A Painful and Deep Hole

All day today I’ve just felt painfully off; I know it has to do with our conversation that went into the final hours of the night yesterday. Although it was more of a fight than a conversation. How can I get her to trust me again? It’s left me with a hole, a painful and deep hole, and I need to fill it. Sara and I have too much history together: a twenty-year marriage, two teenage kids, and countless years of fun. I completely screwed everything up, but I have all the desire to regain what we’ve lost. That’s going to be a tough order; we’ll need to keep digging up the past few days, weeks, and somewhat into the problems of the last few years. There’s really no way to avoid it and I know how much she hates digging up the past.

After having been gone all day, since before I woke up, her car pulls up the driveway. The glow from the headlights illuminates the dark and dreary world outside as well as the front room of our little log cabin where I’ve been waiting for her. Where has she been? A question I shouldn’t ask her tonight; she won’t appreciate the prying. Without a doubt she needed to clear her thoughts.

Half a minute later she slides the key in the lock and pushes open the front door revealing the slow drizzle outside. That’s when I realize I’ve been sitting here so long it’s now dark, so I say, “Sorry Sara, I fell asleep. Can you turn on the light?”

She reaches over and flicks on the light. I’m seated about ten feet away in my comfy chair in the middle of the room. “God, it’s cold in here. Someone better start a fire,” she says turning around and going back outside.

“Sorry baby, I should have done that earlier. I just didn’t know when you were coming back,” I respond. “I didn’t realize how cold it had gotten.” I can’t help her now, she’s very capable and will only be annoyed that I’m trying to do something for her. It would have been smart to already have a fire, a warm house, and some dinner ready. It probably wouldn’t have fixed anything but also wouldn’t have made things worse. I’m just not feeling all that well today. Either way, I should have had everything the way she likes it.

She returns from the front porch with a handful of kindling and a few logs. In a matter of minutes, she puts a match to the paper, and the fire quickly builds up before she shuts the door. “Much better,” she says.

“Sara, we need to talk. I know we really got into things last night. And I recognize that it ended on a bad note. Well, where was it supposed to go? It started on a bad note. Without a doubt, it’s all my fault, I’m willing to admit that I failed you and us. I never should have well, you know, done what I did. I want to make it up to you any way that I can,” I say, not a great start but hopefully my apology starts today’s conversation on a better track. She was just so angry last night.

“I need some wine,” she says while getting up from in front of the wood stove.

“Don’t pour me any, I’m not feeling so great. Our talk last night really did a number on me. And, I can honestly say, I can’t live with that guilt. It’s left me sick,” I reply. I’m not lying, all day long I’ve just felt ill, I haven’t even eaten anything. And, without a doubt, it didn’t help that I drank deep into the night after she stormed away and left me down here alone. I never even went to bed; there was no way she wanted me there. I slept right here in my chair.

She pours herself a tall glass and sits opposite me on the couch closer to the fire. She is at least looking at me, almost through me. “Why Jason, why?” she asks.

“Why? I can’t really say. I know I tried to tell you last night, but things got crazy. And, don’t get me wrong, I was an idiot and deserved every word you said. Well, most of them, but anger does that, people say things they shouldn’t say,” I answer. And she found a lot of things to say, calling me about every name from the non-existent book of caustic things you can say to someone. And, after twenty years together, and me telling her I had a stupid one-night stand; I can’t blame her.

“We had everything,” she says simple and honest.

“I know. It was just a bad moment, a wrong choice, weakness on my part. It was pathetic,” I could tell her it wasn’t even worth it. Or how I was guilty the whole time. Hell, I was so guilty that things didn’t even work. Those are the details she won’t want to hear and don’t matter. I doubt she wants any details. There’s at least one thing I can add, “It was wrong, I knew it, and you must know how bad I felt, after all I told you only days later. It’s you that I love. More than anything. We’ve always been soul mates, destined to stay together no matter what.”

“You threw it all away, for one wasted night!” she says.

She’s not wrong, it was a waste and I didn’t hold sacred that one most important thing, us. Somehow we need to move forward. Last night’s admission didn’t take care of anything in fact it only pulled a strained relationship right to the snapping point. I’ll be lucky if she sees any part of what I now see, no matter what it was that brought this opportunity to us; it’s a chance for us to move forward and build something better. “It was one terrible night. There’s something we can pull from this mess, and you may not believe me when I say this, but, because of this, I realize how much, how incredibly much, you mean to me. I don’t want to continue as we have, I want to go back to the way things were. We used to be each other’s best friends. We told each other everything. We looked forward to the start and the end of our days together. Well, I can’t speak for you, but it was a better time for me and I miss it.”

“We had so much,” she adds, emphasizing the past tense portion of her sentence before taking a long drink of wine.

Is she giving up on us? Throwing the last twenty years away because of my one huge mistake a week ago. Yes, the last few years have been rough too, but that can all be repaired. “We can’t just toss it away. What about the kids?” Wow, that was cliché. “Sorry, bringing the kids in isn’t fair. They’re old enough now to accept whatever decision we arrive at. I hope you at least consider the possibility. If there’s a chance we could survive this then we need to make every effort.”

The light drizzle outside accelerates into a full rainstorm beating on the roof. When I look out the front windows I notice the muddy footprints on the floor and follow them to the fireplace, the kitchen, and to where she now sits. We don’t always take our shoes off, but if that were me, I would be in big trouble. She must have been out walking in the rain, trying to calm herself. I must admit, compared to last night she seems more interested in this calmer approach, this more rational conversation. Now I need to do everything I can to keep it this way.

“The kids. I’m going to have to tell the kids something?” she says.

Why do they have a right to know about this private and embarrassing failure of mine? “Well, I would hope we could discuss that before we tell them anything. First, we really need to analyze it all, talk about everything, and come up with a game plan for us,” I add, hoping she sees this my way. I can’t imagine the moral pressure day to day if they knew about my—sinful and selfish act. It’s bad enough that I did it, and even worse that I failed at being a good husband. “I love you Sara. With all my heart. You have been and always will be my everything.”

“I could just tell them the truth. That probably won’t go over well,” she says.

“I’m glad you agree…”

“There are parts I can tell them. They deserve to know,”

“Parts? What parts?” I say with surprise.

Nearly finished with her wine she swallows the last drink and goes back into the kitchen. “They’ve known for years how we just got by. How we tolerated each other.”

“Tolerated?” I ask. “Is that what you felt. I thought we just got stuck in a complacent groove. We can get back to where we were. Let’s try. We still have the rest of this weekend here, before we go home we can work towards fixing things.” I hope she sees my desire and feels some of her own. I could go to her and hug her, but she’s not that type. She’ll need to be ready for it, and I can tell she isn’t. “Don’t give up, please.”

After pouring another large glass of wine she says, “I need some food.”

“Good idea, I think I could eat something too, maybe just heat up all the leftovers,” I ask her.

She opens the frig and gets out the food from the other night. After turning on the oven, she sets the plate inside to start warming it up.

“I really want us to reacquire what we lost. And I know, it’ll be a ton of work, but we’re worth it Sara.”

“What a day. I’m just tired,” she tells me.

“Me too, but can’t we get into the meat of things tonight, sleep on it, and see where that leaves us tomorrow?”

Looking back my way her eyes are drawn down to the floor. “And my days not over. I still have that big mess to clean up.” She’s probably just seen her muddy footprints all over the room. “What’s going to be the best thing to clean that up?” she says while opening the cabinet with the cleaning supplies.

“Just soap and water. It’s only mud.”

“I should probably just get rid of the rug all together. Maybe head into town tomorrow and grab something new.”

“Over some mud? You love this rug. We bought it together in La Conner, remember?” It was on our fifth or sixth anniversary some 15 years ago. We always argued about which year it was.

“It’s not worth the effort to save it,” she says without emotion.

“Not worth the effort? What are you saying? Don’t give up Sara, please,” I beg.

“It’s probably soaked through to the floor. Bleach,” she says, seeming to settle on a cleaner.

“Bleach? That seems like a strong place to start.” She hates using bleach if she doesn’t have to. What did she track in. I look at the muddy footprints; they just look like dirt. Then I see the large stain on the rug under my feet. It’s all down my pants too. I must have thrown up all over myself in the middle of the night. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry. I’ll get it. It’s my fault.” I immediately try to get out of the chair and find I can’t. My legs feel numb, asleep like they can sometimes get if I sit too long. “Give me a moment, I’ll get it. My legs fell asleep. I just need to wake them up,” I tell her.

“What the hell did you do?”

“I must have got sick last night. It’s no big deal, I’ll clean it up,” I say, still unable to rouse my legs into action.

“You ruined any chance we had. You really left me no choice you bastard!”

She has moved onto the larger elephant in the room now. “I see we’ve moved back onto the other subject. And right into name calling… Sorry, you have every right. Wait, you still have a choice, we have work ahead of us, but we have choices.”

“You really made a mess of everything. And now I have to clean this up,” she adds.

“I said don’t worry about it. Just give me a moment to get moving. I had too much to drink last night and I’ve been sitting here too long. Sara, please just eat your food and leave it for me,” I ask again.

However, she ignores me, as she often does when she’s upset, and approaches with the bucket of bleach water and pulls back the rug, rolling it into a tight bundle. I didn’t even feel her pull the rug out from under my feet. Are my legs that numb?

“God. What a mess,” she says quietly.

She starts to scrub the floor with a brush and a rag. The water turns pink with the first plunge of the brush back into the water. Each dip after the first only makes it a deeper red.

“That looks like blood. Is that blood?” I ask somewhat in shock. “I drank so much I’m throwing up blood. I need to get to the hospital. No wonder I feel like hell.”

“This damn chair’s going to end up in the dump with the rug,” she says.

“My chair? We can’t get rid of my chair.” I look behind me and see it’s covered in the same mess as well. “Sara, you need to get me to a doctor,” I cry out.

“Well, you son of a bitch, you may have cheated on me, but at least I know you’ll never do that again,” she replies.

I then realize the stain on my pants is the same mottled brown as the floor. It’s on everything. “Yes, I never will but none of this matters right now. Please just stop what you’re doing and get me to a hospital,” I plead.

“We both knew it had to come down to this. I told you, I always told you what I’d do if you ever cheated on me.”

“Yes, you always joked you’d kill me. It was always just in fun though, but it was never really that funny,” I reply. It’s then that I notice her arm passing right through my leg while she cleans the floor, “Oh shit. You didn’t…”

“And a shotgun? I’ve always hated guns. Who would have thought I could get mad enough to... But you had it coming. You asked for it,” she says with a bitter sneer, almost trying to convince herself. “God, I hope no one ever finds that grave.”

Grave? She didn’t. This is a joke. I’m right here. “Sara, please, this isn’t funny.” And once again her arm passes through my leg as if I were a ghost.

A ghost? I reach out with my hand to touch her, before my hand reaches her my translucent arm answers my question. “Sara, what did you do!”

Instantly she stops any movement. Slowly she raises her head upward until our eyes meet. She sees me. She then blinks her eyes several times and shakes her head before looking around the area again not focusing on anything. She did see me, for a moment at least. Is this my destiny? To be a ghost trapped here in this place haunting my wife. Is it her sin that keeps me here or mine?

She goes back to cleaning the floor. “Great, now I’m seeing ghosts. Too much wine,” she mutters to herself. She’s always talked to herself, especially when no one else is around.

*** On a side note, four of the five prompts were used. The fifth one is debatable.