The Wished for Man

Maria set down her pen on the open notebook in front of her. She sighed as she took off her glasses and massaged her forehead. “This is ridiculous,” she thought, “What am I doing? This isn’t right. It has to end. I have to make it end.” Straightening herself in her chair, she took a deep breath, put her glasses back on, and bent over her desk with pen in hand.

Suddenly, she heard Michael enter the room and slowly come up behind her. His voice was gentle and sad. “Please, don’t do it.” Maria sat still, keeping her head down. Michael sat in the chair beside her desk. Leaning forward, he tried to make eye contact with her. “If you write me out of your life, I will cease to exist. I can’t bear the thought of non-existence, now that I have learned what it is to love and to be loved!”

“I can make sure the separation is painless.”

“No. That’s not possible.”

Maria shook her head and began to vigorously write. “Yes, it is. I created you. I can choose you to feel and think whatever I will. You’re nothing more than a figment of my imagination.”

Michael reached out his hand and laid it on top of hers (stopping her pen from its work). “Am I? You have breathed life into me. As long as you breathe, I breathe. As long as your heart beats, mine beats. If you erase me, you erase a part of yourself.”

Maria looked at him with tears in her eyes. “We can’t go on like this. You’re not real!”

“The most real things are that which we cannot see: Fear, Love, God. Like the wind, we can’t see it, but we see the effects of it.”

“Please don’t make this any harder for me than it already is. I’ll make you a dream. Then you will have no pain or sorrow, and I will have a wonderful memory.”

Michael looked down at the notebook on the desk. “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”

Maria felt a pain in her heart as she managed a whispered, “No”. Slowly, she reached out her hand and gently caressed some rogue strands of his dark, brown hair off of his forehead. “I will never forget you. You will always be my beautiful dream!”

He lifted his piercing, blue eyes to her and forced one of his broad smiles. “And I know I will continue to exist somewhere, thinking always of you.” Suddenly, his eyes filled with tears. “I won’t kiss you goodbye, if you don’t mind … I can’t.” Rising to his feet, he took one of her small, delicate hands in his large, strong ones, bent down, and kissed it with a whispered, “Goodbye, My Love,” and quickly exited the room.

***

Sitting in the backseat of her brother’s car, Maria stared out the window, oblivious to her sister-in-law talking to her from the front, passenger seat. Suddenly, she heard her name being called (she didn’t know how many times). She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Judy. What was that?”

Judy studied her in the rearview mirror critically. “Nothing, Dear. It wasn’t important.” As Maria turned her gaze back out the window, Judy whispered to her husband, “Nick, she’s been going about in a trance for weeks. You should talk to her.”

Nick shrugged as he replied in hushed tones. “I tried. She insists she’s fine. We’re lucky she agreed to come with us tonight. I’m hoping it will get her mind off of whatever is the problem. At least we’ve achieved getting her out of the house.”

***

Maria felt numb as her brother and sister-in-law escorted her around the room, introducing her to his colleagues. She was unaware of faces, wasn’t retaining names, and robotically offered her hand for a formal greeting when she heard her own name introduced. She only came out of her daze when she felt a familiar hand take hers and heard a strong, gentle voice she knew well. She looked up with a start at the earnest expression of the man in front of her. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name is?”

His face lit up with a broad smile. “I’m Michael.”

Maria shook her head as her brother continued the introduction, “Michael is our newest member on the team. And, so far, the hardest worker.”

Michael laughed. “Hey, you’re the one who got the promotion we’re celebrating.”

Nick laughed and patted him on the back. “Well, believe me, you’ll be next!”

Judy noticed Maria’s intense eye contact with Michael and smiled as she began to pull her husband away. “Well, I think we’ve officially done our rounds of greeting everyone. I think I need to find one of those nice people wandering around with appetizers.”

***

Maria excitedly questioned Michael as they snuck away from the party, out into the garden. “How is this possible? How did you get here?”

Michael smiled as they sat down on a concrete bench. “The night we said goodbye, I started thinking. You put so much of yourself (your heart) in me. I wondered if I could write my own story. I wrote myself into your brother’s corporation. Then I wrote that he would introduce me to you at a party or gathering of some kind. And then I wrote this,” he pulled a sheet of paper and a pen out of his pocket, “I wrote that I asked you a question. But I wanted to wait and have you tell me the answer to write. I asked you if you would come away with me.”

“Where?”

Michael smiled. “Anywhere we can imagine. We’ll create a world of our own, together!”

Maria shook her head. “People just don’t do that.”

“Only because they can’t. We can! Remember when you were a child and everyone said you could be whatever you wanted to be? You can be my wife, and we can live in a world limited only by our imaginations.”

Maria studied Michael’s face for a moment, then smiled. “No. It wouldn’t be right. No one should be allowed to manipulate others. I did it once accidently. I can’t rationalize doing it on purpose. No one should change someone else’s story, even with the best intentions. No one has the right to tell someone else how to live.”

Michael pleaded, “But it would only be ourselves.”

“No. Each life is so intricately woven into others. You can not take out one thread without changing the entire pattern.” Maria smiled as Michael lowered his head. “But I will say this, somehow you were brought to life. And your life has now become part of the tapestry of many others lives. I will no longer question your existence. I will not write you out of my life, again.”

Michael lifted his head and stared at Maria in disbelief. “Do you mean it? You’ll let me stay?”

“Yes. What you did to come back to me proves that you are your own person. I want you to be able to live this life any way you choose.”

“Oh, Maria, I have no life without you! I would be so honored if you would be my wife, right here, in this world. No magic. Just doing real life together.”

Maria took Michael’s face in her hands and, leaning in close to him, whispered, “You are my magic!”