The Golden Key: A Quest for Freedom Episode Two

by Marvin Wilmes

  Mark was doing Roger a big favor, which could only mean that Mark wanted something equally large in return.

  As he got his bag from the overhead compartment he quickly shook off the thought that crept into his mind. He was trusting a new friend in California—he should be able to trust a friend of ten years.

  What am I thinking? I’m the one who no one can trust.

  When he got off the plane and saw Paul and Mark, his doubts came back. Not only was there a heaviness in the air, but Mark’s nose looked like it had been put into traction the way it was bandaged up. Sadness hung over his brother and best friend, which seemed out of place considering Anita’s new circumstances.

  “Hi,” he said, stretching his hand out to Mark. “I’m only here for two days. Where’s all the fanfare?”

  “Later, Roger,” said Paul. “Let’s go.””

  “Anita’s all right, isn’t she?” Roger ignored his brother’’s parental attitude. He no longer craved Paul’s approval.

  “Sure, Rog,” said the cowboy. “She’s getting more of her strength back every day. It’s us who needs some work.”

  Mark turned and walked away. Roger raced up behind him, then placed a hand on Mark’s shoulder. The cowboy stopped.

  “I don’t know what’s on your mind, but hey, this is your old buddy Rog. You look like I did a few days ago, and I’ve learned nothing is that bad.” Roger stopped and watched Mark. “What is it? You can tell me. I know you well enough that when you go out and buy me a plane ticket home it isn’t because you are such a generous soul. You are the biggest tightwad I know. What gives?”

  In all their years together, Roger had never seen this side of Mark.

  “I don’t think you can deliver, Roger. I’ve betrayed you.”

  The cowboy had lost his confidence. Roger noticed Mark’s inability to look him in the eye.

  So it might be true. Mark might be in love with Anita, something he had secretly wondered about since he left. And why should he be jealous? He was the one who left; he was the one who was absent.

  Once again, the darkness gripped him. I’m not worthy of Anita’s love. I’m weak. I’’m worthless.

  I’m scum.

  He hadn’t expected the rush of memories from Memphis. It was almost as if he was hanging onto a ghost from his past. What was done, was done. The weekend of Anita’s accident had sealed his fate on that score.

  He let out a deep sigh as he closed his eyes to ward off the rush of thoughts assaulting his mind. He felt the breeze brush past him and the inner torment of his soul.

  “Mark, I don’t think this crowded airport is the place.”

  “Oh, shut up, Paul,” Roger quickly opened his eyes as Paul’s comment served to crash through the dark cloud that had descended on him. ““Now, Mark, spill it. Just because I ran off like a fool with my head cut off and joined the Corps doesn’t mean our friendship has changed. Is that the reason your letters stopped coming?”

  “I guess. Look, maybe Paul’s right.” Mark averted his eyes from Roger.

  He’s guilty as sin.

  Mark glanced up, causing Roger to shudder as he saw his friend’s pain. He felt the wall between them rise up and he realized something had changed in the friendship while he was away. “Oh my God, I can see it in your eyes. Guilt, and the only reason you can have guilt is because you were here for Anita when I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, Roger, I love Anita. It just happened.”

  Roger was stunned. Even though he half expected it, Mark’s sudden revelation sideswiped him. He wasn’t angry; he was something else.

  He was simply—numb.

  I deserve this.

  He picked up his bag and headed down the terminal aisle toward the baggage claim area.

  “I’m sorry,” Mark offered a weak attempt at an apology.

  Roger was silent as he went through the motions of claiming his bags as Paul and Mark awkwardly waited with him.

  There was nothing he could say right now, and he wasn’t sure what to make of his jumbled feelings. He felt as if he were in a movie that someone else had written.

  Once in the car, he turned his attention to telling Paul and Mark all about El Toro and the friends he had met there, but his mind was drifting back to Memphis.

  It was as if he was relieved this door was closing. But that didn’t mean the other door would reopen or even that it should.

  He had left his heart in Tennessee. He had put up a wall around himself—denied the truth—all because of his loyalty pledge, but another woman had penetrated that wall. He had to close that chapter for good. He was coming up the odd man out.

  He had chosen adventure and it was adventure he had to live.

  ***

  “After I get settled, and see Anita, why don’t I pick you up around nine? I think we need to talk,” Roger said to Mark as Paul somberly turned into the cowboy’’s driveway.

  “Maybe. I appreciate the invite, but right now, I’m dead tired.”

  “Understood.”

  As Mark got out of the car, it seemed as if Roger would make one final plea, but he just smiled and winked.

  Mark watched as they drove off and reflected on how one brother appeared to have something haunting him—which he wouldn’t share with anyone—while the other acted so out of character that he didn’t know what to think.

  Was Roger stepping aside or was he simply waiting until this evening to turn his full wrath upon him? Mark honestly couldn’t say.

  Roger was different someway and Mark wasn’t sure he could cope with it. Just in case there was going to be a confrontation tonight, he went straight to his room and collapsed on the bed. He needed to get some sleep before tonight in order to clearly present his defense of why he believed he was the better man for Anita.

  As he drifted off to sleep, the dark man entered his consciousness again…and Mark awoke screaming.

  Soaked in sweat, he settled down and listened to the cadence of his own breathing.

  Then he did something he hadn’t done for years.

  He cried.

  ***

  “What’s on that mind of yours?” Paul said, as he finally got up the nerve to break the silence.

  “Are you surprised I realized Mark and Anita have been seeing each other behind my back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was angry at first, now I’m just confused. How long has this been going on?”

  “Since Anita’s birthday party. I’m not sure why everyone wanted to make it such a big secret. Up until this week, Anita, Mark, and Donna were the only ones who knew about it. I guess she was on her way to Memphis to break the engagement with you in person.”

  “The accident got in the way, and we’ve all been cast as characters in a play. So, Anita would like to finish what she started, I assume.”

  Paul sighed out of frustration that this conversation had to even take place. “She’s confused…they both are. If you ask me, everyone’’s taking friendship to a level that is beyond what is required.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Long-distance relationships are hard to maintain. You usually don’t become engaged until certain issues are resolved.”

  “Like who I am for one thing. How did you get so wise, brother?”

  “Darn it, Roger, when did you? You seem so calm. I was prepared to be there for you and tell you to just go see Anita before we sort all this out.”

  “Well, I guess since the ocean showed me that life is a celebration. Since a friend told me he believed in me.”

  Paul watched Roger pull the golden key out from under his shirt and admire it. He noticed a change in his brother that he hadn’t quite been able to put his finger on. He never knew Roger to be so forgiving or so open. This conversation was even different. The brothers were entering territory never before explored in their relationship.

  “You know, Paul, I’ve just realized I’m beginning to find what I’ve been looking for. Before I got off the plane, I was thinking of getting on w
ith what’s between Anita and me. Then I realized, my friend is a mess because he feels a certain loyalty to me. I’m not sure it’s fair to anyone to continue the charade. I need to see Anita first, talk to her, and then to Mark, and sort everything out.”

  “Wow, Roger. Sounds like the Marine Corps has done you some good.”

  Paul couldn’t escape the fact that his brother had taken on the attributes of a very wise friend of his. He had been fighting depression and memories of the war since Anita’s accident and they were reemerging stronger since she came out of her coma. There was no logical explanation why the memories should suddenly be haunting him now.

  He wondered if this unexpected development wasn’t part of an overall scheme of the universe, which led him to bring his troubles to the altar of God.

  He wasn’t a religious person, but the prayer Paul had engaged in had comforted him, and so far the flashbacks to the war were challenging him to hold back judgment of Roger’s situation. Instead, he felt a need to be there for him.

  While in the foxholes of Vietnam, Jack Alvarez had shared how he had always relied on God in times of stress and trial.

  Whatever the reason, the events of the last several weeks made Paul’s own search for God grow more intense. That was due in part to his tour in Vietnam with Jack. His friend had explained that one day Paul would understand some of their foxhole chats about Jack’s faith.

  Now, out of his own concern for Mark and Roger’s friendship, he had taken the problems of their love triangle and Anita’s health to God.

  Indeed, that was out of character for the man Paul thought he was.

  “Well, here we are,” Paul said.

  “Yep, guess we are .Thanks, Paul. I’ll take it from here.”

  Paul nodded as Roger hesitated, got out of the car, and walked toward the hospital.

  “The greatest love of all—” Jack had said the night before he was killed, “—is setting the thing you love free so you can find the love and dreams each of you were meant to have.”

  Paul had thought that was an odd paradox, but Jack always knew there was a difference in kinds of love.

  “I’ve experienced that, Paul, and I’ll never regret it. Marriage is a sacred institution and love is its foundation. Love has many colors. We have to let it shape us and let it grow. There is not a relationship I’ve had that hasn’t added to me as a person.

  “Once you find the right love, the love you were destined to experience, don’t ever let it die. Nurture it, water it, grow together, because that is what love is—togetherness, becoming one. Thank God for His gift to you because there is none greater.”

  Paul sighed as he looked up at the starlit sky. A shooting star blazed across the dark night. And Paul was sure Jack was smiling down at him.

  He threw the car in reverse and drove out of the hospital parking lot. As he went through everything he needed to share with Donna, he realized he forgot to tell his brother his most important news—his engagement.

  He shook his head as he let out a laugh. What did it matter now? The weight he shouldered over Roger’s reaction if he found out about Anita and Mark evaporated.

  Some good might come out of all this chaos after all.

  ***

  Anita’s gazed shifted from the stark ceiling to Doc Masters as he walked into the room. She was alive and felt a change, but wasn’t quite sure she understood the nature of it.

  She knew it was time to face her tangled emotions…Roger was here.

  “Are you up for a visitor?” Doc Masters asked.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask who it is?” He smiled.

  “I don’t need to. It’s Roger, isn’t it?””

  He nodded and left. She wiped her eye as she prayed for the strength she felt was leaving her body, then she saw him. Her love for him was still there, however small. She couldn’t deny it, at least for now.

  “Welcome back,” Roger said as he took her hand.

  “It’s good to be back,” she said.

  “You look good.”

  “I feel good.” The emotion fled quickly. Its presence no longer felt, and in its place, the urge to unburden herself with the secret…and to help this man understand it was Mark who was winning her heart.

  He pulled up a chair, then sat down. “Now all you and I have to figure out is where to start.”

  “Maybe that’s my cue. The reason—”

  He quickly put his finger to her lips. “I know all about you and Mark, and I just have one question. Do you love him?”

  Her mouth opened as a rush of adrenaline tingled through her body. He knows. How did he know? As she gazed in the eyes of the man she had once agreed to marry, she saw a stranger, a man of quiet strength and resolution.

  “I think I do,” she said in a whisper. She noticed the golden key dangling from its chain. It was her going-away gift to him in hopes he could find what he was looking for. They had both tried so desperately to hang onto each other, and now she knew he was on a journey to find what was missing in his life, which didn’t seem to include Blair…or Anita.

  She had known if they were ever to make it as a couple, she needed to loosen the reins on him. In doing so, she also unbridled herself. She had done it out of love, a love she could not deny had existed once, but now she was even more certain of its death.

  “Roger, that doesn’t erase what we had. I’m just not so sure about anything anymore.” She still had the urge to protect him somehow, he appeared so fragile, but within her, she knew he would find the same fight and resolve she was finding.

  “I know,” he said. “What we had was adequate at the time to give me strength to go out and try something different on my own. I was so selfish to limit your options by asking you to marry me as if I could have my cake and eat it, too.”

  “If I remember right, you never really asked me, I mean I wanted that ring.”

  She watched him rise, then move to gaze out the window.

  “I think you should know I was in the midst of my own struggles before the accident. I asked myself a thousand times why I left if what we had was enough? I could never answer that question.” He turned to her with determination. ““Last night I made a toast with a friend. Would you like to know what it was?”

  She nodded.

  “Well,” he said as he walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, “it was that you would live for life, not for me. Anita, I won’’t stand in your way. Go for it, I’m freeing you to live, and somehow, I think that’s with Mark.”

  “Oh, Roger.” She started to reach for him, but he stopped her.

  “Hold on now. You’re still a little under the weather. “He reached down to her as they embraced. “Thank you for loving me enough to let me go and find my dreams, and thanks for the key. My life has been enriched since I put it on and have been more conscious of the world around me. I almost forgot who I was and how to live.”

  She pulled back and looked him in the eye. “You mean you are ready to live for life?” She smiled weakly.

  “Yes.”

  After Roger left, Anita picked up the phone to call Donna. She was on her way to a full recovery.

  She never even noticed she was sitting on her own.

  ***

  “We’ll have two rum and Cokes,” Roger said as he settled into a booth.

  Mark joined him—and though he had been prepared for the worst—Roger was being the best. This made this reunion all the more challenging for him. “You remembered.””

  “Of course, how could I forget? Hey, Mark, are you all right?”

  “No. Will you quit acting like someone handed you a million dollars and act like a normal jealous friend for a change.”

  “I understand the past couple months have been rather hard on you.”

  “It hasn’t been a picnic for you either, my friend,” Mark said.

  “No.” Roger grinned as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “Bad habit, I know. Compliments of the Corps. Got to take a
little bit of the bad with the good, like growing up some.”

  “One thing’s for sure. You’ve changed, and I don’t know how to take it.”

  “Here you go, guys,” the bartender said as he set the drinks in front of the odd pair.

  “Thanks,” Roger said as he handed him a five-dollar bill. “I guess it all depends on your definition of change, Mark. This has sure been a whirlwind few hours for me. I’’m not sure I have changed as much as I have realized something hasn’t been all that easy to accept.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Last night, I made a toast with a friend that Anita would live for life and not for me. When you said you loved her, it threw me for a loop. Life includes love, and right now I can’t deliver. I gave that up when I joined the Corps.””

  “Don’t give me that load of crap. You asked her to marry you.”

  “Well, actually I didn’t. I had the ring and all, but it sort of got on her hand by transference. Which was the easy way for her as well. Anyway, yes, I was afraid if we didn’t get engaged, she would be gone when I returned. Although I never dreamed it would be you to take her. But I haven’t changed, cowboy, you’re the one who’s changed.””

  Mark leaned back in the booth and stared at his best friend. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re forfeiting your claims to Anita?” There was a slight tremble in his voice.

  “I already have. We talked and we parted as friends. I hope you and I still are.”

  “Well, of course—” Mark tilted his head and nervously cleared his throat, “—but you lost me somewhere.””

  “Mark, life is an experience to be treasured and so is love. This may sound a little insane, but until today, I didn’t really understand it. It’s a mystery. Men through the ages have tried to define it, and they fell short. You can share with Anita, grow together, build a life. I’m just not ready for that yet. A relationship should be built on togetherness, not letters.

  “Maybe I’m also a little selfish. I joined the Corps to find some answers to my existence and my life. I’m beginning to discover them. I know you and Anita are discovering yours through each other. I think after we finish these drinks, you should drive me over to Mom and Dad’s so I can explain it to them.