I Hate Tuesdays

~Chapter 1~

There's a Little Black Spot on the Sun Today*

I hate Tuesdays.

Tuesdays suck as a general rule of thumb. It’s the second day of the work week. A glaring reminder that although the first day of the week is completed, you have yet another four days of turmoil until the weekend. Only problem is, weekends are a bit of a problem as well. Well, now they are.

But that’s another story. Another chapter.

Let’s move ahead. I’ll explain why I really hate Tuesdays.

It’s the day of the week that I saw my husband lying dead on my kitchen floor. For a good four hours, if I had to guess.

Didn’t realize how much of the scene I absorbed until just now, seven months later.

His curled up hands were poking out from under the blue EMT tarp. Feet jutting out the other side in that all-to-familiar position common to a body in repose. His curly hair popped out the other side, stained with spots of blood and matted to the floor in parts. Piece of broken plastic tubing and one of those sticky round heart monitor disks left behind by a careless paramedic. Garbage can knocked over. His plastic water cup was thrown to the other side of the room. Bloody eyeglasses splayed in another corner. I couldn’t see his face at first; it was covered with the blue tarp - out of respect, I suppose. The irony: it’s respectful to cover the face, but nothing wrong with leaving someone’s limbs and bloody hair hanging out.

Well, that’s the vision that creeps into my mind at the strangest moments. Just recently, while waiting at a car dealership, the image suddenly popped into my mind. The salesman came out and was talking to me for a good two minutes before I realized where my focus had shifted. Guy probably thought I was a space cadet. If he only knew…

So back to my story. No, he didn’t die in front of me and I didn’t happen upon him dead. My mother was the lucky one who actually witnessed his death. I was at work and was called home.

It’s obviously a day that I’ll never forget.

One minute, I was commiserating about the great job we did in handling preparations at my job in South Florida during Hurricane Frances. I’m the head of our ‘Business Continuation Plan’, and was gloating at the email that had just came out from my boss, sending me accolades for organizing the team so effectively, even though Hurricane Frances actually made landfall about 200 miles north of Miami.

“Great job, Lisa”. Gloating a bit. Making lunch plans with my friends. Then the HR director came into my office.

“Got a minute” she asked.

I was reading another atta-boy email from a peer. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

“We just got a call from your house. You need to call home”, she said.

The first thought that came into my mind: my mother.

Only a day earlier, I had “rescued” her from my sister’s house in West Palm Beach. Hurricane Frances had hit the north, and as a result, my sister was without power - and most importantly to an 80 year-old lady - A/C, for 24hrs. So I picked up my overheated mother, and brought her to my house where we had plenty of supplies and power and A/C. She was at my house alone on that Tuesday, as I had decided to go into the office, even though most people with common sense had opted to stay home that day. Rich was going to be running around locally with his real estate business.

The last time I saw Rich, he was sitting on our family room couch, on his cell phone, discussing plans for his upcoming Real Estate Investors Club meeting. I was rushing out the door as I usually do, but something made me stop at the door and turn to look at him. He noticed that I stopped, smiled, and mouthed a kiss. I blew one back, and headed out to my car.

It was the last time that I saw his eyes. Beautiful, dark green eyes.

“No, I don’t think it’s your mother” the HR director replied. You just need to call your house - now.”

The HR director is a youngster. About 30 years-old, if that, and typically a simple, smiling and relatively happy presence in our office.

Today she looked at me with eyes that were glazed over with fear. Big eyes, glassy - not really able to return my inquisitive gaze.

I remember that she stayed with me as I dialed home.

“Mrs. Harris?” said the stranger who answered the phone at my house. He answered in one ring.

“Yes?” I asked, wondering who the hell was at my house, answering my phone.

“This is Deputy Ventura from the Broward County Sheriff’s department. We’re here at your house” he said.

No shit.

“Does this have something to do with my mom”, I asked, cleverly cutting him off mid-sentence. This was strategic on my part. Maybe it’d delay him telling me something that I really didn’t want to hear. I was thinking maybe she had a fall or something.

“No Ma’am” the officer responded. “Your mother is here with me, and she’s fine”.

“Something with my daughter” I asked, now feeling my heart starting to throb in my chest, up into my throat. My 15 year-old daughter had spent the night before at a friend’s house, so I starting thinking that maybe something happened to her.

“No Ma’am, not your daughter.” He said.

Pause. Seemed like about 20 minutes but was probably only about 20 seconds.

“Ma’am, it’s your husband” he continued, forcing his way through the silence.

“My husband?” I asked, trying really hard to push away the thoughts that were already creeping into my mind.

“Ma’am, your husband passed away”.

Silence. Dead silence.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god….” I think that’s what I said. Not sure if I actually verbalized it, but my brain suddenly snapped, went into autopilot. It was like a jolt of emotion sliced through my body, so intense that I actually felt light-headed.

I knew I had to get home.

Somehow I ended the call, and have a faint memory of realizing that the HR director was now squeezing my hand and crying. She finally was able to look me in the eye.

At that moment, I knew I had two choices: one - flip the hell out, scream, yell, run out of there, find Jacqui, get to Rich; two - silently flip the hell out, act normal so that I could drive home by myself, find Jacqui and get to Rich.

I chose the latter.

Why I thought that I needed to get to Rich is beyond me now. What was I going to do? He no longer existed at that point. Funny how the mind responds to getting the rug yanked out from under its proverbial feet.

“Ok, let me get going” I said to the HR Director, standing up authoritatively. Totally in control. Just like during the hurricane. No emotion. No tears.

“No, we are going to drive you” she said, tears still dripping down her cheeks. “Tony is already waiting for you with his car”

No way. Not a chance.

I wanted to be ALONE. As much as I love Tony and my friends at work, the last thing that I wanted was company. It’s like when I was in labor with Jacqui and kicked Rich and everyone else out of the labor room, and did my breathing and chanting on my own. I went to ONE Lamaze class (what a joke) and learned the most important thing: the breathing. You meditate so that you can absorb the pain.

Well, in order to focus, I needed to be alone.

So I kicked Rich out of the room - along with his little bag of ice chips, my mother and her looks of worry, and even the full-back RN who was assigned to “help me along” through the process by ramming what felt like a 24 pin connector into my cervix as it continued to spasm.

Six hours later, after staring at the TV monitor (CNN was on) with numerous wasted Lamaze breaths and labor pains, I ended up having a C-Section. My dopey & defective uterus wasn’t dilating, and the 24 pin connector indicated that the baby was in distress. So much for meditation and the power of the mind!

So anyway, what was my point? Oh yeah, picture how a wounded animal gets when found on the road after having its legs run over by a car. You take a step towards it, even if to help, and it’s going to attack. It’ll do whatever it takes to defend itself.

I was that wounded animal; ready to take someone’s head off and on that Tuesday, I had no idea why. I just had to be alone.

“No, I am driving home. I am fine. Absolutely fine.” Authoritative. Totally in control.

No emotion. No tears. I was fine. Really.

Shock had settled in. I just knew I had to get to my kid and to Rich.

After Tony tried coaxing me into his car, and Bobby tried to grab me in the parking lot, they realized that I wasn’t screwing around. I think my look said it all. Tony was crying, Bobby was crying. I was still dry-eyed. They each gave me a hug, and a look that I’d never seen on their faces before, and allowed me to go. Little did I know that they followed me home in the pouring rain, just to make sure I made it OK.

So the whole way home - all 35 miles or so - it was raining hard: sheets of rain, slanting sideways, forward, backward, and winds….the after effects of our dear friend Frances.

As I look back now, I realize that I was totally oblivious to the world moving around me. I cranked up my stereo - coincidentally had one of Rich’s CDs playing - think it was The Doors “Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar, oh don’t ask why…”- and suddenly started to wail as I drove down US27.

All of a sudden, just like that, no thought, unexpected. It was like a bucket of emotion was being purged from my insides. Once I was alone.

No, no, no, no, no. This has to be a mistake. Dead? What the hell? What the hell happened? What was he doing?

Dead? We were going to be empty-nesters at 43, and get a condo on the beach.

Relief. He won’t suffer any more from the side effects of Coumadin (rat poison used as a blood thinner). I won’t suffer anymore.

Concern: Where the hell is Jacqui? God, how am I going to handle her reaction?

Dead? What the hell. Why the hell would he die?

Was he afraid? Did he know it was happening? Why didn’t he try to call me? He used to call me several times each day, and always, always, always, called me at the end of each day to ask what I wanted for dinner. “Hey Baby”, he’d say. And he’d go on about what he was working on, the idiots he ran into (Rich seemed to run into idiots at least several times a day. Guess that’s what happens when you have a 160+ IQ).

But no phone calls today. What the hell. Where did he go? Where did the energy that was Rich Harris go?

From "King of Pain" by The Police