Coming Home

Mike Tremont lounged in his recliner, his legs dangling over the armrest that belched its stuffing through the fraying fabric. In one hand he clicked the remote, flipping through two hundred channels of the same useless crap. In the other he sloshed a half-drained can of the cheapest beer money could buy. He didn’t like to skimp when it came to his weekend booze, but with his daughter finishing up her freshman year in college, and his wife’s lackluster effort to reapply herself to the American workforce, the budget was stretched to its limit.

He shook his head in short strokes as each channel flipped past. He couldn’t believe there was absolutely nothing on. Not even a decent baseball game. Saturday afternoons sucked. Who cared about the Braves anymore, anyway?

Then he felt a familiar pressure build in his gut. His focus drifted away from the screen as he leaned back and opened his mouth. Out poured a window-rattling belch that reverberated through the house, echoing its own obnoxiousness. He muted the TV and craned his neck back, listening for a voice from the other end of the house. It usually followed one of his masterful a cappella solos and though he never gave her protests much credit, his work lingering in the air lost some impact without its accompaniment. Like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ without drums.

Mike smirked and turned his attention back to the television. Thinking his wife must be ignoring him, or outside, he resumed his mindless channel surfing. He was well into the latter one-hundreds when he was jolted upright in his chair.

“You know,” his wife Stephanie said, standing in the doorway of the den, “that is totally unnecessary.”

He shook his head but didn’t look back.

“You never used to be this disgusting.”

Mike couldn’t resist. He spun the chair around enough to look at her. He saw the short hair and blotchy complexion and the extra pounds that had attached to her body every year. He knew he should stop himself, but he couldn’t. Hadn’t been able to in a long time. Neither of them could.

“Neither did you.” He watched the words strike her with a razor’s edge and immediately regretted them. ‘Why can’t I stop?’ he thought.

Her body shook and as she hung her head and ducked back out the room she said, “You’re a pig.”

“Takes one ...” It wouldn’t stop.

“I want a divorce.” Her voice trailed to him from the hall.

He turned away from the door and in a low voice, barely more than a whisper, said, “Been saying that for ten years.”

The television blinked and flashed in colors as a cartoon he didn’t recognize rolled forth in its punchy glory. His attention was elsewhere now.

Ten years. Could it be that long? He didn’t know. How does one ever know when a good thing goes bad? It develops, or unravels over time. There’s usually no concrete moment that you can point to and say, ‘There, that’s it. That’s when you stopped loving me.’ In many ways he wished it was that simple. Then he could have some hope to fix it. But life with Stephanie didn’t seem destined for anything other than over.

Ten years. The petty arguments that turned into something more serious, that turned into quips, and then insults. The physical distance in the bedroom spread as Luann got older and her demands on their time changed. Accusations of infidelities that never happened. The long, cold winter nights spent in separate rooms on opposite ends of the house. They had been falling apart for almost as long as they had been falling in love.

Then, of course, was the therapy. Marriage counseling of the token, sub-moronic Dr. Phil style that only made Mike scratch his head and wonder why he shelled out two hundred bucks a week for it. More fuel for the fire that was devouring their lives.

They kept at each other almost every day, but had somehow managed to keep their failing marriage hidden from Luann. He missed her terribly. Only when she was home did the house feel like a home anymore. In her absence, there was nothing to distract them from that invariable fate stalking them at every turn, waiting for one of them to accept the fact that yes, Luann was grown up, out of the house now, and there was no reason to maintain the charade. No reason to stay together.

Stephanie said it. She’d been saying it for a long time. Words he didn’t want to hear and couldn’t bring himself to utter: I want a divorce.

Those words echoed in the den long after his obscene gaseous emission and he realized that they weren’t cutting him that deep anymore. What did that mean? Was he coming to accept it as a good thing? Or was he merely growing numb to the concept?

He flicked off the t.v. and sat in silence. He couldn’t wait to see Luann. She should be on her way home for the summer by now. In fact, she could be walking through the door any moment. ‘None too soon,’ he thought.

Stephanie was busy cleaning Luann’s room, vacuuming, dusting, washing the windows, washing the sheets, and so on. Not that any of it needed to be done. She just wanted her daughter to come home to a clean place. Mike thought Steph just wanted to avoid him as long as she could.

He got up and walked outside. He surveyed his half-acre of lawn and the mess of twigs and leaves still waiting to be picked up from the harsh winter storms. He set to work, not because he wanted to but because he had to. It was about all he felt he had left.

Until Luann comes home.



***************



Several hours later, Mike was once again in the recliner sipping the crappy beer and munching on popcorn. Midnight had come and gone. Stephanie was likely unconscious to the world. ‘Lethal Weapon’ was playing for the zillionth time and he watched the mindless violence with little interest.

He couldn’t shake free of an inevitability that snuck around him, slithered up his leg, and wrapped him in a tight bond all afternoon. His marriage was over. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. There was pain inside, but he kept seeing it as more about throwing away twenty-five years of his life than about losing the love of it.

And she was. Stephanie was, and he knew would always be, the love of his life. The young, fifteen-year-old girl that stole his fifteen-year-old heart from him as easily as slipping a quarter from his hand and into the jukebox to play their song for the very first time.

“God,” he sighed to the empty room, “where did it go wrong?”

A firm pounding on his front door jolted him from his chair. He wondered who could be knocking at two in the morning, then realized with a bounce of his heart that Luann was home.

He jumped up and walked, almost trotted, to the front door. He saw Stephanie scrambling to clutch her bathrobe around her and tie it off. Her dour expression that he would beat her to the door made him stop. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t a competition. He waited for her in the living room, not noticing the blue and red lights on top of the car idling in the driveway.

Stephanie looked at him with soft eyes. In them he thought he caught a glimpse of the girl she had once been. For a very brief moment, the years and the effects of life slipped away, as though they hadn’t yet been yanked out of their dreams to catch up to her in the living room. His eyes narrowed and he felt a smile touch his lips. How much of that was for Luann, he didn’t know and wouldn’t surmise. The moment was over but it had ripped a hole through him all the same. Stephanie deserved to open the door.

‘Wait a minute,’ he thought, ‘she has a key. Why would she ...’

Before he could finish it, Stephanie swung the door open with a smile and the words “Welcome home,” tripping from her tongue. Mike couldn’t see her face but he knew it went black, just like his heart. Standing on the front steps in the middle of the night were two uniformed police officers. He knew the term ‘every parents’ worst nightmare.’

For Michael and Stephanie, ‘nightmare’ couldn’t cover it.



***************



Six months dragged by like he lugged the burden of three lifetimes behind him. Nothing was the same and Mike knew it would never be. Could never be. But at some point he knew something had to change. He pawed at the leaves on the ground with the plastic rake, not doing much besides simply surrounding himself with autumn. Something other than the misery indoors.

The police couldn’t say what happened. Luann could have been pushing too hard to get home and fell asleep, or she may have been distracted, or looking at her cell phone. No one will ever know why her car drifted off the road just before midnight, but it did and she never had a chance.

Now his marriage was that car and he could see that tree closing in, but he wasn’t going to wake Stephanie to steer around it. The time had come to say goodbye.

Michael Tremont clutched the rake and cried. He sobbed and collapsed to the cold, damp grass as his body heaved and convulsed. The tears flooded from his body, stealing air from his lungs. He gasped and fought to draw some in but the more he tried, the less he got. In a part of his mind he thought panic should set in, but there was none. He welcomed this release, even if it killed him. He had begun to wonder if he could even feel anything anymore.

He knew Stephanie resented him for not crying at the funeral. What she didn’t know was that his heart had stopped up. All the emotions, all the heartache and disappointments, had built up and clotted the main arteries. Only now had the damn broken and she was curled up in Luann’s bed, staring at a blank wall, or a picture of Luann, or clutching her baby blanket, so far away from him not even NASA could reach her.

He wept for what felt like hours and then lay still in the crisp leaves until his phone chirped from inside his pocket. He pulled it out and once he saw the name on the caller ID, opened it and sat up.

“Hey man,” he said through a sniffle, “when the hell’d you get out?”

A familiar voice drifted into his ear and it was like a long drink of cold water after working outside all day under a blazing sun. “Yesterday.” He and Fred had been friends for most of their lives. Neither one knew when it started, they only understood that it was sometime before they reached ten.

“Where are you?”

“Home.” There was a change in Fred’s voice Mike picked up immediately. A reserved tone. So different than the wild, carefree boy he’d once been.

Mike waited for him to say more. He knew these past two years had not been easy for his friend, but prison never was. He visited when he could, but with a fading family, that wasn’t nearly as often as he would have liked. Mike sensed that there was something on Fred’s tongue that merely needed the space to slide out.

Finally he spoke. “Think we could get together?”

“Sure,” Mike said. “When?”

“Uh, now.”

“Okay, where?”

“How about the Point?”

The Point. A place that overlooked much of Dowden, their hometown, a place they frequented as kids. It would also be the place he took Stephanie late on Friday and Saturday nights once he got a car. It had always been a special place for him and though he hadn’t been there in years, he somehow knew nothing had changed.

“Sounds fine. Need a ride?”

“No man, I’m good. Let’s call it half hour.”

“Okay. See you there.”

“See ya.”

Mike closed the phone and held it limply in his lap. He knew what Fred wanted. There was a familiar, serious, and somber tone coating his voice. Usually that tone meant he was in trouble but Mike didn’t think so. Not after one day of freedom.

Fred wanted to talk about Luann.



***************



The day was growing thin. The sun tickled the tops of the trees behind them and the cool promise of night licked the backs of their necks. Mike thought he’d be shivering by now, but he wasn’t. He was somewhere else, reminiscing with his lifelong friend.

Fred laughed. “You remember Pete Strong?”

“Man, whatever happened to him?”

“Heard he married some stripper who wound up being a lawyer or something and sued him after the divorce. Betchya he’s sworn off strippers now.”

Mike smiled, a part of his mind remembering the gangly, awkward kid, while the other part still scolded him for even thinking about smiling, much less laughing. He didn’t believe he had the right to anymore. It felt like by doing so he would be negating Luann’s very existence.

The words stopped and the two men just sat and looked out over their distant memories. Through the corner of his eye, Mike saw Fred’s head drop and his lips turn down. This was it, the moment they came here to confront. It was fine. For anyone else, he would have walked away, but this man had been like her uncle. He deserved the opportunity he didn’t have when she died.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

There it was. Simple. Concise. And ridiculous. “What are you talking about? You were in jail.”

“No man, that doesn’t excuse it.” Fred turned to look at Mike. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t think anything-”

“No, you know I didn’t have to get in that car that night. I didn’t have to drink like I did. I didn’t have to do any of that. I made bad choices and you know what?”

Mike shook his head and shrugged.

“Nothing hit me as hard as that phone call from you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“No. No, I wanted to know. You think I’d be okay to get out now and find out she’s gone?”

“Of course not.”

“Damn right.” Fred gathered up a handful of pebbles and began flicking them off the ledge where they tumbled out of sight and down the massive slope to piles of garbage and old tires and other rusting junk, a testament to years of neglect. They couldn’t see the crap from where they sat, which added strength to the phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

“I wish I was there for you, that’s all.”

“Come on, man. You’ve been there for me every time I needed you. You think I was upset cause you weren’t at the funeral? I understood. I knew.”

“It wasn’t easy. I didn’t think I was gonna make it. In prison, I mean. They push you, they ride you, they beat you down until they break you. I saw men give in and become empty shells walking around. I saw others, very few, thrive on it, taking college courses, anger management, that sort of thing. But most of the guys I served with, you could see them getting harder, angrier, edgier. I could see them blowing their opportunity as soon as they were out.” He paused and Mike thought he almost saw a tear in Fred’s eye. “When I got your call, I wanted to die. I lost control. Beat up a guard and got a week in solitary.”

“I had no idea.”

“Well, it wasn’t the end of the world for me. Could have been, but I got lucky. One of the assistant administrators interviewed me and determined that it was an isolated incident brought on by, what did he call it, extenuating circumstances unlikely to repeat itself.”

Mike dropped his head. Unlikely to repeat itself. Yeah, absolutely.

“I woke up the next morning, looked in the mirror and, I know it sounds corny, but I didn’t like what I saw. I was becoming one of those other guys, the ones that end up in and out of the system for the rest of their lives.

“I made a mistake. I was a screwed up drunk who tried to drive home one too many times and hit that other car. In the year I’d been in jail at that point, I hadn’t done a thing to address the problem but after Luann ... you know, I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“What happened?”

“Got myself into a program. AA. Been clean and sober since. One hundred thirty one days today.”

“That’s great. Congratulations,” Mike said in a dry tone. He tried to look for the positive things to come from his daughter’s death but hadn’t found anything. Until now, and even though he was genuinely happy for his friend, he resented it at the same time. Why did she have to die for this man to gain an epiphany?

“It’s nothing to celebrate, Mike. It’s just something I had to face and will have to face for the rest of my life. Just like you.”

Mike looked up at him with hard eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean? You think beating alcohol is the same as losing your only child?” He tried to fight this defensive nature, but he had only managed to do so by avoiding people. Here, sitting at The Point overlooking the past with his closest friend, he couldn’t avoid anything and he was afraid of what was coming.

Fred didn’t say anything at first. He seemed to wait for the red to dribble out of Mike’s face. Then he said, “I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Then what?”

“How’s Stephanie?”

It was a masterful maneuver, guiding him into a web that the more he struggled, the more he was going to get stuck. He grit his teeth and breathed heavy through his nose. This was what he didn’t want to talk about. Facing the inevitable truth that once it came forth from, or before, another person, it became real. “She’s hanging in there.”

“Really.” Fred didn’t disguise his doubt. “From what I hear, no one’s even seen her since the funeral.”

Mike’s emotional tension began to relax, somewhat. “It’s been tough on both of us. She’ll get through it.”

“You sure?”

Mike nodded but he wasn’t sure. He only wanted to avoid the issue as long as he could, but he knew his friend wasn’t going to allow that. Fred had missed being there to support him through the most difficult moment of his life. He wasn’t about to let him go through the second worst alone.

“You guys been working out anything?”

The time to sidestep and dance around had passed. He knew it. He drew in a long, slow breath and shot it out in a short burst. His shoulders collapsed beneath it. “I can’t remember us saying more than two words to each other since.”

“Are you serious?”

Mike only nodded, his head dropping further.

“What about before?”

Now his head rocked back and forth. In a feeble whisper he said, “It’s over.” There it was, the truth and the consequence wrapped up in two simple words that were finally out in the open for him to hear with his own ears and to digest with a witness.

“What?”

“It’s been over for a long time, Fred. We’ve just been fooling ourselves or hanging on for something neither one of us can even recall anymore.”

“I know you guys were having some trouble, but geez Mike, that’s the love of your life. She’s your high school sweetheart.”

“I know that.” The defensive energy returned and he didn’t care to press it back. Its troops were far stronger than he. “What the hell you want me to say? Want me to lie and say everything’s hunky-dory? It ain’t, okay?”

Fred sighed in his own place and then said, “It’s your fault. You know that.”

“What are you ... what the hell’s the matter with you?”

“You two were the envy of every kid in school. Every boy who asked a girl out and really liked her would say ‘this’ll be just like Mike and Steph. It’ll be that awesome.’ You guys were what the rest of us wished to find someday. And we all knew that wasn’t ever gonna happen and you know why?”

Mike shook his head.

“Because what you two have comes along maybe once in a fairytale. Maybe. And it’s your fault if you lose it.”

“How is it my fault? I’ve done everything to try to save this marriage. Everything!” His voice rose as the tears beckoned. “I worked my ass off to try and give her everything she deserved and it was never enough. None of it ever mattered. How the hell is it my fault?!”

Fred paused and then said in a calm voice, “You never resolved your lives.”

Mike studied him, confused and unsure what train this man got off of when he left prison.

“Your lives, Mike. You have more than one.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked incredulously.

“Listen to me. When you’re a kid, that’s one life. Childhood, adolescence, pre-teen, teenage years, all that is one life. Then you fall in love and get married. That’s the beginning of your second life. Then Luann was born and you started a third life. I don’t know, but I think women just sort of do it naturally. They manage to combine their different lives into one. Us guys, we don’t do that. We move from one to the next, get all responsible and shit and before you know it we’re completely different than we were when we first met our true love. I think that’s why so many marriages fail. It’s because who we were when we fell in love is so different than who we are once the honeymoon is over and we’re digging in for the long haul.

“You’ve got to hang on to some of that youthful exuberance. You’ve got to remember what you were like when you two first started dating, when it was fresh, when it was real.”

“It’s always been real,” Mike said, not sure what to think about this man’s point of view. He was certainly different than when he went to prison. Fred had never been one confused with the intellectual or philosophical crowd. He was a simple, blue-collar man and Mike didn’t know if this was one of those off-the-cuff whimsical discussions, but he was hitting a soft, tender spot.

“No, it hasn’t. You said so yourself.”

“When?”

“A few years ago, when you first told me you two were having trouble. Remember?”

No, he didn’t.

“Well, I remember. You said the whole thing felt like it had turned into a sham. That the marriage was all for show, for Luann and once she was out of the house, there’d be nothing left.”

He still didn’t remember telling his friend that, but he certainly remembered feeling it. Heck, he remembered feeling it only hours before the officers knocked on his door.

“That’s not being real. You know?”

“Yeah, I do. But it’s too late. There’s nothing left.”

“No it ain’t. It’s never too late.”

“What do you suppose I do? We haven’t even been intimate in more that a year. At least.” He spoke in as sarcastic a tone as he could, trying to derail the conversation, but Fred was always persistent. “It’s past the point of no return. It’s over.” There it was again like a neon sign lighting up another casino.

“You signed the papers?”

“What papers?”

“Then it ain’t over.”

“What the hell do you want from me?” Mike said shuffling to his feet. Shouting out to the world, “What the hell do you want from me?”

Fred kicked to his feet, knocking dirt and more pebbles down the ravine. “I want you to hang on. To try, at least.”

“I’ve been trying for years.”

“No, you haven’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You two have been going through the motions and distracting yourselves from the issues by doting on Luann. She was the only thing keeping you together, and now that she’s gone, you have to work for it.”

“I went to marriage counseling, talked to therapists, confessed my most innermost feelings ... I did all that shit. I don’t see what else-”

“Look,” Fred said, cutting him off with a raised hand. “You know how people always talk about the ‘good ole days’?”

“Yeah, sure. Why?”

“Why do you think we always do that? Wish for those days?”

Mike only shrugged. He scratched the back of his neck trying to wonder, knowing he was about to get Fred’s take on the topic.

“You look back on fifteen and think how easy it was, how much fun, but you forget that you’re seeing it through the eyes of a man who has learned so much since then.”

“Okay.”

“But when you were fifteen, eleven probably looked so easy and fifteen was the hardest, most awkward time of your life.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is ... you’ve only got today. It just seems so tough, so impossible because you don’t know what’s coming around the corner. Back when you were fifteen, you didn’t know you were going to be okay and that’s what made it so scary, the not knowing. But you look back on those days and think, ‘what the hell was I afraid of?’ It looks so easy now because you already know the answer.”

“What answer?”

“What’s gonna happen. You know what came after fifteen. You know how things turned out. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. That’s why it’s so scary right now.”

“Fine. So what does that do for me? What do you think I should do? I mean, how does that little philosophical junket help save my marriage?”

“It doesn’t. But I’m telling you ... resolve your different lives and strip away all the crap you built around you all these years. Go back to fifteen and remember what it was like when you first met Stephanie. Make her remember.

“If you do that and you guys end up divorced, which I’ll tell you, sounds pretty likely, then you’ll know you really tried. You’ll know that you did everything you could.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Bullshit. I know you. I know you too well. If you guys walk away from what you’ve got, away from the love that fairytales are made of, especially now that Luann’s gone, then you both will have wasted twenty-five years. I don’t want to see that. Neither do you.”

Mike’s head rocked slowly back and forth as the night swallowed day. He looked at his friend who merely stood and waited with nothing more to say. No more philosophy, no more pontifications. He said all he needed to say. The man had gone through a different kind of hell than Mike over the past six months, there was no doubt. Except Mike’s didn’t seem to have an end and probably never would.

Fred was right about one thing, though, if nothing else. He didn’t want it to be over.

Not yet.



***************



The days crept by and Mike found himself thinking about the things Fred said to him at The Point. The guy was dead-on about so much it was unnerving. Downright frightening to think a man with such limited mental resources could ponder thoughts and concepts so deep.

Mike wanted to hang on to Stephanie. Every time he thought about the ending, he felt the seams of his heart tear open. He still loved her with fervent passion. And he missed her terribly. He knew, however, that simple apologies weren’t going to get the two of them up this massive mountain and considering they hadn’t spoken much in more than six months, he wasn’t even sure if she’d want to anymore.

He found himself standing outside their bedroom, or Luann’s room, wherever Stephanie was wallowing away her days, several times in the past few days, working up the courage to face down the terrifying prospect of divorce. They needed to talk, but he was afraid talking would quickly turn to yelling and that would be it. Game over. Pack up the bags and bid farewell. The longer he waited, the longer he managed to avoid that dreaded moment.

Except this morning he awoke with a different approach, a different idea. It hit him like a sweet summer breeze billowing off the ocean spray. And along with it came the realization of how right Fred had been, and exactly what the guy was trying to say.

Mike stood outside his daughter’s room, swallowed hard, and then knocked softly.

Stephanie mumbled something and he opened the door. He walked inside and stood in the middle of the room. Stephanie lay on Luann’s bed, her face inches from the wall, her back to him. He didn’t say anything, only stood there and looked at his wife and felt his heart crank up a few decibels. He swallowed again.

He heard her mumble the word ‘what’ but couldn’t manage to force his own words out. Eventually she turned over and looked at him with a dolorous face that had anger etched in the lines of her eyes. “What?” she said more clearly.

Mike stuffed his hands in his pockets, a nervous habit that dated back to a time before he even met her. Now his fingers jittered the keys in them. “I,” he started to say, then only stuttered on that world.

“What, Michael?” She propped up on her elbows and a wad of hair slipped across her forehead, partially obscuring her face. She didn’t make an effort to move it. That and the fact that she called him Michael made things even more difficult.

“Let’s get out of here.” As soon as they were out in the wild, he realized how obnoxiously stupid they were. Just like they were lounging around on a lazy Saturday afternoon, no troubles between them, boredom driving the attitude to simply head out and see what they could find to do.

“Excuse me?” The incredulous look on Stephanie’s face told him unequivocally that he was in for an enduring uphill battle.

“I mean ... can we go somewhere and talk?”

“Go somewhere? With you? For what?”

“To talk.”

“Talk here.”

“No. Not here.”

She swung her legs over the bed and finally brushed her hair back. She sat on the edge of the mattress and dangled her hands in her lap. “What is there to talk about, Michael? What the hell do you think I want to hear?”

“It’s not about what you want to hear,” he said, hearing the tone of his voice drawing in sharp edges, not knowing how to dull them, “it’s about us.”

“What us?” she said throwing her arms out to her side. “What us, Michael? There is no us. Hasn’t been for a long time. Who are you kidding?”

“Don’t say that. Not now.”

“Get out,” she said, pointing to the door. “Get out of my daughter’s room.”

“She was my daughter, too.”

“The hell with you. The hell with you!” Stephanie threw a pillow at him as she jumped off the bed, shouting. “You didn’t cry once for her, don’t tell me she was your daughter.” Her attempt to fight back another barrage of tears was futile.

“I did cry. I did hurt. I still do!”

“Liar,” she said as she pounded on his chest and arms. He blocked what he could, but little more. “I needed you and all you did was go on like nothing was wrong. I fucking hate you!”

“I was numb!” He shouted back at her, blasting her hair back. It was precisely what he didn’t want to happen, but there it was unfolding all the same. “Ten years of this shit. I had nothing left. It all stopped up in here,” he said, pounding on his chest. “I wanted to goddammit. My life ended that night, too. Don’t think you own a monopoly on that sorrow or misery.”

Stephanie stepped back, her body convulsing from the sobs. “I hate you,” she said in hoarse whisper.

“You don’t mean that.”

Her head bounced up and down. “Yes, I do.”

“No you don’t.”

He watched Stephanie drop to the floor and hide her face in her hands. Through heaves and choking sobs she said, “Just leave me alone.”

Mike knelt next to her and extended his arm. He wanted to touch her, to take her in his arms and hold her until it passed, but he supposed he should have done that six months ago. Maybe it really was too late. He still wasn’t ready to concede that yet.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he whispered. She only shook her head and seemed to draw in tighter. He caught three words before they jumped from his tongue and swallowed them back down. They weren’t going to do anything right now expect act like iodine on an open wound.

He waited for her to gain some control and then said, “Will you at least go somewhere with me? Call it ... one last favor, if you like.”

She shook her head but didn’t say anything at first and wouldn’t look up at him. “Where?”

“Just go.”

A loud yet feeble sigh escaped her and her shoulders slumped ever further and he didn’t think that was possible. She slid her legs under herself to stand up and Mike straightened to give her room. She rubbed her red, swollen eyes.

“What should I wear?” Her voice was one of resigned defeat. He didn’t like forcing her to do something she absolutely had no interest in doing, but he kept reminding himself that this was the last effort. After today, there was nothing more.

“What you have on is fine.”

“I’m not going out in public looking like this.”

“It doesn’t matter. You look fine.”

She turned away. “At least let me wash my face and put some makeup on.”

“Why?”

She looked back and studied him. He regarded her with calm patience. They lost control but who wouldn’t? Change was always tough, whether you wanted it or not.

Finally she shrugged and said, “Fine,” and walked out of Luann’s room.



***************



Twenty silent minutes later Mike turned into the parking lot at Matchstick Diner.

“What are you doing?” Stephanie asked.

“Getting something to eat.”

“I don’t want to go here.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Mike, you don’t think I’m that stupid, do you?”

Her last sentence wasn’t a question and he was careful with its double edge. “No, of course not.” He parked near the front door. Two other cars waited patiently in the lot.

“I’m not going in there,” Stephanie reiterated.

“Let’s just go. I’m hungry.” He knew that she only agreed to go out to humor him so that he would then go about leaving her alone again. He knew she’d indulge him this far.

He hopped out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. He opened the door and offered her his hand. She pulled herself up without his help and slammed the door shut behind her.

“What? You think you can just take me back to some nostalgic spot and everything’s going to be all right?”

“No. Come on.”

Her feet dragged along the gravel parking lot to the front door. She kept her head down and Mike could only imagine a dozen reasons why.

He opened the front door and smiled gently as she walked by, even though she couldn’t see it. What he wanted to do felt weird. It was foreign to him, but in that morning moment, it made all the sense in the world.

Once inside, he guided her to a booth with red vinyl seats and an old table top jukebox that hadn’t worked in twenty years. Stephanie regarded the booth for several moments before shaking her head, sighing, and sitting down. She immediately laced her fingers together on the chipped surface of the table and looked up at him.

“Well?” she said. “Talk.”

He stood at the edge of the booth and looked at her. There was something missing and he couldn’t figure out what. He held up a finger and asked her to wait a minute.

He walked over to the counter and, while checking to see that she was gazing out the window, probably into a world that would never be the same for her, he talked to the waitress. He dropped a twenty dollar bill on the counter and said, “You don’t have to wait on us. But if I could borrow a checkbook and an apron, I would appreciate it very much.”

The waitress studied him and arched her brow. “Okay, Mike. Just don’t run off with it.”

She still remembered him. He was glad that some things never changed. “Thanks Karen.”

She stepped into the kitchen and returned with the two items he requested. He took them and put the apron on, amazed at how easy it seemed to grab him and draw him in. He hadn’t worked here in almost twenty-five years, but if needed, he could go right out and pick up where he left off as though he quit last week.

He smiled quickly at Karen and headed back to his table. Stephanie studied her fingernails as she picked at them. Mike stopped at the edge of the booth, raised the pad of paper and a pen he scrounged from the cash register, and said in as normal a voice as he could manage, “Welcome to Matchsticks, ladies, may I take your order?”

Stephanie looked up at him with a sour expression. “What are you doing?” she said, exasperated.

Mike nodded at an imaginary person across from her and said, “Would you like fries with that?”

“Mike, will you stop? You’re making a scene.”

He ignored her and continued his act. He continued moving around the imaginary group until he said, “Mm-hmm. Okay ... I’m not sure if our potatoes were grown in cages or free range, but I can ask.”

Then it happened. A short laugh escaped from Stephanie and a smile spread across her face and as quickly as it came, she sucked it back down. Mike stopped his charade and slid into the booth across from her and touched the back of her hand.

“That’s it. That’s good,” he said.

Stephanie looked away and a guilty, sheepish expression took over her features. She shook her head.

“It’s okay to laugh again. You know that, right?”

Gradually she looked up at him, her eyes hurt and broken, so unlike the soft and bright eyes that gazed up at him from that same seat twenty-five years ago, when they were both fifteen. She had come into the diner after cheerleading practice with three of her closest friends. Mike was waiting tables, trying to help out his father who had lost his job at the local mill. The girls giggled and laughed and being a shy kid by nature, Mike simply went about his job taking their orders. They joked and teased him and he took it all in stride because it wasn’t the bitter, nasty teasing he was used to in school, it was more light-hearted.

Then he came to the fourth girl, the one by the window with the wavy brown hair with blond streaks that fell over her shoulders and he gazed at her. Stared at her was more like it. Stared until Trish, her best friend said, “Think someone’s got a crush on you,” jabbing her in the side while she did.

“It doesn’t feel right,” Stephanie said at last.

“When will it?”

The sobering moments were upon them. “Why are we here, Mike?”

He paused to gather the words as best he could. Then he said, “Somewhere in time there’s a fifteen-year-old boy meeting the love of his life for the very first time. He’s tripping over himself to not look like a fool and she’s taking pity on him, playing along.”

“It wasn’t pity,” she said with a little smile. It had the promise of igniting the world.

He closed his hands over hers. “He’s got his whole life ahead of him and he doesn’t know what’s to come of it. He doesn’t know if this beautiful young girl will even go out with him and the thought of asking her terrifies him, makes him tremble. He doesn’t have any thought of marriage or children or even his senior year still two years away. He isn’t worried about paying for college for his daughter or trying to survive another year of marriage. He doesn’t care about diapers or homework or dance recitals or anything like that. All he’s got is this one moment in time. This one moment to look into this girl’s eyes and feel his heart tripping down a steep slope into her arms.”

“There’s so much that went wr-” she started to say until he cut her off with a raise of his hand and a simple ‘Sh’.

“Somewhere in time, that boy’s going to forget who he was. He’s going to get married and act different. He’s going to forget the little things that made this relationship grow and flourish. He’s going to leave that behind, thinking that’s the right thing to do, and become responsible for his new family. He’s going to take for granted the little things that make a love last. The flowers, the dances, the simple kisses that need no occasion, the embraces under a full moon for no other reason than the fact that he loves her as madly as ever.

“Somewhere in time, that boy will have a child of his own and he’s going to devote his life to her. He’s even going to hide from the things he forgot about and left behind in that child. He’s going to grow resentful of the woman that stole his heart because ... well, for a number of reasons, but mostly because he let himself forget that who he’s with is the most precious woman in the world. He’s going to ignore the warnings and the nudges and the emptiness and continue to slide away from that boy he once was. He’s going to keep doing those things until it’s too late.”

Stephanie kept her attention on him but didn’t say anything. He saw the flicker of the girl inside. He continued to speak, now feeling that he was really talking to her.

“But that boy isn’t worried about those things in that one moment when he’s fifteen. He’s got today and nothing else matters. Someday he’ll wake up and realize that he can’t leave his life behind. He’s going to understand that it’s important to hang on to that child he once was, to the young boy that girl fell in love with. He’s going to understand the importance of resolving those different parts of his life that should define him as complete and that when he didn’t do it, he was incomplete and thus not worthy of the love he so craved.

“Somewhere in time, that boy’s going to fall to his knees and pray that it’s not too late. He’s going to gaze into the woman that is still the love of his life and beg her to try ... one more time.”

He had been fighting the tears and lost. He wiped them away in time to see Stephanie’s own drifting down her face. He watched her struggle with words and waited almost breathless, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.

“Wh- why ... wha- ...” She swallowed and tried again. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you still want to try this?”

“You don’t?”

“I didn’t say that, Michael. I asked you why.”

He didn’t have to think of an answer. It was right there. “Because I still love you.”

Her tears rolled faster now and he reached over to wipe them away. There were too many of them and he decided to let them fall.

Stephanie sniffled and managed to say three words he hoped to hear and one that he didn’t. “I love you, too, but...”

“But what?”

“What if it’s too late?”

“Then it’s too late. But it doesn’t have to be.”

“I don’t know. We’ve said so much to each other. So many hurtful things.”

“We deal them one at a time.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, then he slid out from the table.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

Before he could walk away, Stephanie gently touched his arm and gazed up at him. In that moment he saw past the years and the lines on her face, past the extra pounds and the puffy eyes and cheeks and saw for the first time in so long the young girl he had fallen in love with all those years ago.

“Mike,” she said with a pause, “are we going to make it?”

He studied her and felt that all-too-familiar sensation in his chest, as though his heart was tearing apart. She was right; there were so many issues to resolve for this to work. So many ifs hanging in the wind like dirty laundry on a line. He decided to tell her the truth.

“I don’t know.” He paused, took her hand gently in his own and said, “But we’ve got today. We’ve got right now.”

He let go of her hand and walked away. He reached into his pocket and drew out a decent looking dollar bill and stopped at the jukebox. He didn’t need to use the restroom. He needed something else, something he hadn’t had for a long, long time.

He let the machine swallow his bill, searched out the song he wanted and even though his money gave him two plays, he took only one. He punched in the number for the song and before he made it back to the booth, the first song he and Stephanie ever danced to started playing throughout the diner.

He watched Stephanie’s head lift and begin to turn as the famous piano riff of Journey’s ‘Faithfully’ cascaded over her body.

Mike stopped beside her and as he fidgeted on his feet and wrung his hands and nervously found the right words, said, “Would you like to dance?”

Stephanie took his hand and slid out of the booth. She wrapped her arms around him and wordlessly buried her face in his neck. He held her tight and though they didn’t move the entire song, it was the perfect dance.