A Marriage Carol

by Chris Fabry

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because I know it’s a sin to get a divorce. That’s how I was raised. And once God is ticked off at you, He won’t listen to your prayers.”

  “Well, it’s true that God hates divorce. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk with Him. He’s a forgiving God. And part of the reason He hates divorce is the pain and heartache it creates in the people He loves.”

  “You sound like a pastor.”

  He smiled. “I guess in a way I am. You came across the field, didn’t you? You didn’t see the sign in front.”

  “What sign? I couldn’t see ten feet in front of my face.”

  “Years ago this place was a funeral home. Didn’t get much business way out here, so they sold it. We turned it into a retreat center. For struggling couples. People who’ve given up or those who just want to grow closer.” He pointed at the pictures in the bookshelf. “Some of our graduates.”

  I couldn’t hold back the laughter. “That has to be the definition of irony. I take shelter at a marriage retreat that used to be a funeral home.”

  “I don’t think it’s by chance that you’re here.” He spoke with an edge of certainty.

  “You saved all of those marriages?”

  “Not me. And sadly, not all of them were saved. People make their own choices. We can’t control what anyone does, but we can be there to walk with them. Many were right on the brink, like you. From where I sit, I’d say you were allowed this divine appointment for a purpose.”

  “Or maybe that eighteen-wheeler was God’s way of punishing us for what we were about to do.”

  “I prefer to think of it as a wake-up call. It’s never too late to do something good for your marriage.”

  I shook my head. “We’ve made up our minds. There’s no hope left.”

  He folded his wrinkled hands and looked at the pictures. “I’ve heard that a few times over the years. And I’d like to suggest something about hope. Why don’t you and your husband hold on to the hope I have for you?”

  “A man we can’t even find?”

  “A man who probably doesn’t want to go through with this any more than you.”

  “How can you say that? You don’t even know him. You don’t know me.”

  He pursed his lips. “I’m going on experience. Most people don’t want to throw away their marriage. Working together for twenty years and giving a lot of money to lawyers doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re right about that. The lawyer Jacob found is cut-rate. The only reason he would stay with me is if he could save money, not because of love.”

  “So you’re going through with the divorce even though you know it’s not the answer. You just don’t see another way out.”

  Though I wanted to change the subject, I couldn’t. The old man had nailed my inner feelings. His questions led me further toward the hurt and betrayal I felt at my husband for not seeing me. Not noticing all I did to make our lives work. Of course Jacob felt the same way, that I had not fully engaged in the relationship for some time. That I had given up, disengaged. That my mind was else where, even during lovemaking. Which was true.

  “I know I’m not happy where I am,” I said. “And neither is he. Isn’t that what marriage is supposed to be? We’re supposed to love each other. We’re supposed to complete each other. Isn’t there a verse that says God wants us to be happy?”

  He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “There’s a verse that says Jesus came to give life and give it abundantly. But God doesn’t exist to make you and me happy. Some of the most committed followers of God I’ve ever met have been in miserable circumstances.”

  “Good thing you’re not a pastor, because that kind of message wouldn’t exactly fill pews or the offering plate.”

  He smiled. “True. But notice I said their circumstances were miserable. But they were content in their situation. They saw that God was working in them and through them in spite of what was happening on the outside.”

  “Well, I don’t think God’s at work with us. He abandoned our marriage a long time ago. I’m just following Him out the door.”

  “Are you sure He’s abandoned you?”

  “What do you mean? You think God’s been working?”

  “Maybe God has been closer than you know. Even bringing you here suggests to me that there’s still hope.”

  “I don’t know how many ways I can say it. It’s over. He’s picked out his apartment. I get the house and van and we share custody of the kids. Twenty years ago tonight we started this journey and it’s about to end.”

  The man’s tired eyes lit up. “Tonight’s your anniversary?”

  “Yes. In a snowstorm. We thought it would be romantic to have a Christmas Eve wedding. What were we thinking? We haven’t been able to celebrate our anniversary since our kids were born. Not that we would celebrate now.”

  He stood and walked toward the fireplace. “Interesting. Twenty years ago tonight something pivotal happened. Something that changed your life. Twenty years later on the exact same date you’re making another pivotal choice.”

  “It’s just a day on the calendar.”

  “I’m not so sure. Dates are important. And there’s meaning behind a heavy snowfall. There’s power in it.”

  “You’re losing me, here. What do you mean?”

  “You’ve seen fake snow in movies. You can tell it every time you see it. The stuff blows around. Won’t stick. But real snow does. And that’s what the world hungers for, something that sticks. Not something that’s tossed by the wind.”

  The old man sat by the fire and stared at the crumbling logs. The flames flickered and glistened off the polished exterior of the golden pots and danced about the walls.

  I tried to steer him from his tangent about the snow and focused on the utensils. “Those look old.”

  He nodded. “They are.”

  “What do you use them for? Popcorn?”

  Again, his eyes twinkled. “Believe it or not, they’re used to help the hopeless. Marriages with no future. Couples caught in the web of the past and present.”

  “You don’t let couples bang each other in the head with them, do you?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that!” We both laughed and Rue padded down the stairs and jumped onto the man’s lap and snuggled.

  “How can a couple of gold pots restore a marriage?”

  “There are three, actually. I can show you how they can help, but there’s something I need from you first.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to be willing.”

  “To do what?”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, eyes piercing mine. “To hope. To change. These pots will open a new world. You can’t be forced to look at them, but once you do, you can’t help but respond.”

  “It sounds … strange.”

  He dipped his head. “I’m sure it does. And I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to see. But if you choose to, there’s something you have to do.”

  “Which is …”

  “Be willing to believe in your marriage. That a future together is possible for you and your husband.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t go there. Not after all we’ve been through.”

  He scratched the dog’s back. “I understand. But one more question. I asked if there was another woman in your husband’s life. But I haven’t asked you if there is another man in yours.”

  My face flushed and I stirred up all the indignation I could muster. “I beg your pardon. Are you accusing me of something?”

  He stared into my eyes.

  “How can you accuse me of seeing another man when you don’t even know me?”

  He put the dog on the warm hearth and stood. “You’re right. I’m meddling. Let me get the back bedroom ready for you.”

  “No, I can’t stay.” I threw off the cover and stood. “I have to get home to my children.”

  “Trust me. It’s too dangerous to try and make it off the m
ountain tonight. The roads are next to impassable. As soon as the phone line is restored, you can call your family.”

  “What about your neighbors? Maybe their phones work.”

  “I checked with the nearest one while I was out. They don’t have service either. I expect it might take a while to—”

  In the middle of his sentence the lights flickered and went dark. Rue whimpered and jumped from the hearth.

  There was still a faint, white light outside, but the entire house had gone dark. The man quickly went to the kitchen and returned with a flashlight and handed it to me. “Keep this with you. I have a few more just for such an occasion.”

  “This is spooky,” I said.

  “Oh, it happens often. Nothing to be worried about.”

  “No, I mean, it’s weird. On our honeymoon the power went out. Not that we cared, but we were in the dark all night.”

  The man was silent. I could tell something was going on in his mind.

  “I need to check on my wife,” he said finally. “Then I’ll get the fire started in your room. It should keep you warm if the electricity stays off.”

  STANZA 3:

  The First Choice

  The first-floor guestroom was past the kitchen at the back of the house, across the hall from the pantry. A brick fireplace covered one wall and more bookshelves lined the other. But the most arresting feature of the room was a four-poster bed complete with a canopy and curtains tied at the side. It looked like something out of some Victorian storybook. While the room was quaint and warm, I secretly wondered if this was where they placed the coffins.

  The man saw me staring. “Everything in the house was donated. This bed came from a wealthy family. It was an heirloom from their grandparents.”

  “Nice donation.”

  “They felt indebted for the changes that came from their stay. They wanted to give back.”

  He placed some newspaper under the wood already in the fireplace and lit a match. There were other logs stacked on the hearth, and he told me to add as many as I needed through the night.

  “The kitchen is open for you. Anything you need, make yourself at home. And there’s a bell on the counter. Ring that and I’ll come … well, not running, but as fast as I can go. I’ll keep checking the weather through the night and keep an eye out for your husband.”

  I picked up the phone but heard nothing but an annoying buzz. Rue padded in and cocked his head at me.

  “It appears someone would like to keep you company. There are some treats in the pantry across the hall. A couple of those will keep him busy. He loves to curl up at your feet.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. I picked up the tiny dog and put him on the covers. He looked up at me and made a token gesture of licking. When the man left, Rue jumped down and followed.

  “Wait, I don’t even know your name,” I said. The man turned in the doorway. His voice crackled like the fire. “My wife calls me Jay.”

  I went to the pantry and found a plastic tub of doggy treats and opened it. Rue came quickly, his feet clicking across the hardwood. I tossed the treat onto the bed and he whimpered until I picked him up and placed him there.

  I walked back into the main room and watched Jay carrying a tray upstairs. When he reached the top he paused and looked down over the banister. He looked at me—no, almost through me.

  “Do you need something else?”

  Water filled my eyes and I felt something quiver inside. What if I do give it a chance? What if I open up enough to consider there could be hope? Would that be enough?

  “Stay right there,” he said. “I’ll be right back down.”

  Jay removed the three pots from their resting place and arranged them in front of the fire. “Snow is God’s way of cleaning the landscape. He makes everything new that way. But when it melts, it reveals what is underneath. What’s hidden. What’s true. Melting snow exposes. Each flake is like a choice we make, the choices piling on top of one another. Do you follow?”

  “I suppose, in some metaphorical sense.”

  The firelight made his face look like a fiery sunset after a thunderstorm. “The choices you make lead your heart toward your husband or away; they are never inconsequential.”

  “Can’t you just run parallel?”

  “Have you ever tried to draw a straight line on your own? There’s always a little bend there because none of us is perfect. So it may appear that you’re moving parallel to each other when in fact you’re moving apart or together.”

  “How does it work? The pots, I mean.”

  He took my empty mug from beside the chair and put the spent tea bag aside. “Gather some snow in this from outside. Scoop it with your hands into the cup. Tap it down, get as much as you can, even letting it spill over. Then bring it to me.”

  I slipped into my shoes that were now toasty and warm and headed outside. The wind howled and wet snow pelted the side of the house. Something moved in the darkness.

  “Jacob?”

  No response. I didn’t have to go far to scoop the snow, and as quickly as I did, the act felt like foolishness. This caretaker was probably certifiable. Maybe he had another unsuspecting traveler upstairs trapped in a closet. Or maybe it was Jacob. Why had I trusted this old man? Why had I let my heart be moved by his kind words, or think there could be any kind of hope?

  I hurried inside, kicking my shoes back over the heating vent, even though it wasn’t working. I comforted myself with the thought that serial killers don’t have nice little dogs, they have vicious curs.

  “Good,” Jay said. “Now take the pan and put the snow inside and hold it over the fire.”

  I gave him a look I usually hold back from anyone but my husband and the child who drops a glass in my kitchen. “That’s it? I’m supposed to melt snow and it’ll change my life?”

  He smiled like he had heard that before and handed me a wooden spoon. “Hold the pot over the fire and stir the melting snow. Just try.”

  “I don’t have to click my heels and say there’s no place like home?”

  Crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. Age spots on his hands. A knowing look. A nod.

  I held the pot over the fire and the snow began that slow descent from white to clear, pooling on the edges, moving on its own like an iceberg in an angry ocean. I stirred and a faint echo of music floated upward, a concoction of songs from the past reaching my ears, like tufts of air from birds’ wings. “Promises Made, Promises Broken,” by Dan Fogelberg. I recognized others we heard during our dating years. Songs discovered, uncovered by a new generation. “Riddles of romance” that stirred my heart.

  Steam rose like incense and swirled in the fireplace, hovering under the flue, and I felt myself slipping, swaying, and in one uncontrolled moment I was enveloped. I did not fall, jump, or transmigrate; the scene simply cloaked me, and I was wholly and irrevocably taken in by the experience.

  Pictures from the past, images of children laughing, moments captured and frozen in time cascaded around me like snow, passing me—and suddenly came to life. Music and voices and color, like a vast collage of my life—a dog I had known as a child; puka shells worn in a ninth grade ensemble; buttered popcorn spilled at a theater; my best friend and me eating muffins late at night, smiling before the camera with muffin-stained teeth; me crying through On Golden Pond; a deafening concert in a sea of people near a stage …

  “There he is,” I said breathlessly. More of a gasp of recognition than a full sentence. There was my husband, a young man again, hair much darker and fuller—no receding hairline. Swarthy and lusty and full of life, and a smile that made my heart ache.

  The years had chipped away at his smile, had taken the edges of what was once irrepressible. Many long years had passed since the sight of him had stirred anything deep within me.

  As I watched, I realized there is within each of us an inner longing for a place and season of life we have known—when the future seemed to stretch ahead like some green pasture, inviting us, across the
meadow and into the breadth and depth of life itself. The desire to find such a place resonates and reverberates, creating a passion for that which can never be relived. And yet, here I was, looking into the eyes of the man who captivated me in this season of delight.

  “Marlee,” he shouted across the quad. And before I could answer, a much younger version of me sprinted into his arms. I took myself in, the thin thighs, the width of the hips—or lack of width, and the strong embrace. The difference was striking—not the physical difference between my body then and now, though there did seem to be less sagging in strategic areas, but the way I moved toward him, let myself be held, allowed him entry to my very soul. There was no reserve. Freely I opened my arms and embraced. Similarly, he held nothing back, and the look on his face as he gathered me in was pure contentment.