A Second Chance

The alarm went off at the usual time: 5:26 AM. I slammed the snooze button to shut off the disruptive rings, letting my wife sleep in, since, after all, it was her birthday today. Sliding the tips of my fingers across her soft, blonde, wavy hair, I put my right foot against the ragged carpet below. I would have forgotten my foot was broken if it wasn't for the searing pain. Slowly, I pulled it back up, letting my other foot bear my weight. I had left the wallabies on the lamp table, slightly out of an arm’s reach. At snail's pace, I dragged my upright body closer to the table to get the shoes I needed so badly. When I bent over to reach for them, I collapsed onto the floor, letting out bellowing grunts of pain.

  My wife answered my grunts sleepily: “Ryan? What are you doing up? It’s a Saturday. Spend some time with me today, and please don’t go on another one of your silly walks.”
 
“Help me get these shoes and I will.".

  With her helping hand, I finally got my shoes on and walked slowly to the bathroom, still not fully awake. I looked at my black hair and tired eyes, surprised as always at how different I looked than the last time. Feeling faintly altruistic, I thought about making an elegant breakfast for my wife today, but soon decided my lacking cooking skills would pose too much of a challenge for me. After peeking into the bedroom to make sure my wife had fallen asleep again, I turned off the house alarm -- 8-12-92, the date of our marriage. Even with this constant reminder, often I'd forgotten about our anniversary altogether, gambling at the local casino instead of spending quality time with my wife. I heaved a sigh or two. We're so distant now. The last time we had spent at least an hour with each other was at the damn airport. We took a vacation to the Bahamas -- it wasn't much of a vacation: we had slept in different rooms because my wife thought I was cheating with the doorwoman. I suppose I can't say she was wrong.

  “Is it because she’s more beautiful to you than me? Is that why?” my wife had called out one night. I was alone for only two or three hours -- hell, I don't know.

  “No, no, I didn’t sleep with her! I swear!” I answered, though I knew I couldn't make her believe my tainted words.

  Those memories, those nightmares, still haunt me. I wonder now if our relationship can be tamed; we had been seeing a marital psychologist for years, but what for? We still constantly fight over the most trivial of all subjects, even things like who gets the first cup of coffee in the morning, or who gets to drive when we take a road trip. Now in Illinois -- where much of family still lives -- I'm split apart from my family. We live only a couple hundred miles away from each other. Ever since I met my wife, I recall, I haven’t told my father how much I truly loved him on father’s day, or brought flowers to the grave of my mother. My prophecy is that our relationship is doomed. Still, only time can be the messenger of doom.

  Still thinking of the past on my leisurely walk – and knowing my wife would be sleeping for another hour– I decided that I would head to the local gift store to buy her a nice present. Though our town was small, the roads were always clean; everyone knew their neighbors. While entering the store, I did a slight wave to the clerk at the desk. He was one of the few friends I had -- at least, so I thought. The sun beamed its bright summer daylight into the room, making it difficult for me read the CDs I was skimming through.

  “Need help?” Mark asked, with a tone known only to a dutiful clerk.

  I answered without turning my head even the slightest. “Yes, actually. I’m looking for a Beatles CD, we’re missing only one and my wife would really like to have it. It's her birthday, you know."

  “Beatles? Over there in the corner.”

  An ear-piercing police siren began to go off; I always assume they're for me. Maybe I really am going insane.

  I diverted my attention to the lofty corner where the colors were brighter, grabbing all the attention it could from the neighboring audio. I picked up the one I was looking for, and one other, an expensive remastered version of “the great composer Bach”, as I had read on the reverse side of the cover. I'd heard that he went insane. Perhaps I can learn a thing or two from him?

With a nervous glance, I looked back at Mark, now incessantly tapping his knuckles against the front counter, waiting for another customer to come by. I took the knife from my pocket and started to chip away at the bar code, hoping to make progress before the clerk came to see what I was doing. Adrenaline began to pump into my body without cease, and a cold sweat formed upon my once dry skin. Wiping the sweat with my nearly-drenched shirt, I slid the case into the front of my jeans to try and hide my thievery. Walking up towards the counter to buy the disc for my wife, I  put a $10 bill on the table for the used CD. I wasn't all evil. Trying to conceal my shiftiness, I pranced out of the store, prideful of how well my thievery turned out.

  To my dismay, the alarms still sounded. Were they for me? I dug into my beard nervously, limping hurriedly from the store, but the clerk was catching up too quickly.

  “Your change! You forgot your change!” he called out, as clerk-ly as possible.

  “Oh, right,” I said, wiping the sweat a second time and turning around to face him. He placed the dollar bill and two pennies into my hand, and I was off once more, this time not looking back. For a moment I nearly fainted. Like a dream, almost, but all so real.

  Looking at the clock, I realized that my wife was already awake by now, that the hour had gone by too fast with my little encounter earlier. I started running, stumbling at times to stop falling flat on my face.

  When I got home, my lips were parched. The sun drained all the energy I had left even with a short run. I opened the door into my home, expecting fire and brimstone to greet me. I wasn't disappointed. My wife looked at me contemptuously, sitting, as per usual when she was pissed, at the living room table. She stared at me with a gaze in her eyes that nearly turned me to stone. Her arms were cross; her fingers tapping against her skin in utter impatience. She sighed with unconcealed anger at the very sight at of me.

  “Oh, Ryan, why the hell are you late this time?” she hissed, “It’s my birthday. Do you really have to go somewhere else on my birthday?”

  “Look, I got this CD for you, darling. And please don’t start this. Let’s just have a good day, today, alright? I was out to get you a present.” I pulled out the case from the bag smeared with bright colors somehow resembling "CD Warehouse”.

  “Beatles? I bought that CD yesterday,” she answered without a moment of pause, “Didn’t you know that already? I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t. Listen, I bought it for you. At least take it with some gratitude; I bought it with my own money, damnit.”

  “Right, like the CD in your pocket that you bought with your own money?” she snapped back. This wasn't the first time she caught me. I promised only a month ago that I would stop. I was at a loss of words; I didn’t know what to say when guilt is taking its toll.

  She answered with a tone of omniscience, as she felt she had everything figured out, “Look, Ryan, even with that.. disease or whatever—“

“Kleptomania. And it’s not a disease; it’s a problem I have with stealing things. It’s not my fault. I can't do anything about it.”

“—you can still control yourself. And you know that, Ryan, you know that. You’ve been having therapy for that for a year now. Why don’t you finally change, instead of being some hard-headed idiot that never listens?” She started flailing her arms, and I knew I couldn't soothe her anger. I had to get away from her on her birthday. Her own birthday. Why does she have to do this on her birthday? Why can’t she let me get to know her better and understand her problems, instead of shoving me away whenever I give her even the least bit of attention, and then crawling back to me in superficial agony whenever I don't?

  “I’m going upstairs.”

  “Ryan, no, you are not going upstairs. Ryan?! Do you hear me?! You are not going upstairs! Ry—“

  I slammed the door to shut her up, as I knew she was trying to pull me back into her own conversation. I wasn't allowed to speak but only stand there, waiting -- trembling -- for her onslaught of vindictive punishments. Waiting on the bed, I stayed inside and locked the door to avoid her for a long while. Trying to pass the time, and maybe bring back some memories, I looked around the room, gazing at all the different photographs of better times; times that had been lost forever as we drive ourselves to a meaningless divorce.  I reminisced as I saw the time we went to Rome; we stood in front of the ruined temples of Venus in a loving pose, embracing each other with our arms, our delicate skin brushing against the other as we kissed for the cameraman.

  Then I saw a strange picture, someone I couldn’t remember. Some instinct, some hunch, told me he looked familiar. Walking up to get a better look, I read the caption at the bottom: John Walton, Indiana State College Alumni. A flood of memories swirled my mind into a storm as I recalled the times I had at Indiana State, where I met Sandy and proposed to her in the blissful gardens of the school. But now, the school was in ruins, being remodeled after a terrible disaster causing millions in damage in 1989 -- the same year I graduated.

  The next day I got to see more of my old neighbor, possibly my old friend, John, who lives across the street from me. After I invited him to a morning visit, we sat down at a local coffee shop to discuss the ancient days of our lives.

    “…And that’s when I married Sandy,” I explained, attempting to at least catch his interest, if not his friendship. He was now a much older man, in his forties at least. His once-dark hair showed streaks of grey; wrinkles were starting to from on his forehead and eyes. His sunburnt skin was tanned brown after his years as a lifeguard.

John stared at me in catatonic wonder -- or was it despair?

“There were six who died on that beach. I tried to save them but I couldn’t. I tried to save them. I tried. I couldn’t do anything, but I tried, I tried, but I couldn’t save them, I tried.” He was unstable, trauma erupting from his memories of those six deaths long ago. In 1989.

    “And one of them was my wife. Two of them were my kids." He paused for a moment, but only to catch his weary breath. "I tried, I’m telling you! I tried. I tried!”

    I took his empty cup and stood up to leave. Some of his coffee had spilled onto his shirt, but he didn't notice. The trash can was lying next to the door, and I threw both cups away, leaving him there alone, mumbling to himself that he had tried. Maybe he didn't.

    Bells jingled as I opened the glass door. The sky was turning into a dark storm, oddly resembling the one in Indiana, and I broke into a hurried walk to get to my home before the storm hit. I broke into a run as the rain started to pour heavily against my light clothing, chilling my skin with its watery touch. Shielding my face from the rain with my left arm, I tried to keep my balance in the slippery puddles while running almost for dear life. The thunder roared in the background, sending chills down my spine.  A memory of when I was seven entered my thoughts. Soon enough I was tumbling down onto the ground.

    “Ryan, don’t go too far sweetie,” my mother called anxiously, knowing I would be alone outside for a while. We lived in a small town in Indiana called Clayton where hardly any cars came to visit, leaving me free to roam the lonely streets.

    At the time, a storm had been brewing, the clouds whirling about each other and fierce winds blowing against my face. I was scared, but I wasn't sure where my house was. I went running in frantically – any direction – to get away from the fearsome rainstorm. I found shelter under a great, ancient tree, and waited there until the storm subsided. I spent hours alone there, without anyone to tell me what to do. Out of curiosity I began to take leaves down from the tree, feeling their rough yet soft skin, keeping them in hand. I began to love the feeling of taking things for myself. For the first time, I started to steal from stores whenever I was given the chance, growing ever more cautious with each theft. It was a rush without words.

    My wife wasn't home when I got to the house, and I let out a sudden sigh of relief. She must've been at work. After all, it was a Monday. As for me, I'd been jobless for two months -- a degree in English doesn't mean much any more. I had to find another hobby other than writing; something that didn’t require the discipline of both mental and physical work. I began to spend my nights outside of the bookstore, where boring tables originally designed for eating were turned into the luxurious, green-felted tables of a casino.  I loved the adrenaline rush of playing poker in my teenage years; it reminded me of when I shoplifted things, slyly placing them into my jacket as I walked out. The chances and risks taken for poker were reminiscent of my life. I'd always try my luck whenever given the chance. Such luck that I had when Sandy was in the gardens writing essays for her classes, and I greeted her with a golden ring; but now I realize that luck has ended now. My life seemed to be stuck in a pitfall, never touching the ground, but always in a black abyss where you know and feel nothing other than the never-ending free-falling.

    The people around me did not seem to recognize me as they stared blankly in front of them. I walked past them all, simpering to appear friendly; they never looked back. Worried if I had done something to displease them, I kept moving on, trying to find a spectacle among the crowd. The store clerk, Mark, I think, gave me a quick glance filled with pity: “I’m sorry, Ryan, I really am.”  I moved through the crowd like running a finger through a bristled brush, pushing people aside with little force as they gazed onward. Ambulances blared their sirens; police crowded the streets. A man’s suited leg blocked me from full vision, but I could see the blonde hair that could only be possessed by a young woman. The man noticed me, and took a step aside. I wish he hadn't.

It was my wife.

Blood encircled her lifeless body; her lower body was crushed and scores of tire marks had been left on her once smooth legs. The medics checked for signs of a pulse, but could find none.

“Mr. Wyatt? I'm sorry. Really." I didn't fall for the medic's feigned remorse. "Your wife was killed by a gruesome car accident. The driver was having a heart attack but survived, though he lost control of the car and ended up hitting your wife. I’m so sorry.” – though I knew she wasn't. It was just another impersonal statement, something to make me feel better.

I stood there, frozen in fear of the present and of the future. I didn’t know how I could bear living the rest of my life alone; distorted, twisted.

I knew that I had to move on to avoid becoming a sad and self-pitying mirror of that broken man called Jonathan Walton.

    Suddenly, I felt like I didn't know anyone any more, and that no one knew me. No one patted me on the back, lying to me that it’ll be okay; no one told me that everything will be fine in the end; no one said I’ll just have to move on. My comfort zone collapsed, if it ever existed; I avoided people as if they were a bane to my existence.

  I was alone, I thought. I was not the only man who had lost a wife to such uncontrollable and inconceivable events, but I was the only man who had lost a woman as beautiful and loving as Sandy Satchel. But I could erase her from my mind.

  No matter how hard I tried to elude my fate, I was beginning to become undone. I lost all energy; I spent days in bed and avoiding any chance to go outside unless absolutely necessary. Outside -- that was a place filled with horror and death; a place where the happiness was drained out of your life and replaced with unending disaster. The rooms began to look like more like cellars: I piled books everywhere on the carpeting and walls in an attempt to get her out of my mind, to free myself from this horror. After carefully, cautiously, walking to my car, I drove to the closest gun store, stocking up on rifles and ammunition to feed my insecurity. I hoped that I could avoid a fate like my wife’s if I could just get away from all that has happened in my life. I burned photographs of my family, even the most cherished memories, trying to forget that they had ever existed. But they would never escape my mind. They always came back to haunt me.

    While holding a picture of our wedding in my hand, I knew I couldn’t burn it. Igazed into the bright colors of the fireplace, and placed it upon the mantel, so as to see her lingering presence and remember what I had lost and what I was aiming for in my life. But tears began to drown my eyes; wiping them away only brought more. As much as I tried to escape its grasp, the past kept latching onto my thoughts.

    My mind was pulsating with madness; I felt like I should have saved her, but I knew I couldn’t have. I crawled towards the glass case filled with all the achievements of my life, my fingers pulled into a tight grip. I looked at myself through the reflection in the glass; my face was red with anger and sadness. I threw the glass case to the ground. And I just stood there, staring at the mess of shards that I had created with my own bare hands.

    I have to move on, I told myself over and over, I have to move on.

    I was never hungry; instead, I went to sleep on my soft bed, which felt like one of the only things that I have left in this world. I just lied there, waiting for something – anything – to happen. The phone rang. I picked it up cautiously, wondering who it could be.

    “Hello?” I said, waiting impatiently for answer.

    “Ryan, wake up, please.  Just get up. We miss you.”

    The voice reminded me of Sandy, being sweet yet filled with a sort of mournful sorrow in its tone.

    “Sandy? Is that you?”

    No one answered. All that I could hear was silence interspersed with soft sobbing and mumbling.

    I held the phone in my hand, trembling after thoughts of my late wife came back to me.

    After sleeping a troubled sleep, I sighed a yawn for the new morning.

    I put my wallabies on once again, looking around the room for any signs of life other than mine; I couldn’t let go of the woman whom I loved like no other.

    Today was our anniversary; her birthday the day before. I took a flower from the vase on our mantel and placed it next to the only remaining picture of Sandy, a token of mourning. I avoided her funeral; I didn’t want to be around people, especially ones that I knew. Instead of giving me comfort, I would feel ashamed if I saw her family mourning over the loss of their child. They would think it was my fault. Everyone does. Even me.

    I took a short walk outside, watching everything around me move around as a reminder that the world will go on without me.

    “Ryan, I’m sorry about your loss. I really am,” said the store clerk, with an almost real look of pity within his eyes.

    “Not everyone is sorry. Life will have to move on. I’ll just have to forget about her,” I said coldly.

    “Look, Ryan, stop being so down about yourself and everything else. I’m here to help you in any way; everyone in the town is.”

    “Right.” I said sarcastically, almost in a murmur.

    I looked away from his grandiosely caring presence, and gazed towards the house John Walton now lives in.

    “Ryan, just listen to me. No one here hates you." This time I nearly believed he cared. "We want to help you. We really do.”

    “Mark, please. I’m fine on my own, alright? It’s not like I can’t manage by myself.”

    “Fine, Ryan, fine. Shun everyone away that wants to help you." He began to walk away. "Prick.”

    Again, I felt alone in the world.
   
  I walked towards the red-bricked house across the street. The shutters were closed. Maybe they didn't want visitors.

  I knocked three times, and then waited for an answer.

  “John? You in there?” I asked, looking through the blurred glass door to see if anyone was coming.

  I knocked more times, this time as hard as I could.

  “John, I just want to talk.”

  The door was unlocked as I tried to open it.

  “Come in, Ryan. Sit down.”

  The old man was now sitting in the opposite direction of me, turning his now aged and wrinkled head slightly, liver spots tainting his browned face.

  “John, you—you look older.” I said, surprised, even disgusted, by his new appearance.

  “I know, Ryan." He looked around the musty old room. I noticed there was a picture of a woman upon his mantel.
"This is what you will look soon enough."

  “Who are you?" I wondered if he was the Devil. "What are you?”

  “Because I didn’t appreciate what I had when I had it; stress caused these wrinkles, Ryan. Pure stress from what I didn’t do when I had the chance to do it,” he said, his words resounding through my thoughts. Perhaps they were my thoughts.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused by his strange choice of words on the matter at hand.

  “I know what happened to your wife, Ryan. And I also know how you squandered all your time with her,” he replied, taking a drink from his black mug.

  “I did what I could, John. I tried to be the best I could be when I had the chance. I just—I just never really fit what she had in mind. I always came short to what she wanted.”

  “It’s not that you weren’t able to be what she wanted you to be; no, no, that’s why she fell in love with you,” he said with a short laugh. “It’s because you never went to your full potential, Ryan. You didn’t put all that you could into anything you did. You were just there.”

He gave a terse, haunting laugh.

"A ghost."

  My eyes tensed up into a squint. “How dare you say that about me! I've tried very hard in the things that I do, John. You don’t seem to understand that. I have put my life on the line for Sandy before.”

  “Ryan, you need to understand that you never really appreciated your wife for who she really was. That’s why she was so tense around you. She didn’t feel safe when you were on your own, because she couldn’t trust you after you slept with another woman -- or should I say, many women.”

  “I didn’t sleep with another woman,” I said softly, looking into a corner to avoid his judgmental stare.

  “There was a reason you were with Sandy in the first place. You loved her. You shouldn’t chase other women after you found the one that wants to spend the rest of their life with you, Ryan. Don’t you understand that?”
 
I didn’t respond.  I couldn’t. My mind was tortured by my guilt and shame for the past.

  “You’ll be given another chance soon, Ryan, a second chance." John took a deep breath, strangely relaxed, seemingly omniscient. "Let her know that you still care about her and love her.”

  “Wha-what? She’s dead, John. Dead. She’s not coming back." I looked at him in a mixture of fury and grief. "Now answer the damn question. Who are you, really?"

  “Just call me Ryan Wyatt." He paused for my confusion. "I changed my name when my wife divorced me; I couldn’t take the shame. Don't do what I did. Heed my words carefully. When you realize how much you truly love your wife, that’s when you’ll be given that second chance.”

  A phone rang loudly, louder than anything I had heard before.

John was not surprised by the least.

  “Pick it up, Ryan. It’s for you.”

  I slowly walked towards the phone, my gaze never leaving John’s eyes, and his the same.

  “Hello?”

  “Ryan, they’re going to cut off your life support if you don’t come back. I know what we’ve been through, Ryan, I know. But if you just wake up, we can start new again. Don’t you want that?”

  In the background, I could hear Sandy choking back tears.

  Tears meant for me.

  I hung up the phone, staring at the ground and trying to think of what could possibly be happening. Was this all just a dream? A terrible nightmare? Reality?

  I looked back to where John was sitting, but he was no longer there. All that was left was his mug - which now had "REMEMBER" in gold lettering across its glaze; his rocking chair now completely still. He was gone. Did I have a similar fate?

  I began to think about my past: about everything that I could have done, and what I really did; about how I didn’t get the chance to say a mere “I love you” on the last day of her life.

  Once more, grief enveloped me. I began to cry again over her death, but not like I had before. I knew what I had done wrong. And when I was given that second chance like John said I would, I was going to appreciate my life for what it is, not for what it could have been.

  I was going to right the things I had done wrong; to seize whatever chances I would have let go before.

  I left his house to go back to my own, though the skies began to seem strangely fuzzy.

  With each step that I took, everything became all the more blurry.

  I feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders; nothing felt real any more.

  Everything was slowly swept away, being replaced by the eyes of my wife, who kept staring into mine with a sense of hope.

    It really was all a dream.

    I could feel the warmth of her skin against my body, overjoyed that I could see her alive once again.

  Though my voice was shaky and weak, I asked her only one question:

  “What happened?”

  “You were in a car accident after the driver had a heart attack. Your legs were crushed and blood was everywhere, then you went into a coma." The very sight of her instilled sudden, boundless joy. "I was so worried, Ryan.”

  She wept into my shoulder, digging her nails into my back.

  Tears of joy, I thought.

  I held her into my arms for what felt like hours. I was just lying there, embracing the life I had been given back, knowing that I will never go back to who I was before.

  “You said we could try again,” I whispered into her ear.

She hugged me tighter: “We can. I know we can.”

When I shut my eyes, I could still see the man that could be me. That man walked away.

“I’ll make it work this time, I promise,” I said, “I’ve been given a second chance.”

It felt so real.