by Freda, Paula
"Marry me," he blurted out, as Sandra sat down to commence eating. "Sandra, marry me," he repeated, when she seemed to stop breathing, frozen in place, not raising her gaze to meet his.
After a moment that felt like much longer, she glanced up. He could read the unspoken question in her eyes. Had she heard him correctly? And ... what about Laura? "Marry me," he repeated, softly, the gentleness and warmth in his voice answering her question.
If he expected her pride to cause her to refuse his secondhand offer, claiming doubts as to his loving her, knowing how much he adored Laura, she surprised him with a shy nod, followed by a bout of silence and tears. He rose quickly and enveloped her in his arms. He had always known how much she cared for him. He just had not realized how well he could learn to need her.
They were married in the same church where only a few months before, just outside its courtyard, on a little bridge spanning a small stream, Kevin had closed the door to his past, and opened his heart to the only other woman he trusted. That she loved him, had always loved him, he felt no doubt. As for his loving her, he understood his need and his admiration for her gentle character. Though there would never be another Laura, he considered himself lucky beyond words to have Sandra at his side for the remainder of his days. He did love her, if not with the intensity that he had loved Laura. But he was older now, wiser, and practical. Almost Heaven.
Over the next ten years the waters receded, as the poles re-froze and the excess moisture and heavy clouds slowly dissipated. The earth resumed basking in the sun unimpeded by further solar disturbances. Cities sprang up and industries flourished along new coastlines that once had been mere neglected prophecies on Cable's "History Channel." It was often wondered whether mankind and his squabbles and humanity's misdemeanors and felonies, petty when held up against the true relationship of all earth's creatures, finally had galled the Creator into a second deluge despite His promise never again to wipe clean his creations. Or, perhaps, Nature had had enough of man's refusal to accept his oneness with all the other creatures that were a part of this earth, the universe, and the cosmos.
Whatever the answer, all of humanity for the first time at last appeared to have learned its lesson, and had rallied to hold together what was left after the devastation. Most of the once heatedly disputed borders were gone, swallowed up. Nature had settled the disputes her way. As for dire apocalyptic settings often portrayed in movies set in the future, they simply had not happened. Too many good people of all races remained to stop the sociopaths from gaining control. As all humanity concentrated all its efforts on rebuilding itself, the world regained a measure of its moral and technological progress, with one huge difference – the sentient beings on this earth at last began to mature emotionally.
Kevin's farm prospered, along with his family – his wife, Sandra, and their five children, two boys and three girls. "Almost heaven," Sandra repeated to her image in the mirror on her wedding day, on her wedding night, at the birth of her first son, and all the others that followed. Kevin remained attentive, kind, and understanding. He was faithful, and often professed his affection for her. He never actually used the word "love." He never mentioned Laura, or ever compared. But Sandra understood. She understood when she caught him on occasion pensively gazing at the stars. No one but her could read the sadness in that gaze, the longing, and Laura's memory.
"Almost heaven." It was enough. Until the day that she happened to glance out her kitchen window while humming a tune as she dried the dinner dishes. She went rigid; the plate slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. "Laura …!"
Laura vacated the passenger side of the Army jeep, and glanced at the concrete walkway while she straightened her khaki field jacket and nurse's cap. Apparently the walkway had been recently re-laid, the gray stone unmarred, except for a signature in the corner next to the entrance landing, the words The De Stefanos" etched into the wet cement before it dried. A frown creased her forehead, and rubbing the side of her neck nervously, her slender fingers brushed against the protruding collar of her nurse's uniform, its buff-color now standard issue. She gave it a quick check.
The handwriting on the cement was familiar ... Kevin's; the letters leaned to the right, boldly scripted, yet precisely and evenly sized ... Kevin's, her Kevin. It must be true. Kevin was alive. Her husband was alive.
Seven years ago, when at last her memory returned, she immediately set out to find her parents. Sadly, the only part of her family that survived the initial quakes, were a pair of cousins now living in what had formerly been known as the Great Lakes area. All that remained of the lakes now were thin streams after the bodies of water were swallowed up as earth plates collided and bulged upward, creating hills and mountains in their stead. A few miles further east part of the new coastline loomed eerily. Laura shuddered at the memory. Her parents, her two brothers, and a sister, dead in the initial quakes. She and Kevin had been only one day into their honeymoon aboard the cruiser headed for the Bahamas when the tidal wave smashed the ship and Kevin was presumed drowned.
She might not have regained her memory were it not for an elementary school classmate whom she barely had known, Dr. David Hauser, who as luck would have it, had come to intern at the hospital where Laura worked as a registered nurse and continued her treatments as an amnesiac outpatient. He recognized her immediately, shocking and gratifying her all at once. Over the next few years, he had helped her regain all her memories, even the sad ones. He'd mentioned meeting Sandra and that he, too, had lost everyone close to him in the quakes. They became close friends, clinging to each other as an anchor to their past and a safe port from which to set sail to their future.
Neither willing to part with the other, Laura agreed to join David as his secretary and nurse, when the government solicited doctors to travel across the devastated country to aid the smaller stranded suburban communities. During the years that followed, Laura witnessed much poverty and ruined hopes. But at the same time, the fulfilling work with David, as they traveled in army planes and jeeps from town to town, aiding, healing, and restoring hope to the victims of the devastation, uplifted her spirits and strengthened her own will to live and prosper.
Several times each year David proposed, but Laura, while admitting their close friendship, and her desire not to part with him, refused. In her heart she remained married to Kevin's ghost, comparing any man who showed an interest in her to the one who had loved her since childhood, the one whom she had loved for as long. Then one morning as she and David scanned the names of the families they were to visit in a small Idaho farming town, the title "Mr. And Mrs. Kevin De Stefano" took her breath away. Certainly there were other Kevin De Stefanos' in the states; it was not an uncommon combination. What made her breath still for a moment was the family's census info. The spouse's name, Sandra De Stefano; the children's names - Joseph, John, Kelly, Evelyn and Jennifer – the names of Kevin's parents, and those of Sandra's father and aunt.
"He's alive," she cried frantically, pent up emotions long subdued, overwhelming her.
"Laura, take it easy, it's probably just a coincidence," David placed a comforting hand on her arm. "It's been fifteen years; if he were still alive he would have found you. You were his very soul."
"In a normal world, but not the one we inhabit today. Records destroyed along with a third of the continents. Every day you hear of loved ones miraculously finding each other."
David grew silent, his lips tightening as lines furrowed his brow, a habit of his, whenever he felt in doubt. Finally, taking her hand in his, holding it in a warm clasp, "We'll know soon enough," he said.
The morning sun shone too brightly, the wind too gentle, the air smelled too clean, disdainful of Laura's trembling fingers as she knocked on the door. She turned once toward the jeep. David was in the process of retrieving his black bag from the back of the jeep. This was not a professional call; merely an inquiry, and a notification that free medical service would be available for the next month, part of the go
vernment's nationwide rehabilitation program. Many communities still lacked proper medical facilities, although this was slowly becoming the rarity rather than the norm. By the time the door opened, David had reached Laura's side, and his lean fingers cupped her elbow supportively. Via that simple touch Laura knew he could feel her pulse hammering expectantly.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She feigned a courageous smile, and then her face paled as the door opened. Sandra stood before her. At her side a child, her lips smeared with chocolate, clung to Sandra's apron and glared up at Laura suspiciously. The girl had Kevin's eyes, wide, brown, and expressive.
"Hello, Sandra," Laura said with forced calm.
Sandra stared, shock continuing to numb her body, except for a stabbing emotional pang in the center of her chest. "It is you, Laura?" she asked. Reason argued, perhaps this was a relative of Laura's who bore a striking resemblance to her. Was she dreaming? She heard herself chuckle as the word "clone" surfaced in her thoughts.
"Yes, it's me, Sandra. You're not seeing a ghost. I didn't drown. But I lost my memory, and only regained it a few years ago." She glanced at David. "Do you remember David Hauser? Grammar School, and —"
Sandra nodded. "Y-yes, I met him again, shortly after —" Her voice failed her as the full import of Laura's arrival suddenly engulfed her. Her knees buckled, and she might have fallen, if David had not reached out and caught her, and supported her back into her kitchen and into a chair.
When she had sipped some of the water David poured for her, Sandra told her daughter, "Jenny, get me the cell phone." She looked at Laura. "I'll call Kevin. He's out working the fields."
"We thought you were dead," she explained hastily. "For five years Kevin mourned. He never looked at another woman. He ... turned to me in friendship," Sandra searched Laura's face for an empathic response, a word of understanding, anything that would show some compassion. How could she just show up like this? Wouldn't it have been kinder to write a letter, or even a phone call, to give her time to prepare, to talk with Kevin, with her children.
"Mommy?" Jenny handed her the cell phone.
Sandra dialed. "Kevin, please come home at once." At his worried inquiry, "No, we're all fine, but you must come home now. There's someone here to see you." And in reply to ensuing questions, "No more questions, please come home, right away."
"If you'll excuse me for a moment." Sandra rose and lifting Jenny into her arms, headed for the bedroom, overwhelmed with a furious desire to change from her blouse and jeans and apron into her prettiest dress. She must look her loveliest when Kevin arrived. She changed into the Swiss dotted apricot frock, the same she had worn the night Kevin first kissed her. Over the years she had maintained her figure, and taken extra care with this dress, wearing it only for anniversaries and birthdays. She cleaned and dressed Jenny in a fresh pair of jeans and a knitted white top with yellow daisies embroidered in the center. Finished, she lifted Jenny into her arms and glanced in the mirror over the dresser. Then she turned away angrily. "You fool," she whispered. To compare herself to Kevin's Laura — "Oh Jenny," she cried, burying her face in her daughter's embrace. "What's wrong, Mommy. Don't we look pretty enough?"
She had just finished changing back into her jeans and blouse, when Kevin's voice reverberated through the one-floor ranch. "Laura!"
Sandra steeled herself to accept and deal with whatever the future held for her. She led Jenny to her small, child safe bedroom. "Sweetheart, please play in your room for a little while." She closed Jenny's door, and shoulders braced, walked through the small corridor back into the kitchen. Kevin was holding Laura in his arms, filling his gaze with her image, hungry so long for the woman he had loved since childhood, and believed lost to him forever. Laura, too, was lost in his embrace, tears streaming down her cheeks, flushed now with excitement. David, like Sandra, stood by quietly. Poor David, Sandra thought. His hands were clenched tightly over the back of a kitchen chair, his lips pressed tautly together, as if he was exercising supreme restraint.
Sandra remembered their meeting in the makeshift hospital fifteen years ago, when he'd been brought in, an amnesiac himself. Their conversations had sparked the return of his memories, and he had confided to her his hopeless love for Laura.
"So, what now?" Sandra asked coldly, resisting the emotional outburst and the pain of loss begging release. She numbed both, saving them until after Kevin had gone, and she was left alone. Oh God, and what about her children!
"Yes, what now?" David's adjunct, cold and sharp, brought Kevin and Laura up short. They let go of each other.
Reading the pain on Sandra's face, Kevin went through a series of shocks. Laura, his Laura, was alive, returned to him. Yet he and Sandra had loved and lived as man and wife ten years, and borne five children. He ran a trembling hand through his hair, the strands separating, showing more clearly the grays. He needed to sit, his legs felt weak. He pulled a chair out and sank into it wearily. How could he leave Sandra for Laura, yet how could he let Laura go, now that she had been returned to him? How simple it would be if he were a Mormon living in Utah. But he wasn't, and his religion allowed only one wife, his first, Laura.
Sandra's voice, surprisingly calm, suggested, "We could all use a cup of tea ... and a brandy. Please follow me into the Dining Room." It was the nicest room in their home. Kevin himself had supervised the addition and only last year they had finally saved enough to furnish it with a dark mahogany buffet and china closet, and carved table and chairs to match.
The group might have as easily sat in the kitchen, but the truth was that Sandra needed to be alone in the kitchen to gather her wits while she prepared the tea. She kept hot water ready in the "Mr. Coffee" on the kitchen counter, and within a few minutes had served everyone including herself with the hot tea, and the brandy that she kept in the china closet.
David broke the renewed silence, setting his cup down. The brandy and the hot tea chaser were leaving a trail of warmth inside his throat and chest, a feeling shared by the other adults sitting at the round dining room table. "I'm going to state the obvious ... as an opening, a place to begin finding a solution, at least a common ground." All eyes turned to him. "First, we have to establish that no animosity exists between us. What happened was no one's fault. In fact, only yesterday I read in the papers about a couple in the same situation as ours." Owing to the unusual number and frequency of similar occurrences over the past twenty years, the Vatican had decided upon a simple solution. In view of the extraordinary circumstances of the past years, the parties concerned could return to their former spouse, or remain with their present one. But once the decision was made, it would be binding for the remainder of their lives. The Vatican spokesperson was quoted as saying, "It is an unorthodox decision, but we live in unorthodox times."
"What did the couple decide?" Sandra asked.
David voice held a sad finality. "Each returned to their former spouse."
"Were there children involved?"
He nodded. "The children were given a choice of whom they wished to live with. One condition the Vatican insisted upon was that the families see each other as often as they wished.
Sandra glanced at Kevin. His gaze was fixed on Laura, his features unreadable, as if he were purposely blanketing his emotions.
"I have to start supper ... David, will you help me." Not the normal thing to say, but it would give Kevin and Laura a chance to be alone, and talk. And as much as she was hurting, she must bow to the stronger love. Kevin and Laura had always belonged to each other. David's thoughts not unlike Laura's at this moment, his frown gave way to a nod of resignation. He rose and followed Sandra into the kitchen.
It took only a moment for the pair to fall back into each other's arms; to feel the touch and clasp of that embrace each had yearned for, and dreamed about hopelessly. If they had meant to talk, only touch mattered as Kevin and Laura exchanged kisses and tears.
Laura pulled away first. "Kevin, why ... why were we so cruelly separated?
"
"No one's fault, remember. But we're alive, and here, together." Laura motioned toward the kitchen. "And Sandra, what of Sandra, and your children?"
Kevin bit back the first words that ached to be said. All these years of pushing away his pain, making himself believe he could go on without Laura; and now faced with Laura's reality. Fifteen years felt like an instant, now that Laura stood before him. He should have waited, his whole life if need be. But he hadn't. Sandra's love had cushioned his pain, and he had given himself over to her nurturing. "I know what I want. To be with you, to begin again as if the years of separation never occurred. I can't lose you again."
"Oh Kevin, how much I wish that as well, but dearest, we can't turn back the clock. You have children, Sandra's, and you have a home, a life. You look ... well taken care of. And you can't deny that up to a short while ago, you were content."
"Content, yes. But happy —" Kevin let the word stand.
"Why did you marry Sandra?"
Kevin hesitated.
"The truth," Laura urged.
The words rushed out with a sigh, "I was lost, lonely, drifting, and she was my anchor, my buoy. She had always loved me, and without you.... Again he let the words stand. It was hard to explain without feeling guilt.
"Can you just walk out and leave her, and your children?" Kevin shook his head, a quiet chuckle of irony, escaping. "Always the cool headed one, that was my Laura."
"Not as cool-headed as you think. You had Sandra, and I had David. Without his help and his shoulder, I'd never have survived my own loneliness."
"Are you and David"
"No. We're very close. And yes, he loves me, has asked me to marry him countless times. But I just couldn't ... I just couldn't forget you. I couldn't let go."
"Well, you don't have to. I'm alive and kicking. I won't abandon Sandra, or my children. I'll continue to support them. But I won't lose you again."