Among the Ducklings (12 page)

“Great.
It'd be fun to see you.”

“I'm not
sure. How is your Greek tragedy going?”

“What Greek
tragedy?”

“You,
falling for a woman who is in a wheelchair and engaged to another man.”

“This isn't
a Greek tragedy," he answered.
  "
When you meet Isabel,
you will love her.”

“Has she
told you that she was going to dump her fiancé for you?” Jeremy asked.

“Well no,
but she loves me.”

“You just
confirmed my point. You love her and she loves you, right?”

“Right,”
Phil agreed.
 
Once Jeremy meets Isabel, he will change his mind about her
, Phil
thought to himself.

“Tell me,
Phil, do you know what Romeo & Juliet, Tristan and
Isolde
,
Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Napoleon and Josephine
have in common?” Jeremy asked.

“They are
famous love stories.
 
I didn't know that
you read them,” Phil said.

“I don't,”
Jeremy said.

“So, what
do they have in common, Mr.
love
expert?” Phil asked,
in a mocking manner.

“They are
considered great love stories but they never end well for the two people who
are said to be in love.”
 

“What does
that have to do with us?” Phil asked. But deep inside he knew what Jeremy was
trying to say.

“Wake up
and smell the coffee, Phil,” Jeremy impatiently said. “You both claim to be in
love with each other, but she didn't promise you that she would break up her
engagement.
 
How do you know that she
won't go ahead and marry her fiancé anyway?”

“Jeremy,
you have to understand that it's hard for her,” Phil said, trying to convince
Jeremy. “Isabel and her fiancé had been together for several years before I
came into the picture.”

“I hope
you're right. In any event, I can't wait to meet the woman who has made you
lose all of your senses,” Jeremy said before hanging up.

Jeremy's
call had Phil worried. Now he was not so sure
anymore
about himself or what Isabel would do.
 
Would Isabel sacrifice their love and marry Richard because of her promise
to Richard?
 
Would Jeremy prove to be
right? Would they become ill-fated lovers like in the tragedies?

##

That
afternoon, when Phil reached the Center, he was hoping that the sight of Isabel
would wipe away all of the doubt he had about the two of them since his
conversation with Jeremy.
 
He sat on the
bench and waited for two long hours, but Isabel never came.
 
The ducklings were not there that day.
 
It was as if Isabel's absence had silenced
them.
 
Phil never believed in fate. But
now he wondered whether he should.
As he was about to leave,
Marcia then came to join him.

“Waiting
for Isabel?” she asked.

“Yes, but
I'm worried. I thought she had a therapy session today,” Phil asked.

“She did, but
she didn’t show up,” Marcia simply said.

“Is she OK?
Do you know where she is?”

“I don’t
know. I called but she wasn't home,” Marcia answered.

“You're not
worried?” Phil asked, with his own worried look.

“It has
been a tough week on Isabel. Besides her accident and everything going on at
home, now she must make a decision about you and Richard,” Marcia simply said.

“But you
said she wasn't at home,” Phil said, not understanding why Marcia didn't seem
worried.

“You know,”
Marcia began, “the day Isabel's mother passed away, Isabel walked out of the
hospital and for several hours everyone was looking for her and couldn't find
her.
 
Do you know where she was?”

“Me? No, I
don't,” Phil replied, realizing that Marcia was waiting for him to answer.

“Well she
had gone to church to pray.
 
You see,
since Isabel was young, when she was in pain or hurt, she would go to her room
and pray.
 
She is a very special woman.
 
I hope that you know that anyone that she
loves should consider
himself
lucky,” Marcia said.
 

She was looking at him as if giving him a
warning to never hurt Isabel.
 
How could
he ever hurt Isabel?
 
All he wanted was
for them to be happy and to spend the rest of their lives together.

“Do you
think she went to church to pray because of us?” Phil asked, with an
incredulous look on his face.

“I don't
know. You should ask her when you see her,” Marcia said before she walked away,
leaving Phil staring at the silent lake.

##

Stacy hated
when things didn't go as planned.
 
This
afternoon was one of these afternoons.
 
She had gone to the Center and walked to the back, by the lake.
 
Incredibly, no one asked her anything. She
had learned from one of the landscapers that the woman who liked to sit with
Phil by the lake was the niece of the director of the Center, and her name was
Isabel.
 
As she walked by the empty
bench, she looked at the still lake, wondering if something ominous was lurking
beneath. Stacy never liked Florida lakes because you never knew when an alligator
would show up.
 
 

Stacy
remembered one day visiting a park near Tallahassee, Florida, called Wakulla
Springs State Park.
 
The park had a large
lake that was full of alligators.
 
She
didn't have a problem with tourists wasting their money on boat rides to see
alligators. What she didn't understand was that a lot of the kids were swimming
in the water, not understanding they might be an alligator's next snack.
Apparently, they were doing this because statistics showed that there had only
been one accident involving a fatality at the park, and that was a very long
time ago. Stacy called this type of irrational behavior, the NOT ME
theory.
 
It was the same thing with shark
attacks. They rarely happened and when they happened, experts always tried to
explain them as rare accidents, making people feel more comfortable that it
would never happen to them. Each person going into the water thinks
,
it’s not going to happen to me. NOT ME.
 
Unfortunately, it usually happens to one of
them.
 
Stacy didn't like sharks or
alligators, and didn't believe in the NOT ME theory.
 

In fact,
the only time Stacy had ever come close to an alligator was having a fried
alligator tail on her plate.
 
She
wondered whether that man-made lake had any alligators in it.
  
She didn't see the ducks that were playing
the day before.
 
They must have been
eaten, she assumed.
 
She didn't like
ducks either.

As she
walked back to her car, she thought that Isabel must be one lucky woman for
choosing not to show up the day she chose to talk to her. Sooner or later,
Isabel's luck would run out.
 
Sooner or
later, Isabel would meet Stacy.
 

##

As Isabel
was driving home from church, her phone rang. The caller ID showed the call was
coming from the Center.

“Hi, Tia
Marcia,” she said through the Bluetooth-enabled speaker. Soon after her
accident, she had bought a used minivan which was retrofitted with car hand
controls to bypass the pedals.
 
Without
blue-tooth technology, it would have been nearly impossible for Isabel to use
the phone and drive at the same time.

“Isabel,
Phil was here this afternoon and was worried about you.”

“I was at
church.”

“I guessed
that, when the nurse told me that you had canceled today's therapy session," Marcia said. “Have you
decided what you are going to do?”

“About
what?”

“About
you and Richard.”

“I don't
know. I did make a promise that I would marry Richard.”

“Oh yes,
where is he? I have not seen him lately. Is he in Orlando?”

“Yes. He is
going to be there for at least another week or so, because of construction
projects.”

“I bet.”

“What?”

“Nothing,”
Marcia said. “Phil seemed to really love you.”

“I love him
too, but I can't just walk away from Richard.”

“Let me
know how I can help you.
 
I like Phil
myself,” Marcia said

“I can
tell,” Isabel said. “Somehow, I always sensed you had something against
Richard. But I don’t know why.”

“Why don't
you ask him what he does when he goes to Orlando?”

“I told you
what he does,” Isabel said, not understanding her aunt's fixation with
Orlando.
 
As far as she knew, her aunt
had never even gone to Orlando.

“I guess
you're right,” Marcia said, giving up. “By the way, before I go, I did speak
with Mark's parents today.”

“What did
they say?”

“I didn't
tell them about the pregnancy but they knew something was up when I told them
that we wanted to talk to them about Mark and Rebecca.”

“Did they
say anything?” Isabel asked.

“We are
meeting them this Saturday for lunch at the Habana Cafe on Bird Road.”

“Why
the cafe?
Do they
like Cuban food?” Isabel asked.

“We’ll find
out, won't we?
 
Besides, they’re not
paying so they have nothing to complain about,” Marcia said.
“And,
Isabel?”

“Yes.”

“Don't miss
any more of your therapy sessions.”

“Yes, Doc,”
Isabel laughed.

##

Isabel
reached home as the phone in the kitchen was ringing.
 
She picked it up and her heart jumped when
she heard Phil on the other line.

“Isabel?”

“Hi Phil,
how did your exercises go today?”

“Boring
and painful.
Are
you OK?”

“I’m
feeling better,” she said.

“When I
didn't see you today, I was really worried.”

“I needed to
go to church and pray. Tell me, Phil, Are you Catholic?”

“Me? Does
it matter?” Phil asked. He was afraid to say the wrong thing.
 
He didn't know where this was going.

“Not
really. But I just wanted to know. Do you go to church?” Isabel then asked.

Phil didn't
know what to say.
 
“You mean on Sundays?”
Phil asked. Phil was buying time. He needed to think. Was it a test? Was there
any meaning behind the question?
 
He
understood that women were complicated. Was there a double meaning behind most
of their questions?

“No I just
wanted to know if you go to church,” Isabel simply said. She could feel that
Phil was scrambling to give her the correct answer and said reassuringly,
“Whatever the answer is, it will not make me think less of you Phil.”

Phil, a little
relieved, said, “I go sometimes.”

“When was
the last time you were at church?” Isabel asked.

“At my
friend Jeremy's wedding. I have also gone to the typical masses, weddings,
funerals, birthdays,
etc
,” Phil said.

“There is
no birthday mass,” Isabel said with a laugh.

“I mean
baptism,” Phil immediately corrected himself.
  
He was failing the church
test
.

Changing
the subject, Isabel said. “I missed you today too, but I needed to go and pray.
It's been a very difficult time for me and I just wanted some divine guidance,
if you will.”

“I know. I
would like to help, but I don't know what to do.”

“No
thanks,” Isabel said with another laugh. “You have done too much already.”
Isabel was in a good mood.
 
She still
didn't know what she was going to do.
 
She knew that Richard would be coming back in a week.
 
He had called but she had yet to return his
call, afraid of what she might say.
 
If
only a week wasn't so short,
she thought.

“Isabel, my
friend Jeremy is coming to town this evening and I wanted to know if you have
any time in the next day or so. I told him a lot about you and he would like to
meet you,” Phil said.

“I can do
better. Why don't the two of you come over tomorrow evening to have dinner with
my sister and me? She makes
a mean
pasta.”