A Marriage Carol

by Chris Fabry

  “Thank you.” Becca hung up and gathered David in her arms and dragged him to the living room. “We have to work together to get through this. Mom and Dad are stuck somewhere.”

  “Are they going to be okay?” David asked, sniffling.

  Hearing his concern broke my heart.

  “They’ll be fine, but they can’t call right now. So we have to stick together. I want you to go upstairs and get all your covers. We’ll push the couch and love seat together and make a big tent in the living room to keep us warm.”

  “Yes!” Justin said.

  “But what about Santa?” David said. “If we’re in the living room, he won’t come, will he?”

  Justin snickered and Becca ignored him. She sounded just like me when she said, “He won’t care, if we’re asleep.”

  “But how will he see the tree if the lights don’t work?”

  Justin rolled his eyes. “The guy can come to every house on the planet and squeeze through a chimney, and you’re worried he won’t be able to see?”

  She flicked on a flashlight and gave it to David. “Just get your covers and hurry back. No fighting. And watch your step coming down.”

  The two were off in a flash and Becca hit her contact list on her cell. She chose both my phone and Jacob’s and texted, “We’re ok. Wherever u r, be safe.”

  She hit the send button and closed the phone. She looked out the front window at the falling snow and more tears came. She wiped them away quickly as the boys clambered downstairs.

  I turned away from the scene, overwhelmed by her emotion and resolve. I wanted to reach out, to write a message on the window or call out, but I couldn’t break through. When I looked again, Becca was gone and there were my parents, dressed in their Sunday best, sitting close to each other in a Christmas Eve service at their retirement home. There were perhaps twenty people attending, all dressed in bright reds and greens. When the pastor, who was wearing khakis and a polo shirt, asked if there were any prayer requests, several hands went up. My mother clutched a wad of tissues in one hand and lifted it when the man asked if there were any unspoken requests. He nodded as if he understood. She raised the tissues to her face, and my father put an arm around her and pulled her close.

  It did not dawn on me until that moment, but if I was seeing what was happening in real time, I might also be able to find Jacob. I looked back at the golden pot and shook it, some of the water slapping out and hissing on the burning wood.

  “Careful,” Jay said beside me, but I struggled to stay focused on the misty steam until a building came into view. Through the snow and foggy window I saw a man pacing, looking out from his book-lined office. On the desk were white pages in various piles, with sticky “sign here” notes. He glanced at his watch, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.

  “This is not what I want to see,” I said to Jay. “I want to know where my husband is.”

  “Don’t try to control it,” he said. “You’ll learn by simply observing.”

  The next scene was my sister’s home. She and her husband in their bedroom closet, wrapping paper and presents around them, were deep in prayer. For us. For our marriage. It was humbling and humiliating.

  “You have people who care for you,” Jay said.

  Engulfed in the mist again, the water bubbling and frothing, another home with few books and more linoleum came into view. A figure sat at a makeshift computer table, a TV blaring a football game in the background. A beer in one hand and a mouse in the other, he navigated through his Facebook contacts. I closed my eyes.

  “Do you know him?” Jay said.

  “He’s a friend I knew in high school.”

  “But you’ve become reacquainted.”

  “Only online. It’s nothing, really. Found his picture on Facebook and friended him.”

  The longer we lingered at Erik’s house, with Erik typing a message with two fingers, the more interested Jay became and the more uncomfortable I grew. I let the pot slip from the fire, but Jay held my hand there.

  “Wishing you a warm and happy Christmas Eve,” Erik wrote. “Hoping things go well with the kids in the coming days. Hoping there are better times ahead for you. Love, Erik.”

  “He didn’t get a good grade in typing class,” I joked.

  Jay remained focused. “He doesn’t write like he’s just an old friend.”

  “We’ve had some conversations over the past few months,” I said, and there was something hollow to my voice.

  “Did you date in high school?”

  “A little. We were just kids.”

  “But you’ve made a connection now.”

  “I have lots of Facebook friends.”

  “How many of them sent you greetings on Christmas Eve? On your anniversary? On the day you were going to sign divorce papers?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I watched Erik crumple his beer can and toss it in the trash, then reach for another in the minifridge under the makeshift table.

  “Have you met face-to-face?”

  “Just at our reunion. It was innocent. He’s just being nice to think of me and write.”

  “Something happened in your eyes when you saw him. When you read his message, a light went on.”

  I nodded. “All right, I’ll admit there’s a spark. Just remembering those early years. The youthful infatuation. Mental gymnastics about the past. Wondering how things might have wound up if …”

  “If you had chosen that life instead of this one,” Jay said. “And whether or not it’s too late to still choose?”

  “I guess the thought crossed my mind that we could have a life together. He’s coming off a bad relationship. He learned a lot from it,” I added, realizing I sounded defensive.

  “Like controlling his drinking.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know about that. He must have stock in Coors.” The scene lingered and I tried to talk to mask my discomfort. Laughing at some unharnessed memory of Erik when we were young.

  “Marlee, you have a good chance at happiness. You have great kids. Your family loves you. Cares for you. The best hope for lifelong love is not with anyone but the one you said ‘I do’ to.”

  “My best chance died years ago, then. Jacob looks at us as another investment gone bad. He would probably stay together to save the legal hassle and to keep the kids under one roof, but he won’t even fight anymore. He’s at the whatever stage. Whatever happens now is fine with him. He’s emotionally checked out. He’s engrossed in his work. He’s not there anymore. And frankly, I’m glad.”

  Jay didn’t speak and thankfully the scene changed again, this time to a dark, snowy field. I couldn’t make out much of the scenery because it was snow covered.

  “Is that around here?” I said.

  “I can’t tell,” Jay said. “Wait a minute. That looks like someone’s shoe sticking out of the snow.”

  My breath caught and I choked out the words. “It’s his. It’s Jacob’s.”

  I scanned the scene and through the flurries noticed some trees, an incline, and a fence post. “I know this place. It’s right below where our car spun out.”

  Jay jumped up and rushed to the front hallway, throwing his coat on. I followed, but he told me to stay with the fire. Stay with the scene.

  With tears in my eyes I said, “I thought I tripped over a rock. It must have been him. He was trying to come here.”

  “I’ll find him,” Jay said. “You stay here.”

  “No, I have to go with you.”

  “Marlee …” He put a hand on my shoulder and I felt something warm coursing through my body. A connection with the past and present? “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Shaking, still holding the pot, I placed it back over the fire as Jay left. The water grew warm again and steam washed over me. I closed my eyes, wondering if Jacob could still be alive. He needed medical help, but with the phone out and no cell I couldn’t imagine what we could do.

  The scene was the pasture again and Jacob’s shoe
moved under the covering of snow. A good sign. “Get up,” I whispered.

  Headlights shone on the road above, and then a terrible sound of rubber on ice, trying to grip, trying to stop the momentum of the downhill slide. The car careered into the thin trees above, headlights wobbling over the snow, then toppled over the hillside toward my husband.

  The steam sizzled and evaporated in front of me. I put the pot down and ran to the back door, looking over the landscape. I could see nothing through the storm, not even headlights.

  Frantic, I scooped snow from the back patio into the plastic bowl and ran back to the fire, pouring it quickly into the bowl and jamming it on top of the fire and holding it close until the white began to melt.

  “Come on,” I whispered.

  Something moved behind me. Rue was back, sniffing and whining at the garage door. When I turned back to the fire, the steam rose and I entered without any thought to the process, whether this would work or not. I peered into the wafting vapor, looking for my husband and the old man who would be his paramedic and savior.

  But I did not see the pasture.

  STANZA 5:

  The Mistake

  A woman with long, brown hair carried a feverish child back and forth across the kitchen in a small apartment. The baby’s croupy cough startled me, the chest rattling like marbles in a tin box. A vaporizer sat by an empty crib and the woman pulled the child close. By the window was a scraggly Christmas tree draped with a secondhand garland.

  When she turned, I recognized something in the face. Was this me years earlier with Becca? I didn’t recognize the apartment. Had I chosen the wrong gold pot?

  A phone rang and as the woman picked it up, the baby began a crying, coughing, wail. “His fever is up. I can’t get it down. I don’t know what to do.”

  The voice. Her voice. My own daughter was a mother.

  “No, I’m not calling her,” Becca said. A pause at something said on the other end. “I don’t care if she could help, I’m not calling her.”

  Slowly, the scene in the apartment faded and I was in a loud, dark room filled with laughter and music and people shaking off snow on the wet, wooden floor. At a table in the corner, raising two drinks toward each other and clinking glasses, were two young men, ruddy and handsome, grizzled with a week’s growth of beard.

  “To another Christmas Eve,” the younger one said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Same here,” the other said, taking a long pull on the drink.

  Silence between them. Not much eye contact.

  “Feels like yesterday, doesn’t it?”

  “What? The accident?”

  The man nodded. “Twenty years ago tonight. Our lives changed forever.”

  A glance at the table. “Yeah. Wonder how Becca is tonight.”

  “I don’t think she and her husband are doing well, to be honest.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised, can you?”

  The younger one shook his head. “You okay? “

  Another long pull and a shrug. “Sure, as long as I have one of these in my hand.” He stared at the glass. “If I had to be honest, I’d say I feel lost. Like there are a thousand roads to choose and every one of them leads to a dead end. Every time I hear snow forecast or see the lights flicker during a power outage, I’m right back there in the living room under those covers.”

  “Christmas was never the same after that year, was it.”

  A nod. He drained the glass.

  “Have you talked with Mom lately?” David asked.

  “No. Still hard to get past everything that happened.”

  “Yeah. But it’s been twenty years. Maybe it’s time.”

  “Can I get you two something else?” a pretty waitress said, bouncing in place as she stood by the table.

  “Time for a couple more of these,” Justin said.

  “Be right back,” she said.

  The maelstrom at the bar and the two at the booth faded, along with the peanut shells and booming music. Though I wanted to see my husband, I had stumbled onto something entirely different and unexpected.

  As if seeing my children wasn’t enough, the next scene took my breath away. Jacob, the husband of my youth, was much older and stoop-shouldered. His face was stubble-filled and ravaged by time. His skin was spotted and wrinkled and there was a darkness to his eyes, something vacant. He ate his meal in silence and sat by a small tabletop Christmas tree. Scattered pictures lay on the coffee table. Images of what had been.

  I noticed nothing significant about the scene until he stood. Moving from the table to the kitchen was a Herculean effort. His right leg was almost useless as he dragged it beside him. He was missing fingers on both hands. I reached out in the shadows but made no connection.

  “Oh Jacob,” I said.

  And then I was gone, through the swirling snow again, inserted into another scene of a woman putting away groceries. Even though I did not see the face, I knew her. You can always tell your own figure in a view from behind. If I had compared the slender hips of my youth to the ones of midlife, I was now comparing them to twenty years in the future. Gravity had continued its work, but I felt a certain pride at my appearance. My hair was shorter, grayer in places, mainly at the roots, my arms a little flabby underneath, and when I turned I noticed the lines in my face and extra skin at my neck that could have used tightening. All in all, not bad if going strictly on a score of physical attributes. What concerned me most was the look on my face.

  A sound of announcers and cheering came from the living room. The unmistakable cacophony of televised football. At the bottom of the grocery pile was a case of beer, and no sooner had I put away the other bags than a much more portly Erik waddled into the kitchen.

  “Hope you didn’t run the heater in the back.” He ripped open the box and felt the cans, then cursed. “These go in the fridge downstairs. And could you bring up the rest of the Coors when you come back?”

  It was at least a request and not an order, but something about the way I acquiesced to his demand made my jaw drop. Then, as he walked out, I muttered something as I picked up the case of beer.

  “What was that?” he said, turning.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what did you say?” Erik stood in the doorway, where he could both yell at me and have a good view of the unfolding game. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The kind and considerate man who had sent e-mails and supportive messages was now staring me down.

  As I bent to pick up the case, he grabbed my arm. “Don’t ignore me. Tell me what you said.”

  “Nothing,” I begged, tears in my eyes, trembling. There was real fear here, as if this were only the latest salvo. Perhaps this contributed to the hollow in my eyes. “Please, let me go. I’ll be right back.”

  “You’d better be,” he spat.

  Glancing around the kitchen, I noticed pictures of the three children in inconspicuous places, hiding here and there, as if there was a moratorium on the past leaking into the present. Something in my stomach twinged, like a light of knowledge being flicked on, and I saw what no one could tell me about the greener grass on the other side of the relational fence. Like taking some wild animal into our home and trying to domesticate it. The only life in the home was not the sound of children or grandchildren, but a football battle and the occasional belch. And me trudging back up the steps with the remaining case of beer for the man of my dreams. How had this happened? Had I spent twenty years with … him?

  The steam sizzled and fizzled and Rue stood by my side, watching the last of the snow vaporize into the air. I placed the pot by the hearth and took a breath. Anxious thoughts swirled like the raging storm. I ran to the back window looking for any sign of life or light. I found neither, just darkness. I checked the phone again. Dead. I found my flashlight and checked the garage. Jay’s car was gone and the door was still up. Snow had piled and drifted over three feet deep with a set of tracks down the middle of the driveway. In the other bay sat a Suburban, and I assumed i
t was four-wheel drive.

  Helpless, I watched Rue run up the steps and disappear around the corner at the top. I followed, my footsteps echoing throughout the house. The wooden floor was slick and cold as I crept along. Using my flashlight I checked the hall and found on either side of it were rooms with six-panel, closed doors. Instead of numbers there were words on each. “Goodness,” “Peace,” “Patience,” and several others words I recognized in the list of fruits of the Spirit. (I don’t know a lot about the Bible, but I remembered those.) I opened one that said “Joy” and peered at a bright, cheery room with a yellow comforter on the king-sized bed and wallpaper patterned with sunshine and rainbows. Just looking at it made me smile. A handcrafted needlepoint depicted a basket of fruit and underneath said, “But the fruit of the Spirit is … joy.” A healthy number of books about marriage lined the shelves, as well as a few novels.