Casual Choices

by Tom Corbett

Josh looked at her with a pained expression. “You have heard about all the prior women with whom she has had relationships.” Josh was delighted when Usha looked confused. “I mean, you won’t have to worry about running into them since they are all deceased. But those rumors about her being a black widow serial killer are exaggerated, I am sure. Nothing has been proved in a court of law, and you are innocent until adjudicated guilty, right?”

  Suddenly, Josh doubled over as Usha’s fist hit his stomach. “You’re a shit,…Jeremiah Joshua Connelly.”

  “Rachel,” he called out while trying to get his breath, “your girlfriend is hitting me.”

  “Good,” came back from the kitchen. It sounded like two voices.

  “Leave these two alone for a few minutes and see what happens. They start fighting.” Rachel and Connie came into the room with more food.

  “Rachel, are you giving lessons to all women where to punch me in the stomach for maximum pain? Wow, that still hurts.”

  “Obviously, my lesson plan needs upgrading. You’re still vertical and taking nourishment.”

  “The jury is still out on the second part of that.” Josh tried to chuckle.

  They sat down around the dining room table. Normally, it would have been piled with unread mail, paper, reports, and other reading material on Josh’s must-read list. Now it was being used for its intended purpose. Yes, Josh thought, this is the price one pays for having women in his life. Now, he will probably have to throw dirty clothes in a hamper and not on the floor. And damn, he would have to forego his sniff test to see if an article of clothing was still wearable. But he was smiling as he had such thoughts.

  Rachel mused with a thoughtful demeanor. “Amazing. Several days ago, I landed late at night and was met by the brother I had not really known for decades…a funny but remote and distant guy. I spent the first couple of days here communicating with Madison and wondering how they were going to get along without me. And what happens? First, my useless brother turns out to be someone whom I find tolerable, the same guy I vaguely recall from my distant past.”

  “I didn’t know you had another brother. When are you going to introduce me to this nice sibling?” Josh inserted.

  “More to the point,” Rachel wrestled control of the conversation back, “and much to my chagrin and shock, I discovered that the medical world could survive without me. Patients survived, there was no outbreak of bubonic plague. All these years, I was afraid to take real vacations. Except for professional responsibilities. My big excursions were long weekends in Chicago or New York. I’m beginning think my colleagues are happy I am gone, I’m not pestering them like a mother hen. Really, how inconsiderate of the world.”

  “Welcome to the world of the irrelevant.” Josh raised a wineglass.

  “To the irrelevant,” they all toasted, laughing amid the clinking glasses.

  “The real point is this, Rach. Are you having a good time, are you happy?” Josh asked. She looked down at the food for a long time, saying nothing. “Rach, are you okay?” he asked.

  When she looked up, her eyes were moist. “I’ve not been this content since those days watching that Walter Cronkite show asking you to explain the background of whatever moment in history we were watching. Lying next to you, hearing your authoritative voice, all made sense. You and Walter seemed like the voices of authority. Of course, back then I didn’t know you were making it all up.” She chuckled but her voice remained thick with emotion. “That first morning, when I caught you sneaking out to walk Morris, I thought this would be like all the other visits. We would go through the motions and that would be it. I would get on the plane again and fly back to Madison. We would not have talked, not really. Everything would be the same, this polite but distant relationship. Now, our worlds are turned around. What happened? I wonder. It was all so fast.”

  Josh looked pensive. No quip was coming. “I’ve been thinking about something. It is little more than an image, a metaphor for a critical dimension of life. Okay, I slept through botany in college, but I can remember pictures of tendrils. It seems that they were the thin filaments that flowed out from vines as they struggled to find a direction or even survive. If the vine didn’t have these things, these tendrils, or there was nothing for these lifelines to grasp, I presume the vine would fall then wither and die. The tendril was as critical as the vine itself. It gave direction, even hope, to life.”

  “I remember you asking me about that the first morning…I thought maybe you were finally losing it,” Rachel said.

  “I was thinking of you that morning, even before you ran to catch me. I was remembering my days in Toronto when I first came up here, escaping from all that angst and conflict that had overwhelmed me in those initial months on the run. In addition to the guilt, there was loneliness. I was so lost. Oh, there were helpful folk for American émigré kids escaping the war, but they could not substitute for family.

  One day, it was cold and rainy and I had hit bottom. I got in this bathtub with a knife. I remember thinking that it would be simple. You slice the wrists and let the blood flow out. It wasn’t supposed to hurt that much, surely that pain would not match what I faced every day. But I made one error. Peter had sent me some letters. You were desperate, Rach, and had given a letter you wrote me to him. Maybe he could get it to me. He did, but I hadn’t opened it at first. I couldn’t. I had been afraid. But then I thought, okay, it will all be over anyways. I can take whatever is in the note. After I read your thoughts, I knew I could not do it. Your words wrapped themselves around my heart. I just sat in the water crying. You were my tendril at that moment. You never knew, but you stopped my downward spiral. I clung to your memory, and that proved to be enough.”

  “Oh my god,” that was all Rachel could get out.

  “Rachel, you saved my life that day. I wanted to tell you that first morning. That was why I brought up the tendril thing, but I wasn’t ready yet to talk about things. I was not yet sure I could. Rach, I owe you everything. Today, for the first time in almost a half a century, I have a family. And I have a sister again that I love dearly.”

  “To family,” Rachel raised her glass and the others followed.

  “Funny,” Josh mused, “you think back over your life, any life, and see all these points where things might have gone one way or another. What if I hadn’t put myself back in that football game where I hurt that kid, it was such a spur of the moment choice. When I agonized about coming north, I flipped a coin. Think about that, a life-changing decision based on a coin flip. Even coming to Vancouver, I liked the view from the hotel I picked at random and from a room they gave my because it was the offseason. Hell, I married Usha because she promised me Indian curries.

  “That was all, just the curries.” she laughed.

  “Pretty much,” he responded. “So many choices made so…casually.”

  “Perhaps,” Rachel said quietly, “but I think, my dear brother, you would have become the same person no matter which roads were taken. In the end, it may not be the choices that count, but what each of us brings on the journey, what one makes of the path they have stumbled upon. A wise man once told me that you cannot take out what God has put in you.”

  They pondered Rachel’s words, continuing to sip wine while they talked and shared late into the night.

  EPILOGUE

  It was a late August day at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Early morning joggers could start at Memorial Union where generations of students had consumed beer, flirted, saved the world from itself, and even worried about their courses, though probably not often on that final item. The terrace on the Union, arrayed with distinctive brightly colored chairs, looked out over Lake Mendota, the largest of the five lakes that made Madison special. These joggers could then amble along the lake path past the limnology lab, the social science building up on the hill, Elizabeth Waters Hall, and various other campus buildings with the lake hugging them on their right. Most mornings, even before dawn, the university crew would be out practi
cing, the coaches barking instructions as the long, sleek sculls slithered through the water with the morning sun peering over the eastern shore.

  Eventually, our joggers would reach the entrance to Picnic Point, that fabled peninsula that one national magazine had identified as one of the top 25 romantic spots in the world. The journey from the entrance to the end of the point was less than a mile. The view to the right could be captivating, particularly at night when the capital city’s isthmus was twinkling with lights dominated by the Capitol dome as it stood bathed in an aura of white marble. To the left across the waters were the gentle rolling hills and farmlands to the north of the city, the beauty of which resulted from the glacial movements of many thousands of years ago. Mountains of ice and snow pushed debris aside as it expanded south during a recent ice-age and left deep lakes and hillocks in its later retreat once again to the north. More recently, in the 1830s, Illinois militia chased Chief Blackhawk and his beleaguered band along these very shores west to the Mississippi River where they would meet a violent end. Effigy mounds in the shape of birds and bears yet dot the area as silent reminders of a lost past.

  Rachel had convinced them that this would be an excellent place to have their ceremony. Events had gotten away from them after they all departed from Vancouver. About two weeks later, Josh interrupted Connie as she intently focused on her computer screen. Many of her belongings were still sequestered in boxes waiting to be unpacked as she relocated to his place once again.

  “We have to talk,” Josh said.

  “Uh-oh.” Connie looked up. “Kicking me out already. Well, at least most of my stuff is ready to go.”

  “Don’t you wish. Nope, I want off probation.”

  “You really think you have earned it?” She looked cross.

  “Hey, I’ve been good for two whole weeks.”

  “Well…,” she demurred, “the jury is still out on that one.”

  “Marry me,” he suddenly said.

  “Stop kidding around, I have work to do.” She looked back to her screen.

  Josh dropped to his knee. “Corinthia Chen, will you marry me?”

  “Where is the ring?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Okay, I didn’t think of everything, but I am serious.”

  “Really?” Her tone was changing. This was not his usual banter.

  “Connie, I have never been more serious about anything in my life.”

  “Oh, I suppose I could do worse,” she replied, “though that’s really hard to imagine.” A week later, they were married in a small civil ceremony.

  Cate and Meena spent the weeks following their Vancouver visit furiously trying to get their two war orphans out of harm’s way. Fortunately, they had the kinds of contacts that could cut through the endless bureaucracy. Cate used the State Department and Meena the Jordanian royal family. At some point, they legalized their relationship, believing that might speed things along though they were not sure how. They were married in a civil ceremony in Toronto, where they had been working with Usha on the international adoption issues. Josh flew in for the ceremony, which pleased Cate no end, and Rachel came in from Madison. As they all celebrated later that day, Josh casually asked his sister why she and Usha were still waiting. Rachel looked at him for a long time before saying anything. “Rachel, even an idiot like me can tell when two people are in love.”

  “Usha,” she called out. “My idiot brother has this idea that you and I should get married.”

  “Sounds good to me,” came the response from the next room. “Your sibling is not nearly as dumb as he looks.”

  Josh laughed, thinking he was the object of their humor. But Usha joined Rachel, and they began making plans. “Holy shit,” he murmured, “now that was casual.”

  Rachel noted that all of this was happening so fast. A nascent idea stirred within her. “Let’s all get together,” she proposed, “everyone who had been in Vancouver. Usha and I can tie the knot, and the others can redo their vows. And if it is not legal, we can redo it in Toronto, but we still will have this public commitment. That way, everyone can participate.” With that, a plan was set in motion. Peter, Morris, Carla, Josh, and Connie all flew in to Madison. The day before the ceremony, Peter, Morris, Carla, and Josh took a rental car to Dubuque, Iowa, where they visited a nearby monastery. It was about a two-hour journey through bucolic countryside where the famous Wisconsin cheeses were made.

  At the religious house, they met with Bob, who now was known by a religious name that meant nothing to his visitors. He was still Bob. Josh hardly recognized him at first. His head was shaved, and he had the aesthetic look of someone who daily focused on transcendental matters. He seemed to float over the ground rather than walk on it, perhaps a skill they perfect as they move about the abbey without making a sound. As soon as Bob began to talk, however, Josh recognized his old friend with whom he had shared so much of his childhood tribe and faith. His calm words were soothing yet insightful. There were no unthinking platitudes. This was a man Josh could respect, that he did respect.

  After a group discussion, Josh steered Bob off while the others looked over wine and cheese locally made available for sale in the visitor’s room. They walked to a quiet grove of trees where Josh could envision the monks communicating with their God in peace. Earlier, they had been permitted to listen as the monks sang Gregorian chant as part of their daily ritual. The beauty of the sound reflected in perfect acoustics was soothing, tranquil. Josh understood what had drawn his old friend to this place and life.

  “Bob, tell me. What was Jimmie like at the end? You were closest to him.”

  “If I had been that close at the end, I would not be here today.” Bob looked at him kindly. “It sounds to me as if you’re looking for a bit more guilt, the Catholic stock in trade I fear.”

  “Only if you’re Irish,” Josh responded.

  “The truth. He was hurt by your leaving. But he still felt very connected to the group. Of all of us, he needed that connection, that sense of belonging. Alienation and loneliness are powerful motivators. Please don’t blame yourself for what happened. He never stopped loving you. And if anyone is to blame for his death, it is me. I was supposed to be with him that day. He should not have been handling the explosives alone.”

  “I cannot help but think I would have been able to talk him out of this craziness that killed him.”

  “No, you probably would have joined him in eternity. Our moral vision was correct, it was our actions that were impetuous.” Bob grabbed Josh by the shoulders. “You all think I am here out of guilt, that I’m running away from the past. That’s not true, at least not true any longer. Back then I was searching for a larger cause. We all were. It is what I’ve found here, in my own way. Between you and me, I don’t buy all the personal God thing. But the search for enlightenment, nirvana, truth, meaning remain vital to me. At night, I look at the vast sky and think about quasars and pulsars and the possibility of infinite universes. Who cannot be moved and humbled by such mystery? Pascal was. By the way, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin remains my favorite thinker. Remember how we used to discuss his works?”

  “I have never forgotten. You really can find meaning here?” Josh asked.

  “My boy,” Bob said with a smile, “you can find it anywhere. Remember, we used to make fun of kids who said they needed time off from school to find themselves. Hey, for ten bucks, we would joke, we could tell them exactly where they were. But we were too flip, I fear. I am convinced each of us has a place, a center, where they need to be. You must be quiet and listen, you will know when you feel it. And when you do discover it, you will have that peace you seek.”

  As they drove from Dubuque to Madison, the four spent much time how delighted they were in the visit and in their reconnection. Suddenly, Peter exclaimed, “Oh, I almost forgot. I tried Helen again and did get a response. She gives everyone her love and e-mailed a pic. It is her with three grandchildren. I believe it was taken at one of the Disney parks. Very matronly, I just know she
is the president of the local Republican club.”

  Josh admonished him. “Peter, don’t be cruel.”

  “I’m not kidding. In 2008, she sent me campaign stuff for McCain and that Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett.”

  As he handed his phone around, Morris exclaimed, “Oooh, she looks a bit chunky these days.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is fat,” Carla responded.

  Everyone laughed. They settled into a banter about how they remembered one another. It might have been a discussion of their senior proms. Of course, they soon were debating vigorously a comment that Josh made about knowing that the concept of global Communism would never trump provincial nationalism in the hearts of men and women. That debate was soon replaced by whether they had predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union as a first-rate power. Josh insisted that they saw how the internal contradictions of the Soviet-planned economic system would never satisfy internal consumer demands while maintaining a superpower presence in the world. The core of this debate was whether they were really that prescient or were merely rewriting history to accentuate their perspicacity. After considerable back-and-forth, they decided that they were, in fact, very smart and more insightful than the people in charge of the world back in their day. It was a point on which they could all agree.

  Eventually, silence embraced the car as they gazed at the countryside. Each reflected on those golden moments. Those were days and memories that were priceless to each of them. They all agreed on one fact. The early bonds are the best, the most permanent. As the lush farms and picturesque barns flowed past their car, cows munching leisurely on a grassy lunch, Josh reflected with deep thanks on how fortunate he had been to discover his complete life again. And yes, he thought, they were as smart as he recalled.

  By noon the next day, everyone had gathered at the end of Picnic Point. The ceremony would be officiated by the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist congregation. Their place of worship was adjacent to the west end of the campus and had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright himself. The UUs were noncreedal and thus could draw upon the Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist traditions, the last preferred by Usha even though she had been raised as a Hindu. A cool, refreshing breeze blew off the lake. Meena chose some appropriate Islamic words of wisdom. Often, August could be sultry. But this day suggested the fresher days of autumn that lay ahead. Rachel had been right; this was the place. They could always have used the impressive U.U. church if they were rained out.