Seventy-Two Hours

by Stringham, C. P.

  He took both of my hands. “Sure you do. You know what the right thing to do is. Yes, I was shocked yesterday when you told me, but I had all night to think about it and get used to it. The fact that you’re carrying my child makes me so very happy and I really, truly want this, Jen. For both of us.”

  “It’s going to be so hard.”

  “Our love has created this new life. To do anything else with this special gift would only bring us regret in the future. I know it and so do you,” he stated with conviction. “We can do this.”

  I smiled with a quivering lip. “You have to promise me now that you’ll help me, Chris,” I told him as he nodded his head and his face took on a huge smile. “Let me finish,” I scolded. “You have to keep me motivated so I can finish school. I mean it.”

  “I promise,” he said before grabbing me up into a bone-crushing hug and kissing me so deeply I momentarily forgot about how we’d gotten into such a serious discussion.

  That afternoon, we got our parents together. I could tell by my mother’s behavior she was waiting to hear that we were engaged. Something that had been expected for a while. On any given occasion, our moms discussed plans for our “future wedding” like they were discussing something as commonplace as the weather.

  So as soon as my mother finished serving coffee and crumb cake to Conrad and Marti, Chris began with, “Jenny and I have some news to share with you and that’s why we asked to have you together at the same time.”

  Conrad and Marti exchanged knowing glances. As did my parents.

  “Go on, son,” my father encouraged.

  “We’re having a baby.”

  I literally watched the color drain from my father’s face as his smile melted into a frown and he trained his eyes on Chris like the sites of a rifle.

  My mom was the first to recover. “That’s…that’s wonderful news.”

  Marti sat forward and placed her coffee cup down. “Was this planned?”

  “Of course, it wasn’t,” my father snapped losing his normal good natured manners.

  “Daddy, I’m 21 years old. Chris and I have friends that have been married for a few years and have kids already. You remember Lisa? She has two.”

  “I’ve asked Jenny to marry me.”

  “What about school?” he asked.

  “Sir,” Chris said as he approached my father exuding respect and maybe a little fear. “We haven’t forgotten about school. I carried extra courses while maintaining a 4.0 GPA and I’ll be finished with my Master’s in December. Jenny graduates in May.”

  “With all due respect, Christopher, I was referring to Jennifer’s graduate schooling. You’ll be fine. You’ll have your education completed. She’s the one that still has two years left. If she takes time off now, she’ll never go back. She’ll be the one tied down with a kid at home.” he stated rather brusquely which pretty much ruined his attempt at polite with his “all due respect” line.

  “What would you have them do, Donald?” my mother stepped in.

  “Exactly what I’m wondering,” Marti inserted.

  “They’re adults, Don,” Mom continued after giving Marti a hand motion to give her a moment with my dad. “They’ve already made up their minds. And above all else, it really isn’t our decision to make, is it?”

  “I understand your concerns. I give you my word, as I stand here before you, Jenny will finish school. I’ll make certain it happens, sir. I want the best for her and I can give it to her.”

  “Thank you, Christopher,” my mom told him with a smile. “Your word means a lot to us. We know Jenny’s wellbeing is your main concern.”

  “It’s important to us to have our parents’ blessings, sir,” Chris replied as he continued pleading his case to my father.

  My father looked away and said, “I’ll give you my blessing, but I don’t have to be happy about it. Not yet. You’ve really disappointed me, Christopher. Both of you have.”

  He stormed off and I jumped when the sound of the heavy oak front door slammed shut. No one spoke and I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. All I could do was stand there. My father said the one word that could do the most damage to me. He said I’d disappointed him. In all my life, he’d never said anything remotely close to that. Chris knew how upset I was and he attempted to console me. I pushed him away with a simple head shake and did what I had to do. I went after my father.

  He was right where I knew he’d be. In the garage and staring at his 1923 Ford T-bucket roadster. His latest restoration project and labor of love. He had on his Sloan Equipment ball cap and a Pall Mall hanging from his bottom lip. Donald Sloan had rust colored hair and he’d passed it on to his two children. The hair color also came with a stubborn streak a mile long. That streak may have diluted some in the next generation of the gene pool, but not by much.

  “Daddy,” I called to him.

  “Not now, Jennifer.” He didn’t even glance my way.

  “Then when?”

  He grabbed his cigarette, tossed it to the floor, and mashed it. “How could you and Chris do this to your futures?”

  “I love him, Daddy, with all my heart.”

  “You think I don’t know that? The two of you have been inseparable for almost six years. I thought you had more sense to you. Commonsense to set your priorities.”

  “You don’t care that we’re getting married?”

  “Course not. Chris told me back at Christmas time he planned on proposing to you come Valentine’s Day. Asked me for my blessing back then and I gave it to him. Son of a bitch told me it would be a long engagement so you could finish school.”

  “He didn’t know about the baby,” I reasoned as I took in the information he gave me. “We want to do the right thing and this is what’s right for us.”

  “I truly hope so, June Bug,” he called me by my old nickname. I was born in June and crawled at an early age.

  “I don’t like bringing you disappointment.”

  He finally looked at me and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said something so harsh. Being caught off guard is no excuse.”

  I could tell he would come around in time. Changing the subject seemed to be the best option for us. I noticed he had finished painting the body of his car. Instead of the gray primer it had been two weeks earlier, it was now candy apple red. We talked about the engine he would be putting into it; a Chevy 350 bore .030 times over with a 4:11 rear. For the first time since we talked, he smiled as he discussed his car. He would definitely come around.

  Chapter Seven

  Present Day

  I performed a thorough search of my bedroom, deemed it “bat free,” and closed the window. My book kept me company and helped me avoid Chris for the remainder of the morning. When I reached the ending, I sat it down while at a complete loss on what to do with myself until it was time to go to bed. Being stuck like this was torture.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Hudson to see how New York was going. He answered quickly with a picture message. He and his friends were at Yankees Stadium waiting for the game to start. They looked happy and maybe, just maybe, a little drunk even though most of them were under age. I was his age once. When there was a will, there was a way. The caption under the photo said, “At game. Doing fine. Go Yankees!”

  That ate up three minutes. So I texted Clinton next. Instead of a text, he called me. I was ecstatic.

  “Are you having fun?” I asked.

  “Thank God we’re in a motor home because grandpa has to take a piss all the time,” he stated in his usual style of lingo. Crude.

  “Yes, well, other than the bathroom breaks, are you enjoying yourself?”

  “We’re heading for an RV park in North Carolina. I guess we’re staying there for the night and then driving through to the Outer Banks tomorrow. They’re tired. It sucks cuz we’re almost there.”

  “Grandpa and Grandma are in their late sixties, sweetie, so please pull your weight and be helpful.”

  I had no trouble hear
ing his loud sigh over the phone thanks to pristine digital technology. I could even envision the eye roll he performed. “Yes, mother.”

  “I’m not lecturing you. Just reminding you.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Your father and I are at Seneca Lake for the weekend.”

  “Cool. You going boating with the Palmers?”

  “No. We aren’t staying with them. I think you’re father rented this cottage or something,” I replied realizing how strange my answer sounded.

  “Just the two of you?”

  “Carson’s camping at Jamie’s and you know where Hudson is.”

  “Yea, the dickhead sent me a pic of himself standing outside of the stadium. He was flipping me off.”

  “You’re brother isn’t a dickhead,” I scolded thinking he sounded more like Tony Soprano than a pending high school sophomore.

  “Okay, the prick then.”

  It wasn’t worth arguing with him. “Call me when you get to the Outer Banks.”

  “I told them I could drive and we’d be there tonight.”

  “You can’t drive out of state on a learner’s permit and besides, that gas-guzzling behemoth isn’t easy to drive.”

  “That’s only if I get caught or run something over.”

  “In that case, you’d have bigger things to worry about when you got home to me.”

  He chuckled at my statement as only Clinton could. “I’m just joking, Mom.”

  “I’d better let you go,” I told my son when I heard his grandparents “gently” discussing something in the background.

  Now that they were both retired, Conrad and Marti were together all the time. It left them with a lot of opportunity for such discussions.

  Clinton and I said our goodbyes and then I found myself with nothing to do again. I couldn’t stand it. I felt like a caged animal. My identity was Jennifer Gardner; mother, teacher, and wife. The boys were almost grown. In three short years, Clinton would be finished with high school and maybe on his way to college—or working on a chain gang, if he didn’t get himself straightened out. Carson would be away at college and Hudson would be settled into his career. School was fine. School was my sanctuary. But summer vacation left me with nothing to do. Nowhere to go. And the wife part, well, that wasn’t really anything, was it? I had a husband who was never home. When he was, he was occupied. I missed having a best friend. A partner. A lover. Someone that recognized when something was wrong with me. Someone that didn’t let me face the unknown on my own.

  Maybe I was being selfish, but I wanted that again. I deserved to have it again. I was 42 years old. On a good day, I could still fit into size six jeans. On a bad day, it was a comfortable size eight. I exercised regularly and kept up with my appearance. Men still flirted with me from time to time and I’d been told on several occasions I was attractive. I didn’t always see myself that way. No. When I looked into the mirror, I saw the crow’s feet by my eyes, the patch of gray roots where my hair parted when it was time for my hairdresser to do a touch-up, and breasts that had settled somewhere south of where they’d started. But even though they were less firm, I was happy just to have them. Looks aside, I had plenty to offer on an intellectual level as well. I knew I was a worthy companion. For someone.

  Steve Graves was 47. He’d been married once a long time ago. It ended after nine years. His ex-wife left not long after they found out he was infertile. She wanted children, he couldn’t give then to her, and she didn’t want to adopt. He never remarried and considered himself quite the confirmed bachelor or so he told us at school, often bragging about his “conquests” and the single life.

  However, I saw through his charade and called him on it when we were in Philadelphia. The two of us had left our teacher colleagues behind in the hotel bar where they were partying it up and walked back to our rooms together. When I told him of my suspicions, he gave me a shrug and a tight smile before explaining to me how creating an active social life saved him from the blind dates everyone seemed hell bent on setting him up on. Being single, people assumed he was lonely and unhappy. He wasn’t either of those, but no one ever believed him. His fictional bragging had taken care of that problem. He winked at me before saying he wasn’t a complete celibate though either.

  We talked outside of the door to my room. It was all rather innocent. And then our conversation turned more serious. I invited him inside where the two of us poured our hearts out over a bottle of merlot we ordered from room service. It was amazing how easily we could talk to each other about incredibly personal things. Things about my marriage I’d never told anyone else. Steve listened, commiserated, and confessed to me how his wife had made him feel like half a man when she left. Sometime around 3AM, I welcomed him into my hotel bed.

  The next morning was awkward for us, having breakfast in the hotel restaurant with the others and trying to act as if nothing had happened between us. Our sleeping together was one secret neither of us wanted getting out. Something like that would spread like wildfire throughout the school. Teachers could be terrible gossips. Steve and I parted ways with the understanding it was a one-time thing. That happened two more times.

  Gathering my clothes and toiletries for a late shower, I went into the small bathroom. I washed my hair, shaved, and rinsed off the vanilla scented shower gel Hudson had given me for Christmas. As I dressed in a pair of shorts and a tank top, I considered working on Chris again about going home. Surely he had realized his plan was failing.

  When I found him, he wasn’t on his computer as I’d expected. He was sitting in the arm chair I’d used the evening before and was staring outside with the earbuds of his MP3 player at his ears. Even from that angle, I could tell he’d been crying. The tears were gone, but his eyes were still red and puffy and he looked almost trance-like and so caught up in his thoughts. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen him cry. It had been years.

  “Chris,” I murmured on a troubled sigh. “Look at what we’re doing to each other.”

  He seemed embarrassed when he noticed me. He pulled out the headphones and piled everything together in a jumble of wires on the end table. He held out his hand to me. I walked up and stood next to his sitting form. After a moment’s hesitation, I took his hand. He squeezed it gently before looking at it as his thumb stroked the palm with feather-light circles.

  “Can we please go home?”

  “I didn’t want to take this home with us. I thought we’d settle it all this weekend, but I guess I’m wrong and it’s too late,” he said softly.

  “We screwed up, Chris. Both of us. It should have never gone this far, but it did and there’s no going back.”

  “I just…I didn’t see it. I didn’t see my absence as a problem. I was able to give one-hundred-ten percent at work these past few years because you were at home keeping everything going. I knew you got frustrated with me. But never this.” He paused. “And, you’re right. I am mad at you. Livid actually. All I can think about is how easily you broke our marriage vows.”

  I tried to pull my hand away, but he wasn’t going to give it up. “It wasn’t easy. Don’t ever suggest that. There’s nothing easy about any of this.”

  “I think it was easy especially when you consider the fact you never came to me and told me how unhappy you were. You never gave me a chance to work our problems out,” he said calmly. “So, sure, I’ll suggest it.”

  He had a point. I wasn’t going to admit it though.

  His telltale eyes made me think of something from our past. “Do you think we would have eventually gotten married if circumstances hadn’t pushed us into it?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to think so.”

  “I think so, too,” I admitted.

  “What do we do now?”

  I sat down on the wooden arm of his chair and at an angle so I was facing him. “I guess we’ll need to tell the boys,” and as I said it, my voice broke because I was a mom, first and foremost, and what Chris and I were doing was going to aff
ect them no matter how old they were.

  “I’ll stay at Mom and Dad’s until I can find an apartment.”

  “Are you sure? It’s your house, too. It’ll just be Clinton and me with Hudson and Carson away at school.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The boys come home enough on the weekends. You’ll need the house.”

  “I don’t want us to be one of those warring divorcing couples.”

  “I agree. We’ll have to make a conscious effort to be courteous and patient while we’re hammering out the details. If we’re fighting, it’s only going to make it more difficult for the boys. I’d hate for this to affect their grades, or worse, make them feel that they had something to do with any of our unhappiness.”

  “Absolutely. It’s a transition, but it doesn’t have to be ugly. The boys are going to take their cues from us.”

  With my hand still held in his, he lifted it to his mouth and brushed a kiss across my palm before settling it against the side of his face. Chris’ comment from earlier in the day about crib notes wasn’t a joke. We’d been ardent lovers for almost 26 years and we knew each other so completely. Ending a marriage was emotional business especially when the two people involved still cared deeply for each other.

  Chris’ eyes meet mine and conveyed the pain behind them. I felt myself lose what little bit of control I’d been struggling to keep as I began weeping over what constituted as the end of our marriage. He pulled me down onto his lap and wrapped me up in his embrace while we both cried. Cried about the past. Cried about the present. And cried, I was certain, about the unknown future since we’d always approached it together. But not anymore.

  Chris kissed me first. He pressed his lips against the tears that streaked my face. He held my face in his hands and, in that moment, something silent was shared between us. We met each other’s mouths with equal need as maybe the old lovers in us wanted to say goodbye. Our hands moved over our bodies with a mind of their own. A different kind of strangled cry left my throat as his large hands moved over my breasts fiercely, punishingly and yet delivering so much pleasure. I worked to get his shirt off and easily pulled it over his head as he shifted in the chair to aid my endeavor. I used his broad shoulders to lift myself up before straddling his lap. His hands worked under the front of my shirt delivering teasing strokes to my abdomen, my breasts, and then migrating around to the small of my back where he knew the skin was so sensitive. My tank top became a distant memory as he tossed it aside and his lips found a taunt, lace-covered nipple.