitting area here, too, with several tables and chairs. I scooped the snow into the bowl from the tabletop and kept going until it was overflowing.

Glancing up, I saw a light on in the window above me and the flutter of a curtain. Then, nothing but the stillness of the night and the falling snow.

Jay was at the back door when I returned. “You forgot something,” he chuckled, looking at my feet. No scolding or chiding, just a friendly recognition of the truth. He took the bowl from me and sat it on the table. I handed him my wet socks, and he met me in the living room with a towel and another pair. The feeling
returned to my feet and I was warm again and ready for another excursion.

I took the second pot from the hearth and dumped the snow inside, making sure to drain every drop into the pan. I did not want to miss anything. I did not want to come out of the misty scenes too quickly.

“If the first bowl plumbed my past and used my own experiences and mind, how can it know the truth of the present?”

Jay’s face reflected the firelight, orange and intense. “The snow will only show you what is. It covers the truth and then reveals it.”

“So you don’t know how it works either.”