One Summer Night

by Emily Bold

  Lauren let her hands sink into her lap and stared at the picture on the opposite wall. A watercolor painting of sunflowers, created using slushy colors and low creative aspirations. It felt almost intrusive. The word ‘almost’ being the key term. What did she care about some nondescript painting that would still be around when she wasn’t.

  ‘A year and a half,’ Lauren muttered. She was surprised that she wasn’t crying. That she didn’t get upset; didn’t smash a window or something. A year and a half . . . That was nothing. More of a heartbeat, really!

  She looked up as Tim got up and crossed the room in only a few strides. He looked at her with those red-rimmed eyes before storming out. The counselor – his name had slipped Lauren’s mind again – followed him with sympathetic eyes before turning to her.

  ‘Your husband is angry. Helplessness often makes us feel angry.’

  He moved closer and, full of empathy, searched her face.

  ‘Do you feel angry, too, Lauren?’

  Lauren turned away. This man with his puppy-dog eyes would not be able to help her.

  ‘I’d like to go home now,’ she stated in a flat voice, refusing the hand the counselor was holding out in a gesture of help and support. She might be dying – but she wasn’t dead yet!

  ‘Are you sure you’re in a condition to be making that decision? Wouldn’t it be better to wait for your husband?’

  Lauren almost tripped when she heard this. Who the hell did he think he was?

  She wished she could conjure up her anger and give this psycho-babble-spouting idiot a piece of her mind, but she didn’t have the strength. The feeling flared up for a split second, and died down again. She was in shock – but she didn’t need a therapist to help her to realize that.

  Without another word she stalked out of the room and made her way through the long hospital corridors, having to stop every now and then to lean against the wall. Not so much because she had trouble keeping her balance, but because she had lost all feeling. She couldn’t even feel her steps, or the floor beneath her feet, or the people she passed along the way. She was shrouded in a cloud of indifference.

  It was impossible to say what drove her on or what guided her steps. She simply drifted along in this cloud of nothingness, without allowing a single thought to penetrate her mind.

  And so she staggered rather than walked out of the main entrance and into the tree-lined parking lot. The first leaves had started to fall and were carried away by a strong gust of wind. Without lifting her eyes, she made straight for the space where Tim had parked the car. Right over there, below the massive billboard with the advertisement for bifocal lenses. Funny how she remembered this, but couldn’t remember how she felt after Professor Ahrens had explained her options to her.

  She had almost reached the car when she felt Tim’s presence. She raised her eyes. He was leaning against the car, his head low. His shoulders were hopelessly slumped, but his hands were clenched into fists. Strands of hair were hanging into his eyes, and he carelessly brushed them aside as she approached. He looked so unlike the man she met at the diner years ago. He looked weak, wounded. As if he were drifting in deep waters without knowing how to swim.

  Lauren found it hard to face him. She didn’t know what to say. She was just an empty shell. Burned out. As if, during the operation, they had removed not only the tumor but everything else that made her her. Hesitantly, she kept walking and stopped right in front of him. She looked up into his face, his beautiful, familiar face. It was puffy and red – from the wind and from the tears he had cried. She barely recognized him.

  Why was he crying? And why wasn’t she?

  She raised her hand up to his cheek, but she knew full well that this wouldn’t comfort him. Not now. Not after such news.

  They looked into each other’s eyes, united in stunned helplessness, but so caught up in their respective pain that they each – even though they were standing so close to one another – felt utterly alone.

  And for the first time, the blue in Tim’s eyes did not make her feel safe. For the first time, she found no consolation in Tim’s arms, and for the first time in many years she wanted nothing more than to be alone. Wanted not to have to care about somebody else.

  She lowered her hand and walked around the car to the passenger side.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she muttered and got in without waiting to see if he’d heard her.

  ‘We will try everything possible. Radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, even another surgery if necessary.’ Tim’s voice became more and more heated, and he was driving too fast, but Lauren didn’t care. She also didn’t care about what he was saying. He shouldn’t get his hopes up – she was going to die. That’s what Professor Ahrens seemed to think. And much sooner than she’d thought. A year and a half, Ahrens had said. The average life expectancy of patients with a similar diagnosis was a year and a half. Which was how many days? She couldn’t even do this simple math.

  ‘We shouldn’t go home. We should be planning your therapy with Eckhard. And we should start now.’ Erratically, Tim ran his hands through his hair. ‘Radiation therapy, to kill the cancer cells in the tissue surrounding the tumor. That’s the first step. The most important step, if you ask me. And then . . . I don’t understand how the cancer could possibly return after that. Maybe they’re wrong? I need to talk with Eckhard again. We need to learn everything . . .’

  ‘The lights are red.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop! The lights are red.’

  Tim did as he was told, but his attention was not directed at the street or the traffic around them.

  ‘I’m going to make a U-turn up ahead. We need to better understand the different therapies available. Professor Ahrens . . .’

  ‘I want to go home now,’ she interrupted his nervous torrent of words. ‘That’s all I want.’

  ‘But . . .’

  He looked at her, but Lauren turned away, staring out the window without saying a word. She knew he wouldn’t understand why she didn’t care about anything anymore. After all, she failed to understand it herself. He only meant well, wanted to do something, help her in any way that he could. But for her, it was all a little too much right now.

  From the corner of her eye she noticed his helpless shrug. When he passed the intersection where he had wanted to turn, she let out a sigh of relief.

  They continued like this, in silence, until Tim steered the car into the driveway. He let his hands rest on the steering wheel, even after he had shut off the engine.

  ‘We need to tell the kids,’ he stated gloomily. Lauren unbuckled her seat belt and put her hand on the door handle. She only raised her eyes for a moment and looked straight at him.

  ‘Not today. We’ll tell them tomorrow.’

  Tim spent all day helplessly watching Lauren holing up in the house. She kept to herself and crept through their home like a ghost. He would have loved to be able to read her mind, to know what she was thinking, just so he could find a way of getting through to her. But whatever he said, she dismissed it with a shrug. And yet every fiber of his being screamed for action. To do something. Anything. Like a sledgehammer, her cancer diagnosis had knocked him off his feet, and with the air forced from his lungs he had collapsed. The pain about this unimaginable truth was overwhelming. He felt naked. No, that wasn’t it. It was as if, by speaking those few words, someone had skinned him alive. When Doctor Eckhard had described the normal progression of this illness, Tim had wanted to scream, so painful was the idea that all this was really going to happen.

  And when Tim had stormed from the hospital he had screamed. At the top of his voice and so full of rage that the birds resting in the trees around them had taken flight. He didn’t give a damn about the shocked faces of the passers-by. His urge to shout his pain out into the world was too great. His soul was full of fear, but he did not want to give in to this overbearing feeling. Did not want to curl up in the rain, naked and wounded, but instead wanted to pul
l himself together and go into battle against fate. No illness in this world would take Lauren away from him! Nothing was going to destroy his family and his happiness!

  He was ready to face cancer, fight back with everything he had, and give it his all if only it would save Lauren’s life . . . but he couldn’t pull it off by himself. Lauren, too, would need to put up a fight.

  He was almost beside himself as he watched her standing in the window staring outside. He knew that their yard, with fall approaching, was no longer anything to look at. The summer flowers with their wispy stems and drooping heads were long faded, and brown and yellow leaves falling from the trees and bushes now covered the lawn. Gusts of wind were tearing at the tar paper that was meant to waterproof the roof on the shed.

  There was nothing to see out there. Nothing worth staring at for a solid hour.

  ‘Lauren?’ he asked gently, without moving closer. He had tried that before, and she had rejected him. She wanted to be alone. Which he understood – and yet, they needed to talk. How else were they going to get to grips with this?

  Like before, he received no reply. Not even a reaction. Had she even heard him?

  ‘Lauren? Can you hear me? We . . . we need to talk.’ He was running out of patience, and fast.

  He had dropped off the kids at Rachel’s for the night, who – while not asking questions – had given him a curious look. The last thing he needed were his girls wondering about Lauren’s odd behavior.

  ‘Lauren, we . . .’

  Finally, she turned around and looked at him. Her eyes were dry. She seemed calm and collected – which worried him. How could she be so calm when he so urgently wanted to take action? He had done some Internet research, and there were a few things he wanted to discuss with Eckhard.

  ‘I’m going outside for a bit. I want to be alone,’ Lauren explained in a weak and flat voice. She didn’t seem to expect a response, because she grabbed her coat from the hook by the door and had slipped out of the house before Tim could respond. Fearfully, he hurried over to the door, but she wouldn’t stop. She kept going, and he watched her bright-orange coat fade into the swirling leaves. The wind billowed out the coat behind her as if, like those old leaves, it intended to carry her high up into the air. Her red hair was dancing above her head, like a pillar of fire – stirred up by Mother Nature herself.

  Shivering from the cold, Tim closed the door and leaned against it.

  What was he going to do?

  What the hell was he going to do?

  He let out a roar and knocked the bowl with the keys, the vase with the artificial flowers and the newspaper off the hallway apothecary chest with one angry sweep. The vase shattered, and shiny shards were scattered all over the floor.

  He panted as if he’d just run a marathon and as if his heart was about to leap out of his chest. Sobbing, he pressed his hand against his rib cage, overwhelmed by the stabbing pain that took his breath away. He gasped for air, his pulse pounding in his ears.

  With determination, he yanked open the front door and ran after her.

  She was his wife, the love of his life, and he’d be damned if he was going to let her leave like that! He had let her get away once before, and it was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. He would not make the same mistake again.

  He hurried down the street, seeing her coat flash up in the evening twilight, just as she turned into the driveway at her parents’ house.

  * * *

  There were shocked looks on everyone’s faces. They’d had no idea what Lauren and Tim had been going through. In spite of her promise, Celeste cried bitter tears against her husband’s shoulder, and her sobs shook everyone to their cores.

  Looking back, Tim couldn’t say what had been going on with them that day. Why they’d felt so hopelessly alone – both of them. Why they couldn’t muster up the courage to find a way, together.

  He got up and threw a couple of logs into the fire.

  ‘You were scaring me out of my mind, Lauren. You know that, right?’ he said, waiting for the flames to start licking away at the fire. He would not let this fire go out. Not yet.

  Lauren nodded. ‘I know that now, but back then I was completely oblivious to what I was doing.’

  Taking the Plunge

  Rain was in the air, and dark clouds piled high into the night sky. The wind tore at Lauren’s coat, and she wrapped her arms tightly around her upper body as if to keep warm. She didn’t do it because she was cold, though – she wasn’t feeling anything. It was simply a habit, a reflex, something you did when it was windy like this. She was merely going through the motions, just as she was going through the motions when she ran away to this place. One look at the whitewashed outer walls of her childhood home, and she no longer knew what had brought her here. Why had she come? She turned on her heel, tilting her neck back, and watched the leaves up in the treetops of the giant maple trees dance and swirl in the wind. In the summer, these trees would form a dense canopy over the driveway, but now they showed only a few spare branches, sticking out like the gnarled arms of Death. Lauren staggered backward as the branches swayed in the wind. It seemed as if they were trying to reach for her. As if Death himself was trying to reach out his grisly arms out for her . . .

  She let out a high-pitched scream, and started running. The world around her seemed to come apart at the seams, and everything was spinning around her. She knew she needed to sit down, take a few deep breaths, come to her senses, but she was locked in a nightmare. With unsteady steps, she dragged herself in the direction of her beloved lake house, but this time it didn’t look warm and inviting. The wind tore at the honeysuckle, making the vines writhe like snakes below the awning, and the dark windows stared at her like dead eyes.

  She turned around, making for the small pier that the rowing boat was tied to. The boat was bobbing on the water, grating against the pier with every wave.

  Lauren’s whole body trembled as she reached the end of the pier and let her eyes wandered over the lake. She felt like a wild animal caught in a trap. There was no way out of this. No hope. Not even despair. She stood, her arms hanging at her sides, limp like empty potato sacks, unable to hold on to anything. She inhaled deeply but felt nothing. Not the relief of being able to breathe, not the cold of the storm raging around her, and no fear, even though she knew that she probably would not live to see her fortieth birthday. An involuntary sob escaped her chest, and she wanted nothing more than to feel something. Pain, anger, fear – anything at all. Because this nothingness consuming her right now seemed like the harbinger of Death, separating her from who she used to be. She buried her face in her hands and jumped.

  There was only one thought running through her mind as the freezing waves crashed over her, and the cold pierced her body like a thousand needles:

  ‘Why me?’

  Tim quickened his step when he saw Lauren stagger along the pier. She seemed to be in a trance. He called out to her, but she kept moving. The wind had picked up quite a bit and carried his voice away before it could reach her ears. Suddenly feeling the cold hand of premonition, Tim broke into a run.

  He saw her jump and hit the water – and his world stopped. Water splashed up as if in slow motion, and he could see her coat, briefly billowing out over the surface before it, too, was swallowed by the lake. He saw her thrashing her arms and her breath rising in great air bubbles, even heard her scream, muffled by the water, but he was momentarily frozen to the spot. Then he was running, he knew that much – but he didn’t seem to be getting closer. Tearing off the thin sweater he was wearing when he had started following her, he jumped in after her.

  The lake wasn’t deep in this spot, not even seven feet, but the cold hit him like a freight train, paralyzing him as soon as he hit the water. He managed to grab her under the arms, but her hair was long and wet against his face, blocking his view. Every move toward the shore was a struggle. He could hear himself calling her name, even though he had no idea why. Gripped by furious
despair, he held on to her. Her wet coat was tearing at her shoulders as if trying to pull her back into the water, and Tim desperately tried to free Lauren from the heavy orange fabric. She held onto him, shaking, with her teeth chattering loudly. When he finally carried her to shore with his last ounce of his strength, she clung to his neck and couldn’t stop weeping.

  ‘Goddammit, Lauren!’ he yelled again and again. He needed to get through to her, reach her somehow beneath the shock . . .

  Lauren’s whole body twitched, shaken by heavy sobs. The cold burned against her skin, the water tasted like fish against her lips. Tim’s heart was beating against her chest, and his arms made her feel safe again.

  ‘Tim,’ she sobbed through chattering teeth, burying her face in his shoulder. ‘Hold me, Tim. Hold me!’ The tears were burning like fire in her raw throat, and her stomach was tied in knots from the deep-seated pain. ‘I’m so scared!’

  Tim staggered ashore, almost breaking under her weight. Her clothes were completely soaked, weighing her down, and he sank into the sand with her, without letting go for even a second. Taking her face into his cold hands, he brushed a strand of red, wet hair from her cheek.

  ‘Lauren, why . . . why did you do it?’

  Lauren didn’t respond, unable to talk. With every breath she took, her strength dwindled.

  Angry, Tim shook her by the shoulder, turning her face to look him in the eye.

  ‘Were you trying to kill yourself? Is that it?’ he screamed. Lauren shook her head and wiped the snot away with the back of her hand. How could he even think such a thing? She saw the shock in his eyes. The shock and disappointment. One thing was now clear to her: come what may, she could not walk away from her life like a coward. Never would she give up on what she had. Her children, her friends . . . and her love.