therealljidol week 16: thunderclap
I knew, on our first date, that I was going to marry you someday.
We were both newly out of relationships that had failed -- you, with the ex you'd go on to refer to, somewhat jokingly, as "the bitch"; me, with a brief fling I'd met through work that had turned into something murkier, darker.
"I'm tired of fucking around," you said. "I'm sorry if that's too forward -- it's the truth. I just..."
"You want the real thing," I said. "No more being fucked around on."
"Exactly," you said, and you laughed a little, gently.
It was the sound of your laugh that did it for me -- less as though I'd been hit by lightning, the way it had been with the ex, and more the feeling of something sliding into place.
That was the start of it, where my life changed in an instant.
I introduced you to my parents after our fourth date. You moved in after we'd been together three months. Everyone made the typical jokes at us -- things about U-Hauls, and the like -- but we knew.
I proposed to you, and that's when I met your parents.
It wasn't that I was a woman -- they didn't care about that. It was that you came from money, and I didn't, and they didn't recognize my name.
"What are your plans for our daughter?" was how they put it. "What are your designs on her?"
"I have none," I said, honestly. "I want to marry her. I love her. I want to be with her for the rest of our lives. Isn't that enough?"
Your father looked at me over the top of his glasses as though I was a petulant child. "Just how are you planning to support her? Or is she supposed to support you? She's told us you work in a kitchen -- how well does that pay?"
I thought about the restaurant -- my restaurant, which I'd built from the ground up, scraping by until we'd managed to get good reviews, making money now, slowly becoming known, respected. "I'm the -- I own my own space. It pays well. I have staff, I --"
You were well-educated, well-brought-up. I wasn't. That was never a point of contention between us, but I saw your father turn over my answer in his head, over and over again, fumbling with it and enjoying how uncomfortable he made me.
"Fine," he said, finally.
"I'm sure your restaurant is very nice," said your mother gently, in a way that told me she didn't believe that it was.
You saved the day. You changed the subject, kept us on safe territory.
Your parents never grew to love me, but they could at least respect me, and that was enough.
When we got married, I made our wedding cake, all four tiers of it, and strong-armed my friends into making dinner for everyone. It was a small event -- only fifteen of us, in total -- and the food was up to even your mother's exacting standards.
You wore a dress. I thought about wearing my chef's whites, with the restaurant name embroidered over the pocket, what I wore for photo ops and no other reason, showing everyone who I was, why I was good enough for you, but I didn't. I wore a suit instead, my hair pinned up.
We danced together, after the ceremony, and I ignored comments from your parents that it wouldn't last.
We looked at houses. We thought about adopting, about having a child of our own. We looked at dogs, when we found out what the wait was like for adoption, avoided all the jokes about becoming cat ladies.
It wasn't perfect. We fought a lot, at the beginning -- about money, about time, about how much the restaurant ate into my free time, how much you missed me, during Culinary Week, when I was working twenty hours a day, trying to keep the doors open and food going out, trying to keep people happy to drum up business.
We made it work anyway.
We celebrated one year of marriage, then three, then five -- stacked together solidly, building a foundation for whatever would come next. We weathered everything.
In another story, there would have been someone else. You would have met someone else, or I would have, and it would have ended that way. Something neat and tidy: a conventional beginning, middle, and then an end, ragged and painful, but still providing closure.
Instead, I came home one day, midway through our sixth year of marriage, and you weren't there.
I tried to call you once, twice, three times, twenty -- every fifteen minutes, like clockwork.
It went to voicemail every time.
"I'm worried," I said, to your messages. "Where are you? Call me."
I spent that night alone in our bed, listening to rain on the windows, wondering where I'd gone wrong, what I'd done to drive you away.
I couldn't think of anything. We were happy, weren't we? We loved each other, didn't we?
I turned the questions over and over in my mind, wondering just what it was that I had done, what it was that I was supposed to do.
I never considered a darker possibility.
I think, if necessity had not forced their hand, your parents would never have told me. They would have let me go on, thinking I had been left, your coffee mug with lipstick stain on the table, a Post-It on the fridge reminding me to buy milk, take out the garbage; another note on the calendar about how you had a doctor's appointment on Friday.
They had to tell me, though. The authorities reached them first, slammed as I was, at work. They called when they knew I would be off shift.
"An accident," they explained, swiftly. "She..."
They told me you'd died, and I thought it was a strange joke.
You'd lost control of the car, ended up in a drainage ditch.
You'd probably lost consciousness, when you slid into the ditch.
"It was quick," offered the coroner, when we had to talk to him. "She probably didn't feel anything."
It had taken them hours to find you, more time to get your belongings out of the car, find out who you belonged to.
"You should have called the police," said your mother, as we were leaving. None of us were crying -- we were too numb to cry -- and it must have been the first thing to come to mind.
I was too stunned to come up with a good reply.
When I'd first met you, my life had changed in that instant.
Now, in another, you were gone, and it had changed again.
"I thought she'd left," I said, finally. "I thought, I missed the signs, and she's left me. I never thought..."
"None of us could have," said your father, and I was almost grateful to him, for that.
I gave your parents all your things, after the funeral. They wanted them; I didn't.
"At least it was quick," offered your father lamely, repeating what the coroner had said. "There are worse ways to die."
I wanted to howl, to yell at him about how there was no at least, not when half my life had been ripped away from me, but I couldn't find the words.
"If you want anything of hers..." your mother started. "You have our number."
"I don't, actually," and I laughed until I cried. "We've never -- after the wedding, I thought -- she always handled everything, with you."
She sniffed derisively; wrote it down on a napkin. "Well, now you have it. Put it in your phone. If you need us, call us."
"If I need you," I said, trying to pull myself together, "I will call."
A year passed. I nearly lost the restaurant, but I recognized the signs, the quick plummet that would have meant our end, and I pulled it together.
"Take time off," urged my sous, but I knew she couldn't carry everything herself.
"You're working too hard," said the front of house manager. "You're going to end up in the grave, yourself."
I flinched, when she said it. "You're not wrong, but..."
"But?"
"If I'm working," I said, "I don't think about her."
They didn't badger me, after that.
Another year passed, then two, a gray blur. The restaurant succeeded. We earned more accolades, more awards. All the reviews talked about how "innovative" we were, how creative.
I went home every night, exhausted, and fell into bed to sleep without dreaming. I lived for work, nothing else.
In a different story, this would have been it: I would have fallen into the pit of substance abuse, starting with the pot that I knew all the servers smoked once they were off-shift, moving to the harder drugs one of the bartenders knew a guy for.
I avoided that.
Instead, three years after you died, I met someone.
When I met her, it didn't feel like being hit by lightning, or like something clicking into place.
She was a blind date, a friend of a friend, newly single, "not looking for anything serious, and seriously, Jane, you should be going out more. Give her a chance."
I nearly texted her to cancel, when I saw her walking into the coffee shop.
She didn't look anything like you, and that made it all right.
I told her about you, about how it felt when we met, like puzzle pieces clicking into place, or something settling -- how it was right.
"And then I lost her, and I lost that feeling. It was like -- in an instant, my life was over, too."
"But you're still here," she said, placing her hand over mine. "It can't really be over."
I felt it, then -- not the pieces clicking together, not the feeling of being hit by lightning, but a different feeling, something warm and familiar, like kicking off my clogs at the end of a long day, settling in my favorite chair.
"No," I said, after a moment. "It can't."
fiction.
We were both newly out of relationships that had failed -- you, with the ex you'd go on to refer to, somewhat jokingly, as "the bitch"; me, with a brief fling I'd met through work that had turned into something murkier, darker.
"I'm tired of fucking around," you said. "I'm sorry if that's too forward -- it's the truth. I just..."
"You want the real thing," I said. "No more being fucked around on."
"Exactly," you said, and you laughed a little, gently.
It was the sound of your laugh that did it for me -- less as though I'd been hit by lightning, the way it had been with the ex, and more the feeling of something sliding into place.
That was the start of it, where my life changed in an instant.
I introduced you to my parents after our fourth date. You moved in after we'd been together three months. Everyone made the typical jokes at us -- things about U-Hauls, and the like -- but we knew.
I proposed to you, and that's when I met your parents.
It wasn't that I was a woman -- they didn't care about that. It was that you came from money, and I didn't, and they didn't recognize my name.
"What are your plans for our daughter?" was how they put it. "What are your designs on her?"
"I have none," I said, honestly. "I want to marry her. I love her. I want to be with her for the rest of our lives. Isn't that enough?"
Your father looked at me over the top of his glasses as though I was a petulant child. "Just how are you planning to support her? Or is she supposed to support you? She's told us you work in a kitchen -- how well does that pay?"
I thought about the restaurant -- my restaurant, which I'd built from the ground up, scraping by until we'd managed to get good reviews, making money now, slowly becoming known, respected. "I'm the -- I own my own space. It pays well. I have staff, I --"
You were well-educated, well-brought-up. I wasn't. That was never a point of contention between us, but I saw your father turn over my answer in his head, over and over again, fumbling with it and enjoying how uncomfortable he made me.
"Fine," he said, finally.
"I'm sure your restaurant is very nice," said your mother gently, in a way that told me she didn't believe that it was.
You saved the day. You changed the subject, kept us on safe territory.
Your parents never grew to love me, but they could at least respect me, and that was enough.
When we got married, I made our wedding cake, all four tiers of it, and strong-armed my friends into making dinner for everyone. It was a small event -- only fifteen of us, in total -- and the food was up to even your mother's exacting standards.
You wore a dress. I thought about wearing my chef's whites, with the restaurant name embroidered over the pocket, what I wore for photo ops and no other reason, showing everyone who I was, why I was good enough for you, but I didn't. I wore a suit instead, my hair pinned up.
We danced together, after the ceremony, and I ignored comments from your parents that it wouldn't last.
We looked at houses. We thought about adopting, about having a child of our own. We looked at dogs, when we found out what the wait was like for adoption, avoided all the jokes about becoming cat ladies.
It wasn't perfect. We fought a lot, at the beginning -- about money, about time, about how much the restaurant ate into my free time, how much you missed me, during Culinary Week, when I was working twenty hours a day, trying to keep the doors open and food going out, trying to keep people happy to drum up business.
We made it work anyway.
We celebrated one year of marriage, then three, then five -- stacked together solidly, building a foundation for whatever would come next. We weathered everything.
In another story, there would have been someone else. You would have met someone else, or I would have, and it would have ended that way. Something neat and tidy: a conventional beginning, middle, and then an end, ragged and painful, but still providing closure.
Instead, I came home one day, midway through our sixth year of marriage, and you weren't there.
I tried to call you once, twice, three times, twenty -- every fifteen minutes, like clockwork.
It went to voicemail every time.
"I'm worried," I said, to your messages. "Where are you? Call me."
I spent that night alone in our bed, listening to rain on the windows, wondering where I'd gone wrong, what I'd done to drive you away.
I couldn't think of anything. We were happy, weren't we? We loved each other, didn't we?
I turned the questions over and over in my mind, wondering just what it was that I had done, what it was that I was supposed to do.
I never considered a darker possibility.
I think, if necessity had not forced their hand, your parents would never have told me. They would have let me go on, thinking I had been left, your coffee mug with lipstick stain on the table, a Post-It on the fridge reminding me to buy milk, take out the garbage; another note on the calendar about how you had a doctor's appointment on Friday.
They had to tell me, though. The authorities reached them first, slammed as I was, at work. They called when they knew I would be off shift.
"An accident," they explained, swiftly. "She..."
They told me you'd died, and I thought it was a strange joke.
You'd lost control of the car, ended up in a drainage ditch.
You'd probably lost consciousness, when you slid into the ditch.
"It was quick," offered the coroner, when we had to talk to him. "She probably didn't feel anything."
It had taken them hours to find you, more time to get your belongings out of the car, find out who you belonged to.
"You should have called the police," said your mother, as we were leaving. None of us were crying -- we were too numb to cry -- and it must have been the first thing to come to mind.
I was too stunned to come up with a good reply.
When I'd first met you, my life had changed in that instant.
Now, in another, you were gone, and it had changed again.
"I thought she'd left," I said, finally. "I thought, I missed the signs, and she's left me. I never thought..."
"None of us could have," said your father, and I was almost grateful to him, for that.
I gave your parents all your things, after the funeral. They wanted them; I didn't.
"At least it was quick," offered your father lamely, repeating what the coroner had said. "There are worse ways to die."
I wanted to howl, to yell at him about how there was no at least, not when half my life had been ripped away from me, but I couldn't find the words.
"If you want anything of hers..." your mother started. "You have our number."
"I don't, actually," and I laughed until I cried. "We've never -- after the wedding, I thought -- she always handled everything, with you."
She sniffed derisively; wrote it down on a napkin. "Well, now you have it. Put it in your phone. If you need us, call us."
"If I need you," I said, trying to pull myself together, "I will call."
A year passed. I nearly lost the restaurant, but I recognized the signs, the quick plummet that would have meant our end, and I pulled it together.
"Take time off," urged my sous, but I knew she couldn't carry everything herself.
"You're working too hard," said the front of house manager. "You're going to end up in the grave, yourself."
I flinched, when she said it. "You're not wrong, but..."
"But?"
"If I'm working," I said, "I don't think about her."
They didn't badger me, after that.
Another year passed, then two, a gray blur. The restaurant succeeded. We earned more accolades, more awards. All the reviews talked about how "innovative" we were, how creative.
I went home every night, exhausted, and fell into bed to sleep without dreaming. I lived for work, nothing else.
In a different story, this would have been it: I would have fallen into the pit of substance abuse, starting with the pot that I knew all the servers smoked once they were off-shift, moving to the harder drugs one of the bartenders knew a guy for.
I avoided that.
Instead, three years after you died, I met someone.
When I met her, it didn't feel like being hit by lightning, or like something clicking into place.
She was a blind date, a friend of a friend, newly single, "not looking for anything serious, and seriously, Jane, you should be going out more. Give her a chance."
I nearly texted her to cancel, when I saw her walking into the coffee shop.
She didn't look anything like you, and that made it all right.
I told her about you, about how it felt when we met, like puzzle pieces clicking into place, or something settling -- how it was right.
"And then I lost her, and I lost that feeling. It was like -- in an instant, my life was over, too."
"But you're still here," she said, placing her hand over mine. "It can't really be over."
I felt it, then -- not the pieces clicking together, not the feeling of being hit by lightning, but a different feeling, something warm and familiar, like kicking off my clogs at the end of a long day, settling in my favorite chair.
"No," I said, after a moment. "It can't."
fiction.