It Started to Rain

“How long has it been like this?” Dr. Phillips asked.

“Too long,” Sarah replied.  She paused briefly as she sat up on the couch.  “It was fine at first,” she continued, “pleasant even, but as the days wore on, things just seemed to get stale.  I don’t know when I started to feel like this, I just know that I did, and I do, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Do you have to fix it?” Dr. Phillips asked.          

Sarah laughed.  “Is that a trick question?”

Dr. Phillips smiled as she removed her wire-rimmed glasses and put them on her desk.  “Sarah, there are no trick questions in this office, you know that.  I only ask you questions that I think you’re too afraid to ask yourself.”

Sarah looked into Dr. Phillips pale green eyes and wondered, as she always did, why she still came to see the woman who didn’t understand a single fucking thing about her.

“I’ve asked myself over and over if I have to fix it,” Sarah said as she hastily stood to leave.  “I keep coming ‘round to the same question:  If I leave my marriage just because there is no love there, will that make me a failure at life in general or just the normality of life?”

“Sarah,” Dr. Phillips said as she watched her button her blue pea coat, “lots of marriages end.  A lot of people fall out of love.  It doesn’t make you a failure.”

Sarah walked to the door and turned the handle.  She looked back at the psychiatrist sitting in her plush office and said, “Tell that to my husband.” 

Ben was sitting on the front porch reading a book about mollusks when Sarah pulled her old Buick LeSabre into the driveway.  He heard the car door slam and looked up as she walked up the steps.

“Evening,” he said quietly as she approached.

“Hey,” she said dryly. 

“Good day?”

“Not so much.  You?”

“So-so.”

Sarah nodded and walked past, into the house.  Ben sighed and closed his book.  It had been a long time since he had seen her happy, and he knew that part of it was because of him.

He stood and breathed in the cool autumn air before walking into the house after Sarah.  She was standing in the kitchen in front of the refrigerator, biting the nail of her left forefinger.

“Hungry?” he asked, knowing full well that she only bit her nails when she was deciding what to have for dinner.  It was one of the many quirks that he had noticed in their last four years together, and one of the many things he loved about her.

She grunted.

“I didn’t know if you were going to eat in town tonight, so I didn’t cook.”

Sarah nodded, but still didn’t look at him.

“Do you want to go out to eat?  Maybe to Galiano’s?”

Sarah closed the fridge and looked Ben square in the eye.  “No thanks.”

“Okay,” he said, “how about that new place on Carrolton Avenue that you were talking about a few days ago?”

Sarah, still looking at him contemptuously, shook her head.

“We could order Chinese.”

Sarah slipped past Ben and made her way into the living room.  She removed her shoes and plopped down into her favorite red chair, the only one in the room that didn’t match
Ben’s organized black and white design.

He followed behind her and sat down on the edge of the pristine white sofa. 

“Sarah,” he said as he stared intensely at a string unraveling on the edge of her chair, “I’m really trying here.”

She looked at him, the coldness subsiding as she saw the man whom she had once loved so dearly, trying to make her happy.  Then she noticed him staring at the unraveling thread, and immediately felt that he was yet again staring at a part of her that he wanted to fix.

“You don’t get it, do you Ben?”

Ben stared at her blankly, taken back by the coldness in her voice.  “No,” he said, “I really don’t.”

Sarah stood, picked up her shoes, and walked out of the room, out of the house, and out to the car she had just parked.  She put the Buick in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

Ben heard the car start from inside of the living room, where he had picked up a pair of scissors and was attempting to cleanly cut the unraveling red thread.  He wondered if she would be coming back home that night. 

Sarah backed out of the driveway and onto the maple-lined street where her perfect brick home sat idly mocking her.  She shifted the car into drive and began making her way down the road, the shadows beginning to creep onto the car as the sun descended from the sky.  She stopped at the stop sign and tried to decide which way to turn.  There was no destination in her mind, no importance in her decision; she only needed to get away from the house, away from her marriage, as quickly as she could.

She turned left.  She smacked the knob of the stereo, which caused the voice of some long dead rock star to sing out at her from the confines of the oldies station.  Sarah cracked her window as she lit a cigarette.  Ben hated it when she smoked in the car; he hated it when she smoked at all, but in the car it was somehow worse, and his disdain for it was what made it appealing to her.

She came to a stoplight at the corner of Vine and Fig.  Turning right would lead her back to town, turning left would take her to her mother’s house.  Too many evenings had been spent under the critical eye of her mother, who loved Sarah dearly, but was certain that the problems with Ben could all be fixed if Sarah wasn’t so hard to live with.  Sarah loved her mother too, but tonight she couldn’t handle hearing about her failure from an outside source.

When the light turned green, she went straight.  It was the first time she had ever gone down this road.  It started to rain.

Ben called Sarah’s cell phone for the eleventh time, but again it went straight to her voicemail.  He hung up and began pacing the black and white tiled kitchen. 

“Where the hell are you?” he asked aloud. 

He dialed the all too familiar number that he was hoping to avoid.  He knew Sarah hated it when he involved her mother, but it was possible that she had gone there after she left the house an hour before.

“Hello?”

“Hey Marsha, it’s Ben.  How are you tonight?”

He knew as soon as he asked that it was the wrong question for the old bat.

“As good as I can be, I expect,” the old woman croaked.

Ben listened for a full five minutes about Marsha’s arthritis pain before he got the chance to edge in a word.

“Marsha, Sarah hasn’t been by there, has she?”

“She’s not at home?”

“No, she went for a drive a little over an hour ago, and I wouldn’t usually worry so much, but the rain is getting pretty bad.”

“I haven’t seen her all day, sweetheart.”

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you Marsha?  I mean, to keep me from worrying, you’d tell me even if she told you not to?”

“I swear it, Ben, she hasn’t been here.”

“Okay Marsha, but if you hear from her, please call and let me know she’s okay.”

“I will, dear.”

“Good night.”

“Night.”

It was dark along this unfamiliar road.  Sarah was surprised to find herself missing the comforting street lights of suburbia. 

“Everyone in the movies wants to settle on an old farm somewhere away from the city,” she mumbled to herself as she watched the rain pelt her windshield.  “They’ll sure be sorry.”

The rain was really coming down now.  She had turned down a dusty side road to wait out the rain, and was sitting parked in the darkness between two fenced in cornfields.  The lightening flashed, and the stir in Sarah’s heart echoed the sound of the thunder.  She hated storms.  When she was a little girl, her father had always let her climb up on his lap and he would wrap his arms around her to keep the storms away.  But he passed away when she was still a teenager, and her thoughts of him rarely wandered far enough to take her back to his warm, fatherly embrace.  Since she met Ben, he was the one who kept her safe through the storms.  In fact, that was how they met.

It was summer.  The world was alive and vibrant, and Sarah loved to drive downtown and walk along the streets, even if she had no money to spend in the shops and no one to keep her company, just to feel the heat of the pavement soak through her sandals.  She had wandered into a small bookstore and was perusing the odd array of religious studies when she saw him.

Ben was standing a few feet away, staring open-mouthed at the erotica section.  She smiled to herself, wondering which of the books was so shocking to him.  He reached down and picked it up, then looked around to see if anyone was looking at him.  His eyes caught Sarah staring at him, a smirk clearly visible on her full lips.  His cheeks reddened as he sat the book back on the shelf and shuffled past her and out the entrance.  She walked down to where he had been standing and, looking at the cover, she smiled.

Sarah walked out of the store and into a downpour.  She hadn’t noticed the dark clouds overhead before she had gone inside, nor had she heard the rain pounding on the bricks overhead while she had been observing the dark-haired man.  She looked around and realized that she was at least a mile from her car. 

A black Sedan pulled up by the sidewalk, the owner reaching over to roll down the window.

“Need a lift?” a voice called.  It was deep and soothing, lingering in her mind long after the words faded from the air.

Sarah looked over to see the dark-haired man peering out the window at her as she stood in the rain.

“I don’t want to get your car wet,” she responded as she thought to herself that he was probably a serial killer.

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, as if trying to decide if the girl with the long dripping brown hair would be worth the trouble.

“No worries,” he said.  “Get in.”

To this day, Sarah could not be sure why she got in the car with the stranger with the pale blue eyes and the dimples barely noticeable under his stubble, but she did.  He drove her
to her car, but instead of getting out she sat with him and talked until the rain stopped.  She pulled a pen out of her pocket and wrote her phone number on his arm.

“By the way,” she said as she got out of the car, “I’ve got that book at home.”

From that rainy afternoon until this rainy night, not a single day had passed that she hadn’t heard his voice, or smelled his aftershave, or kissed him goodnight.

Ben was sitting on the front porch swing with a big patchwork blanket wrapped around him.  The rain had brought a chill to the night air, but he couldn’t bear to be inside while she was still gone.  He stood peering out into the night every time a car drove up the street, and sat down more nervous than before each time it proved not to be Sarah.

Her mother had called back to see if he had heard anything, but he hadn’t.  Ben didn’t know if Sarah’s phone was out of service or if she had turned it off to ignore his calls, but either way, he was worried.  It wasn’t unusual for Sarah to go for a drive when she was upset, but it was unusual for her to stay out in a storm.  Sarah hated storms, he assumed because her father had died in a car accident during one, so he always made sure to wrap her up in a warm blanket and turn on her favorite jazz cd every time it rained.  He wondered what she was doing right now, and if maybe another man had her wrapped up in his blanket.     

The rain was letting up a little bit now, enough for Sarah to see the road anyway.  She started her car and pulled off of the small muddy highway and onto what would become Vine Street a few miles down.  After driving for a few miles in the slackening rain, her phone chirped in the seat beside her letting her know that she was back in a service area and had missed a call.  She turned off the radio and pushed the number one that would shortcut to her voicemail.
It was Ben wondering where she was.

“He always has to have control,” she said.

There was another voicemail.  Him again, but a little more agitated.  Delete.  A third voicemail, him also.  He was really starting to sound worried.  After the fourth message from Ben, there was a message from her mother telling her to call as soon as she could.  Clearly Ben had pulled in the big guns on this one.  She dialed her mother.

“Hello?”

“Hey mom, it’s me.  Just wanted to call and tell you that I’m fine.  I hope Ben didn’t bug you.”

“Are you kidding?  Baby, he’s worried sick about you.  I was glad he called.  It proves how wrong you are about him.”

“Oh mom, don’t start that again.”

“Sarah, I don’t care what you think is going on, that man loves you.  You need to figure out why you stopped.”

“Look mom, I can’t talk about this right now.  I’m driving.  I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay baby.  I love you.”

“Love you too, mom.”

Sarah hung up the phone, exasperated.  Every time she talked to her mom these days she had to go on the defense about her relationship with Ben.  Maybe it was her fault; her mom, her sister, her friends, even her psychiatrist seemed to think so.  But what made it worse was the nagging agreement in the back of her head that it really was all her fault.  It would be so much easier to hate her husband if he had actually done something wrong.

There were headlights turning onto the street.  Ben jumped up from the porch swing, knowing that this time it had to be Sarah.  As the LeSabre pulled into the driveway, all his worries were forgotten and relief swallowed his heart. Ben jumped off the front porch, dropping the blanket as he ran towards her car.

Sarah was getting out of the car when it happened.  She saw him running towards the car when she pulled up, and stifling a groan, she was preparing to greet him.  Then, as if in slow motion, Ben’s footing slipped on the wet walkway.  He flew backwards into the air and came down hard on the concrete, hitting his head.  Sarah ran to his side, cradling his head as she watched the crimson ooze from the back of his head.  He was still breathing, so there was still time.  Sarah ran into the house and dialed 911.

“How long has it been like this?” Dr. Raymond asked.

“Too long,” Sarah replied.  “It was nice in the beginning, but somewhere along the way we fell out of love.  I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Is there anything left to fix?” Dr. Raymond asked.          

Sarah laughed.  “Is that a trick question?”

Dr. Raymond forced a smile as he wrote in his notebook.  “Sarah, there are no trick questions in this place.  I only ask you questions to help you face the answers.”

Sarah looked at Dr. Raymond and wondered, as she always did, why she still had to see the man who didn’t really care about her problems with Ben.

Sarah hastily stood to leave.

“Sarah,” Dr. Raymond said as he watched her fiddling with her robe.  “Our session isn’t over.”

Sarah walked to the door and tried to turn the handle.  She looked back at the psychiatrist sitting in his drab office and said, “I have to go.  I have to go.  I have to go.  I need to get home to Ben.”  She pulled on the handle repeatedly, but it wouldn’t open.

Dr. Raymond pushed the red button on the phone that sat on the corner of the desk.  “I need some help in here.”

The door buzzed open and two men came into the room, one pushing a wheelchair and the other holding a large needle.  Sarah swatted at them, trying to get away.

“You don’t understand!” she yelled.  “I have to go home!  I have to help Ben!”

“Sarah!” Dr. Raymond said.  “These men are here to help you!  You have to calm down.”

The man pushing the wheelchair was able to hold Sarah still long enough for the second man to administer the sedative.  They placed her in the wheelchair and pushed her out of Dr. Raymond’s office and down the hall towards her room.

Dr. Raymond sat back down at his desk and pushed the record button on his tape recorder.  Patient number 313, Sarah Marie Radford, session number 172.  Approximately three years have passed since initial trauma.  Patient shows no progress and continues to relive day of husband’s death.

Dr. Raymond pushed the stop button on his tape recorder, sadly noting that every message was always the same.  He straightened his papers and waited for his next patient to be brought into his office.