Welp. Here is my latest monstrosity, for your viewing pleasure. Read the previous post first, and do keep in mind that this is a first draft.
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Jon met Samantha in his freshman year of college, and he told her that he loved her.
How little he knew of love.
Jon was a romantic at heart, and for their first date (which had been long in coming) he took Sam for a picnic at the beach. After lunch, they walked along the surf, leaving soft footprints in the wet sand. They talked in a way that was new and exciting despite the months they’d known each other, and as the sun set and the day died away,they linked hands.
And love painted the sky orange with the dying light. Love made the rolling waves glisten and spark. It made the sand slipping between their toes, and the water that washed over their legs, and the gentle wind that blew through hair fresh and new. It was something neither of them ever forgot, that first walk on the beach together.
And while they were filled with love, it was too big, and too much of a mystery for either of them to do anything but look on at the world and at each other.
There were dances for them in college, intramural sports matches, parties, late nights shared with friends and with each other. Dates, dinners, and study sessions. As they shared, they began to understand, at least a little, what it meant to be in love.
They were married in the summer of ‘08. The ceremony was held on the beach where together they stood barefoot in the sand under a white arch, and in the presence of their friends and relatives, pledged in sickness and in health to love each other all the days of their lives.
Life placed rough hands on their shoulders and pushed them on from there, honeymoon gone in the blink of an eye. Six months later there were jobs, mortgages, car payments, and student loans waiting for them. Jon found work as a manager at a software company. Samantha, as a physical therapist in a nearby hospital.
The first year of their marriage was peaceful, if a bit too quiet. Jon worked long and irregular hours, though Samantha never bothered him about it. Small things began to mount up between them. Jon leaving his shirts on the bathroom floor. Samantha’s habit of nibbling toast at breakfast. None of these things were important, but they were exaggerated by distance and silence. Every so often, Jon would regret his work and take Sam away for a Friday night movie, or a weekend camping trip. But those became fewer and father between.
Then came the baby.
Jon was in his office when the call came. Sam sounded excited and more than a little scared. When he asked her what was going on, she told him.
We’re pregnant.
When he looked back at his decisions in his old age, Jon regretted many that he made because of his job. But that day he always remembered with gladness, as if it helped redeem the others. He told his boss about the phone call and went home to be with his wife.
Life lurched ahead for them then, as if to that point it had only been idling along in first gear. One night Jon went to bed with his arms around the athletic woman he’d first met in college. The next, his hands cupped the swell of his child, and the next, he was rolling out of bed to rock his son back to sleep.
Samantha quit her job at the hospital. Jon went shopping for a minivan.
At work, Jon’s bosses hounded him night and day to meet deadlines, deliver with clients, and manage his staff. And Jon felt increasingly inadequate. Instead of spending time with family, he watched baseball or brought work home to his office. Samantha was at first frightened and then angry as Jon slunk off into the high mountains of his soul where she could no longer find him. The more Jon withdrew, the less Sam felt able to reach out to him.
They had their first real fight one morning after a particularly restless night. They yelled at each other until Jon smashed his way out the door, already running late. He had missed Todd’s first words. And his first steps. He was never around. And when he had told Sam he was too busy to go to Todd’s pre-school graduation, she had lost it. As he sat in the car, he swore up and down at her for throwing a tantrum over something so trivial. He didn’t understand that she didn’t care about the graduation either.
By the time their third child was walking, they had little to say to one another beyond household business. Sam took the children to their soccer practices and baseball games. Sometimes Jon came, but more often, he chose to work. When their youngest entered primary school, Samantha went back to work at the hospital. When Jon went to bed at night, it was in a room separate from his wife. Sometimes, he would find himself looking at Sam or at the boys and a great lump would rise up in his chest. When it did, he would swallow it down, go into his office, and close the door. He stared at the reflection of himself in the surface of his desk. His black hair was mostly gone, replaced by a salt and pepper ring that ran around the sides and an I shaped strip that ran up the middle. His smooth, strong face had grown jowls. His slim one hundred and sixty pounds had become two hundred and ten.
But Jon was about to be startled out of his desktop reveries. In the fall of 2021, after thirteen years of marriage, Samantha was diagnosed with cancer.
For the first time in years, Jon found himself spending time with his wife, taking her to doctor’s appointments and chemo therapy when she became too sick to drive. If he wasn’t driving her around, he was picking up the kids from school or taking them to their soccer games or to see their mother in the hospital. While he was often nervous and sometimes scared, he also found himself strangely happy. Samantha, meanwhile, watched as her shoulder length hair, which she took so much time to wash and condition, fell out. The sleek curves and taught muscle wasted away to knobs of bone and harsh lines. Clear, smooth skin became pale, dry, and tight.
At work, Jon’s bosses hired a secretary, Diana, to help him with his increasing responsibilities. He barely noticed her addition at first, too distracted by his work and by his home situation. Then he began to pick up on little things. Her long brown hair. The way she would brush up against him when he was showing her some paperwork or the way she would touch his hand when she gave him a cup of coffee or a file folder. The way she filled out a blouse and skirt.
She reminded him of Sam in many ways.
Once, while he was sitting alone in his office, he caught her glancing at him through his office’s windows. He stopped then, putting down his paperwork and looked at her. Really looked at her. Then he caught his own reflection in the polished surface of his desk and the dull shine of the wedding ring on his finger. He took another look at her. Young. Beautiful. Eyes meeting his. Maintaining contact. Her face blushing. Eyes looking away.
He frowned at his reflection in the surface of his desk.
That afternoon he took his wife for her next round of chemo therapy and associated stay in the hospital. By now they had a bag packed that Sam took with her when she went. Jon got her checked in and situated. The doctors settled her in her bed and plugged her into the surrounding machinery. Although he wanted to stay until they started the chemo, Jon knew he needed to get back to work.
“I love you,” he told her as he opened the door to leave. It was the first time he’d said it in years.
“No you don’t,” Samantha said bitterly. Her head was turned towards the wall and her arms were crossed as if they could hide her thin body behind them.
Jon opened his mouth once. Then he turned and slipped out.
He had intended to go be with Sam at the hospital, the hours after chemo treatments were rough ones, but Jon instead decided to work late at the office. When he ran out of things to do, he found more. He hadn’t even noticed that Diana had remained at her desk long after the rest of the office had left and the sun had dipped below the horizon. She startled him when she came in to ask him if he wanted some coffee. He frowned at her. She seemed nervous.
He was standing at the window when she came back. When he turned around to take the cup of coffee from her, she set it on the desk and leaned in close to him, her body brushing up against his. Her eyes were excited and terrified.
“I know why you stayed late,” she told him. And she kissed him. He was too surprised to break away.
A thousand thoughts ran through his head all at once. But the loudest one read “What the hell?”
Diana kissed him again, this time harder and longer. She was interrupted when her cell phone started ringing in the next room. She pulled away from him.
“Oh dammit. Hang on.” She went out to the other room and rummaged through her purse. She snapped her phone open and put it up to her ear.
“Hello?” she said. Jon sat down on the edge of his desk, face flushed. He stared at Diana as she talked on the phone. He looked down at his shoes. He looked up at Diana again. She had finished speaking.
“I have to go,” she told him, rushing back into the room after scooping up her purse and jacket. “But you had better be here when I come back.” And with that she rushed over to the elevator and was gone.
Jon flopped down in his office chair, eyes wide. He sat there for a long time before he swiveled the chair to face the window.
Outside it started to rain. Round drops landed on the window and pulled down into long vanishing lines. As the rain came down harder the window pane turned into a slow flowing river that rippled as the raindrops struck. Jon watched Diana run across the parking lot below with her purse over her head. She shook her bag and her coat as she stepped sideways into her car. The engine turned over, the lights came on, and she drove off into the night. Jon sat in his chair for a little while longer before he picked up his own coat and made his way to the door. He paused there, looking back at his office chair. Then he turned out the light and walked to the elevator.
His car made its way around the city, windshield wipers working overtime to clear off the hazy rainwater. He didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular, driving up one street and down another as if they were all the same. He eventually found himself in the parking lot of the hospital sometime near midnight. He got out of the car and pulled his coat up over his head before crossing the parking lot.
She was asleep when he found her. Lying in her bed, shivering like it was the middle of winter. He looked at her, and he didn’t see the drool that had pooled on her pillow, or the sharp angles of her cheekbones. He didn’t notice how pale she was or how dry and taught her skin had become. And when turned to leave he saw his own dim reflection in the glass of the door and he knew.
Later that morning as he lay in bed next to Diana, he had a dream. He was back in the hospital room. Samantha looked the same, still sick and pale, but he looked younger, stronger, leaner. He walked to her side and ran his hand across her cheek. Then he moved around the bed so that he was behind her and he lifted the covers, crawled in next to her and wrapped his arm around her waist.
And when she woke up, he told her he loved her.