Ophelia and Romeo

The wooden rocking chair in the nursery belonged to my grandmother, made for her by my grandfather when they were expecting their first child. The giant, green succulent in my window sill started as a propagation of a plant from my great-grandmother. My girlfriend - now wife - doubted that it would grow, but it did, and it is the only plant that I am capable of keeping alive. The set of whiskey glasses in my kitchen were a gift from my father when I got married. We broke one in our first fight, so now we have seven glasses instead of eight. ‘Phelia spent almost two weeks trying to glue the tiny glass shards back together, and all she got were tiny, white scars along the tips of her fingers and all of my love and forgiveness and adoration.

At this point, I don’t even remember what we were fighting about. I probably missed an anniversary or an important day and didn’t think much of it (I did that a lot, thinking back). Maybe I was too wrapped up in a sports game and didn’t respond to a question. I might’ve been grading terribly written papers and snapped too quickly, but whatever it was, it wasn’t Ophelia’s fault.

Ophelia was too good, too sweet and willing to compromise on most things, so much so that I could never find fault with anything she ever did. I have fallen in love with a perfect girl, married a perfect woman, and I would never regret a single minute of it. 

She sits in the nursery now, perfectly still and silent in that noisy, old wooden rocking chair. Her perfect posture has slumped, hair limp around her face, and I can’t find the words to comfort her, so I stand in the doorway instead to let her know I’m here. I don’t think words are necessary right now, even if I could figure out something to say. 

I met Ophelia in sixth grade, after she had transferred to our small, quiet Lutheran school. Back then, she had been the one who could never find the words to say. Her hair hung short around her face, just long enough to hide behind when the teacher would call on her in class. I would answer for her, which got the pair of us talking-to’s after class, but I thought they were always worth it. And so were the small, shy smiles that Ophelia would send me as thanks. 

Now, it’s hard to get her, or me, for that matter, to shut up when there’s something we want to say. For me, it’s always been the empires of the ancient Greeks and Romans. My students in my literature classes listen to me drone on and on about it when the sections on The Iliad and The Odyssey role around every year. Our Shakespeare section is barely any better, but I’ll always have at least one or two students who can make their classmates chuckle with their dramatic readings. 

Ophelia’s passion lies on the stage (it hasn’t escaped either of us the dramatic irony her name brings to both of our careers). Whether she came home rehearsing lines or lyrics, or with a funny costar story, her words would fly from her mouth in a flurry of unending music, but it hadn’t always been that way. 

The first time I heard her speak was during recess while we and a bunch of kids were playing kickball. At the time, I didn’t know about her terribly deep competitive streak. That was, I didn’t know of it until she marched up to me and told me that there was no reason I couldn’t have kicked the ball she pitched, so therefore, I was up to three strikes, I was out, and it was time to switch sides. She didn’t like it when I stared at her in shock.

She still got competitive: during tryouts for new shows, for seats on the subway when they had lived in New York, for getting the best deals when they planned their grocery trips… when her fellow actors began talking about sisters or cousins or friends or their own spouses getting pregnant and having babies. 

Ophelia was competitive for the rest of our careers as students. Through grade school, she found her voice with our classmates and argued with them on things of various levels of consequence on the daily. In high school, she fought for the title of valedictorian, beat half of the track-and-field sprinting records, and worked herself nearly to death between her lead roles in the drama productions. And in college, she was constantly rewarded for her excellent skills on the stage and in girlfriend-ery to me. She made her Broadway debut when we were sophomores and she promptly dropped out of college. All of our friends and I were there for her opening night, where she dazzled from the chorus, and we made complete fools of ourselves during the bows as we screamed her name. 

We no longer live in NYC. I said that already, but it’s good to repeat; we now live on the outskirts of San Fran. We don’t live in a shoe-box apartment that’s barely big enough to hold our bed, dresser, and a decent sized table, we have a respectably sized 3-bedroom house set right between the high school I work at and the university I lecture at occasionally, and the theater section of the city that Ophelia visits so much it’s like she’s the constant, benevolent goddess of the area. 

New York had been Ophelia’s dream since before we were dating. She had mentioned it at the beginning of our junior year of high school, a passing comment made shortly before homecoming. And I had decided right then and there that I would do anything I could to make that dream a reality. I applied to NYU without her knowing; she assumed that I would apply to Pittsburg or Colombia or maybe Oxford or Cambridge (which I did, and surprisingly, I was accepted into Oxford), but I also submitted my application to NYU around the same time she did. She was sad, thinking that we would be apart, but she (and I) were willing to try out long distance. She cried when she saw my acceptance letter the same day she received hers. 

Our acceptance letters are hung up next to one another in my home office. My Oxford letter is buried in the bottom of a box. Well, my first one, anyways. I was accepted again for my Master’s and left ‘Phelia in New York to pursue my own dream. If I had known what would happen while I was away, I never would’ve left.

I got the call shortly before my final exams before getting my degree. Ophelia was supposed to be flying out to watch me accept my diploma and I assumed that it had been her calling to ask what to wear. Instead, it was her mom calling from ‘Phelia’s phone in tears. 

“There’s been an accident,” I could barely understand her sobs, “Ophelia won’t make it to your ceremony.”

I tried to coax her into telling me, but it was no use. I wondered if the ring I had stashed in my drawer was about to become useless. I didn’t get the whole story until almost a week later. 

“There was an incident,” her mother said when I showed up to our apartment, “at the theater.” It felt like she was trying to keep me from seeing Ophelia: I was barred from our home, stuck outside the door, but I could still see her huddled under mounds of blankets on our couch. There was a cast poking out from her nest. 

“Let me see her,” I had begged, torn between raising my voice so that ‘Phelia would hear me and keeping my voice soft so that I wouldn’t startle her, “I need to know what happened. I need to see her, please.”

She had frowned, but apparently, she had spent too long at the door, because Ophelia said, “Mama, who’s there?”

“ ‘Phelia, it’s me,” I finally caught her eye over her mother’s shoulder and her face mixed into an expression of relief and horror.

“Peter-”

“I think it’s time you leave,” her mother said.

“This is my apartment too.”

“Mama, let him in,” even from the doorway, I could hear the tears in her voice, “This is our home. I need him right now.” After a bit more cajoling, I muscled my way into our apartment and with a little more, we got her to leave. 

I ordered food and sat next to her on the couch, “Tell me what happened.”

Even now, the story makes my blood boil. 

A group of dude-bros visited the theater. They somehow got drunk during intermission. They stagedoored, but instead of staying behind the markers, they pushed forward, shoved Ophelia back into the theater with them, and locked the door behind them. By the time any cast or staff made it there, ‘Phelia’s leg was broken, and the bastards were already gone. 

“They- they wanted- Peter, they were going to-” I kissed the top of her head between her sobs and tried to comfort her the best way I could. 

We moved shortly after that. The theater she was working in no longer brought her joy and her contract was cut off two months before it was supposed to be finished because of her cast. When I brought up the idea of moving apartments, she had jumped at the idea and pushed moving across the country. And, for whatever reason, it made complete sense. After her leg was healed, we made a roadtrip to California, and ‘Phelia’s smile slowly came back and graced my presence again. It was the widest I’d ever seen it when I proposed outside of a cabin at Yellowstone. 

Our souvenirs of the trip sit on our mantle: an over-sized, overpriced Uncle Abe hat from Mount Rushmore, the petrified scorpion paperweight we got in Nevada, a picture of me proposing from another tourist in Wyoming. During Christmas time, our stockings will hang under our souvenirs: Peter, Ophelia, and this year, we had hung up an itty bitty stocking with the ultrasound picture on it. I hold it in my hands now, ready to bury it with my first Oxford letter to avoid causing ‘Phelia anymore pain.

We lost them (I assumed a girl, but Ophelia was adamant it would be a boy) at 12 weeks. No heartbeat. And just like that, my heart stopped too. ‘Phelia’s face had fallen, just like it had after that accident and when her dad died when we were in our junior year of high school. She had sat in our nursery room every day since then for two weeks; I had called in and asked for some time off for her. This theater is much more understanding than the one she had worked at in New York. 

When we were growing up, Ophelia had a giant, fluffy Samoyed named Booksie. Before she made any friends at school, Booksie was her best friend and could pull her out of her deepest, darkest moods.

I’m not saying a dog can take the place of a child. Personally, I hate people who call pets family. But ‘Phelia had loved Booksie, and I needed to see her smile again, which was why I had a little white puppy in a box downstairs waiting for her. 

I left her sitting there to drop the stocking in my office and then I crouch down in front of her.

“ ‘Phelia.”

Her eyes fasten on me from where they were staring at the wall and she attempts a smile. It isn’t entirely believable, but I take her hands in mine and kiss her dry knuckles.

“I love you. You know that, right?” She nods and I continue, “I know how much you’re hurting right now and I ache, watching you go through this by yourself.” I pause again to let my words sink in. Her hands flip to rest on top of mine and her thumbs caress my knuckles, “I’m here to talk, if you need it. I love you more than life itself, and I don’t want you to close yourself off from me. Please, lover.”

Her smile grows a bit more genuine, even if tears fill her eyes, “I’m sorry, Peter.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for. I just love you so much.”

“I love you too.” 

I press a kiss to her hairline and tug on her hands, “Are you hungry? I’ve got dinner on the stove.”

She follows me down the stairs and misses the wriggling box on the table, “Doesn’t smell like there’s anything here.”

“I, uh, just put it in.”

“The oven’s not even on,” she looks at me with a confused expression on her face, “Peter, what are you planning?”

“Come here, love.” I take her hand again and lead her towards the table. The box has stopped moving and I fear for just a moment that I killed it, but no, there are wide hand holes that allow for plenty of oxygen.

“What’s this?” she sits down in front of it, “Did you get me a present?” For the first time in forever, her eyes well and truly glitter with mirth, and I melt a little.

“I did, in fact.” I push the box in her direction and watch her expression carefully as she lifts the lid and a tiny, furry head pops out.

“Oh, my god,” ‘Phelia reaches into the box and extracts the tiny, wiggly body.

“His name is Romeo,” she chuckles, “but he also responds to Rome, if we want to change the Shakespeare theme. He’s a great dane pomeranian mix, so says the pound, and he’s less than a year old, so we’ll be able to train him.”

“He’s so little,” she says, “I wonder how big he’ll get.”

Romeo squirms a bit more and sneezes three times in quick succession. Ophelia sets him on the floor to investigate and he scampers away. We watch him for a while and I move to stand behind her and rest my chin on the top of her head, just like in so many of our pictures. 

The rocking chair, the succulent in the window, the whiskey glasses. Ophelia’s quiet but kind nature, her competitive streak, her beauty and grace when she’s on the stage. My incapability to shut up about the Trojan War and her allowance to that incapability. Oxford and New York and Broadway and the road trip and landing and roosting here, in San Francisco. Looking back at our shared past already brings nostalgia and pride and love, I can’t imagine what will happen next: a permanent position as a lecturer or maybe a storefront downtown filled to the brim with old books, for Ophelia, her name on billboards and someday, a larger family for the both of us to care for.